Interlude 2 – Wolves of the North
POV: Eddard Stark
We had been riding for a moon's turn, and still the Neck lay behind us like the dragging tail of some old, slow beast. The king's party was large, too large for speed. Litter-bearers and wine wagons, whores and squires, dogs and cooks, the whole disorderly court winding its way through the realm like a snake too fat on indulgence to move swiftly. I watched them with quiet irritation as we crossed the Green Fork. Robert did not notice. Or rather, he did not care.
I was glad for the pace, slow though it was. It gave me time to think, and the North had never left my thoughts.
Much had changed. Gods, so much.
In my mind, I could still see the first time Jon had come to me, not the boy he had once been, silent and stiff-lipped, but a young man burning with purpose. There had been something frightening in the clarity of his gaze, something that did not belong in a boy of eight. He came with Maester Luwin at his side, bearing rolls of parchment filled with sketches I could scarcely make sense of. At first, I dismissed it, concrete mixes, crop rotations, foreign crops that could grow in the North, some device for making steel by the ton, but Jon had not relented. He made me see it. The truth behind the ink and charcoal. The promise of what might come.
"You always taught me to prepare for winter, Father," he had said. "This is how we do it now. With plans. With inovation."
Winterfell had changed because of him. Because of them, Luwin's curiosity and Jon's relentless mind, even Robb, always there to help Jon with his wildest ideas. The Snowmelt bank near Winterfell had been reshaped to house the forges they called the Blackworks; deep-chambered hearths, a glasshouse kiln, and some roaring behemoth of steel and valves Jon said could smelt even riverstone to purity. I still wasn't sure what to make of it. But the castle was stronger for it, and so was the North.
Then there were the lands in the Neck.
Rice and cotton in the bogs. It sounded mad when I first heard it. Those swamps had never grown anything but reeds and wariness. But Jon sent soil samples, and Maester Caleott from Oldtown confirmed it. He built dykes, dug channels, shifted the waters like some young Brandon the Builder in black. And the marsh folk, Old Gods save me, listened. Not just Howland, but the Crannogmen themselves. I saw them once, bent over little green paddies of sprouting rice, backs slick with sweat under the sun. It felt like sorcery.
Even on the road, even so far from hearth and hall, the weight of change traveled with me like a second shadow.
I thought of White Harbor, of the smell of brine and fish oil, and the clatter of rope on dock posts. Last time I'd been there, the tide had brought more than cargo. It brought questions. There had been new docks, wider, stronger, built of hard pine and black stone quarried from Jon's lands in the Neck. Great cranes rose above the water like skeletal giants, lifting hulls and anchors with chains thick as a man's arm. And behind them, in the yards, ships half-built stood silent and waiting, sleek designs I barely recognized. Fewer oars, deeper bellies, hulls shaped not for river slips but for deep water. One of them was thin but long and had angled sails. "It's a clipper, won't be a finished design for years, but once the Mandely experts figure it out, it will change trade forever." Jon had said once, like I should've known what that meant.
I didn't. But the shipwrights seemed to, and that was enough.
Then there were the rivers in the west. The hills between the Rills and the Fever had always been quiet country, misty and green. Not anymore. Now men built towers along the banks, earthworks with cross-shaped slits and boiling cauldrons set into stone. Stone forts backed by steel chains and good men who watched the western coast.
And everywhere, like weeds, but good weeds, grew the bones of new roads. Stone bridges with steel bones. Stone causeways across marsh and moor. And granaries, by the gods, so many granaries. Small ones, domed and dry, packed with barley and oats and dried roots, sealed in clay like the old Valyrian jars I once saw in Sunspear. There were villages near them too, sometimes no more than five homes and a smithy, sometimes a hundred strong, all with new well-houses and windmills turning lazily in the northern sky.
They looked… hopeful. That was the word for it. Hopeful, sturdy, and strange.
Strange because they were not born of tradition, not sung into being by old stories or noble oaths. These were Jon's doing, or Jon's idea whispered into another man's hands. Quiet work, steady work, not the sort to win songs, but the sort that would outlast kings. The people praise him; the lords praise him. And they praise me too, even if all I did was help oversee the projects and put my signature under some parchment.
Sometimes I wondered what my father would have made of it. I could barely recognize my own land now.
And then came the legitimization, how could it not with the prestige he had accumulated almost on accident, Robb's argument had been solid.
That had been the hardest part. It was Robert. Watching Robert's face twist when he named the boy Jon Stark. That moment still lived behind my eyes like a nightmare. I could not look away from Robert's hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and for a breath, I thought I might die there in the hall, or worse, watch Jon die.
Rhaegar's son. Lyanna's boy. Mine by oath, if not by blood.
It had been the most dishonorable moment of my life, lying to my King's face to legitimize his most hated enemy's son.
And I would do it again. A thousand times.
The king did nothing that day. He didn't realize the truth even when it was in front of him, even when only looking at his too sharp and pretty face, at his purple eyes would be enough. No, they thought of Ashara Dayne when they saw him, of the rumor I had spread. Jon had stood tall that day, eyes level, not a tremor in his jaw. I couldn't be prouder of him.
The Kingsroad wound through the green heart of the realm like an old scar, cracked and faded, but still unhealed. For days, we had traveled in uneasy quiet, banners fluttering above us, Baratheon, Stark, Lannister, three houses bound together in name, if not in peace.
Summer was thick on the air, and the pace was slow. Robert drank deep and laughed loud, but not even his merriment could wash away the undercurrent of tension. The queen rode with a spine of glass and steel. Joffrey sneered at everything. Sansa and Arya drifted further apart with every league. And Bran… Bran had grown quieter since Winterfell. More watchful. Older, though he was only eight.
Then Arya vanished.
One moment she was at Septa Mordane's side; the next, she was gone. The panic hit like a blow to the chest. I had just returned to my tent when the shouting started, no words, just the chaos of guards barking orders.
We were looking for her through the forest when word came that the Lannister party had found her.
I was out before my sword belt was fastened. The royal tents loomed ahead, and even before I reached them, I saw the crowd forming, the red cloaks drawing a perimeter, their faces taut with confusion and caution.
Arya stood at the center of it, wild and fierce, her cheeks flushed and hair tangled. There was blood on her sleeve, not hers. Her fists were clenched, and she was breathing like she'd run a league. Next to her, Sansa was crumpled in Septa Mordane's arms, pale as milk, sobbing into her sleeves.
But it was Bran who stopped me short.
My boy stood between Arya and the red cloaks, feet planted in the dirt like roots. No sword in hand, no shield at the ready, but he might as well have been clad in steel. His jaw was set. There was a glint in his eyes I had never seen before.
I had seen that look on a man's face before battle.
"Bran," I called. "Stand down."
He didn't move. He looked at me, but not as a frightened child might look to his father. There was shame in his face, but not for himself. His eyes slid toward Joffrey.
That was when I saw him, Ser Meryn Trant guiding the boy-prince forward like a crutch. Joffrey's fine doublet was torn open, stained red, and muddied. His right hand was wrapped in linen, thick and hasty, and his lower lip trembled as he walked. His eyes found Arya at once and burned.
"She set her beast on me," he spat before anyone could speak. "That animal bit me!"
Arya surged forward. "You drew steel on Micah! He didn't even have a stick!"
Bran caught her wrist before she could cross the line to Joffrey. "Arya—don't." His voice didn't rise, but she froze anyway, her fury held in check only by his steady grip. She looked at him, startled. He didn't let go.
"What happened?" I asked, turning to the guards, then to Sansa. "Tell me."
Sansa choked on her words. "It—it all happened so fast. Joffrey only meant to scare him, but—but the wolf came."
"She didn't!" Arya shouted. "Nymeria was protecting me. He was hurting Micah—cutting his face! He was laughing!"
I turned to Bran. "You saw it?"
Bran nodded once. "He drew his sword," he said. "The butcher's boy ran. Joffrey chased him. Arya knocked the sword out of his hand. Then Nymeria bit him."
Joffrey's face was red now, not from pain but rage. "Lies! She's lying! They all are! I'm the prince! That boy dared touch me!"
"Micah touched a stick," Arya said. "You called it a sword fight. He didn't know what you meant."
Before I could speak again, a cold wind seemed to pass through the clearing, though the air was still.
Cersei Lannister spoke as if conjured by fury.
She stepped forward, flanked by Lannister guards. Her gown was silk, green and gold, clinging like armor. Her expression was fixed in ice.
"Where is the wolf?" she asked, loud enough for all to hear.
Arya stared her down. "Gone. I made her run. She's free now."
Joffrey sneered. "Coward."
"That's enough," Robert's voice boomed at last, red-faced, wine-heavy. "Gods, what's this mess now?"
"They set that wolf on my son," Cersei said. "Justice demands blood."
Robert sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Cersei—"
"She let that thing maul him!" Cersei barked. "She admitted it!"
"The wolf's gone," I said.
"Then the others will do."
Sansa's gasp was loud as a bell. "No—please—Father, not Lady! She's mine! She's never even growled at anyone, I swear it!"
Cersei stepped forward. "The girl lied. Her pet attacked the prince. A wolf bit royalty. You know what happens next."
Bran raised his voice. "Lady and Summer did nothing. Nymeria's gone. It isn't right!"
Robert looked between us, then at Joffrey, clutching his hand like a war wound. Then, at Cersei, her eyes were like coals.
He didn't want this. That much was plain.
But the line between politics and wants blurred too easily.
"Damn it all," Robert muttered. "Do it. Get it over with."
I stepped forward. "Is this your command, Your Grace?"
He stared at me, already turning away. "It is."
The clearing broke apart, like a wave smashing against a rock. Guards led Joffrey back to his tent. Cersei glided after him, triumphant. Sansa sobbed into her septa's arms, begging. Arya stood unmoving, her mouth tight, fists clenched. Bran turned to me slowly. It was decided that I would do it, the wolves were of the North.
"I won't let them use a stranger's axe," I said. "This is our burden."
"I tried," Bran said.
"I know," I replied, voice like gravel.
"Is this what justice is, Father?"
"No," I said. "This is politics."
The night was still, the camp subdued beneath a sky heavy with stars. The revels had died early. Even Robert had gone quiet after Cersei's gloating and Joffrey's sulking wore out his patience. But I could not sleep.
I walked without torchlight, guided by memory and moonlight, until I reached the small pen where the direwolves were held.
Two shapes stirred as I approached. Lady rose slowly, padding toward the gate with ears low and tail tucked. She sensed something was wrong. I knelt and placed a hand against the rough wood. She pressed her head to it.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
She whined once, softly.
In the corner, Summer lay curled tight, his golden eyes glowing faintly. He growled low when I moved. His distrust had deepened since the day Bran stood before the queen. Even at eight, my son had stepped into a role I hadn't expected for years: a protector of the blood, of his kin, of truth.
Summer had felt that same calling.
And Lady… Lady had done nothing but remain loyal.
Yet she would die come morning.
I closed my eyes, resting my brow against the wood. My breath steamed in the air.
In Winterfell, my father had always said that duty is the marrow of a Stark. Duty. Cold as the wind that sweeps the Wall, strong as stone carved by winter itself. He taught us with words and with silence, with his eyes when they fixed on us too long at supper, with the weight of the greatsword Ice resting across his knees.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword, he used to say. And I had lived by those words. When I took a man's head, I looked him in the eyes and let him see mine. I let the weight of the blade bear down on my conscience, because that was the only honest way. No masked executioners, no whispered orders in secret chambers. If you could not take the life yourself, then you had no right to give the command.
But what if the sentence itself was unjust?
What if the crime was not a crime at all, but the fragile lie of a spoiled prince and the naked fury of a wounded queen? What if honor, true honor, meant defiance, not obedience?
My boots were soaked through with the muck of this camp, thick as tar in the dark. Southern politics left more than mud on the skin; it left rot in the soul. Their honor was parchment and paint, measured in favors, weighed against who you could betray quietly. And I had brought my children into that mire, thinking I could shield them with northern steel and stubborn silence.
I thought of Bran again. Just eight, still soft in the face, but when he had stood between Arya and those gold-cloaked men, I saw something older rise up in him. Something not of me, nor Catelyn, but of the blood, of the North itself. He hadn't drawn a sword, but he stood like one. A boy who had not yet seen battle had stood against a prince and a queen, and done so for his sister.
Arya, wild and reckless, had faced down Joffrey like a wolf baring her teeth. I'd seen her fists tighten, her jaw set, her eyes dark with a fury that was frightening in someone so small. She would not yield.
And Sansa… gods help me, she was breaking under it. Softened by court life, enamored with stories spun by southerners who had never knelt before a heart tree. Her tears were real, but so was the confusion, the shame of wanting to believe in a fairy tale that would never love her back. She mourned Lady already, even before the sentence was spoken.
And the wolves. Their wolves. No… not just wolves.
Totems. Guardians. Bound by blood and fate to the children who found them. Spirits of the old North, reborn from another age. I had watched them grow from pups, awkward, stumbling, eyes too large for their heads, into sleek, silent shadows that moved with purpose and patience the size of fully grown normal wolves. Summer, ever vigilant. Lady, poised and graceful. Nymeria, fierce and cunning. They were more than pets. They were the children, in a way I had no words to explain.
Even Maester Luwin had sensed it, I think, though he would never speak of magic. The direwolves belonged to them. To the Starks. Perhaps to the gods.
The old gods do not speak in the South, I thought. Their groves are gone, their trees cut and carved, their eyes gouged out or left to rot in forgotten godswoods like moss-covered tombs. But the wolves do. They speak with howls and glances and silent loyalty. They feel when something is wrong.
And now the South wanted their silence.
Lady had never harmed a soul. Summer had done nothing but protect his pack. Yet both were condemned, not for what they did, but for what they were. For whom they belonged to. Their very existence was an insult to the court. A reminder that not all things bowed. That not all power wore silk. I am sounding like Jon more and more lately…
I clenched my jaw, feeling the old pain in my leg where a spear once nicked me at the Trident. The ache never left when it rained. The rain was coming again.
I had followed the rules. I had bent the knee. I had kept my silence through slights and whispers and plots half-glimpsed in torchlight.
I am already a traitor, I made Robert look into Rhaegar's son's eyes, legitimize and raise him to lordship in the next breath.
But I would not kill my children's wolves. I would not offer that final surrender to the altar of royal favor. Let them call it treason. Let them question my honor.
I know what it is. And I know what it is not.
I stood slowly, my knees stiff from the cold ground, but the decision had hardened inside me like steel left in the forge too long.
No one else would swing the blade. Because no one else would know there was no death at all.
Night held its breath as I summoned the only men I could trust.
Jory Cassel. Hallis Mollen. Desmond. Men of the North, with old eyes and long memories.
They met me at the edge of the camp, by the godswood stumps and the path to the stream.
"Bring cloaks," I had told them. "And blades, but no banners."
We walked under the cover of darkness to the pen.
Jory raised an eyebrow. "The wolves?"
I nodded. "They don't die tonight."
They exchanged glances. Not one of them smiled. But I saw the understanding settle in like a winter frost.
"What's the plan?" Hallis asked, already untying the rope.
"There's a pair of half-wild hounds the butcher kept tied to the wagons," I said. "Gray and pale as snow. Near enough in size. We dress them in blood, say the wolves went mad in the night. We did what had to be done."
"It'll pass… if no one looks closely," Desmond said.
"No one will," I replied. "The queen wants a corpse, not the truth. She won't get either."
The gate creaked open.
Summer darted out like a shadow, brushing past me and into the trees. I did not stop him. That one had tasted too much of Bran's soul to be caged again.
Lady lingered.
She came to me one last time. I knelt, pressed my face into her fur, and whispered, "Guard them. All of them."
She licked my cheek once. Then she turned and vanished after Summer into the black wood.
We worked quickly after that. The hounds struggled, but Northmen had leashes stronger than silk and nerves stronger than guilt. When we were done, the false corpses lay wrapped in cloaks, damp with blood and cut to pieces.
As dawn approached, I spoke to them one last time.
"No one breathes a word of this. To lie to the crown is treason. But I would rather be judged by the gods than the court of lions and peacocks."
Jory nodded. "The wolves live. That's justice."
I gave them each a nod and turned away.
It was done.
The North had not bowed that night.
Sansa was quiet that morning.
Too quiet.
She wore a pale blue gown that did nothing to brighten her pallor. The hem was speckled with dust, and her hands rested still in her lap, folded like she'd forgotten they could move. She sat on a small stool beside her tent, under the thin morning light that filtered weakly through the gray sky. The air still smelled of woodsmoke and wet canvas. Around us, the camp stirred slowly to life, boots thudding against the mud, the low murmur of voices, the snort of a restless horse, but none of it touched her.
Septa Mordane stood nearby, her spine rigid and expression unreadable, like a statue waiting to be dismissed. Her hands were clasped so tightly in front of her that they trembled faintly, though she tried to keep her composure. She was a creature of ceremony and rules, trained in hymns and postures, not in the stillness of real grief. She had no comfort to give, and she knew it.
I approached my daughter slowly, as one might approach a wounded animal. Sansa did not lift her eyes. Her fingers twitched once, then stilled again.
"I heard," she said, before I could speak. Her voice was dry, like leaves after the frost. "About Lady."
I knelt before her. There were no guards here, no banners, no court. Just a father before his child.
"I did what I had to," I said.
Sansa looked down at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed from the hours that had followed them. The kind of crying that left you hollow.
"She didn't deserve it," she whispered. "But she's gone now. So it doesn't matter."
The words stung more than any accusation. They weren't angry—they were empty. She wasn't looking to blame me. She had simply accepted the loss, the way one accepts the cold. I could see the edges of her dreams crumbling behind her gaze.
I wanted to tell her the truth. I wanted to say she's alive. She's safe. You'll hear her one day in the trees, and she'll come to you when you're ready. I wanted to kneel beside her and tell her that the world hadn't taken everything from her.
But Sansa… she believed in stories. In the songs about knights and noble queens and pretty endings where the princess smiles through her tears. That belief was fragile now, cracked and patched with pain, but if I gave her the truth too soon, I feared it might break her entirely. She needed something to hold on to. Something simple. Something final.
"She's with the gods," I said instead, my voice low. "And she knew you loved her."
Sansa closed her eyes, and for a moment, I saw her mouth tighten as though she were holding something back. A scream. A sob. A plea. But it passed, and she nodded once, faintly, like she wasn't sure what else to do.
I rose slowly, placing a hand on her shoulder as I stood.
I left her there, beneath the pale sky, with the silent Septa and the shattered edges of a girl's belief.
Later, I found Arya and Bran near the edge of camp, under the stripped remains of a pine that had been scorched by lightning seasons ago. Arya clung to him, her arms wrapped around his small frame, her face buried in his chest. Her shoulders shook with the quiet sobs of someone who did not want to be seen crying, not even by the brother who held her.
Bran stroked her hair gently, like a boy too young to know how to comfort, but trying anyway. He held her with the solemn patience that came to those who had already looked grief in the eye. When he saw me, his gaze met mine, calm, steady, older than it should have been.
"It will be okay…" he said quietly.
Arya fell asleep like that then, her face streaked with tears and streaks of mud, her eyes red.
"It wasn't Summer, was it?" he asked.
I said nothing. I didn't have to.
He stared at me for a long moment, and then his voice broke. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you."
I held them both then, Bran pressed to one side, Arya on the other, my cloak wrapping around their small bodies like a shield against the world. I didn't speak. There were no words large enough to explain what I had done, or why I had done it. There was only the quiet strength of a father's arms and the echo of what might yet be salvaged.
"No one can know Bran, no one." I said, but Bran already understood that.
That night, after the camp had gone still and the fires had burned low, I stood alone at the edge of the wood. The stars above were scattered and pale, like they too were unsure of their place in this sky. The trees swayed gently in the wind, whispering in the old tongue, the one no man had ever truly mastered, not even the First Men.
I listened.
At first, there was only the wind.
Then, far off, barely more than a ripple of sound, came a single howl. Long and low. It rolled over the hills like mist. Then another joined it. And another.
Lady. Summer. Nymeria.
Good, I thought. Run far. Run fast. Run free.
The gods had not spoken that night.
But the wolves had.
And for now, that was enough.