𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒, game of thrones

Chapter Thirteen

Some days it rained, some days were windy, and once they were caught in a sleet storm so fierce that even Hodor bellowed in dismay. On the clear days, it often seemed as if they were the only living things in all the world. "Does no one live up here?" Meera Reed asked once, as they made their way around a granite upthrust as large as Winterfell.

"There's people," Lyanna told her. "The Umbers are mostly east of the kingsroad, but they graze their sheep in the high meadows in summer. There are Wulls west of the mountains along the Bay of Ice, Harclays back behind us in the hills, and Knotts and Liddles and Norreys and even some Flints up here in the high places." Her father's mother's mother had been a Flint of the mountains.

"Wull?" said Meera. "Jojen, wasn't there a Wull who rode with Father during the war?"

"Theo Wull." Joien was breathing hard from the climb. "Buckets, they used to call him."

"That's their sigil," said Bran. "Three brown buckets on a blue field, with a border of white and grey checks. Lord Wull came to Winterfell once, to do his fealty and talk with Father, and he had the buckets on his shield. He's no true lord, though. Well, he is, but they call him just the Wull, and there's the Knott and the Norrey and the Liddle too. At Winterfell we called them lords, but their own folk don't."

"Ah--" Lyanna sighed deeply, and loudly, "my little brother knows a lot about houses and their sigils than I do"

Bran grinned.

Jojen Reed stopped to catch his breath. "Do you think these mountain folk know we're here?"

"They know." Bran said. "They won't bother us so long as we don't try and make off with their goats or horses."

Nor did they. Only once did they encounter any of the mountain people, when a sudden burst of freezing rain sent them looking for shelter. Visenya found it for them, sniffing out a shallow cave behind the greygreen branches of a towering sentinel tree, but when Hodor ducked beneath the stony overhang, Lyanna saw the orange glow of fire farther back and realized they were not alone. "Come in and warm yourselves," a man's voice called out. "There's stone enough to keep the rain off all our heads."

He offered them oatcakes and blood sausage and a swallow of ale from a skin he carried, but never his name; nor did he ask theirs. Lyanna figured him for a Liddle. The clasp that fastened his squirrelskin cloak was gold and bronze and wrought in the shape of a pinecone, and the Liddles bore pinecones on the white half of their green-and-white shields.

"Is it far to the Wall?" Bran asked him as they waited for the rain to stop.

"Not so far as the raven flies," said the Liddle, if that was who he was. "Farther, for them as lacks wings."

Bran started, "I'd bet we'd be there if . . . "

" . . . we took the kingsroad," Meera finished with him.

The Liddle took out a knife and whittled at a stick. "When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed. There's squids in the wolfswood, and flayed men ride the kingsroad asking after strangers."

The Reeds exchanged a look. "Flayed men?" said Jojen.

"The Bastard's boys, aye. He was dead, but now he's not. And paying good silver for wolfskins, a man hears, and maybe gold for word of certain other walking dead." He looked at Bran when he said that, and at Summer stretched out beside him. "As to that Wall," the man went on, "it's not a place that I'd be going. The Old Bear took the Watch into the haunted woods, and all that come back was his ravens, with hardly a message between them. Dark wings, dark words, me mother used to say, but when the birds fly silent, seems to me that's even darker." He poked at the fire with his stick. "It was different when there was a Stark in Winterfell. But the old wolf's dead and young one's gone south to play the game of thrones, and all that's left us is the ghosts."

"The wolves will come again," said Jojen solemnly.

"And how would you be knowing, boy?"

"I dreamed it."

"Some nights I dream of me mother that I buried nine years past," the man said, "but when I wake, she's not come back to us."

"There are dreams and dreams, my lord."

"Hodor," said Hodor.

They spent that night together, for the rain did not let up till well past dark, and only Summer and Visenya seemed to want to leave the cave. When the fire had burned down to embers, Lyanna let them go. The direwolves did not feel the damp as people did, and the night was calling them. Moonlight painted the wet woods in shades of silver and turned the grey peaks white. Owls hooted through the dark and flew silently between the pines, while pale goats moved along the mountainsides.
When they woke the next morning, the fire had gone out and the Liddle was gone, but he'd left a sausage for them, and a dozen oatcakes folded up neatly in a green and white cloth. Some of the cakes had pinenuts baked in them and some had blackberries. Lyanna ate one of each, and still did not know which sort she liked the best. One day there would be Starks in Winterfell again, she told herself, and then she'd send for the Liddles and pay them back a hundredfold for every nut and berry.
The trail they followed was a little easier that day, and by noon the sun came breaking through the clouds. Bran sat in his basket up on Hodor's back and felt almost content. He dozed off once, lulled to sleep by the smooth swing of the big stableboy's stride and the soft humming sound he made sometimes when he walked. Lyanna woke him up with a light touch on his arm. "Look," she said, pointing at the sky with her arrow, "an eagle."

It's grey wings spread and still as it floated on the wind. Lyanna followed it with her eyes as it circled higher, wondering what it would be like to soar about the world so effortless. "it's gone" Bran said disappointedly.

"We'll see others," said Meera. "They live up here."

"I suppose."

"Hodor," said Hodor.

"Hodor," Bran agreed.

Jojen kicked a pinecone. "Hodor likes it when you say his name, I think."

"Hodor's not his true name," Lyanna explained. "It's just some word he says. His real name is Walder, Old Nan told me. She was his grandmother's grandmother or something." Talking about Old Nan made her sad. "Do you think the ironmen killed her?" They hadn't seen her body at Winterfell. She didn't remember seeing any women dead, now that she thought back. "She never hurt no one, not even Theon. She just told stories. Theon wouldn't hurt someone like that. Would he?"

"Some people hurt others just because they can," said Jojen.

"And it wasn't Theon who did the killing at Winterfell," said Meera. "Too many of the dead were ironmen." She shifted her frog spear to her other hand. "Remember Old Nan's stories, Lyanna. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you."

"I'll remember," she promised. She felt a pat on her shoulder from behind, Jojen comforted her. He comforts her sometimes when she's sad, whenever she's homesick, it was Jojen who would wake her up when she has nightmares and he'd promise her that she was okay.