Mara POV
Bran and I were sitting in his room side by side, watching the fire silently.
Jojen entered the room unbidden, with Meera close behind.
I stood up.
"Tell me the bad thing you dreamed," Bran commanded, "The bad thing that is coming to Winterfell."
Jojen took a deep breath, "It is the sea that comes. I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell. I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle. Drowned men were floating in the yard. When I first dreamed the dream, back at Greywater, I didn't know their faces, but now I do. That Alebelly is one, the guard who called our names at the feast. Your septon's another. Your smith as well. "
Bran was confused and incredulous, "But the sea is hundreds and hundreds of leagues away, and Winterfell's walls are so high the water couldn't get in even if it did come."
"In the dark of night the salt sea will flow over these walls. I saw the dead, bloated and drowned."
I laid a hand on Bran's shoulder. "I have seen it too." Jojen's gaze flickered to me, then back to Bran, gauging his reaction.
Bran swallowed hard, "We have to tell them. Alebelly and Mikken and Septon Chayle. Tell them not to drown."
Jojen said, "It will not save them." The pronouncement hung in the air like a stifling burial shroud.
I closed my eyes. I couldn't deny it.
***
The following days, Bran tried to warn people, but no one heeded his words. They merely scoffed at him.
Over a game of tile we were playing, Meera tried to reassure that Bran that perhaps the prophecies wouldn't come true, but Jojen shook his head. "The things I see in greendreams can't be changed."
I averted my face from the fire, letting the shadows mask my emotions.
Meera asked angrily, "Why would the gods send a warning if we can't heed it and change what's to come?"
"I don't know," Jojen said sadly.
"If you were Alebelly, you'd probably jump into the well to have done with it! He should fight, and Bran should too."
"Me?" Bran looked afraid. "What should I fight? Am I going to drown too?"
Meera looked at him guiltily. "I shouldn't have said."
I could tell that she was hiding something. So could Bran. "Did you see me in a green dream?" he asked Jojen, "Was I drowned?"
"Not drowned." Jojen spoke as if every word pained him. "I dreamed of the man who came today, the one they call Reek. You and your brother lay dead at his feet, and he was skinning off your faces with a long red blade."
Meera rose to her feet. "If I went to the dungeon, I could drive a spear right through his heart. How could he murder Bran if he was dead?"
"The gaolers will stop you," Jojen said. "The guards. And if you tell them why you want him dead, they'll never believe it."
"I have guards too," Bran reminded them. "Alebelly and Poxy Tym and Hayhead and the rest."
Jojen's mossy eyes were full of pity. "They won't be able to stop him, Bran. I couldn't see why, but I saw the end of it. I saw you and Rickon in your crypts, down in the dark with all the dead kings and their stone wolves."
No, not Bran. No.
Bran asked desperately, "If I went away to Greywater, or to the crow, someplace far where they couldn't find me..."
"It will not matter. The dream was green, Bran, and the green dreams do not lie."
No. No was all I could think as I put my head back and let a single tear roll down my cheek.
***
I woke up gasping to an uproar. Bran was awake in his bed. I'd fallen asleep in his room last night. Bran panicked and yelled, "Hodor! Osha! Meera, Jojen, anyone!" I let tears fall down my face. The sea had indeed come to Winterfell. The dream I'd shared with Jojen had come true.
The door crashed open. A man clad in a leather jerkin sewn with overlapping iron disks and carrying a dirk in one hand and an ax on his back burst in.
"What do you want?" Bran demanded. "This is my room. You get out of here."
Theon Greyjoy followed him into the bedchamber. "We're not here to harm you, Bran."
Bran sounded relieved, "Theon? Did Robb send you? Is he here too?"
"Robb's far away. He can't help you now."
"Help me?" He was confused. "Don't scare me, Theon."
"I'm Prince Theon now. We're both princes, Bran. Who would have dreamed it? But I've taken your castle, my prince," he grinned lopsidely, showing yellowed teeth.
"Winterfell?" Bran shook his head frantically. "No, you couldn't."
"Leave us, Werlag." The man with the dirk withdrew. Theon seated himself on the bed. "I sent four men over the walls with grappling claws and ropes, and they opened a postern gate for the rest of us. My men are dealing with yours even now. I promise you, Winterfell is mine."
Bran insisted, "But you're Father's ward."
"And now you and your brother are my wards. As soon as the fighting's done, my men will be bringing the rest of your people together in the Great Hall. You and I are going to speak to them. You'll tell them how you've yielded Winterfell to me, and command them to serve and obey their new lord as they did the old."
"I won't," said Bran. "We'll fight you and throw you out. I never yielded, you can't make me say I did."
"This is no game, Bran, so don't play the boy with me, I won't stand for it. The castle is mine, but these people are still yours. If the prince would keep them safe, he'd best do as he's told." He rose and went to the door. "Someone will come dress you and carry you to the Great Hall. Think carefully on what you want to say."
The waiting made me feel even more helpless than before. I stared stonily out at the dark towers and walls. I thought I heard shouting beyond the Guards Hall, and the clash of swords.
I spun around warily when the door next opened. It was Maester Luwin, carrying a candle. "Bran, Mara," he said, "you... know what has happened? You have been told?" The skin was broken above his left eye, and blood ran down that side of his face.
I answered, "Theon came. He said Winterfell was his now."
The maester set down the candle and wiped the blood off his cheek. "They swam the moat. Climbed the walls with hook and rope. Came over wet and dripping, steel in hand." He sat on the chair by the door, as fresh blood flowed. "Alebelly was on the gate, they surprised him in the turret and killed him. Hayhead's wounded as well. I had time to send off two ravens before they burst in. The bird to White Harbor got away, but they brought down the other with an arrow." The maester stared at the rushes. "Ser Rodrik took too many of our men, but I am to blame as much as he is. I never saw this danger, I never..."
Jojen saw it, I thought.
Bran said, "You better help me dress."
"Yes, that's so." In the heavy ironbound chest at the foot of Bran's bed the maester found smallclothes, breeches, and tunic. "You are the Stark in Winterfell, and Robb's heir. You must look princely." Together they garbed him as befit a lord. I put my hair up and fastened an embroidered cloak about my shoulders.
"Theon wants me to yield the castle," Bran said as the maester was fastening the cloak with his favorite wolf's-head clasp of silver and jet.
"There is no shame in that. A lord must protect his smallfolk. Cruel places breed cruel peoples, Bran, remember that as you deal with these ironmen. Your lord father did what he could to gentle Theon, but I fear it was too little and too late."
The ironman who came for them was a squat thick-bodied man with a coal-black beard that covered half his chest. He bore Bran easily enough, though he looked none too happy with the task. We woke Rickon up. My heart throbbed at the thought of the little four-year-old boy having to witness such atrocities. But he was a Stark of Winterfell. Better sooner than later.
Below, we bumped into Jojen and Meera being herded from their room by a bald man whose spear was three feet taller than he was. Jojen looked at Bran and me, his eyes green pools full of sorrow. "Your brother's lost his kingdom," Little Walder told Bran. "You're no prince now, just a hostage."
"So are you," Jojen said, "and me, and all of us."
"No one was talking to you, frogeater," he prodded Jojen roughly with the blunt end of his spear, making him stagger forward.
Theon Greyjoy was seated in the high seat of the Starks. He had taken off his cloak. Over a shirt of fine mail he wore a black surcoat emblazoned with the golden kraken of his House. His hands rested on the wolves' heads carved at the ends of the wide stone arms.
"Theon's sitting in Robb's chair," Rickon's voice was brimming with confusion.
"Hush, Rickon." Bran hushed him.
Surely Rickon was too little, but Theon was not one to waver in gaining his ends. If he wanted to exterminate the line of Starks... We had to leave Winterfell.
Theon raised his hands for quiet. "You all know me-"
"Aye, we know you for a sack of steaming dung!" shouted Mikken, before the bald man drove the butt of his spear into his gut, then smashed him across the face with the shaft. The smith stumbled to his knees and spat out a tooth.
"Mikken, you be silent." Bran sounded squeaky.
"Listen to your little lordling, Mikken," said Theon. "He has more sense than you do."
"I've yielded Winterfell to Theon."
"Louder, Bran. And call me prince."
Bran raised his voice. "I have yielded Winterfell to Prince Theon. All of you should do as he commands you."
"Damned if I will!" bellowed Mikken.
Theon ignored the outburst. "My father has donned the ancient crown of salt and rock, and declared himself King of the Iron Islands. He claims the north as well, by right of conquest. You are all his subjects."
"Bugger that." Mikken wiped the blood from his mouth. "I serve the Starks, not some treasonous squid of-aah." The butt of the spear smashed him face first into the stone floor. I bit my lip so hard it was bleeding.
"Smiths have strong arms and weak heads," observed Theon. "But if the rest of you serve me as loyally as you served Ned Stark, you'll find me as generous a lord as you could want."
On his hands and knees, Mikken spat blood. Please don't, I wished at him, but the blacksmith shouted, "If you think you can hold the north with this sorry lot o'-"
The bald man drove the point of his spear into the back of Mikken's neck. Steel slid through flesh and came out his throat in a welter of blood. A woman screamed, and Meera wrapped her arms around Rickon. It's blood he drowned on, I thought numbly. His own blood.
"I will be as good a lord to you as Eddard Stark ever was." Theon's voice reverberated through the hall. "Betray me, though, and you'll wish you hadn't. And don't think the men you see here are the whole of my power. Torrhen's Square and Deepwood Motte will soon be ours as well, and my uncle is sailing up the Saltspear to seize Moat Cailin. If Robb Stark can stave off the Lannisters, he may reign as King of the Trident hereafter, but House Greyjoy holds the north now."
I could not look. The green dream was coming true.