The ashes fell like a soft grey snow.
He padded over dry needles and brown leaves, to the edge of the
wood where the pines grew thin. Beyond the open fields he could see
the great piles of man-rock stark against the swirling flames. The
wind blew hot and rich with the smell of blood and burnt meat, so
strong he began to slaver.
Yet as one smell drew them onward, others warned them back. He
sniffed at the drifting smoke. Men, many men, many horses, and
fire, fire, fire. No smell was more dangerous, not even the hard
cold smell of iron, the stuff of man-claws and hardskin. The smoke
and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged
snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then
the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the
stars.
All through the night the fires crackled, and once there was a
great roar and a crash that made the earth jump under his feet.
Dogs barked and whined and horses screamed in terror. Howls
shuddered through the night; the howls of the man-pack, wails of
fear and wild shouts, laughter and screams. No beast was as noisy
as man. He pricked up his ears and listened, and his brother
growled at every sound. They prowled under the trees as a piney
wind blew ashes and embers through the sky. In time the flames
began to dwindle, and then they were gone. The sun rose grey and
smoky that morning.
Only then did he leave the trees, stalking slow
across the fields. His brother ran with him, drawn to the smell of
blood and death. They padded silent through the dens the men had
built of wood and grass and mud. Many and more were burned and many
and more were collapsed; others stood as they had before. Yet
nowhere did they see or scent a living man. Crows blanketed the
bodies and leapt into the air screeching when his brother and he
came near. The wild dogs slunk away before them.
Beneath the great grey cliffs a horse was dying noisily,
struggling to rise on a broken leg and screaming when he fell. His
brother circled round him, then tore out his throat while the horse
kicked feebly and rolled his eyes. When he approached the carcass
his brother snapped at him and laid back his ears, and he cuffed
him with a forepaw and bit his leg. They fought amidst the grass
and dirt and falling ashes beside the dead horse, until his brother
rolled on his back in submission, tail tucked low. One more bite at
his upturned throat; then he fed, and let his brother feed, and
licked the blood off his black fur.
The dark place was pulling at him by then, the house of whispers
where all men were blind. He could feel its cold fingers on him.
The stony smell of it was a whisper up the nose. He struggled
against the pull. He did not like the darkness. He was wolf. He was
hunter and stalker and slayer, and he belonged with his brothers
and sisters in the deep woods, running free beneath a starry sky.
He sat on his haunches, raised his head, and howled. I will not go,
he cried. I am wolf, I will not go. Yet even so the darkness
thickened, until it covered his eyes and filled his nose and
stopped his ears, so he could not see or smell or hear or run, and
the grey cliffs were gone and the dead horse was gone and his
brother was gone and all was black and still and black and cold and
black and dead and black . . .
“Bran,” a voice was whispering softly. “Bran,
come back. Come back now, Bran.
Bran . . . ”
He closed his third eye and opened the other two, the old two,
the blind two. In the dark place all men were blind. But someone
was holding him. He could feel arms around him, the warmth of a
body snuggled close. He could hear Hodor singing “Hodor,
hodor, hodor,” quietly to himself.
“Bran?” It was Meera’s voice. “You were
thrashing, making terrible noises. What did you see?”
“Winterfell.” His tongue felt strange and thick in
his mouth. One day when I come back I won’t know how to talk
anymore. “It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were
horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone,
Meera.”
He felt her hand on his face, stroking back his hair.
“You’re all sweaty,” she said. “Do you need
a drink?”
“A drink,” he agreed. She held a skin to his lips,
and Bran swallowed so fast the water ran out of the corner of his
mouth. He was always weak and thirsty when he came back. And hungry
too. He remembered the dying horse, the taste of blood in his
mouth, the smell of burnt flesh in the morning air. “How
long?”
“Three days,” said Jojen. The boy had come up
softfoot, or perhaps he had been there all along; in this blind
black world, Bran could not have said. “We were afraid for
you.”
“I was with Summer,” Bran said.
“Too long. You’ll starve yourself. Meera dribbled a
little water down your throat, and we smeared honey on your mouth,
but it is not enough.”
“I ate,” said Bran. “We ran down an elk and
had to drive off a treecat that tried to steal him.” The cat
had been tan-and-brown, only half the size of the direwolves, but
fierce. He remembered the musky smell of him, and the way he had
snarled down at them from the limb of the oak.
“The wolf ate,” Jojen said. “Not you. Take
care, Bran. Remember who you are.”
He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the
broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would
sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill
damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He
could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched
Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He
could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back
now. Bran used the strength of his arms to squirm to a sitting
position. “I have to tell Osha what I saw. Is she here? Where
did she go?”
The wildling woman herself gave answer. “Nowhere,
m’lord. I’ve had my fill o’ blundering in the
black.” He heard the scrape of a heel on stone, turned his
head toward the sound, but saw nothing. He thought he could smell
her, but he wasn’t sure. All of them stank alike, and he did
not have Summer’s nose to tell one from the other.
“Last night I pissed on a king’s foot,” Osha went
on. “Might be it was morning, who can say? I was sleeping,
but now I’m not.” They all slept a lot, not only Bran.
There was nothing else to do, Sleep and eat and sleep again, and
sometimes talk a little . . . but not too much,
and only in whispers, just to be safe. Osha might have liked it
better if they had never talked at all, but there was no way to
quiet Rickon, or to stop Hodor from muttering, “Hodor, hodor,
hodor,” endlessly to himself.
“Osha,” Bran said, “I saw Winterfell
burning.” Off to his left, he could hear the soft sound of
Rickon’s breathing.
“A dream,” said Osha.
“A wolf dream,” said Bran. “I smelled it too.
Nothing smells like fire, or blood.”
“Whose blood?”
“Men, horses, dogs, everyone. We have to go
see.”
“This scrawny skin of mine’s the only one I
got,” said Osha. “That squid prince catches hold
o’ me, they’ll strip it off my back with a
whip.”
Meera’s hand found Bran’s in the darkness and gave
his fingers a squeeze. “I’ll go if you’re
afraid.”
Bran heard fingers fumbling at leather, followed by the sound of
steel on flint. Then again. A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly.
A long pale flame awoke, stretching upward like a girl on her toes.
Osha’s face floated above it. She touched the flame with the
head of a torch. Bran had to squint as the pitch began to burn,
filling the world with orange glare. The light woke Rickon, who sat
up yawning.
When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead
were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their
father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos
the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell,
one-eyed Lord Jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan
who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat
with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the
warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of
the dead, where the living feared to tread.
And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard
Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives
huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat.
“Little enough left,” Osha muttered as she blinked down
on their stores. “I’d need to go up soon to steal food
in any case, or we’d be down to eating Hodor.”
“Hodor,” Hodor said, grinning at her.
“Is it day or night up there?” Osha wondered.
“I’ve lost all count o’ such.”
“Day,” Bran told her, “but it’s dark
from all the smoke.”
“M’lord is certain?”
Never moving his broken body, he reached out all the same, and
for an instant he was seeing double. There stood Osha holding the
torch, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor, and the double row of tall
granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away
into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as
well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates
charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains
and missing planks. Bodies floated in the moat, islands for the
crows.
“Certain,” he declared.
Osha chewed on that a moment. “I’ll risk a look
then. I want the lot o’ you close behind. Meera, get
Bran’s basket.”
“Are we going home?” Rickon asked excitedly.
“I want my horse. And I want applecakes and butter and honey,
and Shaggy. Are we going where Shaggydog is?”
“Yes,” Bran promised, “but you have to be
quiet.”
Meera strapped the wicker basket to Hodor’s back and
helped lift Bran into it, easing his useless legs through the
holes. He had a queer flutter in his belly. He knew what awaited
them above, but that did not make it any less fearful. As they set
off, he turned to give his father one last look, and it seemed to
Bran that there was a sadness in Lord Eddard’s eyes, as if he
did not want them to go. We have to, he thought. It’s
time.
Osha carried her long oaken spear in one hand and the torch in
the other. A naked sword hung down her back, one of the last to
bear Mikken’s mark. He had forged it for Lord Eddard’s
tomb, to keep his ghost at rest. But with Mikken slain and the
ironmen guarding the armory, good steel had been hard to resist,
even if it meant grave-robbing. Meera had claimed Lord
Rickard’s blade, though she complained that it was too heavy.
Brandon took his namesake’s, the sword made for the uncle he
had never known. He knew he would not be much use in a fight, but
even so the blade felt good in his hand.
But it was only a game, and Bran knew it.
Their footsteps echoed through the cavernous crypts. The shadows
behind them swallowed his father as the shadows ahead retreated to
unveil other statues; no mere lords, these, but the old Kings in
the North. On their brows they wore stone crowns. Torrhen Stark,
the King Who Knelt. Edwyn the Spring King. Theon Stark, the Hungry
Wolf. Brandon the Burner and Brandon the Shipwright. Jorah and
Jonos, Brandon the Bad, Walton the Moon King, Edderion the
Bridegroom, Eyron, Benjen the Sweet and Benjen the Bitter, King
Edrick Snowbeard. Their faces were stern and strong, and some of
them had done terrible things, but they were Starks every one, and
Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts; they
were part of his home and who he was, and he had always known that
one day he would lie here too.
But now he was not so certain. If I go up, will I ever come back
down? Where will I go when I die?
“Wait,” Osha said when they reached the twisting
stone stairs that led up to the surface, and down to the deeper
levels where kings more ancient still sat their dark thrones. She
handed Meera the torch. “I’ll grope my way up.”
For a time they could hear the sound of her footfalls, but they
grew softer and softer until they faded away entirely.
“Hodor,” said Hodor nervously.
Bran had told himself a hundred times how much he hated hiding
down here in the dark, how much he wanted to see the sun again, to
ride his horse through wind and rain. But now that the moment was
upon him, he was afraid. He’d felt safe in the darkness; when
you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was
easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the
stone lords had given him courage. Even when he could not see them,
he had known they were there.
It seemed a long while before they heard anything again. Bran
had begun to fear that something had happened to Osha. His brother
was squirming restlessly. “I want to go home!” he said
loudly. Hodor bobbed his head and said, “Hodor.” Then
they heard the footsteps again, growing louder, and after a few
minutes Osha emerged into the light, looking grim. “Something
is blocking the door. I can’t move it.”
“Hodor can move anything,” said Bran.
Osha gave the huge stableboy an appraising look. “Might be
he can. Come on, then.”
The steps were narrow, so they had to climb in single file. Osha
led. Behind came Hodor, with Bran crouched low on his back so his
head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. Meera followed with the torch,
and Jojen brought up the rear, leading Rickon by the hand. Around
and around they went, and up and up. Bran thought he could smell
smoke now, but perhaps that was only the torch.
The door to the crypts was made of ironwood. It was old and
heavy, and lay at a slant to the ground. Only one person could
approach it at a time. Osha tried once more when she reached it,
but Bran could see that it was not budging. “Let Hodor
try.”
They had to pull Bran from his basket first, so he would not get
squished. Meera squatted beside him on the steps, one arm thrown
protectively across his shoulders, as Osha and Hodor traded places.
“Open the door, Hodor,” Bran said.
The huge stableboy put both hands flat on the door, pushed, and
grunted. “Hodor?” He slammed a fist against the wood,
and it did not so much as jump. “Hodor.”
“Use your back,” urged Bran. “And your
legs.”
Turning, Hodor put his back to the wood and shoved. Again.
Again. “Hodor!” He put one foot on a higher step so he
was bent under the slant of the door and tried to rise. This time
the wood groaned and creaked. “Hodor!” The other foot
came up a step, and Hodor spread his legs apart, braced, and
straightened. His face turned red, and Bran could see cords in his
neck bulging as he strained against the weight above him.
“Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor HODOR!” From above came
a dull rumble. Then suddenly the door jerked upward and a shaft of
daylight fell across Bran’s face, blinding him for a moment.
Another shove brought the sound of shifting stone, and then the way
was open. Osha poked her spear through and slid out after it, and
Rickon squirmed through Meera’s legs to follow. Hodor shoved
the door open all the way and stepped to the surface. The Reeds had
to carry Bran up the last few steps.
The sky was a pale grey, and smoke eddied all around them. They
stood in the shadow of the First Keep, or what remained of it. One
whole side of the building had torn loose and fallen away. Stone
and shattered gargoyles lay strewn across the yard. They fell just
where I did, Bran thought when he saw them. Some of the gargoyles
had broken into so many pieces it made him wonder how he was alive
at all. Nearby some crows were pecking at a body crushed beneath
the tumbled stone, but he lay facedown and Bran could not say who
he was.
The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but
now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside
it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could
see right into the rooms, even into the privy. Yet behind, the
broken tower still stood, no more burned than before. Jojen Reed
was coughing from the smoke. “Take me home!” Rickon
demanded. “I want to be home!” Hodor stomped in a
circle. “Hodor,” he whimpered in a small voice. They
stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.
“We made noise enough to wake a dragon,” Osha said,
“but there’s no one come. The castle’s dead and
burned, just as Bran dreamed, but we had best—” She
broke off suddenly at a noise behind them, and whirled with her
spear at the ready.
Two lean dark shapes emerged from behind the broken tower,
padding slowly through the rubble. Rickon gave a happy shout of
“Shaggy!” and the black direwolf came bounding toward
him. Summer advanced more slowly, rubbed his head up against
Bran’s arm, and licked his face.
“We should go,” said Jojen. “So much death
will bring other wolves besides Summer and Shaggydog, and not all
on four feet.”
“Aye, soon enough,” Osha agreed, “but we need
food, and there may be some survived this, Stay together. Meera,
keep your shield up and guard our backs.”
It took the rest of
the morning to make a slow circuit of the castle. The great granite
walls remained, blackened here and there by fire but otherwise
untouched. But within, all was death and destruction. The doors of
the Great Hall were charred and smoldering, and inside the rafters
had given way and the whole roof had crashed down onto the floor.
The green and yellow panes of the glass gardens were all in shards,
the trees and fruits and flowers torn up or left exposed to die. Of
the stables, made of wood and thatch, nothing remained but ashes,
embers, and dead horses. Bran thought of his Dancer, and wanted to
weep. There was a shallow steaming lake beneath the Library Tower,
and hot water gushing from a crack in its side. The bridge between
the Bell Tower and the rookery had collapsed into the yard below,
and Maester Luwin’s turret was gone. They saw a dull red glow
shining up through the narrow cellar windows beneath the Great
Keep, and a second fire still burning in one of the
storehouses.
Osha called softly through the blowing smoke as they went, but
no one answered. They saw one dog worrying at a corpse, but he ran
when he caught the scents of the direwolves; the rest had been
slain in the kennels. The maester’s ravens were paying court
to some of the corpses, while the crows from the broken tower
attended others. Bran recognized Poxy Tym, even though someone had
taken an axe to his face. One charred corpse, outside the ashen
shell of Mother’s sept, sat with his arms drawn up and his
hands balled into hard black fists, as if to punch anyone who dared
approach him. “If the gods are good,” Osha said in a
low angry voice, “the Others will take them that did this
work.”
“It was Theon,” Bran said blackly.
“No. Look.” She pointed across the yard with her
spear. “That’s one of his ironmen. And there. And
that’s Greyjoy’s warhorse, see? The black one with the
arrows in him.” She moved among the dead, frowning.
“And here’s Black Lorren.” He had been hacked and
cut so badly that his beard looked a reddish-brown now. “Took
a few with him, he did.” Osha turned over one of the other
corpses with her foot. “There’s a badge. A little man,
all red.”
“The flayed man of the Dreadfort,” said Bran.
Summer howled, and darted away.
“The godswood.” Meera Reed ran after the direwolf,
her shield and frog spear to hand. The rest of them trailed after,
threading their way through smoke and fallen stones. The air was
sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had
been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had
defeated the flames. “There is a power in living wood,”
said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking,
“a power strong as fire.”
On the edge of the black pool, beneath the shelter of the heart
tree, Maester Luwin lay on his belly in the dirt. A trail of blood
twisted back through damp leaves where he had crawled. Summer stood
over him, and Bran thought he was dead at first, but when Meera
touched his throat, the maester moaned. “Hodor?” Hodor
said mournfully. “Hodor?”
Gently, they eased Luwin onto his back. He had grey eyes and
grey hair, and once his robes had been grey as well, but they were
darker now where the blood had soaked through. “Bran,”
he said softly when he saw him sitting tall on Hodor’s back.
“And Rickon too.” He smiled. “The gods are good.
I knew . . . ”
“Knew?” said Bran uncertainly.
“The legs, I could tell . . . the
clothes fit, but the muscles in his
legs . . . poor
lad . . . ” He coughed, and blood came up
from inside him. “You vanished . . . in
the woods . . . how, though?”
“We never went,” said Bran. “Well, only to the
edge, and then doubled back. I sent the wolves on to make a trail,
but we hid in Father’s tomb.”
“The crypts.” Luwin chuckled, a froth of blood on
his lips. When the maester tried to move, he gave a sharp gasp of
pain.
Tears filled Bran’s eyes. When a man was hurt you took him
to the maester, but what could you do when your maester was
hurt?
“We’ll need to make a litter to carry him,”
said Osha.
“No use,” said Luwin. “I’m dying,
woman.”
“You can’t,” said Rickon angrily. “No
you can’t.” Beside him, Shaggydog bared his teeth and
growled.
The maester smiled. “Hush now, child, I’m much older
than you. I can . . . die as I
please.”
“Hodor, down,” said Bran. Hodor went to his knees
beside the maester.
“Listen,” Luwin said to Osha, “the
princes . . . Robb’s heirs.
Not . . . not
together . . . do you hear?”
The wildling woman leaned on her spear. “Aye. Safer apart.
But where to take them? I’d thought, might be these
Cerwyns . . . ”
Maester Luwin shook his head, though it was plain to see what
the effort cost him. “Cerwyn boy’s dead. Ser Rodrik,
Leobald Tallhart, Lady Hornwood . . . all
slain. Deepwood fallen, Moat Cailin, soon Torrhen’s Square.
Ironmen on the Stony Shore. And east, the Bastard of
Bolton.”
“Then where?” asked Osha.
“White Harbor . . . the
Umbers . . . I do not
know . . . war
everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor,
and winter coming . . . such folly, such black
mad folly . . . ” Maester Luwin reached
up and grasped Bran’s forearm, his fingers closing with a
desperate strength. “You must be strong now.
Strong.”
“I will be,” Bran said, though it was hard. Ser
Rodrik killed and Maester Luwin, everyone,
everyone . . .
“Good,” the maester said. “A good boy.
Your . . . your father’s son, Bran. Now
go.”
Osha gazed up at the weirwood, at the red face carved in the
pale trunk. “And leave you for the gods?”
“I beg . . . ” The maester
swallowed. “A . . . a drink of water,
and . . . another boon. If you would . . . ”
“Aye.” She turned to Meera. “Take the
boys.”
Jojen and Meera led Rickon out between them. Hodor followed. Low
branches whipped at Bran’s face as they pushed between the
trees, and the leaves brushed away his tears. Osha joined them in
the yard a few moments later. She said no word of Maester Luwin.
“Hodor must stay with Bran, to be his legs,” the
wildling woman said briskly. “I will take Rickon with
me.”
“We’ll go with Bran,” said Jojen Reed.
“Aye, I thought you might,” said Osha.
“Believe I’ll try the East Gate, and follow the
kingsroad a ways.”
“We’ll take the Hunter’s Gate,” said
Meera.
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
They stopped at the kitchens first. Osha found some loaves of
burned bread that were still edible, and even a cold roast fowl
that she ripped in half. Meera unearthed a crock of honey and a big
sack of apples. Outside, they made their farewells. Rickon sobbed
and clung to Hodor’s leg until Osha gave him a smack with the
butt end of her spear. Then he followed her quick enough. Shaggydog
stalked after them. The last Bran saw of them was the
direwolf’s tail as it vanished behind the broken tower.
The iron portcullis that closed the Hunter’s Gate had been
warped so badly by heat it could not be raised more than a foot.
They had to squeeze beneath its spikes, one by one.
“Will we go to your lord father?” Bran asked as they
crossed the drawbridge between the walls. “To Greywater
Watch?”
Meera looked to her brother for the answer. “Our road is
north,” Jojen announced.
At the edge of the wolfswood, Bran turned in his basket for one
last glimpse of the castle that had been his life. Wisps of smoke
still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen
from Winterfell’s chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot
stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack
or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it
seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the
keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and
it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at
all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees
go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their
thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not
dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I’m not dead
either.
The ashes fell like a soft grey snow.
He padded over dry needles and brown leaves, to the edge of the
wood where the pines grew thin. Beyond the open fields he could see
the great piles of man-rock stark against the swirling flames. The
wind blew hot and rich with the smell of blood and burnt meat, so
strong he began to slaver.
Yet as one smell drew them onward, others warned them back. He
sniffed at the drifting smoke. Men, many men, many horses, and
fire, fire, fire. No smell was more dangerous, not even the hard
cold smell of iron, the stuff of man-claws and hardskin. The smoke
and ash clouded his eyes, and in the sky he saw a great winged
snake whose roar was a river of flame. He bared his teeth, but then
the snake was gone. Behind the cliffs tall fires were eating up the
stars.
All through the night the fires crackled, and once there was a
great roar and a crash that made the earth jump under his feet.
Dogs barked and whined and horses screamed in terror. Howls
shuddered through the night; the howls of the man-pack, wails of
fear and wild shouts, laughter and screams. No beast was as noisy
as man. He pricked up his ears and listened, and his brother
growled at every sound. They prowled under the trees as a piney
wind blew ashes and embers through the sky. In time the flames
began to dwindle, and then they were gone. The sun rose grey and
smoky that morning.
Only then did he leave the trees, stalking slow
across the fields. His brother ran with him, drawn to the smell of
blood and death. They padded silent through the dens the men had
built of wood and grass and mud. Many and more were burned and many
and more were collapsed; others stood as they had before. Yet
nowhere did they see or scent a living man. Crows blanketed the
bodies and leapt into the air screeching when his brother and he
came near. The wild dogs slunk away before them.
Beneath the great grey cliffs a horse was dying noisily,
struggling to rise on a broken leg and screaming when he fell. His
brother circled round him, then tore out his throat while the horse
kicked feebly and rolled his eyes. When he approached the carcass
his brother snapped at him and laid back his ears, and he cuffed
him with a forepaw and bit his leg. They fought amidst the grass
and dirt and falling ashes beside the dead horse, until his brother
rolled on his back in submission, tail tucked low. One more bite at
his upturned throat; then he fed, and let his brother feed, and
licked the blood off his black fur.
The dark place was pulling at him by then, the house of whispers
where all men were blind. He could feel its cold fingers on him.
The stony smell of it was a whisper up the nose. He struggled
against the pull. He did not like the darkness. He was wolf. He was
hunter and stalker and slayer, and he belonged with his brothers
and sisters in the deep woods, running free beneath a starry sky.
He sat on his haunches, raised his head, and howled. I will not go,
he cried. I am wolf, I will not go. Yet even so the darkness
thickened, until it covered his eyes and filled his nose and
stopped his ears, so he could not see or smell or hear or run, and
the grey cliffs were gone and the dead horse was gone and his
brother was gone and all was black and still and black and cold and
black and dead and black . . .
“Bran,” a voice was whispering softly. “Bran,
come back. Come back now, Bran.
Bran . . . ”
He closed his third eye and opened the other two, the old two,
the blind two. In the dark place all men were blind. But someone
was holding him. He could feel arms around him, the warmth of a
body snuggled close. He could hear Hodor singing “Hodor,
hodor, hodor,” quietly to himself.
“Bran?” It was Meera’s voice. “You were
thrashing, making terrible noises. What did you see?”
“Winterfell.” His tongue felt strange and thick in
his mouth. One day when I come back I won’t know how to talk
anymore. “It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were
horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone,
Meera.”
He felt her hand on his face, stroking back his hair.
“You’re all sweaty,” she said. “Do you need
a drink?”
“A drink,” he agreed. She held a skin to his lips,
and Bran swallowed so fast the water ran out of the corner of his
mouth. He was always weak and thirsty when he came back. And hungry
too. He remembered the dying horse, the taste of blood in his
mouth, the smell of burnt flesh in the morning air. “How
long?”
“Three days,” said Jojen. The boy had come up
softfoot, or perhaps he had been there all along; in this blind
black world, Bran could not have said. “We were afraid for
you.”
“I was with Summer,” Bran said.
“Too long. You’ll starve yourself. Meera dribbled a
little water down your throat, and we smeared honey on your mouth,
but it is not enough.”
“I ate,” said Bran. “We ran down an elk and
had to drive off a treecat that tried to steal him.” The cat
had been tan-and-brown, only half the size of the direwolves, but
fierce. He remembered the musky smell of him, and the way he had
snarled down at them from the limb of the oak.
“The wolf ate,” Jojen said. “Not you. Take
care, Bran. Remember who you are.”
He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the
broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would
sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill
damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He
could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched
Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He
could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back
now. Bran used the strength of his arms to squirm to a sitting
position. “I have to tell Osha what I saw. Is she here? Where
did she go?”
The wildling woman herself gave answer. “Nowhere,
m’lord. I’ve had my fill o’ blundering in the
black.” He heard the scrape of a heel on stone, turned his
head toward the sound, but saw nothing. He thought he could smell
her, but he wasn’t sure. All of them stank alike, and he did
not have Summer’s nose to tell one from the other.
“Last night I pissed on a king’s foot,” Osha went
on. “Might be it was morning, who can say? I was sleeping,
but now I’m not.” They all slept a lot, not only Bran.
There was nothing else to do, Sleep and eat and sleep again, and
sometimes talk a little . . . but not too much,
and only in whispers, just to be safe. Osha might have liked it
better if they had never talked at all, but there was no way to
quiet Rickon, or to stop Hodor from muttering, “Hodor, hodor,
hodor,” endlessly to himself.
“Osha,” Bran said, “I saw Winterfell
burning.” Off to his left, he could hear the soft sound of
Rickon’s breathing.
“A dream,” said Osha.
“A wolf dream,” said Bran. “I smelled it too.
Nothing smells like fire, or blood.”
“Whose blood?”
“Men, horses, dogs, everyone. We have to go
see.”
“This scrawny skin of mine’s the only one I
got,” said Osha. “That squid prince catches hold
o’ me, they’ll strip it off my back with a
whip.”
Meera’s hand found Bran’s in the darkness and gave
his fingers a squeeze. “I’ll go if you’re
afraid.”
Bran heard fingers fumbling at leather, followed by the sound of
steel on flint. Then again. A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly.
A long pale flame awoke, stretching upward like a girl on her toes.
Osha’s face floated above it. She touched the flame with the
head of a torch. Bran had to squint as the pitch began to burn,
filling the world with orange glare. The light woke Rickon, who sat
up yawning.
When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead
were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their
father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos
the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell,
one-eyed Lord Jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan
who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat
with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the
warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of
the dead, where the living feared to tread.
And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard
Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives
huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat.
“Little enough left,” Osha muttered as she blinked down
on their stores. “I’d need to go up soon to steal food
in any case, or we’d be down to eating Hodor.”
“Hodor,” Hodor said, grinning at her.
“Is it day or night up there?” Osha wondered.
“I’ve lost all count o’ such.”
“Day,” Bran told her, “but it’s dark
from all the smoke.”
“M’lord is certain?”
Never moving his broken body, he reached out all the same, and
for an instant he was seeing double. There stood Osha holding the
torch, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor, and the double row of tall
granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away
into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as
well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates
charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains
and missing planks. Bodies floated in the moat, islands for the
crows.
“Certain,” he declared.
Osha chewed on that a moment. “I’ll risk a look
then. I want the lot o’ you close behind. Meera, get
Bran’s basket.”
“Are we going home?” Rickon asked excitedly.
“I want my horse. And I want applecakes and butter and honey,
and Shaggy. Are we going where Shaggydog is?”
“Yes,” Bran promised, “but you have to be
quiet.”
Meera strapped the wicker basket to Hodor’s back and
helped lift Bran into it, easing his useless legs through the
holes. He had a queer flutter in his belly. He knew what awaited
them above, but that did not make it any less fearful. As they set
off, he turned to give his father one last look, and it seemed to
Bran that there was a sadness in Lord Eddard’s eyes, as if he
did not want them to go. We have to, he thought. It’s
time.
Osha carried her long oaken spear in one hand and the torch in
the other. A naked sword hung down her back, one of the last to
bear Mikken’s mark. He had forged it for Lord Eddard’s
tomb, to keep his ghost at rest. But with Mikken slain and the
ironmen guarding the armory, good steel had been hard to resist,
even if it meant grave-robbing. Meera had claimed Lord
Rickard’s blade, though she complained that it was too heavy.
Brandon took his namesake’s, the sword made for the uncle he
had never known. He knew he would not be much use in a fight, but
even so the blade felt good in his hand.
But it was only a game, and Bran knew it.
Their footsteps echoed through the cavernous crypts. The shadows
behind them swallowed his father as the shadows ahead retreated to
unveil other statues; no mere lords, these, but the old Kings in
the North. On their brows they wore stone crowns. Torrhen Stark,
the King Who Knelt. Edwyn the Spring King. Theon Stark, the Hungry
Wolf. Brandon the Burner and Brandon the Shipwright. Jorah and
Jonos, Brandon the Bad, Walton the Moon King, Edderion the
Bridegroom, Eyron, Benjen the Sweet and Benjen the Bitter, King
Edrick Snowbeard. Their faces were stern and strong, and some of
them had done terrible things, but they were Starks every one, and
Bran knew all their tales. He had never feared the crypts; they
were part of his home and who he was, and he had always known that
one day he would lie here too.
But now he was not so certain. If I go up, will I ever come back
down? Where will I go when I die?
“Wait,” Osha said when they reached the twisting
stone stairs that led up to the surface, and down to the deeper
levels where kings more ancient still sat their dark thrones. She
handed Meera the torch. “I’ll grope my way up.”
For a time they could hear the sound of her footfalls, but they
grew softer and softer until they faded away entirely.
“Hodor,” said Hodor nervously.
Bran had told himself a hundred times how much he hated hiding
down here in the dark, how much he wanted to see the sun again, to
ride his horse through wind and rain. But now that the moment was
upon him, he was afraid. He’d felt safe in the darkness; when
you could not even find your own hand in front of your face, it was
easy to believe that no enemies could ever find you either. And the
stone lords had given him courage. Even when he could not see them,
he had known they were there.
It seemed a long while before they heard anything again. Bran
had begun to fear that something had happened to Osha. His brother
was squirming restlessly. “I want to go home!” he said
loudly. Hodor bobbed his head and said, “Hodor.” Then
they heard the footsteps again, growing louder, and after a few
minutes Osha emerged into the light, looking grim. “Something
is blocking the door. I can’t move it.”
“Hodor can move anything,” said Bran.
Osha gave the huge stableboy an appraising look. “Might be
he can. Come on, then.”
The steps were narrow, so they had to climb in single file. Osha
led. Behind came Hodor, with Bran crouched low on his back so his
head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. Meera followed with the torch,
and Jojen brought up the rear, leading Rickon by the hand. Around
and around they went, and up and up. Bran thought he could smell
smoke now, but perhaps that was only the torch.
The door to the crypts was made of ironwood. It was old and
heavy, and lay at a slant to the ground. Only one person could
approach it at a time. Osha tried once more when she reached it,
but Bran could see that it was not budging. “Let Hodor
try.”
They had to pull Bran from his basket first, so he would not get
squished. Meera squatted beside him on the steps, one arm thrown
protectively across his shoulders, as Osha and Hodor traded places.
“Open the door, Hodor,” Bran said.
The huge stableboy put both hands flat on the door, pushed, and
grunted. “Hodor?” He slammed a fist against the wood,
and it did not so much as jump. “Hodor.”
“Use your back,” urged Bran. “And your
legs.”
Turning, Hodor put his back to the wood and shoved. Again.
Again. “Hodor!” He put one foot on a higher step so he
was bent under the slant of the door and tried to rise. This time
the wood groaned and creaked. “Hodor!” The other foot
came up a step, and Hodor spread his legs apart, braced, and
straightened. His face turned red, and Bran could see cords in his
neck bulging as he strained against the weight above him.
“Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor HODOR!” From above came
a dull rumble. Then suddenly the door jerked upward and a shaft of
daylight fell across Bran’s face, blinding him for a moment.
Another shove brought the sound of shifting stone, and then the way
was open. Osha poked her spear through and slid out after it, and
Rickon squirmed through Meera’s legs to follow. Hodor shoved
the door open all the way and stepped to the surface. The Reeds had
to carry Bran up the last few steps.
The sky was a pale grey, and smoke eddied all around them. They
stood in the shadow of the First Keep, or what remained of it. One
whole side of the building had torn loose and fallen away. Stone
and shattered gargoyles lay strewn across the yard. They fell just
where I did, Bran thought when he saw them. Some of the gargoyles
had broken into so many pieces it made him wonder how he was alive
at all. Nearby some crows were pecking at a body crushed beneath
the tumbled stone, but he lay facedown and Bran could not say who
he was.
The First Keep had not been used for many hundreds of years, but
now it was more of a shell than ever. The floors had burned inside
it, and all the beams. Where the wall had fallen away, they could
see right into the rooms, even into the privy. Yet behind, the
broken tower still stood, no more burned than before. Jojen Reed
was coughing from the smoke. “Take me home!” Rickon
demanded. “I want to be home!” Hodor stomped in a
circle. “Hodor,” he whimpered in a small voice. They
stood huddled together with ruin and death all around them.
“We made noise enough to wake a dragon,” Osha said,
“but there’s no one come. The castle’s dead and
burned, just as Bran dreamed, but we had best—” She
broke off suddenly at a noise behind them, and whirled with her
spear at the ready.
Two lean dark shapes emerged from behind the broken tower,
padding slowly through the rubble. Rickon gave a happy shout of
“Shaggy!” and the black direwolf came bounding toward
him. Summer advanced more slowly, rubbed his head up against
Bran’s arm, and licked his face.
“We should go,” said Jojen. “So much death
will bring other wolves besides Summer and Shaggydog, and not all
on four feet.”
“Aye, soon enough,” Osha agreed, “but we need
food, and there may be some survived this, Stay together. Meera,
keep your shield up and guard our backs.”
It took the rest of
the morning to make a slow circuit of the castle. The great granite
walls remained, blackened here and there by fire but otherwise
untouched. But within, all was death and destruction. The doors of
the Great Hall were charred and smoldering, and inside the rafters
had given way and the whole roof had crashed down onto the floor.
The green and yellow panes of the glass gardens were all in shards,
the trees and fruits and flowers torn up or left exposed to die. Of
the stables, made of wood and thatch, nothing remained but ashes,
embers, and dead horses. Bran thought of his Dancer, and wanted to
weep. There was a shallow steaming lake beneath the Library Tower,
and hot water gushing from a crack in its side. The bridge between
the Bell Tower and the rookery had collapsed into the yard below,
and Maester Luwin’s turret was gone. They saw a dull red glow
shining up through the narrow cellar windows beneath the Great
Keep, and a second fire still burning in one of the
storehouses.
Osha called softly through the blowing smoke as they went, but
no one answered. They saw one dog worrying at a corpse, but he ran
when he caught the scents of the direwolves; the rest had been
slain in the kennels. The maester’s ravens were paying court
to some of the corpses, while the crows from the broken tower
attended others. Bran recognized Poxy Tym, even though someone had
taken an axe to his face. One charred corpse, outside the ashen
shell of Mother’s sept, sat with his arms drawn up and his
hands balled into hard black fists, as if to punch anyone who dared
approach him. “If the gods are good,” Osha said in a
low angry voice, “the Others will take them that did this
work.”
“It was Theon,” Bran said blackly.
“No. Look.” She pointed across the yard with her
spear. “That’s one of his ironmen. And there. And
that’s Greyjoy’s warhorse, see? The black one with the
arrows in him.” She moved among the dead, frowning.
“And here’s Black Lorren.” He had been hacked and
cut so badly that his beard looked a reddish-brown now. “Took
a few with him, he did.” Osha turned over one of the other
corpses with her foot. “There’s a badge. A little man,
all red.”
“The flayed man of the Dreadfort,” said Bran.
Summer howled, and darted away.
“The godswood.” Meera Reed ran after the direwolf,
her shield and frog spear to hand. The rest of them trailed after,
threading their way through smoke and fallen stones. The air was
sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had
been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had
defeated the flames. “There is a power in living wood,”
said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking,
“a power strong as fire.”
On the edge of the black pool, beneath the shelter of the heart
tree, Maester Luwin lay on his belly in the dirt. A trail of blood
twisted back through damp leaves where he had crawled. Summer stood
over him, and Bran thought he was dead at first, but when Meera
touched his throat, the maester moaned. “Hodor?” Hodor
said mournfully. “Hodor?”
Gently, they eased Luwin onto his back. He had grey eyes and
grey hair, and once his robes had been grey as well, but they were
darker now where the blood had soaked through. “Bran,”
he said softly when he saw him sitting tall on Hodor’s back.
“And Rickon too.” He smiled. “The gods are good.
I knew . . . ”
“Knew?” said Bran uncertainly.
“The legs, I could tell . . . the
clothes fit, but the muscles in his
legs . . . poor
lad . . . ” He coughed, and blood came up
from inside him. “You vanished . . . in
the woods . . . how, though?”
“We never went,” said Bran. “Well, only to the
edge, and then doubled back. I sent the wolves on to make a trail,
but we hid in Father’s tomb.”
“The crypts.” Luwin chuckled, a froth of blood on
his lips. When the maester tried to move, he gave a sharp gasp of
pain.
Tears filled Bran’s eyes. When a man was hurt you took him
to the maester, but what could you do when your maester was
hurt?
“We’ll need to make a litter to carry him,”
said Osha.
“No use,” said Luwin. “I’m dying,
woman.”
“You can’t,” said Rickon angrily. “No
you can’t.” Beside him, Shaggydog bared his teeth and
growled.
The maester smiled. “Hush now, child, I’m much older
than you. I can . . . die as I
please.”
“Hodor, down,” said Bran. Hodor went to his knees
beside the maester.
“Listen,” Luwin said to Osha, “the
princes . . . Robb’s heirs.
Not . . . not
together . . . do you hear?”
The wildling woman leaned on her spear. “Aye. Safer apart.
But where to take them? I’d thought, might be these
Cerwyns . . . ”
Maester Luwin shook his head, though it was plain to see what
the effort cost him. “Cerwyn boy’s dead. Ser Rodrik,
Leobald Tallhart, Lady Hornwood . . . all
slain. Deepwood fallen, Moat Cailin, soon Torrhen’s Square.
Ironmen on the Stony Shore. And east, the Bastard of
Bolton.”
“Then where?” asked Osha.
“White Harbor . . . the
Umbers . . . I do not
know . . . war
everywhere . . . each man against his neighbor,
and winter coming . . . such folly, such black
mad folly . . . ” Maester Luwin reached
up and grasped Bran’s forearm, his fingers closing with a
desperate strength. “You must be strong now.
Strong.”
“I will be,” Bran said, though it was hard. Ser
Rodrik killed and Maester Luwin, everyone,
everyone . . .
“Good,” the maester said. “A good boy.
Your . . . your father’s son, Bran. Now
go.”
Osha gazed up at the weirwood, at the red face carved in the
pale trunk. “And leave you for the gods?”
“I beg . . . ” The maester
swallowed. “A . . . a drink of water,
and . . . another boon. If you would . . . ”
“Aye.” She turned to Meera. “Take the
boys.”
Jojen and Meera led Rickon out between them. Hodor followed. Low
branches whipped at Bran’s face as they pushed between the
trees, and the leaves brushed away his tears. Osha joined them in
the yard a few moments later. She said no word of Maester Luwin.
“Hodor must stay with Bran, to be his legs,” the
wildling woman said briskly. “I will take Rickon with
me.”
“We’ll go with Bran,” said Jojen Reed.
“Aye, I thought you might,” said Osha.
“Believe I’ll try the East Gate, and follow the
kingsroad a ways.”
“We’ll take the Hunter’s Gate,” said
Meera.
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
They stopped at the kitchens first. Osha found some loaves of
burned bread that were still edible, and even a cold roast fowl
that she ripped in half. Meera unearthed a crock of honey and a big
sack of apples. Outside, they made their farewells. Rickon sobbed
and clung to Hodor’s leg until Osha gave him a smack with the
butt end of her spear. Then he followed her quick enough. Shaggydog
stalked after them. The last Bran saw of them was the
direwolf’s tail as it vanished behind the broken tower.
The iron portcullis that closed the Hunter’s Gate had been
warped so badly by heat it could not be raised more than a foot.
They had to squeeze beneath its spikes, one by one.
“Will we go to your lord father?” Bran asked as they
crossed the drawbridge between the walls. “To Greywater
Watch?”
Meera looked to her brother for the answer. “Our road is
north,” Jojen announced.
At the edge of the wolfswood, Bran turned in his basket for one
last glimpse of the castle that had been his life. Wisps of smoke
still rose into the grey sky, but no more than might have risen
from Winterfell’s chimneys on a cold autumn afternoon. Soot
stains marked some of the arrow loops, and here and there a crack
or a missing merlon could be seen in the curtain wall, but it
seemed little enough from this distance. Beyond, the tops of the
keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and
it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at
all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees
go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their
thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not
dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I’m not dead
either.