Jaime
"Changed your mind yet?" Bronn called, mind still clearly on the palisaded town as the First Army of King's Landing filtered into the wooded foothills of the western mountains.
"Not particularly." Jaime replied, not bothering to turn back at the sellsword. And I don't want to see what a shambles we've shrunk to.
"Makes me miss the days I was following your brother around the city and getting paid to hear him talk."
"Tyrion kept you around because you're a killer without the first scruple."
"He did far and away more talking than I did killing. In fact, I reckon I've never been paid more to do less."
"It seems to have rubbed off on you." Whereas Bronn scarcely shut up, Varys said little and Matthos still less. Small wonder. Varys says only as much as he's comfortable with others hearing and Matthos has been absent from the airy world for years. As different as they were in nearly every other way, Lord Renfred Rykker and Shitmouth, the Mountain's aptly labeled last remaining lackey, refrained from speaking due to simple cold. They have not spoken up even to complain. No doubt the town was on more than a few minds but the further they got away from it, the better Jaime felt. At first he could not quite put a finger on why, then when he nearly turned his ankle in the snow it hit him. "No footprints." he said aloud, more to himself than the others.
"What was that, my lord?" Rykker asked.
"No footprints. Not from beast nor man, nor grumkin nor snark now it comes to mind. Were that town as fit a respite as we would have liked, there'd surely be a trail of prints coming and going back to Deep Den."
"The snows fell hard and fast, my lord…" Rykker reasoned.
"All the more suspicious it is that there's no trace of anyone caught in the mess. We're the first to come through these hills since first the snows fell." That did not reassure Jaime. This is the bloody goldroad. The passage from the King's Landing to Casterly Rock and back again. It should be well-travelled even in winter, particularly this close to a castle.
"Ah, well, now, this is just my two pennies, but might be what's come and gone before us simply hasn't left a trace." Shitmouth said, glancing up at the sky through grey eyebrows warily. Jaime put on a bemused face, though he was certain the dragon was the least of their worries.
"We're likely to hear trees afire or animals panicking, or else just the ornery bastard's roars before we spot him awing."
"Eh." Shitmouth grunted in reply, though Jaime's words seemed to do the trick. The sun began to leave them soon after, Jaime passing down the line that the last of them would do well to lose themselves in the trees rather than be caught out in the open.
When he saw stars twinkling through the frosted trunks, Jaime thought perhaps the cold had done for his senses. He took a sharp breath of cold air that cut into his lungs as he got closer. The webs ran from the base of one tree to another, some ten feet wide and tall enough to roll up Gregor Clegane.
"Shit me fucked…" Shitmouth hissed at the sight, fearful murmurs coming from the men in the front who had caught a glimpse. Freglyn and Joss Stillwood were no less unnerved, the lads' eyes dinner plates at the sight of the diamond-dusted webs.
"Well, what the fuck now?" Bronn asked. It was the first time Jaime had ever heard fear in the man's voice. Jaime tried to remember if he'd ever heard Tyrion go on about the Others before. No. It was ever dragons on his mind. Before the army could go to pieces out of fear, Jaime ordered they dig in.
"Pack snow, raise tents, I care not how you do it. Make sure your men are out of the wind's reach, though. The trees will help but so will cloth and packed snow." He turned to Freglyn while the rest were busy playing at being badgers.
"Could you scale a tree free of webs and have a peer about?"
"Never doubt it, ser. Don't know what I'm like to see up there, though. Meaning aside from snow and naked branches."
"If that's all you see, I should be glad to hear of it." The common lad paled at the thought of spotting something else but did not shy from ably climbing a nearby oak. Jaime tossed him a few bundled blankets as well, the better to keep him warm. Then he mused on just what they'd come upon. For all the people of Westeros liked to curse the Others, Jaime found he knew very little about them aside from what Jon Snow had relayed at Dragonstone. Even if they have the dead men and the giant spiders, it should matter little. By rights all this should still be on the other side of the Wall. He wondered if perhaps in his efforts to keep Cersei alive, a lost cause from the first, he'd neglected the rest of the people in his power to help. King's Landing is now beyond my reach. I'm not the king nor the overlord of the crownlands anyway, my task was to rally the west. Jaime had no way of knowing how the rest the dragon queen's supporters had fared in setting their own lands to rights, but he hoped they were making better time than he. I've yet to so much as put eyes on the Rock yet. "Anything, Freglyn?" he called up the tree.
"Nothing, ser. Not animals, not people." Wonderful. I guess that answers whether we'll find any food in here.
"Never mind. Careful on the way down, ice and whatnot."
"I did get up the tree, milord. I think I can f-" Abruptly his words stopped. Jaime looked up to where the lad had bundled himself in the tree, unharmed thus far. Perhaps committing the land to memory. Jaime's terseness had spread to his officers, soon the rest of the men quieting as well. The sound had been lost among the countless voices before, but in silence it was unmistakable. The raspy growling did not stop, sounding for all the world like one of Tommen's cats, only much larger. An animal padded out of the trees, the icy webs separating them from it. A lion, Jaime thought at first, until he could more easily distinguish its white hide from the snows. It was definitely a cat of some unknown breed, the size of a horse with a head bigger than a man's. Jutting from its top jaw was a pair of long curved teeth, like a pair of icy sickles. The blue eyes that blazed out of its skull told Jaime the cat would gladly have made off with one of them, but for the messy issue of the webs. It had no mane, though a longer trail of gray-white hair ran from the base of its neck down to its tail. And I thought Robb Stark's wolf a monster. Despite the biting cold and its sparse light fur, the cat gave no hint of discomfiture. Winter-blooded, Jaime thought. Its interest in them faded quickly, though, giving a yawn that showed a set of teeth no common hill lion could hope to match before turning and wandering back the way it had come. Not in a straight line though, Jaime observed, but winding in a staggered path through the trees. He heard Freglyn reach the ground behind him. "I don't think the forest is the best way to Deep Den, milord." he said through his shivering. Now what gave you that idea, lad?
"Did you see that fucking thing?" Bronn was hissing as they camped for the night, Jaime willing to wait until the whole lot of them were rested as they could get before pressing on. Elsewise someone or something will start picking off the stragglers and those who wander off. Torches on poles were set here and there and everywhere, a ring of them around the poor man's thousand that constituted Jaime's army.
"If a torch goes out, don't send someone to relight it. Pull back toward the center and light another. We have wood to spare. Men are another story." he'd commanded. Even with wood all around for them to burn though, what flames would take were pitiful sputtering things, even when fed with leaves and dry brush. "What of it? So the westerlands have lions in them again." Jaime said, shrugging.
"If that was one of your Lannister lions, then I'm your big blue beauty." Bronn answered. Dinner turned out to be one of the fallen horses. It had not withered before its end, though, so most everyone got a mouthful of broth or a bite of dried horsemeat. Jaime ordered their weakest animals killed as well. When some of the men whose horses fit that description turned out to be knights, Jaime told them horseflesh could fill their bellies or the cat's and monsters like it.
"An easy meal will have all the horrors of the north on us before dawn comes. If we want to keep them at bay long enough to reach Deep Den, we need to put on a strong show. That we're more trouble than we're worth. D'you think that cat would have spent a second idling if the webs weren't there? No, it would have torn a dozen of us into tasty strips and bounded off through the snow before the rest could shit themselves." Dawn can't come soon enough. Now the lot of them won't get a wink of sleep peering into the trees imagining what's out there. Thinking on the spiders and their cold masters made Jaime remember the Valyrian link that had come with Qyburn's written farewell. Pulling it out, he watched it glitter like black glass in the spluttering torchlight. Scarcely a weapon, he thought. Though… he spent the next few hours tearing off soiled strips from his saddle, tying knots with Freglyn's help.
"Well, ser, I suppose you could shiv someone with it, but keep in mind it is Valyrian steel. It could just as well cut backward and…" he blushed, trailing off.
"Cut through the strips and reopen my stump, aye, lad. Better to have something in hand than nothing. Better still to have a hand to begin with, but I'd sooner wish this winter away than be whole again." Even the ground is frozen. Some men had tried to get dug in to get out of any wind that found them through the trees, finding the dirt hard as rock. When he looked up, Freglyn's eyes had gone wide again, the boy's face alert and wary. Looking south, though. The sounds of a large group of men on approach silenced the army all over again. Jaime's first glimpse was not one to be much inspired by. They stumbled right toward the torches in a half-blind daze, wrapped in what looked like whatever they had been wearing when they fled wherever they had come from. Men groaning, women sobbing, even here and there the high voice of a child. Jaime looked in vain for badges, sigils, seeing quickly that it was a futile effort. Houses and homage cease to much matter when you're frozen to the bone. Jaime had Freglyn rustle Varys and the others up while he headed for the torch line. The first person he met, to his great surprise, was a girl of rough age as Myrcella had been when last Jaime saw her. Myrcella was not pale, though. The tip of her nose was not black, there was no frost in her hair. Jaime whipped off his cloak and wrapped it snug around the girl, who had not even the strength to resist. Indeed, once his arms were around her Jaime found himself holding her up. For a moment Jaime thought she had died then and there, only relaxing when her breath continued to come in soft white clouds.
The rest were in no better shape, what horses had made the journey in even sorrier shape than the ones brought from King's Landing. At last Jaime spotted a golden tree on the barding of one of the animals. Rowan, of Goldengrove, from the heart of the Reach. They had a shorter jaunt than we, why do they look so dreadful? He saw the three oak leaves of Oakheart next. Old Oak, nearer the coast. There were others as well, lesser houses of the Reach or simple smallfolk who had survived the journey. Has the Reach fallen to the snows? All told, daybreak came before the last of them, what order Jaime's camp had achieved utterly lost in the wake of so many newcomers. We're barely fed ourselves. Here come as many mouths, if not more, and the lot of us sat in a frozen forest empty of food.
"We'll never keep like this." Varys said in a low voice.
"I'm nothing near so smart as my brother. Still, I'd have thought your opinion of my wits higher." Jaime replied, thinking hard.
"Your wits and witticisms both will not feed all these people."
"Deep Den-"
"-may have stores enough for those already in the castle. Should we come upon them as such, we may well be turned away."
"Lord Lydden will not turn away a Lannister He was in my lord father's funeral train."
"It was your lord father who so held the west in sway. Your brother is a dwarf patricide who fled the country and you've spent just as much time missing or imprisoned as not these past few years. Certainly more so than you have in the west. Perhaps your name does carry some weight. But is it weight enough to take in such a shambles as us?" On finding Bronn and asking for his opinion, the sellsword put it rather more bluntly.
"We're fucked." he said, shrugging.
"If you fold now, you'll never make it back to that Dornish girl."
"Your brother liked to give me shit about that, too." Bronn said, in a rather unsporting tone.
"Tyrion's the kind to turn the screw, aye. Keep in mind I was bloody there in Dorne and got you out of Sunspear's cells."
"Bully for you. You went down to that sandpit to bring a girl back. You came back to King's Landing with a body." Jaime raised his eyebrows. Bronn had a singularly dark sense of humor but it wasn't like him to care enough to put venom in his barbs. To care about much at all. Which means this Dornish girl is more than a passing fancy. That amused Jaime so that he began to chuckle, fist to his mouth to stop from going any louder. Bronn didn't deign to so much as scowl, instead striding off into the mix of people. Perhaps that's for the better, Jaime mused. When it comes to killing people, few are more practiced than Ser Bronn of the Blackwater. When it comes to keeping them alive… Jaime sought out Lord Rykker to get the Reachmen situated, or as well as they were like to get, while he himself spoke to the preeminent knights who had led them into the western foothills. An Oakheart retainer did the talking. "The lords gathered at Highgarden failed to let us know what they were about before they all left for the capital. By the time we got wind of what was going on, winter had fallen and there was little point leaving the safety of Old Oak. We had trouble enough worrying how we'd feed ourselves before the mist rolled in." That startled Jaime, and his party besides.
"Mist?" he asked, baffled. The knight nodded, an earless maester limping over.
"Omer, once of House Florent, now a maester of the Citadel in service to Old Oak." he introduced himself. Jaime nodded and bade him continue. "What's to tell? It rolled in off the coast, thick as a white cloud come to earth. Cold. Cold as death."
"You fled?"
"What else was there to do? All the castle fled inland, the smallfolk the countryside over too."
"All the way to Goldengrove?" Jaime asked. Surely the young and the old were the first to fall as the walk turned into a run, the run into a rout.
"All the way here." Jaime blinked.
"It followed you?" Rykker asked, face pale.
"Like a pack of dogs after a corpse cart. By now it must cover all the Reach." Omer said, nodding ruefully. He put his hand to his mouth. "It never stopped. Even when we put hours between it and us, what rest we could get was plagued with nightmares and dread."
"You can scarcely be blamed, maester. At least you made it here."
"Small peace in that, ser. More and many of us fell to the mists than survived the journey." Almost on reflex Jaime's eyes flicked up toward the southern horizon. There was nothing in sight but hills giving way to snow-swept fields.
Despite his own obvious frostbite, Omer spared no time getting to addressing the wounded now that he had time to.
"You're hardy, maester, and unafraid to get your hands dirty. I've heard it's precisely the opposite when it comes to members of House Florent."
"I've gone without a fox on my breast for near twenty years now, ser. I was well quit of Brightwater Keep the day I left for the Citadel. Grey mice, I've heard my order called, but better true mice than false foxes." Jaime snorted humorlessly.
"No less." He introduced those in his camp. "If I might press you, maester, have any Oakhearts or Rowans come with you?" Varys asked from over Jaime's shoulder. Omer swallowed. That answers that, Jaime thought grimly. Omer turned to the knight from Old Oak.
"No Oakhearts, but there was that Rowan girl…" "She disappeared into the trees before we reached them."
"Oh, her." Jaime said. I hope she hasn't died on Freglyn. When he returned to the pair of them, he found Freglyn tucking a bundled ball of rags behind her head, a small fire crackling nearby to try and warm her frostbitten face. "Is she dead?"
"No, ser. In and out of it, even talks some. Or tries to, her voice is too raspy to tell just what she's saying."
"No matter. You did well to get her warm, Freglyn."
"Do you know who she is, ser?"
"If what I hear from the men who came here with her is the truth, she's a Rowan of Goldengrove." Very possibly the Rowan of Goldengrove, he thought. Jaime left Freglyn to splutter nervously as he sought out the seasoned campaigners among the arrivals. Once they were assembled, Jaime detailed the course he saw in his head as best he could. "There's nothing to be gained from staying here. Deep Den is the closest castle, its garrison comparatively small. It stands to reason there will be stores enough to keep us, at least until we reach the Rock. Once past Deep Den it should be an easy journey, a short meander along the goldroad, no more, and then all the bounty of the Rock for us to reckon with. Eventually we'll have to sail north, but a chicken must be plucked before it's roasted."
"Why not plant down in the safety of the Rock until winter passes, Ser Jaime?" one of the Reachmen asked.
"According to the plan laid out on Dragonstone between all the lords of Westeros- and one barmy cripple- we're to converge on Winterfell with all speed. By now I'm sure they've all met up and are taking turns pissing on the west for our tardiness, but that can't be helped. No more than you could help being overlooked when the lords of the Reach left for King's Landing."
"My lord, we're in no shape for combat, scarcely fit to stand-"
"-then sit and rest. We're in no more hurry to rush off in the dark than you are. We'll leave at dawn, certainly we should make Deep Den before we lose the light." He made no mention of the webs, nor the cat. Winter's had its pound of flesh from them already. "In the meantime, get some rest, good sers. We're safe for now, or so I'm convinced. I'm also convinced we're unlikely to stay this way, especially out in the woods." While the army and the Reachmen rested, Shitmouth took the opportunity to express his opinion.
"Shit's fucked." he said, spitting into the snow. "We're strewn about like a bag of dead rats what's got a hole in the bottom. The mongrels will come."
"Better asleep than dead." Jaime replied, shrugging.
"Eh, but sleep can become death if cold has its say. Never mind the cold, what about them webs, eh?" Jaime waved his stump indifferently.
"Freglyn would have seen something if there was something to see. Besides, once dawn comes we can get moving and the next time night comes we'll be safe behind Deep Den's walls. Ah, there's the lazy bastard." he said, looking to the light peeking through the trees. "Time we got off this hillside, I think." Jaime said, trying to rub feeling back into his arms and legs.
"It was time when we got here." Bronn grumbled from his spot beneath a blanket.
When he checked on Freglyn and the girl, he was unsurprised to see she hadn't come to. She may not, he thought bleakly.
"Can you get her up?" Jaime asked the lad.
"Yes, but I'll need to get her on a horse to move her." She stirred feebly, eyelids fluttering then opening. "Oh!" Freglyn cried, pointing. He moved to help her but Jaime put a hand on his shoulder.
"Give her a moment, lad. She may be awake but that doesn't mean she's sensate." Omer clapped his hands in delight at the sight of the girl awake, though it was Goldengrove men in service to House Rowan that took charge of her then, not Old Oak's maester.
"Bully for them. You'd think a girl's never gotten up from a bloodying before." Bronn muttered when Jaime found himself in the sellsword's company once again, Varys, Matthos and Lord Rykker falling in soon after.
"Now we're on to Deep Den. It shouldn't take long-" Jaime began, a panicked wail cutting him off and making him grit his teeth. We'll never fucking get there. Jaime made his way through the crowd toward the outcry, spotting for the first time a billowing line of white to the south. That wasn't there when I fell asleep, he thought uneasily.
"It's coming for us!" one woman shrieked. If it is, it's taking its merry time.
"Forget the mists, good lady. The sun robs winter of its power, I read it in the Seven-Pointed Star once." That made her hiccup, nodding through her frozen tears. Once the lot of them were as ready as they were like to get, Jaime led them west.
"You've never read a word of the Seven-Pointed Star." Varys muttered under his breath when they came up alongside one another.
"I can barely read to begin with." Jaime replied. At first he avoided the deep tangles of the forest, the hills growing steeper by the hour, until they found the first of Deep Den's border fastnesses. Had it stood freely it might have been a tower, but it had been carved into the flat face of the mountains the goldroad wound through. A window above the entrance and another above that would have allowed for archers to pincushion an enemy force coming up the way, the angles of the windows and flats anything but an accident. House Lydden's white badger on a green-and-brown field hung in the space between the second and third floors, but there was no sign of anybody. In Father's day, fifty men might have garrisoned this building. He went inside, peering about warily in the light of a torch. Nothing seemed amiss, save the absence of Lydden soldiers. Lord Lewys well have recalled everyone to Deep Den Proper. In the larder, though, Jaime found something that quite drove the missing men from his mind. Barrels and crates had been piled in the far corner of the room, evidently to bury whatever lay beneath them. Not just two or three either, Jaime saw. Everything in the holdfast seems to have been piled on. "The fuck went on in here?" Shitmouth grunted as he came in, looking around cluelessly. "Maybe they let a fire get a little too big." Jaime said, poking one of the outlying crates with his foot. A sudden rapid scuttling from behind the wood made him freeze, the sound of several agile bodies scurrying about and bumping into each other just below the pile filling Jaime with a nameless revulsion.
"Fuck. That." Shitmouth opined, all but taking Jaime by the shoulder and dragging him from the room. Even outside in the sun it was hard to get the sound out of his head, the image of the wood rattling with the movements of something below. Of several somethings.
"It could have been rats." Bronn shrugged when Jaime told him what had happened.
"Rats, aye. Rats the size of dogs, could be. With twice as many legs as they ought have." Shitmouth growled back, shuddering violently. "How's this for a plan? If we come on the next badger hole and it's as empty as this one here, maybe we don't go any further?" They were saved the task of exploring the next holdfast, big enough for two windows on each landing. Webs coated the stone and ran out the windows, covered the ground around the threshold and, most importantly, hung fast between the valley walls, a thick glinting wall of frozen silk lined with frozen droplets. Shitmouth noisily trying not to gag up his breakfast did not improve matters.
"I suppose this means we must turn around…" Lord Rykker said.
"Only for a bit. We'll head back just enough to find passage into the mountains and continue west. We won't lose a day." Jaime said, ignoring the webs quite completely.
"We've got to keep moving. Most urgently. When night falls, we'll be trapped in this pass with nothing between us and whatever's netted the place up so prettily." Lord Rykker said, in the tone of an officer.
"Keep the women and children and those in their grey hairs away from the walls." Slowly they maneuvered about, the of the column heading back the way it had come. Jaime had the captains blurt out more than once that the pass was blocked by snow, that they'd simply have to go around.
"It will be handy to have the cliff to piss off of as well. Beats accidentally pissing on each other as we sleep." one of the officers added, getting rather a sporting laugh from the people around him.
Once back at the mouth of the valley Jaime led the trek up the hill, into the trees.
"Keep a hundred feet between us and the drop-off. It may be that the ice has made the edge treacherous." And whatever lingers in the walls might not hear or smell us pass from so far off.
"Eh. I've fallen on me arse more than a handful of times on flat friendly ground. I'd sooner piss my own eye than shimmy along that edge." Shitmouth added, aptly reinforcing Jaime's position to those who were not trained for combat, who did not know good ground from bad. If we're going to be ambushed, we won't have a hundred-foot fall to worry about while we are. While they walked, Jaime told Freglyn all he could remember from his lessons as a boy about the country through which they passed.
"It isn't just the Rock with veins of ore running through it. All through these mountains, thought the westerlands at large, wind tunnels old and new. Mining was the livelihood of many a westerman since the coming of the Andals. Since the First Men held this land." Freglyn nodded, committing as much of it to memory as he could. It intrigued Jaime that a lad common as the deer he hunted should be more interested in the history of the westerlands than Jaime had been at his age, and he heir to all of it. The fate of the west bubbled up in Jaime's mind once again. I am a member of the Kingsguard, or so I account myself. I cannot be Lord of Casterly Rock. That left Tyrion…or would have, had he not committed the small oversight of murdering Lord Tywin. The westermen will never have him. Jaime knew that for an iron certainty. Lord Tywin's Bane, they called him once. A monster. Jaime breathed. He was only ever the monster Father made him. Cersei, too. Small wonder he ran half a world away to join the dragon queen's cause. Only, the dragon queen's cause was the lion's as well, in the end. The wolf's too, and the kraken's, and the falcon's, and all the rest. Here I am, creeping like an outlaw through mine own country, without once setting eyes on what's got us so to ground. When they began to pass small barrows here and there, Jaime figured they must have covered petty kings dead a thousand years. When they headed further west and webs began to cover them, with single great holes sunken deep into each, he wondered if new occupants had not made themselves at home.
"We won't make Deep Den before we lose the light." Matthos said, Jaime initially not recognizing him due to his hood.
"There may be ruins in these hills the bulk of the people can rest in, with men able to bear arms standing in their defense."
"That haven't already been webbed over?"
"Ser?" Jaime had almost forgotten Joss Stilwood's voice. Indeed, it was squeaky as if from disuse. Silence served one well in the service of the Mountain, Jaime thought. He turned to the lad, the squire's eyes on the nearest barrow and the hole within it.
"What is it?"
"Mines honeycomb these hills, you said."
"So I did. So they do." He ought know that, he's a bloody westerman by birth himself. Then again, I doubt Ser Gregor had him studying much history.
"Could it be the barrows lead to tunnels? Might be you could run from one end of the west to the other without once coming up to light."
"Even if one could, a barrow is no place for a lad."
"Neither was riding with Ser, ser." Stilwood replied, Bronn murmuring colorfully in agreement. He chose his words carefully before he spoke again.
"If we can't get to Deep Den through the pass or the forest, blocked by webs…"
"…you are aware, lad, that webs come from somewhere? They don't simply happen, like rain or snow." Lord Rykker said.
"Yes." Joss Stilwood's reply was unabashed. "I've not seen what might have made them, though. What if they don't like the sun? Sleeping during the day and coming out at night with only a sliver of moon to light down on 'em."
"That doesn't remove the obstacle of 'them' to begin with."
"Sure it does, so long as they're asleep. They'll go out when night comes. While the people are holed up in the ruin, as my lord said, and 'them' scattered about the woods looking for food…the tunnels would be ours to use." The others, Jaime included, gaped at him like fish.
"Boy, serving under Ser's gone and done for your wits." Shitmouth said brusquely.
The ruin they came upon was as Matthos predicted. Webs coated it like glaze on a tart. The creatures that made them, Jaime did not fail to notice, were absolutely nowhere to be seen, leaving the silk-spun stones to glitter beautifully in the sunlight. It was very quiet. Not even a single cawing crow, Jaime realized. He turned to see how the rest of them were doing following, stopping cold at the sight of Freglyn staring at the ruin.
"What is it, lad?"
"Ser, I can see two or three snares at least set about the place." Jaime looked again and saw only webs.
"Well, you're the poacher. Can, uh, you point them out?"
"I could, but if you don't know what you're looking for you'll step on one before you see it."
"Well, then, how about a bit of pruning?" Jaime flipped him the Valyrian steel link. "I hear it works wonders on ice. Why wouldn't it on cold silk?" he said while Freglyn spluttered, bobbling the link in his hands. "If you like, someone could-"
"Everyone should stay here." Freglyn said once he'd caught hold of the black steel. "Elsewise you might set something off or wake something up. Or both." he said, swallowing as he looked back to the ruin. Before Jaime could stop him he was off, bobbing and hopping like a drunken rabbit here and there, only doddering more severely the closer he got to the stones. Then he was at it, on all fours to snip seemingly random strands Jaime could barely see as he went. He crawled through the threshold much to Jaime's dismay, disappearing into the ringfort like a morsel down a wide mouth. I wonder if Tyrion ever feels like this when he has a bad idea. When the sunlight began to wane Jaime brought everyone closer to the ruin, their fearful mutterings notwithstanding. Then Freglyn was limping out, looking as stiff in the knees as he was sore in the back. Small wonder, thought Jaime, if he spent all that time mucking about looking for deadfalls and the Seven only know what else.
"I think that's all of them, milord." he said, straightening up with some help from Joss Stilwood. "I found three holes that will want filling though. Might be we light fires around them to keep them off us, coming topside elsewhere and giving us a nice spot to go below at the same time." Jaime had trouble quite organizing his thoughts.
"It's supposed to be your brother purveying the suicidal notions." Varys advised as the lot of them stared into one of the holes, ringed by torches as the sun began to dip behind the ruin walls.
"I've not yet gotten close enough to a dragon to tweak its snout the way Tyrion has." Jaime replied.
"If you do this, you may well never do." Jaime had been rather pleased earlier by the captains' unfailing obeisance of Lord Rykker's order, and so left the column proper in his charge. And you'll know best what to do if I and mine don't come back, he thought. Varys was unlikely to be of much use despite his infamous nickname, so Jaime bid him stay above as well.
"Seaworth, you can see in the dark so I'm afraid you're in whether you like it or not."
"I don't mind. It's cold up here."
"Cold down there too, where the sun's never reached."
"Whereas it shines most every day at the bottom of the Narrow Sea, does it?"
"I want to go!" Freglyn said enthusiastically, trying to keep the fear from his voice and failing.
"Lad, you're a loud noise from filling your trousers-"
"They may have more snares down there, who's to say otherwise? I know what they look like and I know how to snip them so we might slink by." To Jaime's amazement, Bronn made clear his own intention to be in on the plunge.
"I'm not fond of sitting about waiting to get pounced on. Besides, between you and the dwarf it's almost a contest who gets themselves killed first. Should I save your arse down there, I expect I'll get my time's worth in gold when up we come." If up we come, Jaime thought.
The torch fell ten feet before hitting the ground, sputtering out almost immediately. A frigid draft welled up from the tunnel, making Jaime's teeth chatter. Shitmouth whistled. They all braced for movement, for noise, for something to happen. When nothing did, Jaime dared to peek back down the hole. Only darkness was there to greet him. A clutch of dragon eggs could lie down this tunnel, Jaime thought, and I'd never see them. He took a long breath, exhaled out the side of his mouth, and slid down into the hole. As soon as his feet hit the ground someone dropped him a torch, which he blindly thrust out in front of him. There were webs of course, but just as Joss Stilwood had suggested, there was noting else to see. Well, except the bloody tunnel, Jaime thought, looking around. It was almost five feet tall and similarly wide, so Jaime could get by with bent back and knees. Freglyn came next, squinting warily into the darkness. Though by rights a scout or spotter belonged in front, Jaime kept the lad directly behind himself. Matthos came down next, followed by Bronn. To his displeasure Stillwood tumbled down after, Shitmouth muttering a nonstop stream of nonsense and looking utterly dreadful as he brought up the rear.
"Who invited you?" Jaime asked the squire.
"Your mother." Stilwood replied, getting to his feet. Jaime felt his jaw drop as he heard Bronn's hands clap to his mouth, face red behind them, trying not to fill the tunnel with a roar of laughter. "You haven't got any practice being a rat in the walls- you'll leap out at the first finger or toe left out for you."
"Ser, I'm rightly sorry, let me get this jackass back above and I'll beat him right bloody-" Shitmouth spluttered, as eager to get out of the tunnel as he was to spare Stilwood whatever consequences might come to him.
"That isn't necessary. Every moment we tarry leaves the people longer in jeopardy." He turned away from the others, looking down the tunnel. Easy does it, he told himself. Freglyn's gaze, meanwhile, stayed locked on the ground before them.
"How far away are we from Deep Den, anyway?" Matthos asked, the darkness no obstacle to him, as he'd said. Eerie, Jaime thought.
"The path through the mountain is not a long one, it just winds a lot and heads past plenty of defensible positions, making it a nightmare for an invading army to negotiate. Depending on whether you ask a westerman or someone form the Vale, one got the inspiration for their own defenses from the other. Not that I believe it. The Vale's defenses are known the realm over, and besides, dug into mountains proper and not just between one's toes." His words made Shitmouth snort in amusement. Though Freglyn's vigilance never wavered it must have been glinting silk he was looking for- which explained why Jaime found himself tripping on a root running along the bottom of the tunnel, falling flat on his face. Suddenly the sound of dirt crumbling quickly and the feeling of handfuls of it showering his back had Jaime on his feet fast as he could manage, the lot of them running forward to escape the cave-in. Only when they reached open air above their heads did they stop for breath, Jaime panting hard with his hands on his knees and the cold winter air playing havoc with his lungs.
"One thing…after the next…" he hissed, wincing in pain.
"Always fucking is with you, Kingslayer." Bronn said hoarsely, coughing hard himself.
A fresh rush of cold let Jaime know it had begun to snow again.
"Come on." he told the others, heading for the darkness of the tunnel ahead. "No reason to wait for one of 'them' to notice we're quite boxed in down here." It was only the steadily nearing sound of skittering legs that got them safely down the tunnel, the lot of them all but holding their breath as they waited for the animal to wander off. Instead, to Jaime's dread, the skittering got closer. Shitmouth's eyes went round as dinner platters as loose dirt tumbled down from the tunnel mouth, a single long pale leg poking into view. It hooked around the lip of the tunnel, the tip of a second leg slowly sliding down to accompany the first. White mists and cave-ins and giant ice spiders, Jaime mused darkly. When after several minutes no panicked morsels scurried past into the open for easy grabbing, the legs retreated. A clicking sound followed, soon accompanied by a haunting hoot. Above, unseen, the spider scuttled off after the sound, hooting in reply.
"Might just have been poking around after the cave-in." someone said. In the darkness with his heartbeat hammering in his ears, Jaime couldn't tell who.
"Let's get on." he bid them, getting moving himself though now without a torch, Seaworth had to do the seeing for all of them, so when he stopped dead in his tracks it caused yet another pileup.
"You can't be fucking serious…" Bronn muttered as they regained their feet.
"Ser Jaime." Matthos bid.
"I've gone nowhere. The next time you decide to plant it midstride-"
"This is no mining tunnel, Ser Jaime." His blood went cold.
"Well, what is it then? I'll take your word for it, whatever it is." Seaworth actually bothered to get another torch lit, making Jaime's frayed nerves go numb. The walls were earth and stone, alcoves dug who knew when pitting them here and there. Each held the bones of someone who must have died long before, the crude pictures of lions on the walls between the alcoves hint enough of that. When they were plentiful in the westerlands, hunting beast and man as they pleased. "We're in a barrow." Jaime realized. "Likely closed since the last of these men were put here, opened only by the spiders' tunnelling."
"Aye, and a Lannister barrow at that." Bronn added, looking oddly pleased.
"The lions tipped you off, did they?"
"No, that did." He pointed to one of the skeletons, briskly stepping over.
"Oi, leave off. He's right there." Freglyn said indignantly, motioning vaguely to Jaime.
"And he's the only Lannister man left." Bronn replied, shoving the bones aside. "Were these lads in a talking mood, might be they'd thank me for keeping their line alive. As it happens…" he straightened back up, a heavy gold ring of clumsy make pinched between his thumb and forefinger. "I'm well inclined to accept."
"Graverobbing aside, we should burn the bodies." Seaworth said. "One trick the Others are dearly fond of is bringing up the dead to fight on their behalf."
"These are just bones, though." Joss Stilwood observed, pointing at one yet undefiled. "How could they get up and move around?"
"Ask an Other when you see him." Seaworth replied.
"Right, well, let's sort them just in case. No call to leave anything worth taking behind, either." Jaime said indifferently. The long-dead westermen were just that, and anything that kept his mens' minds off the Others and all the rest was worth letting them have. Joss Stilwood got a bronze sickle and there were crude coins half the size but twice the thickness of the Seven Kingdoms' gold dragons, but it was Freglyn who found the real prize. A golden armband stuck over with garnets, and at its wearer's bony side was a spearhead wrought of black glass.
"Dragonglass." Bronn said immediately. "I scarce heard else while on Dragonstone and besides, I found myself surrounded by the stuff when I went underneath the castle. Come to think of it, this whole place sort of reminds me of then. Except it's just lions on the walls and not a tide of dead killing everyone." The armband was too big to fit around Freglyn's arm, so he just slapped it 'round his ankle. When Jaime looked at him bemusedly, the lad grimaced.
"I'm not about to leave it behind. Should I make it through the winter, it might well mean me owning a house instead of begging at a window." Since Matthos Seaworth was the only one among them who could see unassisted by a torch, he was given the spearhead.
"You know what to do. Just get in and like this." Shitmouth said, making a quick jabbing motion. "Just right in the fucking neck."
After they'd seen to the skeletons they kept on, Jaime taking them down every tunnel that led southwest (or so far as he could tell). They had to do a fair bit of backtracking and nearly lost one another several times, eventually working out that moving down was the way yet untried.
"It makes sense. If we want to come up from under Deep Den, we must needs first well bloody get under it." When the tunnels became cleaner, not the work of scraping limbs but iron tools, Jaime grinned in the darkness. "Quiet now. We don't want to scare the wits out of some serving maid looking for wine in the cellar." Jaime told the others. We're rats in the walls proper now. Eventually they left the tunnels and found themselves in a proper corridor, though the torches that hung from the walls were unlit. That's odd, Jaime thought. Then again, it was proper freezing down here, maybe Deep Den's lowest levels saw little use during winter. "That's enough of going down. Time to stop some stairs, I want to see the sun again." Jaime said. They passed the rusted iron bars of a cell. Not the cellar. The castle dungeons. Jaime did not envy whatever smallfolk on Deep Den's lands might have found themselves the target of House Lydden's ire. Up a stair that hugged the wall, and that coated in treacherously slippery frost while to the right only a sheer drop off the steps to the floor below, and then they were standing on the threshold of a heavy wooden door. We should hear people, Jaime thought. Maidservants gossiping, guards complaining about the cold. Together he, Bronn and Shitmouth pushed the door open as quietly as they could manage. I really should ask him what his name is, Jaime mused as he bit his lip with the effort. At once Jaime saw just how wrong he'd been to come to Deep Den. The walls were coated in frost, the floor slick with patches of ice. Shimmering splashes of red on the stones on closer inspection were revealed to be blood, frozen where it had been spilled. An unearthly howling filled the corridor, wind whirling off the walls with nowhere to go. It sounded like the mother of all drafts…until Jaime realized it stopped and started so cleanly it could not have been the whims of the wind. They all looked at one another. Matthos Seaworth was uneasy, Bronn frozen into ill temper, Shitmouth scared of his own shadow and the two boys all but hugging one another from nerves. He put an arm on Bronn's shoulder, mouthing his next words. If I'm not back in ten minutes, leave. Then he went on alone.
It was plain that Deep Den had been caught unawares by whatever had befallen it. Frozen splashes of blood spattered here and there, random castle articles lying about in the chaos, everything Jaime saw told him the Lyddens had fared poorly in the defense of their home. There was not a single body though, an oddity that became a danger, preying on Jaime's mind as he remembered what Seaworth had said of the Others' penchant for necromancy. He kept an eye out too for any glimpse of the other side of the castle, preying that the goldroad to the west had not been obstructed. I might be so lucky from atop one of the towers. It wasn't a tower he found next, though, but the doors to Lord Lewys' hall. The next best thing, he figured, pushing them open. Immediately as the doors swung inward, Jaime reflected that every door he'd found so far in Deep Den would have been better left shut. This one proved no exception, from the thick white mists that billowed up from between the bricks like bubbles in boiling water to the people in the room themselves. On glimpsing two lithe figures through the mist he braced instinctively for an attack and promptly flying backward as if he'd been hit by a charging bull. He went straight through a wooden bench, cracking his skull on the floor for his trouble, while from out of the mist-filled room stepped a person such as Jaime had never seen before. His skin was so white it hurt to look at (or that might have been Jaime's head), with nearly translucent white hair falling to his shoulders. He wore armor that seemed to shift in color as its wearer moved, ice that took on the hue of whatever was around it. In each hand was a weapon not unlike the horselords' arakhs, though thinner and longer. As Jaime blinked blood out of his eyes, he looked to the creature's own. Before he managed to get a glimpse of anything other than two stars through the blood there was an ear-piercing sound of ice splitting against itself, then shattering altogether. Nearly insensate, Jaime could only wriggle feebly and flop over like a drunken worm while footsteps rushed the threshold of the hall and battle joined- or would have, had the winds not picked up again. Finally managing to sit up, the room still spinning hellishly, Jaime spotted the long twin blades lying in a pool of icy water. He made for them, crawling like a baby, only to soak his stump in the pool and cry out in shock at the cold of it. Too cold to freeze. The rest of them, those who had followed him to this tomb-called-castle, were pushing at what had once been the inhabitants of Deep Den. Dead men in green-and-brown, a maidservant with a bloodless gash down her front and frost in her hair, they came at the living in number, pouring form the hall, only to meet the waving torches of those they sought to destroy. The dead crumbled into ash at the merest lick of flame while through the madness Jaime spotted a woman of a kind to the man who'd launched Jaime before he knew what had hit him. She bore no arms and wore no armor. But for the spare strands of icy silk that wound about her, quickening belly included, she would have been quite bare. Jaime needed no knowledge of the Others to know she was the important one. Standing there without so much as a dagger in hand, all but daring me to rush into the room and do something stupid. Another trap. Another palisaded village, another Whispering Wood, Jaime thought as he glared at her through the flames, the mists, the battling bodies. The second male Other made no move to assist the dead men, the pair content to watch the wights keep the living at a distance. He turned to the she-Other, the sound of ice beneath a lake echoing madly off Deep Den's stones even above the cacophony. The mists began to twirl and spin until a third Other took shape. Another she-Other, if her gown was any hint, but her head was hidden completely by a white veil that hung to her hips all about her and even somewhat impeded her arms. Or maybe you're the important one, Jaime thought. The Other beneath the veil did not spare the living men burning through the dead a single glance. A hand beneath the silk came up to take the pregnant she-Other's shoulder while the male made do with taking hold of the mist-maker's deep white shroud. Then the mists rose, hiding them from view- and scattering abruptly, leaving no trace that the Others had ever been there. The sconces promptly ignited to a one, filling the hall with warmth and light. Jaime found himself collapsing to his knees, groaning at the feeling of knocking his right one funny. Only after several breaths did Jaime realize it no longer hurt to breathe, to think, to be. Wherever the Others went, the maddening cold had gone with them.
