10. Gendry

When he stumbled back to the camp, weaponless, disoriented, half frozen, bleeding again from his thigh, and with a large bump on his head, and told Anguy that Kyra was gone, Anguy thankfully didn't press.

Gendry wanted to explain but didn't know how to start. He hadn't told anyone in the Brotherhood about Jaqen Ha'gar; in fact over the years he had almost forgotten that the faceless man had existed. And to claim that the girl that they had been traveling with was like that man — that she could change her face at will — and that that girl was none other than the long dead Arya Stark, whose direwolf had saved them from Stannis's soldiers —

On the other hand, he'd seen more unbelievable things.

The swords confused him. How had she come to carry the Widow's Wail, and why did she hide it from him? Why did she take Oathbreaker? She confused him. Why hadn't she told him who he was? Did she think he would have tried to ransom her or use her? If she didn't want them to know who she was, why had she chosen to travel with them? Why had she picked him, specifically, when she could have—

Gods, he had deflowered Arya Stark.

In the morning they re-dressed Edric's wound, hoisted him onto his horse, and tied him to the horse's neck so that he wouldn't fall. Anguy rode in front on Kyra's mare and Gendry behind, the bridle of Edric's mount tied to the back of Anguy's saddle. Gendry took a sword from one of the dead men to replace Oathbreaker. They left Anguy's skittish horse behind when Gendry reiterated that Kyra wouldn't be coming back.

Before they'd ridden more than a mile Edric begged to be untied, as the horse's movement jostled his injured shoulder. He sat up for the rest of the day, looking all the while like he was about to faint. Gendry leaned back in the saddle as far as he could, but that didn't keep his leg wound from opening up several times. The road was a beautiful white from the fresh snow, and northern evergreens grew thick on either side.

They continued in this manner, largely without speaking, for almost a week. By the third day Edric could largely manage by himself. The wound was clean, and almost entirely in muscle; he kept his left arm tightly bound to his side but could hold the reins and even draw his sword with his right. In some ways he was in better shape than Anguy, who still struggled to draw a bow with his sprained wrist. Gendry's gash left a nasty scar but otherwise didn't both him much.

The drifts were too deep in the woods for the horses to make much progress, and so for the most part they stayed on the road. They walked much of the time, leading the horses through patches of ice and around fallen trunks and mounds of snow. At night they looked for cottages, sometimes stopping early or riding late to find one; it was too cold to sleep in the open if they could help it. They met two more groups of soldiers; one trio on foot, who eyed Gendry's bulk and moved on, and one group of five that looked even more road worn then they were; one man was missing an arm, and another was slung across their only horse. Anguy managed to draw an arrow and after a moment of tense silence both groups of travelers continued in their respective directions.

"Yer going the wrong way!" the injured man on the horse yelled at them as they left.

Two days from Winterfell they ran into a haggard group of smallfolk heading south—perhaps twenty women, children and old men. A grandfather stepped forward and begged mercy, but when they realized that Edric, Anguy, and Gendry meant no harm they offered to share a meal in exchange for the pair of dead man's boots that Gendry had carried from Moat Caitlin. They had news also; Winterfell had fallen from within, and was now in the hands of the smallfolk, with no lord to claim it.

"I don't like it," the old man had said. "That Ramsey Snow was a bastard in all ways, but I'd rather have a bastard than a ghost. They say it happened all in one night like—three dozen soldiers with their throats cut, and Bolton's head left in the middle of the yard, rolling in the muck. And not a word about who did it. But I can tell you this, it wasn't human, and whatever it was, it'll be back again. Yessir, that's enough for us. We're done with the North."

The next night they found a cottage with its roof half fallen in and the door on its hinges. The hearth was cold, but the ashes were still a dark grey, not yet feathery with age. In the middle of the night Gendry awoke to a scratching sound a few feet from where he slept. A small girl, maybe 10, dressed in rags and covered in dirt, had clawing at the earth around one of the hearthstones and pryed it up to recover something wrapped in a dirty cloth. She saw him and froze, unable to tear her eyes away from his blue ones. He looked back and tried to tell her silently it was alright, he wouldn't say anything. She grabbed her bundle and ran past the sleeping men.

They arrived at Winterfell a day later.

The first sign of the fabled keep was a line of smoke rising across the horizon. At first he thought the castle might be burning, but no, it was a narrow column, the breath of a controlled flame. The plain surrounding the castle was surrounded by snow, drifts that in some places were taller than a man. The dark stone of the walls was glazed with sheets of ice, that clung to the rock in crevices between stones, at corners, and climbed up the bottom from the sea of white. The sun was out today, for the first time in a week, and little streams of water were running down the sides of the castle.

The road that ran to the gates was packed down and strewn with grit and straw, in better condition than much of the Kingsroad. The heavy outer gate was open, although the portcullis was closed; Gendry noticed that a tattered black flag with the face of a wolf was flying above the right tower.

"Halt!" a gruff voice yelled when they were about one hundred paces from the gates. "Who are ye and who do ye fight for?"

"We fight for no one!" Edric called back. "But we journey to defend the north from the scourge of Winter, to defend the seven kingdoms against the evil of all evils, to fight the ones that walk beyond death! We are—"

"Aye shut up! Throw your weapons down, or you'll be dead before you take another step!"

Edric sputtered slightly. They couldn't see anyone from where they stood.

Gendry sighed and looked at Anguy, and then drew his short iron sword and tossed it to the ground a few feet in front of his horse. Anguy dismounted, and carefully placed his bow beside it. Edric awkwardly unbuckled his sword belt with his right hand and handed it to Anguy, who placed it beside the bow.

"Stupid idea Gen," Anguy muttered on his way back to his horse. "Although at least they'll shoot us clean, and we won't have to fight."

Gendry scowled. He still couldn't see anyone. He squinted up against the bright winter sun and saw the voice coming from a portly, older man peering from slit in the stone in the middle of the tower to the right of the gate. Beside him was an archer, bow drawn, who couldn't have been older than 12.

"Al'ight now, back up!" The three travelers complied, urging their tired horses to move. "Tha's enough! Now, who de ye fight fer? Everyone fights fer someone," the man said. "Or did. Are ye Stannis men?"

"We are knights of the Brotherhood without Banners, and serve Lady Stoneheart, the living vessel Lord of Light," Gendry called as loudly as he could, remembering the words Thoros used to call when the situation called for it. "We are traveling to join our Brothers at Castle Black. We mean you no harm, we seek only a warm hearth and a chance to trade our gold for bread."

There was a pause, and then the man shouted, "The Brotherhood, you say? We heard here they fought for Stannis. They're all dead, I suspect."

Edric sagged in his saddle and Anguy must have tensed, because his horse shook its mane. Gendry mind raced through those he remembered — Thoros, Red John, Kerril, Spence. All gone. Was the Lady Dead? Could the Lady die? Of course the Lady pledged the Brothers to Stannis. His enemy was the Boltons, and the Boltons as much as the Freys had planned the Red Wedding. And Stannis had aimed to recapture Winterfell, the Lady's home. Not for the first time, Gendry wished fervently that the Brotherhood had never found her, that Beric had never kissed her, that she had never risen.

Gendry heard his own voice respond. "That is news to us, sir. But our needs are still the same. Grant us leave to stay in your halls for the night."

"How do I know ye ain't lying?"

"You don't." Gendry said. "But you saw us come from the Southern road. And we can see you need help. Anguy here, he is one of the finest archers in the Riverlands. And Sir Edric is a trained knight."

"And you?" called the portly man.

"I'm a blacksmith."

They put him to work as soon as they'd stabled the horses, mainly mending tools, barrels, door hinges. The weapons could wait, said Barth, the portly man who had questioned them at the gates. He had been a brewer in a town near Winterfell when Eddard Stark ruled, and had lost his left leg in a boar hunt twenty years ago. Now he was the chief steward of Winterfell.

Winterfell's blacksmith had been flayed a week ago by Lord Ramsey, they said. The smoke was from a large bonfire out back; they were still burning the bodies of the Bolton guards who had died three days ago. They burned all bodies now, Barth said. Stannis' army had brought south with them tales of armies of the the dead, that stopped fighting only when cut to pieces, and the Wilding refugees that, if a fire large enough could not be kindled, would drag the dead behind them until one could.

More smallfolk poured into Winterfell everyday, mainly orphaned children and tenants of the surrounding lands who, Barth said, had been starving and freezing in their cottages for weeks. Now that the Boltons were gone, they came to the one place around for miles that still had adequate supplies of food, and walls that could withstand the heavy winter storms. Most came gratefully, but some came grudgingly, or even in fear, disturbed like the old man on the road who had told tales of ghosts.

"It was a White Walker, I say," hissed a woman while Gendry, Anguy, and Edric took their midday meal, a tasteless mush made from oats, vegetables, and hog fat. "It came and it murdered those folk, and I tell ye it's here still, all dress up as a man! Here, in this hall, you'll find it, rotting flesh hid up underneath a cloak, wearing' the face of an innocent!"

There were few fighting men among the smallfolk, and fewer left in the castle. Barth asked Anguy to look after the watch, and put him in charge of a handful of boys and a few girls, all of them barely large enough to string a bow. Anguy told Barth that Gendry was a great swordsman, and despite his protests Gendry found himself teaching a group of eight to fourteen year old boys the same exercises that Brienne had taught him on the road south six months ago. Occasionally a Bolton dissenter or a Stannis deserter would arrive at the gates, much like they had, and if Barth thought them sincere, he let them in and gave them to Anguy or Gendry. Edric healed slowly, and helped teach the boys Gendry taught, or took shifts at the main gate.

Gendry still spent as much time as possible in the forge, as there was much work to be done. The boys he was teaching to fight took turns helping him, bringing him wood, feeding the fire, cleaning rusted tools for mending. There was an older boy with orange hair, Calin, who had been helping Milkken, and Gendry let him take on smaller tasks.

Barth often came into the forge to sit and discuss the keep's administration. Gendry listened quietly and occasionally offered input when asked, although he didn't quite understand why the man wanted Gendry's opinion. Food wasn't an immediate issue —thanks to the extortion the Boltons, most of the storehouses were full, although more smallfolk streamed into Winterfell everyday, and Barth was worried the grain wouldn't last until spring. More pressing were the envoys of the lords of the north, who began to arrive only a day after Anguy, Gendry, and Edric to stake their right to Winterfell. They demanded more hospitality and better food than Barth felt he could offer, and as a whole they seemed unwilling to contribute to its repair or maintenance. Worst were the rumors coming from the North. Jon Snow, Bastard of Winterfell and Commander of the Night's Watch, had been killed by his own brothers two moons ago, and the wildings he had settled into the Gift south of the Wall were in open revolt against the new leadership at Castle Black. The Wall seemed weakest when strength was needed most; there were rumors of a dark army gathering opposite the wall—an army of the dead.

Gendry had finished mending the castle's essential tools and had just begun to work on weapons and armor when Barth had received a raven from Old Town. Some maester wrote that Winterfell must set itself to making weapons from obsidian, a strange black rock that Gendry had never heard of. The maester said that, according to a scroll he found in Old Town, there was a store of obsidian buried under the northeast corner of the First Keep, and that more could be mined in the mountains between Ironrath and Shadow Tower. Along with the advice were strongly worded threads about the coming army of the dead. Barth, who had never received a raven before and seemed to consider its contents an edict from the Gods, put as many smallfolk as he could find to digging around the ancient keep.

The envoys came from nearly every corner of the North: Karkhold, White Harbor, Flint's Finger, the Barrowlands, Hornwood, and Torrehen's Square. There were lords and second sons, chiefs of mountain clans, weedy crannogmen, elderly knights, and men-at-arms, most of who were missing an arm, a leg, or an eye from the wars. The Stark line had stretched unbroken back to the age of the First Men, and no one had the obvious claim. Barth said there were far fewer envoys than there should be; too many houses had lost all of their adult males, and many more were snowed in, trapped in their keeps with what food they had managed to save until the snows melted.

To Gendry's great annoyance, most of the envoys spent most of their time lounging in the hall loudly announcing their blood ties to the Starks or organizing hunting trips from which they returned empty-handed, frozen, and angry. They also seemed to spent a great deal of time peeking into the forge, or standing to watch while Gendry instructed the boys, although they rarely spoke to him. Gendry hated it. It reminded him of working in Tobho Mott's shop, when Lord Arryn, and then Lord Stark had come to watch him, had said nothing, and then left.

Nothing good comes of watching me, he wanted to retort as he flattened a stake or mended a helm. Stay away. It wasn't until the boys he led in exercises started calling him "milord" that he turned on Anguy and Edric.

"I told you never to repeat what I said outside of King's Landing," said Gendry, more heatedly than he had intended, when he managed to get the two of them alone, lounging in a corner after their midday meal.

"We didn't, Gen," said Anguy sharply. They hadn't been on easy terms since Lem's death. "They can see it on your face, just the way Brienne saw it, just the way the Lady knew it too. There are men here who've served with Stannis, who knew the King before he died."

"Doesn't seem like you'e done anything to deny—"

"Some of the Glover men asked us who you were," cut in Edric, trying to play peacemaker. "We said you were a bastard from the south who used to be a smith's apprentice in King's Landing before joining up with us, and that was all we knew."

"Don't see why you're pretending you're just some whore's brat anyway," muttered Anguy.

Gendry was growing hot, but he didn't want to get in a fight with Anguy. "That's exactly what I am," he said. "I am just some whore's brat, and I've no intention of being anyone else. So just keep your story straight, alright?"

"There's going to be an assembly next week, Gen," said Anguy tensely. "They're going to pick the next Lord of Winterfell. And you know what? Not one of these Northern scumbags left is worth a scarp. If you stand up the smallfolk here would support you. And so would Barth."

Gendry stared at him. What he said was ridiculous. Bastards didn't become lords, and even if he wasn't a bastard, Baratheons didn't become lords of Winterfell. "I'm the blacksmith," he said flatly.

Edric was studying his boots. He said in a small voice, "Lords and smiths really aren't that different, Gen."

A week later Barth announced that there would be a Kingsmoot. The envoys from the houses of the North were everywhere now. They had run out of room in the halls and many had pitched tents in the courtyards. One poor lord had forced to pitch his tent halfway into the sty where the hogs were kept. The boys Gendry taught had been displaced and several slept in the forge with him, lying blankets next to the anvil or underneath the small bed where Gendry slept, in the room that had been Milken's.

Gendry had found the last week very unsettling. First to approach were two crooked, fierce looking chiefs of the mountain clans. They watched Gendry from the doorway of the forge as many of the lords had done that week, occasionally grunting to each other in a language that Gendry did not understand. After he had finished pounding out a helmet, they entered and one of the clapped him on the back in a friendly sort of way, and pressed a palm-sized piece of quartz that had been carved into a rough disk into his hand. Gendry was so surprised he hadn't thought to refuse, and mountain clan men said something more in the language he didn't understand, clapped him on the shoulder again, and left.

The next day an old knight watched Gendry lead the castle youth in their exercises. The group had swelled to the point where Gendry felt it was necessary to lead the exercises in two groups; while one grouped worked through the set of lunges, blocks, and thrusts, he paired off the second group for practice sparring. When he sat down to rest on the long wooden bench lining the practice yard, the old man spoke up.

"So you're the Bartheon whelp."

Gendry wiped the sweat from his brow and glanced at the old man. "I don't know who my father was," Gendry said dully.

"Well I say you are. I fought in Robert's army, and you're his spitting image. I've never seen any so near as like in the Seven Kingdoms, least of all those golden brats that wear his crown."

Gendry looked ahead. He was already tired of this conversation.

"Now we're here in a tidy predicament, you know. The Stark line stretched back eight thousand years. There has never been a Kingsmoot in the North. And we are not a negotiating people. Chances that the meeting will end without bloodshed are slim to none, and civil war is likely. There are those among us who think an outsider would be the best choice."

"I've no desire to be a lord," Gendry said.

The knight looked at him thoughtfully. "Then perhaps you would make a good one," he said.

The next day Lady Mormont stopped him in the hall after breakfast. "They say you are the son of Robert," she said in a loud, commanding voice that made Gendry wince internally. The hall grew quiet. "I want you to know that if you stand at the Kingsmoot, House Mormont would support you."

Part of Gendry wanted to refuse on the spot, but he could tell that Maege Mormont was not used to being refused. Instead he nodded solemnly. Arnolf Karstark, who was sitting two tables away, spit onto the floor and left the hall.

—

On the day of the Kingsmoot all of the lords assembled in the great hall. Perhaps 40 of the houses of the north were represented, in some form or another. Barth had wisely ordered that no weapons nor men-at-arms be permitted inside the hall. The tall windows were fully open, letting white light stream into the room. Smallfolk had climbed into the window recesses and were standing five thick at the door, each straining to have a better look. The boys of Anguy's watch kept them back.

One of the lords of Umber stood up and announced in a haughty voice that they must deliberate in the old way; any man of noble blood who wished for consideration must stand up and state their claim. Each house would name a representative, and that representative would vote. If no candidate received a majority, then the top ten candidates would restate their claim, and so on, with a smaller pool, until the winner could be chosen.

Arnolf Karstark was the first to stand. He argued that the Karstarks were more closely related to the Starks than any other house in the north, and that with the marriage of Alys the heir to the house and to the north was rightfully his son Arthor, now that his elder son Cregan had taken the black. Next to speak was Attwen Slate, a shriveled man of forty with a club foot. Then Lord Ondrew Locke, who spoke on behalf of his great-grandson, Olin, a boy of 10. And so it went. Lady Mormont and her daughters, all of whom looked more king-like than the aged lords who spoke, looked disgusted. An hour went by, then two, and the attention of the Kingsmoot slowly moved around the room. When Jonelle Cerwyn sat down after making a half hearted claim for her house, all eyes in the room focused on Gendry. Barth looked at him with a half-plea in his eyes.

Gendry stood up.

"I am a bastard and a southerner," he began. "I have lived in these halls less than the space of two moons. I have no claim to any title. I have no claim to the North." He swallowed. "And yet…"

While he spoke he saw Calin slip through Anguy's line and run towards Barth. The boy put something in the old man's hands - a scroll, and the steward squinted to read it, his mouth sounding out the words. Suddenly he stood up.

"There has been a Raven!" Barth interrupted, breathing loudly. "An army is marching North along the Kingsroad—led by Sansa Stark!"

**NOTES

This is another Gendry chapter that covers a lot of ground and therefore is a bit awkward, and also perhaps has an unnecessary subplot. I needed to get some more Gendry character development in there though. He's strong and responsible and charismatic but also angry and not very happy about the role into which he's been dropped.