The story he remembered was less than half a year from its first cut.
When it opened, the North would not be a place a man could stand aside from.
Westeros would not.
There was no profit left in pretending he was only a quiet boy with a book and a decent seat on a horse.
He thought of the red comet.
Less than a year, if he had the count right.
When the stars bled, the old powers would wake with them.
Dragons would find the sky again.
Magic would stop being a grandmother’s story.
In front of the old gods, the Seven, the Lord of Light, the children of the forest, and the Others beyond the Wall, a clean cut was a small thing.
“When do I get a sword-arm like yours?” Robb said, as if the thought had been sitting on him since the yard.
“Soon enough.
When you’re my age.” “You’re two years older than I am.” “I am.” You will be stronger, Domeric thought.
It may not even take the two years.
The bout had told him what he needed.
Robb had put the work in.
The foundation was honest.
What he lacked was the part no master-at-arms could give him: blood and fire, the kind of fear that opens a body all the way.
The War of the Five Kings would see to that.
By the end of those fields Robb Stark might well be the better man.
“Arya’s little blade,” Robb said.
“Father says the steel in it is rare work.
Not Valyrian, but close enough to matter.
I need a weapon that fits my hand.” “Hammer-steel,” Domeric said.
It was a smith’s patience, not a spell.
Heat.
Hammer.
Heat again.
Beat the grit out of the bloom until the metal ran even and tight and the grain went fine.
The result took an edge and kept it.
The work was slow.
Lonehill had iron enough.
It did not have hours enough, not if a man wanted a dozen such blades before winter.
“You’re not about to ask me for one as a gift,” Domeric said.
“I don’t take gifts I haven’t paid for.” Robb sent a servant running.
The horse they brought back was a black heavy enough to look like a joke told at an ordinary courser’s expense.
It struck a hoof, dropped its head, and gave a sound that did not belong in a stable.
A horse’s throat.
A beast’s temper.
“Northern plains stock,” Robb said, grinning with the pride of a boy who knows he is holding a good card.
“Rare.
They live long and come bigger than they should.
When they’re mean, wolves think twice.
Tigers too, if the stories are true.
Father meant her for my fifteenth nameday.
I want a hammer-steel weapon for her.” “Done,” Domeric said.
He did not think he had the poor end of it.
“When does Lord Eddard come back?” “He went after the men himself.
Three days, if the road behaves.” “After what men?” Winterfell’s lands held seven or eight hundred thousand souls.
If the lord of them rode down every thief himself, he would never sit his own hall.
“Night’s Watch,” Robb said.
“Deserters.
They ran from the Wall and left their vows in the snow.” That, at least, was Eddard Stark as the man was.
Stiff.
Honorable past the point of comfort.
Not blind.
He knew the North’s true enemy lived on the far side of the Wall, and he kept the Watch’s law the way other lords kept their tax rolls.
“Then I’ll wait,” Domeric said.
“I want the judgment called while I can still spare the days.
Lonehill does not run itself.” “Good.
Then you can give me the yard until he rides in.
A proper opponent is rarer than a proper sword.” Robb’s voice dropped, and he flicked a look that wanted to be conspiratorial.
“The Karstark sitting Karhold is in the castle, you know.
You could pay him a visit.” “Torrhen.” Domeric had seen the boy.
Rickard’s youngest.
With the father and the elder sons in Lonehill’s mines, Torrhen wore Karhold like a cloak cut for a larger man.
“That’s the one.
You missed the last fortnight.
It was a poor joke, even for this place.” Robb’s mouth twisted.
“He came by oxcart with two servants and a long stretch of North under him.
Someone took his purse on the road, or that’s the story.
He begged the last of the way.
The gate didn’t believe a lord could look like that.
They’ve been calling him the Beggar Lord of Karhold behind their hands.” “So he’s spent the last dignity the name had.” It sounded like misery.
It sounded like a bill Domeric had written.
He could also remember who had started the writing.
Rickard Karstark had brought steel into the Lonely Hills.
The rest had followed from that choice.
“I’ll see him at the judgment,” Domeric said.
There was no use in going downstairs to laugh at a boy who had already been laughed at.
A lord with his house in pieces would reach for any knife that still had a point.
“Father will stand with you.
I mean it.” Robb put a hand on his shoulder and gave him the look boys gave one another when they thought a look could bind a lord.
The first days of the seventh month came down hot.
The air in the North had a dry bite to it.
The long summer was in its eighth year.
Winter had been a word so long that the fear in it had worn smooth.
Domeric led the black horse back from the yard toward the rooms Winterfell had given him.
“Ser Domeric!” A girl’s voice, behind him.
Arya.
Lord Eddard’s younger daughter.
“My lady Arya.” “Did you give Sansa a white gem?” A white gem.
It took him a moment.
The stone was porcelain.
He had burned a few pots at Lonehill between the iron runs, more as a throw of the dice than as a trade.
The clay and the fire in this country had not forgiven him.
What came out of the kiln was cracked and wrong.
He had ground the best of the failures smooth and called them stones.
In Westeros a clean white shard like that could pass for a kind of white gold, if the light was kind and the girl was willing.
“I did,” he said.
“And it was your mother’s.
And you told her she was the most beautiful girl you’d met.” The words came fast, stacked on each other.
“I did.” Courtesy was courtesy.
He did not see the use in treating it like a vow.
“I see.” Arya stopped.
She turned with her lip held in her teeth.
The tears were already on her face.
She made a bow that had more pride in it than her height.
“Ser Domeric.
Please excuse me.” Then she was running, and the yard had her.
Domeric stood with the black horse and turned the conversation over.
He could find no broken bone in it.
He said that sort of thing to pretty girls because pretty girls were where such words belonged.
Unless the Starks kept a law he had not learned.