The cold wind came from the north, threading through the bare branches of the Wolfswood with a low, mournful sound.
The party moved along a forest path.
Hooves crunched over a muddy mix of fallen leaves and thin snow, making a soft, constant rustle.
The sky was grey-white, the clouds pressing low, like an old blanket washed too many times, barely covering the sky, doing nothing for the cold.
Frost clung to the soldiers’ armor.
Every breath became a small white puff that the wind tore apart almost instantly.
Aven rode in the middle of the column with little Bran held in his arms.
Bran’s small body was curled against his chest, warm as a hearthstone.
Bran liked Aven.
That was no secret in Winterfell.
Aven told stories about Karhold.
He told legends from beyond the Wall, tales of the Children of the Forest and the ancient wars with the First Men.
And whenever Lady Catelyn caught Bran climbing the walls again, Aven would interject at precisely the right moment: “Lady Stark, I asked Bran to go up and check whether the rope on the flagpole had come loose.”
Catelyn knew it was a lie.
She could never be bothered to say so, because Aven never actually put Bran in danger, and Bran, in Aven’s presence, was more obedient than he was for anyone else.
“Aven.” Bran tilted his head back, grey eyes fixed directly on him.
There was that trust only children carry, plain and unguarded.
“What are White Walkers?”
Several ears in the party went sharp.
Robb eased his reins and drifted closer.
Theon turned his head.
Even Eddard, riding out front, tilted his face just slightly to the side, enough to show he was listening.
Aven didn’t answer right away.
He glanced down at Bran, then looked ahead at Eddard’s back.
The horse kept its unhurried pace, steady with the rest of the column.
“White Walkers.” His voice was quiet but clear, like a stone dropped into still water, the ripples spreading slow and wide.
“Let me think.”
He paused.
Not because he was thinking of what to say.
He was choosing how to say it, not for Bran to understand, but for everyone present to actually hear it.
“The North has always had a legend.
In an ancient age, when the Long Night fell, the bodies buried in the ground — they rose.”
Bran’s fingers tightened slightly.
“They hate every living thing.
And they carry a kind of magic.
Wherever they pass, every creature that has died becomes one of them.
Eyes turn ice-blue.
Skin goes white.
No heartbeat.
No warmth.
They only know to kill whatever lives.”
Even the hoofbeats seemed to soften, as if the horses had decided to listen too.
“The Children of the Forest and the First Men fought side by side.
They fought for a very long time.
They finally drove them back to the eternal frozen lands and put them to rest.
And our ancestor —”
He looked down at Bran.
“Brandon the Builder raised the Wall to keep those dead things from ever returning.”
The voice stopped.
The forest held only wind and the slow creak of branches.
Bran was quiet for a moment, turning it over.
Then he looked up, his voice carrying clearly through the still air.
“So what that deserter said was true?”
Theon moved.
He spurred forward a few steps and came up alongside them, dropping a hand onto Bran’s head and ruffling the messy brown hair.
Casual.
The kind of clumsy affection an older boy shows when he doesn’t quite know how else to show he cares.
“Of course it’s not true, little Bran.” There was a grin in Theon’s voice.
“The Wall is for keeping out wildlings — stopping them from breaking through and raiding our people.
White Walkers?
That’s just Old Nan telling stories to get children to sleep.”
From ahead, Eddard’s voice came.
Not raised, but the whole party heard it.
“Aven.
Bran.”
Both of them looked toward the grey-cloaked back at the front of the column.
“One day you’ll both be Robb’s bannermen.
Both his to rely on.” Eddard’s tone was level, stating a plain fact.
“These stories are worth hearing.
But,”
He turned his head slightly.
His grey eyes were half-hidden in the shadow of his hood, but that weight, steady and solid as bedrock, carried clearly across the distance between them.
“What you see is what you can trust.
Rumor is not.”
Aven dipped his head.
“Yes, my lord.”
He left it there.
Because he knew Eddard Stark didn’t believe.
Not out of stubbornness, that was simply his nature.
He was a man who needed to see a thing before he could accept it.
No ravens had come from the Wall.
The Lord Commander had sent no letters.
The wildlings north of the Wall had shown no strange movement.
There was only one deserter, a pair of bloodshot eyes, and one sentence: I saw White Walkers.
That wasn’t enough.
Not nearly enough.
Aven rode on with Bran in his arms.
Bran didn’t press further, but he leaned in closer, like a small animal that could feel a storm coming, instinctively pressing toward whatever was warmest.
Aven’s thoughts drifted.
The White Walkers were real.
Before long, the wildlings beyond the Wall would die one by one and then stand back up, dead men with blue eyes.
The Long Night would return.
The White Walkers would march south.
And Westeros’s lords would still be clawing at each other over the Iron Throne, scheming, brawling, paying attention to everything except what was coming.
But what good was worrying about any of that now?
The Mother of Dragons was still across the Narrow Sea.
That girl whose brother was about to sell her off like goods was probably still somewhere in Pentos.
Her three dragons hadn’t hatched yet, those 3 petrified eggs were sitting cold and still somewhere, no different from any other stones.
Speaking of dragons.
Aven ran the numbers quietly in his head.
The Karstarks were a branch of House Stark.
The same family, once, a long time ago.
And apart from Jon, the Starks didn’t seem to have any connection to dragon blood.
But the Karstark line had a small, forgotten history of its own.
Several hundred years back, a lord of Karhold had served the royal court in the south.
While there, he married a bastard daughter born to a cadet branch of House Targaryen.
The woman had no name in the official record.
No title.
The royal histories never mentioned her.
She appeared in only a few sparse lines in the Karstark family records, and even her name had faded past recognition.
Centuries of mixing.
Generation after generation of dilution.
Whatever dragon blood had passed down the line was thinner than vapor now, something the family itself had nearly forgotten existed.
But forgotten or not, blood was blood.
Once the Mother of Dragons hatched her dragons and magic woke back up in this world…
was there any chance he could get his hands on a dragon egg to try?
Aven’s fingers shifted slightly.
He turned the image over in his mind: a third son of House Karstark, on dragonback, cutting across the sky above Winterfell.
That wasn’t entirely impossible.
It could go in the plan.
Behind survive and don’t let the Starks die out, but it could go in.
➤ Next: Shooting the Stag