Brienne

Even days later the princess' words still stung, rankling deeper than any insult any man had ever paid her. Because their words were empty, just wounded pride. Sansa was speaking out of genuine concern for me. Jaime Lannister could stoke her into a towering temper but Brienne in all her lonely life had never felt so inadequate. In such a subdued mood, she'd taken to making sure those southerners who'd come to Winterfell were faring well. Eventually came the turn of the valemen and their handsome liege. Lord Arryn took a single look at Brienne from across the table the Knights of the Vale frequented, looking bemused if anything. When she asked if there was anything he or his worthies needed, Harrold Arryn laughed.

"There's wine by the barrel and dinner's hot and fresh every night. Nothing much more to want for but perhaps an end to the waiting. Crannogmen keep seeing off the sorties against the outer wall before anyone else can get there." His mouth curled into a smirk. If Sansa tells it right, the lost wights don't matter. Their numbers are beyond counting. Then the blue eyes narrowed the slightest bit. His mousy homely Waynwood relations did not notice, roast chicken and kale occupying their attentions. "Right, I'm off for a piss." Harrold said abruptly, slapping his hands on the table and pushing himself up. His gaze flicked to the doors, to the mouth of the hall, and back to Brienne. She gave a slight a nod as she could manage. He was off immediately after. She gave him a good few moments, wandering the hall to make a show of moving on, before she too left the hall and the scent of chicken and the sounds of laughter. "Well then, what's gone wrong now?" he asked, his careless affect gone. "I haven't seen Princess Sansa in a few days, so if you're looking for her-" Brienne was ready for him to give half a hundred different dismissive answers. There are women all around Winterfell for me to chase. I've been too busy keeping the lads in good order. Gods, but you are ugly. "-don't." His abruptness made her blink.

"I beg your pardon, my lord?"

"Don't." he said again, clear and unconcerned. She stared at him. Tall as he was, she was taller. Broader, too, she thought, though she felt no embarrassment. After handily outsizing most every prospective husband, she'd quite gotten used to being the biggest person in the room.

"What do you mean?"

"When last I saw her, she was coming out of whatever northern fog keeps trying to fill her head. I can only guess she's well at something or other now that you've got no reason to involve yourself in. Myself, either."

"You speak as if you know her quite well, my lord." Brienne said, her tone hardening a bit.

"I didn't need to know her at all to know squashing a vicious bastard and freeing an imperiled princess is what any maiden would tell you makes a knight. Only, she didn't need me freeing her. We didn't even need to be there. Trust our luck to arrive in time not to matter." He shrugged.

"You mean the giants."

"I mean the stupefying wave of wildlings Jon Snow brought down from the Wall. And yes, the giants. The men who survived serving Stannis told me of how the big lads atop their mammoths smashed his pretty armored center to bits. That greyhair, Lago, he took the lesson well to heart. When it came time to smash the Boltons' center, the giants knew what to do." Brienne frowned, and Lord Arryn noticed. "All the chivalry, all the skill and training and seasoning in the world don't matter when what your fighting can turn you into red stains with a single fist, a single foot. Never mind the tusked trumpeting hulk he's riding, smarter I hear than any horse." That had taken Brienne quite aback as well. While the giants were responsible for the great earthen rings going up, it was the mammoths who hauled blocks of permafrost too heavy for a dozen giants to move. More than once a mammoth would turn in its traces to look at something or follow some odd sound, trunk coiled and curious. They would look at men the same way Brienne had seen dogs do, and ravens, the sort of animals maesters supposed might think. A dog isn't going to smash a column of seasoned knights though, Brienne thought. A raven isn't going to crash through everything but mortared stone.

"Have you seen the other beasts? Prince Brandon says the giants call them rhonok or some such." Brienne shook her head. To her astonishment, Lord Harrold Arryn of the Vale offered his arm to her.

"My lord?"

"Come, it's bright as we're like to see outside for a good long while. They should still be grazing at the base of the earthen ring." He wants me to go with him, she realized. Maybe he thinks out here's not private enough. Surely he must know there are likely Littlefinger's men among the Knights of the Vale, if not the lords themselves. Astonishing herself still more, Brienne took his arm and let him lead her outside, into the midmorning flurries. "There aren't so many, not near so many as the mammoths, but that should change. The way the wildlings tell it, Mance Rayder called a halt to hunting any of the beasts to please the giants. I suppose with more room to mill about and kept away from the Others or hunters or whoever, the hope is they'll get to rebounding." Lord Arryn said obligingly, as if they were talking about his destrier. Even through the furs Lord Arryn couldn't help but shiver, cursing under his breath. "Do you know, it's not the cold that bothers me. It's that the cold bothers me that bothers me. Were I a different sort of man I'd follow the king to hell, but…raised in silk and satin, on the finest fare, at Iron Oaks…" Brienne stopped walking. Ah, now I see what he's about.

"I vowed to keep Princess Sansa safe, Lord Arryn. Wherever she goes, I will follow."

"That's grand of you. Say all goes as well as can be expected and we win out, some way or other. Will Sansa want to spend the rest of her days rearing a brood of squalling babes, safe behind a stone wall? Not the Sansa I know. I'm sure before the Lannisters so misused her and the Bastard beat her black and blue, she might have found that life alluring. You saw the walnut branch with Ramsay Snow's skull on it, yes? Seems to me she's got new plans. Or, at least, isn't about to stick to any old ones. When that time comes and she finds herself more comfortable in the company of woods witches in the Haunted Forest, if not further afield, where will you be? Shivering at her side in your blue armor, looking more out of place than a septa in a brothel?" Brienne frowned.

"I'm less a stranger to cold, hurt and hunger than you are, Lord Arryn." she said icily.

"I don't doubt it. Any more than you must doubt that if Sansa were still the maiden from the story, she and I might well be married already. Lord Royce, Seven save him, asks me almost daily why I've not yet broached the matter. The simple truth is, I have nothing whatever she requires. Littlefinger might have sent us to get closer to ruling the north, Lord Royce might have intended the Battle of the Bastards merely the raising of the curtain on an Arryn-Stark marriage, but the lads and I came because we wanted to. Sick of sitting in the Vale hearing about everyone else, about the great battles of the War of Five Kings while Lady Lysa tittered to herself and wrung her hands and brushed her stunted son's hair."

"I'm not sure your words would move many in Westeros. There isn't a family great or small who didn't lose someone in the war, some rather more than others. I was with Renly at Highgarden when it all started, he and the chivalry of the Reach struck me as noble then, foolish now. If half of those boys-called-men lived to tell their parents of their folly, the gods were kinder than they're known to be. You'll forgive me if I see certain similarities between you and Renly, between the knights of the Reach and those of the Vale."

"That's just it, my lady. The lads and I are gallant fools to a one, I'll not deny it, but we're not about to head somewhere we've less than no business being. Renly wanted the Iron Throne nor no other reason than because he was most like the kings in all our arsefool southern stories. The kind who stay honorable and handsome and chivalrous forever, who never age and never die. Well, Renly got the never aging part right. As for me, I'll keep well clear of the royal family but for whence I'm called. When I am, though, I will not let them down."

They walked the rest of the way in silence, Brienne wrestling with herself.

"You were there, at the accession."

"I was. I declare, a grander spectacle I've not seen, the preceding battle included. Drunker I've never been and If I ever am, woe betide me." He laughed to himself.

"Why him?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why Jon Snow? Why not Sansa, she's trueborn-"

"Trueborn, a beauty without equal, and well worth going to war over. None of which concern the wildlings in the least, to say nothing of the giants. Maesters love to argue themselves hoarse over claims and blood ties and aught, but what does it really mean? Look at me, for example. Aye, I've got a drop or four of Arryn blood. What the fuck has that got to do with me lording over a thousand better men? Because somehow, when all is said and done, I'm the one with the Arryn name and the most Arryn blood left? What is that to someone who's spent his life, or indeed hers, following someone who has earned their place not by blood or birth but deed? Shit, Robert had no more right to the Conqueror's throne than the Conqueror had to Westeros at large. You might say Jon Snow has no right to the crown he wears, but we didn't give him all that much voice in the decision. The wildlings, the northmen, the valemen, the last few hard old tree stumps who made it from the stormlands. It's his right because we say so, and never mind the rest. He took Winterfell back for House Stark, not Sansa. Not to say she had nothing to do with the victory, if she hadn't teased Littlefinger into action we might not have had cause to come north at all. Maybe Littlefinger thought she was calling for help against the Boltons, he certainly didn't count on a horde of savages and a triple-line of giants on mammoths stealing his moment of fortune." Brienne's bad mood was soured further by confusion. And men say we like to talk in circles.

"If she didn't want your help dealing with Ramsay, whyever would she have summoned you?"

"Maybe she took the king's words to heart about the true enemy being someone else altogether. A problem a few hundred extra knights could readily help solve."

"Whom you could say were really behind your own rise to Lord of the Vale, and never mind the falcon in you."

"The same might have been said of Lord Renly, had he seen fit to stay in the Reach where he belonged. If what I hear of him is true, he'd not have left an heir behind anyway and all would come to Stannis in time."

"I found him lying against a tree after the Boltons took him unawares. The man was broken, I had only pieces left to sort out." Lord Harrold let out a hoot of laughter.

"Stannis Baratheon, famed and feared, killed by a woman. With Stark steel no less, shaped in a Lannister forge. A more ignominious end I can't imagine. Where was his red god then?"

"Where's any god when truly they're needed?" Brienne asked in reply, Lord Arryn snorting in agreement.

Gods but they're big, Brienne thought sheepishly as they passed a giant laid out flat on his back who might have been dead but for his twitching nose and occasional thunderous snores.

"Eh?" A loud voice called from further down the innermost earthen ring. Rather flat-footedly another giant approached them, one shorter and less muscled than his sleeping kindred. No beard, either. Perhaps he's not yet reached manhood, or whatever giants call it.

"Lately they've been having him mind the calves." Lord Arryn tapped his nose. He doesn't want to say the word and get our visitor excited. A snort from above made Brienne uncomfortably aware of how closely the giant watched them, blinking his big mud-brown eyes. When she could no longer pass off looking at Lord Harrold as politeness she turned and looked at the massive creature before her. Even were he man-size, the lad would have been burlier than anyone Brienne had ever seen, with huge hairy feet and great powerful hands. No wonder they use mauls. His nose twitched.

"Eh." he grunted again, nimbly tapping his middle finger against Brienne's chest. "Big. Big like sky, blue like sky." he smiled, teeth huge and square. For some reason that made Brienne feel rather less uncomfortable.

"Are the rhonok around?" The sleeping giant gave an irritable grunt and sat up, grumbling in what could only have been the Old Tongue. He looked around blearily but quickly, as if expecting one of the beasts to be running amok at the moment. The younger giant gave answer in a calm, unrushed tone, the elder rubbing his eyes grumpily and trotting over. He stopped at the sight of Brienne.

"Eh?" he muttered, eyes going wide. The same mud-brown. Either they're eyes common to all giants or you two are father and son. Like his get, the older giant tapped Brienne's blue armor with a finger. The Old Tongue flew back and forth with astonishing rapidity, Brienne again taken aback by the quickness of the words.

"I am Brienne, of Tarth. Uh, an island far to the south." she said. Usually it's me making others sound like chipmunks. The son got to translating. Evidently something about Tarth the father found distasteful, letting out a displeased groan.

"I don't think they're fond of deep water." Lord Arryn said quietly, though Brienne was sure the giants heard. You might have told be that before, my lord.

"Wug Wod." the elder giant said finally, his son quickly shooting him down.

"I Wug Wod." he said, sounding as only a younger man correcting his elder could.

"I Wug Wod." He pointed to his son.

"Wug Tar, herd rhonok." Wug Tar nodded in approval. "Herd now." his father said, not looking at him. The lad's face fell and he shuffled off in a sulk. Brienne couldn't help but laugh, Wug Wod smiling in agreement. Chores, youth's great bane and age's great boon. Eventually Wug Tar returned, red-faced and panting hard, one of the animals in tow. Brienne spotted a handful of cabbages in his big fist.

"Rhonok not horse. Push rhonok, rhonok push back. Greens, pull rhonok." Wug Wod said as a cabbage tossed at Brienne's feet brought the calf right up to her. The shaggy beast seemed shortsighted so she kept still, following the giants' lead.

"They've got good noses and ears, to catch out anything trying to run up on them. Or so the prince tells me." Lord Arryn said, as if he knew her thoughts. When the cabbage was no more the baby immediately moved off, snuffling and nibbling on every patch of frozen grass it could find. Wug Tar gave a tired groan and followed, Wug Wod looking after him with a combination of pride and concern. Why, they're no more than herdsmen, Brienne thought, put into this world to keep men from bringing down everything possessed of tusk or horn.

The walk back made Brienne think on her own father. He was no less proud of me, as much as the courtly way allowed. She wondered what life would have been like had her mother lived long enough for Brienne to remember her. Had Galladon lived, had Arianne and Alysanne made it out of the cradle. Most other people had the names of great heroes stuck in their heads, Aegon the Conqueror, Duncan the Tall, Ser Barristan the Bold. Stuck in Brienne's were the names of her siblings. Occasionally, too, was Jaime Lannister, though Brienne doubted his path would bring him north of the Neck twice in a lifetime. Who knows? He's a proper ass and would think nothing of slipping over the Bite once word gets out I'm here just to twist my ear. The family that could have been, the many ghosts Tarth held for her were for the first time wholly supplanted by other faces she could not place, with names she did not know. Blonde hair and green eyes go well enough together, House Lannister's looks are proof enough of that. Hang thinking on what's been, should I spend too much time wondering what may be, I'll find myself daydreaming right into the path of a charging mammoth. "Dry your eyes, my lady." Lord Arryn said gently as they neared the castle. Only a flight of fancy, as silly as falling for the first man to treat me half decently. I only pray he survives what storms Cersei can bring down on him on the way to Casterly Rock.

"If you're looking to clear your head, there's nothing like rattling a few skulls in the training yard." Lord Harrold suggested. Brienne lifted an eyebrow.

"Is that an offer?" He laughed aloud.

"There are spearwives the castle over and what's more, most of the Mormont fighters Lady Lyanna brought from Bear Island are women themselves. No doubt they're itching to get into a good scrap. Go to them, and by the Seven uphold the honor of the south." Had it come from any other man, Brienne would have suspected him of jesting. He knows well his true place, despite what the Valemen think of him. He'll not climb an inch higher than he can reach and he's keen to keep out of business too big for him. She wondered if that came from having precious little family in his own right, of living as a ward of Anya Waynwood's. No doubt pushed to give generously to his broken-wheel relations on his ascent to the Eyrie. Small wonder he puts such stock in Jon Snow if half the tales told of him are true. As had become the norm, the yard rang with the sound of steel on steel, the curses and cries of men locked in combat bouncing off the bricks. From what Brienne could see, wild courage fared poorly against what the wildlings called "kneeler" discipline, but on rare occasion it was spectacularly reversed. A thickly set man with an unkempt mop of blonde hair dressed in furs and hides was giving a long-bearded stormlander all he could handle, using his scythe to keep his opponent's broadsword off-balance. He was slower to move than the swordsman but quicker to react, deft for such a big man and it was only moments before his arm caught the other man cleanly across the jaw, knocking him to the ground sure as a tree branch would knock a rider from the saddle. Brienne spotted several other men nursing various injuries off to the side, one of the visiting lord's maesters going up and down the line as needed.

"Toss all the kneelers about, Weepy. Best you're like to do before it's an Other tossing you around like a bag of potatoes." a spearwife called from somewhere on the upper level. The big man turned and hurled a snowball quick as a flash, earning a shriek of surprise from on high. When he stomped from the yard Brienne saw his face was full and fleshy, almost too much so. His blue eyes were streaming and when the light caught the wetness and shone off his boyish cheeks it made him look faintly absurd. With none of that blonde hair on his face. A boy in a man's body. Brienne made to follow him but a voice in the yard called her back. "Never mind him. Weepy's not the sort you go out of your way to soothe."

Brienne turned to see the same girl, willowy with the remnants of the snowball in her long black hair eyeing her up.

"Weepy?"

"Aye. The Weeper's mongrel. Looks enough like him, great greasy sausage that he was, but nobody's seen him since the battle at the Wall. He wasn't one to come along and hide with the crows behind the ice, so most like he's wept his last at the hands of the Others."

"Why do you call his son 'Weepy'?"

"Because he can't keep his eyes dry any more'n his pig sire could. 'Cept the Weeper's eyes were runny and rheumy, Weepy's are just always wet because people jerk his chain."

"You'd do better to best him in the yard instead of mocking him."

"Why? That's stupid. A bad step and he'd break my pretty nose. Let him at the half-dozen kneeler lads I've got eager to get between my legs, then maybe I'll put my spear to him."

"Might be a froggy lad puts his spear between your legs, nice and sharp and slick with poison." Brienne knew well the deep raspy voice of Sandor Clegane but the proud spearwife assumed he was just another man. When she turned, all wild pride, to see the man standing behind her, overtaking her by a foot and more, she got a good look at the ruin the mountain had made of his face. He wasn't looking at her though, his eyes were on a half-dozen of the little boggy people gathered in a corner of the yard. "They don't fight fair, though. They don't give a fuck about honor or any of that. The weepy lad, he's only got a scythe to gut you with. I bet if it came to a real fight, those froggies would happily kill the rest of us off not near so gently." One of them turned, though man or woman Brienne could not tell. The face was a chalky white but for the black tarry lines running about the face, bisecting it and partitioning it, pooling in the eye sockets. A Styng, Brienne knew at once. "Might be if we asked nice, they'd toss one of those nests over, big as a man's head. Full of something worse than blood and brains, too." The Styng retainer's fellows turned toward them, faces frighteningly blank. There is no hate in them. It's not in them to hate, they just kill absolutely everyone who tries to cross the Neck. They and the other houses of the marshes. "Look, now you've bothered them. Bugger off." Clegane barked, the girl scampering immediately. After another few moments the crannogmen went back to their own affairs, though given a rather wider berth than before.

"What was that about?" Brienne asked Clegane.

"You know just as much about fighting as me. That lad could be someone worth a full pail of shit, even with his stupid scythe instead of a real weapon."

"Wildlings haven't the first notion of discipline. The time would be better spent, to greater success, teaching a giant to tiptoe."

"A beating or two will knock that out of him. If he weren't good enough in the first place I'd not bother."

"We could send him to the castle's master-at-arms."

"Not so good as either of us and you know it. If you're so keen not to be looked at while you knock somebody down, a fat lot of good you'll do when the dead men manage to get past the walls." The color rose in Brienne's cheeks instantly. "Hang it. I'll bloody well do it myself." he said, heading off with just the slightest hint of a limp. At least that's one scarring he's escaped.

The sound of someone else heavy of step approaching made Brienne groan inwardly. When she looked for the newcomer though it took an honest moment for her to realize she was looking too high.

"Down here!" a girl's voice cried. Brienne looked down to see the tiny Lady of Bear Island staring at her appraisingly.

"Hello, Lady Mormont."

"Shove 'hello'. If you're looking for someone to spar with, nearly every woman who came with me from Bear Island is itching for the chance to try you." Lady Lyanna's smile was wide and earnest. "The younger of us can watch. Better that than have some knight too flustered by teaching girls how to fight to get a word in." Though the King in the North had indeed decreed that all who could hold a weapon should be learned in how to use one, in practice it was slow going bringing the lords 'round to the idea. Brienne was well familiar with odd looks and low muttering. After Jaime had given her the blue plate and Oathkeeper both, though, the dark looks and grumbling lost what bother they still held for her. Besides, none of them could beat me. Sandor Clegane never gave me grief for carrying a sword or wearing armor, either. "It would break up this interminable waiting. I think I'll take you up on that, my lady." Brienne told her, smiling despite herself. The little lady was off like a shot, returning with several women dressed as unladylike as Brienne could imagine. Sheepskin under leather under chainmail under fur. The lot of them had not a beauty among them, all rather stocky and barrel-shaped, but Brienne knew fighters when she saw them.

"It's good the lot of you tend to maces. A bashing blow is harder to turn aside than a thrust or slash."

"Unless it's coming from Valyrian steel." the foremost of the women said.

"Still. Were we to swap, neither of us much familiar with the other's weapon, I'd bet on me."

"So would I, Lady Blue. You're taller, stronger and your arms are longer. A shadowcat's teeth might be longer than a bear's, but the mouth behind them isn't half so strong. The weapon doesn't do the fighting, but the bearer." True as can be told.

"What's your name?"

"Beccah. As for you, word's gotten around Winterfell quick of the lady warrior in blue armor with a red sword." Brienne drew Oathkeeper, letting Beccah and the other Bear Island women have a look.

"Pretty enough, but how's it handle?" one asked.

"It's wanting those lions off, for starters. Stark steel ought wear wolves or nothing."

"Especially because male lions don't lift a paw to help their wives hunt. All they do is laze around and sire cubs when comes the time."

"Men are fools for gold, now why would somebody make a sword so gaudy?"

"Eh. Chip the rubies out and put sapphires in their place, it won't look so tasteless. Blue goes better with gold anyway." The words were offhand and thoughtless, but they made Brienne blink.

"Hang this talk of men, lions or otherwise." Beccah said shortly, waving her hand in an impatient swat.

"You first, then?" Brienne asked.

"Aye, or soon they'll be at blows to work out who gets first crack at you!" Lady Mormont piped up, clearing off with Beccah's sisters-at-arms.

Brienne watched Beccah's broad arms raise her mace, her gloved hands tighten fast around the oaken handle. That's good stout wood. I hope I don't break it on her. She raised Oathkeeper in reply, ready to let the she-bear have first blow.

"Dead men!" the cry came from somewhere north. A wide grin spread across Beccah's face. "Later, then. I'm ready just not to brain a dead man-" The cry came again, from the west. Then the east, then the south.

"Dead men! DEAD MEN!" Brienne watched the grin falter and fall into grim purpose.

"Let's at it." she said through gritted teeth. A huffing from the entrance to the yard caught Brienne's attention next and she saw Podrick Payne standing there with his hands on his knees, looking as if he'd run the breadth of the castle in the half-minute since the first cry of alarm. She stepped up to him and let him catch his breath, heedless of the crannogmen even then swarming uncountably around and atop the Great Keep and the Great Hall. Their strange addendums to the castle allowed for them to pass quickly between the ramparts and the towers without sacrificing number necessarily, letting them bubble up in a spear-toting gush wherever needed. "Are you ready?" she asked. Pod nodded, face ashen and eyes wide. At least he isn't shaking. Despite her long strides he managed to keep up, even as she took the steps up to the ramparts three at a time. Walls they could build until the stars fell but the giants had known nothing of bridges- another innovation of the crannogmens' that allowed troops to move from the ramparts out to the inner wall, then the inner ring, and so on. The bridges themselves were staggered and rigged to collapse if need be to keep the enemy from using them in turn. Who knew bogs made great builders? There were people on the walls, people on the ground below, and the noise was such that Brienne didn't hear pod until he was practically shouting in her ear.

"Where should we go?" Her first instinct was north, after the first alarm and, well, north, when thoughts of the thick wolfswood made her head west. Pod hadn't waited for words, as good a judge at action to come as any lad. At least in battle. Put him in a ballroom and he's adrift. The castle's defenders had done their best to clear the nearest trees away while the giants had laid the great blocks. Even with a hundred feet of stumps and fallen brush between it and the outer ring the forest stood inviolable, free of House Glover and its vassal houses and the mountain clans both.

They seethed out of the trees like spilled ink soaking into fresh parchment. Numbers were one thing, but the mob was packed so dense it looked as if there wasn't room to bring a weapon to bear from one figure to the next. Not that wights need weapons to be a danger, not in numbers like these. Even thirty feet up Brienne felt unprepared as the figures grew closer, heedless of those who tripped or fell over the uneven ground, trampling them underfoot. There was no thinning at the back, no rear rank that she could see- they were packed like fish in a barrel from the ring's earthen face straight back to the wolfswood itself, a sea of dead. Of grasping arms, of gnashing teeth. Wights in black, wights in fur, wights denuded even of skin or limbs, the sight took Brienne's breath away.

"Before the wildlings tried the Wall, someone japed that if a hundred and two brothers were to hold against a hundred thousand wildlings, each would have to kill a hundred or more. Pyp promptly informed us he wasn't confident he could kill a hundred wildlings. Well, if everyone here found it in them to kill a thousand dead men each…we'd still not leave a dent." Brienne heard a soft voice mutter. At first she thought she was looking at a girl, but the black of the Night's Watch gave the man away for what he was. He noticed, because his next words were no less inspiring. "An ugly woman and a pretty man, fitting fellows to die together."

"Satin, shut your bloody hole." The once-Lord Commander of the Night's Watch muttered. Eddison Tollett, who brought us news that the Wall was no more. Brienne feared the dirt beneath them might give to dead hands clawing at it, dead bodies running up against it, but the notion of the earth being too cold to break seemed to prove true. Tollett seemed to be thinking along the same lines. "What a lark, that cold should prove our savior and a burr in the Other's arses." Brienne wasn't so certain they had been saved as yet, though. If the dead men are in such number all around the ring, all the Others need do is wait. It may take years, but time they have. Movement behind them clued her in to archer massing on the middle and inner rings as well as the ramparts, each nocking a burning arrow. Likely Lord Reed's notion, or the prince's. Each rank loosed as one. A fourth ring, one wrought of air and fire instead of earth, bloomed outward in all directions from the tops of the walls. Although many went out on the trip back to ground, more stayed alight- and cut the dead down in a wave of quick-spreading flame. Cheers went up (as well as screams), only to die away when more dead came out of the trees, heedless of the flames as they were of their own fallen.

"Movement at the treeline!" Brienne heard Pod cry, though he went unheard by the others. Brienne screwed up her eyes, trying to see through the rising flames and the countless bodies both. Bright blue pinpricks at forest's edge gave away the presence of something else in those far trees, watching the destruction of the wights impassively. The fires began to die, one by one.

Long, lanky bodies loped out of the darkness here and there, ice-blue forms shaped as if from nightmares. Their arms and legs were long and narrow, fingers hooked and spindly. Their noses, too were strange- long and pointed, under wide mad eyes. Brienne could see most were naked, menfolk all, while some wore instead pelts or even hammered shirts of silver mail or splint. Again, most went without a weapon, but others clutched ice-hewn greatclubs or long wooden shafts topped by hooked icy heads. The archers would wait no longer and a new volley shot out from the walls, the creatures their target. Great sheets of ice formed in the air, there and gone, warding the brutes from harm.

"VETRARTONN!" they cried in a deafening cacophony, in what might have once been the Old Tongue before who knew how long in the icy wastes of the Land of Always Winter had made what it would of the language. Another figure stepped out of the trees, taller than its fellows and clad in something rich and white that could only have been snow bear fur, the head worn as a hood. Rather than a club, it gripped a long piece of wood capped by a piece of glittering quarts the size of a barrel lid. The outcry only got louder as the creature waved its hand, the few fires remaining snuffing out at once. "VETRARTONN! VETRARTONN!" The others butted the ground with their weapons or else beat their chests or clapped their hooked hands. The one in white took a long breath.

"IDIR A GRUHIR!" he bellowed, the rest lost to frenzy and dashing for the earthen ring with all speed. At their heels came hundreds of quick-moving pale shapes. Brienne's stomach turned. Spiders. The size of hounds. Which was more eager to close with the ring, she could not say, and even as they came more dead emerged to replace those fallen to the flames or the creatures barreling their way through the wights' ranks. The white-clad leader made no move to stay behind, running at the head of his kindred. Every time the flaming arrows flew, he raised his stick to the sky and what water lay in the air hardened into icy panes if for just long enough to blunt the arrows. Where the wights had failed to scratch the ring, much less surmount it, Brienne suspected the monsters berserking toward their position would not be so stymied. A ring of silver-splinted bodies closed tight around their leader once it was clear they would, in fact, reach the ring.

"Hold!" she cried, as loud as she could manage. She heard the creatures' ragged breaths, the shrieks and skittering of the spiders as they left frozen ground for frozen ring. A monstrous hooked hand appeared at ring's rounded edge. "HOLD!" she cried again.

A swarthy wide-eyed head came up next, mouth a twisted grin of wayward pointed teeth. Out came its other hand, quick as a sucker punch, and only Tollett tackling Satin out of the way stopped the cruel searching fingers from grabbing him. Instead they closed around one of the Bear Islanders and simply flung her backward into the horde of dead before the creature tried to bring itself to bear. Brienne had just enough time to snap Oathkeeper through the air and cleave a leaping spider in twain before it could tackle her off the top of the ring. The air grew frigid and filled with bluish light, the earth beneath Brienne's feet shook as if struck by a giant's maul, frost forming over the surface. The brute finally clambered up to where she and the rest were waiting, looking at them as a wolf would a line of fatted chickens. Another hand appeared at ring's edge. Again the wall shook and it was trial enough to remain standing aright without having huge brutes tearing at them all but freely. Then a bag burst against one of their heads and the greenish liquid within ate away at its face until Brienne could see the icy bones beneath. From the hollow space beneath the ring came crannogmen beyond count, hurling bags of acid or dragonglass dust where they may to create havoc among the raving brutes. Bellowing in wounded fury, one of them lashed out blindly and caught Brienne squarely in the chest, knocking her off her feet and the ring's top both. She let out a low whine, trying to get air back in her lungs. Blinking stars from her eyes she watched the hollow section of the ring empty, taking the attackers unawares. Before she could even register relief, the air went cold again, blue light blazed forth from the other side of the dirt and something hit it, cracks spreading from under the hollow slowly but surely. Then the wall simply collapsed, dust and dirt filling the air while dead men and white spiders stormed the breach. Brienne beheld the white-clad monster step through the gap, blue eyes narrowing on spotting her. Jutting from his jaw was a large silver tooth, around which was wrapped a crude gold armband ringed with wards. Up came his stick, the quartz on the end twinkling with what could only be magic. He drew in a breath, raised staff's end to his mouth. He blew out, a concentrated icy gale flew at her face. She heard a clear brilliant ring as the spell caught her in the center of her chest. Again Brienne went off her feet, the memory of the Hound's most savage blow no more than a caress as she was laid out some thirty feet from the spot she'd left, the stars spinning brighter and air harder to keep in her chest.

Up, a voice called from within her. Her father, Ser Goodwin, Ser Jaime, Sandor Clegane? All four? Up. She sat up and winced at the feeling of bent plate poking her in the belly. Something closed around her, a grip tight enough to further warp the blue plate wrapped around her. Up she went, unable to see or breathe. But for the wide blue eyes, she thought. But for the scent of fresh-spilled blood. Glittering gold, sparkling silver. The gold rune-ring, the silver tooth that bore it.

"Fiodr." At first she thought she'd gurgled unintelligibly, then she saw the second swarthy face. It was possessed of the same silver tooth, as well as silver sickles that hung from its ears. It had no eyes for her though, only for the creature in snow bear fur that held her aloft as a girl would a doll. There was more Old Tongue, but she could not catch it. The brute tossed her away almost absently and Brienne felt the bent plate open a fresh gash between her shoulders. Cold proved a balm stronger than any pain though, and she made it to her feet yet again to limp after the pair. Don't fall, the voice within her said. If you fall now, you'll never get up. There were no wights around, none she could see, but she was too tired to wonder why. Maybe I'm dead already. Some septons theorized that the Seven Hells were battles unending, lit by unseen fires and filled with bloody haze. Tall figures blinked about just at the edges of her vision, too sturdy and constant to be more shadows. Even now, I have Oathkeeper to hand. I did not lose it, Ser Jaime. One of them stepped closer. A grunt let her know it was yet another of the cold brutes, a greatclub held fast in its fist. Suddenly it poked her in the shoulder, the arm that held the sword. She swung out weakly, just managing to keep her feet. Another grunt, another prod in the shoulder.

"You make for a poor mummer. Finish it." she said curtly, tears hot despite the cold. Grunt. Poke. At last some semblance of sight returned to her. The creature's eyes were on her sword, a lone cruel finger pointing firmly to the snow-slick ground. "I'd sooner bury Oathkeeper in mine own gut than be parted from it, monster. Much less drop it." snarled Brienne. Her tone was unmistakable, even if it spoke no Common Tongue. Its long nose twitched; its nostrils flared. Then its foot was on her chest and she was back to ground, though not with near so much force. Carefully the club nudged Oathkeeper from her hand and flicked it away into the night. "No…" she groaned. Then she was in the air again, the creature holding her firmly about the waist and making briskly for the safety of the wolfswood. She saw wights massing for another charge, broken bodies of other dead still twitching where they lay. The trunks of every tree were layered in thick webbing, spiders thrice as large as had charged the ring nestled 'neath fallen trunks or high in the branches. Snow began to fall, a light airy blanket of flakes. Brienne was too tired to so much as bat them away, so it took her a moment to realize there was order to the snows, a shape that held even as the flakes that made it sank to earth, only to be replaced by still more. Blue eyes bright as stars blinked out of the snows, inscrutably looking her over. The snows whorled together still more tightly, to make what might have been a cloak or mantle. All the while the blue eyes, bluer than her own, never left Brienne.