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EDDARD STARK: A Game of Wolves and Whispers [July 2022 Fanfic Contest Entry]

A little drabble from the one and only Ned based on the prompt for this month's fanfic contest: a game of werewolves gone awry... the way I see it, poor Ned would recognise the game all too well if he'd played it before.

Ice on his cheek. Lions licking lips as they waited for fresh meat to be served. A jeering mob who'd sooner see his head than question the wolves in sheep's clothing that reigned so high above them, and trapped them in on all sides.

Wolves. He thought, a venom in his inner voice that could not reach his dry, blocked up throat- a stomach-dropping gush of air stroked his cheek as the sword rose up above his head. 

If only it were just wolves again, games of Wolves and Whispers.

Old Nan told many stories of The North- and The Real North too. Ned had been unable to help a chuckle escape him at the terror in his own children when they would run to him crying at thunder in fear that it was the roar of a grumpkin, or when they had spotted a small figure crossing the courtyard below their windows at night, convinced they had seen a snark, or a wight- he would hold them in his arms tight and tell them, "Don't listen to Old Nan's stories- they're just that." Yet he had been no different himself at that age, till he had grown up enough to learn which stories were just that, stories-

And which were warnings under the guise of myths and legends.

There was one tale in particular that had struck out to Ned as a particular spook as a child. His own Old Nan had told him of a man who had gone wandering into the woods alone, searching for his missing wife. As a full moon sat high above him, streaking his vision of the grey winter forest with silver, he had heard a growl from the depths of the foliage that swarmed him.

Before he could even draw his sword, two glowering red eyes leapt out of the darkness and he was set upon by an ungodly wolf- gnarled and bloody white fur, and the same height as him, even on all fours. It tore into his arm, straight to the bone, and he felt the bite fester and burn in a way he'd never felt from any beast he'd hunted before, nor any blade that had cut him in battle. Though he managed to wriggle a dagger from his belt and drive it deep into the beast's heart, the damage had been done and man and wolf lay atop each other, drawing their last breaths-

He was no ordinary man, though. He had the blood of the First Men in his veins, and that blood danced with the blood of the beast that slumped above him. As the full light of that cursed moon stroked that fading body of ragged breaths, his skin was torn asunder... and from within a beast emerged, bloody wet fur and not a scrap of sensibility left in him. Not till morning came, and once again the man was birthed painfully from the skin of the beast- cursed to suffer that same fate once every full moon. 

The story of the beast with a man's form had terrified little Ned; He couldn't imagine such a terrifying monster waiting to burst out from someone who looked so ordinary, and yet was impossible to bring any mercy to in form of death.

I know now just how many monsters lay beneath the skin of man.

 For weeks he jumped at the sound of whining in the night, at the growls of hounds in his own home and in the vale where he spent much of his childhood- but like all children, his fear was conquered when his ever gallant friend Robert Baratheon had made a game from it; the game of Wolves.

Waiting till night, Robert would bar them up in a cellar with the stable boys and kitchen servants, and tell the tale under the light of a dithering candle, golden glow of light fighting a losing battle with the shreds of moonlight from the window. The boys would sit in a circle and he would silently declare a wolf, with the brash and resolute command in his glare and his pointing arm of the King he'd one day become. This wolf would then stalk the circle as everyone else sat rigid, eyes tightly shut, and he would take another boy to the ground- when he returned to his seat and everyone opened their eyes to see who had been taken by the 'wolf-man'  in the night, the accusations would start flying till either the wolf killed everyone night by night, or was successfully lynched by the just young men.