5. Demon Queen
The pack was restless. They'd been in the southron lands too long, lands that were full of prey, but crowded. The woods had a sweet, pungent smell, and the air was thick and sluggish. They longed for the sharp scent of pine needles, and cool winds of the north. It wasn't natural, for wolves, to stay this far south.
Their leader knew the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the streams, the rivers, the forests, the roads, the towns. She had wandered this country, from the swamps in the north to the city on the sea whose stench stretched for miles, for five years. At first she was alone, but gradually, they found her. First the loners, wolves whose packs had died out or males who had lost the fight for alpha and were forced to leave the pack. Then a smaller packs had come and asked to join her, mainly females and pups who needed protection. Then larger packs, drawn by the rumors of the wolf who stood as high as a man. Her pack was now one hundred strong, an army, almost, that moved from hill to valley, from river to plain like locusts, emptying the woods of game and taking what livestock the soldiers had left behind.
Demon wolf, the humans called her. They locked their doors and shutters and night, and kept long sticks with sharp ends by the doors, beside the bed. When they heard they howling in distance they carried their lambs inside to sleep with their children. Only then did the children understand that this was not just another story told to frighten them.
Among her pack she was a queen, the greatest they had known. She had killed a bear alone, they said, and devoured its carcass in two days. She was raised in the great northern forests, they whispered, beyond the swamps, and her kin came from a land of always winter. And she had lived among humans. She knew how long to stay, how many lambs to take, before the villagers would come looking for them with flying sticks and pointed metal and fire. She knew that humans often left food unattended, and taught the wolves to wait until the shepard had fallen asleep before taking an ewe. She kept her pack safe, and well fed. As their numbers grew they grew bolder, sleeping closer to towns, attacking larger animals. Two weeks ago they had killed a horse, and the man that was riding it.
But their Queen had a master. A girl. Her master had raised her, fed her, trained her, loved her, and then one day had made her leave. The wolf had been confused and angry for many moons. She was little more than a pup then, and had lived for most of her life in a castle. She tried to find her way back but she couldn't; she had lost her master's scent and suddenly was alone, away from her master and her sister and her brothers and the humans that had given her food and water and brushed her coat. She had been hungry. She had killed a deer. She learned to hunt and to find water and dry places to sleep at night. Her pack found her. She almost forgot her master.
Then, several years later, something changed. First it was a sense of being watched, but not from the outside, like a predator might watch her (although she had never encountered a predator before) but from the inside. The feeling came again, usually at night, usually in the heat of the chase. It grew stronger. It made the hair on the wolf's back stand up, but she wasn't afraid of it. Then one night she saw her master, sleeping in a dark room. Her master woke up and said her name.
The next night, her master came to her again. She sat up in bed and spoke and water ran from her eyes. Nymeria understood that her master was sorry for sending her away. Over the next several moons her master visited her many times. She showed Nymeria a house made of stone, white on the outside and dark on the outside, with a pool of water in the center. She showed her a city that was full of many small rivers, and that smelled like the city to the south but not as bad. She her a wooden house that was surrounded on all sides by water as far as she could see. Nymeria in turn showed her master her pack, and the woods and the streams that were her home. She showed her her favorite hunting trails and places to sleep at night, and where the deer went to breed. She showed her the villages, and the men with sticks that marched on the road in twos and threes and tens. Then one day the master showed the wolf the tall red mountain that Nymeria recognized; the city in the south. The wolf understood that her master had come home.
Nymeria had led her pack south towards the city by the sea to meet her master. She waited. A moon ago, her master had called her, and the wolf had gone to meet the girl in a wood less than half a day's ride from the city. The girl had cried and wrapped her hands in the wolf's fur, and the wolf had wagged her tail. She didn't remember the last time she had wagged her tail. They found that when they were touching they could communicate very clearly, much clearer than the wolf remembered when they were children. And her master was glad.
**NOTES
Another short one. I'm following a pretty strict off on chapter schedule, and I didn't want to break it. Plus some details on Arya's particular warging connect that will be useful later, although the rules bend.