Catelyn

Whatever was upon them had no interest in catching White Harbor by surprise, if the noise of the drums was anything to go by. Meanwhile, the rains got worse by the moment. Not wholly by our making, either. Nor do we work winds as well as water. Atop the city's white walls, Catelyn could see only the White Knife running north into the darkness, from whence the drumbeats issued forth. Drums to the east boomed in answer, each seemingly eager to outdo the other even amidst the rising wind.

"It's fortunate White Harbor's walls are high. A man would be hard pressed to stand aright in this, much less fight. Behind the white stone though, they'll be safe from the brunt of it." Talisa observed, at her side as ever.

"They'll still be soaked through and freezing besides." Catelyn replied, feeling a sort of helpless dread. Even as we are, we're powerless against the endless waiting. Once they come on us, it will be noise and blood and death as in the riverlands with Robb, but I'll be in the thick of it this time. Distantly Catelyn wondered if there was aught she need to fear. Only that Arya might perish. Her daughter had gone from the wall though, hidden away in the castle somewhere with the other ladies as Catelyn had learned to never expect from her. Nymeria paced along their section of wall, the men manning the nearby trebuchet studiously ignoring the three of them but for quick ashen-faced looks. "Steel yourselves. You'll not aim true with your thoughts on us." Catelyn told them, sounding as she had when it was Robb's lords she was trying to talk off the scaffold a lifetime ago. I wanted them to make peace, to get my daughters back. I sought no crown for Robb, only that he should see his father again. As it pleased the gods, nearly everyone present that night had died either in the war to follow or the Red Wedding. And here I am, in another world altogether. The sounds of men running this way and that on the wall and in the streets below only added to the confusion, even when they sounded like mice skittering inside a barrel compared to the drums thundering from the moor.

"Ships!" came the cry from the southern wall. Catelyn turned, expecting to see wayward arrivals from the dragon queen's fleet or perhaps a detachment from the Golden Company, if word that yet another arriving Targaryen had hired the sellswords proved true. Instead she saw a slipshod mess of hulks and derelicts bulling directly for the port, making no attempt to slow or change course. Beyond them floated a flat-topped iceberg, shaped sure and sharp as a sword's hilt. Sinister flickering will-o-wisps the size of proper ships lit in the glassy hull. In short order they were flinging themselves up in wide arcs. Seal Rock lit up in a glowing green shroud, its own projectiles shattering uselessly against the ice-ship's hull. Another volley of green light saw the whole formation collapse into the Bite. Still another and the southern walls of White Harbor threatened to follow suit, their white bricks swaying like a drunkard struggling to hold his pants up.

Catelyn didn't remember starting off, didn't remember rushing toward the sagging wall. One moment she was watching the ice-ship have its way with the city as a whole, the next she was at the gate to the harbor. On impulse she raised her hands, as if she had the strength to hold the walls in place. The water flowing down the stones began to race back up them, the volleys from the enemy more than enough to freeze the walls solid. Catelyn watched the stone crack from cold, freeze in place after coming unmortared, but the new-formed ice caught the wall before it could sag into itself proper. Another volley saw her do the trick again, as did another. Don't fall, she thought to herself, trying to ignore the ungodly noise of the hulks crashing into the docks.

"Enemy coming ashore!" someone called from high above her, the sound of countless feet staggering up the icy rain-slick piers, no doubt making for the city proper. Bodies slammed themselves tirelessly against the very stones frozen into place with Catelyn's waters and the ice-ship's own volleys. Ice-blue eyes became visible through the gaps in the stone where only clear ice held, the fleshless faces that they stared out of void entirely of life.

"Seven save us…" she heard a Bracken archer mutter nearby.

"So long as they're out there and we're in here, they're no concern of ours." Catelyn said. "You'd do better to look to the walls than beyond them." The gazes of the dead were unblinking, unthinking, yet Catelyn felt no aversion to them. Perhaps I've truly lost the ability to fear, at least for myself. That upset her, or should have, but there was no time to ponder such mysteries. White Harbor's walls had yet to fall, but if the men defending them couldn't keep their courage the ice-ship didn't need to send the white stones tumbling down on their heads. I'm not the one to help them find their courage, no doubt they fear what is beyond them be it walking dead or talking water.

"Steady on, lads. I've seen stiffer-looking scarecrows than these sorry bags of bones. No doubt once they're on us we'll be scattering them half a dozen at a blow." The blacksmith-made-lord spoke with a voice that cut through even the wretched wind, it seemed, an untroubled ringing thunder that made the scrabbling dead outside look just that, woebegone cairn-fodder a watchman with a shovel might lay low. He must have followed me here, I'm not exactly hard to miss. Gendry Baratheon stood taller than any man in White Harbor and was likely broader as well. Several of the Dothraki Catelyn had seen were tall, six feet, but lithe and sinewy where the Lord of Storm's End looked able to fell a tree with a single blow. His armor was piecemeal, whatever fit most likely, and it was clear to Catelyn his hammer didn't make the most of his reach or strength, but the young man seemed singularly untroubled by the madness unfolding at every turn. "My lady." he nodded to her when he saw she'd noticed him.

"My lord." she replied, without thinking. He is taller than Robert was at that age, she thought. After the Battle of the Bells the victorious rebels had come to Riverrun and she and Lysa had married the young Lord Stark and old Lord Arryn respectively in the same ceremony. In the audience had been Robert, flush with victory and wine besides. Robert's head turned after every skirt at the feast, every washerwoman who bowed low for him to see. It had been the same at Winterfell near twenty years later when the royal family had come to Winterfell, and the seeds of doom were sowed. I doubt a falling star could make this bastard of his turn from his course. A bull, indeed. Arya's direwolf loped up behind him and he gave her a scratch behind the ears. One of a very few men who can reach them when she's on her haunches. "I told Arya you both would return to her at battle's end, if battle comes."

"And if one of those volleys finds me, her, or us together by black luck, what then? I'm sure you want Arya to be happy, my lady, but no less than I do. Instead of mother-henning us about, you ought to be smashing dead men flat against the walls and streets of White Harbor. You and your young charge." He did not patronize her, as so many of Robb's lords had, and her own lord father's besides, during the War of Five Kings. "You want to make sure we get back to her, put your fist in something's face. After all, your hand's not exactly like to break." Then he started off through the crowd, probably to find his stormlanders. Edmure turned up a few moments later, looking pale. Faces paled to a man when the riverlanders beheld their lord, but he only grinned sheepishly.

"Don't mind me, my lords. I've just been shitting myself sideways for the last few hours, I don't think that fish agreed with me. I'm as ready for a fight as anyone-" he suddenly lost his stomach, vomiting behind a crate. "-ready as ever." he said as he straightened up, slapping himself. "When you feel as wretched as I do, you haven't got room for fear."

A warhorn sounded from the north cut through the clangor, a note so loud it sent pebbles and small stones bouncing up and down the city's white streets. Voices followed it, loud and rowdy, fierce and wild. Catelyn got back atop the wall as fast as she could manage, Nymeria nimbly keeping pace with her despite the animal's size. Talisa was there to meet her, eyes on the blizzard roiling out of the moors. There was no time for warning and then it was on them, a thousand icy knives, a million blinding blows. As chips of ice ran through her harmlessly Catelyn looked for something, anything, anywhere from whence the enemy would come. Even over the screaming blizzard, she could hear the voices. A dozen Greatjons, greater still than Lord Umber had ever been. Then came a deep rumble, an ornery snuffling, a sudden irate trumpeting. Though she was not blinded by the snows as the others might have been, Catelyn could neither see through the wall of white that hid the moors from her gaze. Something moved in them, just out of sight. It was enormous, the largest creature she'd seen by far, and a quick glimpse of a pair of beady ice-blue eyes in the storm told Catelyn it stood taller than four Gendrys each standing on the other's shoulders. More snuffling, a tempestuous snort. Several figures stepped out of the impenetrable tempest, each man-shaped if definitively not man-sized, between fifteen to sixteen feet to Catelyn's eyes. Giants, she thought. From what she'd heard through the grapevine though, the giants that had thrown in with Jon Snow and the Free Folk were almost comically withdrawn, content to keep their comings and goings closed to menfolk. Greataxes and mauls are not the tools of shy, retiring mammoth-herders. Nor are horned helms and long beards the color of straw or ivory. The trebuchet nearest Catelyn simply shattered into kindling, a full minute passing (and the ruin of an outbuilding in the street below) before she realized what had happened. They're throwing boulders. Man-shaped they might have been, but it seemed the giants were stronger still than men, were they of a size. After a few minutes more of boulders pulping men into red mist or shattering the ramparts that ran atop the wall, the giants seemed to conclude that they'd need to close with the city to get past its defenses. They parted, butting their weapons against the ground, chanting.

"LORM! LORM! LORM!" A war-call, a curse, Catelyn could not begin to guess. Out from the swirling cloud-come-to-ground stepped a mammoth, indeed at least as tall as she'd earlier guessed. On its back was another giant, sitting tall and proud with a snow-white beard running to the center of his pelt-clad chest. When his mount snorted, he ran a hand the color of morning sky down its shoulder. The mammoth's eyes narrowed and its trunk coiled against its face, the giants on foot clearing off at once.

"EGIR VERGIR! EGIR VERGRIR!" he called, he sang, he challenged. Then the trunk shot straight out, there was a sound like a mountain cracking, and Catelyn was launched skyward.

She had no bones to break, no flesh to tear, no blood to spill, but even so when she came back to earth Catelyn splattered against the frozen ground like a rioter's flung fruit. Another moment and she was on her feet again, none the worse for wear. Not even dizzy, she thought, though despair managed to catch her in its stead when she saw the breach in the walls, white stone crumbling down either side and onto the heads of those on the ground. Her person rippled uncontrollably. The ground is shaking. She turned to see the giants running straight at her, swinging their weapons like berserkers. Then she caught the head of a maul and scattered into uncounted droplets Feeling so much like her body had been stretched, that the greatest effort would only wiggle a finger, Catelyn slowly drew herself back together. I make for a poor soldier, she thought, finding that the mammoth had not moved. Its rider was leaning forward, hand over its eyes as if to see her more clearly. If anything the giant looked positively enraged, booming an order from the mammoth's back. The sounds of battle joining in White Harbor began, if battle it could be called. There is no one to keep me from my enemy now, Catelyn realized. No Robb to say it is unsafe, no Greatjon to say it is unladylike. She started for the giant and his mammoth too. The snows began to turn to sleet, the winds to thick wet fog. The giant noticed, dropping off his mount and sending it trundling back into the white with a slap on its hindquarters. He gripped his greataxe, steeling himself. As if I were a danger in his eyes. Perhaps he sees what the Lords of the North could not. She broke into a run, her dress a part of her, a vain veneer, and so no impediment. Indeed, I need no legs to move, I have no form I must adhere to. I am the rivers, red and green and blue, free to flow where I will- and over who I may. Once she'd given up her mortal shape, become a rolling tide, the distance closed much faster. A hundred feet, a hundred fists. No fingers to slice, no throat to cut. She was close enough to smell the mead on his breath, to see the fury in his blue eyes. Then she was frozen, only an outer shell at first and then through and through. Catelyn panicked, quickly discovering that though her shape had been manipulated, her form, her nature could not be so easily addressed. In only moments her frozen body began to pool inside itself, leak out of holes in the surface- only to refreeze as soon as she managed it. The giant brought his great fur-laden foot down on her, stomping her into the frozen mud. When again she tried to rise, he gave her another furious stomping, bellowing incredulously.

"You cannot kill them. They are not alive, and so cannot be killed." Catelyn tried to reconcile what she'd heard. Cracking ice, not words at all. When again she freed herself from frozen form, she found herself surrounded by countless waist-high figures. Unblinking blue eyes told her all she needed to know regarding the children, some scarcely old enough to walk. Or were, when death took them. She looked for where the voice had come from, certainly it had not been the giant who had spoken. In fact he was already making for the city, axe raised high and letting out a savage war-cry. When she saw the one who'd spoken, even bereft of fear as she was, she stopped in her traces sure as if she'd been frozen all over again. He stood in profile, rail-thin but taller even than the Greatjon had been. He wore a sort of black vestment, whorls of grey and white coming and going to match the fog that swirled around him. Catelyn gaped as he reached into a pocket, pulling out a handful of ashes. His blue eyes were fixed on his fist, on the gray trails crumbling out of his grasp. "Fear is more painful than pain itself, more tiring than any labor. Your race feels it with such intensity that echoes of it sound clear to me when the rest of you has crumbled away." His voice was ice on ice, icicles driven into each other and splitting as they fell. An Other, she realized. As Jon Snow spoke of countless times. An Other. And I understand his words.

"Who are you?" she asked. Rain falling on a frozen roof, water splashing off castle stones caked in snow. He drew the fistful of ashes to his nose, long fingers curled around themselves, and inhaled deeply of them.

"Among those who have but a meager century to live at most, I am called Father Frost. A lurking horror, a spiteful lullaby, to keep the young tractable. Savages, those beneath the obstacle named them, yet they shared a need to keep their children tame." That almost seemed to amuse the Other, the phantom of an upturned mouth blowing across his face.

"Who are you among your own race, then?" He turned to her. There was not a hair on his head, a characteristic that only seemed to emphasize the Other's Otherness. I thought I could feel no revulsion, Catelyn thought. I was wrong.

"The True Tongue does not allow for labels, names, as Father Frost is mine. There is no what you are called, there is only what you are." He cupped his hands to his chest, blowing a long whorl of freezing fog in Catelyn's direction. Freezing Fog.

"Is the True Tongue what we are speaking now?"

"It is not a tongue that can be spoken, as a collection of grunts and cries and calls can. It is the sounds of the world, of was and will be. Are we speaking it, or is it speaking us?" Dimly Catelyn could hear battle still being joined at White Harbor. When she turned, Freezing Fog spoke again. "Why do you care?"

"It is no business of yours."

"Bonds that transcend the flesh, that run counter to all base instincts. In time, in endless time, they will fade. Whomever draws your thoughts will die. Tonight, tomorrow, it is all the same to the likes of us." He is not threatening, or at least thinks he isn't, Catelyn realized. In his mind, he is simply stating fact.

"Not yet," she responded, "not yet, if I have my say."

"And if you do? Can your waters turn aged flesh spry and vital again? Can your rains smooth bones thorned by the decades?" When she moved to leave him and his herd of dead children behind, they moved to block her path. He must know they cannot stop me. Still she did not move to simply bowl them over. Her eyes went wide and she whirled about. Freezing Fog was on his feet, his arms out from his sides, hands in fists. The impassive mask he had removed, his icy eyes bright with hunger. He cannot kill me any more than the giant could, so he must needs defeat me by other means to remove me as an obstacle. Fear, doubt, despair, the like. She lunged, but before she could fill his mouth and nose and ears, Freezing Fog had simply melted into his namesake, reappearing on the other side of the pack of dead. Figures. An Other, and a wizard.

"You are not like me." Catelyn said. "You are flesh and blood and bone. You can tire, you can hunger, you can die."

"I am. I can." Freezing Fog replied, raising his fistful of ashes.

"She can't." He blew into them then, "and in her tirelessness, her endless hunger, her deathlessness, she will make an end to this farce that has bored me." The ashes spilled across the snow, staining them an ugly tarry black. Catelyn saw bits of bone scatter about as well, scraps of charred cloth, a single tooth. "Awake." Freezing Fog called. The vague memory of waking under a log reared up in Catelyn's mind. The Other turned to her as the ashes began to burn, lighting seemingly of their own initiative. "I owe you a great debt, in truth. This is no magic of my own, but one worked by the princess. Without her, without her ally, such power is not possible." Then he was gone, vanished into fog. Meanwhile, the flames began to spread beyond the ashes.

I have less than nothing to fear from fire, Catelyn thought even as the dead children vanished into the hungry heat. Puppets of the Other's will, to be discarded when they ceased to be of use. The flames folded in on themselves, the dregs that remained of whoever it, she had been catching as well, but were not consumed even by the prodigious heat. Suddenly Catelyn got a very bad feeling. The people in White Harbor are not so proofed against fire as I… They licked higher until the flames flickered on a level with Catelyn's shoulder. Some fiery revenant, a new tactic where the dead men failed, no doubt. A tendril of flame guttered out from the mass, sprouting tendrils of its own. She made to simply roll over the thing before it could reach her, but when it took shape (if hazily), Catelyn found herself staying her hand. A girl, was her first thought. Though, if this Father Frost as the wildlings name him sends dead children against their living parents to unnerve them further, I should not be surprised. She had no face, certainly no discernible features as to who she had been in life. To Talisa and I, faces and forms are just means to stay tolerable to those still living. No doubt this girl, whoever she is, can see me fine. She has no more use for eyes than I. The noise of battle made the girl's head turn, unpracticed in being able to see all-round.

"You're disorientated." Catelyn said softly, trying not to alarm her. "Give it a few moments, a few minutes." Then again, I had form of a kind when I came out of the river, as did Talisa. This girl does not, there is no corpse to puppet along from within. The answer came in a crackling hiss, a wave of heat. The True Tongue. No words, not truly, but Catelyn could hear meaning regardless.

"What is happening?" "Never you mind. Ignore the battle, try to center yourself or you'll never get anywhere." Catelyn gave answer in the Common Tongue, trying to help her find her rock. The tendrils that might become arms if the girl could manage to anchor herself went to her face.

"A thought, a memory. Someplace, somebody." Catelyn prompted, coming closer. Steam began to run up and down her front, yet she felt no pain and could feel no compromise in her shape.

"There's nothing…" Still the True Tongue. Perhaps she can't remember as much as how to speak. Though the battle raged fierce within the city limits, Catelyn knew leaving the girl to chance would be most abominably irresponsible. Left to my own devices fresh out of the river, I turned the riverlands into a drowned mire. One hand left the girl's face, fell to her side, and a hand took shape, closing around something. Or would have, had she held anything. Perhaps something she was holding as she died. Catelyn could remember no disaster involving fire, aside from the Blackwater. Two of Daenerys Targaryen's dragons are missing, perhaps one of them is to blame? But then, surely an appearance by a dragon would be well-known. Not up here, she answered herself. Not in the North. The girl's outline flickered and she was a fiery shadow no longer. A brow, cheeks, a nose, a mouth…slowly a face that to Catelyn's surprise she half-recognized emerged from the blaze. Before she could spend too much thought on it there was another flash of green light. One of the New Castle's proud white towers lit up like a phantom and collapsed into the city streets below, prompting a new outbreak of shouts and screaming. "What was that?" the girl asked in the Common Tongue, as if the sight had jerked her from her fugue somewhat. A southerner for a certainty, and one well brought up.

"An ice-ship. One of the Others', loosing volleys at the city."

"What can we do?" Cause great grief, do more damage than we mean to, and cause general devastation.

"What do you mean?"

"We can't just stand here and watch." The girl left a burning footprint as she took a step toward White Harbor, one Catelyn quickly extinguished before it could spread.

"You're not to do any fighting and that's for iron certainty, my little lady."

"Why not? I can help-"

"-once you learn how, yes, I'm sure you can. Being that the enemy upon us works in cold and ice, you may well be a godsend, even. Just now, though, you'd set the moor aflame just getting to the battle."

"So I'm to stand here like a dolt and wait for this to end?" There was something very of Arya in the girl, even through her ladylike manners that so reminded Catelyn of Sansa.

"Well, if you aren't given the option of staying hidden until battle's end, I suppose you must defend yourself." Catelyn looked around for someplace the girl might find sanctuary, if temporarily. "Perhaps the White Knife. If you could melt it, I'm sure that would be helpful in one way or another." Catelyn pointed to the river, cutting north into the hills frozen over or no.

"As you like. With luck, I'll do it without getting a crease in my skirts." came the sullen answer, the girl sulking off toward the ice, this time managing to keep from leaving any flames behind.

Now I know how Uncle Brynden felt, Catelyn thought wearily as she made her way back toward the city. It never seems to stop. There's madness in every corner, at every hour. To think I once thought direwolves to be songs come to life, found their howling to be unbearable. The great fissure in White Harbor's wall gave her ample room to get inside, the gap wide enough for the giants to rush through unimpeded if one at a time. The consummate destruction before her made Catelyn gasp all over again. Buildings lie in ruin and dead men were everywhere, half-crushed by great boots, flung against the walls of white stone to leave garish red stains, or else just crushed into paste. The giants' calls and cries sounded from further on, so Catelyn pressed toward them with all speed, ignoring the touch and sound of corpses squelching beneath her as she moved.

"EGIR VERGIR! EGIR VERGRIR!" Their voices were astonishingly loud, their words steeled and full of wroth. Catelyn emerged into a courtyard to see a cadre of knights force the newcomer up into a corner with their long lances. The giant quickly tore part of the stone stair at his back away and flung it at the men, crushing several and scattering the rest before charging in himself, his icy maul finishing what the stairs had begun. Even the ground cracks when he strikes it. The giant had taken several arrows but if he felt them at all, he kept it hidden beneath his fury. Before he could charge off after fresh prey, Catelyn sent a rush of water rolling out to meet his feet. Surefooted on ice, I'm sure, but you're no Other, and besides, your feet are clad in fur! Immediately the giant lost his balance, waving his arms wildly as he slipped, crashing through the roof of a townhouse. Exploding out the other side, fury renewed, his blue eyes locked on the New Castle at the center of the city. There was a berserker's rage in the giant's face, but also something of deepest hatred. Why a giant from the furthest north would so despise menfolk was a question for someone else, though. Catelyn harried him unceasingly on his way to the Wolf's Den, near the water, where it seemed the other giants were busily trying to bash their way in. In and up, Catelyn thought. Up the Castle Stair to the Merman's Court where the helpless, the harmless, the innocent wait to be slaughtered like lambs. What defenders were garrisoned in the Wolf's Den stood topside, firing crossbows or trying to hit the giants below with boiling cauldrons of pitch. A few had bad hissing burns, ugly whitish-black blotches, on their arms or legs, but they were well wise to the ploy and had taken to ducking out of range of the pitch whenever it came down. They're all looking up, Catelyn realized. Up, when they should be looking down. Only when their boots soaked through did the invaders look down in confusion- time enough for the men atop the ramparts to bring up a scorpion and angle it downward. Catelyn balled her hands into fists and pulled, the water rushing out from under the giants' feet like a rug out from under a mummer in a farce. Three landed flat on their backs and one caught himself on hands and knees before falling any further, but it was the giant Catelyn had followed from the courtyard that caught the scorpion bolt squarely between the shoulders. He lurched back, bellowing like a harpooned whale as he reached back to pull the shaft from his back, ripping it out in a spout of grey mist. While he tried to squint through his agony at the bolt's head, Catelyn knew the black glittering point for what it was. Dragonglass. Eyes filling with numb rage, he tore the bolt in twain, pulled it end from end, as no man could have done even with a small branch. Picking up his maul, he charged, swinging wildly at Catelyn- the icy head finding purchase in the sea-facing wall she had so hastily mended. The ice was thick, the white stone strong, but the giant's fury soon had the whole thing crashing down notwithstanding. Dead men surged into the breach, rushing blindly past or through the giant's legs as opportunity allowed, pressing themselves flat against the Wolf's Den's walls. The defenders must have somehow blocked the door, made it impassable on the other side, Catelyn thought. No wooden beams would hold 'neath a giant's maul.

"ISTROLLEN!" the giant bellowed, waving his maul in the air. Following his gaze, Catelyn saw past the dead to the ice-ship that lay waiting in the Bite, its volleys stopped, likely so as not to hit the giants. Still more monsters were leaping from the hulks that had run themselves to pieces on the snow-covered sand, gaunt and lanky with cruel hooked fingers and mouths filled with frightful teeth. Most wore ragged pelts, swinging branches or jabbing with shards of ice on one end. Others were naked, their only weapons being their grasping hands and snapping mouths. They loped through the wights without a second's hesitation, racing past the giant to stop at the Wolf's Den's gate and immediately start hurling whatever they could reach up at its defenders. One of the creatures spotted Catelyn in passing and in his double-take tripped up on scattered rubble, his fellows readily trampling him on their way into the city proper. To Catelyn's shock he popped right back up, long nose snapping into place, crushed jaw popping back open and his wrenched shoulder coming unwrenched in two dizzying swings of his arm. He flashed a hungry grin and lunged for her, his hand splashing harmlessly through her figure. No decorum, she couldn't help but think as she sent a geyser through his wide, mad blue eye. At once he reared back in surprise, Catelyn using her stolen second to rush past him only to spot the giants hoisting the new arrivals partway up the wall, their sharp hooked hands well fitted to scale the black stones and attack the defenders on the ramparts. The first one over gave a roar, there was a sickening crunch and he came toppling right back over the side. Landing at the giants' feet in a heap, head pulped by a stunning blow, he looked of no further concern until Catelyn saw the monster's cheek simply pop out of his pulped skull, nose jutting forward and crushed socket going round, The blue eye blazed out crazed and hungry a moment later, none the worse for wear. No wonder they throw themselves at us! Catelyn thought. They know there is no risk in it for them! Then her eyes found the broken bolt, tip twinkling merrily at her even as dead men continued to pour into the city. The giant who'd taken the bolt, who'd broken White Harbor's sea-facing wall, had a hand on the frame of the Seal Gate trying to catch his breath. Time to give you another poke. The dead would not have impeded her, formless as she was, but the bolt needed carrying and it was too much a hassle to hold it aloft as she rolled a path on through, Instead she simply pushed them out of the way, a waist-high tide that crushed them as were in its path flat until she reached the giant's knee, promptly burying the bolt in the meat of his calf. He gave another tortured bellow, the flesh around the glass head bubbling angrily- and bounded past Catelyn. The giant's agony renewed, his outrage replenished, he simply drove his left fist through the wood of the Wolf's Den's gate, doing the same with his right a moment after. He lifted up, the gate creaking as the giant's brute strength slowly did for the only thing standing between his kind and the New Castle. The other giants immediately got to tossing extra pelts over him to protect him from more boiling oil, a few lucky lanky brutes making it topside to wreak havoc and further push the defenders back.

"LORM!" the giants boomed, a cheering chorus echoed witlessly by their allies. "LORM! LORM! LORM!" Not a curse, Catelyn realized. A name. It quickly became apparent that even for a savage, even for a giant, this Lorm was prodigiously strong. The gate continued to rise, pushed up from outside instead of pulled up from within by way of a gate-wheel, Lorm not stopping even when the broken wood of the gate poked and pierced into the muscle of his great arms. Even with clear blood streaming from the holes, the sounds of arrows needling his hands from behind the gate, Lorm did not falter, the gate soon boot-high. Dead men began to stagger forth, falling down as they bumped against the gate and crawling under after they fell.

With a last terrible creak and a crack like a thunderclap Lorm simply ripped the gate from its moorings, like a tooth from the top of a mouth. He lifted it, wood still gnawing on his arms, into the air with a wild booming cry of triumph.

"EGIR VERGIR!" his fellows called, Lorm answering at once.

"EGIR VERGRIR!" Then he simply pulled the gate in twain, heedless of the deep gnawing his new tower shields were doing. The dead men pushed forth and the lanky brutes with them, finding their path well obstructed by it seemed every barrel, wagon, crate, and other object that could be used to impede their endless tide. It doesn't matter, Catelyn thought, despairing as she ran to try and slow them still further. They have no number and the barricade will not hold forever. Then a gout of flame lanced past her, lapping up the stumbling dead before they could stagger out of the way. Not that they could think to do so! The giants and their spindly ilk were not so heedless of danger though, yelping and shouting in surprise as they hastily moved off the walls of the Wolf's Den. Lorm blinked the stars out of his eyes long enough to squint at what was going on in front of him quite as if the sun itself were blazing forth. Catelyn noticed the same behavior in the other giants and their swarthy ilk. They are creatures of the cold, she thought, but of the dark as well! Lorm launched one of the gate-halves at the source of the blaze, an ever-flowing fountain that bubbled up from White Harbor's streets, but the girl would be no more harmed by the giant's attacks than Catelyn herself would, she knew. We have no bones to break, no flesh to gash open, no blood to spill, good giant. The wood burst in a shower of splinters and steel studs, the girl emerging utterly unscathed.

"Your pardon, my lady," she called over the blaze, "but I thought better of waiting for your permission." Her next lance flew at Lorm's face. He had only time to hold the other half of the gate out before the flames scattered into harmless sparks against something a foot in front of him. The thin barrier of ice lasted only as long as it was needed, formed from the water in the air, it seemed, checking the girl's continued attempts even as she tried to go around. Catelyn's brow furrowed. A sorcerer this brute is not. The mists that came from the open flames warring with the snow-covered ground congealed into a thick fog.

"Show yourself." she said, forgoing the Common Tongue. Freezing Fog did not oblige, though she was sure he spotted his gaunt outline once or twice in the landed cloud. Thunder began to rumble, a storm sounding from the north. To a one the giants' faces went from wroth to reverent, snapping north like pups after their mother. Again the thunder rumbled, moving off. Breathing heavily, Lorm snapped off without a second look at the gate, the other giants quickly following his lead. Rather than stay, bereft of their leader, or try and make it back to the ice-ship, the gangly brutes left with them. As the dead men were still well at trying to force their way through the barricade, White Harbor's remaining defenders were in no position to do anything but watch them go. Catelyn followed as best she could, and only when the last giant disappeared through the great fissure they had come by did the fog begin to clear. A moment later and the storm moved off as well, leaving only a light cold rain mixed with sleet to mark the giants' coming. That, and the corpse-choked rubble-pile that had once been White Harbor.

"Shall we see to these, then?" the girl's voice called from behind Catelyn. Only then did she realize that Talisa had been quite absent for the entirety of the battle. Raid, more like. Catelyn turned to see the girl pointing vaguely where the dead massed in their thickest. "Not just the ones that move. The giants killed plenty of people, no need to leave them out for the Others to work mischief with." Grimly the girl nodded and set about it, Catelyn working to douse her fires whenever the walking corpses took too rapidly. That is, often. Truly, fire spells a quick and utter end to these soulless things. No wonder Jon Snow aimed to get the aid of Daenerys Targaryen. Despite the sheer amount of dead, the ghastly work still to be done, the girl had well steeled herself. Perhaps before she perished, she was no stranger to death. Scouring the streets and pushing rubble into the breaches the giants had created to the north and east took some time, Catelyn making sure her waters froze the white stone into a semblance of place. The breaches were still well visible and quite inconsequential when it came to stopping giants, but the rubble reached a third of the way up to the ramparts and that was more than enough to keep dead men from coming into White Harbor.

"I should like to try and go all the way up. The Seven only know there's stone enough to use."

"Unmortared, unsettled, held in place by ice. How long would it last if they came back?" the girl asked. Familiar with death and fortifications as well. More to the point, how long would we last?

"Before we set off from King's Landing, the Golden Company landed with the intent of putting Prince Rhaegar's so-called son on the throne. Hopefully they'll arrive and reinforce us, if they haven't simply taken the capital for themselves." The girl's outline flickered.

"If I'm meant to know what any of that means, I'm sorry to disappoint you."

"Talisa had difficulty remembering who she was as well. It came back to her in time, I'm sure the same can be said for you."

"As my lady says. Uh, should we join the others now?"

"Another trot around White Harbor won't make its walls any stronger. Better we should take the measure of who's been killed."

"Or who hasn't, to be sure." Catelyn found herself reminded again of her daughters, Sansa's politeness and Arya's optimism. Well, before their father died. Arya was very much how Catelyn remembered in temperament, even if she let her hair be brushed and took to wearing dresses. I used to think her wild. After seeing the Dothraki, even from afar, after seeing the giants… She shook her head. There are people who belong below the Wall, and people who belong beyond it. Then her eyes popped open. The Wall, she remembered. How could they have gotten past the Wall?

Rather than clamber over the barricade that blocked passage through the Wolf's Den to the Castle Stair or have the girl simply blast it out of the way, Catelyn wove through the rubble as water through rocks in a stream. I could pass through the bars of a cell with more ease, she observed. Plate would be no defense, not with gaps for me to slip through. Thinking on that reminded her of the shadow that had killed Renly Baratheon, kitting through steel and flesh with equal ease. Her budding mood withered. It makes no matter now. Stannis is as dead as Renly, his horrors died with him.

"Is something wrong, my lady?" Evidently distress was plain on Catelyn's face. The talking flame that struggled to hold a girl's shape was no less impeded than Catelyn, roving over stone instead of wood where she could.

"Thinking on the ills of the past. Nothing you need worry over."

"Well, if by past you mean the last few hours, I can think of an ill or two that could use some worrying over." I only hope when your memory returns you handle it with greater grace than I. There were more cries still higher up, on the ramparts of the New Castle, but Catelyn heard her uncle bark them down.

"She look like one of those big cold cunts? Open the…" Before the Blackfish could finish Catelyn simply seeped through the gaps under the gate, none the worse for wear.

"I don't think that trick will work this time, my lady…" the doubtful voice came from the other side.

"The fuck is that?" someone cried. A lady, ser, who you will address as such. It seemed waspish to voice the thought at such a time though, so when again the command for the gate to rise was given Catelyn held her tongue. The girl slipped under the gap right away, needing only that to join the rest of them. No shape but for the one we choose. The soldiers' fear gave way to stunned silence when the flame gave a dainty curtsy.

"Good evening, my lords." she said when she saw that several of them were obviously highborn. They were either lost for words or never learned the ones to handle such a moment, so Catelyn took the reins.

"My lady remembers nothing. So far as can be determined, she shares a condition akin to Talisa's and mine own." A giant of a man, armor dripping with what looked like liquid glass, stepped forward while a pox-scarred man helped him get his helmet off. Gendry Baratheon's face showed less fear, more awe, as he took the girl in.

"Ever been in a smithy before?" he asked breathlessly, the scarred man giving a rough bark of laughter.

"I've no idea. But even I know fire that can think would be rather handy doing forge-work." the girl replied, totally nonplussed. Her ambivalence made Catelyn smile. No future either, but for the one we choose.