But perhaps his grandchildren will think,
Like eaglets longing in their nest:
"Where are those strong arms now,
These burning souls — where?"
(c) Nikolai Gumilev
Even in the Enchanted Forest, it is not easy to find a char tree on demand, but John was not particularly eager to take Iggrit's advice.
"I already dream about charwood almost every night, and the face on it makes faces at me," John grumbled, coming to his senses and heavily throwing himself into the saddle. "And I also dream about some insolent crow that threatens to knock out my tambourine, that is, to peck me in the forehead."
"That's interesting information," said Qoren. "The old rangers still remember a lord commander who promised to knock out the tambourine of many. And he did.
Meanwhile, Ygritte was watching the others. For perhaps the first time, she was genuinely interested not only in Jon, who was the only one she wanted, and Qhoren, who was impossible to avoid, but also in the rest of her companions. First of all, she was intrigued by the fact that nothing had changed among the members of the group after the incident with the eagle. No one but her was afraid of Jon, the tall Lionel was still protective of Jon's sisters, who might harbour the same terrifying gift, and Qhoren remained the commander and seemed to consider everyone except Ygritte as his children. One could attribute this to the fact that no one but her knew all the possibilities open to sorcerers, and that Queren had simply guessed right with his song about the sorcerer's doll, but what if the others had some kind of protection that allowed them not to fear the power awakening in Jon, as Ygritte feared it?
First of all, Ygritte noticed that although the sorcerers beyond the Wall were loners and did not like each other, the young werewolves in her group felt neither jealousy nor rivalry towards each other. When Arya approached Jon, who was sitting by his tent that evening, Ygritte listened through the thick fabric wall separating them, but Arya didn't seem interested in how Jon had dealt with the eagle.
"Tired?" Arya asked, sitting down on a fallen tree next to Jon. "If you want, I can try to watch the chase for you."
"Does your arm still hurt?" Jon asked, a little concerned. He could still feel Ghost through the general pain from the wound Ghost had received, but Nymeria's minor wound should have healed in the last few days.
"No," Arya smiled. "I just feel Nymeria when she feels the same as me. I think I can see through her eyes even when I'm not dreaming, if I try hard enough."
"What is she feeling now?" Jon asked.
"She's eaten, probably better than we have," Arya replied, and even licked her lips as if she had found a northern deer hunted down by three wolves for a good dinner, raw and all. "And she's happy that the three of us are together again. Take my hand, I'm a little scared."
Arya and Jon were silent for a long time, long enough for Ygritte to think about how she probably had many stepbrothers like Jon was to Arya, but Ygritte herself did not remember her own brother very well. he had gone somewhere, either on a raid or simply to a foreign tribe, and since then Ygritte had not heard from him, nor had she been interested. Now Ygritte could easily imagine Jon sitting on a log next to the tent, holding Arya's hand while she was in a witch's trance, looking at the world through the eyes of a wolf — almost certainly for the first time in her life, not in a dream, but consciously. And for some reason, this witchcraft seemed not scary, but sweet.
"They're half a day's journey away," Arya said. "That's closer than thirty miles."
"And closer than twenty," Jon agreed. "If Cuoren is asleep, we'll have to wake him."
Quoren assumed that their pursuers might want to catch them off guard by crossing at night and attacking in the morning, so he roused his men in the middle of the night, and he was right: Arya saw through Nymeria's eyes that the Wildlings had not stopped for the night. Before waking up, Jon had a dream in which he met Benjen, who managed to say a few words, starting with the most important.
"The eagle was their eyes," Benjen said. "The wolves must become your weapons."
By dawn, Jon had time to think over Uncle Benjen's suggestion and, during a rest, approached Arya to tell her about his plan to cause a diversion in the camp of their pursuers: the direwolves, under the control of their masters, were to scatter the horses throughout the forest and, if possible, kill a few.
"Can Sansa help us?" Jon asked, and at first he didn't see anything strange in asking Arya about Sansa. He hadn't gotten along well with Sansa as a child, and even now, it helped him that he had stopped taking offence at her treating him not like a sister, but like a distant, albeit well-known, relative.
"Yes," replied Arya, sleepy and cold. "If she wants to. I'll talk to her."
And then Jon realised what was strange about his question: for the last few years, he and Arya had kept secrets from Sansa, and now he was asking Arya about her sister with the certainty that she knew the answer, and his belated surprise at the thought that the sisters talked to each other was even stronger than Lionel's. Although he could have guessed, John reproached himself: after leaving the capital, Arya had been alone with Lionel and Sansa for weeks, and now the three of them were always together; Arya hadn't been with Lionel all that time — of course she had been with her sister.
And Queren, adjusting his pack on his horse and making faces at the eagle wrapped in a blanket, only glanced a few times at John and Arya and at the puzzled expression on John's face when Arya went back to Leo and her sister, and thought once again that John might make a lord commander, but as a scout he would be useless, and he should be sent somewhere to attack or storm somewhere. After all, everything was there for the taking, not quite like a black cloak on white snow, but if you looked closely, you could see that Arya was clearly not a fifth wheel with Lionel and Sansa. They both needed her, and she seemed to be pushing them away, but she couldn't and didn't want to leave. She just loves them so much, secretly and as if she doesn't believe in herself.
The wolves' attack on the pursuers' camp was supposed to begin after dark, but luckily, the Wildlings, who had not slept all night, fell asleep before sunset. Jon, without even tuning in to Ghost, felt that they shared the same desire, and both were eager to fight, shed blood and sow fear. Arya also found Nymeria and was ready to attack, but Sansa still had doubts.
"I love Lady," Sansa said a little unhappily; it was still difficult for her to talk to Jon about what was in her heart the way she now talked to her sister. "I don't want to force her. At least, not like this."
"It's not the sword that kills, it's the hard heart," Jon recalled Rodrik Cassel's words, not knowing that Sansa remembered them too.
"A lady is not a sword," Sansa replied and turned away.
"If your heart grows hard, the lady will feel it," Jon said confidently. "They're catching up. We have to kill them before they kill us. At least their horses, or we'll have to fight in two or three days. With Leo and the wolves.
If Ygritte had heard Jon, those harsh words and even the threat of unequal combat would have made far less impression on her than the three white-eyed figures frozen in the centre of the tent. The sorcerers moved their wolves, and in the camp of the pursuers fifteen miles to the north, horses were trampling people. Ghost tore the throat of someone who stood against the still-light western sky, and Nymeria and Lady drove three horses to their deaths in the thicket. Ygritte was terrified that invisible hands could grab her head at any moment, breaking her will and confusing her thoughts, and she fixed her gaze on the fourth figure: Lionel sat apart, holding his old light sword on his knees, guarding those whose consciousness and feelings were far away. Ygritte didn't even understand at first who exactly he was protecting: no one would dare touch the trance-like sorcerer, who knows when he would return and what he would do to you if he caught you. Besides, only the strong can protect the weak, an adult child... Lionel, meanwhile, got to his feet, crouched down, walked past the frozen figures, and took Igrith by the hand, just like a child.
"If you're scared, don't look," Lionel advised. "Lie down."
Lionel led Ygritte to her place, sat her down on the blanket and went back. "He's not afraid of witchcraft," Ygritte thought. "He's protecting them and even me." With her keen hunter's ears, Ygritte heard more than the others did, and when Jon, exhausted by his unusual exertions, lay down beside her and embraced her like a simple, tired man, she whispered in his ear:
"Is he your king?"
"Yes," John replied, falling into a dream in which the Ghost and his sisters, licking their bloody muzzles, walked away unharmed towards the south.
And Ygritte, falling asleep, wondered why Lionel had been left on guard duty, while Qhoren, also slightly shaken by the sight of the figures in trance, simply entered the tent and lay down to sleep.
Lionel left the tent almost at the same time as the guards, but Arya woke him up anyway, climbing over him. In the morning light, Qhoren measured out the grain for porridge and counted out slices of salted meat, while Arya scooped snow with her ladles and began to build a fire.
"Quoren," Lionel said sternly. "Stop with your stories about werewolves. You've already scared our Wild One half to death. She could barely stand when she came into the tent yesterday."
"Weren't you scared?" Arya teased Lionel, already realising that Quoren knew everything about them and approved of everything since he had picked her up for her last shift with a smile that was quite kind for his stern face.
"I'll be scared when you start cooking porridge," Leo laughed. "For now, there's Quoren with the wooden spoon."
"Not a bit scared?" Arya pouted a little; she had no intention of ever cooking porridge in her life, nor did she intend to embroider or even sew; Leo loved her just the way she was. Sansa was good at cooking porridge, and anyway, the three of them were always together. "I saw Jon looking for Ghost, and he looks kind of scary sometimes when his eyes roll back. Was I like that yesterday?"
"If a girl asks you if she's scary, what should you say, Queren?" Leo continued to tease, and finally got a snowball on his head from Arya, after which Leo deftly picked Arya up in his arms, and she habitually reached for his lips. Meanwhile, Quoren, very good-naturedly for a professional killer, chuckled as he poured grain into boiling water and rejoiced for the young couple.
"Don't worry about Jon's girl, that's his business, he should worry about her," Quren said quietly from the fire. "Free women always need to be broken, they have no king in their land, no master in their house. They don't even have a home, they just wander around. That's how they are in everything. Is that what Jon wants? I'm sure it's not. But she'll be broken and become a real person.
"And you have humane ways of doing that?" asked Lionel. There was no stopping Cuoren; he wasn't shy about discussing such topics in Arya's presence, and perhaps he was right not to be.
"John has humane methods," Cuoren laughed. "Pleasant in every way." Well, it's not for me to tell you: the lord promises protection and patronage, but first the vassal bows down and lays his sword before him. It can't be the other way around. This is not your land, not your people. Let our Wildling kneel before you, then you can protect her from me.
"No way!" Arya immediately intervened jealously and kissed Leo. "We don't need vassals like that.
"See," remarked Cuoren, stirring his porridge. "You have a quick one yourself, speaking for both of you.
"But someone from the Stormlands wrote to me, Renly didn't finish his letter," Lionel recalled. "Selwyn Tart, I think. His daughter grew up healthy and quarrelsome, decided to go travelling and was going to become a sworn knight. That's what he wrote to me: 'If she swears allegiance to an unmarried man, rumours will spread, and there will be scandal, and if she swears allegiance to a married man, it could even lead to murder.' He suggested taking her into the Kingsguard, saying that at least in the Kingsguard they take a vow of celibacy."
Ygritte, of course, did not hear Qoren's words, which were not meant for her ears, but during the next day's journey she pestered Jon with questions about life south of the Wall.
"Listen, you really don't know anything?" John asked in turn, feeling that he would have to start with the basics of family, private property and the state, and he was not particularly capable of such a titanic task in a day on horseback.
"I know, but probably not the right way," Ygritte admitted modestly, surprising Jon again — he was still young and didn't know that women are most modest just before they become most curious. "I want to hear you talk about your life."
In the course of the story, Jon discovered many gaps in his knowledge; after all, he had never been a lord or the head of a family, and he was certainly not interested in peasant life, so Ygritte's naive questions often stumped him, and it was Queren who had to fill in the gaps during the breaks. "So they sent a man to gather information," Qhoren thought with a smile, telling Jon instructive stories about what kings can and cannot do, and examples of the saying, "The king gives, but the king's servant takes away," and now he himself is interrogating me for her. But the boy is interested in the right things, and she'll be like a human soon enough," and Qhoren slyly led Jon into a conversation about family customs.
Meanwhile, Ygritte was beginning to understand how much of life south of the Wall depended on the same cunning that had saved her life at the Wailing Pass, — that the only way to defeat the strong is to surrender and win their hearts before their minds — but she still couldn't understand why she was afraid of Jon's magical powers and wanted to seek protection from Lionel or even Qhoren, even though their hearts were harder than his.
During the evening halt, Queren learned from Arya that the pursuit was not far behind and that the Wildlings had simply abandoned their horseless comrades in the forest. He decided that Jon's horse was enough and that he would not be able to carry both of them at the necessary speed. Queren was going to put Ygritte on Arya's horse and put Arya on her sister's, but Arya responded by telling him to go to hell.
"So much for subordination," Thought Ygritte, who was now listening carefully to the conversations in the camp but had not yet mastered the technique of applying the rule "my vassal's vassal is not my vassal," which in everyday life meant, among other things, that no one gave orders to women and children without going through the head of the family.
Qoren knew how the world worked, so he smiled and went to talk to Lionel, while Ygritte quietly stood next to the horses, where Arya and Leo had soon joined, and listened to Arya complaining to Leo about Qoren's stupid ideas.
"Do you want me to carry you?" Lionel asked Arya, almost like a child.
"They'll see," Arya replied quietly and hesitantly, and Ygritte felt ashamed that she was eavesdropping, because Arya was so different now, not at all like she usually was.
"For the whole day?" Lionel asked cheerfully.
"You're a cheat," Arya sighed, and Ygritte hurried to hide in the tent, from where she could clearly hear Queren explaining to Jon that she would continue on Arya's horse. It seemed that Qoren had no doubt that Lionel would persuade Arya, no matter how resolutely she sent him away.
"Qhoren didn't even talk to me," Ygritte remarked to herself. "Is it because I'm Jon's woman, or because I'm a captive?" Based on the customs north of the Wall, the correct answer was the latter, especially since Qhoren had spoken to Arya, albeit unsuccessfully. And suddenly, for some reason, Ygritte imagined Lionel hugging a happy Arya sitting in front of him in the saddle tomorrow, and for the first time she truly understood that she would never ride with Jon like that.
"Tell him you won't give me away," Ygritte silently asked Jon, not realising that this was the first time she had thought of herself in this way, as if she could be given away or not, like a child or a horse. But Jon, unfortunately for her, was a good soldier and listened to the voice of reason.
And Ygritte unexpectedly solved her riddle in the morning when she woke up next to Jon. Jon was just like her, and with him she didn't feel like a little girl, and Ygritte wouldn't trust herself with witchcraft, who knows what might pop into her head. And then Ygritte remembered that Jon had never given her orders, but he had never defended her either, except for the very first time, when he had spared her and protected her from Qhoren, and she had gone to him of her own accord. After that, either she had become too independent with him, afraid of becoming a powerless captive, or he was still too young to be more than a comrade. "Don't look," Lionel had told her the night before last, taking her by the hand and standing between her and her fear, and before him she could stand unarmed and kneel down, bowing her head and asking for protection. But she still wanted it to be John.
***
patreon.com/posts/baratheons-son-137236569