131 AC
Rickon Stark ran his stubby fingers along the cold stone walls of Winterfell, feeling the bumpy, scratchy parts where the Runes were carved deep. The stones felt alive sometimes, all buzzy and warm when he pressed his palm flat against them. The grown-ups couldn't feel it. He asked Aunt Sara once, and she laughed and ruffled his hair.
"Just the hot springs beneath us, little wolf," she had said.
But Rickon knew better. The stones were talking. Not with words exactly, but with feelings that tickled his fingertips and made his tummy feel funny.
Today, he was being a shadowcat, stalking through the corridors on tippy-toes. Father was having an important meeting with the bannermen, and Rickon wasn't supposed to listen. But listening was easy when nobody thought you understood.
He crouched behind a tapestry, the dusty fabric making his nose itch. Through the tiny gap, he could see Father's serious face, all frowny and tired-looking.
"The Greens press their advantage," Father was saying. "If Queen Rhaenyra cannot hold King's Landing..."
The words made Rickon's head feel fuzzy, like remembering something he'd forgotten, except he'd never known it to begin with. He saw flashes of dragons in his mind, big and scary with fire coming out of their mouths. But he'd never seen a dragon.
His tummy growled loudly, and one of the men looked toward the tapestry. Rickon held his breath until his cheeks puffed out. When the man looked away, he scampered off on all fours, still pretending to be a shadowcat.
"And what mischief are we about today, young lord?" came Maester Kennet's gentle voice.
Rickon darted away, giggling despite being caught. His small legs carried him swiftly down the corridor, the stone floor cool beneath his bare feet. The maester's chuckles faded behind him as he rounded a corner, nearly colliding with a serving girl carrying linens. She sidestepped him with practiced ease, used to the young Stark's perpetual motion.
In the kitchens, the Mara, the Head Cook gave him a honey cake and a cup of warm milk. Rickon sat on a barrel, swinging his legs and watching the kitchen people bustle around. The honey stuck to his fingers, and he licked them one by one.
The castle was his playground, every nook and hidden passage a new adventure waiting to be discovered. Yesterday, he had been a knight battling grumpkins in the kitchens, much to kitchen workers dismay. The day before, he'd been a wildling scout hiding in the stables, watching the stablemen with solemn intensity until Hullen had offered him an apple and a pat on the head.
"There you are, you little scamp!" Aunt Sara, his father's bastard half-sister appeared in the doorway, hands on her hips but smiling. She was a beautiful young woman of eighteen, her dark hair plaited in a tight braid that hung down her back, her Stark-grey eyes bright with mischief that belied the paleness of her skin. The silver direwolf pin that had once belonged to her mother caught the morning light as it held her practical northern woolens together at her throat. "Been looking everywhere for you."
"I was being quiet," Rickon said proudly.
"Too quiet." She scooped him up, honey fingers and all. "Bath time, and then Maester Kennet wants to see how your letters are coming along."
Rickon wrinkled his nose. "Don't want a bath."
"Don't want doesn't matter," Sara said, carrying him away from the warm kitchens. "Little lords must be clean, especially ones covered in honey."
Later, scrubbed pink and dressed in fresh clothes, Rickon sat at the small desk in the maester's chambers, carefully tracing the shapes of letters with a piece of charcoal. His tongue stuck out the side of his mouth as he concentrated.
"Remarkable," Maester Kennet murmured, watching him form a perfect letters. "Most children twice your age struggle so."
Rickon didn't look up. Drawing the letters was easy. They looked like the runes in the walls, only simpler. Sometimes when he closed his eyes, he could see all kinds of letters and symbols, dancing behind his eyelids.
That night, tucked into his bed with furs pulled to his chin, Rickon listened to Aunt Sara tell the story of Bran the Builder.
"And he built the Wall so high, higher than the tallest tower of Winterfell, to keep the monsters away," she said, her voice getting quiet and spooky.
"What monsters?" Rickon asked, even though he'd heard the story a hundred times.
"The Others," Sara whispered. "With eyes like blue stars and skin as white as snow."
Rickon shivered deliciously. "Father says Winter is Coming."
"Aye, that's our words. But winter is still far away, little wolf." Sara kissed his forehead. "Sleep now."
But after she left, Rickon didn't sleep. He stared at the shadows on his ceiling, watching them stretch and move. One shadow looked like a wolf, big and scary with eyes that glowed. It seemed to be watching him back.
"Hello," Rickon whispered.
The shadow-wolf's tail seemed to wag, just a little. Rickon smiled and closed his eyes, drifting into dreams where he ran through snowy forests on four legs instead of two, with shadows trailing behind him like faithful friends.
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Morning brought a shift to Winterfell's rhythm. Rickon felt it before he opened his eyes, a strange humming in the stones beneath his bed, an unusual bustle in the corridors. He slipped from his furs, the cold floor greeting his bare feet as he padded to his window.
The courtyard below teemed with activity. Men in armor. Horses laden with supplies. Banners snapping in the northern wind, the grey direwolf of House Stark predominant among them, but others too: the merman of Manderly, the chained giant of Umber, the bear of Mormont.
"There you are," Aunt Sara said, entering his chamber with a bundle of clothes. Her face looked tight, her usual smile strained at the edges. "We need to dress you properly today."
"Why?" Rickon asked, though something in his belly already knew the answer. The strange knowledge that sometimes came to him unbidden, like memories that weren't his own.
"Your father rides south today," Sara said, helping him into a fine wool tunic embroidered with direwolves around the collar. "The lords have gathered to see him off."
"Because of the dragons?" Rickon asked.
Sara's hands paused in their work. "How did you, never mind. Yes, little wolf. Because of the dragons and their riders who fight for the throne."
The Great Hall was filled to bursting when Aunt Sara led him there, hand clasped tightly in hers. Lords and ladies in their finest garb stood in solemn rows, their faces grim as winter. Father sat in the great chair, Ice laid across his knees, the Valyrian steel catching the light from the high windows. He looked different today, not just Father, but Lord Stark, the Warden of the North.
Rickon was brought to stand before him, and the hall fell silent. Even the stones seemed to hold their breath.
Father rose, magnificent in his grey armor with its snarling wolf helm tucked beneath his arm. The plates gleamed dully in the torchlight, ancient and terrible. His brown hair fell in waves around his neck. He looked so tall, towering above Rickon like the kings of winter in the crypts.
Then, to Rickon's surprise, Father knelt. One knee touched the stone floor, bringing those stormy grey eyes level with Rickon's own. Behind them, Rickon heard murmurs ripple through the crowd.
"Rickon," Father said, his voice low but carrying in the silent hall. "I ride south with our bannermen. While I am gone, Winterfell must have a Stark to guard it."
Rickon's chest felt tight, too small suddenly for his heart. The stones beneath his feet thrummed with approval.
"Winterfell is yours until I return," Father said, placing a heavy hand on Rickon's shoulder.
"You are young, but you are a Stark. The blood of the First Men flows in your veins. Remember our words."
"Winter is coming," Rickon whispered, the words feeling ancient on his tongue.
Father nodded once, his expression softening for just a moment. Then he stood, towering once more, and placed the wolf helm over his head. The transformation was complete, no longer just Father, but the Wolf of the North, as the bannermen had taken to calling him.
The lords filed past, each kneeling briefly before Rickon, pledging to serve faithfully in his father's absence. Their words blurred together, but Rickon stood straight-backed and solemn as the statues in the crypts, knowing this moment was important even if he didn't fully understand why.
Later, from the battlements, he watched the column of men wind away from Winterfell like a great steel serpent. The wind carried their banners high.
"Will he come back?" Rickon asked Sara, who stood beside him with a shawl pulled tight around her shoulders.
"Of course he will," she said, but her grey eyes followed the departing host with hidden concern. "Your father is as strong and stubborn as the Wall itself."
When he slept that night, he dreamed of dragons battling each other and falling from the sky.
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132 AC
Winterfell felt empty in his father's absence. The great stone halls echoed with each of Rickon's footsteps, making the castle seem larger, colder somehow. The servants moved with hushed voices and quick glances, as if afraid to disturb the heaviness that had settled over the ancient stronghold.
Rickon noticed how people's faces changed when they thought he wasn't looking. The stable master's smile would fall away the moment he turned his back. The cooks whispered when they thought he'd left the kitchen. Even Old Nan's stories had taken on darker tones, tales of long winters and the terrors that came with them.
"Don't fret so, little wolf," Sara would say, smoothing his unruly hair with fingers rough from years of work. Her grey eyes shone with a warmth that contradicted the worry lines etched around them.
Maester Kennet, too, offered reassurances, though his came wrapped in lessons and histories. "The North endures, young lord," he'd say, adjusting his chain with ink-stained fingers. "As do the Starks."
But Rickon knew. Something was changing. The world beyond Winterfell's walls was burning, and the smoke had begun to drift northward.
His fourth nameday came and went with little celebration. A special meal, a new wooden sword, a sweet honey cake with candles. Nothing like the feast his father would have held, with music and gifts from the bannermen.
That night, Rickon dreamed of snow falling on a field of fire, of shadows with gleaming teeth, and woke crying out for a father too far away to hear.
The lessons with Maester Kennet increased in frequency and intensity after that. Each morning found Rickon perched on a cushioned stool in the maester's tower, surrounded by scrolls and maps and books with cracking leather spines.
"House Manderly," the maester would say, pointing to the map spread across the table.
"White Harbor," Rickon would answer promptly. "The merman. Lords of the sea."
"Good. And their words?"
Rickon's brow furrowed in concentration. "A Promise Well Kept."
A smile tugged at Kennet's weathered face. "Indeed. And House Umber?"
"Last Hearth. The chained giant. Death Before Chains."
On and on they went, through the houses of the North: Mormont, Karstark, Bolton, Glover, Reed, until Rickon could recite their seats and sigils and words without hesitation. Then came the southern houses, more numerous and complicated, with their knights and their summer castles.
Numbers followed, scratched onto slates with chalk that left his fingers dusty and white. Rickon learned to count beyond what his small hands could show, to add bushels of grain and subtract men lost to winter. He learned the measures of the stores, how many mouths Winterfell could feed through a year of snow, how many men could be armed from its forges.
"A lord must know the strength of his keep," Maester Kennet explained, watching Rickon's small face pinch with concentration.
The common tongue came next, its letters strange and angular compared to the flowing runes that sometimes appeared in his dreams. Rickon traced them carefully, over and over, until his hand cramped and his eyes burned.
"Your father will be proud when he returns," Aunt Sara told him one evening as she tucked him into bed, his fingers still stained with ink. "You're learning faster than children thrice your age."
Rickon stared up at the canopy of his bed, at the shadows that danced across it from the hearth fire. "When will he come home?"
Sara's hand paused in smoothing his furs. "When the fighting is done, little wolf."
"And when will that be?"
She had no answer for that, only a kiss pressed to his forehead and a whispered prayer to the old gods.
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Where is Mark you may be thinking. Don't worry memories will emerge over time, before the Awakening.
Hope you enjoyed the chapter!!