Arya
Even given the battle, even given the chaos of the giants' raid, Nymeria was beside herself. The direwolf could not focus on a single sight or smell for more than two or three seconds at a time and it dizzied Arya something awful from behind Nymeria's eyes. Easy, girl, was all she could think, but the chorus of howling that was not Nymeria's own echoed in her mind. Between Nymeria on the wall with Gendry and the soldiers and Arya in the castle with the other highborn women, it was impossible to keep the plot of either situation. Then the night sky light up in an otherworldly green glow, freezing Nymeria in place and thought both. The green light faded as quickly as it had appeared though, Arya left at a total loss for what to do or how to feel. This isn't Lannister soldiers against Stark soldiers. Not dueling bravos on the canals of Braavos. This is pure brute force smashing against itself. I want to go back to Storm's End, she thought, feeling smaller than ever she had. The other ladies were near as loud as the chaos outside, given that they were all cooped up in the New Castle's ballroom. Then the madness outside calmed, the giants' bellows receded. A knock at the door made them all jump, then the doors simply fell forward, knocked off their frames by a man who could make even the Hound look small. Arya dashed for him, for the direwolf behind him too. His gaze is only for me, Arya thought, while Nymeria's head is on a swivel as bad as any owl. Once they were alone she'd try to reach her but just now all she wanted to do was wrap her silver-sleeved arms around her lord.
"Gods, no, princess." Rolland Storm said, hastily getting between them. Up close Arya could see something like liquid glass running down his helm and armor, frost forming wherever it ran.
"What is that?" Arya asked, more than a little concerned for Gendry's safety.
"Blood. Bloody cold blood, too." He lifted the hammer he'd gotten from the armory. The same icy substance dripped sluggishly off the steel, leaving frosty white streaks.
"Blood from what?"
"Whatever it was, my lord bashed its head in and sent it flying off the wall." Rolland said with an air of deepest satisfaction. He's glad Gendry isn't just a paper bull. Then again, so am I. "There were plenty more where he came from. They ran off with the giants when they heard the storms, though." Arya only let a sigh of relief out when Gendry was freed from the battered armor. She wasted no time, heedless of the sweat soaking into her silver gown. Better sweat than blood. Only when Gendry gave an innocuous cough did she let go.
"You can cough all you like. I don't care what a spectacle I'm making of us." He coughed again, louder and most definitely feigned, making Ser Rolland chuckle. She coughed right back, a loud obnoxious hack.
"Is that so?" Gendry asked, lifting Arya as if she weighed nothing and kissing her neck, her forthcoming tickled shriek very real.
"Come, my lord. We ought get that off you before you catch a chill." Rolland said.
"I'll be right back. No marrying any turnips until I get back."
"Try and stop me!" Arya declared, poor Ser Rolland laughing aloud now.
"Only a real anvil-head would try and stop you from doing something. More fun to watch and see you go all red and bashful."
"I'm not bashful!" Gendry kissed her cheek and Arya promptly felt a rosy flush fill her face. When they left, Arya turned to see all the ladies' gazes fixed on her. Oh, she thought. I forgot about them. With as much dignity as she could muster Arya moved over to where Nymeria twitched and glanced about, causing the women nearest her a deal of unease. "Come on, girl." she said. Nymeria shot her an uncertain glance, as if she wasn't quite sure herself what was going on. It wasn't the battle, of that Arya was sure. It's bloody something though, it isn't right for a direwolf to act like a skittish fawn. Up a spiral stair and in the privacy of the room Arya and Gendry had been quartered in, as well as Nymeria, Arya took the great grey head in her hands and tousled her wolf's fur. "What's wrong, girl?" Her golden eyes were so big and wary Arya could practically see herself in them. Nymeria's weary whine was enough to make Arya reach for her, intent on finding out whatever had her so anxious. The first thing she saw was herself, her own face, through Nymeria's eyes. Well this is bizarre, she thought. It was not so startling as it might have been, though. Arya was not a southern girl and she'd long since learned that the line between her and Nymeria was much hazier than between, say, a hunter and his hounds. She quickly found that rather than something present bothering Nymeria, it was something that had passed. The howling echoed in her wolf ears. When once she could only hear her lonely brother and barely at that, the chorus of the pack was so near and so numerous it was as if they were in the room with her. Nymeria could no more smell than see them, though, and it made her nervous and more. Never mind them, girl, Arya thought. You're alright. More concerning were the half-remembered dreams that lingered on the edges of Nymeria's mind like wolverines in the bushes waiting for her to move off a kill. Bloody ones of howl and hunt with absolutely no sense of self. Savage. Arya tried to dredge up Nymeria's fuzzy memories of Winterfell, when she'd thought the wolf could be trained to pack her gloves for her. At the time I wondered if you understood what I meant. Now I know you knew exactly what I meant, but you weren't going to do it, not for a whole side of beef. Memories of the world when it was bright and warm eased Nymeria's worries a bit, but also made the dark wilds at the limits of her being all the darker. Queen of the Fords, Arya thought sadly. The heart of the riverlands, hardly anyone's idea of the darkest wild. Perhaps it was the pack Nymeria had called to her in those days, calling in turn for their leader. Nymeria herself dismissed that notion as readily as Arya offered it up, their wordless exchange void of words but full of understanding. They were small gray cousins, kin of the weakest sort. It isn't common timber wolves calling to you from who knows where. Arya thought back to when she saw a hairy goat with one horn fall to something truly terrible, Nymeria's idea of a monster. Even the notion of it seemed to distress her, the wolf giving a low whine as she rested her head on her paws. From the dark corner of the room a low growling hit both pairs of ears. Arya's heart stopped in her chest as something in the darkness moved, barely visible in the deep shadow created by the light from the window. Fresh-spilled blood hung so heavy in the air it made Arya's knees knock. I can see the light glinting off its teeth, she thought. In its green eyes. It was another direwolf, but that only seemed to make Nymeria's misgivings worse. Her hackles rose and she bore her teeth, a gesture their visitor took with no ill grace. It would not come into the light though, would not leave the world of shadow from which it had emerged. It was fixated on Nymeria, staring across the way even as Arya moved slowly to the curtain- and yanked it from the wall. At once the light flooded in, the other direwolf gone as if it had never been there. I suppose because it wasn't, Arya reasoned shakenly. Except in Nymeria's mind. She went cold all over when she spotted the muddy prints of a wolf's passing on the stone floor, though, and the scent of blood was still apparent, if only just.
Arya was still staring openmouthed at the prints on the floor when Gendry came in the room, in fresh clean garb.
"See, now I told you I'd marry a fish-" he stopped his jest at once when he realized something was wrong, coming over to Arya's side of the bed. He took in the footprints, brow furrowed over his blue Baratheon eyes.
"It was here, Gendry. The one that ate the goat. Here, in our room. It might well have killed me too, but for Nymeria." He scooped her up and she curled into him, trying not to burst into tears. What is happening? she thought. Nymeria ran her head across her mistress' side, trying to comfort her in her own way. To her shame she felt a few hot drops escape her eyes. Before the rest could come though, Gendry's hand came up and cradled her head.
"I've never seen an anvil cry before." he whispered into her ear. Instantly her shame turned to storminess. In another instant, the tip of her nose was a hair apart from his.
"Better an anvil than someone stupid enough to marry a fish."
"Stupider still to try and talk sense into you." Gendry replied, the edges of his smile visible at the edges of Arya's view. She knew he was teasing her as he always did when she was upset, a trick that never failed to work. But I've got one that will cut even the Lord of Storm's End to the quick. When she backed up so she could see him proper, he let her go.
"Gendry?"
"Arya?" he asked in reply, already preparing to parry her next nonsensical insult.
"Will you marry me?" His jaw dropped. I win, Arya thought. Before she could trip over her own tongue Arya seized her moment. "I don't know much about being a princess. I barely know left from right. I know I love you, though. I knew I did the moment you told me you were joining the brotherhood without banners. Even if I made it home to Winterfell, it wouldn't have been with the person I wanted to bring there. When I told you I can be your family, I meant it."
"And when I told you you'd be my lady, I meant it." Gendry replied, almost on instinct.
"I'm no lady. I'm a bloody princess." she crossed her eyes, wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue, making Gendry snort in riotous amusement. "Or at least that's what everyone keeps saying."
"Well…" Gendry sounded breathless, on the verge of tears. "We all want things we can't have."
"Have this!" Arya cried, leaping at him and tackling him backward on the bed. "I suppose we'll have to ask the septon in charge of the Sept of the Snows if he'll accommodate us." Gendry mused, her atop him as if she weighed not an ounce. "After what's happened, I don't think I want to wait until after the war. The Manderlys mean the best, but no doubt if Ser Wylis knew about it he'd want to give a feast, pack the sept with every guest…" The notion of such an event made Gendry go deep red. "What's wrong? You took the stormlanders flocking around you well enough."
"Storm's End was not half-full and the people were tired, no-nonsense. A whole city is something else."
"So what? We need only wave a red kerchief in front of you and you'll never know the people were there." Gendry rolled his eyes.
"Meantime we'll get someone to wave me in front of you and you'd never know the crowds were there." It was Arya's turn to blush.
As the world had taken a break from ending for the moment, Arya got a bath in as well as her pick of dresses, largesse provided by Ser Wylis as well as the seamstresses of White Harbor. I wonder if Sansa will recognize me when we next meet, Arya thought. Not for the first time, either. I have a hem, I have sleeves, I have bloody shoes on my feet and my hair isn't a sparrow nest of tangles. Wearing black made her look mournful, an idea she thought appropriate until the septa suggested the ladies of White Harbor would follow her lead.
"'Tis not my place to question you, my princess, but there will be ample time to mourn the dead. Just now, perhaps something brighter. Or at least more spirited. A court of color instead of one steeped in gloom."
"Black and gold are Baratheon colors." Arya replied with a frown.
"They are. But you've not married Lord Baratheon yet, wearing such fare might be a bit premature."
"I'd rather be premature in wearing Gendry's colors than never get to, septa. He or I or both may die before this war sees an end."
"Seven save you both form anything more than a stubbed toe!" the septa said, shocked.
"Besides, I could wear all the black I liked but without the gold it's scarcely representative of Gendry's house. I'd rather not short-change it and wear a cheap yellow sash, either." The septa swallowed.
"Deep green would go nicely with your eyes, a harmless enough gesture both welcoming and unpretentious." Rather than say something without thinking, as Arya the girl might have done (would have done), Arya the young woman let the septa bring her handmaidens in, getting her into just such a dress. I don't much care about seeming unpretentious, septa. A band of giants, gangly brutes and dead men just cracked this city open easier than Ser Wylis might crack open a crab at dinner. There was a knock at the door and one of the girls hurried over to crack it open and peek out. No doubt hoping for a glance of Gendry. When she returned to Arya and the others she had an uncertain look on her face.
"There's an archer outside. He says he's to escort you to the hall, Lord Gendry and your- uhh, Nymeria will meet you there."
"A common archer?" The septa was not pleased.
"He's one well-known to Gendry and I. In truth, he's late." Arya said, effortlessly putting on a cross face. At once the septa herself rushed for the door, opening it wide.
"Where have you been!? The princess has been expecting you!" The man mumbled an apology and shuffled into the room, looking every bit the common soldier.
"You know him, princess?"
"I do, more's the pity. After escaping King's Landing, Gendry and I spent a lot of time on the kingsroad. We met a lot of people, some with fairer temperaments than others. This man is not one of them. Had things gone according to plan, we would have reached Winterfell and he the Wall." The girls shied away from the archer as if he were a leper.
"A criminal?" The septa was aghast.
"It's no crime what to pick through what others gone and left behind." he said sullenly.
"It is to start the fires that cause people to abandon their homes for you to loot after the blaze has done its work." Arya said, voice hard. The man mumbled and looked at his feet. "I'd tell you to look at me when you speak and in a respectful tone, but just now I don't much want to meet your gaze or hear what you have to say." Arya said in an irate tone. "Take me to my lord and quick, or I'll tell him you wasted my time and he'll have you peeling potatoes until the next battle." She turned to the septa. "I'll be fine in his company, poor as it is. Perhaps you should see to the ladies in the ballroom, septa." Arya advised, before leaving. Once they were out of earshot, the archer spoke again, his peasant's mumbling gone as if it had never been.
"A girl plays the princess well."
"That's because I'm not playing. You play the commoner just a well, I almost had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing."
The hall had brightened somewhat, new torches burning in the sconces, the hearths full of crackling logs. Cherry, Arya knew at once. The smell brought her back to her girlhood at Winterfell. Mother only had it used when we had an important visitor. This lord or that one, or some officer from the Night's Watch. Cherry wood had filled every hearth when Robert Baratheon had come north as well, of course. Now all those people are burned away sure as any firewood. Her wistfulness must have shown.
"A girl is home, as she told a man she was going."
"White Harbor isn't my home. I told you and her both a hundred times, the Starks come from Winterfell." The archer sniffed rudely, his insolent air a true master's mummery.
"One place is much like another. A man speaks of a person, not a place." That startled her. Did he always know I was going back to Gendry, even when I didn't?
"Well, if I'm so known to you, perhaps you'll be so kind as to tell me what I'm going to do next. And not in some stupid confusing way." The archer scratched his nose.
"A man has many gifts, but one the god never gave was knowing what went on in other heads. He saved that gift for a certain lovely girl." Arya frowned.
"I said don't be confusing."
"A girl spent some time in the house of Black and White, just so. She may have even learned this thing or that thing. Did she learn well enough how to see without eyes? A man thinks not. Her own eyes were dead and blind, a man knows this, but she saw him all the same. That another girl could not see the cats lurking in the shadows or poised overhead only tells a man she was too proud to truly serve the Many-Faced God."
"You weren't there when she attacked me." Arya said bluntly, but quiet enough so that they'd not be overheard.
"How would a girl know? A man might have anyone that day and a girl would never have known."
"We were the only ones in the room."
"Just so. A man can see what may be happening around him without using his eyes, if he's in his senses. If he sees another man drink too much wine and then leave the room, he can see that other man is drunk somewhere. A girl may do this as well, and no need for the eyes of cats and rats. Or wolves." He knew what would happen when she came after me. That I'd spot her through the eyes of the animals around us, even as she flailed in darkness. The eyes of men and girls both, even trained in the House of Black and White, fail utterly levelled against eyes born to the dark. His mysterious air vanished before Arya could blink. "Will that be all, princess?" he asked, barely hiding his contempt.
"Go and find my lord. Don't come back without him." Arya waved him away as if Gendry had been the subject the whole time. When she turned to see who had Jaqen changing his tune so fast, she beheld a very pretty girl with the softest dusting of rosy freckles 'cross her cheeks who looked at least as old as she imagined Sansa. No, she corrected herself. She's Jon's age. The girl curtsied.
"Desmera Redwyne, my princess." she introduced herself with the exact same kind of blameless blushing beauty Arya had once so hated about Sansa. This one hasn't got her head I the clouds, though.
"A Redwyne of the Arbor? I should think you and yours are welcome at every corner of the Seven Kingdoms, even a few places in Essos and beyond the Wall." Desmera put a hand to her mouth and giggled. Arya could hear amusement both feigned and real.
"I suppose we are, or at least the wines coming out of the Arbor. I should rather hope to make a better impression than some grapes, though."
"That's the trick for highborn girls, being seen as more than a name and a claim to this or that." Arya replied, looking back to the dinner crowd slowly filling the table. "Highborn men too, I should think. Particularly if they're the last of their house." Arya turned back to her. Desmera Redwyne had a mournful look on her face but Arya knew better than to trust a mask. She strikes me as too bright to be so direct, at least about Gendry. A Redwyne would not care about the stormlands or who rules them in any case. "If you must know, my lord and I have pledged ourselves to each other this very evening." Desmera gave a happy gasp.
"Oh! What wonderful news! Any occasion to cast off this wretched cold and the gloom of the city with it. It's not my place to correct you, princess, but Lord Baratheon was not who I was speaking of." Rather than ask straight out, as she imagined her father might have done, Arya tried hard to remember if there was anyone this Redwyne girl could have in mind that was somehow relevant to Gendry. Then her grey eyes opened.
"I suppose only the gods know what the future holds, but I know the prospect of holding Nightsong distresses Ser Rolland almost as much as it fascinates him." Desmera's own brown eyes widened and her pretty mouth opened in surprise. "I would not be too presumptuous, Lady Redwyne. Ser Rolland has spent these long years aiding Ser Davos in keeping the influence of the red fanatics in Stannis Baratheon's court to a minimum. Their failure is no mark of incompetence, far from it. That they kept Stannis upright as long as they did marks Ser Davos, Ser Rolland and those in their camp as stalwart Baratheon men, well worthy of regard." Arya would never say it aloud, but she did not truly see Ser Rolland refusing Nightsong, particularly if Gendry was the one offering it. Better still if he just gives it and is done with it. Stormlanders like short and sweet. While Desmera fumbled for something to say, someone cleared their throat behind Arya.
"Lord Gendry Baratheon, Ser Rolland Storm and the Queen of the Fords." Jaqen announced dryly.
The southern girl went from blushing to pale at Nymeria's approach, but Arya knew the direwolf had eyes only for her. And besides, her mind is on whatever's past chasing her in dreams and has followed her into the waking world. Arya gave her a fond scratching behind her ears but Nymeria's troubled attitude did not diminish.
"Right, I'll be off. Can't have those as born in hovels eating alongside those as born in castles, the sky might fall." Jaqen shoved off, making room for Gendry to approach.
"Too bad you outfoxed him when he was made up like an archer. Had you stuck him in the trappings of a lord, he might be less full of venom."
"Don't worry, it's all a mummery." Arya tried to assure him, but Gendry only shrugged.
"It wasn't a Faceless Man who sold me to the red woman for her to roast. So far as I'm concerned, he can skulk around all he likes." She rolled her eyes. As she was quite sure Desmera had gone to chat up Ser Rolland the moment she'd turned her back, Arya was not worried that the girl from the Reach might have overheard anything. On looking back for her, she found her guess spot on. Desmera was blushing, freckles and all, as she listened to Rolland's account of some battle or other, 'oh!'ing and gasping as if she were following a master mummer's script. Arya was wondering how best to rescue the poor knight when another outcry somewhere on the walls made her stomach flip. Not more of them! The voices were not dismayed, not terrified, though. The calls of "Ships!" were lively, excited even. Gendry let out a breath. "Come on, ser. We'd best get out there. See what all this is about." Arya pulled her fur cloak tight around herself and followed, head on Gendry's shoulder. "You know this could be something bad." he murmured.
"Could be. But between you and Nymeria, I ought be safe."
"What if it's more giants?"
"Then I suppose I'll hurt some great frozen foot terribly when it steps on me and finds I've an anvil for a head." She stuck her tongue out at him, earning her a kiss on the neck and him a scream of tickled giggling. Outside the wind had gone for the moment but it was cold as ever, prompting Gendry to pull Arya's hood up past her ears when she did not do it herself. When she grumbled annoyedly he shook his head.
"I like your ears the way they are, not black and stiff and froze."
"Frozen, you-" her smart reply was cut short when he simply scooped her up and kissed her nose, making her giggle all over again.
"Froze. Frozen. Each as cold and dead as t'other, and neither's what I want your ears to be. The rest of you, either."
"Mlhhh." He kissed the tip of her tongue. Then he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes on the inlet as it rolled south to the Bite proper. The Nibble? Arya thought, smiling until she caught sight of the ships within it. Those aren't Westerosi, she knew at once. They were too far away to count but Arya knew a fleet proper when she saw it. Some of them were landing on this side or that of the inlet in rather a haphazard fashion while a tighter-knit group pressed on, headed it seemed for the beached hulks of the dead ships where once White Harbor's outer docks had stood. Or would have, had sudden twin lances of flame at water's edge not begun to clear away the wreckage.
"That'll be that fireling. Helped Tarly and I make his toys." Gendry said, while Arya watched openmouthed. The image of the Iron Throne melting like a cheap candle popped up in her mind yet again. Despite her reputation as a spitfire Arya found herself shrinking into Gendry's chest, a reaction he did not begrudge her.
Arya the girl would have dashed out to meet the newcomers. Arya the young woman was more reserved. It would be different if I thought Jon was on one of those ships, she insisted to herself. He left on one of Dragonstone's, though, not some Volantene vessel.
"I wish we knew what was going on down there…" Arya said wistfully as Gendry set her to her feet, correct in his wordless guess (as ever he was when it came to her moods) that she was not much in a playful mood any longer.
"Well, no doubt they'll come up for a chat, whoever they are." Gendry squinted toward the inlet. "Probably that princeling. Brought the Golden Company with him and the sweepings of the Free Cities with him, didn't he? Stands to reason he'd need a lot of ships."
"Good of him to turn up with his army right after White Harbor's taken a battering." Arya replied crossly.
"Not his fault, is it? Those storms on the Narrow Sea were something awful, made the deluge in the stormlands look a dainty spring rain." That much is true, Arya thought. I thought the ship was going to shake apart around us even before it got a chance to sink.
"I suppose we ought get ready for them, then." Arya said sulkily. And hang any chance of getting married before everyone busies themselves with our business. \
"Why not? We'll snap up some seamstress and she can make you a lovely dress of black-and-gold."
"The septa says it's better to wait until we're wed before I wear your colors. It would be unseemly, you see."
"Oh, save me, I forgot the septa." Gendry slapped his palm to his forehead as he led her back to the New Castle. "D'you know, even with toothy horrors from the coldest hell trying to chew my fucking face off and giants turning men to red mist with thrown boulders and smashing the city walls to pretty white chips besides, nothing would be so unseemly as you wearing something so forward as black-and-gold." His manner was one of grave stately seriousness, blue Baratheon eyes wide as he spoke. Yet Arya was laughing, and no giggle at that. Her glee echoed off the stones of the New Castle and would not stop, not even when they reached their room. Only when they found Nymeria snarling at the darkness did Arya's joy depart, replaced so quickly by fear it made her feel sick. The black direwolf had returned, and this time he was no shadow. Larger than Nymeria, fur a wild tangle and wide eyes green as emerald, he was as magnificent as he was terrifying. Though his nose twitched, betraying his awareness of the men in his midst, he had eyes only for Nymeria. Arya reached for her, unsurprised to feel fear of the direwolf's own but wholly stunned at the nature of it. The animal before her was no stranger to Nymeria, insofar as he was there as a yipping black pup in the hazy memories she had of her time as a pup herself. When I was tall as the walls of Winterfell and fed her with a glove soaked in milk. Other thoughts were harder for Arya to quite understand. Nymeria did not think as she did, people and places and words and times, but the black direwolf seemed as likely to attack her as she was eager to attack him. Realization came slow as a winter dawn. They were all grey at first, all but Ghost, Arya remembered. Only one had fur come black, though. But what had been his name? Rickon was barely more than a baby when Father and the rest had come back with the pups, and the name he'd given his was the sort a baby might think up. Rickon had died, though, killed by Bolton's bastard before battle joined proper. The black direwolf's green eyes glittered with hungry glee. Arya was on her knees before him before she realized she'd moved.
"You're Rickon's. Or were, I don't know." she whispered. The direwolf's nose twitched. He knows the name. It was not so recognized as Arya might have supposed, though. Maybe he's forgotten, maybe they're not together in the hereafter. That thought made her feel sad until she felt something reach for her, for Nymeria, for both of them.
The furnished bedroom she shared with Gendry had vanished. White Harbor's chill had become a balmy summer day in the face of the wickedly sharp cold that seeped into her flesh, the smells of the city wholly gone. Where Arya was still trying to warm herself even in Nymeria's body, the direwolf herself was not caught so ill-prepared. This is where we ate the goat, Arya realized. Where all three of us did, I looking through her and she through him. Snow coated most everything but the sheer sharp walls of razor rock that jutted out of the frozen earth. The pines were back as well, the forest huge and trackless. Utterly absent, Nymeria noted, was the scent of men. We must be in some realm of the old gods', Arya thought. Even the wolfswood is not so vast, its trees not so tall. Her black brother let out a joyous booming cry, deafening to Nymeria who was used to the piping notes of the timber wolves of the riverlands. The forest came alive with the answering notes of countless of their kind, their true kind. Then the Call sounded. Richer, louder, deeper than any direwolf's and Nymeria was caught utterly between the twin urges to dash heedlessly straight for it and to flee as fast as she could. In the end the latter won out and she joined the frenzied rush of fur and teeth that rushed for the source of the Call, the black brother the swiftest, the strongest, the most eager. They came upon the Den then. Not just a den, as one of theirs might have been. The Den. Bones of every sort lay scattered here and there, goat and direboar and moose and man. The source of the Call was waiting for them, its great body half again the size of theirs. Its breath billowed up from its muzzle in a never-ending stream of white fog. This is no hereafter, Arya thought numbly. It's some wild cold hell. Their liege, their lord, their leader without question put its muzzle skyward toward the moon, huge and silver in the sky. The Call was not for her to question, a song her kind had run to since its first sounding. This close it was almost too loud, drowning out the packs replies without effort. It let the note echo off into the trees until silence fell once more.
Then it stood.
Run. The pace was breakneck, trees flying by too fast for Arya to avoid. She needn't have worried. Though she did not have the reins, the body in which she found herself never hesitated, never slowed, never tired. Ground to tree, tree to tree, tree to rock, rock to ground again, the Den was soon as far away in body as it was in mind. Though she recognized Nymeria's howling in the midst of the other wolves, the pack was soon left well behind. Run. The primal rush smashed to dust her scattered thoughts, even thoughts of Gendry and Jon. The memory of his face earned a snort of surprise from the monster, clawed hand swiping at its face as if to free it from a spiderweb. So quick did the image come that Arya almost didn't catch it, but a memory that was not hers flitted briefly, so briefly across her mind. The crypts, Father's statue newly added, Jon's face in manhood so as his had been. Run. Yes, but from what? Arya cried back. Are we running toward or running from? There was no answer, not that she'd expected one. Suddenly there was a scent, one they both knew. Where Arya was relieved at the scent of men, though, the creature's hackles rose. Somewhere she felt her stomach turn. No, she thought, but too late. It, they were upon them in moments, men with powerful muscled bodies and hard strong limbs. What little they wore were loose fur pelts, despite the cold. Neither was proof against their teeth, neither could turn aside a frenzied rush of claws. Despite the utter carnage they did not break and flee. Perhaps they knew death was on them this night and saw fit to meet it with spear or club or raised fist. One such man who looked as if he could have sent Brienne of Tarth tumbling down after the Hound spat a stream of warm blood across their muzzle when a sweep of their arm snapped him nearly in twain. The column numbered two dozen, more, and in the span of a few bloody minutes they'd been strewn across the cold ground in still more pieces than they'd come. They sounded the Call, trying to will away the thoughts that chased them. Off they went, speeding northward so far as Arya could tell. Even the icy surface of a frozen pond did not deter them, rushing over it in a few long bounds. A taste hit their tongue, a far cry from hot bloody meat as befit a member of the pack. It was so strange, so sudden, so strong that Arya could only blurt the word out. Walnuts?The thought of them, an image in her mind, stopped the rushing body she was in on a pinhead. No tumbling forward, no momentum sending them into a snowbank. They just stopped there on the lake, from manic to motionless quicker than any earthly beast ought be able. I can taste them, she thought. The bitterness was nothing like hot red meat heavy with blood. Nothing like the sweet marrow they found whenever they found bone cracking clean apart beneath their teeth. These thoughts are not mine, she realized, but those of the monster I'm peeping on.
As she could hear its thoughts, though, it could hear hers. She saw Winterfell's yard again, a glimpse of Bran struggling to fly an arrow true. I remember that day, Arya though wonderingly. I was behind him, though, with a bow of my own. Then she was, not its memory but hers. Her eyes drifted past Bran, flanked by Jon and Robb. Rickon, far from the giggling six-year-old who had been watching that day, loomed forward off the saddle like a gargoyle, teeth bared and eyes a deep shade of mesmerizing gold rather than Tully blue. Where are you? Arya thought, ignoring Father's voice sounding from the walkway above. The moors of the north, windswept and empty. Eastward, Arya thought. Every day toward the rising sun. Shaggydog was there as well, and so their belly was never empty. Only when they reached a bleak shore with the roiling grey sea before them did they see people. The villagers were too poor to be rightly called poor, but they neither drove them away nor fled upon Shaggydog's approach. Arya could hear their words, talk of Lord Stark's children finding direwolf pups in the wolfswood. Loyal to Father even as they scrape what sustenance they can from the sea. She wished they could share in the bounty of White Harbor. The debate on what to do with Rickon lasted but a single night.
"He cannot stay here. The lords in their castles cannot be trusted with a Stark." One careworn woman said.
"There's only one place we can hide him. One place he'll never be found." An older man agreed.
"You may as well bring him straight back to Winterfell and whatever turncloak holds it!" the woman cried.
"He has the wolf. It will protect him."
"Who will protect us? Those shores are rocky and treacherous anyhow, small aid a wolf will be when the ship he's on goes aground or sinks altogether-"
"It won't. He has the gods about him and the bay belongs to the gods same as the cold earth 'neath our feet."
"And those people? Godless doesn't begin to describe them-" The old man, who seemed to be the village elder, turned a foot-long horn over in his gnarled hands.
"They belong to the gods too." Morning had come, and then a voyage still further east over the storm-churned waters. The haziest peek of a monstrously mountainous island looming out of the mist at them- and then she was warm again, her own harmless pink perfumed self, wriggling her way out of heavy covers.
"Arya!" Gendry's voice was so startling it made her start- and Nymeria yelp.
"I'm alright…" Arya burbled, not altogether convinced herself.
"Horseshit, you've been asleep for two days!" That cut right through the fog.
"What?"
"You and Nymeria both!" Arya had seen Gendry bracing to be tortured once and he looked less afraid than now. She managed to pull herself free of the blankets, trying to find the words.
"Did I… do anything?"
"Nymeria scarce went an hour without a yelp or a snarl, but you might have been a statue." The color slowly worked back into his face. "Might be it was Nymeria's dream you were stuck in rather than your own." Something about that sounded right to Arya…
"She dreamed of Shaggydog."
"Of who?" Arya looked into her lap.
"The black direwolf."
"His name is Shaggydog?"
"He was my baby brother Rickon's."
"Isn't Rickon dead?" Gendry asked, brow furrowing as he struggled to keep up.
"That's what Jon told me. Shaggydog, too."
"So what, the black wolf that's been giving you fits and scaring me witless besides is a ghost?" Arya's lip quivered. All that had happened in the woods, inside the mind of the ravening beast…there had been cold and hunger. The dead do not feel cold, no more than they do hunger.
"It wasn't a ghost that pulled Nymeria into the dark trees and rocky passes. It wasn't a ghost, either, that tore two dozen men apart within a few breaths." The more she thought about it, the more obvious it became. "Nymeria, at least, must not think Shaggydog is dead." She got out of bed, Gendry wrapping her in a fur-lined robe.
"Common wolves can be black same as direwolves. The north under the Boltons was full of orphans…maybe the Boltons were paid in false coin."
"Jon saw him die, though."
"Jon hadn't seen him in years. I don't think it would have been too difficult to find a boy of the right coloring." I should feel excited, elated even. My trueborn brother ay yet live and all I can feel is scared. Memories that could only have been Rickon's had reared up inside the monster's mind, hadn't they? And he had known Arya, after a fashion. But only after a fashion. Whatever might remain of Rickon is buried within the beast that killed those wild men.
Her jumbled feelings must have shown because Gendry wasted no time sweeping her off her feet and into a chair by the hearth. More cherry. Was it Arya smelling it though, or Nymeria? As if to reassure her, the direwolf trotted over to her mistress and lay her head in Arya's lap. Or would have, had it fit. Instead, it was more like someone had laid a warm furry anvil of all things on Arya's legs. Despite her unease, the thought made her hiccup and smile weakly.
"Two days is a long time these days. What did I miss?" Gendry whistled.
"Well, that King Aegon and all his lot have made their way up the Bite and landed at the Manderlys' doorstep."
"Poor Manderlys." Arya said, shuddering at the thought of more courtly complications.
"Have you met him?"
"Didn't think it'd be taken too well for Robert Baratheon's son to stroll up to Rhaegar Targaryen's. From what I hear, a lot of his mates are stormlanders themselves. A Connington's his Hand, and already the old man and his dead cousin's son are arguing the white walls down who's the one true Lord of Griffin's Roost." He stuck out his tongue and pressed a finger to it. "Bleegh." Arya snickered.
"Anybody else?"
"Oh, well, there's that Littlefinger…" he looked into his own lap while Arya' stomach did a flip. It took her a moment to realize that Gendry had stopped speaking.
"Who else?"
"A certain Edric Storm. One of…one of Robert Baratheon's bastards with some Florent girl. My half-brother, I suppose."
"And…you haven't talked to him yet?" Gendry looked like she'd started speaking Valyrian.
"I've never met him before. You were insensate, Arya. For two days. Save to talk to Davos at the door, I haven't left your bedside. " Arya went from pink to red.
"You could have been more helpful in the hall, trying to keep the stormlanders on your side!"
"Your hard head must be made of Valyrian steel. No common iron's so dull and dense."
"It is not-" she began hotly. He kissed her on the cheek.
"Storm's End is a lovely castle. I wouldn't piss in its direction if it came to a choice between you and it, though. I wasn't going to leave until I knew you were alright."
"Did you raise a fuss and get a maester? Will that septa break in here with a battering ram in a few moments?"
"No, I figured you were up to your typical wolf-mischief when Nymeria wouldn't wake either. What would a master know of that? Or a septa? Now your back though, we can go to the hall together." Arya was about to agree when she chanced to look out a window and see a white building that seemed to glow in the moonlight, halfway across the city. The Sept of the Snows.
"I have a better idea." she said.
While Gendry set to asking after the storm lords, Arya had the septa clean her up. I'm a princess after all, she thought dryly. She answered the older woman's constant fussing with short vague answers, mind on an island across stormy gray water when Wylla Manderly found them.
"You're awake!" Arya groaned inwardly at having to answer more questions when one suddenly sprang to mind.
"Are there any islands around here? Big ones, with mountains on them?" Wylla stopped mid-blather.
"Uhh…the only islands near White Harbor are the Three Sisters, nearer the Vale in truth than the North." Arya shook her head. "It would be much bigger than all the islands of the Vale put together. Stuck in the middle of an iron-grey sea, with choppy waters and formidable rocks that make approach a chancy thing at best." Wylla was mystified but also mesmerized.
"Have you been there-"
"No, and gods save her, she never will be. She's talking about Skagos, Wylla." Lady Leona told her daughter, coming in from the corridor. Wylla's face went from enamored to aghast. Skagos? All Arya knew of the place was the old maps Maester Luwin had shown her when she was young. I remember now. It looks kind of like a wolf's paw, if you count Skane. She had liked that part. Not so much the island being stuck in the Shivering Sea, half below the Wall and half beyond it.
"Are there goats there? Shaggy goats with one horn?" Lady Manderly's mouth tightened, as if to speak of the place was bad luck.
"So there may have been once. Or so the rumors go."
"I thought Skagos belonged to the north? Uh…ships stop there from time to time…" Arya said, confused.
"Ships stop to trade with the people on the island's rocky shores. Only desperate ones, though, and most that make Skagos their destination do not return." Well, those villagers were definitely desperate enough to get Rickon out of the north.
"Whether or not Rickon is there is beyond our help just now, Arya." Gendry said steadily. "We can't keep a fishing sloop from upending on the Bite let alone sail all the way to Skagos." Arya bit her lip. What good is knowing Rickon is alive if he's somewhere we can never reach him? If he's someplace no one would ever go? Thoughts of Rickon receded though when she saw the storm lords assembled in the hall. Absent was Lord Buckler, who'd fallen in the giants' raid. Not the last of them to die either, I think. Ralph Buckler had been one of the most overjoyed to see House Baratheon retake its rightful seat of Storm's End, and the man's absence made Arya still sadder. "Should we find your mother?" Gendry asked softly as they prepared to make for the sept.
"I suppose. It wasn't the Seven that made her as she is now, though." Nor that set that song-storm loose on the voyage north. Thinking on the old gods made her shudder as it never had when she was a girl. When they found her lady mother she was with Robb's wife, as usual. Fled of skin, though, you'd only know she was Volantene from her name. Certainly she had no accent to speak of.
"Hello!" called a cheerful voice, a whorl of flickering embers emerging from the boiling water the other two had going to keep the soldiers nearby in hot soup, if nothing else. Arya started badly when she caught the outline of a head, her and there a hint of hand. Talk had reached Arya of her, of course, but that didn't make her any less off-putting in the flesh. Or rather, in the flame.
When they told Lady Catelyn their intentions, her face fell. It was not the reaction Arya was expecting. Here I am, a lady just like you always wanted, a proper bleeding princess. Now what's the matter?
"I suppose I would have liked to have Ned with me to see you get married. I would have liked to see you grow from the girl whose hair clumped in dreadful knots to the woman you are now."
"We all want things. I've learned to hold fast to what comes my way and put dreams of Father coming back out of my mind."
"Jon Snow came back, though."
"He did. Not because I wanted him to, though. Not because anyone did. This is old northern country and it belongs to old northern gods. Why they sent him back is not my place to question." Nor yours. She let the thought hang in the air like a sword on a string. "And anyway, neither of them are here just now. Neither ever followed the Seven. Maybe you'll find some peace from this, however small." Lady Catelyn had been at the art of keeping a shape for longer than the fireling, and so her face was well-defined in its melancholy. I'm less her daughter now than the two beside her. As if reading her mind, her lady mother's hands came up and took Arya's own.
"I wasn't there when I might have been. Seven save me, I should never have let the three of you go south in the first place." Were she able she'd be crying, Arya realized.
"Never mind. You're here now, and I'd sooner have you at my wedding than not. If only because I thought it might bring you some small consolation. Your daughter a princess, marrying a lord." She noticed the fireling looking at Gendry- or that's what it looked like, it was hard to tell when Arya couldn't always make out the girl's head and eyes.
"Are you all right?" Talisa asked her.
"I don't know." came the reply.
"Speaking of giving people their due, I think it's past time you receive yours, Ser Rolland." Gendry said, clapping his hands together decisively. At once the man's pox-scarred face went pale.
"My lord, I-"
"-can take Nightsong at the end of a hand on your shoulder or a fist in your face." Gendry cut him off serenely, earning a few hearty snickers form the other storm lords.
"Where is Ser Davos?" Arya asked, noticing the old knight was not among their party. A wave of warmth told her the fireling's gaze had drawn on her.
"Who?" she asked.
"Ser Davos Seaworth. As leal a man as ever there's been known, perhaps more commonly as the Onion Knight." Ser Rolland said, ignorant of the definition building in the girl's face and form. Arya saw her mouth the work 'knight.'
"Ka-niggit." she said. Before anyone could reply she took her leave of them, a dress weaving itself out of the embers with every step.
"What's her problem?" Ser Rolland asked.
"Leave her, ser. She'll come back when she's ready. Speaking of knights, though, you needn't rely on your spurs alone any longer." Gendry cracked his fingers. "Never done this before. I wonder what will happen?" Resignedly the Bastard of Nightsong went to a knee. "Something something, honorable. Something something, lordly shite. Whether or not I do this you'll be just as dead one day, so best wise up and drink the wine you're served. Arise, Rolland Caron, Lord of Nightsong." Gendry saw that the man was too knock-kneed to rise under his own power so he simply gripped him by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet.
"You honor me, my lord. May I ask a simple boon?" "Gendry nodded.
"That this be kept between you and I. And, I suppose, the rest of us hardheaded stormlanders. There's a war on, I don't need fathers with unwed daughters fighting to get me to sit next to them at dinner."
"As you wish. It will be for you to let the others know I prodded you on the shoulder once."
"Better than a punch in the face." Rolland said with a rueful half-smile.
"Not to be the crass one, but can we well and get this done? I declare I'm colder than any man ought have to put up with." Lord Estermont broke in.
"You're not wrong, my lord. Come on lads, let's see what that sept looks like from the inside." Gendry said bracingly, offering Arya his arm and leading her on.
Barely halfway to the steps up to the Sept of the Snows a fresh alarm sounded at the city's northern gate. People around them panicked but Arya couldn't hear any giant voices and besides, Nymeria for once seemed perturbed rather than put upon. If we live to see this through, we'll go where you can rest easy, girl, Arya promised.
"Shall we go see what's wrong this time?" she asked the others.
"Nothing we can't fuck up worse." Gendry replied genially, already stretching his arms as Rolland laughed, shaking his head. "Seriously. You want something utterly wrecked, all you need do is loose the two of us at it. We've made something of a habit of wrecking plans beyond repair." Gendry said, Arya turning red. They argued about what was whose fault all the way to the northern gate. Shouting atop the ramparts had Arya craning her neck to see who, what and all the rest.
"There's someone out on the moor!" one of the men manning the wall bellowed down to the street.
"Grand. A giant or one of those toothy jobs? We'll aim as befits our visitor's height." The officer of the watch replied.
"You'll need to aim a lot lower then, it looks like a man!"
"Well, no use wasting good rubble on a single dead man." The officer sounded put out. Men.
"How about a live one?" Arya was atop the wall in half a breath, Nymeria bounding aside her as she squinted out into the night, determined to spot whatever was going on outside White Harbor. Jaqen was right. When mine own eyes won't do… She reached for Nymeria. Even with the moon waning into a slip of silver she could see fine, and that included the slight figure running headlong for the city. That's no wight…but those are! Behind the ragged figure came a mob of them, staggering and stumbling heedless of the terrain.
"OI! We're in luck!" cried the officer happily.
"We won't even have to aim, either! We're bound to hit at least a few of them!" his lackey replied. Arya smacked her forehead.
"Well, hurry up! Don't want to-" The stone beneath her feet grew hot and caught a whiff of burning wood. Oak, like the city gates. Then the fireling was striding out to meet both parties. When the person fleeing the dead collapsed into the snow she sent a gout of flame at the wights dogging his heels, cutting them down in their dead droves as she bent over the prone figure, even picking him up. Arya winced from within Nymeria's skin but the poor bugger seemed no worse for wear, even as the fireling carried them back to the (relative) safety of the city. Even faster than she'd climbed Arya descended, finding the pair of them surrounded by gawking onlookers. The fireling's form had gone from barely-there to quite breathtaking. Her dress was white flame but more striking was the girl herself, with skin of molten brass. And yet her touch does no harm to him. Her face was an inch from his, studying him carefully. Arya did not need the training she had received to know tenderness when she saw it. She knows him. Or at least, she did in life. A fit of ragged breathing betrayed Ser Davos' approach. Just as he seemed ready to speak, he caught sight of the girl and the person in her arms. As if sensing his gaze, she looked up, eyes black holes in a brass mask.
"He's cold," she said, "and I can only do so much."
A litter was hastily assembled, the soldiers nearby as eager to get warm in the fireling's presence as avoid her chilling gaze. Ser Davos staggered toward her, as heedless it seemed to Arya as the wights had been. In the end he was on his knees in front of her, mouth moving but quite mute. The invalid mumbled from the litter and despite her misgivings Arya got closer, her curiosity regarding Ser Davos overriding her fear. As is typical for me, she noted dryly. Looking down into the bundle that had been made of their visitor Arya beheld a common face framed by lank brown locks and a few wisps of hair on its chin. A boy just come to manhood. His eyes opened, jittering and unfocused, widening at the prospect of the Onion Knight before him. A high whistling note like a dog's whine issued from him, followed by a rasp. "Father." Davos looked down, his own eyes bulging still further.
"Devan!" he cried, pulling the lad into a sitting position on his litter as he groaned. The young man's next utterance was an unintelligible pained wheeze. "What?" the old knight asked, as if on instinct.
"The Wall. Father, they knocked it down." Elation turned to dismay as the young man coughed. With the fireling's hand on his chest to banish the cold form his lungs, it did not seem his life was so imperiled.
"We need to get him to the castle and tell the others." Gendry said, though hit looked like his tolerance for oddities and quirks was just now sorely strained. On the way up Devan recounted how he had come to them.
"When the black brothers turned on the Lord Commander…I ran. I didn't want to be there, I wanted to run south as fast as I could to Stannis and be by his side in battle against the Boltons as a squire ought. Instead I found the traces of a massacre, so I doubled back toward Eastwatch…hoping I suppose to find a ship to take me south. While resting on a berm, I heard the thunder roll overhead. The sound of a horn…and then the Wall came down. Well, that got me running south again, through Umber lands and over frozen Long Lake. I thought I had a decent head start on whatever was coming down from the wilds…but dead men don't tire and cold giants astride cold mammoths can quick catch up to one squire near dead of fear. Even with their stopping to feast or raze any building they came across, they were making better time than I was. At least, until tonight." They laid him up in bed, gave him hot mulled wine even as the fireling somehow managed to drive warmth back into his black cheeks and nose and his awful swollen black feet.
"How are you doing that?" Arya asked.
"Very carefully." the girl replied.
"Devan, you spoke of giants. Dead men, too. We forced them away some weeks back- or rather, she did." Davos said, nodding to the fireling. Devan shook his head.
"A raiding band. They're coming in force now they know there's a fight to be had, and the old gods only know what else besides." What Arya thought was blood rushing in her ears grew steadily louder until she could hear the rhythm in it, Devan Seaworth groaning as he passed out. Drums, she knew.
