Bran
While others die to defend my home, I'm stuck in the keep. It was like being crippled again, only worse. I have no excuse now not to be out on the rings with the rest of us, the best of us. It had been Howland Reed's own request that Bran remain with Meera and their child. Than Bran found distantly curious. As cherished as she was by her lord father, the crannogmen and Lord Howland in particular did not strike Bran as the type to leave able warriors behind, even their most beloved daughters. Besides, Howland isn't a newborn any longer, Meera could leave him for a skirmish or sortie if needed. Howland the elder would no more hear of her leaving the safety of the Great Keep than Bran, however, and so they both stayed. Bran could hear the flinty voices of whatever had come against the outermost ring, the sundering of the frozen earth as it was breached, blown apart. The cries of men as the dead stormed in, gleeful cackling accompanying them. The lanky brutes Sansa mentioned, no doubt. The feeling of helplessness only got worse as whatever was happening at the edge of the wolfswood wore on until Bran simply reached out blindly, hoping at the least to cut a wight's strings. Instead he found himself wearing flesh that was best described as hunger with limbs. So ravenously, madly hungry was his new friend that its long spindly arms grabbed wights when hot-blooded prey was out of reach, tongue lolling rabidly over sharp slanted teeth as it gnashed them together. Bran only had time to think well, this must be what riding a bull is like before he was kicked out, more on instinct than any willful effort. Even in the Great Keep, Bran heard one of the brutes give a sudden startled cry. Surprise, he thought grimly. His little trick didn't stop the sounds of battle though, shrieks and hoots only adding to the din. Spiders, Bran thought. Packs of pale spiders, big as hounds. Big as horses. Even the crannogmen would not turn the tide, he knew, not when they were beset on all sides by foes that felt no sting nor bite nor poisoned blow. We can't beat them through force of arms, he realized. There are simply too many, and every second more are brought to bear. The only way he'd ever seen wights speedily sorted out to the last was fire, as when Leaf had saved them from the skeletal dead waiting in the snowdrifts outside the Three-Eved Raven's cave. And after, he remembered. He stopped pacing in his tracks. They came into the cave and blew apart like scarecrows in a windstorm. Leaf's words were loud as if she were at his elbow. The power that moves them is powerless here. He turned to his princess and their little quiet prince.
"We have to go find Branch." Bran said breathlessly.
The Singers had done much and more to the crypts beneath Winterfell. Tight cramped tunnels were widened, raised, and passages ran from one end of the castle to the other like a great anthill. The Singers themselves rarely came above the surface, the cold too much for them or else the great number of men in such close quarters. Or both, Bran thought. Branch was in the grotto 'neath even the crypts, eyes closed and hands on one of the trees that grew in spite of the sun's absence. I wonder how often he stops to sleep, eat, drink.
"Over and over, I heard of how I had to keep my own body alive when I went out as Summer." Bran said. Lecturing a Singer of the Song of Earth on a tune his people call. When Branch turned to him the little childish face had lost its customary dour pall, alive with mirth. More than mirth, joy. It made Branch look a child proper, his gloomy air quite vanished.
"It works!" he cried, voice echoing.
"What do you mean?" Bran asked, startled by the Singer's enthusiasm. He caught sight of others of Branch's kind communing with other trees here and there, the sourceless golden light quite in force.
"The trees, they wake!" Uhh, thought Bran. And I'm supposed to know about this sort of thing.
"That's lovely. Branch, the wights have broken through the outer ring, to the northeast. It sounds like they've marshaled from the wolfswood, accompanied by spiders and…something else." Branch's wide grin faltered. "Something happened when Meera and I met our first Singer. A she-Singer, Leaf, who managed to snatch us from out of the wights' dead grasp."
"Not all of us though." Meera said. Bran missed him terribly. Not half so terribly as Meera does, he knew.
"The wights that tried to follow us…when they crossed the threshold of the cave, they…"
"…died?" Branch asked.
"In so many words. They flung apart in every direction." Meera said, evidently remembering without difficulty. A hard thing to forget, seeing a dead man pop like an acorn in a hearth. Branch's three-fingered hand trailed down the tree's trunk, thumb tapping a knot in the bark.
"I wouldn't think they were many." he said finally.
"Only two or three." Bran replied.
"Brandon Stark, the trees are not swords. They are not weapons to swing as you will." Bran felt his patience for the Singer, moping and snail-slow when most speed was needed, waning quickly.
"If something's not done right now, we'll soon be overrun."
"What you request will no doubt stress this place, perhaps drive it back to sleep."
"Are there any among the Singers unafraid to show initiative?" Meera snapped, her endless patience it seemed quite at an end and her irate voice likewise echoing off the grotto walls. "It seems to me the Singers of the Song of Earth want to be right more than they want to win. The Others are assuredly not crippled by this attitude, they've shown as much by taking on other beings native to the Land of Always Winter, even making common cause with a miscreation of Leaf's own making." While Branch looked aghast, Bran could only revel in his princess' fiery words. I could count on one hand the times I've seen her truly angry, he thought, and likely each of those has roots in the Singers' reluctance to actually do anything.
"You can't whine about winter's murderous nature while sitting there waiting to get butchered, Branch." Bran said, trying to keep a civil tone. "Dismaying and singing sad songs will get us nowhere. We brought you here so you could help us and us you. By coming here, it was understood that you would fight, that you would without a second thought get muddy, get bloody as we will, as the giants will. Point to the Pact all you like but unless you're actually willing to fight for your right to exist, that right doesn't exist. Nothing born into this world is owed life, owed anything, unless they learn that way of thinking from those around them. Like many of the highborn of Westeros. Maybe things were different in the beginning, when first your race began to sing, but times are harder now. We have Others all about us, intent on turning the North into a lichyard with the rest of the world to follow. Pouting 'it's not fair' will not bring your paradise back, an ever-dimming memory to your kind before you were born. Now is the time, not then, and today is the only bloody day that matters. If you can do something about the wights, do it. If you can't, or you won't, tell me and I'll have the lads pile dirt and stone at every entrance to this grotto. You and the other Singers can go on bemoaning to each other how unfair it all is while men and giants carry on without you."
Before he'd come into the grotto, Bran had been jittery and nervous. Now he felt as if he'd run a league in a minute, breathing hard.
"You fought the First Men when they came to Westeros." Meera said, her own anger receding. "The giants too, in ages before that. Why will you not fight the Others?" Howland had not made a sound, even when Meera had all but shouted, his grey eyes taking in the trees around them. "What they will, you will not, is that the way of it?" Branch gave no answer, hand still on the tree's white trunk. Then he reached out behind him with the other, toward Bran. He took it at once and they were gone from the grotto, gone into the tree and the ground beneath it.
"By such means can we see what eyes do not." Branch's voice sounded in his ear. Then he was above the crypts, above the castle, warging into nothing at all and yet his vision was ever clear. Seeing as trees see, perhaps? The castle was aglow with life, countless living things bustling within even as a black mass gained headway from the north, peppered here and there with pinpricks bright as any of the lives within Winterfell.
"Can we refine this sight?" Bran was well versed in speaking without a mouth, using his thoughts to give his words voice.
"What do you mean, Brandon Stark?"
"We can't really see the dead this way, or easily tell the living apart unless we focus on one individual in particular." It was like someone was sliding colored glass in front of his eyes. The formless mass remained ill-defined but Bran could see partitions in the blackness.
"The dead are colder than the ground and cold life is colder still." Branch said, as the tall pricks of light the wights made no move to attack took on a deep bluish hue. From the depths of Winterfell, awash with light and warmth, Bran spotted a single blot of brightest blue. Alive as any man, colder than any wight. Our prisoner from the Land of Always Winter, stuck fast in his cell. It was as the Raven said. Time is nothing to a tree. Hot and cold, life and death. These are things a tree understands. He could not see much further than the edges of the wolfswood, though. Where the Others must have set themselves to keep an eye on things. "Branch, there are weirwoods aplenty in the wolfswood. In the other castles of the north, too."
"Overrun by Those That Walk With Winter and their chattel."
"Do you have to be there, though? Can you not…do what you've done here, from here? Through the trees or something, instead of in the flesh?" Then he was back in the grotto. I didn't even fall down. "If we, if you could do with other weirwoods what you just did here, we could see them all throughout the North. They could not hide from us, even behind ice or stone. Even ice cold enough to hide their cold isn't alive, and would not hide the light of life. They'd light up like a torch in the darkness when viewed through the trees." Meera only looked mystified, Howland silent as ever. Branch let go of the tree, his customary melancholy expression gone almost struck dumb. "If it's time you need, time we have- or will, once we've stopped the wights and closed the breach." Small shapes moved in the trees, other Singers emerging to join the first. They have no head, no foot, Bran knew. They have no kings among their own, no peasants either. All are equal, all are one.
Bran left them to it as they gathered into a circle, taking Meera with him. She needed no persuading.
"It's easy to forget that they're as potent as the Others, if in different ways." she said meekly.
"Easier still for them to forget. Don't think you acted rashly, Meera. They like to think of themselves as blameless innocents who seek only to sing. Happy little woodland fairies they are not, and it was time someone told it to their faces." Perhaps it's because she is a crannogwomen. They're little people too, yet they don't give a fig about appearing harmless. Styngs wear that scary black paint, Coyls tattoo themselves to look like the endless body of one great snake… He led his princess and their prince to a high parapet facing the skirmish, standing among several lords from the Vale. Muttered prayers from the lordlings to the Seven did little good to aid the men fighting for their lives, though, and more than one was clearly itching to bury his blade in the gut of a dead man. Meanwhile, the wight tears his face off.
"Just what are we waiting for?" a sudden angry voice called. Only when Bran heard a man breathing shortly in his ear did he realize the question was addressed to him. Thank the gods Meera didn't get in the way. He wanted not the least bit of harm to come to her, yes, but neither did he want to be known as the prince who hid behind his wife with his son in her arms. Bran turned to see a man with triple ravens each clutching a red heart on his breast. A Corbray, he knew, of Heart's Home. At his hip was a longsword's scabbard, made of fine dark red leather. What Bran first took to be a spade-shaped ruby in the pommel he realized was yet another heart, merely upside down. I'll bet it looks a heart well enough when the sword is drawn.
"In Lord Reed's estimation his own retainers are more mobile than the rest of us. Each detachment is to hold its position, the crannogmen will augment anywhere that comes under attack."
"Ants may augment where they like when a child stomps on their hill." Bran frowned. Impatience was expected, especially among men eager for the fight and denied it at length, as was the case with the Knights of the Vale, but he misliked the man's words all the same.
"I recognize your arms, ser, but your name escapes me. Pray forgive me."
"Ser Lyn Corbray of Heart's Home, with little and less need to heed the words of some bog-walker who's never seen battle before in his life." He drew his heart-handled sword. Valyrian steel, Bran knew at once. "Littler still need for shit-smeared arrows when I've Lady Forlorn to hand."
"Go then, Ser Lyn." Bran said immediately, before he could stop himself. "Take your Lady, lead a charge into the wights afoot or ahorse, the end's the same. Eventually they will overwhelm you and you'll come against the living same as any other wight. No doubt the man who puts a flaming arrow through your dead blue eye will be a crannogman." Bran turned back to the battle, unwilling to engage with the prickly man further. He's not a Vale lordling I know. Harry introduced me to all of them, I thought. Or maybe just the ones he likes.
"Better than waiting here to die. My forebears would never let me hear the end of it if I went to them surrounded by crannogmen and lawless savages. Small wonder this godsforsaken land puts such stock in trees, trees are all you have."
"Trees are all we need." Branch's voice called from the parapet steps, nimbly squeezing through the startled men. Men in fur and steel where he wears threadbare hides and yet they are the colder. He had eyes only for the skirmish, on the steadily-oncoming tide of dead. Bran saw different shades of red in the Singer's eyes, flickering like the ever-shifting light of a torch. The other Singers are watching through him. Men began to shuffle out of the way, until Branch reached them at parapet's front. He raised his little fist. "Trees are all we need." Then he opened it.
The center of the mass blew to bits, an unseen tide roiling out all around. All the dead it reached were crushed beneath it, shredded by a gale-wind. Bran felt the stones beneath his feet shake and tremble as the Singers' magic flowed through them, Branch waiting until the breach was again filled with wights before opening his palm again. The same thing happened, with pieces of bone and cold dead flesh flying every which way as the wights were unmade. While Bran's mind was still reeling at just what he was seeing, another lordling got to a knee to whisper in Branch's ear.
"F-f-f-forget the d-d-dead, w-we-we-we'll see to st-st-st-st-stragglers. Close the g-g-g-gap, that's a g-g-good lad." Branch's little hands came up flat, as if holding a dish. He raised them higher, raising them for all to see. A thunderous grinding of rock on rock sounded from the outer ring, the frozen earth rising and flowing over itself. Slowly the breach knitted closed of its own accord, with dirt a dozen men would have needed a day's time to move. The great wall of force had caused no such harm to the living in the space between the rings, even the brutes and the countless spiders, but unsupported by the wights it was their turn to find themselves buried under an oncoming tide. Not of bony hands, either. Spears, swords, lit torches, cudgels, even loose bricks. The brutes were smart enough to cut and run when they saw the wights go down, scaling the earthen rings posthaste, but the spiderlings it appeared were too hungry for blood to abandon the chase. Even as they were cut down they bit and screeched and skittered about, fighting bloodily to the last. And these the newborns, hatched in the Haunted Forest or sooner, Bran thought as he watched. The Other we captured rode an adult. I only hope the Others have not mastered the cavalry charge. While he struggled to come to grips with what just happened, yet another of the Valemen stirred his fellows up.
"Come on, lads! Before there's none left for us!" They rushed off, Ser Lyn among them with his lady in hand. We are well quit of that one. I had forgotten about the rest of the people in Winterfell. Then again, my son was just born, I think I was well within my rights to be a little too distracted to play the peacemaker prince. Besides, Sansa's better at that than I am. Where was Sansa, anyway?
"You'd best go tell your father what's happened, Meera. I'll try and sort this mess out." Bran said. He kissed Howland the younger on the top of his tiny head, making Meera giggle, and then she was off. Bran left Branch to find his own way back down to the grotto, taking every shortcut only he and the birds knew about to reach the site of the wights' sortie.
It could have been worse, Bran thought as he took in the sight of people lying dead, of bits of wight vanishing beneath a blanket of fresh snow. He stepped over the body of a wildling who wore only blue paint but for a hide about his waist, breath hitching at the sight of a man in plate laid out where he had fallen. Bran caught a glimpse of a broken wheel enameled on his pauldron.
"Ser," Bran began, stopping at the sight of the man's face. Grayish-white, veins turning black, the man's blue lips were dribbling foul black blood. He was shivering violently, the weight of his plate the only thing keeping him from writhing about like a split worm. Bran spotted a pair of puncture holes in his cheek and still another in his neck. Men began to gather 'round, another near-naked wildling who looked younger than Bran and the stuttering Valeman who'd whispered in Branch's ear. His eyes were bulging out of his head, mouth moving but lost for words. They have the same lantern jaw, Bran realized. The same stringy brown hair, the same pinched nose. The wildling lad looked pensive, even thoughtful when he lifted his club, bringing it down on the man's head and ending his suffering with a single blow. He turned to leave but the knight of stutters put a hand on his shoulder. His lips curled and he tried to speak, but the words would not come. "Leave it." Bran told him, closing the dead knight's visor. He stood. "Go collect yourself. Take him with you." He pointed to the wildling boy. Still the knight didn't move. Oh gods, he's going to try to talk.
"M-m-Morton w-was my eldest b-b-rother. I m-m-must tell my l-lady m-m-mother that R-Roland is heir to Ironoaks n-now." Small matter then that it's unlikely any of you will make it back to Ironoaks.
"What about Roland?" still another broken-wheel knight asked as he came upon them, taking in the sight at hand, including the wildling with the bloody club. Ser Roland went to his knees, looking like he'd gone into shock. A sudden glimpse of the space that had once been the Hungry Wolf's crypt flitted in front of him then, again quite unoccupied. Bran's hands went to his face. Not again!
"Do you understand the Common Tongue?" The boy's uncomprehending expression told Bran all he needed to know on that score. Bran pointed to him, then to the broken wheel knights. Stay with them. Then he was off, heading for the entrance to the crypts. He must know he cannot get away, not with a castleful of defenders and the Singers besides between him and freedom. That thought if anything alarmed Bran even further. He cannot be allowed to cut all down who cross his path. Even a knight with Valyrian steel has nothing to say to an Other.
A half dozen Singers waited for him in front of the cell, the sounds of trickling brooks and leaves crunching underfoot the closest Bran supposed the true Tongue could get to muttering.
"It took much of what power the trees will yet give to turn the dead. The effort caused a break in the circle, in the river that runs through this holy place."
"Allowing him to escape, and undetected at that." Bran said tersely. The she-Singer doing the speaking nodded. "Can we not look through the trees and find him that way?"
"They've gone to sleep. We must wake them before they can be used again. It may be that they will not wake at all." Lovely. Where would an Other go? He found it unlikely that the Other would stay down in the earth were the Singers were strongest, so Bran began to search through the highest towers of the castle where only stone and cold empty air dwelled. And icicles, he thought. Then his gaze fell on the broken tower. Where naught but crows go. And me, before I fell. Bran wondered if the Other could climb half so well. Even if he could, it makes no matter. He could be anywhere in there from the cellars to the open eyrie, nobody goes in there but the rats anyway. Rather than head straight for the tower as Bran the Boy might have done, he went back to his chambers. Meera was waiting for him as was her father, with Lady Reed in the far corner softly soothing Howland.
"You're recovered, my lady." Bran said, feeling relieved for Meera's sake if anything. "It's nothing catching, my prince. You need not fear." Jyana called over her shoulder. Meera's happiness at Bran's reappearance died when she saw the look on his face.
"The Other has escaped again. When the Singers pulled their trick it must have caused a fault in the cell somehow." Instantly Meera had her smoke-colored sword in hand, the one from the Raven's cave that had tasted the Other's flesh already. With weirwood wrapped around the handle, no less. I wonder how long it laid on that cave floor. "I can't begin to guess what he might try to do, but the broken tower is where he'll be able to go undiscovered the longest."
"We-"
"No, no 'we.' Never 'we.' My daughter, my darling, you have a son now to mind." Jyana said from her corner. She strode over and gave Howland to Meera. "Your father will mind this just now, and your husband." Bran started when Lady Reed came close, close enough to see the torches reflected in her eyes. Dark as before, Bran thought. Clearer now though. With the bogs washed from her hair as well Bran could see it was black as Meera's, a deep lustrous onyx one woman in a thousand did not have. Skin like snow under the full moon as well. It was all he could think, and the more he tried to put it off the more the thought seared its way into his mind. If she's a crannogwoman, then I'm a bloody Dornishman. Before Meera could argue Lady Reed rounded on her lord, who to Bran's amazement did not shy away. "You will go and find this creature and put him back where he belongs. If he will not submit to you, strike him from the world. I will not suffer our daughter aor her son being in harm's way a breath longer than I must." Well, now I know where Meera gets her fire from, Bran thought shakily.
Outside his chambers Bran found himself face-to-face with a young man of an age perhaps with Sansa, a sword with ripples of red in its grey-black blade cradled in his grip. He appeared in a daze and his face was red from battle but Bran could not stop for every skirmish-shocked squire. Lord Howland was hard enough to keep up with on foot but when they took to climbing Bran found himself just barely shy of being left hopelessly behind. The Lord of the Neck wasted no time tapping for a sound brick or feeling for a firm hold, he just jumped from here to there, guided by eyes an eagle would envy. At last they reached the base of the tower, Bran breathing hard while Lord Howland gave no sign he had moved so much as appeared from the high chambers without effort. Well that was mad, Bran thought as he gasped. When he set his hand on the door to the crumbling tower he felt it straightaway, the cold an Other could not hope to hide, would not think to hide. Not this Other, anyway, Bran thought. Peacock that he is. Before he could push the door open, though, an outcry rang out behind him and Lord Reed put a hand on his shoulder. "A few more swords wouldn't go amiss, my prince." What swords have we that they could be made more to, my lord? Still, Bran knew well Howland Reed was not to be second-guessed and so moved to address the noise. Instead of finding men coming off having fought wights for the first time he found another knight with the Corbray arms on his surcoat. Younger, Bran thought. Jon's age, a little older. He did not look so like Ser Lyn as the Waynwoods did each other but there was enough of the prickly knight in the youth before Bran to make him think they were brothers.
"Ser?" Bran asked, coming near. He got a chorus of "my prince"s as he approached, nodding to the Corbray men-at-arms. Seated under a torch with blood dripping from his lips and eyes wide in shock was the body of Ser Lyn Corbray. Something had run him through, punching through the plate and out the back as well. Something like an Other's fist, and I see no Lady Forlorn here. His stomach sunk into his feet. "Oh, fuck." he muttered under his breath. The younger Corbray looked to him.
"What could have-"
"I need you to find your lord, ser. Tell him to bring all his men to the base of the broken tower. Don't dally. If you see my sister or the Children of the Forest, bid them come as well. Go." He slapped the man on the shoulder to get him moving. "You lot had best get to the tower directly." Bran continued, dropping a torch on the corpse of Ser Lyn. "Just wait outside, though. Do not go in." He knew razor crystal would not last against Valyrian steel blades, Bran thought, rushing back to the tower himself, so he found one of his own.
By the time he reached the tower doors, the men-at-arms behind him, Lord Reed had disappeared. In his place stood Lady Reed, gazing forlornly up the tower's great height. A hood hid her gentle features from the cold, the blowing snow, but even so bundled she got more than one stare from the Valemen in Bran's company.
"My l-" A sound like glass on steel pierced the night, Bran's muscles tensing at once. Oh gods, is he in there?! Bran took a step toward the door but stopped at a look from Lady Reed.
"You needn't worry, my prince." She sounded wistful if anything. "Howland will be just fine." The sound came again, that awful screech, then a meaty thud. Bran heard the sound of an icicle falling and shattering on stone. The True Tongue, he thought wonderingly. If only a Singer were here to hear. The sound kept up, so often that the hairs on Bran's neck stood on end, every flurry punctuated with another dull thud. In short order though, the screech-rings grew sparser, the thuds more frequent.
"He didn't go in unarmed, surely." Bran said.
"Of course not, my prince. No man would last long against an Other without something to hand." 'Something' is right, Bran thought as the fight continued, unseen. Something more than steel, mundane or otherwise. A dozen thuds, more, in quick succession, and the Other crashed through the door, knocking it flat off its hinges. Again he had been robbed of what limbs he could draw from the ice around him, but new were the nicks, the cuts, the dark blue whorls beat into his flesh with the pommel of a sword. He had Lady Forlorn tight in hand though, and that was threat enough to make Bran try tugging Lady Reed out of his reach. Before Bran could do more than loop his arm in hers though, the Other rolled onto his back, rising with the aid of his stolen sword. He's winded. Winded and wounded. He has not the strength to raise his blade again. Bran could see liquid glass running from his nose where it had been struck, running freely from his lip. The blood of winter. The little Lord of the Neck stepped out of the darkness of the tower's interior as if fashioned from it. His hands were empty. Bran heard a noise like branches rubbing in the wind and looked up to see the people of the Neck on the roofs and steps above them, each with a bow to hand, aiming at the Other. Even with a hundred arrows on him, he had eyes only for Howland Reed. When he can keep them fixed on him, anyway. Lord Howland's got him seeing double. Slowly his ice-wrought limbs grew back, those that Meera had cut away. He levelled Lady Forlorn at his enemy, breathing hard through his broken nose. From the crowd that had gathered came the sword the squire had held, which Howland Reed caught in a single hand. Smoky, Bran thought. Of a make with Meera's.
The Other, once whole enough to move unaided, bent his legs. An ice spider ready to spring. The disdain Bran had seen beyond the Wall was gone, as was his typical uninterested manner. Lord Reed did the opposite, leaning back with legs straight. A bull lizard-lion, ready to swallow the ice spider whole.
"You are going to die." Sansa's voice turned every head, the Other's included, save Howland Reed's. Flanked by Singers and with her walnut branch to hand, red hair running down to below her waist, she looked positively frightening. One of the she-Singers ran Sansa's words through the True Tongue. The Other did not reply, did not even look at the creature who had spoken. He has eyes only for Sansa. What does it take to turn an Other's head, I wonder? His gaze seemed to irritate her. "If to escape from hurt is your desire, die, and hurt no more." Despite the dozens of people present, despite screwing up his ears, Bran did not hear a single breath. At a glance, Bran knew the Other would drop the sword. The resignation in his eyes has become something else. Still, it was something to see Lady Forlorn's heart-capped handle fall from his cold fingers. The Valyrian steel clattering to Winterfell's stones sounded to Bran louder than any giant's bellow. Slowly he stood aright. His fair mouth moved and the sound of ice creeping up a castle wall filled the air.
"To hurt is to live. Those who live must make the living worth the hurting." the she-Singer said. Bran shivered. The words of an Other. Sansa was not so unnerved.
"I have hurt enough in my few years to match that in all your many. No life lived can make worth suffering all I have, all my family has." Again the Singer acted as Sansa's mouth and the Other's both.
"No life thus. What about life yet to come? The lives of family yet to come?" Well, that suggests there will be something left of us once your kind have had your way.
"What is your name?" Sansa asked. In answer, Bran heard the sound of frost, the first frost of winter, falling like a curtain over glass.
"First Frost." The she-Singer said.
"First Frost, you will return to your cell. Whether bound and beaten or under your own power is your choice and yours alone to make." Sansa sounded like she was talking to any ordinary hedge knight taken captive on the battlefield.
"Lead, and I will follow." With that Sansa left the rest of them behind, First Frost following with more grace crippled as he was than any whole man could hope to have. Save Meera, perhaps, who took it from him. "Right, back to stations. Or I'll have you lot gutted and the hogs fit with hauberks." Rylis barked from his place in the crowd, shooing away the men-at-arms. Bran looked to Lord Howland. Who this First Frost could not kill even with Valyrian steel, when he could have killed a dozen knights with Sansa's walnut stick.
He returned to his bedchambers tired as he could ever remember being, everything whirling in his head it made impossible the task of focusing on any one for more than a few moments. The Sansa of his boyhood had been a prim and proper lady, one who never failed to remember her manners or conduct herself with perfect courtesy. The Lannisters did for that sweet girl, and what bits they left behind the Boltons finished off. The woman who had talked First Frost off the ledge, off the edge of the lizard-lion's bog, was fit more for the Raven's cave or standing before the Night King than Winterfell's Great Hall, trading empty courteous words with other highborn lords and ladies. I wonder if Jon will even recognize Sansa, but for her red hair. Even that had become something else altogether. Mother oft brushed it so it ran in a straight auburn river down her back. Now it runs down as it will, unbrushed and unbound. Meera had Howland in her arms, looking like she had just fed him. He'll not recognize me, that's for certain. Not with my legs beneath me and a wife and son of my own.
"What is it?" Meera asked when she noticed his mulling things over. "Just wondering what I'll say to Jon when he returns. Just what in seven hells I'll say."
"Tell him what's happened, Bran. Think of all I had to tell my parents when first they arrived." It was her turn to look melancholy. The death of their son.
"Has your father told you what he intends to happen when he dies? Who will take charge of Greywater Watch?" Meera gave him a sad smile.
"Bran, where do you think all the additions to Winterfell came from? One is now the other, sure in building as in blood now." Bran's jaw dropped.
"No wonder the Freys never found the Reeds of old." Meera nodded.
"No fixed position, everyone always says, but more a boon was that Greywater Watch had no fixed layout. It could stretch, widen, shrink, grow as needed, as we waxed and waned."
"Yet even at its smallest, its primacy was never challenged." A small shy smile grew on his princess' face.
"A man may find a hundred deaths in the Neck. Stinging insects, biting serpents, quicksand and the blue death. No sting can pierce a lizard-lion's hide though, no matter how sharp. No serpent's fangs can find the flesh beneath the armor, no matter how long. A lizard-lion will move through quicksand as a bird will move through air, and the blue death sleeps in their flesh only to awaken should someone from outside the Neck eat of it." Yet while you flourished in those haunted hollows, Jojen struggled even to live as long as he did. Bran, to his great shame, could not picture Jojen holding his peoples' hearts and minds as so obviously his father did. He was with Father from the tourney at Harrenhal through to the end of Robert's Rebellion, yet Father never so much as breathed his name. Nor Aunt Lyanna's, nor half a dozen others I only know of thanks to Meera's story. If anything, it sounded as though Lord Howland had told his daughter some of what had come before, if as a story.
"I should like to ask your father, plainly, what happened between himself and mine own." Bran said. "Why, only after news reached him of my father's death, did he send you and Jojen to us." The only time I'd ever seen him cry, Jojen said. The tears a man sheds, perhaps, when some great terrible burden shouldered between two men is left to one to shoulder alone.
