Author's Note: Merry Christmas Eve friends! I'll try to make up for nine months of silence with two chapters in 48 hours. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. God bless and stay covid-free!
Real quickly, if you're only here from the show and haven't read the books, you might want to wiki of ice and fire a man named Varamyr Sixskins. Or don't. I can't tell you beautiful savages what to do.
Where the hell is Damon?
Tyrek Lannister had been among the first to plunge out the other side of the wildling encampment, wheeling around amidst the chaos. He had lost his place at the side of his friend not far into the charge—with the sheer number of shelters and fires and running bodies, it had been nearly inevitable—but he'd caught periodic glimpses of the king through flashes of furs and snow until they'd reached near the middle of the camp.
It was there that Tyrek had seen two things that, though he'd heard them mentioned, his mind refused to accept. One had been a giant, rising high over the chaos playing out at its feet, swinging both a club the size of a horse and a fist not much smaller. The other had been a small, rattish man atop a giant white bear, pointing and shouting orders, his bear roaring in fear and anger and other bearish grumblings as it swung massive paws at the stream of horses and men rushing by. It was there he had lost sight of his king.
Tyrek, reining his grey to a stop a hundred yards on the other side of the camp edge, stared at those behind him. The charge wasn't much of a line anymore, but it had held something close to that at least. There were gaps aplenty, where men had been steered off course or killed, but it still resembled a fighting unit as men galloped out, wheeling as Tyrek had done and beginning to form up in line again.
He didn't see the king. He did see Robb Stark, who had managed to find himself nearer the center than the right. And Lord Stark's hulking beast of a direwolf, red with blood from muzzle to flank.
Tyrek was to the Lord of the North before he fully realized he had galloped that way.
"Stark!" The Northerner's blade was as bloody as his wolf, the bay he rode bleeding from a wound to its shoulder. The former king's helm—plain and unadorned, as most norther's wore their armor—turned to Tyrek, even as men and horse galloped around them, wheeling and shouting to form lines. Tyrek absently realized Robb had been doing the former, his sword raised as he shouted for ranks to be formed. "I've lost Damon in there!"
Stark stared at him, Tully blue eyes flashing. His voice came across rough and sharp as he shouted back. "How do you expect me to find him?"
Tyrek didn't let the surge of anger last. It was a valid question, for in truth Tyrek had no idea if what he was thinking was reasonable or not. Though Stark had better hope it is. If Damon dies then Tommen is king, which means Cersei and Tywin are, which means all the goodwill and forgiveness Damon has for Robb and the North will be gone. And without Damon to temper our family…
It all flashed through his mind in less than a second. "I don't. I'm hoping he can." Tyrek pointed his intentionally empty left hand towards the direwolf, who nearly stood as tall as his master's horse. Its startlingly intelligent eyes were already watching Tyrek, huge mouth open and panting and red.
Robb stared at his direwolf for a moment, with likely the same questions running through his mind that were running through Tyrek's. The direwolf was fiercely protective of Stark and fought like the beast it was for him—Tyrek remembered the horror stories of men from his own side of the creature. Damon however wasn't a Stark, and while Robb and the king had sparred and rode and planned together in the past moons, Tyrek wasn't aware of any apparent fondness between Stark's wolf and Damon. Even if the creature would know who the word 'Damon' meant—and Tyrek somehow thought that yes, it very well might—he would likely be impossible to find. The camp was chaos, some men inside still fighting, others trying to prepare for the second rush, others trying to flee in every direction save the one the growing line of men were in. Not to mention that their must be a thousand smells detectible to the direwolf's nose, the stench of a shit and blood and piss and death. Even Tyrek's pitiful human nose could detect some of it.
It was a stupid thought. He turned to survey the camp again, mind racing. I'll never find him in this. Seven above, don't let him be dead.
Robb Stark's voice interrupted the increasingly panicked thoughts. "Grey Wind." Tyrek jerked his head around. The wolf had too, ears pointing up in alertness, mouth closing as it intently stared at its master. Stark held his animal's eyes a moment. "To Damon. Go."
The direwolf stared just long enough for Tyrek's heart to sink. Then it turned and scented the air in the direction of the camp, great grey head tilted back. Two sniffs later it soundlessly, gracefully leapt into bounds across the ruined snow.
Lannister and Stark glanced at each other a moment, and then their voice rose at the same time. "Forward!" "Hit them again lads!"
Hooves thundered as hundreds of men kicked their mounts into a gallop, following the bounds of a loping direwolf back into the fray.
His grandfather had not skimped when he had gifted Damon a new set of armor. It was of the highest price and therefore the highest quality, and while it had clearly been forged with the intent to be seen, it had also been forged to protect the wearer.
It was accomplishing that, and thank the Seven for it.
Damon hadn't seen one of the creatures before, but his brain shouted the species of the leaping animal a second before it collided with his chest. Shadowcat. Black with white stripes and several hundred pounds of silent predator, it was a beautiful way to meet one's death. Its forepaws hit his chest with all the cat's weight behind it, slamming him back into the mud and snow as its fangs tried to bury into his neck. The armor of his helm and breastplate, as well as the boiled leather and mail beneath, kept the teeth from finding purchase, although it wasn't for lack of trying on the creature's part. He could feel it's hindlegs digging at his belly, trying to disembowel him. The steel stopped those efforts as well, only the plate there keeping the king's guts from pouring out to the ripped ground.
One claw did slip into the joint below the abdomen steel, a line of pain starting on his right hip and ripping outwards, the creature switching angles as it attempted to sink its teeth into the man beneath it. The pain shook Damon from the temporary stupor the attack had put him into, and with a scream he started flailing. His arms came up, both empty of weapons, but he managed to grab a handful of the creature's scruff and yank hard with his right hand while shoving at its head with his left. He couldn't dislodge it, the shadowcat being too big and strong for that, but he managed to pull its head from attempting to dig into his throat.
With a roar and a shake, it shook him loose, swiping a paw at the eye slit of his helm, while still trying to rip at him with its lower body, weight still atop the man in armor. Another line of pain near his groin rewarded the shadowcat's effort, not as deep as that on his hip but causing the king to shout out in pain again. He punched, landing a fist to the animal's ribs and another to its belly. The cat shrieked, a horrible, gut wrenching sound, but it did not stop clawing and biting.
Belatedly he remembered his dagger. He managed to work it free, arm taking the brunt of several powerful digs of the shadowcat's paw, but before he could plunge it into the animal's belly it twisted around, mouth closing around his right forearm, as if it knew what he had done and what he intended to do with it. With a powerful shake of its jaw, it sent the dagger flying from Damon's shocked grip, then immediately returned to its original spot with a twisting leap, once again pinning the man and attempting to slash him to ribbons.
Unsure of what else to do Damon wrapped his arms around the cat, pulling towards his chest with all his strength. It roared again, digging once more for his neck, one clawed arm whacking at the back of his head while the other was pinned with its body by Damon. Using all of his strength he managed a flopping, ungainly roll to his left, taking the screeching animal with him. His goal had been to get on top of it, although where he meant to go from there even Damon didn't know. It didn't matter, for just as it lost its seat atop him the cat managed to wriggle out of his grip, leaping back with a dexterity only found in beasts of the wild. Damon attempted to sit up, scrambling to get his feet beneath him.
That was when the wolves arrived.
There were three best he could tell. One clamped down on his left arm, thrashing its head side to side, as the other two each gripped an ankle. Working in a unison that scared Damon—although everything about this scared Damon—the wolves pulled in three different directions, thrashing, seeming as if they were trying to rip him bodily apart. He'd shake one loose, its teeth unable to fully gain purchase in his armor, but before he could make any ground it would reclaim a grip on the same limb and continue its struggle. The wolf on the right on its third grip nabbed his ankle perfectly, teeth sinking in, digging into the king's flesh. Damon screamed in pain again, pulled in three directions as the pack of wolves tried to tear him apart, right arm striking uselessly, unable to get any power behind his blows due to the thrashing of his limbs. He caught a glimpse of the shadowcat, somehow in unison with the wolves, stalking towards him from between his legs.
Sword. Sword. His sword was his only hope. He had gotten so turned around in the repeated blows and thrashing that he wasn't sure where he was in relation to where he had been when the dead wildling had forced it from his grip. He twisted one way, then the other, fighting the whole while against the thrashing of the wolves. There! It was above and to the right of where the animals tried to keep him prone. Damon fell flat, reaching with his right hand, throwing the last of his strength into reaching the pommel of the sword. He managed to get within a foot. Eight inches. Five.
The weight of the cat landed on his chest again, pining him three inches from his target. It's teeth and claws returned to their work, trying to find a weakness, knowing they eventually would. The King of the Iron Throne, a warrior almost without parallel with a sword in his hand, thrashed in the mud, ripped in three directions by wolves as a shadowcat tried to disembowel him.
Damon did the only thing he could. He screamed, loud and terrified as he kicked ad thrashed in the clawed grips of his adversaries.
He heard snarls of alarm from the wolves, felt them left go, half a second before a form, big and grey and moving very fast, bulled through them.
The teeth at his arms and ankles disappeared, as did the weight of the cat. Damon shot to a sitting position, watching in awe as another wolf, twice the size of the three attacking him—Grey Wind, his mind supplied numbly—rolled with the one who had been at Damon's left ankle, having knocked the other two and shadowcat aside with his bulk. Snarling, hair flying everywhere, the direwolf came out on top, ripping the throat out of the smaller wolf with a twitch of his neck. The other animals howled or barked or screeched, and Damon distinctly heard the agonized shout of a man and, though the Daring didn't believe his own ears, a bear and eagle.
The first wolf hadn't finished dying before the other two attacked, darting in and out at the direwolf's flanks. The shadowcat, having been knocked aside but kept its feet, hunkered low, approaching from behind as Grey Wind fended off the attacks of the wolves.
Damon, bleeding from hip and groin and ankle and likely a dozen other places, finally rolled to a knee, taking the grip of Widow's Wail into his fist once more. He didn't truly gain his feet, partially due to haste and partially due to his ankle screeching in protest. It was half hops, half lunges that sent him staggering towards the shadowcat. With a scream of his own, one built of the terror of the last few minutes or hours or seconds, he brought the weapon down with both hands. It had sensed him, as of course the shadowcat would, and deftly leapt out of the way, twisting as it did so, then taking a leap to the left to gather momentum before launching itself back at Damon's side.
Damon switched grips as the cat made it's second leap. He let go of Widow's Wail with his right and reversed his left, gripping the hilt as if it were a knife he meant to bring down towards the ground in a stab, blade below his hand. Screaming again he brought it out in a sweeping, savage stab to the left as the shadowcat leapt.
The blade buried through the meat and bone at the top of the shadowcat's neck, its screech of attack turning to a yowl of pain as Damon used his momentum and its to slam it to the ground, blade pinning it through one of the white stripes. Still screeching and not quite dead it once again kicked at Damon, who withdrew the blade long enough to bring it down again with all his strength at its flank, burying the blade through its lungs and heart and into the ground below.
The shadowcat's last screech died on its scowling face.
There was no time for victorious thoughts. Wildlings, more than he had realized having stayed back from the fray of animals trying to rip the king apart, suddenly came rushing in at the death of the shadowcat, weapons of stone and bone and iron raised. Damon withdrew the sword from the shadowcat, taking a deep breath as he stayed down on his right knee waiting.
Robb Stark killed the closest man to him, riding by in a blur and flash of steel. Others followed, horses again parting like water around him and the corpse of the shadowcat. One, immediately on the heels of Stark, reined up and dismounted in one motion as Robb and the other riders circled around them, blades swinging. "Get up, Damon!" It was Tyrek, muscling his king up with the considerable strength in his broad shoulder. "Get up!"
The king did, his ankle faltering. Tyrek looked down, saw the blood, and cursed, making to duck under the king's arm. Damon saw the wildling rushing forward, having avoided in the confusion of battle the line of horsemen riding to their king's rescue. He shoved Tyrek away, shouting a warning, blade up.
His cousin pivoted and drew his own blade in one motion, driving it through the wildling's chest with ease, withdrawing smoothly. Another came in, dispatched with much the same ease, and a third met their end at Damon's hands.
And then, silence. Horrible, beautiful silence.
"I can't decide if you're the luckiest or unluckiest man I've ever met," Tyrek said, handing down the bottle of wine.
Damon reached up with one hand, took it, and downed a huge mouthful before returning it. "I'm leaning the latter."
Tyrek brought the bottle straight to his lips and took his own mouthful, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah, so am I."
Damon lay propped on his elbows in only a shirt, a towel the only thing preserving his modesty as a maester worked on his lower body. The wound to his hip had been painful but not deep, as had the wound that carved dangerously close to the future of the Seven Kingdoms. Both hurt like the Seventh Hell, but would heal so long as Damon kept them clean. The ankle would be tougher, the wolf's teeth having ripped and torn, but the boot—ruined now—had saved him from permanent injury. He'd limp for moons, a dangerous thing in this time of war, but he would walk normally eventually.
Balon Swann wouldn't. Balon Swann would never walk again.
Damon had half convinced himself that the 'giant' that had sent his horse pinwheeling had been a figment of adrenaline and fear. It hadn't; it had been a giant in truth, huge and deadly. It had died trying to finish Damon, or so it appeared.
Ser Balon Swann, a Kingsguard to the end, had stopped it with a morning star and his life.
Gods do I need Bella. He could feel the guilt over that, as well as the hundreds of other dead—including a young, pretty wilding girl—waiting to crush him. But it can't. At least not yet.
"Bind it, maester. I have duties to attend to."
Half an hour later Damon limped heavily to the center of their new camp. They'd taken the wildling spot on the banks of Lost Lake, erecting defenses as the wildlings had not. There were several hundred of them imprisoned in the center, held in a rough stockade. Damon hadn't made his mind up as to what to do with them; honor dictated shipping them to a dungeon, likely in Winterfell, whereas prudence urged him to kill them. The first was difficult but he refused the second; more than three quarters of those captured were the elderly or children.
Mance Rayder was not among them, nor was he among the dead.
He hadn't been here at all.
The chieftain had been a man named Varamyr Sixskins. A 'skinchanger' or 'warg', so the wildlings claimed. Damon had heard the tales though he'd never gave them much credence until the battle; four of Varamyr's six skins had nearly killed him during it, though, and now he looked at it all with a new light—including Grey Wind and Robb Stark, whose connection began to make more sense in Damon's mind.
Damon hadn't truly decided where he stood on magic, beast or otherwise, but he knew where he stood on Stark and his direwolf. They had saved his life, and if it had taken some power he didn't understand to make that happen…well, Damon knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Whatever it was or wasn't, it was the reason he was still alive today.
The chieftain had ridden a great white bear, thirteen feet in height, and had gone mad when, in rapid succession, two of his wolves and the shadowcat died. The final wolf had escaped to who knows where, the eagle as well, but the bear had gone on a mad rampage that killed men from both above and below the Wall before it had finally been put down by over a dozen stabs and as many arrows. It had thrown the frail, small figure of its 'master' off its back. He had been crushed beneath hoof and foot.
He had nearly made it to Stark's tent, his destination, when Garlan Tyrell appeared beside him. "I believe you will want to come to the lake, Your Grace; we have some information."
The speaker was a middle-aged man, wrapped in only robes and soaking wet, shivering horribly. Damon had known how certain of his company was extracting information; he didn't like it, hated it in fact, but he hated not knowing where Mance Rayder was even more. Besides, all he had to do was look at the conglomeration of wildling tents holding the captives his men had freed—the blank or tortured faces within—to lose any hesitation.
Stark reportedly didn't like it and Garlan certainly didn't, but neither Stark nor Tyrell had stopped it.
War calls for hard men and hard deeds.
Oh, how proud grandfather would be.
Bedwyck the Giant had been one of the interrogators. He gestured towards the shivering man whose skin was near blue. "His name is Fenn, or so says he. First of 'em to crack, though it took a bit."
Damon didn't know where Tyrek pulled the stool from, but as he sank onto it, right leg stretched out in front of him, he could have kissed the man. "Well?"
The wildling, hate in his eyes, remained silent. Damon gave him a moment, then looked to Bedwyck. "Dip him a few more times."
The ranger of the Night's Watch took a menacing step forward before the wildling threw up a violently shaking hand. "Wait, wait."
Damon cocked a brow, trying to keep his distaste for what had been done to the man—on my orders—from his face. "Where is he."
The wildling sighed. "Where he meant to be the whole time. He's on your Wall." There was a moment of silence before he spoke again, malice in his eyes. "And he's got that bastard brother of yours with him, Stark."
*tease* he knows nothing