Ahead, Eddard suddenly stopped.
No warning at all.
He dismounted, stood in place, shoulders locked tight, his right hand settling without thought onto the hilt of his sword.
The entire column froze as if an invisible hand had pressed it still.
Everyone dismounted.
No one spoke, no one asked why, Northern soldiers didn’t need orders.
They only needed to watch their lord’s hand.
Aven felt it before he understood it.
Something was wrong with the air.
Not the temperature, the Wolfswood was already cold as an ice cellar.
This was something older than that, something primal, buried in every breath.
That nameless pressure you can’t put words to.
Like walking into an empty room and knowing, with complete certainty, that something had been there just before you.
Aven peered out from behind Eddard’s back.
In the forest clearing, a direwolf was locked in a standoff with a mountain lion.
The direwolf was larger than Aven had imagined.
Its shoulder height nearly reached an adult man’s waist.
Its gray fur was thick as a suit of armor, the hackles along its spine fully raised, tail rigid, fangs bared.
A continuous low growl rolled from its throat without stopping.
Its forepaws raked at the mud and snow, body pressed low, like a bow drawn all the way back.
Ten paces away, the mountain lion crouched and waited.
The tip of its tail twitched in quick, sharp jerks.
Its golden eyes held nothing but killing intent.
The muscles of its hind legs were pulled taut as steel cable, ready to launch at any second.
Neither side had any intention of backing down.
“How is there a lion in the North?” Robb’s voice came from behind Aven, thick with confusion.
Aven didn’t answer.
His mind was already moving fast, turning the scene over, because something here was wrong.
He remembered now.
In the original story, Eddard’s party encountered a direwolf on the road back to Winterfell after executing the deserter.
But not a living one.
A dead direwolf, an antler driven through its throat, a litter of pups lying beside its body.
So why was this one alive?
And the mountain lion hadn’t left.
Two apex predators, holding ground against each other, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
He was still working through it when a stag burst from the forest.
It crashed out of the underbrush like an arrow off a bowstring, head low, antlers leveled forward, long, savage antlers, the tines worn white at the forks, like two daggers bolted to its skull.
Its target wasn’t the mountain lion.
It wasn’t even the direwolf.
It was charging at the direwolf’s back.
In that instant, Aven saw the whole picture.
The direwolf didn’t dodge.
It didn’t even shift sideways.
It only pressed itself lower, all four legs driving into the mud, its entire body planted across the stag’s charging line.
It was protecting something.
Whatever was behind it mattered more to it than its own life.
Aven’s body moved before his mind caught up. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Since crossing over, he had always felt something slightly off about this body, not that he couldn’t use it, but that it was too good.
Reaction speed, explosive power, hand-eye coordination: all of it far beyond anything he’d had in his previous life.
When sparring with Robb he’d always held himself back, careful never to go full force, not wanting to frighten anyone.
He didn’t hold back now.
He let go of Bran’s hand, stepped sideways in one stride to the flank of a nearby soldier’s horse.
A bow hung from the saddle, recurved limbs reinforced with horn strips, string twisted from hemp rope.
The draw weight wasn’t impressive, but it would do.
His fingers hooked the bowstring, and his other hand reached to a branch overhead.
CRACK.
He snapped off a length of it.
A birch branch, frozen brittle.
About half a meter long, thumb-thick, straight as if it had been grown for exactly this purpose.
When Aven nocked it to the string, he didn’t even have time to strip the side branches, a few small offshoots still jutted out from the shaft, like fletching.
He drew.
The muscles of his right arm went tight.
The bow bent into a clean, taut arc.
The string touched the corner of his mouth.
His gaze tracked over the bow’s upper limb and locked onto the charging stag.
The stag was running hard.
Hooves churning, muscles bunching and rolling beneath its hide, antlers catching the gray-white sky like two unsheathed swords.
Every eye in the column was on the stag.
No one had noticed that Aven already had the bow drawn.
Maybe the Old Gods were real.
Maybe it was just fate.
That snapped birch branch, no arrowhead, no fletching, bark still on, lay against the string without moving.
THWIP!
The birch branch flew.
Not as fast as an arrow, of course not, it was a twig.
But it flew straight and steady, with a kind of composure something hastily torn from a tree had no right to have.
It crossed the ten paces, threaded the narrow gap between antler fork and skull,
And hit the stag square between the eyes.
The stag didn’t even finish its cry.
Its forelegs locked mid-stride.
The body kept surging forward on momentum, but the head was already snapping back.
It flipped half over and crashed sideways into the ground, limbs twitching twice, hooves gouging into the mud.
Then it went still.
The branch had driven through the forehead and out the back of the skull.
Its tip was painted with red and white.
Fine wisps of heat curled off it in the cold air.
The mountain lion let out a short, startled hiss.
It turned and disappeared into the underbrush.
The branches crashed and shook behind it, then settled.
The whole forest went quiet.
Everyone was looking at Aven.
He was still holding the archer’s pose, bow in his left hand, right fingers still resting at the corner of his mouth, eyes fixed on the dead stag.
Then slowly he lowered the bow.
The breath turned to white mist in the cold air and drifted apart.
His heart was hammering.
A deep, drumbeat thud against his ribs, spreading outward in a weak, unsteady tremor.
The adrenaline was draining away.
Emptiness crawled up through his bones, soaking into whatever strength he had left.
“Aven.”
Eddard’s voice came from ahead.
He turned.
Gray eyes looked at Aven, surprise in them, and something warmer than surprise.
Then he smiled.
“Good.
Good.
Good.”
Three goods.
Eddard Stark didn’t often say three goods.
Robb was the first one over.
His face was lit up, eyes burning bright as a hearth fire in deep winter.
He clapped Aven on the shoulder so hard that Aven stumbled half a step forward.
“Aven!
You’re gods-damned unbelievable!”
His voice cracked through the trees and sent a cluster of crows scattering from the branches above.
He circled Aven once, looked at the bow in his hand, then looked out at the dead stag, his expression caught somewhere between worship and pure disbelief.
“You actually hit that?
It was running full speed!
And what did you even use for an arrow — a twig?!”
“Shh.” Aven pressed one finger to his lips, though the corner of his mouth was already losing the fight.
“Low-key.
Keep it low-key.”
“Low-key my ass!” Robb hit him again.
“That’s not what you said when Ser Rodrik was making me practice archery every morning!
You said, ‘Robb, the sword is an extension of the arm, the bow is an extension of the eye’ — and then you go and shoot a charging stag with a twig!
How am I supposed to look that old knight in the face?”
Jon came over quietly.
No shoulder-slap, but there was a faint curve at the corner of his mouth, small enough to miss if you weren’t looking for it.
He reached down and pulled the bloodstained twig from the stag’s head, turned it over in his hands, then held it out to Aven.
“Keep it,” Jon said.
“If you’re going to tell people you dropped a charging stag, you’ll want proof.”
“Proof?” Theon shouldered his way through from the back, wearing that grin of his, the one that always sat somewhere between teasing and actually meaning it.
“It was stuck in the stag’s head.
Whoever picks it up could call it proof.
What if the stableboy finds it tomorrow — does that mean he shot the stag?”
“Then have a go.” Aven held the bow out to him.
“There’s still a mountain lion somewhere up ahead.
Go shoot one.”
Theon glanced in the direction the mountain lion had disappeared, pulled his neck in slightly, and said nothing.
Robb and Jon both laughed at the same time.
➤ Next: Cubs — Heartbreak