The morning came thin and cold, with a hint in it that summer was spending the last of itself.
Dust lifted off the road.
Dozens of riders first, then two ranks of foot in clean mail.
The direwolf ran above them, grey on white.
The lord at the head had brown hair long enough for the wind to take.
White had begun in his beard.
He was five-and-thirty and looked older.
The black armor did the rest.
It sat on him like a second, colder name.
Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North.
A wagon rolled behind him.
In the wooden cage a condemned man slumped, hair in his face, as if the road had already finished him.
The winter town poured after the column to see it done.
A thousand at the least, and loud.
Stark sons had come.
Jon Snow, the bastard.
Theon Greyjoy, the ward.
Domeric sat a tall horse among them and could not, for a moment, find the sense in it.
The Warden of the North had not yet washed the road off his boots, and he was already going to take a head.
Some men kept stranger habits than others.
They stopped on a strip of ground that had been beaten flat.
Axes opened the cage.
The deserter was dragged to the edge of the yard and put on his knees.
Lord Eddard came down from the saddle and climbed the little rise with a two-handed greatsword in his fist.
Ice.
The Stark blade.
Wider than a palm.
Tall as a man when it stood.
Valyrian steel, and the spells that went into that forging still lived in the metal.
It was the color of old smoke.
Nothing in the world took a keener edge.
He stripped his gloves and gave them to the captain of his guard.
The sword rose in both hands.
“In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, I, Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, sentence you to die.” Ice came down.
The head left the man.
Blood found the snow and spread there, bright and ruinous.
The crowd liked it.
Domeric’s mouth tightened.
Robb rode in close.
“He ran from the Watch.
Father says there’s no more dangerous animal.
They know the Wall only takes them back as corpses, so they spend what’s left on whatever cruelty comes to hand.” “I see.” Domeric nodded as if the lesson had been for him.
Off Robb’s cloak, between one breath and the next, he took half a hair.
It was Lord Eddard’s.
The embrace on the road had left it on the boy’s shoulder.
Hair was skin enough for the Unearthing.
The other options—a flake from the scalp, a scrap from a heel—did not bear thinking about in a yard full of witnesses.
[Unearthing] Eddard Stark Lord of Winterfell.
Warden of the North.
Robert Baratheon’s brother in all but blood.
Title: Wolf Lord Strength: 60 Agility: 65 Spirit: 40 Combat index: 165 Note: None.
The target feels no fear.
His secrets stay shut.
A hundred and sixty-five did not surprise him.
This was the man the stories put in the same dust as Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
The last time Domeric had taken the count, Ice’s master had stood at one hundred and seventy.
Age was already collecting its tax.
Lord Eddard sent for him before the morning was old.
The godswood had him.
At its heart a weirwood older than any oath in the yard leaned over a pool so black and cold the North called the tree the heart tree and did not argue with the name.
A long, sorrowing face was cut in the trunk.
The children of the forest had put those faces there in the Dawn Age, before the First Men ever came across the Narrow Sea.
Ned sat a mossed stone with Ice across his knees and washed the sword in water that looked like night that had forgotten to end.
“My lord.” Domeric’s hand went to his breast.
He bent.
“Domeric of House Bolton.” “Domeric.” The voice came from a long way off, even at this distance.
“How long has it been?
Half a year?” “Near nine months.” “Nine, then.
You watched the sentence.” “I did.
The stroke was clean.” “And why do you think I take the head myself?” “A lord’s justice belongs to the lord.
In his own land no one else should name a man dead.” “That’s part of it.” Ned did not look up from the steel.
“We keep First Men in the blood up here.
The old way comes with that.
The man who condemns does the cutting.
You look him in the face.
You hear whatever he has left.
If you cannot stand that much, the death may not be owed.
A ruler who stays in the hall and buys a headsman’s arm forgets what a life weighs.
One day the Dreadfort will be yours.
You will hold the law whether you like the feel of it or not.
When that day comes, do not kill because you enjoy the sound.
Do not hide from the work either.” “I hear you, my lord.” “Jeor Mormont wrote me.” The change in the air was small and sharp.
“Half a year past you took men beyond the Wall and stood with the Watch against the wildlings.
Is that true?” North of the Wall was a country most northerners would not buy at any price.
Wildling ground.
The rest of Westeros had spent a few thousand years trying to forget it.
In the stories they told in warm halls the free folk were slavers and fire-starters, hand in glove with giants and ghouls, stealers of girls in the dark, drinkers of blood from polished horn.
Their women, the same stories said, had lain with the Others in the Long Night and brought back children that were not cleanly either thing.
Domeric smiled the way a man smiles when he is choosing a sentence.
He was not going to explain the labor he had pulled out of those hills.
He did not know what game the old bear was playing, writing Winterfell after a bargain that had already paid both sides.
The Lord Commander would hear about that.
“The Dreadfort sits nearer Castle Black than most,” he said.
“The Wall is every northern lord’s problem.” Ned’s face eased.
“I’m glad you see it.
Mormont says the Watch is under a thousand.
Deserters, yes.
The rangings have been worse.” “That poor?” When Domeric had last been in the haunted forest the Watch had still looked like a wall to a man in rags.
The wildlings he had seen then could not have stormed a well-run pig yard.
“It will not improve.” Ned lifted Ice a fraction.
“If it runs on as it is, we may have to take the North up there and finish it in the open.” “If that day comes, I will ride.” “There is a nearer matter.” The look he gave Domeric lasted long enough to count.
“What happened between you and the Karstarks?” So the ride and the sword-washing and the Wall had been the road.
Here was the door.
Domeric put a parchment on the stone between them.
A contract.
Taken off Benita.
House Karstark’s name on a hired death.
It was also the price of her new collar.
A killer who sold her employer would not be welcome in the House of Black and White again.