Chapter Text
The North proper began at the Neck; everyone agreed on that. The Neck itself was largely marshland and fens, though the reeds were dead and brown with winter and the water frozen.
“In summer there are flowers that give you a rash if you pick them.” Arya told Systlin, solemnly, as they rode. North of the Twins they had come across snow proper, and it was growing deeper the further north they rode. It had taken two days to swap wheels for runners and to turn the wagons to sledges. Systlin had offered the Stark girls a sledge to ride in, but both had instead chosen to ride. Sansa rode sidesaddle, but Arya rode astride, and boldly. Both stuck close to Sys’ own horse, though for quite different reasons.
“Let me guess how you know this.” Systlin said, amused.
“They’re pretty! They’re red and look like lilies and I picked some for Father.” Arya screwed her face up. “My hands itched for a week!”
“The sort of lesson that will never need to be learned twice.” Systlin laughed. “I’ve learned a few that way myself, Lady Arya.”
“Father still kept them in a jar in his tent.” Sansa said, quietly. They were all wearing thick wool and Sansa had taken some scrap wool she’d salvaged from a torn cloak and some rabbit furs brought to her by the loyal Northerners who shadowed the Stark girl’s steps to sew mittens for herself, Arya, and Systlin. She’d embroidered her own with a fine pattern of dragonflies, in blue and green silk thread. She had a thick wooly hat on as well against the chill; that was Sura’s handiwork. Systlin wore a similar one, as did Foicatch. “Until they wilted.”
Sura was riding on Sansa’s other side, though she just had the reins looped loosely over the pommel of the saddle and was knitting as she rode, very rapidly. This time the hat was dark gray and cream, and a snarling wolf head was taking shape on it. A match to Sansa’s, then, for Arya. She’d promised both girls matching ones. As Sansa spoke, Sura paused her work to reach out and pat the girl on the shoulder. Sansa leaned into it, very slightly.
“Remember them fondly.” Sura said, quietly. “And don’t let them be forgotten. It’s all you can do.”
Sansa looked at Sura with those huge wounded blue eyes; she was starting to look at Sura, Systlin thought, much the same way that Arya looked at Systlin. “Did you lose your father?”
“And my mother.” Sura said. “Mother died giving birth to my brother.”
Westerosi knew that sort of death well; there were sympathetic sounds from the Northerners, and from any others riding close enough to hear. Sura went on.
“My father died when a…beast attacked our herds.” There was no way really to describe wraithen to the people of Westeros. “Some years later. My brother Alric was only ten; I was eighteen.”
“Oh.” Sansa said. Was quiet for a moment. “Does it stop hurting?”
“No.” Systlin said, thinking of her own father, and her little brother. “But it gets older and more distant, with time.”
“Your father died?” Sansa caught herself. “I mean, I’m sorry, of course he did. You wouldn’t have inherited his lands if he didn’t, I’m sorry…”
“It’s all right. Don’t be sorry. He did. During a war. My brother died in the same war.”
“I hate war.” Sansa said, suddenly and venomously. “I hate it. All it does is kill people. Father, and Robb, and Mother and Rickon and Bran…”
“Smart of you.” Foicatch had been riding along the ranks again; now he caught up once more. “That’s what war does; kills people. Sometimes it’s necessary. Other times it isn’t. Most times it isn’t.”
“Then why…”
“You know the answer to that, I think.” Systlin eyed the Stark girl sidelong. Sansa was far from stupid, though she could play it well when it was smart to do so.
“Yes.” Sansa said, bitterly. “Because they wanted things, and didn’t care. Because Cersei wanted to…to…to fuck her brother, and then wanted to protect her children from Robert, and that meant more than anything else to her. She doesn’t care about anyone else, so she doesn’t care if everyone else dies.”
“Clever girl.” Sura said, over the clicking of her needles.
“Sometimes, though.” Sys said. “They do have to be fought. Like I will ride north to your half brother for.”
“Old Nan always said the dead were just a cradle story.” Arya was looking thoughtful.
“When things last happened very long ago, they can seem like such a thing.” Systlin shrugged. “People likely wished they were only a story to thrill each other with around the fire. Pits, I certainly wish they were. It would make my job easier.”
Both of the Stark girls chewed on that in silence for a time.
Aside from the bloody cold, they had a fairly easy progress north; the fact that the muddy Kingsroad where it cut through the bogs of the Neck was frozen made for good travel. Once past the Neck, there was little problem finding accommodations for the Stark girls, at least; every small croft and farmstead they passed greeted the Starks with jubilant cries of “Wolves! The wolves are back!” Nothing would suit save that Ned’s girls be given the best bed in the house; the Queen who was bringing them back received a great deal of joyful celebration as well, but distinctly as an afterthought. Systlin took no offence; she knew that sort of loyalty. It could not be bought, or faked; it was the sort earned, and earned through long hard service.
Her family, in the Northern Lands of Ellinon, received similar such loyalty. They’d won it with three thousand years of judicious and prudent governing, and by fighting a murderous god to the death. It told her more about the Starks than anything else ever could, in truth.
The dismaying thing was the steadily deepening snow, and the steadily dropping temperatures. Systlin, a fire witch to her bones, gradually added layers the further north they got, much to the amusement of the Northerners, including the Stark girls. Neither of the Stark girls seemed to mind the cold much at all. Arya, indeed, downright gleefully frolicked in the snow, particularly after one of their sworn man cut some winter-bare willow, took some rawhide thongs, and made her a pair of snowshoes. She happily tromped about on them as they set camp each night, badgering people to show her how to set up a tent and how to start a fire with flint and steel and how to skin a rabbit properly.
“Stark.” Said one small crofter, fondly, as Sys defrosted next to his hearth one night as his wife stared wide-eyed at the Southern Queen. Arya was happily rough housing with the couple’s six children out behind the farmhouse, which dug into a hillside to retain heat. Sansa was outside in the snow as well, though she was playing in a more sedate fashion; she was making a little snow castle with one of the crofter’s children, as the northern men at arms watched with the air of very protective mother bears. “They’ve a touch of ice in their very blood, it’s said. They used to be the Kings of Winter, that was the old title.“
The man’s wife snapped an admonishment. “Bloody Queen, Bren!”
“Sorry. Sorry.” Bren glanced at Sys. “Your Grace. Sorry.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I just wish I could borrow a bit of it.” Sys sighed, took her boots and socks off, rolled up her trousers, and stuck her feet into the fire, to the mutual alarm of both Bren and his wife and Foicatch’s amusement.
In the lands governed by Lord Manderly of White Harbor, they were met at a small town built around a lively stream by two hundred men at arms, and with them a great number of dog teams and sledges.
“It’s the better way to travel in the north when winter bites than horses, if you’re after speed.” Said Robyn, who was commanding the company. “We’ve heard you’re moving towards Winterfell with the she-wolves; my lord thought they might be of use.”
“We use them at home as well.” Systlin said, very pleased; there’d been no sled dogs to find for love or money further south. Sura was up to her neck in delighted yowling hounds, and Arya was rolling about in the snow with no fewer than six excited dogs, wrestling and shrieking in delight. “I’ll send Lord Manderly my thanks.”
“This is his thanks.” Robyn said, simply. “You aided the wolves.”
He watched later that night as Sys worked with Arya; Arya was a ferociously quick little thing, and devious. Both were excellent traits in a swordswoman, and Sys told her so. He wasn’t the only one watching; a great number of people seemed to think that the Sorceress-Queen training the Little Wolf was a very interesting spectacle.
“Was it Syrio Forel who taught you to train both hands?” Sys asked, as Arya switched hands when asked, without complaint.
Arya nodded. “He said that a water dancer should be able to fight with either hand.”
“He was a wise man.” Systlin said, and Arya beamed even brighter at the praise for her teacher. “I would have liked to meet him.”
“He was the First Sword of Braavos!” Arya said, proudly.
“I think I understand why.” The man had given Arya a very solid basis; her stances were good, and getting better with only a little prompting. Her movements were quick and fluid, and she had a very sharp eye for what her opponent was doing. She was a fast learner, and once she learned something she did not forget. “And I think you’ll be as good as he was one day, little wolf.” Sys fondly tapped Arya on the tip of the nose with one finger. “Even my aunt would be pleased with you.”
“Your aunt?”
“She taught me to fight. She was the greatest sword in our kingdom, until me. Come, let’s do the same drills with your left side. And remind me to find you a dagger for your off hand at some point; I think you’d take to the style well.”
“Like yours?” Arya asked, excited.
“Just like mine.”
The snow around them as they pushed further north was deep, but the Kingsroad was packed hard. It seemed to be a duty every man and woman of the north took seriously when the snow fell; to keep the roads passable by sledge. Once they reached a river, though, the Northerners drove their dog teams and sledges onto the hard-frozen river and abandoned the road.
“The Little Knife.” Sansa said. “The Kingsroad follows it from here to Winterfell anyway.”
The smooth thick ice, swept nearly clean of snow by the steady north wind, was as good as a well paved road. The dogs had little trouble with traction, with their heavily furred foot pads and claws. The horses had more; the northerners showed how to take a file and roughen the steel of the horseshoes to give them a better grip. There were plenty of files and whetstones in the army; it would have taken one farrier or blacksmith months to so treat all the horseshoes, but with thousands of hands the work was done quickly enough.
Foicatch, the traitor, was clearly enjoying himself. He quite liked cold weather, to the delight of the Northerners. He didn’t even have his fur-lined jacket done up all the way, even as Sys had hers closed tightly under her chin and her wooly hat pulled down as far as it would go. Sansa had spent a few nights with silk thread by a fire and Systlin’s mittens; they now had a pair of horses embroidered on them, one on each, and very finely. She’d made a pair for Sura as well, embroidered with little cat faces.
When at last the walls of Winterfell rose above the endless white of the North, even Systlin was impressed.
Winterfell was as massive and fierce a fortress as her own Keep, but then she supposed there were certain similarities. Both had been built to shield all the people they could from a monster; the Keep from a mad god, and Winterfell from winter itself. Had those great gates been shut, it would have been a beast to siege, but of course right now the gates were not shut.
No, they were in fact thrown wide open, and banners of gray and white wool bearing the Stark wolf flew from the battlements. The joy of Winter Town as Sansa and Arya Stark rode home was unbounded, and a massive man wearing a white bearskin and an equally massive man Sansa greeted as “The Greatjon” greeted them at the gates, beaming.
“Lady Stark.” Systlin said to Sansa. “Lady of Winterfell, Wardeness of the North. As I promised; welcome home.”
Both the enormous men beamed. Behind them were a great many more people, only with great effort restraining naked joy.
“Lady Stark.” Said the man wearing the bearskin. “Winterfell is yours. The Boltons have been chased off.”
“Never thought I’d see a Southern queen worth it.” The Greatjon said, as Sansa very seriously took the offered tray of bread and salt and turned to offer it to Systlin and her spouses. “But these are strange times, I suppose.” He inclined his great head to her.
“She’ll do well at it.” Systlin said, nodding to Sansa, and then accepted the bread and salt.
She and her spouses were put in the best bedroom Winterfell had; Sansa, Lady Paramount or not, could not bear to take her parent’s old bedroom. Systlin quietly praised whatever genius had installed the thermal spring fed underfloor heating of Winterfell.
And later that evening, as they prepared for the welcoming feast, Systlin felt the fabric of reality warp, as something evil and hungry and cold reached out and seized power for itself, and nearly fell over while lacing up her boots.
The news of the attack on Oldtown reached them by raven a few short days later.