Not because it was long, but because the words inked down on the parchment left much for brevity.
Something stirs beyond the Wall.
Do not leave the garrison of Bear Island empty.
Jorah set the parchment down on his desk and pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
Through the open shutters of his solar, the last of the evening light was going from the sky over the bay, the water darkening from iron-grey to black by degrees.
The signal lantern on the harbor dock had been lit.
He could see its reflection moving in the water, breaking and reforming with each small wave.
He had been Lord of Bear Island for over a decade, and he still sometimes looked at this view and expected his father to be the one sitting behind the desk.
Bear Island had always been proud and always been poor, two qualities that tended to blend in the way that only houses in the North could be.
Pride was cheap to maintain; the island had cliffs enough for that, and storms enough.
Poverty was harder.
Jorah had grown up understanding that Bear Island’s worth was measured in the men it produced and the loyalty it gave, not in gold or grain, because it had never had much of either.
That had begun to change.
It had started with Karlon, as most things on the western coast had started with him.
The fleet patrols had pushed the worst of the raiders out of the bay, and when raiders stopped burning the fishing boats, the catch improved, and when the catch improved, there was surplus to trade, and the gold in the coffers began piling up.
Hells, even the small harbor his father had allowed to be built on the eastern shore years ago was now busy enough on a summer day that you could hear the activity from the keep walls.
All of it, of course, came from Lynesse.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
He had met her in Lannisport, the summer of the tournament, with the salt of Pyke still in his beard and Longclaw on his hip and more renown than he had any right to carry on his shoulders.
He had been the first through the breach.
He had not done it for renown — at least not the sole reason — but renown had followed him regardless, and the tournament at Lannisport had been full of men who wanted to measure themselves against the first man over the walls of Pyke.
He had unhorsed them all.
He was good on horseback, better than most people, and that day had been his best showing.
A day when he finally showed all of Westeros that the Mormonts were as fierce as the bears in the sigil.
Lynesse Hightower had been watching from the stands.
Her father, the Lord of the Hightower, had been watching too.
Leyton Hightower had agreed to the match, and Jorah had come north with his wife and his sword and his prize money and the full weight of what he’d done settling slowly onto his shoulders.
He was worried in the first months.
He would not pretend otherwise, even in the privacy of his own head.
Lynesse had been raised in Oldtown, in warmth and comfort and the specific richness of a city that had been accumulating wealth since before the Targaryens came.
Bear Island was none of those things.
Bear Island was cold stone and cold water and cold wind and nothing else.
But Lynesse had adapted, thankfully, and Alysanne was part of the reason.
While the recent rise in trade and riches certainly helped, it was his cousin who had made friends with Lynesse and helped her fulfill into the position of the new Lady of Bear Island.
Maege, bless her heart, was hard on Lynesse.
But the She-Bear had mellowed when Lynesse took the young Lyanna Mormont as her lady-in-waiting, teaching the girl the southern courtesies that Bear Island had never had occasion to require.
His wife had wanted a feast and a ball, and so Jorah used the winnings from Lannisport to pay for the great hall’s expansion.
Seeing this, Maege had pushed for the walls to be strengthened while there was coin for it, and he agreed.
Lynesse’s marriage also brought a significant dowry, and he used those to tear down the wooden palisade and build a curtain wall made entirely with hewn stone.
The number of guards had expanded, from forty men-at-arms to sixty.
A measly number compared to some of the other Houses in the north, but something Jorah took great pride in.
Ships from Oldtown called regularly now, following the trade routes that Lynesse’s connections to her father’s city had opened.
Jorah’s son, Leyton — named for his grandfather, which had pleased the old Hightower more than he would admit — was eight years old and already showed the broad frame of a Mormont, which brought no small amount of relief to the She-Bear.
His father even said that he had done a small feast in Castle Black to celebrate.
A rather sad and gloomy feast considering, until Jorah sent two bottles of Arbor Red to the Wall from Lynesse’s own personal storage.
It was a good life.
It was a better life than Bear Island had expected to have.
And now Jeor was writing to tell him something stirred beyond the Wall, a whole army of wildlings uniting under the banner of a traitor crow.
As if in answer to the thought, the door opened and Alysanne appeared with Maester Thom, a portly and balding man who has been the Maester of Bear Island since Jorah was a boy.
“My lord,” the Maester greeted.
“A raven just arrived from Frostkeep.” “It’s from Lord Karlon,” Alysanne said, taking the sealed letter from Thom’s hand and placing it on his desk.
His cousin looked so much like Maege it was uncanny.
Dacey, Alysanne’s older sister and the Lady of Frostkeep, was said to be even more so.
He took in the direwolf seal etched on the wax and broke it.
Jorah, I ride for Winterfell.
The King rides north, and I think you know what that means.
Meet me at Deepwood Motte, and if the timing serves, we should arrive together.
The north will want to see that the men who took Pyke still ride together.
Ride hard.
I’ll see you soon.
— K Jorah read it quickly and set it down beside his father’s letter, so the two of them sat side by side on his desk.
He looked at them for a moment.
His father: do not leave Bear Island empty.
His friend: meet me at Deepwood Motte.
He picked up Longclaw from where it leaned against the desk and stood.
The sword had been his father’s before it was his — a Valyrian steel blade with a bear’s-head pommel, passed down through the Mormonts since a time before anyone living could remember who had first carried it.
Jeor had given it to him the day he left for the Wall, pressing it into his hands and closing Jorah’s hand on the hilt.
Jorah was glad, for the blade had carried him through the Greyjoy Rebellion and at the tournament in Lannisport.
“Walk with me,” Jorah said to her cousin as he walked out of his solar and into the keep.
Bear Island’s hall was warm tonight, lit by the long hearth that ran the length of one wall, the smell of woodsmoke and supper still hanging in the air.
The expansion had transformed it — Jorah remembered the old hall, low-ceilinged and perpetually damp, smelling of dogs and wet wool — into something that still smelled of dogs, inevitably, because there was no version of Bear Island that did not smell of dogs, but also of pine resin and tallow candles and that unique warm-bread smell that had come with Lynesse and her insistence on a proper kitchen.
She was at the far end of the hall, seated near the fire with young Lyanna beside her.
At this moment, Lynesse was instructing her in the proper way to stitch.
His wife looked up as he entered, Alysanne walking in to take the spare thread and needle and sitting beside her sister.
Golden-haired and fair of skin, Lynesse was still as beautiful as the day he had first seen her in the stands at Lannisport and when he crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty.
“You have that face,” she said the moment he entered.
“What face?” He asked.
“The one that means Karlon Stark has asked you to do something.” “He is a friend.” Jorah said as he sat in the chair across from her and stretched his legs toward the fire.
Little Leyton appeared from the side door and settled himself on the floor near his father’s boots, with his mother’s coloring and his father’s jaw.
“Karlon rides for Winterfell,” Jorah said.
“He wants me to meet him at Deepwood Motte.” Lynesse considered this for a moment.
Her eyes moved to the window, where the harbor light was still visible through the dark.
“The King rides north,” she said.
It was not a question.
News traveled; Lynesse had never pretended not to pay attention to it.
“Aye.” “And he needs you there with him.” “Something like that.” She was quiet for a moment, her fingers moving through Lyanna’s hair.
“Go then.” Lynesse said, at last.
“Stop pretending as if you haven’t made a decision.” “My father has written.
He wants the garrison kept strong.” “Alysanne and Lady Maege can manage the garrison.” She met his eyes.
“I can handle the household in the meantime.” Alysanne, who had been pretending to study Lyanna’s needlework through this exchange, looked up with the expression of a woman who had been waiting to be consulted.
“I can do it,” she confirmed.
“My father also writes that something stirs beyond the Wall,” Jorah said.
“A man called Mance Rayder is gathering the Wildlings in numbers that haven’t been seen in years.” The fire crackled.
Leyton looked up from the floor, no doubt hearing the word wildlings and decided that conversation was interesting.
“All the more reason to go,” Lynesse said.
“We are in an alliance with Frostkeep, and your friendship with Karlon Stark has brought more benefits to Bear Island than I can count.
And if the wildlings march, Bear Island will be their first stop.
It is not the first time they reached our shores, swimming through the Bay of Ice.
The Night’s Watch will need men, and they will need lords who can provide them, and lords who have the King’s ear are better placed to provide them than lords who stayed home.” She tilted her head slightly.
“Go.
I didn’t marry you for your company when you’re brooding over your father’s letters.” Jorah looked at her for a long moment.
She looked back with a raised eyebrow.
A warm chuckle came out of him despite it.
Never say that any daughter of the Hightower wasn’t fierce.
Lynesse was not his first wife, yet a part of him felt glad that Myanna Glover died in the birthing bed, for he never loved her as he did Lynesse.
“I’ll ride the day after tomorrow,” he said.
“Alysanne—” “I heard,” Alysanne said.
“Go to sleep, Jorah.
I’ll have the garrison rosters on your desk by morning.” He rose, rested his hand briefly on Leyton’s head, and leaned down to kiss Lynesse once before heading for the stairs.
She caught his hand as he turned away.
“Come back to me,” she said, simply.
Seeing that, he never planned to do otherwise.
“Aye,” he said.
“I always do.” …
Check it out if you’re interested, at least chapter 8 (long form, which is around chp 14 in webnovel) should be available by the time this chapter was uploaded.