HE OF SIX SKINS
The campfires guttered as the wind blew in among the tall trees, smoky and smelling of the freshly cut branches of soldier pine that had to be burned to get the flames burning hot enough to be worth the effort. Men coughed and argued around each one, eating their day's lot of food knowing it wasn't enough.
Even the chieftains sharing Varamyr's fire bitched and moan like old hags, not leaders of warriors, arguing over what was responsible for their defeat. The Shadow Tower was home to a flock of Crows still.
Maybe you'd all be in a better mood if you had a spearwife or two to fuck. Varamyr thought with annoyance. Their kind didn't allow the women to have weapons. Ignoring them as best he could, he focused his mind on betrayal. Mance's betrayal.
He had been given the honour of leading the third warband of the Free Folk by the king. While others would try to climb the Wall and storm the keeps in the east, he was to take the Bridge of Skulls and seize the Shadow Tower. To kill every Crow in the west, he had been given the Ice River Tribe and the mountain cave clans. Savages that made the Thenns look like the Antler River folk, cannibals and slavers, but well suited to the job. Especially as all eyes would be on Castle Black and Eastwatch and the great hosts that would appear before them.
But no other tribes had joined when the call came. Varamyr cursed himself, knowing he should've realised something was wrong then. At the time, he had thought it was merely the chieftains' personal hatred for him. Now he could see the scheme behind it.
Mance's scheme.
The King had gathered all the tribes and chiefs that would rebel against his authority once they were south of the Wall, and given sent them against the keep most likely to hold out against any attack. He had sent them there to die, Varamyr was now sure of it.
After running through the events of the past days again and again, his mind always went to what he would do on reaching the Nightfort. Schemes of his own, madness most of them. That night was no different.
I'll go through and take Castle Black from the south myself. I'll kill the Canadians one-by-one in their sleep. I'll kill Mance and call myself the King of Wargs…
Something in his mind told him that wouldn't work as a plan. That the Free Folk would not brook cowardly ways… if they knew about them. That wasn't what they looked for in a chief or king. The memory of his failure, or how no chieftains had deigned to join him to attack the Shadow Tower when he had asked, would sour any open attack in the eyes of the other chiefs. They had all shunned his leadership.
No… I'll take Mance's skin in the night. A new body with a crown on its head. I'll tell the chieftains to kill the Canadians. I'll take Dalla as my own. I'll take the sister too, as my right. I'll make the wargs the heart of the host. I'll take more skins and when the Starks come, I'll confound and kill them in their camp just before we attack…
As satisfaction at the dreams of such revenge and glory rose up, Varamyr grinned widely, poking at the fire to make the flames lick beyond the smoke. The noise of the chieftains disappeared, replaced in his ear only by the crackling of the wood, his sight flooded with a vision of him having the 'queen' and 'princess' in the ruins of Winterfell. His blood warmed at the dream, banishing the unnatural cold all around him that furs were a poor shield against.
"You speak o' whos to blame like you were chief o' this band o' warriors!" boomed a voice out of nowhere, cutting through the swirling arguments and the fire's spitting.
Varamyr's gleeful grin soured in his mouth, the spell of his new plan broken. He knew who the voice belonged to, and raised his gaze.
Narkar, an old chief of the Ice River tribe, sat opposite Varamyr across the fire, his scarred face and grey beard the only parts of him visible among the thick furs and leather armour. The man met Varamyr's gaze with no fear. "Wasn't to the Ice River or the Cave that Mance gave the bronze rod. Was you, Six Skins. He told you to bring him the Tower of Shadow and the bridge o' the Gorge, and told us to follow what you said. Here we sit, beaten like stray dogs."
Varamyr coughed and hocked into the fire. There was no point talking with the man. The chieftains murmured, displeased with the lack of answer. Hands moved to weapons. Varamyr paid it no heed, his mind moved elsewhere for a moment.
Snow crunched underfoot and Orell stepped in front of him as he returned his attention to the circle. "Wisdom, friends," the young warg said mockingly, "If you could not kill the Crows, you've not a kneeler's chance against us."
"Fuck you, Orell," said a chief of the cave clans of a similar age, his sire dead by the Crows' hands, "You're Rattleshirt's leavings, pissed your skins twice before a Canadian rifle."
"Aye, 'cause you've faced such sorcery and stood tall like a giant," Orell laughed back, "I did not see you try and take the Canadian camp at Craster's, though I heard much talk of how you'd like to enjoy the woman." A clamour of objections and assertions followed, as more of Orell's fellows stepped forward to join him in shouting back.
Varamyr sighed to himself. As tedious as taking a shit. He stood, which quieted the lot of them, though he was no taller than Orell's shoulder. They wanted their answer. He looked at the young mountain-clan chief first, the boy so new to his place that he didn't know enough to be afraid.
"I was told your tribes are the best climbers among the Free Folk."
The young man raised his chin with pride. "Aye."
Fucking lackwit. "You lot couldn't climb the Gorge. We all saw your men slip and fall, cracked open like eggs against the rocks or washed away by the Milkwater to sea. And when some of you did reach the top on the Crows' side, the black ones threw you down one by one to the same fate. Fucking boys and old men too, not the Rangers. You were as useful as teats on an aurochs bull."
The young man bristled, as did his friends-now-fellow chiefs. But he did not have the confidence to attack. The cave dwellers' menfolk had been gutted by the attempt to take the Gorge.
The Ice River chieftains took the opportunity to laugh. Though their true rivalry was with the Frozen Shore clans, they had warred with the cave tribes in the past too.
Varamyr could see they were enjoying the hesitation of the other chiefs to defend themselves with their axes. Too much. "I don't know why you find it such a great lark," he said to them, "I was told you were great warriors, tribes that forever warred with the Thenns and the Frozen Shore, men who fought in the shieldwall. And that you knew the lands near the Gorge well as your own."
The Ice River men were not stupid enough to be outwardly proud. They knew what else was coming. Not such lackwits then.
Varamyr gestured to the trail they had been retreating down. "We were ambushed twice by the Rangers. It seems they knew the trails better. And when the time came to take the bridge, you could not move the Crows from it. Even with my wargs and archers to aid you."
He sat down again. "Mance lied to me about you."
Narkar gave a rasping chuckle. "If Mance lied, he lied 'bout you, not us! You were some great man of cunnin' by his word. The Crows weren't as weak as you were thinkin', and they all had black steel on their bodies and in their hands."
"You were given steel of your own," Varamyr countered, stalling for time.
"A handful o' blades," Narkar sniffed with a dismissive wave, "Prizes to be sure, but not 'nough to break the Crow shieldwall. Tell me, Varamyr, how is it you still've all your skins yet I've lost many fine warriors?"
Fine warriors? Varamyr's mind laughed, Cannibals and men unworthy of seeding a woman. I'll see yours get better stock when I get south. "A bear or a wolf cannot break a shieldwall, Narkar. Mance lied to us all."
"How do I know tha' without you tryin' it?" the old man replied, leaning forward on his knees, "Bears have thick hides, and wolves can grab the ankles o' men."
"And Crow spears are sharp steel. If you don't know that by now, you are unworthy of leading warriors."
"No, Six Skins, 'tis you who's unworthy. You can go back to lurkin' in a cabin, forcin' women into it with your shadowcat, hated by all. Once we make the happenins o' this raid known, no man will ever follow you again."
Varamyr saw the movement behind in the trees, the slow lumbering and rapid shifting. The time had come. "I know," he said.
Narkar blinked and stared, to Varamyr's great amusement. "Wha?"
"I know that if you make it back to Mance with your lies, no man will ever follow me again."
Now.
The snow bear reared up behind Narkar and roared, as she brought her full weight down on the old chieftain at Varamyr's command. The other chiefs stood and flinched away from the creature in their midst, weapons pulled from belts and loops. As the bear brought her jaws around Narkar's shoulder with a wet crunch, ignoring a bone-axe thrown at her, the wolves and shadowcat struck from every other direction.
Ankles, Varamyr thought. His skins obeyed. The wolves grabbed another three chieftains by their lower legs and pulled them to the ground, the shadowcat swiping with his claws. The remaining chiefs scattered as the beasts began tearing at throats and arms, the screams and roars of pain and exertion overwhelming all other sound.
Varamyr watched the gore with satisfaction, not moving from his sitting position. They had not thought much of him. They always thought little of him. He was small, thin, not any man's imagining of a great warrior, nor any woman's. But he was the greatest living warg, and that's all that mattered.
"Should we kill the rest?" Orell asked, pointing with a spear at the fleeing chieftains.
Varamyr grinned again.
The snow whirled in rivers through the air, streaming side-on, the northerly wind carrying it battering all every man and woman it hit regardless of how much fur they had wrapped around them. Even the animals seemed to suffer, their heads turned away from the surge as they pulled the sleds of what remained of the Ice River and mountain cave warriors.
Frost stinging his eyes, Varamyr squinted back from the front of the straggling warband atop his snow bear, seeing that even his own skins were not likely to live to see the night. The survivors of the other tribes had not taken the death of their leaders well, but they wanted to get south. And as if to add misery upon discontent, the food was running out. Only the death of stragglers was keeping each warrior's share above a mouthful's worth each night.
Varamyr dared not ask how things could get worse. He knew exactly how they might. But his thoughts soon quietened as he noticed the wind doing the same, a strange silence settling over everything.
Hoping the worst of the weather was over, Varamyr looked this way and that, finding that the snow was falling directly downwards and letting up. The cold bit less deeply. The world covered in the powdered ice emerged from the flurries. More of the warband emerged with it, the flakes sticking to their furs, the dogs shaking to clear their own. All his skins joined him from the sides.
"The gods are with us…" Orell commented from the sled behind, his eagle flapping its wings on the handle beside his hands. His sled-dogs pulled away as the bears turned to see what had approached from behind.
"We'll see," Varamyr grunted back. He misliked the other warg, no matter how useful the man and his bird was. Orell had come to Varamyr only because none others would take him. None would defy the Canadians. His true loyalty was to a dead man, an unpopular man even when he was alive, mocked for his haughty nonsense and rotted teeth.
But Orell knew the ground they were supposed to be in by now. Seeing it was time for the younger warg to show his worth, Varamyr drank deep from a skin he had kept inside his clothes, the warm water fortifying him. "How near to the Nightfort are we?"
Orell glanced around for a while, his eyes lingering in the direction of the Wall newly visible to the south for longer. "Can't tell. Everything's covered in snow-dust. Leagues, I'd guess."
"Find out," Varamyr stated, "I didn't bring you so you could give me half-arsed guesses." He nudged his skins' minds, making them to open and close their mouths together at the same time. An old favourite of his.
Orell's mouth twisted with disgust for a moment. He knew what those jaws could do. The younger warg sat down on his sled, his eyes rolling and then turning white. His eagle twitched, before taking off, Orell's mind inside it.
Satisfied the man would do his job, Varamyr straightened up atop his snow bear, raising himself as high as possible. He saw nothing that he recognised either, though he had not been by this way in many years. His mind briefly suggested the Crows might be around, but it was a fleeting fear. The Rangers wouldn't be showing up. By now they'd know their black brothers elsewhere on the Wall were under attack or fallen.
It was time for the warband to rest, Varamyr decided, and see how many of them yet lived while Orell flew to the Wall to see which keep they were closest to.
A scream echoed from the very back of the line of sleds. Varamyr's head shot up, seeking a foe in the distance. He saw only panic as the sled drivers and warriors abandoned their sleds and ran in his direction, the dogs pulling the sledges off the trail. Along with the food, Varamyr's inner voice reminded him, The fucking idiots.
"Get those things in hand!" he shouted at the nearest lurking warriors, looking confused about what they were seeing, "Then find out what happened." Some idiot pulled under a sled, he thought, Mayhaps.
The men wasted no time in departing to follow the command. Varamyr watched as they shuffled over the snow towards the disturbance, as more and more warriors and sleds began to flee. He saw other figures too, harder to spot, like the light bent around them. At first, he wasn't sure if they were people or random snow flurries, but his wolves' noses did not lie, their fear wafting to him. His own throat closed on recognition of just what they were, his skin burning as if he had just fallen through the ice over a lake.
The White Walkers had come.
One on either side of the trail stalking through the trees, herding the warband forwards. Bone-tipped arrows flew from bows of those further away, missing or bouncing harmlessly off trees. Their aims thrown off by the weakness cut into them by the cold, the trail and the hunger.
Varamyr's mind snapped out of its torpor, as it understood the tactic. Force the lot of us to run, pick off those too weak to keep up. He himself had used it when intimidating villages for their women, and clans attempting to take other clans alive did the same. And all the better; the Walkers seemed to have no wights under their rule. An expedition to get more then. I won't be taken, he told himself, I am prepared.
He reached behind his cloak for the weapon he had prepared; a wooden club with shards of obsidian lodged down its length in lines. It had taken him two years and a dozen lives bloodily taken to build it. Now it was time to test it.
Varamyr nudged the mind of his warged beasts to advance, swinging to the left of the trail.
The mass of warriors retreating seemed to pause as they saw him and his skins run by, but he paid them no mind. They had no dragonglass, he knew. Better that they distract the Walker on the other side.
The thing directly ahead soon paid heed to the collection of animals advancing on it. The way the light bent around the thing seemed to melt, its edges and shapes not flowing with the trees behind any more. Its glowing blue eyes like starlight peered straight at Varamyr.
You want me to see you… Had the Walkers' approach not been picked out before, such a sight would have set Varamyr to running away. But he had been granted enough time to think. I slay you and your brother, and no man can call me a defeated craven, his mind whispered to him, So your lives are mine.
The White Walker produced a longsword of crystal-like ice from behind its back, and aimed its point at the charging snow-bear and its rider. Varamyr did not stop his white-furred mount. If the Other was surprised at this, it did not show on the thing's face. I'll see those eyes widen with fear yet!
His eagle swooped down from the side just before sword could meet bear-hide, causing a flinch at the critical moment. His snowbear swiped and the wolves circled as he jumped off, distracting the White Walker further. As the crystal sword was swung to create space away from the bear, and then plunged into one of the wolves, Varamyr stepped into range from behind.
They always underestimate me.
Varamyr aimed for where the backbone would be on a man, and brought his obsidian-studded club into a vicious swing, connecting with the Other's hip. Whatever curses he might've wanted to spout at missing his mark disappeared as his enemy let out a crunching, guttural roar of pain. Dropping to its knees, the strike had caused part of the Other's body to shatter, blood like water tinged deep blue draining and steam pouring out the cracks.
The talk of dragonglass was not just talk. Triumphant, Varamyr Six Skins raised his club over his head and sent it flying directly into the back of the White Walker's head. The skull exploded, a gust of steam spewing into Varamyr's face. The rest of the body decided it was nothing more than a pile of ice chunks, collapsing in a pile.
Though his blood sung with the victory, he knew he had no time to enjoy it, nor any to see if his wolf Sly was dead yet. The slain enemy had a brother nearby. Sweat running cold into his furs, Varamyr quickly remounted his snowbear and turned towards the direction of the second White Walker, marshalling the surviving skins to follow.
To his surprise, he found the warband had rallied nearby, blocking the way of the Other. They were forming a shieldwall, archers to the rear shooting. Orell and Varamyr's own war party were at the centre, shouting to the rest to hold. Not so fucking useless after all. Together, they could beat one White Walker, even without the advantage of surprise.
Varamyr rode down to join the warriors, but forced the snowbear to stop halfway. His eyes soon picked out more shapes as they began moving between the trees and across the snow, the light of day going through parts of them but shining on others.
The single White Walker became two, then three, then five, and finally, seven. Armed with swords, axes and bows, the former of crystal, the latter of weeping weirwood.
All staring at Varamyr. Complete silence fell. All words stuck in his throat. The wind halted completely and the final figure appeared between the Others.
A woman.
Her face and body was glowing-white, but unlike the Others escorting her, they were made of skin and not ice. But with them she shared the glowing blue eyes that announced they were not anything human. Her hair was like white gold, and fell to her shoulder. She was cloaked and clothed in a white fabric that seemed to cling to her, revealing every curve.
She was the most beautiful thing Varamyr had ever seen. But he was too afraid to appreciate the sight. He knew who she was. What she was. And so did every other warrior in the warband. This was the Lady of the Nightfort, the consort of the Night King, the High Priestess of the Others, enslaver of Crow and Free Folk alike, the Witch that had sacrificed thousands on weirwood altars atop the Wall, long thought dead at the hands of Joramun and one of the Stark kings.
The Corpse Queen. She's come for me.
"FLEE!" Varamyr roared, abandoning all fear of calls of cowardice and dreams of kingship. He turned his snowbear southwards. The warband did not hesitate to follow this command, nor did the Others wait to commence their own attack. Ice arrows began flying, screams of pain echoing, and strange noises chittered in the distance.
The blizzard returned with a vengeance, closing around the world once more.