Bran
Even with the endless snows covering everything everywhere, he felt as if he were seeing, hearing, smelling it all again for the first time. He felt a pup again, with a pup's curiosity and eagerness. His sister's presence tempered that somewhat, unsettling him even when she was as close to him as one life could be to another. They had shared a womb, they and the rest of their siblings but where he was flesh and blood once more, she was less than a shadow and quieter than an owl awing when she wished to be. More than once he tried to tussle with her only for his teeth to close around empty air instead of scruff, his powerful body falling gracelessly into the snow instead of wriggling against hers. As much as he could feel sadness, he did, but his sister was capable of that which he was not. She did not eat, did not sleep, and passed through snow, wood and stone with equal thoughtless ease. No prey could hide from her. When they had run back to the great stone den together, they'd come upon lanky sharp-eyed creatures with noses as good as their own. When he took the arm off one, it simply unfurled back out like a branch from a tree. The wounds his sister gave were not so easily shrugged off and more than one of the creatures had staggered off into the snows to die after her teeth had found a belly or throat. Come, come, he thought, all but jumping to and fro trying to get her to chase him, small effort though he was to catch. She was seldom idle, though, running off into the great storms that raged to the north, returning with cold clear blood dripping from her muzzle. What little time she spent away from the hunt she spent with her mistress, who was fast drifting away from the world he himself had just returned to. The den itself had changed since he'd seen it last, the high perches taller and full of countless strange new people besides. After giving up the search for his sibling he returned to his master, the room warm and cozy for the benefit of a family of his own. A burbling sound made his ears perk up and he sniffed curiously after the sound. The sound got louder, more insistent. He espied the three of them wrapped up in bed, the pair sound asleep but the tiny life between them sitting upright regarding him with grey eyes.
That's always the strangest thing, Bran thought as he sat up, Howland babbling and waving his tiny fist energetically at Summer.
"Have our defenses been breached, then?" he asked the babe. Howland responded by sticking his fist in his mouth. The sound made Meera murmur sleepily. Bran hated to wake her but there was little to define day from night these days and Lord Howland would no doubt rather they be ready for trouble than dozing away right up until the Others made their play for Winterfell. They were out there, that much the whole castle understood, occasionally sending masses of wights supported by their brutes and spiderlings to test Winterfell's outer perimeter the way a fox might try to reach some chickens behind a fence. Keeping us on our toes, Bran thought. They have chaff enough and more to do so. At last Meera roused, looking singularly surly. "Did you miss the white bull this time?"
"I wasn't even in the Neck, just caught in a freezing wind with naught below me but snowy moor." she murmured, stretching. Howland promptly tumbled into her lap, making Bran smile. Quiet even in hunger. After he wrapped the pair in another blanket, Bran looked out the window. More snow had fallen, piling up to knee height in some corners of the castle. Deep snow might tire Summer but Lady could walk across it without so much as breaking through.
"I'm going to look for Sansa." Bran decided.
"Be careful," he heard his princess say. She's not wrong, he thought. Summer is wary around Lady. How could he not be? She can do things no living thing can. He could only hope Sansa might hold a firmer grip on winter than it held on her. He hopped up to the window, the slick icy stone beneath his feet no deterrent. Summer did not need telling to stay with Meera and the babe, so off Bran went down the outside of the tower. She'll not be in her room, he reasoned. The Others seem to have difficulty causing mischief from afar when the Singers or the grotto are concerned, so likely Sansa will be somewhere furthest from them. The little people avoided men, so the Winter Town seemed the best place to start looking. Though I'm sure Sansa would be recognized instantly wherever she goes, so I should find her sooner or later. When Bran's own efforts proved inadequate, he asked one among a group of Fenn retainers if he had seen her. "The Winter Town is full of people with more building going on every day. I've not seen the princess but the black she-hound that follows her around is not easy to miss." That, and she's flesh and bone. I have no doubt Lady would evade even a crannogman's notice should she choose to. Bran scaled one of the newer buildings, hearing a deal of loud talk coming from inside. Hedge knights and levies from all the realm over.
"I've been stuck worse places. Food, wine, fires in every hearth, not to mention the soft company-"
"Soft, did you say? I hope you don't mean the spearwives, I've known softer rocks." The snows began again, making the occupants of the building groan to a man. Bran reached for a cur he saw digging in an alley. If Summer was a sword, the mongrel was a spoon. The dog did not flinch away as Hodor had, though Bran suspected that was because men (and direwolves) were hardier of spirit than common beasts. The cur picked up the black bitch's trail through town and Bran marched him up to a hut rather conspicuously ringed in wildling women. Bran didn't know one kind from another aside from those who came from the Haunted Forest or beyond it, so he released the dog and made for the hut himself. By the time he reached it a woman wearing a white weirwood mask had come out from the hut to meet him, as had Frygga of the Ice Wives. Maybe Sansa's just busy keeping the peace between tribes. Both women were on edge, that much was plain to see, but they scarcely gave Bran a second look until he was close enough for them to make out his Tully features.
"Have either of you seen my sister?" he asked. Before either could answer, Lady came through the front of the hut. Bran's breath caught in his throat. Summer might have been happy to see his sister again, but there was nothing left of the mild grey pup that had gone south with Sansa. Lady was larger even than her brother, a grey specter that might have looked a normal direwolf in the dimmest of light. Not her eyes, though. They were golden rings, as before, but the sort that burned into a man's mind and held him fast. Lady trotted past him making no noise and leaving no prints before she disappeared from view. "I guess that means I can go in." Bran said shakily.
"Lucky you." Frygga replied, sweating despite the cold.
The inside of the hut was nothing remotely worth so heavily defending, at least on first glance. It was cozy and warm, complete with a table and even a small bed, but the women at the hearth were who Bran had come for. Sansa wore a patched grey cloak over her tattered dress, but with the hood down and her fire-red hair falling freely down her back there was no hiding who she was. Seated in front of the hearth was someone Bran vaguely recognized. She was there the night we arrived at Winterfell, he remembered. Then she was gone. He could hardly be faulted for that, though. There was the arrival of the crannogmen and the small matter of a baby to contend with, after all!
"There you are!" Bran exclaimed, Sansa shushing him at once even as the honey-blonde woman in the seat looked up, eyes going wide at once. The baby she was feeding did not seem much concerned with anything but breakfast yet Bran could hear the bloody flakes falling outside. "Sansa, you've got to stay in the castle. I don't want you falling into a snowbank and freezing when the she-Other's mischief catches you unawares." And neither you nor Lady needs to be scaring the wits out of some poor lordling from the Vale. Sansa blushed, the bloom of color in her cheeks near as much a relief as getting his legs back had been. There's warmth yet in her.
"I'd be more than happy to, but for the stubbornness of wildling women." Sansa said, looking rather flustered.
"I thought Jon Snow coming back from the hereafter was as batty as things would get. But you Starks flip good sense on its head every bloody chance you get, small wonder I'd rather keep Dalla well quit of all that!" the blonde woman said, cradling her daughter. Bran was befuddled.
"How do you know Jon, my lady?" Bran asked. She turned pink.
"My name is Val, and I'm no lady. Nor a princess, despite what some arsefool kneelers might say. Once, my sister Dalla was Mance Rayder's queen. I named my daughter for her." She kissed the babe's forehead.
"And?"
"And what?"
"What does any of that have to do with Jon?" Bran asked. The pink in her cheeks turned a red to rival Sansa's hair.
"Dalla is Jon's daughter too, Bran." Sansa said from her side of the hearth. Bran felt his eyebrows disappear into his hair. Oh. He swallowed.
"Well then, no doubt Jon would want you to stay in Winterfell as well, Val. I can't imagine he'd be pleased that you were afraid of his trueborn siblings." Bran said, attempting to sound welcoming. While Sansa lingers between the light of the hearth and the darkness of the room's corner. "We could find you a room far from the southern swords-"
"-and near the creeping bogmen, no doubt." Val replied, going from rose to pale.
"Perhaps that's not a bad idea. Nowhere in the castle is safer, Val. You might like the room across from the Reeds. If it's your intent to keep to yourself at least until Jon arrives, that'd be the place to do it. Who knows when the Others will next come, or where. This is no fit place for Dalla, or you." Sansa told her. Bran found the blonde's eyes meeting his own. He felt certain in that moment they were thinking the same thing. Who of everyone in Winterfell would know the Others' movements better than Sansa?
The shift from well-meaning to wild was so quick Bran didn't spot it at first.
"We need to leave. Now." Sansa said, Dalla burbling uneasily. "There are people approaching from the south. An army and a half, by the look of them."
"More wights?" Bran asked.
"No. Living and wary, looking hard-used." At blessed last, Bran thought, relief washing over him at the prospect of Jon's return.
"How do you know? Lady?" he asked. Sansa nodded, biting her lip.
"They don't see her, though. They're too busy-" Sansa's sharp inhale all but stole the warmth from the room, her blue eyes wide as feast platters.
"Others?" Bran asked. Sansa's mouth fell open. A sound reached them then, echoing up over the moor from the south.
"The whole castle will have heard that. Before everyone tries to get a glimpse, please, Val, let us take you somewhere safe and secret." I don't think it's Val people will want a glimpse of, nor Dalla. The same thought seemed to occur to Val, who finally stood before tucking her babe into her front so that her hands were free.
"Thank the gods for Morna…" she said. "Frygga, too. They did well and right by me. Even made Dalla swaddling that I could never manage." She looked up. "I suppose you're right, princess, but for the sake of the babe if nothing else, could you keep the magical madness off us?"
"If I can, Val." Sansa replied. The sound came again, closer and louder. Bran heard the buildings around them start to come alive. "Now or never. Come." Lady waited without, the wild women giving her a wide berth. Somehow the direwolf let them past the massing crowds and through Winter Town, all the way up to the base of the tower the Reeds and Starks shared. "If nothing else, the room is bigger." Sansa said as Val took its measure.
"Bigger, but with castle maids and servingwomen coming and going. 'Twas no secret that Jon Snow and I shared a bed, and more than once. One or more might see Dalla's eyes and know her for who she is at once, spreading the tale through the castle."
"We'll have crannogwoman do for you what must be done. They are not a gossiping people, and with so many so near none of Winterfell's staff will come looking for something to do." The sounds of movement began to fill the corridors.
"I'll go have a look at them." Bran said.
"I'll find Branch, I suppose. It won't do to have them hiding in the grotto when they ought be out and about for the southrons to see." Sansa said. "If you need anything…"
"I'll give a shout. In fact, a bath might not go amiss. Dalla's going to fall asleep soon, anyway."
"I'll send for hot water and a nursemaid or two." Sansa replied, all tenderness. Bran left with Sansa but where she turned toward the crypts, he made for Winterfell's southern gate. Several giants had been roused and mammoths besides to move an earthen block temporarily from each ring so as to allow the newcomers a path into the castle proper. Bran waited atop the gate as he had when it was Robert Baratheon coming up the Kingsroad. Back when the sun still shone and I could see just who was coming. Now snow falls it seemed a foot a night, cold winds race across the whole of the north and the dead walk in numbers uncounting. With his eyes on the ground squinting after the new arrivals, he missed what was going on in the sky- until the dragon came swooping out of the fog.
Automatically Bran's head turned skyward, gaping at the sight of the creature as it grew ever closer. The dragon didn't roar nor breathe fire. It didn't have to. Even the heavy cold night did nothing to reduce its spectacle, its magnificence. It landed on the second of the rings, peering curiously at the giants behind the raised earth even as they gawked up at the dragon. In the darkness its scales appeared pale but they might have been anything from true white to bone. There was no hiding the golden pools that were its eyes nor the splendor of the crown of horns that ran about its head, though. Bran could no more look away than fly himself, and only when the dragon took wing again to find a better perch somewhere in Winterfell itself did he realize the new additions had begun moving through the gate beneath him. They had no golden eyes nor horns to catch the light of the torches and so Bran couldn't see them, so he made for his bedchamber to check on Meera. A prince should receive all who pay him a visit, Bran thought, even in these dire times. It was something his lord father would have done. What Father would have done regarding all the rest of it, that was what Bran wrestled with. He stopped only to make sure the castle was ready to receive everyone it could hold, the new additions to Winter Town standing empty ready to be filled. He was out of breath when he made it back to their bedchamber, more form all the running than the climb. Lord and Lady Reed waited with Meera, who held Howland close while Summer ran his head across her shoulder. Bran grinned. In love with her himself. Lady Jyana's little smile and the tears in her eyes confused him until Meera spotted him at the window.
"Bran!" she cried, stepping over while Howland turned at the sound of his father's name.
"What is it? What's happened, my princess?" Bran asked, nerves sore tested from all the excitement. "Is it Howland?"
"Jojen. A Jojen of mine own, thanks to you. You did hope to give me one, after all..." Her cheeks turned pink. "Or a Jyana, if it's a girl." He blinked. Howland reached for him with little pink hands and Bran took him, still thunderstruck. Howland put a hand to Bran's nose, little tongue between his lips, while Bran tried to keep the floor from slipping away beneath him. Another babe. He wondered at it all. Truly, is there nothing Meera Reed can't do?
"Congratulations, my prince." Howland Reed said, but where his wife beamed, an unearthly beauty even in the light of the hearth and Meera couldn't stem her streaming eyes, he himself looked resolved.
"Thank you, my lord. The southern contingent has at last arrived, with a dragon in tow." Lady Jyana's glee turned to dismay at once, her husband pursing his lips. Now what? True, word reached us of three but better one than none, Bran thought.
The hall's normal occupants had already found their usual places when Bran, his family and the Reeds came in to fill the high table. For now, he thought as Summer sat beside him. Until I can yield the prince's seat to Jon and all troubles can fall somewhere they'd be wholly better shouldered. It wasn't Jon who took the southern lords north from White Harbor, though, if all the Manderly badges were any clue. The newcomers sorted themselves as well as they could, Maester Luwin's lessons coming back to Bran. The reachmen, to Bran's confusion, didn't appear to be wearing any Tyrell devices. Instead, the lords among them seemed intent on trying to figure out who was their lord paramount, something it seemed had been a bone of contention for a good while. They don't sound angry, though, Bran thought. They sound bone-tired, and ready to reach consensus. There was no such confusion on the part of the stormlanders, filling the tables across from the reachmen and clearly led by a man who could only have been a son of Robert Baratheon. Bran remembered the three children who had visited the very hall he sat in. How could anyone have believed them Baratheons? Among the storm lords was a man who Brienne of Tarth let out a gasp on seeing, lifting him off his feet in a hug he returned with equal fervor. The crownlanders had no crowned head to follow and were not nearly so influential without King's Landing to back them up so they quietly filled a table of their own without a fuss. The rivermen were similarly purposed, though their lord turned out to be a small boy who scarce looked up from his mother's skirts- at least, until someone put a tray of roast pork in front of him. Then he was on it voracious as a direwolf, washing it down with water. Still more people were coming in, queer quiet men carrying spears and all outfitted in identical armor. Toy soldiers, Bran thought, though they seemed anything but toys. Rowdy copper-skinned people wild as any wildling made enough noise to make up for the soldiers' silence, followed by a small number of what looked like still more of the Free Folk, though they looked on those already in the hall uncomprehendingly- until they saw the sigils of the Valemen and immediately sat as far away from them as was possible. A peculiar group brought up the rear, sellsword captains and freeriders following a man with silver hair. Who might he be? Is that his dragon I saw? Why wouldn't he ride it here?
A boy broke from this last group, waddling up to the table. Bran blinked when he realized it was a man standing before him, one he knew. He had a nose when he was here last, though. The scarred visage of Tyrion Lannister might have frightened and fascinated Bran the Boy. After seeing an Other in the freezing flesh, to say nothing of the dragon, the Prince of Winterfell had gotten a mite bit harder to impress.
"Welcome to Winterfell, my lords." Bran said, voice echoing when the rest had quieted. "I hope your journey was not too long."
"We'd not have made it to begin with without Viserion blasting the dead men into dust whenever they surged out at us." Tyrion replied, sounding exhausted himself. They don't have it in them to hash anything out just now, Bran realized. They're dead on their feet. Rather than wheedle them for news on Jon, who was obviously not present, Bran merely extended the bounty of Winterfell to its guests. More than one face flushed in relief when they realized they had not just marched miles and miles straight to a war council.
"Not for nothing, my lords, but the lot of you falling asleep before the maps even come out will do us little good. If you are hungry, eat. If you are thirsty, drink. There is room enough for everyone and more, and the Others have found taking Winterfell will not be so easy as they might have thought." He realized his words were being relayed to those in the hall who did not speak the Common Tongue. Only moments after the hall had filled did it begin to clear, though without a word of protest. The group at the back alone lingered, though the Dornish-looking girls in their company had all fallen asleep at the table.
"So much the better that you clear the hall, my lord. Or is it my prince?" Tyrion asked, sounding genuinely unsure rather than making mock of him.
"Being a prince wasn't much different from being a lord. Not without legs under me, anyway. I had some help with that, though." Tyrion smiled.
"I'm pleased the saddle-" he abruptly stopped talking when Bran stood and nimbly hopped over the high table. "Very good. I don't suppose this 'help' knows how to regrow a nose?"
"Not that I know of, I'm sorry, my lord."
"Such a tragedy. I was a regular Florian until I lost it and now it would seem all luck has left me." The dwarf seemed almost at peace.
"Why is it better that the hall is cleared?" Bran asked. Tyrion's brow furrowed.
"I thought it best that Princess Arya be reunited with her family behind closed doors." Arya. Bran remembered the wild girl who gave their parents no end of grief. And she was good at archery. He turned to see wat Sansa thought of the news, only to realize his sister had not yet come into the hall.
"Where is Arya now? Does Jon know?"
"He does. The princess seemed to think your brother Rickon and his wolf might be on Skagos, of all places, so the King in the North took a slight detour on his way to Winterfell." A slight detour? Skagos is hundreds of miles away, across hostile seas and land both! His incredulity was not lost on Tyrion Lannister. "Her Grace was of the mind that, given the harshness of the Skagosi wilds and of the islands off its coasts, another of her dragons might have taken up upon the largest of them." Skane. "Drogon seemed content to brood on Dragonstone but his brothers soon left the island. We attempted to sail north from King's Landing and Dragonstone itself, only to run afoul of some kind of storm. It saw us washed up on the toes of the Mountains of the Moon, so we had to do a bit of walking. It wasn't a total loss, though. The hill tribes found us and we found Viserion basking in the Neck, living as a bull lizard-lion." A white bull, Bran thought, the hairs standing on the back of his neck. Wondrous to behold. Well, this Viserion was a wonder and no mistake, but would he be enough?
"A dragon? In the Neck?" Meera asked in utter disbelief, turning to her father. Lord Howland gave no sign that any of it was news to him.
"We left shortly after he arrived. There was no need to crowd him with the black cow in his sights. I should think by now there are some little ivory wonders ready to make the Neck their own."
"Five, or so far as we saw."
"A cow will brood over thirty eggs or more." Meera said, still stunned.
"Dragon blood will slow things down." Lord Howland replied, looking lost in thought. "It was the same when the Cannibal paid the Neck a visit near two centuries ago."
"All for the better, Lord Reed. Mundane lizard-lions are more than formidable enough as the gods made them. Were dragon blood no deterrent to their breeding, soon the black cow would be the rule and not the exception." Tyrion said. "Who could have guessed dragons would do so well in the Neck?"
"Who are your companions, my lord?" Lady Jyana asked, while for the first time, Bran saw anger in the cold gaze of the lord of the Neck.
Tyrion Lannister, ever perceptive, seemed to realize he was being regarded with hostility. He cleared his throat and waddled back to the far table, waking those among them who remained asleep while Lady Reed whispered soothingly in her husband's ear. It isn't like him to be so quick to anger. Surely he's heard worse regarding his home and people both. Bran knew Tyrion Lannister as well, or thought he did. He was not trying to be belittling. The dwarf returned with the rest of them in tow, introducing what Bran understood to be the last of House Martell and their bastard cousins, the Sand Snakes. The princess Arianne was very pretty and the image of her mother, Mellario of Norvos. Prince Quentyn tried to play the proud son but it was clear he was shaken by Summer's presence, to say nothing of the giants he'd passed on his way into the castle. The silver-haired man got closer, as did the older lord at his shoulder. Bran judged the former to be about of an age with Jon, while his companion could not have been younger than forty. The man wore dancing red-and-white griffins on his surcoat, spurring something in Bran's memory. Perhaps he's the lord of griffins, from Meera's story. One of the purple-eyed maid's partners in the dance. He blinked slowly, as if unable to coordinate what was in his mind with what was before him.
"Aegon Targaryen, trueborn son of Rhaegar Targaryen. This daft old fool would be Lord Jon Connington if he could find it in himself to loosen his jaw." Tyrion introduced the pair, elbowing the older man in the shin.
"Come from across the sea, no doubt. Rhaegar's ghost has much to ask you for, my lord. Forgiveness, for a start." Lady Jyana said. Lord Connington started, mouth moving though no sound came out. "I wonder if Prince Rhaegar would have persisted in his folly, knowing his friend would be the one to serve the sentence for his crime."
"Robert Baratheon killed my father on the Trident." Aegon said, turning pink.
"Robert Baratheon killed the prince of a house that died when he did. Your father stands beside you, the man who raised you up from infancy and kept you safe. Day after day, year after endless year. The decades of exile crawling by, a moment at a time, making you the man you are." She stood, moving around the table toward Lord Connington. "Rhaegar's suffering was over in an instant, if indeed he suffered at all. There were no sleepless nights, no terrible heavy weight that followed him everywhere he went." Jyana Reed took Connington's hand. "The Iron Throne has gone the way of the house that sat it. Gone, my lord, beyond even your ability to pursue. Forget the prince, forget the throne. Instead, glory in the man you and you alone have the right to call 'son'." Bran was as dumbstruck as the rest of the room. What is going on?
Finally, the griffin lord found it in himself to speak.
"All the years have taken from me, they've vouchsafed you, my lady."
"Not so, my lord. Howland and I lost our only son, crushed beneath a weight far beyond his strength to carry." Connington sniffled, his hard-worn air crumbling away to reveal a man who knew weariness more intimately than any of the lords who'd left the hall. Weariness of soul, Bran thought.
"It is a fearsome heavy weight. More than once I thought it might pull me down as well, and would have, but for His Grace."
"But for your son." Jyana corrected him. "Who may well wear a dead prince's name and colors just because he thinks it will please you. Who aimed to take the throne because seeing him on it would give your tired spirit some smallest measure of peace." Aegon looked stricken. I might well look the same way were my whole life laid out in a few breaths. "You will take your father to the chambers prepared for you and see that he has rest. All a man can give, he's given to you." The boy-called-king pursed his lips, trying not to cry himself even as Lord Connington gave a sob through his hands. Father and son left the hall together, followed by the Dornish.
"I think it's time you called on your sister, my prince." Lord Howland said as Jyana turned to look at her husband.
"I will take you to her. Lord Umber and Lady Karstark are with her as well, no doubt they'd be pleased to meet you." Tyrion offered, sounding most eager to leave husband and wife alone. Bran stood, helping Meera to her feet even as Howland reached for her, pudgy hands outstretched. She was reluctant to leave her parents, most understandably in Bran's opinion, but it was obvious lord and lady both had eyes only for each other.
"Come, my princess." Bran put his lips to Meera's hand. At last she let him lead her after Tyrion, the elder Howland getting up himself. He sat on the table, feet brushing the floor with his hands up and open. His lady stepped up to him and he wrapped his arms around her, touching his forehead to hers. The wooden door closed and they were lost from Bran's sight, but he could clearly hear Jyana Reed's soft sobs.
