13. Arya

When old Nan had told stories of the Horn of Joramun, she had always imagined a sudden cataclysmic event; a deafening loud sound, and then 600 feet of ice crashing down all at once, crashing down and crushing everything and anyone too close. The reality was just as dramatic, but much slower. No one had heard the horn sound; well, she supposed, someone might have, but one at Castle Black; they only knew something had happened when the ice began to crack.

There were times in her childhood when the wind had blown cold enough for a small pond near Winterfell to freeze over; a summer ice, her father called it. She had gone with her brothers to to see it, and they had all walked on the ice, daring each other to go farther and farther out. Arya was the lightest and also the bravest; she would go out towards the center, where the water was deepest and the ice was thinest, until her brothers called for her to come back. She remembered how the ice would crack under her feet; the sound was always louder than she expected, and when they grew frequent she her heart would race.

The cracks on the wall were like peels of thunder, that preceded not lightening but a sickening sort of slipping sound and then a great crash. But this was not summer ice. The wind blew colder than ever than the north, and the cracks in the wall were entirely unnatural.

She had seen the crows fleeing south, driving a handful of wilding prisoners who carrying most of their provisions. They did not stopped for nightfall, nor when two of the wildings fell from exhaustion, nor when even when one of their brothers disappeared in the dark.

A great rage had filled her when she saw them, like the rage that she had felt when she saw Milken's flayed corpse hanging in the courtyard at Winterfell, or when she had heard the singer boast of his treachery. The singer. That was where she had seen the round-cheeked maester. The maester who had sat only a few seats away from the man with the long hair.

She satisfied herself with the brother she and Nymeria had picked off in the dark. He told her about the horn, and the wall, and about the Red Woman and the Dead Woman who had remained behind when the rest had fled. He told her about the great army of the dead that had gathered behind the wall, and was waiting, without fires, or tents, or any sign of life, for the ice that to fall.

—

When she reached it, Castle Black was half buried in ice. Great chucks of it had fallen on either side, so that in many places the wall stood less than half its original height. Four of the towers had been hit and were fallen; only the Silent tower and the Lord Commander's tower remained. The ruins of the winch elevator were sprawled on top of the Flint Barracks, and a mountain of ice completely blocked the gate.

Nymeria refused to go farther than the treeline a kilometer south of wall, and so Arya crossed the frozen plain alone. As she drew nearer, she saw that there was a column of smoke rising from the Lord Commander's tower; too small for the structure itself to be ablaze, but too large for a cookfire. Underneath the smoke was a thin flame like a candle's about the height of a man. As she walked the weak grey light of evening faded into night. The moon was full.

The gate was open. The flame seemed very large now, and its orange light mixed with the pale blue luminance of the wall to light the yard. Arya scaled one of the piles of rubble and ice to climb in through the second floor window of the Lord Commander's Tower. Most of the interior was still intact, although there were signs of great haste. When she reached the top she saw that a great boulder of ice had fallen upon the tower and torn the ceiling apart. The remains of the wooden ceiling had been piled into a fantastically tall bonfire, that shot its flame above where the ceiling had been and far above the battlements. The fire gave off enough heat to make sweat bead on Arya's face, although the shards of the boulder that had fallen around it did not melt.

The woman waiting on the opposite side of the room. She sat on a block of ice only a few feet from the fire, and showed no signs of either cold or heat. Her robe was blood red and cut low enough to reveal her breasts, and her skin, illuminated by the orange light, was alabaster.

"You have come to kill me," she said.

"Yes."

The woman nodded briefly, and seemed to relax. "You must understand something before you do. Look into the flames."

Arya felt the rage well up in her again and she did not want to look, she wanted only to draw her dagger and drive it into this terrible woman's heart. She stared back at the Red Woman and she knew that her face, her true face, could not hide her rage. The woman smiled cruelly.

"It is your fate, child. You cannot run from it."

Arya closed her eyes and felt that her head moved against her will, and when she opened them she was staring into the flame, except it was not a flame but conflagration that filled the room, and she felt that she was on fire and she screamed. There were other figures in the flames; she saw Jon Snow, and her father, and a beautiful woman with long dark hair; she saw her brother Bran crowned in thorns, three dragons, and the a woman with white blonde hair who was crying blood. She saw Gendry, and the two swords, and a tall hooded figure whose face was hidden in shadow. He pulled back his hood with long dead hands, and she saw that where there should be a face there was only a flame.

When she came to she was crying and thrashing on the floor, and the Red Woman was holding her down and stepping on her sleeve which had caught on fire. Arya tried to pull away but Melisandre's grip was like iron.

"No! I won't! I won't!" Arya screamed.

"That is not your choice," the Red Woman thundered, and her voice was like sulfur. Swiftly, she drew the dagger from Arya's boot and raised it toward the night sky. "Rholl'or, I am your servant!" she screamed, and with a terrible smile made two cuts on either side of her face, from the top of her forehead to the underneath her chin. The blood covered her features spilled in a sheet onto Arya's face, and everything went dark.

When Arya woke fire was out, and the room smelled like burnt flesh. Her heart felt like lead, but she knew there was still a task for her to do. Through the window she could see a figure pacing on the top of the shadow tower. The night was clear, and from the height of the tower in the light of the full moon she could see for miles. In the distance there was a crack and then a terrible scything sound as another sheet of ice fell from the fall.

She put what remained in the room into the bag she carried on her shoulder and descended, climbing out through the window again and crossing the yard. The entry and the interior of the Silent Tower was intact and Arya climbed slowly to the ramparts.

The Lady was pacing in the cold wind, and she stopped when Arya climbed through the hatch leading to the floor below. She looked at Arya without expression, her hand clasped over the slit in her throat. She rasped something inaudible and opened her arms, waiting for an embrace. Ayra walked towards her and stood on her toes to give her mother a kiss.

Her lips were as cold as ice.

**NOTES

It took me a long time to figure out how to make this part of the story work and then finally I was like "THE WALL DOESNT COME DOWN AT ONCE!" because if there is this big clataclysmic event that really messes with the slow burn of the story, and everything takes so long in westeros, it's not like they can all just hop on dragons and show up to fight the others.