Chapter 18 — The River Between, Part II
The fire in my chambers had burned low when the knock came, soft, insistent. I was still wearing my riding leathers, the smell of forge-smoke and pine clinging to them. Ghost stirred by the hearth but didn't rise. I slipped out into the hall, where a young girl waited, one of the kitchen hands.
"Lady Catelyn awaits you in the Godswood, Lor—errr Prince Jon!"
That was cute.
I thanked her and went on my way. The wind had sharpened since sunset. Winterfell's halls were quiet at this hour, the stones whispering with old memory. I passed through the outer door and crossed the yard in silence, boots crunching over frost-crusted grass. Beyond the broken walls and scaffolds of restoration, the godswood still stood, untouched and ancient.
I walked past the ancient trees.
She was waiting there.
Catelyn Stark.
Draped in mourning black, her hair bound in a tight braid, she stood beneath the red leaves of the weirwood as if carved from the same old sorrow. The moonlight painted her skin pale, her eyes darker still. The wind stirred her cloak, but she didn't move.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Finally, her voice came, brittle and bare.
"I always hated you, you know."
I didn't flinch.
"Not for what you did. You never did anything. But for what I thought you were. The reminder. The insult."
I said nothing. I had nothing to say.
So, it is this conversation, uh?
She turned slightly, her eyes tracking the carved face in the weirwood, the red tears running down its pale bark like the blood of memory.
"Ned… even Maester Luwin, I think, suspected. But no one told me. Not once. Not a word." Her voice cracked, the quiet rage behind it threatening to give way. "I hated a ghost. And they let me."
Still I didn't answer. Let the silence speak. She looked like she needed to get this out of her chest.
She finally turned fully to face me. Her eyes, once sharp as broken glass, were dull with grief, and something older. Regret.
"I never understood how he could bear it," she whispered. "Bringing a bastard into our home. Letting you grow up among our children. I resented him for that almost as much as I resented you."
I didn't shift. Didn't breathe too loud.
"But now…" She shook her head. "Now I see. He wasn't choosing dishonor. He was choosing you. Protecting you."
"I didn't know," I said softly. "Not truly. Not until I left for the Wall." A little lie. The only way to explain my knowledge of my birth. "But even if I had… would it have made a difference between us?"
She closed her eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell.
"Maybe. Or maybe I would've hated you more, for being Rhaegar Targaryen's blood. For making Ned lie. For making him keep you when he should've sent you away."
Though I didn't let it show, the words cut.
"I was just a boy," I said. "I made no choice in it."
Her lips twisted. "None of us did."
A breeze rustled the branches overhead, sending a whisper through the leaves, like the trees were remembering too.
"I said cruel things to you," she said. "Or worse, said nothing at all. And when I did, I made sure you felt unwelcome. Less. Always less."
"You loved your family," I said. "Fiercely. I never faulted you for that. You thought I would take Winterfell from your son, especially after I started accumulating coin, prestige and duties."
Her eyes flicked to mine, surprised by the gentleness in my voice.
"You sound like him," she murmured. "Like Ned."
I shrugged. "He raised me."
She stepped closer, only a pace between us now. "You're not my son, Jon. I won't pretend otherwise. But you were his. And that means something, even now."
I nodded. "It means everything."
We stood in silence beneath the weirwood. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and old leaves.
Before she turned to go, she hesitated.
"Be careful with the truth, Jon."
I stiffened.
She gave me a long, tired look. "Not all the lords are ready for it. Some never will be. You can wear Stark colors, ride with your brother, win the love of the people. But once they hear your name, your true name, it may all come apart."
I let out a slow breath. "I know."
"Then remember this: leadership is not just strength. It's knowing which truths to tell, and when."
I nodded. "And which lies to bury."
Her eyes narrowed. "Ned said something like that once. Right after the war."
She gave a bitter little laugh. "Maybe you really are his son."
Then she turned and walked away, her black cloak vanishing between the trees.
I stood there long after she left.
Staring at the carved face of the old gods, red tears running like blood down the pale wood.
Ghost padded out from behind a bush, brushing his muzzle against my hand. I crouched beside him, fingers deep in his fur.
I had not expected peace with Catelyn Stark, had not dared hope for it. Her hatred had been one of the constants of my boyhood, cold and sharp as the winds off the Wall. Her words had not been warm, but they had been honest, and that honesty felt like a bridge built of ash and sorrow.
I found myself wondering if peace was possible. A truce between two ghosts of Winterfell, bound by loss. Perhaps we would never be family in the way Ned had wanted. But if she could look at me and no longer see only the wound her husband had hidden, then maybe there was hope for something better than bitterness.
The godswood was empty again, or so I thought.
Catelyn Stark's footsteps had long since faded between the trees, swallowed by frost and pine. Only the weirwood remained, silent and solemn, its carved face weeping slow red tears beneath the branches.
I stood still. Listening. Breathing.
Any visions today? You old fuck…
The cold had deepened, the air tingling with frost. Ghost was at my side, silent as always, but alert now. His ears pricked forward. He stared past the tree, into the shadows beyond the roots.
Then I felt it too.
A rustle in the undergrowth. A figure stepped out from the moss-laden trunks, cloaked in greens and browns that seemed part of the forest itself. Small, wiry, and weathered. A reed-bound spear rested against his shoulder.
Ghost didn't growl in my mind. That was enough.
He is quiet.
The man bowed his head. "My Prince."
I took a slow breath. "I wondered if you'd come."
Howland Reed.
The Crannogman. The last living man who had stood beside my father, Ned Stark, at the Tower of Joy.
"I sent my letter only a sennight ago," I said. "You couldn't have had time to cross the Neck and ride north so soon."
"I didn't wait for your letter." His voice was soft, barely louder than the wind in the trees, a murmur, like reeds brushing against a still lake. "My son had a dream. Of wolves and fire. And blood in the snow."
"A greendream?"
He nodded. "Jojen is never wrong."
I have a feeling he will be a difficult man to talk to…
I stared at him. He looked unassuming, older than I expected, with a thin beard, a lined face, eyes green as lichen. But something in him was solid. Grounded. Ancient.
"You knew I would be here?"
"Beneath the weirwood. Cloaked in shadow. Crowned in flame." He looked past me, to the tree. "He saw you with fire in your eyes. And a storm behind your back."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"Jojen and Meera," I said instead. "Your children are gifted, aren't they?"
"They are," Howland answered. "Jojen most of all, even if he doesn't understand all he sees."
Silence stretched between us.
Then I asked, because I had to: "Why didn't you come sooner?"
Howland stepped closer, resting his hand lightly against the weirwood bark. The red sap stained his fingers.
"Because your father asked it of me. Not the dragon. The wolf."
He looked at me, and there was sorrow in his eyes.
"Ned Stark lived a lie. But he did so with honor. Because of the promise he made at your mother's deathbed."
My throat tightened. "Lyanna."
"Aye." He turned his gaze skyward. "She was young, but not foolish. Fierce. Proud. They never understood her, not Brandon, not Robert. They wanted her to be a lady, or a prize. But she was neither."
"And Rhaegar did?" I scoffed.
Howland smiled faintly. "Perhaps he understood her a little. Perhaps she understood him. He crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty before half the realm, and still they called it kidnapping. They made a story of it. One they could live with."
"They were married?"
"Aye. In secret. By a septon before a Wierwood. Not that it mattered in the end…"
The Doctrine of Exceptionalism should have allowed Rhaegar to take more than one wife. House Targaryen had never given up it's right, just set it aside to fit in more easily. Incest was enough to make the faith queasy.
Not that it mattered. I would be called a bastard even if Lyanna were his first wife.
I shook my head. "And I'm the child of that marriage... A Reed's heir greendreams are not enough evidence, sadly."
"You are. And no, but it is a start."
"What do you mean that it did not matter in the end?" I asked.
"Lyanna may have gone with him willingly, foolishly perhaps, but she didn't stay of her own will. Not after what Aerys did."
I closed my eyes. And so my fears come true…
So simple. And yet it changed everything. My whole life had turned on that. Ned Stark's silence. Lyanna's death. Rhaegar's doom. The war. The rebellion. It may not have been kidnapping at the start, but it sure was at the end, according to Howland…
I couldn't let anyone know of that, a big chunk of whatever legitimacy I had rested on it.
Glasses half full, Jon. At least you were not born of rape.
I waited until the wind stilled and the flakes settled like ash on the earth. Then I asked the question that had lingered in my mind since I first heard the name whispered in old stories.
"The Tourney at Harrenhal," I said. "What happened there?"
Howland turned his face slightly, his green eyes narrowing. "Ah. That old ghost."
"I've heard the songs. The knight of the laughing tree. Rhaegar crowning Lyanna. But I do not understand how the events are connected. How Rhaegar and Lyanna fell in love."
He gave a small, dry chuckle. "Because the truth was never sung."
He moved toward a gnarled root and sat, folding his limbs like a man more comfortable in swamps and silence than in any hall. I lowered myself beside him.
"I was young," he began. "Barely of age. Small, as you can see and even smaller then. I'd ridden south to attend the great tourney with nothing but a spear and a few old prayers. It was the first time I had ever been south of the Neck. And I was laughed at for it."
I said nothing. Howland appears to have delved deeply into his memories.
"There were squires from the Vale, knights from the Reach, lords from the Westerlands. They mocked my leathers, my accent, my size. One day, three squires caught me outside the lists. They beat me half to death."
I felt my hand tighten.
"I might've died there. But she found me. Lyanna Stark."
He smiled again with the bittersweet pain of remembering someone long buried.
"She was wild as the wind. She took me to her tent, wiped my face, gave me water. They laughed at her too. So that night, someone else came."
He leaned forward, voice low.
"The Knight of the Laughing Tree."
I looked at him sideways. "You know who it was."
He didn't answer. Just looked back at me with knowing eyes.
"The knight appeared only once, clad in mismatched armor, with a heart tree painted on their shield. They challenged the three knights whose squires had tormented me. Defeated each one in turn. Demanded that the squires learn courtesy, and give me apologies."
I raised an eyebrow. "And then vanished?"
He nodded. "The king sent men to find the knight. Rhaegar was among them. But the knight's tent was empty. All they found was a painted shield and a woman's laughter on the wind."
"So it was my mother? She must have been a great fighter to accomplish that."
He gave a shrug so small it barely moved his shoulders. "It was her, and she was great. She admitted it."
I shook my head. The thought of her, bold enough to ride against knights...
"Rhaegar must have found her." Howland said. "Something changed that day. He crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty, not Elia Martell. Before all the realm. And the whispers began. She was no southern lady. She belonged to the wolf blood, fierce, loyal, free."
He looked up at the snow falling through the red leaves.
"They ran. Or they rode together. Maybe she followed him. Maybe they both fled something they couldn't live with. But she loved him at the start."
"And then came the war… And the Tower of Joy."
"Yes, I was wounded. Arthur Dayne would have killed us all, he nearly did. He was a monster in the battlefield; had he been at the Trident… You would hav been raised in the Red Keep. I stabbed him in the back, and your father cut his throat."
His voice was reverent. A quiet memory.
I looked up at the tree. At the carved face, older than the First Men. The wind stirred the leaves above.
"And so you kept the secret," I murmured.
"For years," he said. "For your father. For your mother. And now… for you, if you ask it."
I looked at him, long and hard. "And if I don't, Lord Howland Reed?"
Howland smiled, thin, sad, full of understanding. "Then I will still stand behind you."
Then, without a word more, he knelt.
"To the son of Lyanna Stark. To the boy raised by Ned Stark. The Crannogmen will stand behind you, when the time comes. You will not face the lords alone."
"They can't know the whole truth, my lord." I said.
"No… they can't."
I didn't move for a long moment. My hands were cold, clenched at my sides. My mouth was dry.
And then I stepped forward. Reached down. Lifted him to his feet.
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. "For my mother. For my father, the one who raised me. And for me."
He met my eyes. "More things are waking in the world than just dragons and kings. Winter is not done with us yet."
I nodded.
Jojen sees far...
A gust of wind stirred the trees. The leaves whispered, blood-red against the black sky.
"Will your people fight?" I asked.
"They will," he said quietly. "Though they are not warriors in the way the bogless houses understand it."
"I'm not asking for knights in shining mail. I have those. I need shadows. I need men who can move unseen and strike from behind."
"You need Crannogmen," he said with a faint smile.
"Bring as many wargs as you can," I added. "The real ones."
His brow arched. Looking at Ghost as he moved like a shadow through the trees. "Few would know to ask for such."
He hesitated, studying me, then nodded again.
"There are still green-blooded lines in the Neck. The bond is thinner now than it was in the Dawn Age, but it still runs through the Reed veins, and a few others. If they come, they will come as part of the land itself. Quiet. Deadly. Loyal."
Most in the North spoke of wargs in hushed tones, old wives' tales and fearful mutterings, the kind that made children glance over their shoulders and septons clutch their seven-pointed stars.
Even among the Free Folk, where the skinchangers walked openly, they were treated with wary distance, half-revered and half-feared. In the halls of northern lords, a man who dreamed through the eyes of a beast was a danger, a wild card, an omen of something older than laws and lineages. Wargs were pariahs, because they reminded the world that not all power could be tamed, and not all bloodlines bent to steel and banners.
I'd seen what a single warg could do, one man who could slip behind another's eyes, ride a hawk through stormy skies, or stalk unseen in the skin of a wolf. But what if there were more? Not one, not a few scattered wildlings or hedge-born freaks, but an entire company trained for war? A division of the royal army that moved like mist ahead of the host, unseen and everywhere. Eyes in the sky, ears in the trees. Saboteurs, scouts, killers. Our own ghosts in the green.
I imagined a line of knights, proud and shining, galloping in a perfect wedge. One warg could disrupt a patrol. A dozen could shatter a charge. If we knew where they camped before the sun set, if we could strike before they ever knew we marched, that was power. That was control.
It would take time. Gods, years maybe. Discipline, training, trust. Wargs were pariahs even in the North, too close to the old powers, too wild for most lords to stomach. In the south, they'd be called monsters. I see a future. I see an army the old kings never dreamed of. Let the south cling to their knights and castles. I'll build something else, something that sees in the dark, runs with the wolves, and fights like no one else ever dared.
"Can you teach me?"
"I am no Warg, but I will tell you all I know, my prince." He replied.
Snow began to fall. The first flake landed on the back of Ghost's neck, then another on my glove.
It was quiet. Cold.
And so I have my first bannerman… and a host of crafty poisonous Crannogmen.
The forges breathed like dragons in slumber, low, hot, alive with purpose. Smoke drifted from chimneys like gray banners. The ring of steel on steel echoed across the yard as the hammers sang their morning songs. The Blackworks were a heart, burning, beating, building.
I rode in with Arren, and two scribes behind me, their saddlebags full of ledgers and ink. The cold bit deep, but the fires within were hotter than ever. Snow dusted the rooftops, melting to steam on the slate tiles of the forge halls. Ash clung to everything. Even Ghost, padding beside me, had a faint black streak down his white shoulder.
Inside, the space was thick with noise. Hammers struck anvils like war drums. Water wheels turned in steady rhythm, grinding gears and drawing bellows. The air stank of soot, sweat, and molten iron. A boy no older than Bran pumped a forge with one hand while shaping hot steel with the other. His brow was soaked, his eyes focused like a soldier's.
Child labor… something to tackle in the future.
I watched him work, just a moment longer than I meant to.
Then I turned toward the central hall, once a granary, now repurposed as a war office. Garrick and the master smiths were already there, standing around a broad table marked with soot-stained maps and sheets of design parchment. They looked up as I entered.
"Lord Stark," Garrick said with a respectful nod. The others murmured greetings, rough men with calloused hands and burn-scarred arms. They'd once served lords in the south or been bonded to noble workshops in the Free Cities. Now they forged steel for the North.
I didn't waste time.
"Let's begin."
Arren read out the current output from his notes, his voice clear despite the background roar of the forges.
"Per day: twenty swords, twenty full plate sets, ten reinforced shields, and fifty halberd spears."
I nodded. "That's enough to fully arm between three hundred and five hundred men every fortnight."
Garrick folded his arms. "With more steel and labor, we can double it."
"You'll get both," I said. "I'm pulling men and resources from all non-critical projects. We don't need luxury goods until the war is done, we will do enough to complete the contracts but no more."
There were some grunts of approval.
I tapped the map. "We focus on modular armor, brigandine and half-plate. It's faster to make, easier to repair in the field, and cheaper to distribute. Full plate's for knights and vanguard captains only. My men in Moat Cailin are fully armored and we can supply ourselves, but the same can't be said for the levies of some Lords. The rank and file need to live."
The scribes scribbled. Garrick's brow furrowed.
"And what of the cavalry?"
"We'll outfit them as medium-heavy shock units," I said. "Steel half-helms, reinforced gambesons, knee-length mail, northern saddles."
I unfurled the sketches I'd prepared the night before, lines and arcs scratched over parchment by candlelight. Some weren't elegant. But they were real.
"Crossbow carts," I said, pointing to the largest sketch. "Crank-winch powered. Two men can operate, four bolts per minute. Mobile. Wheeled. Steel-framed."
A smith raised an eyebrow. "Too heavy."
"I've compensated with wheel leverage. I used to work with timber frames in—" I stopped, catching myself. "—with timber works at the Wall. Use pine, reinforce the frame with iron collars. It'll move."
Another sketch. "Reinforced mobile rams. Steel tips. Hinged awnings with boiled leather to block arrows. Each ram crewed by four. Field use only. Perfect for gates and palisades."
They were listening now, heads turning toward the drawings.
"Watchtowers," I said next. "Collapsible. Three men can assemble in two hours. Spot fires at night. Horn relays. We'll post them along the King's Road and key river crossings. Observation is half the battle. Catapults and trebuchets too, the new versions."
Garrick gave a low, approving grunt.
I turned to Arren. "I want you in charge of tracking steel distribution. I want to know how many arrowheads we have at the end of each day. How much wool we've stored for gambesons. How many strips of boiled leather are coming from the tanners."
"Yes, my prince," he said immediately, already scribbling.
"You'll report to me at dusk. Daily. No excuses. And… how are my own reserves Garrick?"
"Full, my lord. Enough to outfit three thousand men."
"Great! A well-spent coin, Arren, gift it to the Lords for their levies. Umber, Karstark, and Mormont."
He nodded. "That's a lot of gifted coin…"
I leaned over the table again. "Our enemy has numbers. Gold. But they don't have our steel. And they don't have our logistics. Every sword we make here swings twice."
And the gift will go a long way during the upcoming council.
The meeting broke with nods and rough salutes. I left them to their steel and schedules, stepping back out into the open forge yard. The snow had begun again, light and lazy, drifting down like ash. The men whispered in my wake.
The Battle of the Whale, they were calling it now. I had only heard the name twice, once from a pair of Cerwyn riders exchanging rumors over a fire, and again from a Tallhart archer grinning through chapped lips and bloodied knuckles. It hadn't even been a full moon since the clash in the gullet but already the tales were spinning faster than the ravens could fly.
They said Jon Stark broke the enemy lines with a sea beast breaching through the water, that Stannis's men had scattered like krill before a leviathan's charge. Some called me a Targaryen. Westeros had a way of naming things, branding every death with poetry.
I stood in the Blackworks, watching smoke curl into the pale sky, and wondered how many more names would come before the war was done. They were already etched into the tongues of soldiers and scribes, stories woven over hard bread and boiled oats. Westerosi memory worked like old bards: it could not abide the absence of myth. Every skirmish needed a title, every death a cadence. It was how the realm endured horrors, by naming them, shaping them into fable.
And perhaps, he thought bitterly, that was why the people needed kings and crowns and coats of arms, too. Because truth was too raw. A butchery at sea became the Battle of the Whale. A massacre became a tale of valor. A bastard became a prince, or a traitor, depending on who was telling.
The boy from earlier was still at the anvil, a half-formed blade glowing orange in his grip. His hands were black with soot, his hair damp. But his strokes were steady. Sharp.
I stopped beside him and watched.
He noticed me but didn't speak.
I murmured, more to myself than to him, this is where I win the war. With sweat and fire and grit.
Still, the blade in his hand caught the light.
I turned, drawing my cloak tighter, and stepped out into the yard as the snow kissed my shoulders. Above, the sky was white and low. Beyond the walls, war stirred like a beast waking in its den.
And on the distant horizon, under the shadow of bare trees, I saw Karstark and Umber banners moving through the snow, arriving at Winterfell.