Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
Deep in the heart of the Riverlands, a girl travelled alone. She moved quietly, passing through old wood and blackened farms, ivy-covered ruins and abandoned mills, a ghost enveloped in a brown roughspun cloak. Everything around her was coated in a fresh layer of snow, white powder dusting the bare branches of trees and the thatched roofs of homes. Here and there human skeletons could be glimpsed poking out from the mud, their skulls cracked or rib cages splayed open in silent prayer to the one true god.
Black, dried blood sat caked under her fingernails, the only evidence left of the deed she had committed the night before. Already Frey bannermen would be spreading out from the Twins in search of the culprit, she was certain, yet the girl was unafraid. Who would think a sixteen-year-old capable of murdering Lord Walder Frey and his two most prominent sons?
Besides, if she did stumble upon a suspicious soldier, the girl could simply change faces once again. It had been easy enough to masquerade as a serving wench the previous evening, donning the mask of a pretty lowborn maid and switching into a dress stolen along the way. No one had questioned her authenticity, allowing her to slip into the castle unobstructed. Invisible. Floating through the dining hall like a spirit.
Considerably more difficult had been the task of carving Black Walder and Lothar, but she had managed. Old Walder Frey hadn't suspected foul play in the slightest - not until she gestured to the pie and he lifted the crust to reveal a finger. The rest had been quick, a blur, grabbing the elderly man by the hair and pulling his head back, bringing the knife to his throat, cutting it open in a dark red smile. Watching the life bleed out from his pale, wrinkly neck until his body went slack.
Now the girl sat atop a chestnut gelding taken from a nearby village, heading south along the Green Fork. She avoided the kingsroad, with its plethora of bandits and rapists and soldiers, instead using the river as her guide. Its water swirled and churned, a blue, lazy serpent winding through valleys and forests. She had heard rumours that her mother’s corpse had been thrown into this branch, treated as nothing more than a sack of rotten potatoes after her entire family was murdered before her eyes. The thought of Lady Catelyn’s body disintegrating at the bottom of the waterway hardened the girl’s resolve.
The Freys and the Lannisters would pay.
Eventually her horse tired, and the girl stopped to let it feed on the grass dying beneath the frost. As it ate, she dismounted and removed Needle from its sheath around her waist, the thin sword a familiar weight in her hand. Closing her eyes, she began to practice in the darkness, swinging at non-existent enemies. Swish, swish, swish went the blade, slicing through the air in an elegant dance. She could see them in her mind’s eye, falling one by one, powerless to stop her.
Ser Gregor, Beric Dondarrion, Thoros of Myr, Ser Ilyn, Queen Cersei.
Valar morghulis.
“Arya Stark.”
The girl’s eyelids flew open, causing light to flood her vision. For a moment she was disoriented, until the world began to focus and she could see the figures in front of her. Needle was a sharp threat between them.
“Beric Dondarrion,” replied Arya.
The middle-aged man wore an eyepatch over his left socket and rope marks around his neck, visual reminders that he had been killed over half a dozen times and continued to be brought back to life. His savior, a drunken priest called Thoros of Myr, stood next to him.
“Thought we'd never meet again,” said Thoros, grey bearded and thinner than she remembered. “Last time we saw you, you were a skinny little thing. This one tells us he took you captive, but a woman attacked him and you ran away.”
Only then did Arya notice Sandor Clegane, standing a distance behind the other two men, his scarred face unreadable.
“You were supposed to die,” said Arya, eyes locked on his.
“Didn't really feel like it,” came the Hound’s gruff response.
After a moment of prolonged silence, Thoros of Myr cleared his throat. “While this is truly a touching reunion, I'm afraid I must interrupt. What exactly are you doing in the Riverlands alone, Lady Stark?”
“I’m not Lady Stark. That was my mother,” snapped Arya. “I'm here to avenge my family.”
“Ah, very well. And how's that going for you?”
“I killed two of Walder Frey’s sons and served them to him for supper before slashing his neck from ear to ear.”
Thoros seemed right to laugh at her words, but Beric’s expression remained serious, his good eye searching hers.
“We heard rumours of his demise, but we weren't sure if they were telling the truth of it.” Beric nodded in her direction. “Apparently so.”
“You can't possibly believe this girl murdered Walder Frey,” scoffed the Hound.
“I do. I can see it in her face,” said Beric. “Where are you going now, my lady?”
Arya stared at him for a moment, unsure, her mind weighing every possible option. She could jump on her horse and flee now, risking eventual capture, or she could stab one of them through the belly and start a fight. However, she wasn't sure she could win, not with so many armed men surrounding her. Mayhaps she could make it to the next town and change faces, and no one would know…
“I'm going to King’s Landing to kill Cersei Lannister,” Arya heard herself say. She hadn't intended to tell them her objective, as she had no idea who they may have sworn allegiance to after so many years, yet there it was, hanging in the air between them.
After a brief pause, Beric began to chuckle through the quiet. “Forgive me for laughing, little wolf, but that is highly unlikely to work out in your favor. Even if you made it past the guards, Cersei’s birds would find you. She’d never let you leave the capital alive.”
Arya grinned inwardly, because Arya would not be the one to enter the capital in the first place. She would choose a peasant’s face and go through the Fishmarket to the River Gate, then travel the city as a beggar until she reached the Red Keep. She hadn't completely worked out what she would do from there, but figured she had enough time between the Twins and King’s Landing to devise the rest of the plan.
“I'll take my chances,” said Arya, keeping Needle pointed at Beric. Now it was her turn to appraise each man, her gaze sweeping over the lot of them, this Brotherhood Without Banners whose numbers had shrunk greatly since her time as their prisoner long ago, when she was only a child. Before Thoros and Beric sold her friend Gendry to the Red Woman, and Arya escaped, running right into the arms of the Hound. “What are you doing up here?”
Thoros of Myr smiled down at her. “Why, we're traveling north to fight the cold. It seems all those stories about White Walkers and wights weren't just fairytales after all.”
“How do you know?”
“The Lord of Light spoke to me in His flames,” said the red priest.
“There is only one god, and His name is Death.”
“Death is coming for us all, little wolf,” interjected Beric, “and it rides in on winds from beyond the Wall. We must work together now, enemies and friends alike, if we are to survive the Winter.”
“I don't care. The Lannisters cut off my father's head, and shot my brother full of arrows, and slit my mother's throat. They helped the Freys take Riverrun and kill my uncle.” Arya lowered her sword unconsciously. “It's not survival I want. It's revenge.”
She saw something pass over the Hound’s face then, something resembling pity, and she raised Needle again. “I don't need your sympathy,” she stated. “I need you to die.”
“And why would you need that?” asked Thoros.
“You owe me. You gave Gendry to that witch.” She looked to Beric, her anger rising. “He was innocent, and you sent him off to die for a bag of gold!”
“People have been killed for less,” said Thoros. “That's the cost of war, unfortunately.”
“It didn't cost you anything. He meant nothing to you. He was my friend.” The fingers of her right hand played with the hilt of the dagger at her hip. “There’s nothing to stop me from gutting each of you in your sleep.”
“I’d listen to the girl,” said the Hound, gesturing to her with his axe. “I know what losing a friend can do to a person, and it's not pretty. At least for their foes.”
At his words, Arya realized that the look on Clegane’s face had not been sympathy, but empathy. He understood the festering, hot, bitter longing that accompanied loss, as well as the burning desire for vengeance. She felt the corners of her lips turn up ever so slightly...
...and then the hairs on the back of her neck began to rise, the sensation prickling across her skin in waves. Something was in the air, charged as a crack of lightning, pushing and pulling her body all at once.
It appeared that the Brotherhood had sensed it too. They looked in all directions, weapons raised, waiting with bated breath.
For a moment nothing happened, and then all at once, like ghosts awakening from slumber, a hundred wolves emerged from the mist surrounding them. Their leader was a great she-wolf, large as a pony, with dappled grey-brown fur and glowing amber eyes.
It was a dream come to life. Arya recalled experiencing a similar scene in her sleep, and half-forgotten memories began to flash in her mind; running through the forest under a full moon, the glisten of snarling fangs, the heat of a fresh kill. Yet in those visions, she was the wolf at the head of the pack, no longer human. Transformed.
Nymeria moved closer to her, no hint of trepidation in her gait despite the numerous crossbows pointed at her.
She fears no man.
Arya stood still, heart beating wildly in her chest. She knew she shouldn't be afraid, but her body betrayed her, causing a sheen of cold sweat to break out on her hands. This animal was nothing like the young direwolf she had abandoned in the woods so many years ago, when Cersei had promised to have her head.
Nymeria was less than a yard away now, and Arya could feel the warmth of her breath against her cheeks. She forced herself to swallow her anxiety and extended a trembling hand. The she-wolf gave a slight growl, then sniffed her fingertips, the touch light as butterfly wings. In that instant, the world seemed to warp, shifting under Arya’s feet until she fell to her knees. Distantly, she heard the gasps of the men around her, but they were faint, far away, nothing but wind. All she could sense was the taste of deer on her tongue, the dirt clumped between the pads of her paws, the sounds of the forest that seemed crisper than ever.
When she opened her eyes once more, everything was a varying shade of grey, and she could see her own body slumped on the ground.
“She's a warg!” shouted a red-haired northman. He aimed his crossbow at her still body, then at Nymeria, then back again. “We should kill the beast!”
Arya felt Nymeria’s lips pull back into a snarl, and panic began to seize her. How do I get out? Two heartbeats thumped in her ears, one pounding so fast and loud that every other noise was muffled. How do I get out?
“We’ll do no such thing,” said Beric, voice straining to remain calm. “Lay down your weapons, all of you.”
The men did as they were bid, eyes huge, and Arya felt sweet satisfaction swell in her chest. They are afraid of me. Every one of them looked as if they were about to piss their smallclothes, even the Hound, and the vulnerability that had plagued her since her father’s beheading began to recede. Killing Walder Frey had been a start, but she had still feared men like this, the Sandor Cleganes of the world, stronger and larger than she would ever be, no matter how many times she changed faces.
Now she only felt power.
Suddenly her vision fragmented, and Arya felt herself slipping back into her human body, shedding Nymeria’s skin. The world seemed disjointed somehow, and for a time all she could do was sit on her knees, staring at Nymeria’s retreating form, at her own hands, trying to make sense of what had just occurred.
“You have a role to play in the war to come, Arya Stark,” said Thoros finally, his words shaking with awe. “The Lord of Light has chosen you for greatness.”
“You’ve got to stop crediting your bloody red god with everything,” complained the Hound.
“Whatever the case, you have been blessed with an incredible gift,” said Beric. “You should accompany us north.”
“No,” said Arya, fingers finding Needle again. “I have to kill Cersei Lannister.”
She expected Beric to reiterate that grumpkins and snarks beyond the Wall were the true enemy, not the Lannisters, but he didn't get the chance. “Someone’s coming,” Arya said, and the men turned southward. Shadows were moving towards them through the fog, and this time they were human.
“Looks like you won't have to go all that way to find a Lannister,” said the Hound. “One’s walking right into your lap.”
A man and woman were riding along the riverbank, just becoming visible in the pale morning light. The woman was exceedingly tall, clad in fine armor and wearing a sword about her hip. A sword with a lion pommel.
Brienne of Tarth.