The Logistics of Good Living (ASOIAF, Brandon Stark SI)

The Whispering Monk

Well-known member
Osaul
I'm wondering what would happen to Westeros if a former soldier-turned-farmer led a successful uprising against cruel nobles.

I'm thinking kof someone like Gird from the Paksenarrion series of Elizabeth Moon.
 
Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Brandon)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
tGTx5w4.jpg


BRANDON

“-. 274 AC .-“​

“The Pentoshi did what?”

As he listened to his assistant’s report a second time, Brandon Stark wondered what in all the hells kind of bugworm had squirmed its way up the cheesemonger’s arse and whatever passed for a cunt on his perfumed cockless paramour. Even without his hard-won ability to read the patterns, the signs he could see in this sudden eruption of tensions ostensibly between Braavos and Pentos – the deliberate warning signs – were plain to see for anyone familiar with either of those swindlers. Which was increasingly many people these days, now that the pair were secure enough in their wealth, contacts and blackmail to openly peddle their ‘repossessed’ wares and otherwise cultivate their reputation as people of wealth and taste. Wealth especially. Still, even knowing how blatant the two had grown in casting their net throughout the Free Cities, this was beyond the pale. A sudden string of thefts, mutinies or pirate attacks on ships known to sail under any business openly affiliated with the Company. Inexplicable reticence or outright mistrust by their latest prospective trade partners. Rental depos and granaries burned, looted or littered with dead little mice. Swaths of their underworld contacts dead in canals or alleys, all ‘found’ with precious gems on them. Some so precious that even the most desperate street urchin knew better than to expect anything besides a knife to the kidney over.

He grimly accepted and opened the bag of collected ‘recompense.’ Amethyst, tourmaline, emerald, green pearl, jade, jet, onyx, opal, ruby, sapphire and slit yellow tiger's eye, they were all there. Even a black diamond. It sat there on top of the rest, taunting him with its promise of ill will and unfinished business.

“Thank you, Byam.” Brandon was glad for the age and experience that let him keep the ice inside him from cracking where others could see. All seventy-four years of it. “Take the rest of the day off. Go to your lady.”

“She’s no lady, my dame,” the young man grinned. “She’s a goddess, she is.”

“I appreciate the attempt at levity, my boy.” The young man ducked his head bashfully at his failure to lift his spirits. Seeing him act so contrite, one could almost forget he was a knight, sellsail and Captain-adventurer that regularly braved all the five seas. “Tell your goddess what you just told me and let her know I’ll be by later to talk.”

Byam Flint, formerly of Widow’s Watch, nodded and left, ordering the gates locked and barred behind him.

Brandon Stark waited for the knight to leave, then left his office for his private chambers on the second floor of the manse. Blue Petal Manor was a lofty edifice that his enterprising predecessors had bought piecemeal, and then built up into the closest thing to a bridge castle that could be found in Braavos. It was rooted in fully-appointed, walled houses on both banks of the Green Canal and had two stories. Its size served to give his private balcony a broad, sweeping view of the Secret City. One could see half-way to the lagoon to the west on a clear day, insofar as Braavos even had clear days. As far as the Palace of Truth as well, to the east, where voting took place. He had no interest in any of that today, however. He closed the doors to his balcony, pulled down all the blinds and went to lie back on his bed. He needed peace, quiet and time away from his aching joints. Time enough for the ice cap containing his black, roiling rage to firm back up, never mind everything else on his mind that he didn’t have it in him to worry about lest his heart give away right there. He was not a young man anymore, to roar and rage, let alone go out digging worms out of their pits and splitting guts open from dust to dawn and dusk again on the battlefield. He had duties. Responsibilities. New orders from his King that had only just reached him a scant month prior. Orders that had sent him sending orders of his own as well, practically emptying Blue Petal Manor of the many farmers, traders, sailors, sellswords and everyone else who could be spared to help realign their various interests. He’d been so shocked at the time. So thrilled. So hopeful. He’d felt so alive after so very long not stepping foot on the earth of his homeland. Now he wondered if the orders had come too late, or if his own actions since then were what caused… whatever this was.

For a moment, he let himself succumb to the weight of the thankless task he’d borne for so many decades. Then he took a deep breath and collected himself.

He was Brandon of House Stark, son of Artos the Implacable, nephew of Rodrik the Wandering Wolf, Prince in Exile of the Kingdom of Winter. And he would see this handled. He would see this handled. He would see this handled carefully. Calmly. So calmly that he’d not keel over from a sudden fit of apoplexy the next time someone came charging in, screaming that his last remaining goodson or nephews or grandson or all of them had decided to follow his brother and daughters and sons into d-

“Uncle?” Came the strong voice of Osrick on the heels of the front doors smashing open. “Uncle! Are you home? Byam said you were!”

For the umpteenth time, Brandon Stark thanked his ancestors for the thick stone blocks and high walls. He was not as thankful for the promptness of the servants that oh so efficiently directed his nephew to find him.

“Uncle, Byam said you were-ah, there you are! I bring news!” He’s not dead, he’s not dead, he’s not dead- “That news being, of course, that your grandson continues to be a complete moron.”

“He’s still not dead then?”

“Apparently not. Though not for lack of trying. Do we have any secret magic stores that could turn back time to before my girl popped out her little Dabron? Because I’m seriously reconsidering this whole grandchildren business!”

“Where is he? Which courtesan’s honor was he protecting this time? And how ready is he for my latest, all too futile lecture on the merits of not being a brash imbecile ready to cross blades with every bravo this side of Lys?”

“Madam Rosmerta of the Three Broomsticks, Lady Flint is tending to him now, and not hardly.”

“Wonderful.” He wasn’t dead. Not dead. Not dead like the others, thank whatever god had seen to it, even if they never seemed to be doing anything else!

“I heard you were headed to the Flints anyway?”

“Where and how did you hear?”

“Never fear, uncle, you needn’t ‘reconsider Byam’s usefulness’ or any such rot, we were both behind his wife’s closed doors.”

Times like this made him want to share the true mission with more people. But then he reminded himself that the secrecy of home and kin was the only thing that had consistently served them well, all of them, as opposed to the morass of treachery, hardship and worthless ‘compromise’ that came with every other risk they’d ever taken. It meant they had to establish their own, internal channels of management and leadership once their families and enterprises expanded enough beyond a mere sellsword company. But it also protected them from the attentions of the fleeting powers of this land, and the factionalism so prevalent in the Free Cities and elsewhere. Especially when combined with constant flow of new blood from home in the form of third sons and daughters and other scions noble and small alike, come down from the North to seek their fortune. There were other reasons why they’d never openly declared their goals and nature as well, reasons that the Blackfyres had proven justified repeatedly. Ultimately, Essos was rich in many kinds of coin, but honor wasn’t among them.

Neither was good sense, he despaired internally when he walked in on his grandson later. In fact, Essos was so lacking in sense that it had become its own leech! “You stupid boy! Look at you! Split open from hip to neck! I told you this would happen one day! What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Next time he’ll be drinking from the Moon Pool, mark my words.”

Brandon Stark felt a sharp throb in his neck. “There won’t be a next time, you stupid boy!”

Rodrik Stark looked up from his bandages, aghast. “Grandfather! You can’t lose your wits now! Don’t you realise what such a snub would do to the cause?” On second thought, maybe he’d shared the true mission with too many people. “You’re telling me to turn down a challenge by the First Sword of Braavos!”

“Oh, that was not the First Sword of Braavos!”

“He damn well will be.”

“I’m sure,” sneered Brandon Stark at what had to be the dumbest spawn’s spawn that House Stark had ever been cursed with since the cravenly brood of Torrhen the Kneeler, on both sides of the sea! “Just like the one before. And the one before him. And the ten before that!”

“Ah, but they didn’t beat me!”

Brandon smacked him. And when the impudent rascal only grinned wider, he threw his hands in the air and left him in Osrick’s hands while he went to speak with Dame Flint for his own peace of mind. He never imagined he would be discussing the greatest threat to the Cause while considering it a boon to his peace of mind, but there it was.

The Dame Bessara Flint nee Reyaan took one look at him and immediately started fussing over him, seating him in her husband’s chair at the head of the table, bringing a basin of hot water to soak his aching feet, and insisting he have a warm meal when he admitted to not having broken his fast even once that day. Brandon ruefully accepted her care and gratefully partook of the shrimp and persimonn soup. He gladly accepted the sardines also, fried crisp in pepper oil and served so hot they burned his fingers. He mopped up the leftover oil with a chunk of bread torn off the end of Bessara’s evening loaf of olive bread and washed it all down with a cup of watered wine, savoring the tastes and the smells, the rough feel of the crust beneath his fingers, the slickness of the oil as he pinched it out of his beard, the sting of the hot pepper when it got into his cracked wisdom teeth. Hear, smell, taste, feel, pain he reminded himself. There were many ways to know you still lived, even for those like him who had outlived so very many he shouldn’t have.

When pleasure was done, they got down to business. For all his skill in patterns, it didn’t compare to skill and talent, and Lady Bessara had him beat in both. Though a third daughter of a fourth son, she was a testament to the worth of the bloodline and education of Keyholder families. She was also the one with consistent access to news from all their enterprises, having coordinated multiple different businesses and ships since even before she effectively took over as chief overseer of trading interests from Alyssa Karstark, Brandon’s own daughter four years dead. Aside from Bessara’s own husband Byam, who brought the news to begin with (or often became the news on his voyages, which sadly cut him off from current events for weeks and even months at a time), the Dame herself was the one likely to provide the best perspective on things.

Bessara sat next to him and worked with him to lay out the maps of the Narrow Sea, Braavos, Pentos and the Disputed Lands on the round table. Not for the first time, Brandon Stark wished someone came up with a better map instead of these hand-drawn sketches. “I’ve heard back well enough from the folk back west,” she told him. “We’re still waiting on Karhold, but Widow’s Watch and Ramsgate have already responded. They’re not enthused to be passed over for the bigger fish, but they understand public spectacle as well as the next man. Envoys have been sent to White Harbor. Lord Weyrman Manderly will hopefully read the signs and not obstruct our efforts to secure the needed storage space and berthing.”

Hopefully, she says. Well, since the scope of the Rose had deliberately been kept from most people on both sides of the sea outside the heads and heirs of the great houses, that couldn’t be helped. Torrhen’s unfaithful children be damned, but they sure had taught them all a lesson in keeping secrets. He supposed it was time to see if the lesson had been a good one or just another kind of failure from overreacting in the other direction.

Unfortunately, much like he’d feared, the best perspective was also the grimmest. Replies had yet to come from half their holdings in Andalos (hah!), and none yet from further south. They didn’t know if the new orders had reached the Company of the Rose before they deployed under their latest contract either. Which was of particular worry because said contract was against roving Dothraki in the Flatlands near Pentos, not the Disputed Lands further south. Brandon could see why his goodson and nephew had signed on it. It was not only sponsored by three Keyholders of Braavos, but also deployed them ahead of the Rose’s own (not openly affiliated) holdings near the Braavos-Pentoshi border. Braavos had secured its demesne close to home, but its need for sellsword contracts hadn’t actually dropped since the Braavos-Pentos war. If Braavos had only forced Pentos to abolish slavery and withdraw from the slave trade after their victory in in 209 AC, things either would have been different or another war would have occurred after the recovery period. But Braavos had also limited the Pentoshi military forces and prevented the city from hiring sellswords. Unfortunately, this crippled Pentos’ ability to secure its territory and act as an effective buffer state. Which made it an open sieve for any Dothraki Khal who got the idea to detour through their lands and raid Braavos from the south, instead of roving across both Norvos and Braavos’ own border to the South-Southeast. This meant that any armed incursion into Pentoshi lands were unofficially Braavos’ problem too. A problem made worse every time they deployed their latest sellsword hires. The Pentoshi magisters always started braying about Braavos aiming to finally attempt the full armed occupation they surely must have been planning all this time.

It was an open secret that Pentos used its connections in other Free Cities as proxies to hire sellswords on their behalf. But the lack of mutual loyalty between any of the Free Cities made this a risky gamble, and not owning the contract of professional soldiers whose loyalty was already in doubt was never going to be a good idea.

And now it all seemed to have become the Rose’s problem too, Brandon thought testily. Perhaps Pentos was airing its grievance with Braavos. Perhaps the semi-cockless duo had inflamed tensions or otherwise taken advantage of things to strike at them somehow. For whatever reason Brandon couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was all just bad luck. Or perhaps nothing out of the ordinary had happened and it was just freak weather or a fallen horseshoe that had stalled the word back. For everyone. At the same time. Yes.

As the day wore down, it became clear that unknown elements were moving against even the holdings they had painstakingly rented, leased and even bought outright in some cases all the way up north, at great expense and deniability through some of their naturalised kinsmen. Even those in the Braavosi Marshes and the coast facing Lorath along the Shivering Sea. They were widely considered the most dubious long-term investments Braavos had ever seen, but were in reality their most precious agricultural projects. Sugar beets from Lhazar, black pepper from Sothoryos, red and green hot peppers from the Orange Shore, bell peppers from the Summer Islands, even sugarcane from Mantarys. Crops they had painstakingly cultivated and bred for years, even decades, in and out of glass gardens, in the hopes they would eventually turn out strains capable of surviving and even thriving in the North. A day that the farmers swore waited only for his word based on the turnout of last autumn’s final harvests. And yet, now, probing raids ostensibly by Norvosi pirates and ‘Skagosi’ seemed to have started all over the coast as well. How convenient that Braavos was caught looking southward and there were no direct interests by native Braavosi worthies in those small, out of the way regions.

And then there was the rice. The rice they had laboured to breed some semblance of winter endurance into for literal hundreds of years. The rice they had been partnered on with one of the dynastic YiTish merchant guilds since the very beginning. They would give half of all new harvests and new strains in exchange for funding half the enterprise, training in their cultivation, coordinating records of their parallel progress, and replenishing seed supplies from their share of the crops at cost in case of disaster. Which had proven a boon on several occasions when frostbite or plague swept their paddies wholesale. The YiTish had dreams of expanding northward into the lands of the Jogos Nhai, and this would give them a ready strain of their most fundamental crop to sustain any new adminsitration zones. Or that was the reason they agreed to share the techniques of YiTish rice farming in the beginning. Who knew why they still kept their part of the deal after everyone originally involved was dead and gone?

Unfortunately, there was a double catch to the enterprise. One, the duty to defend the crops fell entirely on them. That was already one clause in jeopardy, if the scoundrels currently moving against them within the city decided to expand into the swamps on the mainland. And two, the enterprise was too big to downplay and had to be run through the Iron Bank from the very beginning. Which meant collateral.

Significant collateral.

Never mind all the threshing, husking and polishing!

Brandon Stark looked upon the increasingly dotted map with dismay. At this rate, the only enterprise that wasn’t suddenly in some danger were those earth apples that some scoundrels swore had come from Sothoryos. Alas, Brandon wasn’t far enough gone to buy into stories of randomly-occurring wonder crops, no matter how well the first harvests had gone. He’d spare his hopes for the soybeans instead. And even then only because the fields were on lease from House Reyaan and the masters of these oh so mysterious ‘raiders’ would be mad to tangle with the Iron Bank over a farm of all things, even just by proxy through one of the Keyholder Houses.

He was well and truly ready to collapse by the time the lamp oil ran low. He gratefully accepted Dame Bessara’s invitation to stay the night and collapsed on the bed in their guestroom, his grandson next to him and his nephew on the floor between them and the door, sitting against the bedside with sheathed sword in hand.

As he faded, he thought of his lost son. He’d long ago decided he had most likely disappeared because someone had found out and taken exception to him flitting up and down the Arsenal of Braavos through that seagull of his. Never mind he’d never gotten around to putting anything on paper. Sometimes, though, he wondered if it might have been something more sinister that took him. Him and… and the others.

Mercifully, nothing disturbed him that night.

Then they took a serpent boat back to Blue Petal Manor only to find it locked down tighter than a chastity belt with smoke coming out of his bedroom.

His guards turned out to be as overzealous in denying entry as they were ashamed over the lack of alertness during the night. Which was Brandon’s own fault for stretching their numbers so thin that even his own sentries had to pull double shifts. Little wonder someone sufficiently determined would sneak in. Except that wasn’t what happened. Best as anyone could figure, this wasn’t an assassination attempt or whatever else. It was some no-name out to try and steal the cheesemonger’s weregild.

I was to die in a mugging, Brandon Stark thought in abject disbelief. Not some Faceless or Sorrowful Man or some sworn foe. Just some robber.

He felt stunned. Then numb. Then he just felt furious.

“Osrick. Byam. Gather everyone. Go. Now.”

They went.

And when all the trusted gathered in the deepest recesses of Blue Petal Manor, the Prince of Winter in Exile stood before his people. Knights, sailors, bravos, merchants, sellswords, farmers, artists, pit fighters, whores and killers. He stood before them and laid things bare and gave his order.

“We are at war. Be they the most devious of enemies or the deepest depths of stupidity, we are at war. We are at war and it vexes me. Collect our kin. Call in our favors. Purge the spies. Send out the assassins. By the time the Grey Ships come to bear us hence, I want this finished.”

Grim nods and swift action was his answer.

“Osrick. You and Rodrik stay.”

“Yes, uncle.”

“Yes, grandfather.”

When next day dawned on the Bastard Daughter, the streets and canals flowed with red blood of decided more mixed ancestry than ever.

For a whole month he locked down Blue Petal Manor to all those not explicitly summoned and devoted himself to the task of nursing his grandson back to health. He was no maester, but he had skill enough for this, as did his servants with how many times his fool blood had gotten into a scrape. Or worse. All the while, the picture gained contours, shades and clarity with every new bit of news and person that answered his call and messages.

My sudden change in routine must have spooked them. He still had no idea what had set the cheesemonger and his bald arse boy against them. Failing all the shady elements from Myr to Lorath suddenly deciding to go after them and their disparate interests by pure coincidence, this reeked of a long-term plan turned arseways. If it were him, he’d have waited until spring when they usually re-invested most of the seeds back into the fields. Between that and the sudden elimination of everyone informed of the Rose’s true scope and purpose, the Kingdom in Exile could have been decapitated with none the wiser. Would have left their centuries of work up for easy takeover too. Who knew how long it would take for new leadership to emerge and gather the branches back together? How many branches would even be left at that point?

Instead, what was happening was the winter equivalent of going on a raiding spree to light up the fields wholesale. Wasteful, but worth it if you’ve already invested so many resources in the preparations. For whatever reason.

Essosi lunatics!

And this was just Pentos. The less said about Norvos, Tyrosh, Qohor and Volantis, the better.

Brandon wondered, briefly, if he was perhaps running the leakiest information net in the world, before dismissing the notion. He didn’t run such a loose house that he’d have missed all the signs of poor spycraft. More likely the half-cocked duo – or their clients or patrons, if any – had uncovered whatever they uncovered about the Kingdom in Exile before his time. Why they’d have sat on the information so long was beyond him, but it was the only thing that made sense.

When he next emerged from Blue Petal Manor, he used the rarely used undercroft access to bypass the Iron Bank and Sealord’s men that had been all but camped on his doorstep for days. Then he walked into the Iron Bank itself blithe as you please, because certain statements had to be made. After all, didn’t the Keyholders and their many clients know better than to openly show ingratitude to being warned of major threats to their livelihoods? But of course they did! Like, say, the fact that Pentos had gone from appeasing the barbarian horsemen to allying with them, going so far as to strike deals with marauding Khals to problem-solve certain ‘Braavosi mercenaries.’ Could he and his be blamed for retaliating against the Pentoshi scum that tried to help them with blades drawn in the dark? Of course not! Why, he wasn’t even obliged to consult with them, but it paid to be courteous. It paid to be courteous, isn’t that part and parcel of the Iron Bank’s reputation?

It was, they agreed, all the way up to the account manager overseeing their rice venture and the representative from Yi-Ti that she’d taken the liberty of summoning in his absence. Brandon, of course, graciously assured the ambitious woman that he was willing to forgive this breach of protocol. After all, it couldn’t be that the Iron Bank meant to take advantage of the chaos to renegotiate standing contracts with only half of the parties present. “Besides, surely you couldn’t have known this could leave our YiTish partner here in the lurch,” he told the ambitious woman and her frozen smile while representative Cheng fumed in the chair next to him. “Not when our rice breeding project has finally borne fruit! Surely not for the sake of some paltry collateral from days gone by!”

The visit to the Sealord’s Palace didn’t quite come at sword point, but ended more or less the way he expected. Brandon was banished along with all those similarly involved in the recent ‘unrest’ after being denied every last, ‘desperate’ appeal. He was to leave within a moonturn and never return on pain of death. That the Sealord’s office still had no idea of the Rose’s true scope even though the Iron Bank did (and surely the Faceless Men as well) said a lot about the power of the current title holder to enforce his banishment. Such a shame that didn’t cover the nine tenths of his people he was in charge of. Such a shame he was taking at least six tenths of those people and leaving anyway with all their wealth. Such a shame that would upend Braavos’ economy for the next year or ten once they started to really liquidate their assets. He wondered how many outstanding contracts and debts the Iron Bank would pounce on in the ensuing chaos. On that note, he went and sold the deed to Blue Petal Manor to a certain naturalised ‘friend’ of the family with no outstanding debts, all for the positively ruinous price of one iron mark.

And if it so happened that he failed to mention the impending, sudden removal of thirty-some vessels from the sea trade? True, doing such a thing without letting anyone know in advance could really spook people, but what could he do? Age makes people forget the oddest things.

Vindication, when it came, was saccharine sweet and thrice as bitter. It turned out that his change in routine probably hadn’t been the reason for the sudden escalation. That could probably be laid at the feet of his wonderful nephew the King, who’d gone and done a visit down south that quite thoroughly broke the kingdom of those Andal lunatics, and their disgusting seven-fold pretense at godliness that had no problem making exemptions from their holy word for sister-fucking abominations.

Imagine a people so disgusting, they need to make laws to make it illegal to hate them.

But now…

Bloodied maesters scattered to the five winds, humbled Andals, child-buggering shitstain septons being killed in the streets by their own useless sheep. Each piece of news threatened to split his face.

Or would have, if not for the news on their own side of the Narrow Sea. Khals marauding all over their southernmost holdings, pillaging two thirds of their summer crops. A last ditch attempt by the ‘Skagosi’ that set a scattering of their seed granaries on fire. The Windblown fighting the Company of the Cat – again – in an area that just so happened to spill over into their stores of earth apples. Fortunately, his orders seemed to have been acted on quick enough that they’d managed to spirit away sufficient supply of all their crops to start over elsewhere.

And then there was the Company of the Rose. Their very own sellsword company, with twenty-five hundred foot and one thousand horse, altogether thirty-five hundred strong. He hoped his orders reached them before any disaster struck. And that the people on the ground interpreted his orders as ‘save what you can if you’re in the area’. Even if he technically hadn’t originally intended for the crops to be moved before winter’s end. He supposed they’d find out their ability to thrive in the North by how many of them succumbed to humidity and frostbite on the way to the mainland.

His mercurial mood lifted only when he saw the triumphant sight of their armada when passing under the Titan’s shadow.

He didn’t expect the Wolf Pack. Which, it turned out, was a common thing. The Dothraki never seemed to expect them either, or any infantry that didn’t break at the first bellowing charge of those half-naked barbarians that never saw a lance. Which, it turned out, had been the biggest blessing of them all, even if it didn’t really carry the day in the end.

Brandon Stark welcomed the disembarking Wolf Pack as heroes, but on the inside he felt as if he could drop dead and damn whatever else.

The Company of the Rose. It had been caught in a double ambush by the Bright Banners and Second Sons, who’d lured them in by ‘supplying’ themselves from the Rose’s variously owned stores across Andalos. Even now that accursed place taunted the men of the North. His orders had reached them just in time to turn them back in the nick of time. But though able to retreat in good order, losing just a handful of men, it wasn’t without wandering into a surprise raid by some now dead Khal. The chaotic, orderless, four-way disaster that followed cost them twice again those numbers and eliminated almost all of the Company’s senior leadership, and might have seen tem defeated in detail if not for the unexpected rear guard action by the Wolf Pack themselves. Tarl Ryswell. Wallace and Waller Dustin. Alan Liddle. Norton Norrey. Jon, Rod and Brandon Wull, named after him.

He was Brandon Stark, son of Artos Stark and Lysara Karstark. Father of three sons, two of whom had long since died as sellswords in the disputed lands, the third having failed to disembark after a voyage to Lys that same summer. Twin of Benjen, who’d gone looking for his vanished boy and vanished as well, his half dozen compatriots lost or found addled or not at all. And now, the list grew still. His nephew Odrick, Osrick’s twin brother. His goodson Karl Karstark, may he find again the embrace of his wife, Brandon’s own daughter. Dolman Glover, whom he’d been in talks with for a betrothal for his grandson. Gone, now, all of them like the rest. Along with everyone else in the company who knew their real purpose.

He looked inside and he felt dead.

And then he felt livid.

To whatever hell existed with the entirety of Essos and all the vermin crawling around this dead carcass of a bygone age! At this rate those two blackguards were going to cripple the cause by sheer accident!

The rage exhausted itself like most of himself did these days.

Brandon Stark beheld the leader of the Wolf Pack sellsword company. Malyn Hornwood. Descended from Hallis Hornwood, the man who’d originally established the Wolf Pack in the aftermath of the Dance of the Dragons alongside Timothy Snow. The man was of middling height, stout strength and positively ludicrous endurance on account of the way he trained his men, as he was all too boisterously regaling him without being asked.

“It never does to be too free with your approval!” The man laughingly boasted once his men had disembarked. Surprisingly quickly too. Efficiently. The full thousand of them, men of Northern blood one and all. “No man is a true member of the Pack if he can’t handle two battles, three full days and nights of forced marches, crossing a stream once by wading and once by building a brigade, building and taking down a small fort and pitching and breaking camp no less than a dozen times, all while carrying and caring for their equipment and making sure no man is left behind.” The man smiled, slapping the chest of what was probably his second in command, man clad in lamellar armor armed with a shield and halberd. “Once your lot is back on its proper feet, might be I can get them worthy of being called proper soldiers. Provided we can still keep abreast of each other of course.” The man turned serious and leaned close. Close enough to whisper. Close enough to kill. “Tell the King we’d like to come home too.”

Brandon Stark reared back and stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment.

The man pulled back as well and gestured to the strange, one-wheeled contraption being repaired nearby. “You can keep the wheelbarrows. Should be some two hundred or thereabouts. Good YiTish engineering, did you know? A baggage train with these lovelies can almost match our pace. Probably leave you and yours in the dust though. Oh well, more motivation!”

Malyn Hornwood winked and led his men away.

“I don’t think I like that man,” Rodrik muttered.

“’Course you don’t,” Osrick grunted. “He’s a man’s man. You’re a dandy with shit endurance.”

“Fuck you, nuncle.”

“Not for all the clap in the world.”

Well.

Well!

Brandon Stark turned towards the gangplank.

“Won’t my Lord Stark be needing a cabin boy on the way?” asked the biggest, fattest dockhand he’d ever seen. “The sea won’t be leading where you thought it might.”

Brandon stopped and turned to inspect the speaker with a sudden feeling of trepidation, only for his heart to skip a beat as the man turned a silver coin over his fingers, cast in the shape of a green hand.

“… Mayhaps I might.”

Thirty-one grey ships sailed into the west. Four merchanters, six carracks, five cogs and fifteen galleys, led forth by the newly restyled Snowdrift, a double-decked dromond with three masts, two hundred oarsmen, and seventy men ready for war.

“Wonders be afoot, my lord,” said his new guest, throwing off his hood to reveal blond hair so pale it ate the snowflakes falling on it. His beard was just bushy enough to hide his second chin. “Waiting for the next one is like being teased by an unpaid whore, but damned if they don’t make you look forward to more.” There was a small, round box in the man’s hand, made of bone. He played almost obsessively with the lid, clack-clack-clack showing glimpses of a two-ended needle. “But I can see sailing’s not your passion.”

So much for hiding the sad state of his sea legs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“No matter.” The man’s other hand came from beneath his cloak, briefly revealing green stitching shaped like a lamprey’s maw. It held a booklet of some kind. “Perhaps a spot of good reading? I hear it’s all the rage up in Winterfell these days. This here in particular seems to have caught right quick with you Braavosi.”

“’Them’ Braavosi, not ‘you.’” Brandon took it and traced its surface. It was made out of exquisitely high-quality paper covered in the neatest letters he’d ever seen, if somewhat faded. There was a drawing of a strange blob with hairs on the front. Above it were words. Science is a clear understanding of truth, the enlightenment of reason. Below, more words. The title. It read:

On the Killing of Plagues
A Treatise on Unseen Morphons and the Use of Mold Extract as Infection Treatment: A Double-Blind, Randomised, Sugar Pill-Controlled Trial
By Lord Brandon Stark of Winterfell, Maester Qyburn, Maester Luwin and Archmaester Marwyn, with assistance by Acolytes Colemon, Rhodry and Tybald Snow.​
Journal of Scientific Inquiry, Volume 1, Issue 1, published on 05.02.274 by the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning.​

Brandon Stark felt a strange feeling that he decided not to look at too closely lest it be smothered along with everything else. He wouldn’t last much longer, he knew. He’d be lucky if he saw Winterfell. But as he stood atop the deck of the Northern Fleet’s flagship, bearing forth the bounty of work done over centuries and years, he decided that he didn’t really care what the half-cocked wonder duo was thinking after all. A lesser son of a lesser house under a lesser Cause might have lost all sense and dropped everything in order to swear vengeance against those two, but he had more important things to do. He’d left behind competent men and women to oversee the transition. He no longer needed constant watch by his blood to defend from murders. And he was looking forward to no longer having to fight on behalf of slavers, no matter how clean and shiny their coin.

The Essosi cunts could have their shit continent. He was going home.
 
Last edited:

ATP

Well-known member
Great chapter - initially i thought that you made skip time and your SI is now 74 years old.
Why Pentosi attacked company of the rose ? if they are Blackfyre supporters,then attacking Northmen have no sense at all.
 

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
Great chapter - initially i thought that you made skip time and your SI is now 74 years old.
Why Pentosi attacked company of the rose ? if they are Blackfyre supporters,then attacking Northmen have no sense at all.
It's a mix of hostile takeover by various cutthroat merchant houses (which is the definition of business in Renaissance-style city-states) and Illyrio/Varys pulling whatever strings they could to dismantle the Kingdom in Exile, for both pragmatic as well as personal reasons. Since I've had time to hash out this answer elsewhere, here we go:

As might have been inferred from the level of preparation and coordination, it couldn't have happened so quickly or spontaneously. The explanation assumes Varys and/or Illyrio's wife are Blackfyres, as will be inferred next chapter by the relevant parties.

Economically and geopolitically, this certainly wasn't a good first plan, but that's because it wasn't a first plan at all - it was the firing of a suboptimal contingency due to outside spanners. Assets to decapitate the Kingdom in Exile unawares and take over / dismantle their various assets in a minimally disruptive fashion (so called) were already in place well before Rickard made his little trip. That much would need to be the case for such coordination to occur on such short notice. Indeed, as Brandon guesses, it would have gone off in spring for best effectiveness. Some of the broader backing and cooperation required for this escalation came from Aerys' boon to the North and White Harbor, which has everyone and their grandmother in Essos scrambling to take advantage of. How they justify the hostile takeover varies (insofar as they even need to for what is basically the nature of business).
  1. Pentos: we can't let Braavos have this! They're already closest to the tax haven!
  2. Braavosi trade houses: we have to pre-empt the inevitable monopoly that our North-blooded compatriots (i.e. Blue Petal Manor) will surely snatch up thanks to mainland nepotism!
  3. Everyone else - Chaos! My favorite ladder!

For Illyrio and Varys it was a case of throwing the dice when backed into a corner - however disruptive this will turn out to be Pentos and Braavos and Essos as a whole, canceling their grand plans would have turned into a ruinous loss for themselves with little to no chance to recoup many of the investment done already (connections, blackmail, info, coin).

As for the reason the Blackfyres wanted to problem-solve the Kingdom in Exile? That's because they've known about it, as Brandon speculated, since well before current time. But because the North never participated in a Blackfyre rebellion - and because southern propaganda about the North being okay with their treatment under the Iron Throne isn't as easily swallowed by people who've been suffering the same - they'd taken a wait and see approach (notwithstanding the standard corporate plant and espionage operations). With every time the North refused to get involved in Targaryen kinstrife, the Blackfyres were more comfortable considering the KiE (and the North) a powerful potential asset.

Then the North participated in the Ninepenny War on behalf of the Iron Throne, and potential asset became declared enemy asset in need of subsumation or dismantling.

The decapitation and takeover has been in the making for a long time. And it would have worked. Though the result would have been dismantling rather than seizure, given the positioning of the factions involved.
 
Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Jon-I)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
A/N; This is ballooning massively. For the sake of symmetry (and my sanity), I'll eventually merge all the parts of this particular POV into this single post later. But I've decided to post it piecemeal like normal chapters in the meanwhile.

=============
jodBUhb.jpg


JON

“-. 274 AC .-“​

He was glad to be leaving the Bolton lands, even if he didn’t get to see the Dreadfort demolished and burnt down like it deserved. He wasn’t so glad about them not going round to bash in the heads of all the cunts getting ready to make trouble, now that the flayers weren’t there to stare them down with their sharp knives. But Lord Stark said he’d much rather wait and see who was too dumb for their breeches. Planned to use them in ‘war games’ come spring, whatever that meant. As if he needed to explain anything. Jon thought Lord Stark should’ve just done the lordly thing and told them to shut their bitch arse mouths and follow his travel plan, seeing as it was so fancy and urgent-like. But far be it from him to lecture his elders about how to rule the North. Last time he did that, the Old Cunt punched him in the head and bemoaned the gods for cursing him with two lackwits instead of just the one.

Aye, the cheek on Jon Umber to want his Pa brought on the trip with them. Never mind that Uncle Mors barely pulled his head out of his arse enough to mind him most days. Never mind that it was the man’s own girl that Pa was trying to get back when he got his head bashed in so hard he was left simple. Jon didn’t care how many ‘reassuring’ smacks he got from either old arsehole, nothing was gonna convince him that keeping Pa out of sight was for the best. Pa was still a man, wasn’t he? He could still swing an axe, couldn’t he? He still had strength enough to bend old Hoarfrost into a knot, didn’t he?

Nothing was gonna convince Jon that Old Crowfood wasn’t bitter over his Pa either, being a ‘mere’ castellan and all. He never missed the looks on Uncle Mors’ one-eyed mug whenever they got Uncle Hother’s books and letters. Pa was always so happy, just like a young boy excited at mail from an adventuring older brother… but then his face would fall when he was reminded that he couldn’t read no more. Or even remember anything for any span worth a damn. And those moments when Ben Umber had a flash of his old wits, when he realised what he lost and broke down weeping, those were the worst.

Maybe it’s for the best Pa didn’t come, Jon thought glumly. What kind of son was grateful to see his father so done in? But those were the only times when he was left to hold his Pa instead of being slapped over the head and sent off to do shit duties for ‘coddling’ him.

The one time the Old Cunt tried to pull Jon away was the only time Jon recalled that his Pa went mad mad. Almost killed old Lord Hoarfrost. His own father. One-handed. Then Pa broke down and wept in his arms and-

“Are you deaf, boy?” Hoarfrost Umber slapped the back of his head. Jon felt it even though his layers of fur and helmet. Fuck. “I said go and watch them snow huts being made. Or would you rather help Muff build ours?”

“Piss off, old man, I already know how.” But he went and obeyed anyway because it let him throw his sticks and skis right in the Old Cunt’s face as he left.

Also because Big Muff made his butt clench. Jon still didn’t understand why the Old Cunt had taken him on, instead of letting him rot with the rest of the Dreadfort lowlives. Jon damn near took him for kin early on, that’s how big and broad he was, but then the lump turned around and he didn’t have no hair on him, not even on his eyebrows. Freak slathered himself in pig grease and shaved himself baby-smooth every damned week, and not just above the neck either. And then there was the really nutty stuff Jon wished he didn’t have to stumble on.

Never trust no man that pisses like a woman, that’s all he had to say.

The days that followed, they picked up the pace. Lord Stark seemed to have decided they could be trusted not to break their fool necks so he drove them as fast as they could manage on those skis of his. Well, theirs. Making and learning their use for themselves had been the first thing Lord Rickard ordered when he came up from the west. Jon came around to them right proper. Them boards let you travel right quick in winter time, as fast as riding a palfrey in summer. At least. And that was just the basics.

Which was good because they weren’t going straight home. And they wouldn’t be staying home neither. Lord Stark’s travel plan really was all fancy and urgent-like.

They made good time to Karhold, where Rickard Karstark welcomed them on behalf of his father, who was out checking on some problem or other with the ice harvesters on the coast along the Grey Cliffs. Probably more dumb cunts that couldn’t tell blue ice from the salt. They had their own share of them in the Bay of Seals. Lord Stark taught the Karhold men how to make and travel on skis while they waited for the man, including the bunch of craftsmen and apprentices and letter-knowing boys he’d sent raven ahead to order ready for travel. Well, more like he had his learned man – a Maester Mullin and his adorable little helper – do the teaching while he was holed up in the Godswood with orders that no one come near the place. He’d done the same at the Dreadfort too, and would be doing the same at every other stop thereafter. Jon didn’t know Starks to be so pious, but then if his family lackwit miraculously recovered, he’d turn pious too. He’d turn pious right quick and then some.

When Lord Willam Karstark finally got back, Lord Stark lingered only so long as it took to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone before having the Old Cunt lead them off to Last Hearth. Lord Karstark didn’t even have time to try holding a straight line on them boards, and he didn’t enjoy being lumped on the sleighs with the baggage neither. He learned right quick once they made their first stop though, so Jon figured he wasn’t as big a cunt as he could’ve been. Mercifully, their stops otherwise passed with just a pittance of grumbling at most, and that was just the few whiners who were still worried their cocks will fall off because of the new cold training Lord Stark commanded of them. As if anyone would notice the difference! Wasn’t it bad enough they were already being shown up by a Maester? A Maester! And his girly boy apprentice too! It was insulting!

They made it to Last Hearth with just one of the Karhold men dying, a farmer who done misjudged a slope and broke his neck. They made a cairn for him before moving on.

During their short stay at home, Jon stole as much time with his old man as he could. It meant they couldn’t keep him quite as out of sight as the Old Cunt wanted, but fuck his shame with a gnarled dogberry. Jon even told him so to his face. Fucker should maybe think about what it means that he had to glare up at his own grandson. Then maybe Jon wouldn’t have so many chances to think about how he was stronger than the Old Cunt too.

“I almost wish Lord Stark had asked the Karstarks to secure the Dreadfort instead,” Jon complained to the Heart Tree that afternoon. “That way I wouldn’t have had to leave Pa with just Old Crowfood.”

The Heart Tree was white and ancient and had nothing to say back, as usual. Looked a lot better without the bloody tears though. And the red that used to trail down its open maw, like blood from a fresh kill. A lot less crazy. If Jon knew what difference it made to spend a few hours scrubbing off all that petrified sap, he’d’ve done a cleaning a long time ago.

Jon did worry he might’ve made a mistake though, the second time in the same hour that his father went and introduced himself to Lord Stark and started asking childish questions about the shorter man and his family as if it were the first time they met. Never mind how long they’d known each other before Pa was made a lackwit. But Lord Stark answered him seriously and patiently and gifted him one of the silver rings in his beard when Pa looked longingly at it a tad too long. The Lord smoothed out Pa’s beard and put the clasp in himself too, all solemn-like.

“This way, mayhap you won’t forget about me.”

“Never!”

Jon was glad he was a man. Otherwise he might’ve cried that night when Pa Ben showed off his new favorite thing and chided him for thinking he wouldn’t know who slipped it on him. “I know I’m a lackwit, but not that much of one!” Ben Umber laughed boisterously. “Who else could’ve done it without me noticing? The Old Man forgets I exist and One-Eye’s too busy navel-gazing! ’Course it were you, my boy! Who else?”

Jon couldn’t leave home fast enough.

They left westward towards the mountains, where the Wull himself met them at the pass, with his son Theo and a small group on bear paws. He took them to his longhouse and feasted their small party, accepting their gifts of flour, wine and smoked meat and gifting them in turn with wolf furs, bear furs, shadowcat hides, and the most delicious ground pork greaves that Jon had ever tasted. Lord Stark lingered for a couple of days while the Wulls learned how to make and use the skis and sticks and the new snow shoes the rest of them were using. Then they were off with the Wull and his party in tow, to met and greet and feast and exchange gifts and collect the rest of the Heads of the Clans in the Mountains. Knot, Liddle, Burley, Harclay, Norrey, they all joined up with their best fighters and craftsmen and learned men and wise women.

“Umber!” blustered Brandon Son of Brandon upon settling them in the hall of his father. “When I heard you were still a maid, I was shocked! I was sure you’d be on your third wife by now!”

“Norrey!” Jon bellowed, hauling arse to clasp arms and headbutt the smaller man because he was no maid, thank you very much! Tough skull on him, though, not gonna lie. “When I heard you still hadn’t started mining all that gold, I was shocked! Was sure you’d have your own Casterly Rock by now!”

It was an open secret that Umbers weren’t the first choice for betrothals because their seed made for big sprogs that often killed the women coming out. Not so open was the secret that Umber men often partook of the right of first night around the same time their women’s moonblood stopped, so they could pass their bastards as trueborn children. The only reason Jon’s siblings weren’t around was because the difference in mother was too obvious. Pa Ben had them shipped off to find their fortunes in Essos, back before he got the blow to the head.

Also an open secret was that clan Norrey styled their banner as six poisoned thistles on gold because they had the dubious honor of being the only people in the North to have discovered gold. Dubious because the miners didn’t work themselves into an early grave by age forty. Instead, they died within a year, usually after gut pains, weakness, fits of madness, and falling into a sleep they never woke up from again. The few goblets and coins cast from the gold killed people the same way too, including the Norrey himself at the time. That had been during the first century of Stark rule.

Fortunately, no one got poisoned at the feast or after.

Or cursed.

That they could tell.

… They’d see in a month or five.

Their much increased party came out the other side of the mountains to be received by the First Flints. The Flint turned out to be just twenty-three, barely older than Jon’s own eighteen. Torghen Flint, a stout man with red-knuckled hands as big as hams. Quite respectable by Jon’s standards. The Old Flint had died not long before on a ‘hunt.’ They’d found him gutted near a bear with its neck snapped old madman had actually been the one walking away from that fight! Flint went and actually feasted them on some of the meat saved from that very beast before they finally moved on and left the Mountains altogether.

Jon was glad, even if he wouldn’t admit it. It was fucking cold up there! How Lord Stark and his ‘Maester’ endured it in barely any layers, Jon hadn’t the foggiest. Even with all the training they were all still going through. And did he mention that ‘Maester’ Mullin spent his mornings spanking their arses one after another? Three out of three? At their own weapons? ‘Maester’ Mullin, what a croc of shit!

The look on the Old Cunt’s face, though, when the good ‘Maester’ made him kiss in his own arse print? Delicious.

They didn’t enter the Wolfswood, instead taking the coastal path so they could still ski on and not lose their progress. They made it to Deepwood Motte without incident, save Norrey spraining his ankle and having to be lugged around on one of the dog sleighs. The look on his face wasn’t bad either.

Lord Jeor Mormont and his group from Bear Island were waiting with the Glovers in Deepwood Motte when they arrived. After the usual two day stay, they went on. Again they took the long way around, circling the Wolfswood along the foot of Sea Dragon’s Point, then going round the edge all the way to Torrhen’s Square, the home of House Tallhart where the Ryswells of the Rills, Dustins of Barrowton, Reeds of Greywater Watch, and the Flints of Flint’s Finger were already gathered. And that was the last stop before they all set off for Winterfell, where the Manderlys, Hornwoods and Flints of Widow’s Watch were already waiting for them.

Once past Castle Cerwyn, they came upon the most peculiar baggage train just a day out of Winterfell, driven on some of the strangest wheelbarrows he’d ever seen, with one big wheel in the middle. He dismissed them at first, seeing as one was broke and got whoever was in charge to call the whole thing to a halt. He ate his own thoughts later though, when he saw it catching up to them barely hours after they caught sight of Winterfell themselves, despite cutting across the hills on skis. Come to think of it, those wheelbarrows were carrying much more baggage than any one man should be able to push or pull alone. How much faster could armies move with those things? How fast coud they resupply?

Jon spent the final stretch in something of a tired haze. Then an altogether different daze from how much his head kept turning. Lord Stark hadn’t shared why he’d come out collecting his principal bannermen on such short notice. The Old Cunt thought it was probably to dismantle the Bolton lands into smaller chunks between them. Either that or because of the whole Citadel cock-up – the Old Cunt was right pissed that Uncle Hother hadn’t come home to take over for old Danner, even though the Maester hadn’t been no traitor far as any of them could tell. Seeing how much was happening at Winterfell, though, and Cerwyn before that…

Unfortunately, Jon couldn’t even think about it proper because of all the venerable greybeards around him. Jon really wanted the trip to be over so he could go on a bender and pass out for a while. He liked himself some good company, but these wiser-than-thou old men, Gods! The Mountain men were fine, but the others were damn too curious and envious of House Umber’s great ‘honor’ in being the ones entrusted with the stewardship of the old Red Kings’ castle.

He’d like to see them spend just a handspan’s worth of time down in that secret dungeon, with its darkness, its stench, its walls lined pink with human skin, the framed cunts, the pickled cocks, the stuffed skins and carcasses of people who were splitting images of almost every one of them jealous high lords. Karstark, Hornwood, Glover, Dustin, Tallhart, Ryswell, even the Old Cunt himself, they all had doubles in that oh so rosy gallery. Fuck, Jon couldn’t be sure there weren’t any stuffed men in there that weren’t just doubles, considering the many Bolton wives in there, not to mention how far back the gallery went once you got past the newest collection. Every High Lord of the North Jon could think of was in there, save Lord Stark himself.

“He was building up and waiting for the right specimen to immortalise,” Lord Rickard had said, not even a crick in his jaw as Jon was struggling to keep his guts from spilling out through his nose. “Living vicariously comes with rather exacting standards, I’ve found.”

Fucking Starks and their fucking ice for blood.

Then again, Jon spoke too soon. Thought, anyway. He hadn’t met the little Stark yet. Then he did and there was nobody in the whole world that could stop him from having his bender after that.

Jon Umber woke up under the unfamiliar ceiling of the unfamiliar bedroom in some unfamiliar townhouse of some unfamiliar townsman whose son was not entirely unfamiliar after all the meet and greet of the previous day and night. Which he still remembered. Vaguely. Part way.

“Lord Jon.” Maester Luwin looked even younger up close as he briskly took a seat at his bedside. “Any pain? Breathing problems? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“… My jaw hurts and my head’s pounding, I’ve got the mother of all hangovers, the air smells like arse and I need to piss like a horse, how’s that?”

“Drink this water, the bad air is from the pig sty you inhabited after the last drunken brawl – your fourth, I believe – and the outhouse is at the back if you’re good enough to walk.”

Jon groaned sitting up and drank the water and – wait, a pig sty? This late in winter? They had enough of them in use that he could just stumble into one? Wait a second. “… What about my jaw?”

“That would be my father, on whose behalf I already asked and received clemency so you may not seek retribution.” Luwin prodded Jon’s jawbone through his beard. Jon winced. “Nothing broken. You’ve strong bones, my lord.”

“Damn’ right.”

“Drink.”

He drank the second mug of fresh snowmelt, then a third before he felt like his bladder was about to burst. He hurried downstairs as fast as his pounding skull let him, was in the outhouse long enough that the pounding faded completely, then staggered back inside in search of warmth and his boots. He found the former but not the latter, and the Maester wasn’t anywhere either. Looking around, he got as far as wondering if it was really a smallfolk that owned a trunk so fancy before it finally occurred to him to wonder how he’d even gotten there. He’d gone on a bender, that was right enough, but he didn’t actually remember any of it. Or what all happened leading up to it. Which meant it worked right good, but fuck if the Old Cunt wasn’t gonna tan his hide like he was ten years younger.

Following the noise, he found a second exit. This one didn’t lead to the road either, instead opening into a large yard shared with the house next door, with a smithy smack in the middle. A large, open smithy that was also half a workshop for… pretty much everything he’d seen worked on at home and then some. The Maester’s pa was one of them jumped up blacksmiths, it looked like. Wait, didn’t them grey rats swear off all family ties?

Grudgingly glad for Lord Stark’s training that let him ignore the cold nipping at him, Jon breathed deep and long like he was taught, just ten times to get the tingling started, then went out and approached the two, no, three people working there. He’d’ve thought it was some apprentice or partner in trade before he saw the getup. The smith in his leather apron and headscarf looked same-ish in the face as the Maester, so he could see the family connection. Jon’s jaw trobbed at the sight of the man’s arms. And fists. Damn, very respectable by his standards.

The third man was right weird though. Short, squat, extremely respectable fists and arms, and and a face that looked about to bite your head off. The stranger had the same robe as Luwin, which belatedly made Jon take it in properly. It wasn’t so much a robe as a coat, made of thick grey wool and long enough to reach the ankles, slit at the back for riding and open at the front, tied with black cotton lace above the waist. The Maester’s upper sleeve was lined in metal links of chain set in the fabric, each half-way on top of the next like many-colored scales.

If Luwin had scales on one arm, though, the other Maester was wearing a whole mail. His grey coat shimmered even in the shade of the winter dawn, glinting in many colors from wrist to shoulder and from waist to neck every time the smith stepped on his bellows, causing the forge to spew flame and sparks into the air.

Jon came to a stop just as the shorter man finished working a link of grey steel into Luwin’s sleeve. It had special pleats sewn in, Jon realised.

“There you go,” the short one grunted with satisfaction and maybe a smidgen of pride. “May it be the first of many.”

“I’ll drink to that!” the smith called from his workbench as Luwin murmured his thanks.

“And who do we have here?” The short man turned to behold Jon. “Well now, you’re a big one. Actually, that’s right auspicious! I’m Marwyn, Seneschal of the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning up in yonder keep. How’s your arm? Any strength worth a damn?”

“I can show you if you like,” Jon growled, offended. “Where do you want the punch?”

“Well, if you’d caught me yesterday I’d have said the underside of my right cheekbone, but you missed your chance.” Eh? “As is, I’m not so much interested in how deep you can stick it as I am in how smoothly you can pull out.”

Fuck japes. Base ones too. Maybe he should give the man pointers.

That’s how Jon wound up sitting on the shortest stump he’d ever sat in, poking around the squat man’s mouth with something straight out of a Bolton’s randy fancies and now he couldn’t even handle holding a measly pair of tongs because of those dead fucks, fuck the Boltons.

Framed cunts and pickled cocks flashed through his mind.

Actually no, that’s wrong. No one fuck the Boltons. Ever. Let’em die.

The thought stirred something at the back of his head, but not remembering whatever memory he’d bendered his way out of remembering was the whole point of going on a bender. He focused on Marwyn’s instructions and set about yanking stuff out of the madman’s mouth with these new ‘forceps’ things.

And so Jon Umber yanked. And tugged. And jerked. And wrenched as hard as he could, and then again. And again and again and again and – “Alright, really?” Jon gasped the twentieth time he yanked on the baddest tooth buried in the ugliest swelling he’d ever seen without loosening it even a bit. “Are your gums made of rock or something? What the bloody fuck is your jaw made of?”

“Better stuff than yours, clearly,” Marwyn grumbled after taking the forceps away and looking at them. “Well, at least they’re not bent this time.”

“Or broken,” Luwin sighed. “Any pain, Master?”

Master? Not maester? What’s this?

“Plenty, but I’ve had worse. Ever told you of my time as a shadowbinder’s thrall? The fucking was so-so, but having your blood sucked out through your pores, now that’s pain.”

What had he just heard?

But Marwyn wasn’t even looking at him, instead digging through some pouch at his belt for something which he broke a piece of and held out. “Here. Eat this. Maybe then you can put your back into it.”

“I ain’t having no funny mushrooms.”

Marwyn tsked. “Right where the Maester of Winterfell can bear witness. You should replace the giant on your banner with a chicken.”

“Fuck you, Maester.”

“Come come, Umber. I do get off on power, but you barely rate higher than your uncle.”

Jon gaped. What!? That fucker! He didn’t dare! Uncle Hother was no pillow biter! Any rumors about that whore he gutted were terrible, vicious lies!

Somehow, though, he got talked around to eating whatever it was. And because food didn’t digest all that quick, he got roped into hauling charcoal and coal as well. Oh, if only the Old Cunt could see him now, playing the lowborn apprentice. Hoarfrost Umber would not be happy, if just because he wasn’t the one who ordered it. The Others take all three of these cunts, Jon wasn’t happy, but what was he supposed to do? He wasn’t gonna be made out to be a coward in front of Lord Stark’s eyes and ears. He wasn’t no moron, nobody that young snagged a post like that without being the most devious fucker this side of the Neck.

Then Jon was back on his little stump clamping the forceps on that there wisdom tooth and he pulled. He tugged. He jerked. He yanked. He wrenched. He saw red, hauling arse out of his seat, pushing the squashed cunt’s head back, gripping the tongs in his other hand so hard the tooth creaked and then he wrenched it right- “Get the fuck OUTTA THAT BOIL YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

The big, square tooth burst out of gum and mouth with a spray of rank pus.

He did it! HE DID IT! HE TORE THAT CUNT TOOTH OUT OF THAT BITCH ARSE MOUTH LIKE THE BITCH IT WAS! WHO’S NEXT!? YOU? YOU! YOU FUCKING CUNT YOU’RE THE ONE WHO PUNCHED ME IN THE JAW COME GET SOME!
 

Abhishekm

Well-known member
Also an open secret was that clan Norrey styled their banner as six poisoned thistles on gold because they had the dubious honor of being the only people in the North to have discovered gold. Dubious because the miners didn’t work themselves into an early grave by age forty. Instead, they died within a year, usually after gut pains, weakness, fits of madness, and falling into a sleep they never woke up from again. The few goblets and coins cast from the gold killed people the same way too, including the Norrey himself at the time. That had been during the first century of Stark rule.
Ah, so radiation is a thing to worry about now huh?
 

Abhishekm

Well-known member
Actually, it's mercury poisoning. The Norrey gold is contaminated with it. Got the idea from another fanfic and decided it makes more sense than NO gold being found in the whole North for 8,000 years.
Wouldn't that have evaporated in the smelting? They just notice or am I missing something? To be fair don't know much about gold mining or mercury.
 
Last edited:

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
Wouldn't that have evaporated in the smelting? They jot jotice or am I missing something? To be fair don't know much about gold mining or mercury.
Maybe, maybe not, but that wouldn't make a difference to the miners, and there's loads of ways even smelted gold can be contaminated just by being moved and stored next to the ore.

Mercury vapors aren't that kind on people either, I imagine. If it didn't kill the smith, some would probably settle back on the ingots / coins too. Maybe.

Most importantly, they don't know that's the problem.
 

Abhishekm

Well-known member
Maybe, maybe not, but that wouldn't make a difference to the miners, and there's loads of ways even smelted gold can be contaminated just by being moved and stored next to the ore.

Mercury vapors aren't that kind on people either, I imagine. If it didn't kill the smith, some would probably settle back on the ingots / coins too. Maybe.

Most importantly, they don't know that's the problem.
Ah well, that's a potential local source of mercury now too. Thermometers will be nice if they can settle on a proper temperature scale.

Wdit: That and in glass panes I guess.
 
Last edited:

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
Good to see,that North would remain North even with all changes made by SI.
It's the only kingdom that even remotely has something approaching culture, beyond the Faith (which is self-admitted social engineering and propaganda by their own priests), so it's the only thing with anything approaching a foundation for nationhood. No way is the SI planning to undermine that.
 

ATP

Well-known member
It's the only kingdom that even remotely has something approaching culture, beyond the Faith (which is self-admitted social engineering and propaganda by their own priests), so it's the only thing with anything approaching a foundation for nationhood. No way is the SI planning to undermine that.

In Poland we have gentry nation from 13th century - but it was made from only gentry and later townspeople.Peasants was not included.But after we lost another uprising/1864/ people from elites start educating them and workers,that they are poles,too - novels wroten by Sienkiewicz was very efficient - and as a result in 1920 workers and peasants feeled that they are poles and fought soviets.
SI could do the same - only difference is,that,becouse peasants could not read,he should use songs,not novels.
 
Intermission: A Short Reach Is No State for a Hand (Jon-II)

Karmic Acumen

Well-known member
A/N: Still planning to merge this into Jon-I eventually.
===============
“-. 274 AC .-“

“I’ll pay you back.”

“Yes you will. For my torn robe. And the half my links that I lost. And all the soft foods I’ll have to eat until my guts stop trying to dribble out my nose.”

“I’ll pay your pa back too.”

“Yes you will. For his black eye. And broken jaw. And dislocated arm. And my medicine. And the time lost on work and business while he recovers. And the soft foods he’ll have to eat until he doesn’t see stars every time he tries to chew something. And the fence. And the wall. And the outer wall. And the fire. And mother’s glory box that you threw at him and is now kindling for the smelter along with every last of her special sheets and pillows and the wedding dress I’d only just finished de-mothing. And my mother’s spinning wheel, which was our final proof of concept and therefore a priceless heirloom before you ruined it. And everything else on the exhaustive list I’ll provide this very evening, while witnessed by as many maesters and lords as I can find besides himself Lord Stark.”

Jon Umber wilted.

“Now that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Marwyn said brightly, sounding far too cheerful for someone who’d had his nose broken. Again. The Archmaester hadn’t stopped gleefully fondling his shit tooth, nor did it seem like he would any time soon despite having to spit out gobs of the foulest pus imaginable every other turn in the road. “It were me that fed him that mushroom. Poor lad had no idea! He’s just a victim of an evil, devious old man that done preyed on the poor little boy!” Excuse him!? “I’ll send the first payment tomorrow. That’s the honourable thing, yes? You northmen are big on that up here.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Luwin groused.

“Oh woe is me! To be cursed with such a cruel apprenti-is that the Young Lord?”

Eh?

Brandon Stark was rappelling down Winterfell’s wall.

Jon Umber stopped, mouth agape.

He blinked, astounded. Reality, being the utter cunt she so loved to be, didn’t stop being reality just because it didn’t make no godsdamned sense.

Was there no one watching that child? Wait, no, there was. And they were helping him! The biggest lunk Jon had ever seen outside his own blood was the one giving him the rope to burn his arse on! And there was a right fancy guardsman right next to him, just holding his face in his hands and not doing anything! What the fuck?

Jon didn’t notice all the other people that went and stopped to gawk around them until Luwin nudged him in the side. He hurried along before the crowd squashed them. They were all cheering, the dumb fucks. Didn’t they realise their child lord could fall and break his fool neck?

He did fall. Leapt off the wall right onto the naked back of a black stallion that came out of nowhere and swept him forth to cut the path of a second, far less impressive horse, sending its rider nearly falling out of his saddle with a yelp as the animal reared to a stop in the middle of the market.

Luwin facepalmed.

“Well!” Marwyn said blithely as they resumed their walk nearer to the side of the road. “That’ll solve the muttering about the Young Lord’s bravery or I’m the God-King of Ib.” What’s this now? “You missed old Hus so you wouldn’t have heard. Turns out there are some people – quite a few actually – that’re right worried over the Young Lord not beheading anybody yet. They’re glad he ain’t no lackwit, sure enough, but a craven isn’t all that better, looks like.”

“You don’t say.”

“There was a rape while Lord Stark was off south,” Luwin explained. “The Young Lord tried him, heard the case against him, even offered to hear any case for him – which the raper’s mother went and provided with much passion, if not all that much sense – then instead of sentencing him he tossed him in the dungeon. Some people think he didn’t technically pronounce a sentence so he needn’t swing the sword so young. On the other hand, everyone knows that’s why he didn’t pass the sentence, so is he craven? That’s what some are asking. Including my father’s business partner, who never lets me hear the end of it when our visits happen to overlap.”

“Doesn’t help he hadn’t been to no executions before either.” Marwyn gargled and swished mouthfuls from his wineskin. When he spat out, it looked like the splatter of rotted whale blood. “Already eleven years and not one rolling head to his name. Young Lord went and watched the man get shortened when his father came back, right enough, but boys start a lot younger ‘round these parts, or so I’ve heard.”

Jon had seen his first execution when he was seven. Jon also recalled something about a Stark that became Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch at age ten.

“Right,” Jon cast about for a change in topic. “This whole jumping off walls business-”

“Oh don’t get me started,” groaned Winterfell’s Maester, briefly cradling his forehead before the bumping commoners cured him of it right and proper. “Did you know Winterfell is a maze? Because it is. It’s a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slant up and down so that you can’t even be sure what floor you’re on. The place has grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, one whose branches are gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth. You’d think that would get a boy excited about skittering through tunnels in the deep to dig for treasure, but no. Brandon Stark, as always, has a better idea than everyone else in the world, that being to get out from under it all and scramble up near the sky. Says he likes the way it looks, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle goes on below. When he fancies to write or draw something, he perches for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brood over the First Keep. Our First Keep, where we’re supposed to set up our new Citadel. Have you ever woken up to the sight of a stripling climbing over your window? I don’t recommend it. I swear he does it on purpose. Windowsills are one thing, but the best handholds aren’t anywhere near there otherwise!”

Jon carefully didn’t say anything as Maester Luwin went and got more than started. Instead, he tried to imagine it. And when he realized he hadn’t seen enough of Winterfell for it, he instead imagined himself standing on top of the highest tower at Last Hearth watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their cauldrons and the gardens, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. Just the picture of it made him feel like the lord of the castle, in a way he doubted even the Old Cunt would ever know.

“It wouldn’t be such a task to keep my poor heart from giving out before its time if not for all the secrets it teaches him. None of the builders up to the Builder himself ever leveled the earth – there are hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell, you must have seen it. But it’s not enough that he knows that, no, whatever he’s learned of the keep is beyond anything I’ve been able to puzzle together. Possibly beyond anything I’ll ever piece together, knowing my luck. Since we arrived and helped him finish his last pressing business, he’s taken to popping out from literally everywhere. I don’t even want to know how he gets on top of the Broken Tower.”

“There’s two ways, so far,” Brandon Stark said as they finally reached him.

How had he even heard them? Jon could barely hear him.

“You can climb straight up the side of the tower itself.” Brandon Stark spoke with the air of someone indulging in some secret jape. “The stones are loose, though, and the mortar that held them together has long gone to ash. They don’t take my full weight well anymore.”

“They shouldn’t have to take your weight at all!” Luwin said in exasperation. “Has my predecessor soured you so totally, My Lord? Does my peace of mind mean so little to you?”

“An excellent if transparent emotional argument,” Brandon Stark replied as his garishly dressed kinsman disappeared back through the gates, corralled back into Winterfell by another kinsman much older than all of them. Dark hair, long face, respectable height if you didn’t have giant blood, how many Starks actually were there? “The one where you offered to make a pottery version of me to throw off the tower was better.”

“And useless,” Luwin groaned.

“Only because I saw it coming,” Lord Brandon ‘reassured’ him. “If the narrative convention hadn’t materialised, I might not have followed through on my off-handed ‘let’s see if I can climb as well as my namsake’ plan.”

“Oh, you are not blaming this on me!” The Maester told his lord with shocking rudeness. “You’ve no namesake as mad as all that in all of House Stark’s history, and the world is no song or story! Has your Lord Father still not impressed that enough?”

“Ah, but testing how much life wants to be like certain songs and stories is the whole point.”

Jon looked over at the half-ruined monstrosity that was tall enough to somehow be seen over the wall from even that close.

“The best way is to start from the godswood,” Brandon Stark continued as if there had been no break in the topic at all. “You shinny up the tall sentinel tree there, cross over the armory and the guards’ hall, and leap roof to roof – barefoot so the guards don’t hear you overhead. That brings you up to the blind side of the First Keep. The renovations haven’t even started proper, it’s still just rats and spiders living there, and the old stones still make for good climbing. You can go straight up to where the gargoyles lean out blindly over empty space, and swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side. From there, if you really stretch, you can reach out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leans close. The last part is the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, but that’s really just a measly ten feet. Hardly a problem. Especially now that there’s no crows left to come and mob you to see if you’ve brought any corn. Or at least that’s what they want you to think.”

As he beheld the young boy ahorse next to him, Jon Umber was struck by his shameless manner almost as much as he was by his appearance. Not so much his looks – Starks all looked the same when you got down to it – but his clothing. It was nothing like he’d ever seen. The boy wore a black vest of some new cut, all black but with golden lace decorating the front top to bottom with braided cord trim in gold, with silver buttons and bright white at the cuffs and the upright band collar. His hands were covered in black moleskin gloves, and his legs in long black trousers and shined leather boots, also black. Over it all, he bore a coat vaguely like the one the Maesters had, but made of fine suede that flapped in the winter breeze. It was also black, save for the direworlf stitched on the back in silver thread, the golden fringed straps on the shoulders, and the buttons – silver again, cast with direwolf heads, undone to the last as if the cold didn’t bother him none. And there were small folds on his right shoulder where a number of chain links like those of the Maesters sat, neatly stacked like scales of black, grey, gold, brass-green, copper-red and silver.

“Don't you all expect me to start throwing coins!” Brandon Stark suddenly told the commoners who’d gathered in a right thicket around them.

Jon eyed the smallfolk cautiously. He only had a knife on him but his fists should still do fine.

“Please let us pass, unless there's anyone here with a positively unhealthy obsession with having more booze every day than the last? You, the man with the raised hand. You should talk to friends and family about that, wanting booze more than water is a sickness of the mind you know! In the mean time, though, the Archmaester here will be needing a taster for his stills, do you have a job? What about trouble, are you a trouble maker? Angry drunk? Of course you’ll answer no. Anyone can vouch for you? Well now, those are quite a few hands, you must be a killer at parties, you a bard or a fool? Never mind, here.” The boy took a notebook out of some pocket or other, wrote down something with a fancy pen, ripped out the page and passed it to the suddenly awkward-looking man. “Take this to the jobs overseer, directions are on the note – can you read? No. Alright, is there anyone here who knows the place? Right, take him there and get him started on that, you’re a kind woman you are, here’s a moon for your trouble. That will be all, thank you everyone!”

The people got out of their way with heartfelt well wishes and many backslaps to the lucky man who was either hungover or still drunk from last night, now that Jon had the chance to look at him.

“Jon Umber.”

“Berk, Berk, Berk!” Jon flinched and glared at the cackling raven as it flew off the roof nearby. Dumb bird, that was not how you pronounced his name!

“From the look on your face, I’m assuming you don’t remember our meeting yesterday, and likely nothing after that either.” Brandon Stark pat his horse. The stallion obediently set off at a slow amble, no spurs, no saddle, no reins, no nothing.

“… Aye.”

“Well, nothing to it then. You’ll find out at the funeral.”

Funeral? There was going to be a funeral?

“By the way, this is Ser Neigh.”

“What?” Jon felt staggered by yet another shift in topic. “Ser What?”

“Nay.

“Ser Nay?”

“Not Nay. Neigh. You behold Himself, His Chtonic Magnificence, the Grim Darkness, the Shadow Never Once Cast by Sun and Stars, Lord of the Empty Night, Ser Neighs-A-Lot.”

Oh, just take his head off now and be done with it.

“He says hello.”

“… Hello.”

The horse snuffled him.

Right.

The Others take all of today.

Jon Umber submitted to the cruel hand of fate and wound up attending a funeral. A solemn funeral. A funeral attended by everyone who was anyone in Winterfell. Which seemed to be a lot more people than he expected, but then again there was a lot more of everything than he expected. The number of armed men about the place was some eight times bigger than what he thought was the number of Winterfell guards in peacetime. Some looked patchy though, in both get and appearance. Garish even. So did the representatives from the other noble houses, great and small, of which there were far more than had come with their group. More than he knew existed. There was a fairly big crowd indeed gathered for the funeral. A funeral in the Winterfell lichyard.

A funeral for Big Muff.

“What the fuck?” Jon muttered as he entered on the heels of his small future liege lord. “No really, what the fuck?”

“By your leave, My Lord, we’ll go take our places.”

“You have it, Archmaester. Luwin, you’ll stand with the household.”

“Understood.”

The maesters went ahead of them while Jon was still reeling from what he was seeing.

Everyone was there. Bunch of Winterfell menials. Them High Lords that Lord Stark came and collected, all of them on one side of the freshly dug grave, wearing their best getup. Even Lady Lyarra was there on a palanquin, flanked on either side by her youngest son and daughter. Across from them were the maesters of the new Citadel, all of them wearing those same woolen coats with metal chain links set into their sleeves. All of them including his uncle Hother, whose flinty eyes lingered on him briefly but otherwise stood like a tall sentry with his long dark beard and face as hard as winter frost. All of them to a man lined up on the other side of the pit and the open coffin above it. All save one.

The last was hanging back near the entrance that Jon had just been led through, looking just about ready to fall to pieces while Lord Stark loomed over him, dressed like a forbidding god in attire similar to his son’s, except twice as fancy and with the coat changed for a large black cloak lined with fur as white as snow. Only that wasn’t what he was doing, was it? Looming. Not like that.

“Are you sure you don’t want to speak any words?”

“I can’t, Lord Stark, I can’t. I just can’t.” Tybald Snow looked like he was half a step away from crying himself to death. “I can’t-just looking at him is-he just smiled when he saw me and then he-he-he looked happy, how can anyone-I know why but-I can’t be anywhere near him, I just can’t!”

“Hush now, shh, you don’t need to do anything.” The Lord Stark went and pulled the young man into a hug, his cloak almost completely hiding him from sight like a direwolf of silver and gold stars imposed on the night sky. “Can you stand here, then? With me?”

“I’ll try,” the young lad gasped thickly. “I’ll try.”

Jon Umber watched as Tybald Snow fell to a thousand pieces, unable to look away. Slivers of memory pricked at the insides of his skull, skewering his brain every time they bumped against his thoughts like washed up flotsam in the Bay of Seals.

“The late Lord Bolton, it turns out, had a type,” Brandon Stark said as Hoarfrost Umber stepped forward to give the most awkward, bewildered eulogy Jon had ever heard in his entire life. “The type that makes it hard for the third leg to get up without taking certain liberties, let’s say. Taking them away, I mean. From other people. Very specific people of very specific bodily attributes. A hunt here. A rape there. A spot of torture for flavor. All three of them back to back for the entirety of so and so’s wedding night. Sometimes he even remembered the supposed point of availing himself of new couples, instead of losing himself in planning how to debase and stuff the remains of the people he thought were his rightful subjects. Occasionally, he even overcame his resentment over having to settle for body doubles enough to stick it in the bride before he went all soft. Skip nine months and change and, well, here we are.”

“Muff was the father,” Jon breathed. “The stepfather.” But that didn’t feel right-

“Oh no, the groom killed himself the day after. Didn’t cope well with being raped, you see, never mind everything else. As I said, Lord Bolton had a type.” The eleven year-old boy didn’t seem to care that the biggest, strongest man in the North was staring down at him in jaw-dropping horror. “He did manage to switch from groom to bride at least once though, thus…” The boy gestured briefly where his father was holding and consoling the poor bastard. “The mother didn’t last long herself, but she did power through until her son’s weaning before she threw herself into the Weeping Water during the springmelt. The man over there was her father. The kind, self-assured grandfather that took in her girl’s boy and raised him as his own with all the love and care and firm guidance that neither of his parents would have had it in them to show even if they had lived.”

Jon was starting to remember, now. What happened the prior day. The long and merry meet and greet with ten times as many people as he’d expected, including his own half-brothers from Essos, before it all came to a crashing halt when some lad came screaming bloody murder about House Umber’s newest dogsbody. There was shock, yelling, stomping half-way across the keep, more yelling. And then there was a wretchedly clear image shoving its way into the spot behind Jon’s eyes. Big Muff laid out on the ground, smile on his bald head while the frenzied half-maester was wrist-deep in the blood pooling from the knife stabbed in Muff’s heart.

“His name was Andric, did you know? A farmer, sometimes lumberjack, sometimes fisherman, and veteran of the Ninepenny war. Big man. Had some Umber blood from one of your forebears that went and knocked up some lass during a name day feast or whatnot. A good, stout, fierce man and loving father. Up until the Lord Bolton made his second visit. The late Lord took exception to the example the man was setting for his bastard son, or so it’s figured. Might be he just hit all the right spots. Either way, turns out flaying a man’s cock off one strip of flesh at a time can break even the biggest, strongest, fiercest man until you can remake him into whatever you want. And making an eight-year-old boy watch, watch some more, and then participate, will let you make him into whatever you want too.”

And then Bolton died out of nowhere, the boy got brought back North by what might not have been coincidence, Jon’s grandfather decided to take the man in out of pity – or more, Jon thought as he recalled what he first thought on sight of the man – only for the two to end up laying eyes on each other in Winterfell.

At which point the old man killed himself right in front of his boy.

But Jon hadn’t seen it that way. He’d assumed the worst and pulled his sword on the lad. Which, as he belatedly recalled, was why he didn’t have it during his drinking binge. Or now.

He remembered something else too, now. Brandon Stark on the roof of the firewood shed. Glaring quellingly down at him while stroking the feathers of some raven or other that had gone and pecked at Jon’s face just as he was about to-

“Lord Bolton was fair scholar of language too, but I think I’ll let you find out for yourself why he got fixated on the man’s name. It’s quite enlightening.” Brandon Stark looked at him. His grey eyes seemed made of quicksilver that burned like cold stars as they reflected the snowglare like it didn’t bother him at all. “You didn’t really think I’d let it go with you absconding into the sweet embrace of forgetfulness, did you? You pulled a sword yesterday, no by your leave, no nothing. Terrible idea up here in Winterfell where my father is king, I can attest personally. Have you found the right words for that now, my lord? Or will you be missing the meeting of the Lords as well?”

Jon Umber almost couldn’t hold the gaze of his future liege lord who looked back as if it wasn’t fucking terrifying what all kinds of horror had come spewing out of the mouth of a boy of barely eleven years. “…I may have made a mistake.”

“Quite.” Brandon Stark smiled mildly. And commanded. “Don’t break guest right. Ever.”

Jon Umber stared after the eleven year-old boy as he strode forward to stand next to his siblings.

Fucking Starks and their fucking ice for blood!

But then, that’s why they paid homage unto them, didn’t they? They were their icy gods that took the winter for their own so that the rest of them could make some life in the other three seasons, wasn’t that what Pa said? Bard’s truth was still truth, wasn’t it? Some shape of it.

When Jon’s grandfather was finished, Lord Stark carefully led Tybald Snow to the front and kept him under his protection as the boy stooped to grab and throw the first handful of dirt into the grave, sobbing fat, ugly tears all the while.

“I’m proud of you, lad.”

Tybald Snow just made a wretched noise, clung to the man under his cloak and refused to come out.

Jon’s chest grew tight. Lord Stark was a good man.

He quietly went to stand next to the Old Cunt-

Muff didn’t just mean bungle, Jon realized suddenly. Muff also meant cunt.

Bolton had flayed a man’s cock off until he turned lamebrained, remade him into the closest thing to a woman anyone could be without a cunt, took him as his personal dogsbody, and named him Big Cunt.

He almost didn’t manage to swallow back the vomit before it spewed out all over the Lady Stark and the little ones.
 
Last edited:

ATP

Well-known member
Starks as icy gods...wait,i remember some story where Starks was desdendents of Others.Something about Otherstarks.
If we think about it,then entire story is about Ice and Fire.
Targs are affilated with fire,so Starks should be affilated with ice,too.

P.S Company od Rose arleady come back?
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top