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Oberyn IV
296 - AC
The cold had grown cruel.
Not the brisk, biting cold of Winterfell's courtyards, nor the stinging wind that rolled through White Harbor's docks. This—this thing clawed its way through every stitch and seam, gnawed at bone, crept into marrow like a patient assassin.
The sort of cold that made a man from Dorne question every choice that had ever led him north of the Neck.
They had left the kingsroad two days past, cutting east through the Gift on a track only the black brothers and the mountain clans pretended was a road.
Pines crowded close, heavy with snow, their branches sagging like old men carrying too many sins. The world had narrowed to white ground, black trees, and the low iron sky that pressed down on them all.
He sat on his borrowed steed and tried not to let his teeth chatter loud enough for the boy to hear.
The boy rode a length ahead with his bastard brother and the Ironborn, cloaked in grey wolf and white weirwood, hood thrown back despite the wind.
The cold did not seem to touch him. His breath plumed, yes, but his cheeks stayed pale, not flushed, and his eyes never left the path ahead. He had been watching the treeline for hours, head tilted like a hound catching a scent no one else could smell.
They made camp at dusk in the lee of a crumbled watchtower the black brothers called the Greyshed, though no fire had burned here in a hundred years.
The Winter Sons moved with practiced silence: pickets set, horses seen to, a few low tents raised for the prince and the heir. The rest would sleep under the stars, or what passed for stars behind the cloud.
He ducked inside the tent and nearly wept at the brazier's glow. The boy followed a moment later, brushing snow from his cloak like it was an afterthought.
"The Hearth's warmth is beyond us now," the boy said, voice low. "Keep the watch tight. I do not want a pack of wildlings taking us unaware with sticks and stones."
The Winter Sons nodded and melted into the dark. He watched them go, impressed despite himself. They moved like his own spear-carriers back home, but quieter. Northern quiet was a different beast.
Robb pulled the flap shut, sealing them in with the brazier's sullen heat. He knelt, fed it another brick of peat, then looked up.
"A bunch of wildlings?" He asked, raising his brows in feigned surprise. "I thought your name alone would scatter them across the snow in dread."
Robb had merely smiled as he turned around. "I do not believe my name carries that much weight among the wildlings as you might think."
A quiet silence had settled before the boy broke it,
"How do you fare, my prince?"
Oberyn barked a laugh that came out more honest than he intended. "I am beginning to think this was a fool's errand. At Winterfell I believed I understood cold. There the air stung like a wasp. Here…" He flexed his gloved fingers, felt the ache in every joint. "Here the air has claws."
The Stark's mouth curved, not quite a smile, more the memory of one. "The Wall is half a day yet. If the sky clears, you'll see it at dawn. A blade of ice across the world."
"You have been before," Oberyn said. It was not a question.
"Aye." Robb sat cross-legged on a rolled cloak, close enough to the brazier that the firelight painted gold across the sharp bones of his face. "Two summers ago. Word came of clans fleeing south whole families on the road to Winterfell. None arrived. Then ravens from the Shadow Tower, deserters, cutthroats, men who had taken the black and decided the Other side of the Wall suited them better."
He paused. The brazier crackled. Outside, the wind prowled around the tent like something alive.
"We rode out from Castle Black," Robb continued. "Twenty Winter Sons, Ser Jory, Jon, myself. We tracked them through the Haunted Forest to Queenscrown. Found what was left of the clansfolk."
His voice did not change, but something in the set of his shoulders did. Oberyn leaned forward.
Robb met his eyes. For the first time since they had left Winterfell, the mask slipped just a finger's breadth, but enough.
"Men nailed to trees by their own entrails. Children with their skulls dashed against stone. Women…" His jaw worked once. "Women kept alive long enough to regret surviving the first hour. One clung to the bark with broken fingers, begging. Begging me."
The tent felt suddenly smaller. The brazier's heat was nothing against the chill that crawled up Oberyn's spine.
"I gave her mercy," Robb said quietly. "Then I gave the rest of them the same."
He looked into the fire as though it held pictures only he could see.
"I lost my head that day. Fury and vengeance, dangerous companions. We chased them north for three days, into snow so deep the horses bled from the hocks. They had men waiting, more than we knew. An arrow took Ser Jory through the lung. Another man lost an eye. We killed them all in the end, but the price…"
Robb exhaled, slow and steady.
"I learned something on that ride," he said. "Justice is a luxury, Vengeance is a fire that burns the hand that wields it."
Silence stretched between them, thick as the snow outside.
Oberyn found his voice. "The injustice done to the innocent women and children… it makes us all lose our heads."
He rose, restless, and stepped to the tent flap. Lifted it just enough to peer out. Snow still fell, soft and relentless, erasing the world.
"You speak of Lady Elia." Robb said.
Obreyn did not answer at once. When he did, his voice was soft. "I speak of Elia. And of her children. No war, no rebellion, no slight justifies what was done to them. Smashing a babe's head against a wall and calling it victory… that is not war. That is cowardice wearing a lion's skin."
Oberyn let the flap fall. He turned slowly.
The boy sat very still, firelight flickering across a face that suddenly looked far older than two and ten.
"I do not weep for Targaryens," Robb went on. "But I weep for children who never drew breath free of terror. And for a woman who died screaming while the realm looked away."
Oberyn felt something twist inside his chest. He had carried that grief for years, honed it like a spear, fed it on every rumour of Gregor Clegane's movements, every whisper of Tywin Lannister's cold smile.
And here was Eddard Stark's son speaking of it as though he had stood in the throne room and seen the blood himself.
He crossed the tent in two strides and poured mulled wine from the skin the Winter Sons had left. Drank deep. The warmth spread, but it did not reach the places the cold had claimed.
"You are very certain for one so young," he said at last.
The boy's eyes never left the fire. "I have seen what men become when they believe no one is watching. I have buried good men because I was too slow to learn the difference between justice and slaughter."
Another silence. Then, almost too soft to hear:
Oberyn's hand tightened on the cup.
He thought of Elia laughing in the Water Gardens. Of Rhaenys hiding under his cloak. Of Aegon's tiny fingers curled around his thumb.
He thought of a boy who had cut mercy and vengeance from the same steel and learned to tell one from the other by the weight of the dead.
He set the cup down carefully.
"You should sleep, Lord Robb," he said. "You have given me things to think about."
Robb rose. At the flap he paused, half in shadow.
"What did you do to the men who did it?" Oberyn lifted a brow.
"The men who did those things at Queenscrown," Robb said. "We took them alive when we could. The ones who begged, we gave clean deaths. The ones who laughed…"
He looked back. The firelight caught the edge of something cold and ancient in his eyes.
"They learned what the Red Kings did to their enemies before the Starks broke them. Piece by measured piece. The snow kept their screams from travelling far."
Then he was gone, the flap falling shut behind him, footprints already filling with new snow.
Oberyn stood alone in the tent's dim glow long after the brazier burned low.
Outside, the wind howled like something with too many teeth.
Inside, the Red Viper stared into dying embers and felt the first true shiver of his life that had nothing to do with cold.
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Jon VI
296 - AC
The wind howled like a beast in chains as we crested the last hill, and there it was—the Wall.
He had seen it before, of course. He was dragged north at some point to stand in its shadow and feel small. But riding toward it now, with the fog clinging to their cloaks and the snow stinging their faces, it looked different. Larger. Hungrier.
It stretched across the lands like a great blue blade, seven hundred feet of ice that gleamed under the weak sun, veined with cracks that wept slow tears of meltwater.
The top was lost in clouds, but he knew what waited up there: wind that could strip a man's flesh from his bones, and a view that made the world below seem like a child's map.
Robb rode at the front, beside the Dornish Prince, their horses plodding through the drifts.
The Dornishman sat his garrison with the grace of a man born to warmer sands, but his face was tight, his dark eyes narrowed against the gale.
He had swapped his silk for bearskin days ago, but it sat ill on him, like a stag trying to wear a wolf's hide.
Theon trailed behind them, muttering curses under his breath, his Ironborn blood rebelling against the cold. The Winter Sons flanked them, their spears and swords bundled against the weather, banners furled to keep the cloth from freezing stiff.
Castle Black squatted at the base like a beggar at a king's gate: a huddle of stone towers and timber longhouses, black against the white, with the Wall looming over it all like a judgmental Septon.
Smoke rose from the chimneys in thin plumes, torn away by the wind before it could climb high.
Black brothers moved about the yard, cloaked and hooded, their faces hidden. They looked up as we approached, but there was no welcome in their eyes, only the wary stare of men who had learned to trust nothing that came from the south.
We dismounted in the yard, horses stamping and snorting steam.
A steward took the reins without a word.
Lord Commander Mormont emerged from the King's Tower, old and grizzled, his greatcloak billowing like a raven's wing. His one good eye flicked over us, lingering on Robb and the Dornish prince.
"Lord Robb," he rumbled, clasping forearms with his brother. "You've grown since last I saw you. And you've brought... guests."
Robb inclined his head. "Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne, Lord Commander. He wished to see the Wall."
Mormont's bushy brows rose. "Dorne? The sun must be freezing if a Martell comes north to gawk at ice."
Oberyn's mouth curved in that sharp smile of his. "Perhaps it is, my lord. Or perhaps I simply wished to see if the tales were true."
The Old Bear grunted. "Tales are for singers. The Wall is real enough. Come inside before you fall dead in the snow."
We followed him into the common hall, where a fire roared in the hearth and the air smelled of stew and wet wool.
Black brothers sat at long tables, eating in silence or murmuring low. They watched us with the same wary eyes as the yard sentries but a few of them, they recognized the Winter Sons.
Mormont led us to his solar, a cramped room stuffed with maps and ravens' cages. He poured mulled wine, thick and spiced, and gestured to chairs.
"You've come a long way for a look," Mormont said to Oberyn. "What do you hope to find up there?"
The prince sipped his wine, his dark eyes reflecting the firelight. "To see the legend itself perhaps or just a cold wind to clear my head."
Mormont snorted. "You'll find plenty of that. The Wall's no place for summer lived southerners, but if you insist, I'll have the cage ready."
Oberyn nodded, and Mormont turned to Robb. "And you, lad? How goes the hunt?"
Robb simply smiled. "The hunt had been good, Lord Commander but I have returned home for a while."
"Truly?" The Old Bear smirked. "Back when you came here with half your men bleeding, you had a look about you that screamed for the heads of every lawless man out there."
Robb's face was still, but Jon saw the flicker in his eyes, the memory of Queenscrown, the screams in the snow. "The Wall saved Ser Jory's life that day. I owe it a debt."
The Old Bear's eye softened. "Debts are for Lords and merchants, Up here, we take what we can get."
We ate a simple meal—black bread, salt beef, onions boiled in broth.
Oberyn picked at it with polite distaste, but he spent the noon asking questions: about the Watch, the rangers, the wildlings beyond. Mormont answered gruffly.
After, we climbed the Wall.
The cage rattled up the south face, groaning like an old man with bad joints.
Oberyn stood at the bars, staring out as the ground fell away. Theon grumbled beside Jon, his face green as old cheese. Robb was calm, as always. He pressed against the wood, feeling the ice through the bars, cold as death's own hand.
At the top, the world beyond opened.
The wind hit like a hammer, whipping cloaks and stinging eyes. Jon pulled his hood low, but Oberyn threw his back, letting the gale tear at his hair.
He walked to the northern edge without hesitation, staring out at the haunted forest, a sea of black and white stretching to the horizon, broken by frozen rivers and jagged hills.
"By the gods," he breathed. "Your ancestors truly built a marvel to keep out the wildlings."
Robb joined him, the wind tugging at his cloak. Jon stayed back.
A quiet silence settled before Robb broke it.
"The wildlings are not the real danger beyond the Wall, Prince. They are men, like us. Hungry, desperate, fleeing something worse."
Oberyn's eyes narrowed. "Worse?"
Robb's gaze went north again, to the endless white. "The old tales speak of Others. Things that bring the cold and raise the dead."
The prince laughed, but there was no mirth in it. "Stories to frighten children."
"Perhaps," Robb said, "But the Wall was built for something. And it weeps when the weather warms, as if remembering."
Jon felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind. He had heard the tales from Old Nan, but standing here, with the ice under his feet and the forest staring back, they felt real. Too real.
Oberyn studied Robb for a long moment, then turned to Mormont. "Take me down, Lord Commander. I've seen enough."
As the cage rattled back to earth, Jon caught Robb's eye. He looked at him and for a moment he saw it again, that shadow behind the grey, the thing that had called the mist and burned men from the inside out.
The stories spoke of the Wall keeping the dead out and many don't believe it, he wouldn't have either but his brother has shown him things too.
Maybe not all stories were just that.