Chapter 22: That Was Just Your Life

Benjen

It was cold, then again it was always cold this far north, always had been, always would be. The cold of the wall often reminded Lord Commander Benjen Stark of wintry nights in the halls of Winterfell, sitting by the fire with his father and siblings, listening as Old Nan or his mother recounted stories from ages past, or playing in the snows that often graced Winterfell's gardens and courtyard during Winter or Summer, running around throwing snowballs and making snowmen with Lya. Of course that had been long ago when he had still had dreams of perhaps becoming a knight in the south, or becoming the captain of his elder brother's guard in Winterfell- back when the world had seemed normal, when it had been Brandon set to marry Catelyn Tully, and Lya was to marry Robert Baratheon, Ned's oldest friend, before Harrenhal, before the dragon idiot set eyes on his sister and made her lose sense of her honour and her duty with a few sweet poisonous words. But of course, Harrenhal had happened, Robert's Rebellion had happened, and at the end of it all it had just been him and Ned left of the pack, and Ned had brought home a young southern bride and two boys, he needed to get his own house in order and did not need to be buried under the doubts and guilt that wracked his younger sibling.

So Benjen Stark had made a decision one day sixteen years ago, he remembered the recruiter who had come calling in Harrenhal and when the same man came and stopped by Winterfell one day in the early years of Robert's reign, Benjen had decided to ride north with him when he returned. Sixteen years he had been at the wall, slowly working his way up the ranks, and clamping down on his guilt and regrets. Yes the cold of the wall had always been a reminder of his home, the only true reminder of Winterfell that he would need without it dredging up old memories- painful memories, memories that were better left not thought about and buried in the recesses of his mind- at least that had been the case until he had returned from his ranging. He had seen the dead come back to life, he had felt the unnatural chill of the White Walkers as they had converged on his men, he had fought the wildlings, though he knew it was a futile effort, for they were only doing what was a normal human instinct fleeing south from the dangers of the furthermost north. No, once the cold had been a balm to Benjen Stark's hurts and memories, now it was merely a reminder of the upcoming war that he would have to fight.

After the fighting with the Wildlings, the Watch had been left with no commander- Mormont having been killed in his tower, Marsh having taken a severe wound, old Donal Noye dead at the hands of a giant- Elections had been called, and the cronies from Kingslanding Janos Slynt and Allister Thorne had put themselves forward, though both men had done nothing to prove themselves during the battle. Ser Denys Mallister and Cotter Pyke had also put their names forward, though both had withdrawn once Benjen had made it clear that he intended to stand for the post, for though he knew Ser Denys and Cotter Pyke meant well, both men were incredibly stubborn and did not truly appreciate the depth of the threat that was coming from the north. Truth be told neither did he, but he had some sort of idea, and so he had been elected the 998th Lord Commander by his sworn brothers, and had begun the momentous task of preparing for both a potential wildling invasion and the oncoming war with death itself.

As it turned out the task of dealing with the Wildlings was much less stressful than he had first imagined. Their numbers had been significantly reduced during the battle, thanks to help from Robb and Jon, especially from Jon's behemoth of a dragon, Mance Rayder, Tormund Giantsbane and Rattleshirt had all been killed during the battle, and the three were major wildling commanders, those wildlings that had not perished at the hands of dragonfire or from steel, had either been captured and sworn to help defend the wall or had fled with the Weeper. It was the man himself, not the potential men and women he commanded that worried Benjen. During his long years as a sworn brother, the Weeper had crossed the wall several times, each time coming back with more plunder and loot, he had never been caught despite the attempts of some of the best rangers the Watch had ever seen, it was rumoured that it was the Weeper who encourage Mance Rayder's bid to become King Beyond the Wall. Yes, the Weeper himself would be more of a challenge; the man Benjen knew would be stubborn and unyielding and would try and lead his people over the wall over as many black brother's corpses as he possibly could. Benjen had sent several scouting parties out to see if they could track the man's movements, so far only two of the parties he had sent out had come back, both reporting the same thing, the Weeper was gathering the remenants of Mance Rayder's host and marching south.

Of the White Walkers they had no news, but Benjen had already set Samwell Tarly off to the old library in Castle Black to find out what he could of these mysterious creatures, as well as asking Maester Aemon- the fountain of knowledge that he was- what he knew of the pale white creatures, who seemed to be the very embodiment of death itself. As it turned out information about the White Walkers was scarce in Castle Black, and even Maester Aemon himself seemed devoid of any significant knowledge about them, something which deeply surprised Benjen, considering that the old maester had often appeared to know everything that there was to know about the world. He had therefore resolved to send Samwell off to Oldtown and the citadel, where he would train to become a maester and to learn what he could about the white walkers, if the Citadel had the books needed to learn what they could.

Letters from Shadow Tower and Eastwatch reported seeing a great host of wildlings approaching at a fast pace, and Benjen gave orders for more men to be dispatched to both castles, though after giving the orders he noticed that Castle Black itself seemed rather poorly garrisoned, and was tempted to recall his men, but thought of something he had once overheard his lord father tell Brandon once when he was very young : It is always important, that before you give an order you think about what the possible consequences of that order could be. For if you give an order and then begin to doubt it, your men will doubt it also and question you.

It was he was thinking this through that Maester Clydas knocked on his door and announced that a scouting party had returned to Castle Black bearing urgent news with regards to the White Walkers.

Victarion

A Kingsmoot had been called when word had reached Pyke of Balon's death. With Asha dead and Theon still a prisoner of the Greenlanders, the Damphair had announced that a Kingsmoot- the first in centuries was to be held- all the great houses of the Iron Islands had come together on Great Wyk to decide who should be the next King of the Islands. He knew that if his brother had his way, it would be him Victarion that sat on the Seastone Chair, not the Crow's Eye. No never the crow's eye. That man, though he shared the same blood as both Victarion and the Damphair, was not Ironborn enough to sit the Seastone chair, nor was he godly enough. Since the man had been exiled, many strange and horrifying rumours had reached the ears of the remaining Greyjoy brothers, tales of dark magic and sacrifices, and secret dealings had been the talk of Euron Crow's Eye, whenever he was mentioned.

The men upon the shore had spied their sails. Shouts echoed across the bay as friends and kin called out greetings. But not from Silence. On her decks a motley crew of mutes and mongrels spoke no word as the Iron Victory drew nigh. Men black as tar stared out at him and others squat and hairy as the apes of Sothoros. Monsters, Victarion thought.

They dropped anchor twenty yards from Silence. "Lower a boat. I would go ashore." He buckled on his swordbelt as the rowers took their places; his longsword rested on one hip, a dirk upon the other. Nute the barber fastened the Lord Captain's cloak about his shoulders. It was made of nine layers of cloth of gold, sewn in the shape of the kraken of Greyjoy arms, dangling to his boots. Beneath he wore heavy grey chainmail over boiled black leather. In Moat Cailin he had taken to wearing mail day and night. Sore shoulders and an aching back were easier to bear than bloody bowels. The poisoned arrows of the bog devils need only scratch a man, and a few hours later he would be squirting and screaming as his life ran down his legs in gouts of red and brown. Whoever wins the Seastone Chair, I shall deal with the bog devils. He had been called from Moat Cailin by a raven from Pyke, instructing him to leave a token force behind and make haste for Pyke, Balon meant to take Winterfell and needed the islands protected. He had been close to home when he had received the raven write in the hand of the Bolton Bastard proclaiming his brother's death.

Victarion donned a tall black warhelm, wrought in the shape of an iron kraken, its arms coiled down around his cheeks to meet beneath his jaw. By then the boat was ready. "I put the chests into your charge," he told Nute as he climbed over the side. "See that they are strongly guarded." Much depended on the chests.

"As you command, Your Grace."

Victarion returned a sour scowl. "I am no king as yet." He clambered down into the boat. Aeron Damphair was waiting for him in the surf with his waterskin slung beneath one arm. The priest was gaunt and tall, though shorter than Victarion. His nose rose like a shark's fin from a bony face, and his eyes were iron. His beard reached to his waist, and tangled ropes of hair slapped at the back of his legs when the wind blew. "Brother," he said as the waves broke white and cold around their ankles, "what is dead can never die."

"But rises again, harder and stronger." Victarion lifted off his helm and knelt. The bay filled his boots and soaked his breeches as Aeron poured a stream of salt water down upon his brow. And so they prayed.

The Damphair helped Victarion stand and then led him to the shore, away from the din coming from the assembled tents. In hushed tones he spoke to Victarion. "Brother, you must push your claim. You must. Euron is a godless man who surrounds himself with monsters and sinners. The Drowned one has shown me what will happen to our people if Euron becomes King, and it is not a future I like, nor is it one we should allow to fall on our people."

Victarion stared hard at his brother and asked. "What are in these visions brother, what has you so scared?"

The Damphair looked around them once then twice, the drew in closer and almost whispered into Victarion's ear, "If the Crow's Eye becomes king, Nagga shall rise from the grave, and our dead will walk through our islands with wight eyes, for the Crow's Eye has given his life away."

Victarion sighed. "What would you have me do brother? It is a crime in the eyes of god and men to be a kinslayer. I promised Balon – may he rest in peace- that I would never harm Euron so long as we both drew breath."

The Damphair gave an enigmatic smile and said. "Brother, Balon is dead- may he rest in the drowned god's watery halls- but Euron and his crimes live on. Why should he become King, when you are the more deserving, the more holy candidate? Why should he take what the Seastone chair?"

"Because it is his right as the elder brother."

"Ah but if we were to go by rights, Theon would be king not you nor Euron. But we are not here to elect Theon as King are we?"

"That is because he is still in the hands of the Greenlanders though!" Victarion protested.

"Yes but he made no attempt to come back to us did he. He has forgotten his roots and has become soft; he abandoned his true family in order to fight for the ones who took his father, brothers, sister and mother's lives. He is no Ironborn, merely a pup lost in his skin. He is not fit to be king."

Victarion sighed. "What would you have me do?"

The Damphair smiled a sly smile. "Challenge Euron to the finger dance, not the one the children play but the finger dance of Nagga, he cannot refuse you and still hope to be king."

Victarion sighed and said. "Very well then brother, I shall challenge the Crow's Eye."

Bran

The moon was a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife. A pale sun rose and set and rose again. Red leaves whispered in the wind. Dark clouds filled the skies and turned to storms. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, and dead men with black hands and bright blue eyes shuffled round a cleft in the hillside but could not enter. Under the hill, the broken boy sat upon a weirwood throne, listening to whispers in the dark, as ravens walked up and down his arms.

"You will never walk again," the three eyed crow had promised, "but you will fly." Sometimes the sound of song would drift up from someplace far below. The children of the forest, Old Nan would have called the singers, but those who sing the song of earth was their own name for themselves, in the True Tongue that no human could speak. The ravens could speak it though. Their small black eyes were full of secrets, and they would caw at him and peck his skin when they heard the songs.

After the bone grinding cold of the lands beyond the Wall, the caves were blessedly warm, and when the chill crept out of the rock the singers would light fires to drive it off again. Down here there was no wind, no snow, no ice, no dead things reaching out to grab you, only dreams and rushlight and the kisses of the ravens.

The moon was fat and full. Stars wheeled across a black sky. Rain fell and froze, and tree limbs snapped from the weight of the ice. Bran and Meera had made up names for those who sang the song of earth: Ash, Leaf, Scales, Black Knife, Snowylocks and Coals. Their true names were too long for human tongues, said Leaf. Only she could speak the Common Tongue, so what the others thought of their new names Bran never learned.

But there were a few new things that Bran learnt during his time in the cave of the Children. He learnt that the three eyed crow, was called the last greenseer by the Children, that he had once been called Brynden and that he had once fought in a great war some hundred years before Bran had even been born. He learnt that the three eyed crow, too had been led to this very same cave some fifty years ago, when he had been out ranging. He had been led out to the cave by the Children, and there had met the last king of the Children of the Forest. The creature who, the three eyed crow said had fought in the Battle for the Dawn alongside the last hero. This king had many names, the three eyed crow said, some had said in the years and centuries following the battle that the child king had been a god come to help the world in its hour of darkness, others said that it had been a wizard, or a creation of the imagination. The three eyed crow said that it was all of these things and more, and that Bran would have heard of the child king in his stories told to him by Old Nan- that the three eyed crow knew of old Nan was enough to convince Bran that what he said next must be true- the child king had married into House Stark, had provided it's sword to House Stark's founder and presented its knowledge of magic to the founder. The one known as Brandon the builder had married the last child king, and from their union the line of House Stark had been produced.

The three eyed crow also went onto to tell Bran about how his family had been tied to the fate of the Wall and the Night's Watch ever since the day Brandon the Builder had raised the Wall. The stories told in the night to tell children to behave, about how the Wall was there to protect them from wildlings was all a lie, said the three eyed crow. He said that Bran had seen the truth for the Wall's purpose as he had made his way to the cave of the children. That the wall had been raised to keep the darkness out of the land, that it had been built to keep the White Walkers and the dead out. The three eyed crow said that for as long as there was magic in the realm and the people of the north remained vigilant, there was no chance for the White Walkers to return. But, he said two hundred years ago when the last dragon died, the White Walkers began to awaken from their slumber and began preparing for an invasion, a second Long Night, he called it.

The three eyed crow said that the White Walkers would be much more powerful now than they had been during the first Long Night, for this time their sworn enemy had been born and was claiming his throne. Bran did not understand what he meant by that, nor did he truly understand what he meant when he said that there had to be three heads to defeat the White Walkers once and for all, and that only two had been found. There was much that the three eyed crow told Bran that he did not truly understand, but he listened none the less and as he was taught all about using his different skins to see the world through new eyes, and as he was taught to see the past, the present and the future, he learnt about how his role in the coming years would be to observe the realm, and where he felt necessary make changes to the future, if he felt that one outcome would be to catastrophic. But he was warned that he could never, never, ever use his power for his own use. He could use it to change events that needed to happen, for that would be playing the hand of the gods, and that the three eyed crow said was something that they were not.

It was during one such vision, as he sat in his weirwood throne that Bran Stark, the Prince of the Green saw death and destruction on a field of white stained red, and saw dragons, three of them flying high in the air burning all in their path, and he saw White Walkers dying and killing. But most of all he saw the Wall, in all its icy glory, falling and collapsing and signalling the battle. The start of the Long Night and the Battle for the Dawn.

Jon

Snow lay heavy on the grounds outside Riverrun. Winter had truly come and with a vengeance. It had also brought with it more news of the war. From Harrenhal they received word that the forces led by Lord Edmure and Lord Royce had fought the Lannister- Tyrell host, and had inflicted some serious damage onto the host, forcing it to retreat back to Sow's Horn. But they also wrote that Lord Edmure had been seriously injured during the fighting, most specifically during a fight against Loras Tyrell, which had ended in Ser Loras dying from his wounds some days later and Lord Edmure still holding onto his life by the skin of his teeth.

Robb had also returned after being away from Riverrun for two months, he brought with him Danaerys Targaryen- Jon's aunt, though it was hard to accept her as such when she was so young, no older than him truth be told- and her two dragons and the 9,000 men of the Golden Company, plus Stannis Baratheon's red woman, Melisandre. Danaerys had bent the knee to him, yet Jon was always weary whenever he spoke to her or was in her presence, for he got the feeling that she was waiting for an opportunity, any opportunity to prove herself more of a dragon, more of a ruler than him. He had to admit she had some strange concepts of ruling, she seemed more inclined to take back the Iron Throne through simply using their dragons, and whilst Jon admitted that, that might solve a few problems it was no way to truly win the people of Westeros over to their cause, as he had said many a time during many a heated argument with his aunt.

Their progress was not helped he thought by the constant whisperings of Ser Jorah Mormont, who by all rights was a condemned man, having fled justice many years ago when Jon had just been barely more than a babe, the same age as Rickon was now. He had pointed this out to Robb one day, when it was just them and Ser Barristan and Aunt Catelyn, and he asked Robb why he had not taken the man's head there and then, and Robb had stuttered and spluttered before finally saying that it did not seem prudent to do so when it was clear that Danaerys found Ser Jorah's council and presence all the more assuring. Though from what Jon could gather from Ser Barristan and Lord Connington, the man was by all accounts a bit of a brute, and his true motives for staying with Danaerys were to be questioned thoroughly and he was to be kept watch on always, something Jon had been reluctant to do at first, though he had gone through with having some men look around and see what Ser Jorah was truly about. As of yet they had found nothing suspicious. And yet Jon could not help feel like he was missing something, some valuable piece of information that could make it that much easier to truly understand Danaerys who was a part of this other family that Jon belonged to, but did not truly feel connected with. There was something about her, the way she spoke, the way she acted that deeply unsettled him, it was almost as if she was truly planning to do something to him, almost as if their current inaction was frustrating her, and she seemed like to do something rash.

That something manifested itself through her proposal that they marry, following on with the Targaryen tradition, Jon was horrified by the idea. He was married to Sansa- whom he loved, who held a place in his heart that none else could- even if he was not married to Sansa, he did not think he could give himself to Danaerys, and when she suggested that it would be better that he marry her now, for Sansa could very well be dead, Jon had nearly lost it and had almost decided to throw her out, but Robb's hand on his arm, and Aunt Catelyn's soothing words had calmed his temper. He would not give up on Sansa he could not give up on Sansa.

Serrax had returned to Riverrun some days ago, and with him had come an attached note, from King's Landing written in the Spider's hand, and it explained how the Spider was doing all he could to make sure that Sansa stayed safe and escaped soon, though she would be great with child now, and Jon worried that perhaps the stress of escaping and travelling would be too much for her to cope with. He wondered if he should not just fly to the Eyrie now and burn Lord Baelish out of his hovel and have him burnt, or better yet hung, drawn and quartered for daring to take Sansa, for having the gall of claiming to be a friend to the man Jon would always see as his father, and then betraying him at the moment it suited him.

As Jon brooded over various decisions to do with Danaerys and Sansa, Robb and Lord Connington began organising the next military campaign. Their scouts had reported that Tywin Lannister was moving his host from Sow's Horn and was planning on marching to the Trident. It had been taken into consideration that perhaps they could be delayed on their way there, but that had been knocked down and instead, they were allowed through. Jon was told that they would be marching for the Trident very soon, and all three dragons would need to be used to fully deal with the Lannister threat, despite whatever objections or moral qualms anyone had about using all three dragons, it was agreed that that was the only way to truly finish this war once and for all. Then they could march on King's Landing, and take it, and if Sansa was not free by then, Jon swore to himself that he would fly to the Vale and burn Lord Baelish and anyone who stood in his way. He would let them harm his wife ever again.