The morning after receiving Ned's stunning gift, Lohgun rode out of Winterfell's stable in the company of brave Martyn Cassel's son Jory, Harl Paige the junior steward, Dougal the woodsmen, Quent Burley the mason, and Fell the logger. Three extra ponies carried the supplies and tents they'd need to live on until the full work crew Ned promised arrived at the ruined tower. Slowly crossing the courtyard he watched the steward, Vayon Poole, and Maester Luwin at work assigning and managing the day's work for many of the castle's craftsmen and simple laborers. The wildling hoped much of the activity revolved around arranging the men, carts, food, tools, and materials that were supposed to follow after him in a week's time.
"Ho, Badger!" Tom called, stepping out of the shadow of the Library tower to keep pace with the short man's slowly ambling mount.
"Don't your ugly hide have duty?" he asked.
"Ahup, got the North Gate today with One Thumb. Now there's an ugly bastard. He can hold it himself for a minute I figure," Tom answered smugly.
"Then why you bothering me Tom?"
"Word travels fast in the castle. I wanted to say congrats, yer high and mighty lordship." The Winterfell guard swept an exaggerated bow over his just noticeable paunch at the Badger.
Lohgun unleashed a rude sound, causing his five companions and Tom to chuckle. "You sweetening me up bub, so's to ask to head my banners?"
Tom returned a similar rude sound. "And freeze my bored balls off in the back of nowhere?" he scoffed. "Hells, no, I like Winter Town too much for that!" and the guard grabbed meaningfully at his cod for emphasis. "But I did ask Lord Eddard if I could head up the work crew when it heads out to the Wolfswood."
"And did our lord lose the mind the Old Gods gave him?" Quent challenged from behind the wildling.
A smile spread across the man's chubby cheeks. "That he rightly did," Tom announced proudly.
"Well, you might finally do an honest day's work then," Jory Cassel, lieutenant of Winterfell's guards jested, earning some chuckles.
"Could be, could be," Tom declared, pretending an air of thoughtfulness.
"I'll look forward to seeing you there Tom," Lohgun said and snapped a quick salute. He clucked his teeth and gently prodded spurs to increase his horse's gait. "Just don't be late," he called.
The Badger's five companions increased the pace of their horses too. As Dougal rode past Tom he leaned down and added, "Don't get lost pudding head."
"Damned arse!" Tom swore cheerfully after him.
They passed through the East Gate and into Winter Town to pick up the Kingsroad. The autumn chill lasted the several hours during which they travelled north on the well-worn avenue, trotting past hamlets and mostly open farmlands, all pledged directly to House Stark. With the sun near its zenith, the trees of the Wolfswood had edged noticeably closer to the road, and occasional separate stands of trees met it directly. Soon a cart track broke off the road heading northwesterly into the forest.
"This'un," Dougal muttered and took the lead in heading the small group on to the man-made trail.
Within an hour they entered the Wolfswood proper, an oak and elm and beach and evergreen shaded world of leaves, branches, and thick trunks only sparsely interrupted by meadows and leas. Near dusk the track began to curve more to true west than northwest. Not long after the woodsmen called a halt and pointed to the north. "There's a trapper's hut beyond that rise of soldier pines.
The wind shifted, the Badger sniffed the air. "Smoke, cooking meat," he said.
"I'd pay a copper for some fresh game instead of eating the smoked jerky we brought," Quent announced.
Fell chuckled. "They'd rather swap for a knife or a wool shirt afore they'd ask about coin."
They spent a pleasant evening with a hard scrabbled hunter and his two sons. An ermine and two rabbits cost them only a skinning knife and a share of a wineskin. And in the morning Lohgun knew word of a new lord for Tumbledown Tower would start to spread through the wood.
Dougal soon found the overgrown remains of the path that broke straight north toward their destination. There was usually enough room between the towering trees that the low growth didn't slow the horse much. The biggest delay was Fell's notching of the forest's sentinels to mark them for cutting. The loggers as part of the work party to follow them in a week would need to widen the path enough for carts. They broke out tents for the second night. Wind through the trees and sleet hitting the canvas gave them a lullaby to drift off to sleep with.
By the time they finished breaking their fast, the slushy remains of the night's icy precipitation had all melted into the leaf, pine, and moss covered floor of the forest. They all loaded up their gear and mounted, the only ones doing any complaining, little though it actually was, were the mason, Quent, and the steward Harl. Lohgun, Jory, Dougal, and Fell, all veteran outdoorsman, exuded superior grins at the discomforts and trials of their softer companions.
The morning proceeded smoothly; Dougal shooting a doe at one point and Fell relentlessly marking which behemoths needed chopping down. The so called trail passed by ponds and through streams, only a few of which would require bridges to allow carts or wagons over. When they curved around a small lake nestled between several small hills and started following along the meandering crook that fed the basin, the trees of the Wolfswood began to thin and not tower so high. This stand was new growth, at least in Northern terms, since it was likely less than five hundred years old.
The six men entered a meadow. At the far end a boulder strewn mound rose fifty feet above the brush and grass filled lea. A mile beyond that, back in the returning forest, flinty, cliff marked hills rose three or four hundred feet high. This was the site. They rode closer to their goal, no one speaking. The stub of a tower, hardly more than a man's height, sat precariously atop the middle of the mound. The ivy and moss covered boulders were the large stones of the modest keep that time and weather had tumbled back down to the earth.
They dismounted and climbed, scrabbled their way to the top. Each one gazing around, taking in the messy, jumble.
Finally, Fell whistled to break the silence.
Dougal shrugged.
"She's a shabby bitch," Quent pronounced.
"That is gonna to take a fucking lot of work," Harl agreed.
"Winter is coming," Jory predictably announced.
"No shit!" the Badger agreed with all the above. "Let's look about."
"Thought we was a doin' it a'ready," Fell grumbled.
"Quit bitching before I take your axe and knock your big block head in with it," the Badger said with mock menace.
"Over here," called Quent, who'd already stepped inside the remains of the tower. "Stairs going down."
They crept one by one down the partially rubble strewn stairs and found an ironwood door in passable condition half open.
"Boar scat," Dougal declared.
Lohgun sniffed. "Years old," he declared. Nevertheless, he took precautions. Snickt! "Fell, push back the door," he ordered.
Creak! The rusty hinges protested the hard shove the logger gave it, one even crumbled apart.
They all peered in, the outside light that reached the tower cellar turning the darkness grey and shadowy.
"Not bad," Harl pronounced staring up at the vaulted ceiling, judging how big and damaged the space was.
"Looks sound," the mason declared.
"Nothing hard work can't fix, right bubs?" said the Badger.
Lohgun grunted. The A-frame of the crane creaked from the strain.
"One more turn," Harl shouted encouragingly.
"Hodor," said Hodor cheerfully and heaved on the handles of the winch.
Lohgun grunted again as he pulled on the other end of the winch that stretched three feet off the ground between the two thick beams making up the A- frame. Sweat dripped down his naked chest and steam rose off his body into the chill morning air.
"Another!"
"Hodor. Hodor," shouted the stable boy cum crane mule excitedly, not appearing the least bit taxed by the effort. The winch started to turn another rotation.
Lohgun groaned, throwing his strength into it; his muscles burned as they raised two thousand or so pounds of granite twenty feet off the ground with the help of the giant simpleton and a the five pulley crane built atop the newly restored second floor of Tumbledown Tower. The support ropes allowing the beams of the A-frame to incline at an angle hummed softly from the forces stretching the woven strands of hemp.
"Hold it! Hold it!" Harl yelled.
"Shove it boys!" bellowed 'Slender' Tom, the slightly pudgy Winterfell guard turned crew chief.
Four young men rushed in from the sides to lay hands on the thick stone and started rocking it, swinging the big rock first away from the tower face and then letting it arc back over the tower.
"Ready, ready," Harl whispered loudly with anticipation.
The Badger's eyes near floated to the back of his head as he fought against the strain as the heavy, shaped piece of granite swung back and forth.
"Drop it!" the crane supervisor barked.
The wildling and the stable boy released the winch.
"Hands!" 'Slender' Tom screamed at his crew, all four of whom instantly skipped backward.
The stone dropped six inches. A loud 'CRACK' reverberated across the slowly widening space being made in the Wolfswood by the work force from Winterfell. The rock fell into place right beside the mini-boulder they'd raised twenty minutes earlier. All eyes rested on their newest conquest. Tom walked up to it, tapped it, leaned out over the edge of the Tower and glanced at the other side of the stone, tapping it again.
"No cracks," he declared. Everyone on the second floor breathed easier, the effort hadn't been wasted; only one broken rock so far that day. "Come on boys, untie the cradle, then sand it, shimmy it over tight, and sand it again. You know the drill."
Two men leapt forward to take off the ropes that had secure the hunk of granite to the crane. The other pair picked up buckets and waited their turn to throw the sand down to make the new rock slide easier into its finally resting spot.
The Badger thirstily drank the ale from his deer hide wineskin. Hodor just stood there looking pleased with himself.
"Come on ya lazy lowlanders," the voice of Quent Burley called out from down below.
Lohgun stepped to the partially rebuilt wall and peered over the side. The man in charge of providing the stones stood by his team of eight men, each holding a large ironwood lever, at the base of the tower. Another cube shaped piece of granite already waited their attention.
"Sure you don't want to switch jobs," the wildling asked.
A smug look spread across the clansman's plain, weathered face, revealing a gaped tooth grin. "No thanks," Quent answered. "I'm the brains; you're the brawn, don't you remember that little man?"
The Badger hocked a loogie that made the man even more diminutive than Lohgun quickly hop to the side to avoid being splattered. Several shouts of protestation rang like music in the wildling's ears. "You sure it's the right stone to go next?" he asked dubiously.
The northern clansman squinted up at the new made Lord of Tumbledown Tower and swept his hands at the field of rocks, some still moss covered, that lay arrayed around the rapidly rising small keep. "Welllll," he drawled. "T'is a bit of a puzzle figuring which rock would have gone where hundreds of years ago. But luckily for you, one of us has a brain." and the grinning man tapped the side of his thick skull.
"Alright," Lohgun conceded. His eyes then drifted off to scan the immediate, visible portions of the demesne granted him by the Lord of Winterfell. Workers with mattocks, shovels, and large wicker baskets were nearly done with one of the two pits being dug for the underground storage areas. The first timbers for the structure were going in on the corners and flat paving stones waited on the edge to be lowered into the pit once the floor appeared sufficiently levelled. The dirt was carried by the wicker basket hoisting pit mules out to the ringworks that would hold the wooden palisade. Work on the ditch in front of the ringworks had lasted only long enough to outline the raised, oval shaped defensive position as well as provide the first mounding of earth for it.
The clatter of saws and hammers caught his attention next. At least the Wolfswood offered an endless source of timber from which to construct the bailey's workshop, kitchen, water hut, and first storage shed. Maybe by next week the first big dual level warehouse would be complete as well as a barracks; no one particularly enjoyed sleeping in tents with the weather turning; even if a barracks intended to house fifty would be forced to temporarily hold close to two hundred. Everyone had been extremely pleased when the removal of some of the tower's tumbled masonry found around a wet spot revealed not only a modest spring, but a functioning cistern. The clang of metal told Lohgun that the lowest journeyman and senior apprentice which Mikken the blacksmith had sent along with the group were hard at work sharpening tools, making nails and hinges, and improvising together whatever gadget one of the supervisors needed to solve the seemingly endless number of small, but vexing problems that cropped up each day.
Pairs of horses, and actual mules, not the human kind he liked to refer to his workers as, dragged the huge trunks of oaks, firs, ashes, and black briers cut down by the logging crew across the slowly widening expanse of meadow. Though far from a crofter, the wildling estimated by the apparent quality of the soil and the size of the space being etched out of the forest around his incomplete manor, that perhaps a third to a half of the crops Tumbledown Tower would need to survive could be grown here. No crops would be planted this season. Still, he needed skilled crofters, and tough ones too, to take tenancy on his lands. The roadway hewn out of the Wolfswood from the Kingsroad to here would see a farmer hauling his produce by cart reaching Winter Town in three days; perhaps that might prove an inducement to tenants. Hunting game and fishing in the forest's many streams, ponds, and small lakes could provide a steady supply of meat to those intrepid enough to risk having a jumped up wildling as their pledged lord.
Lohgun drew a great breath, pleased with the promise the land showed, yet still a bit daunted by the new and many challenges of lordship confronting him. Ned had gifted him with a large, skilled team of builders and craftsmen. He hoped they'd have time enough to make this modest motte-and-bailey style keep tenable afore too long. "Winter is coming," he whispered.
Six inches of snow had fallen over night. The thirty three men and nineteen women gathered at the base of the nearest cliff had tromped through the white covering to the open space and with shovels quickly cleared a fifty foot wide circle. Wielding a mattock with strength and speed, the Badger broke through a foot of frozen ground in five different spots making holes.
At last satisfied, he softly asked with visible breath, "May I have Lord Eddard's gift."
Harl Page stepped forward, pulling a small box out of his pocket. "Here my lord," and he handed it over.
Lohgun jiggled the slight, yet significant weight in his hand for a moment before opening the lid. Five completely different shaped nuts looked up at the wildling.
He took the first, an acorn, and dropped it in a hole.
Moving to the second hole, he extracted an elm seed and let it fall.
In the third he placed an ironwood nut.
For the fourth he chose a sentinel evergreen seed.
Finally he stepped up to the middle opening and grasped the largest nut, the fruit of a weirwood. The wildling stared at it, pondering time and his short existence weighed against the majesty of Westeros and the vast North he'd come to love. When Lohgun spoke, he spoke from a kernel in his heart he realized had grown mightily, "From Winterfell, Lord Stark has given us the seeds to begin a new life here at Tumbledown; to create our own godswood. We shall be blessed with a weirwood. Not in my life, maybe not even in our children's lives, but our grandchildren shall see a face upon this tree when they pray to the Old Gods. And when they do, hopefully they'll remember us and our making this place fit again for a northman."
The wildling turned northern lord bent over and gently placed the pale white nut in the bottom of the hole. Then he knelt, and all those with him knelt too. And as he prayed, he had a vision of an enormous stone manor, light gleaming out from huge glass window, more beautiful and comforting than any place he'd ever seen or dreamed of.
(home)
As his mind soared above the palace, part of the immaculately sculpted garden grounds shifted, revealing a deep dark hole in the earth. Light and fire and noise flickered inside and erupted out of the cavern. Lohgun waited for a dragon to fly forth, but instead a large black bird with three shiny eyes hovered into view.
((intrusion))
The wildling blinked. The vision disappeared. He noticed many eyes surreptitiously glancing at him from beneath lowered brows. The Badger stood up and stepped back to the edge of the cleared circle.
Harl waived a hand and five men rushed forward to fill the holes back in with chunks of frozen dirt. The man sidled up to Lohgun and murmured, "An auspicious beginning, my lord."
"It's damned freezing out here, and none of Winterfell's hot water springs to warm us. Still glad you asked to become my steward, pipsqueak?"
The man smiled broadly, well knowing the weather was far, far from rating as freezing to a northerner, let alone to a man born beyond the Wall. "Never said, I'd stay for life, did I? And there's no further advancement at Winterfell without Vayon passing on or Lord Eddard taking him to King's Landing because he bloody well got asked to become the Hand. Now what are the odds of that?" Harl asked with a rueful laugh at the futility of reaching his dream.
The men and women to first pledge to him at last began to walk back to Tumbledown Tower. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the Keep and out buildings, an enticing enough picture. Someone would get a batch of heated, spiced wine going soon enough. "It's a small group," Lohgun acknowledged out loud.
"But dependable," Harl assured him. "Word is spreading about our new tenancy. And you've a name, my lord. Come spring, we'll be swimming in people. Clansmen too, you and your claws are bloody popular with the Wulls, Flints, Norreys, and Harclays I hear."
The Badger laughed, remembering, or partially remembering, many a spirit fueled frolic with the mountain peoples. "Time will tell," he declared.
"Think they'll survive winter?" Harl asked, looking at the covered up holes.
"Hope we do, hope we all do, bub," the Badger repeated earnestly.