The King of Winters

Chapter 50

Andrew

Winterfell was full of ghosts for Andrew Stark.

This was not the castle he remembered from the summer of his youth. This place was scarred and broken, more pain than comfort, a haunt of crows and mists. The great double curtain wall and the castle inside the walls still stood, but there was something missing from it. Something which had been there once but not now. Andrew knew exactly what it was. For years he had dreamed about taking Winterfell back and standing in his home once again, but now that he is here he doesn't want to walk in. Too much pain. He has not even visited his parents' room. When he was a little boy he had loved to stay in that room and go to sleep with his parents, listening to his mother's song. Without them even that room is not so fond for him anymore. 

A few towers in the first keep had collapsed in his battle with the dragon. The thatch and timber had been consumed by dragonfire, in whole or in part. Under the glass panes of the Glass Garden his mother's roses had frozen and withered, the fruits and vegetables that would have fed the castle during the winter were dead and black. Andrew wondered what did he miss the most? The people who died, the unbroken towers, granite untouched by dragonfire. . . mother's love and father's care? It was them he missed the most, Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne. He would've happily lived anywhere with his father and mother but without them even Winterfell felt like a ruin.

Plumes of grey smoke snaked up from the rebuilt kitchens and reroofed barracks keep. The battlements and crenellations were crowned with snow. All the color had been leached from Winterfell until only grey and white remained. The Stark colors. Andrew did not know whether he ought to find that ominous or reassuring. Even the sky was grey. Grey and grey and greyer. The whole world grey, everywhere you look.

All about the yard, Winterfell was crawling with people doing dozens of works. None was standing idle except for Andrew Stark. Everytime they chance to see him they bowed and muttered a happy 'Your Grace.'

They had raised the Stark direwolf above the walls of Winterfell as the wind came howling from the north. It was a comforting sight to see the Stark banner flapping in the wind. It had taken the lives of many good men to get that banner to stream proudly from the top again. Ser Rodrik and the others, he had them buried in the old licheyard where they might rest peacefully. 

The corpse of the dragon had been burned and the bones all collected in a sack. He would return them to Jaehaerys, the prince had earned them at least. He had cut off the head, that  might serve him though. I made myself the Dragonslayer, he thought, and from that came all of this. He might even have made himself a kinslayer but for her.

Andrew kept his eyes downcast as he crossed the yard, weaving between the people. I played in this yard, learned to swing a sword in this yard, he thought, remembering warm summer days playing with his father and mother, sparring under the watchful eyes of old Ser Rodrik. That was back when he was whole, when he still knew how to laugh and smile.

As he passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Andrew put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping across the yard. He felt warm and happy in the presence of the white wolf. It comforted him to think that part of his family was still with him in the form of Ghost.

It was warmer in the godswood. Andrew Stark was no stranger to this godswood. He had played here as a boy, skipping stones across the cold black pool beneath the weirwood, hiding his treasures in the bole of an ancient oak, climbing up the great weirwood in the center. Once he learned to swim, he had bathed in the hot springs after many a days playing in the yard. In amongst these chestnuts and elms and soldier pines he had found secret places where he could hide. The first prayer he ever said had been here, before the brooding face of the weirwood. His parents used to spend many nights here and he would accompany them whenever he could.