Eddard

Dusk was falling slowly over the haunted forest. Somewhere in the open glades at the Frostfangs' foot, wolves began to gather for a night hunt. The sound of their grim howling reached Ned's ears, yet he almost heeded not. As a ranger of the Night's Watch for well-nigh six years now, he was more used to the howling of wolves beyond the Wall after nightfall than many might have been to a woman's kisses.

Like to the wolves, he had long since become accustomed to riding at night, yet now they had made no halt for many hours and Ned could feel not only the growing weariness of his own body, but also that of his garron, which was picking his way with increasing difficulty through the sticky sweep of dense snow.

"We ought stay for the night," he told the Kingslayer. "The garrons are tired."

Lannister shrugged, hardly even giving Ned a glance. "You are the commander," he said lazily. "Command!"

Eddard sighed inwardly. It would seem that over the years on the Wall he had also grown accustomed to a puzzle that Jaime Lannister had been to him sith the very beginning of his service in the Night's Watch, yet as he stopped his garron ata wood glade and began to gather branches to set a fire, he caught himself involuntarily trying to unravel it once again.

They both had come to Castle Black from King's Landing on the same day, but scarcely even speaking a word to each other along the way. Ned had never therebefore known Lannister well, yet it had been enough to bear little love for him, and he might easily note the dislike had been reciprocated. The coming years had barely changed that. Jaime was as much a gifted swordsman, belike best Ned had ever seen, as he was proud and arrogant, speaking little to any of his fellow brothers and even less of the Night's Watch concerns taking seriously to heart. Ned thought ofttimes there was no thing in the world Lannister would not laugh at. He cared for no one and nothing, responding, as it seemed, to all that life brought him with the same shrug. Even at his own trial before the newly crowned Rhaegar Targaryen he had said nigh nought to defend himself, nor his version of the story. Not a word of a conflagration, far redder, higher and greater than Targaryens' castle itself, said to had been 'sun that sprayed into a thousand flames up on Aegon's Hill', that had devoured half of the Red Keep and far more of its dwellers.

"Fire is a strange, amusing thing, isn't it, Stark?" he had told Ned once whilst one of their first rangings, his brightly green eyes queerly bogged into flickering flames. "At times a boon, at times a curse. Both good and ill."

Ned twired at him, never hitherto suspecting Jaime of such pensiveness. "As so many things in world," he said hesitantly. "Men just need know how to use them, lest they not turn ignoble in the end."

"Obviously," Lannister said. "And you do always seem to have easy clarity what's good or wrong, do you not? I've never had that privilege."

For a whit of a while Ned had thought him for some reason being sincere ere he had acknowledged that Lannister had been merely mocking him as usual.

Now Jaime was sitting the same way by the fire he had built a moment before, yet spoke not. He was leaning carelessly with his back against a fat tree trunk, with legs outstretched, his sword resting just out of reach, lying in its scabbard 'mongst the snow. Ned glanced at him fleetingly, but said nought as well, merely tossed the collected wood atop the others' mound, then sat, resting his arms on his knees. Fire was a strange thing indeed, the Kingslayer had spoken the truth, he could not help but think whenas got some water, then pulled bread and a piece of dried salted meat from his bundle, and began to chew slowly.

'The True Dragon', the folk had named Rhaegar Targaryen after the Trident, and they kept saying therewithal that fire had been what helped him on the battlefield. It was said fire had been in Rhaegar's eyes, and they had blazed red like two suns, and that afire had been his sword, and that even the river's waters might not stifle it as he met Robert 'mongst them to fight him. Ned had not seen that with his own eyes. He erst had been on the battle's other wing, then wounded badly enough to awake only whenas it had all been over... After Robert's death, after the Trident, after Rhaegar's victory, after the Rebellion's failure.

Thereafter, though, the same fire had played a cruel trick on Rhaegar Targaryen, and that were also those mysterious circumstances due to which Jaime had been forced to take black that once and again had niggled Ned somehow till now, even if such musings left him displeased with himself. What for forethinking that, after all?

Whenas Rhaegar had defeated Robert and their armies, and returned from war, he had found the whole Red Keep in ruins, engulfed by an eerie and horrible fire, and the rumours had been that he had also found Jaime Lannister on the Iron Throne (allegedly one of few things having survived the blaze), with both his own blood-stained longsword and the mostly charred corpse of Aerys Targaryen lying at his feet. That was what Ned had heard.

They said Rhaegar had willed to kill Jaime thereafter, but voices had been many: some had claimed it had not been Lannister but the fire that had slain the Mad King, others that Jaime had slain him justly to save the city, for it had been Aerys himself who had bid the fire to be started, the townsfolk hailing Lannister as both traitor and hero, the Kingslayer and the Flameslayer. All had seemed to have something to say, all but two: Jaime himself and Tywin Lannister, who had spoken not a word during his son's trial, both of them equally mute. And thereafter, Jaime had ended on the Wall, and Tywin had become Rhaegar's Hand as he had been his father's, and Cersei Lannister had wed the new king 'mongst the red ruins of stones and on Elia's Targaryen fresh grave 'midst them, her fate burned to ashes by the voracious fire...

As Ned caught himself watching Jaime's motionless profile, he shifted his eyes swiftly to flames frolicking in the firepit, growing high like weeds, yet Lannister noticed nonetheless, despite his eyelids being half-closed and his gaze half-absent.

"I will take the first watch," was all he said, though, more to the black depth of the wood he was dispassionately staring into than to Eddard.

He awoke to find the forest bathed in full darkness, Jaime's hair falling over him like wisps of grey-white light as he crouched beside him, hissing a whisper, "Stark!"

What is it?, Ned's eyes at once asked alertly, but Lannister answered them not, merely picked himself up and began to walk into the wood, treading the litter quietly and carefully, showing Ned to go after him. Having frowned, Eddard raised amain and followed his comrade's steps.

Eftsoons he descried poor glims coming from below, from a hollow of land behind an escarpment, immingling with vapours of rare mist and colouring it a yellow as pale as birch dust, and he realised that someone encamped there. Voices began to reach him as well. At first Ned thought that the distance and the wall of the scarp was muffling them and therefor he might not understand the words, yet he erelong grasped that it was the whole speech he did not understand, one that he had never hitherto heard, unpleasant speech, sharp as the sound of knives grinding and snarling as a rale of a dying animal. He frowned even more.

Whenas they almost reached the very edge of the scarp, Lannister hid behind a sentinel's trunk, quiet as a shadow, and with a fleet move of his head pointed down at the camp, showing Ned to look as well. Eddard chose another tree, equally close to the slope's edge, and warily peeked from behind the trunk, his eyes wandering downwards, to the voices' source, and anon widening in astonishment like platters.

There were around a score of them, creatures, for Ned could scarcely name them men. No, men they might not be, as impossible and unbelievable as it might seem... and if they were, they were all malformed in a way Ned had never seen or heard of, their figures short and crooked like twisted roots, skin dark and sere like ash, seeming stiff and dead as stone, savaged with queer ripples as uneven ground, ears oddly pointed. There was, however, something more fremd and non-mannish about them than the appearance: cruel and hostile ferociousness beaming from their faces and laughs that made Ned involuntarily dart a step back and grasp his sword's hilt tightly.

He turned to Lannister afterwards to spot a scrap of his face in the foggy half-light that was reaching it. Jaime's brows were dismissively raised, but his eyes held genuine bewilderment that Ned had never seen in them therebefore.

Ty for reading! :) So sorry it's short and merely half of the chap again - I've recently had very little time to edit things, hope that'll change soon!