𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒, game of thrones

Chapter Twenty-Three

That proved a forlorn hope. Inside the longhall they found the ashes of a fire, floors of hard-packed dirt, a chill that went bone deep. But at least they had a roof above their heads and log walls to keep the wind off. A stream ran nearby, covered with a film of ice. The elk had to crack it with his hoof to drink. Once Bran and Jojen and Hodor were safely settled, Meera and Lyanna fetched back some chunks of broken ice for them to suck on. The melting water was so cold it made Lyanna shudder.

Summer and Visenya did not follow them into the longhall. Lyanna could feel the big wolf's hunger, a shadow of her own. "Go hunt for your brother," she told her, "but you leave the elk alone." Part of her was wishing she could go hunting too. Perhaps she would, later.

Supper was a fistful of acorns, crushed and pounded into paste, so bitter that Lyanna gagged as she tried to keep it down. Jojen Reed did not even make the attempt. Younger and frailer than his sister, he was growing weaker by the day.

"Jojen, you have to eat," Meera told him.

"Later. I just want to rest." Jojen smiled a wan smile. "This is not the day I die, sister. I promise you."

"You almost fell off the elk."

"Almost. I am cold and hungry, that's all."

"Then eat."

"Crushed acorns? My belly hurts, but that will only make it worse. Leave me be, sister. I'm dreaming of roast chicken."

"Dreams will not sustain you. Not even greendreams."

"Dreams are what we have."

All we have. The last of the food that they had brought from the south was ten days gone. Since then hunger walked beside them day and night. Even Summer and Visenya could find no game in these woods. They lived on crushed acorns and raw fish. The woods were full of frozen streams and cold black lakes, and Meera was as good a fisher with her three-pronged frog spear as most men were with hook and line. Some days her lips were blue with cold by the time she waded back to them with her catch wriggling on her tines. It had been three days since Meera caught a fish, however. Lyanna's belly felt so hollow it might have been three years. She would go hunting but she lost the bow and arrow at the Keep.

After they choked down their meagre supper, Meera sat with her back against a wall, sharpening her dagger on a whetstone. Bran looked tired and seemed to have a hard time resting. Hodor squatted down beside the door, rocking back and forth on his haunches and muttering, "Hodor, hodor, hodor."

Lyanna closed her eyes. It was too cold to talk, and they dare not light a fire. Coldhands had warned them against that. These woods are not as empty as you think, he had said. You cannot know what the light might summon from the darkness. The memory made her shiver.

Sleep would not come, could not come. Instead there was wind, the biting cold, moonlight on snow, and fire. She was back inside Visenya, long leagues away, and the night was rank with the smell of blood. The scent was strong. A kill, not far. The flesh would still be warm. Slaver ran between her teeth as the hunger woke inside her. Not elk. Not deer. Not this. The direwolf moved toward the meat, a gaunt grey shadow sliding from tree to tree, through pools of moonlight and over mounds of snow. The wind gusted around her, shifting. She lost the scent, found it, then lost it again. As she searched for it once more, a distant sound made her ears prick up.
Wolf, she knew at once. Visenya stalked toward the sound, wary now. Soon enough the scent of blood was back, but now there were other smells: piss and dead skins, bird shit, feathers, and wolf, wolf, wolf. A pack. She would need to fight for her meat.

They smelled her too. As she moved out from amongst the darkness of the trees into the bloody glade, they were watching her. The female was chewing on a leather boot that still had half a leg in it, but she let it fall at Visenya's approach. The leader of the pack, an old male with a grizzled white muzzle and a blind eye, moved out to meet her, snarling, her teeth bared. Behind her, a younger male showed his fangs as well.