The hill rose alone above the Riverlands, a lonely monument to loss. By the time the group reached it, Lyanna was ready to collapse without even setting camp. Dacey whistled low as Winter slowed to a halt.
"So this is High Heart," she said. "Looks more like a perch for crows to shit on than a holy place."
Lyanna dismounted, boots scraping the mossy ground cover loose. After the death of the weirwoods, nothing else seemed to take root on the summit. The wind carried no birdsong here, only the rasp of dry grass. "The children of the forest worshiped here once," she murmured, remembering half a tale Old Nan had spun by Winterfell's hearth. "They made their pleas to the gods beneath a circle of weirwoods."
Howland's reed-cloak whispered as he followed Lyanna up the slope. His eyes, dark and solemn, never left the ground. "They did," he said softly. "But the Andals cut them down. Only the stumps remain."
At the crest, the proof stood before them: pale stumps hacked low, gouged with axe-marks now worn smooth by centuries of wind. They jutted from the earth like broken teeth. No red sap bled. No carved eyes watched. All that remained were scars where gods had once dwelled.
Lyanna laid her hand on the nearest, its surface cold and empty. She wanted to feel the comforting pulse she had felt in Winterfell's heart tree, even faintly. Here there was nothing. Not a whisper. Not a dream.
"So many corpses," she whispered, the words catching in her throat.
Howland touched the stump with two fingers, as though to bless what remained. "The songs say the singers still haunt this hill, but only in memory. The gods do not answer here."
The pilgrims lingered in silence. The wind tugged at Lyanna's cloak, carrying faint laughter from the road below, where travelers passed without knowing what was lost.
Finally, Dacey broke the hush. "If your gods mean to speak, they'll choose better ground. This hill's as dead as any grave."
Lyanna clenched her jaw but didn't argue. Dacey was right. Still, as she pitched their tent, Lyanna couldn't shake the feeling that the stumps were watching in their silence. Perhaps absence was an answer too — a warning of what happens when gods are forgotten.
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Screams pulled Lyanna from sleep as sharply as a blade. At first she thought it was the wind over the stumps of High Heart, but when she pushed out of the tent the sound was clearer: women's sobs, men shouting, the jangle of mail.
"Down the hill," Lyanna hissed. Dacey was already strapping on her mace belt, and Howland's hand went to the pale bow at his back. They picked their way through bramble and brush until the trees thinned, and there below, on the road, Lyanna saw them.
A half-dozen riders in patchwork mail circled a cart, their sigils plain even in the gloom — the black talon of House Lychester, though their bearing was closer to coyotes than knights. One man dragged a peasant girl by the arm, his faced fixed with a lustful grin. Another tipped a sack of grain into the dust. The smallfolk pleaded, hollow-eyed, while the knights laughed.
Howland's whisper was sharp in Lyanna's ear. "These are not our foes. We gain nothing by meddling."
The girl cried out again, and something inside her clenched. "We gain honor," Lyanna said, louder than she meant to. "I won't stand aside."
"Starks and their honor," Howland mumbled. Resigned, he drew an arrow with the calm of a man stringing a harp, loosed, and one of the soldiers pitched from his saddle with an arrow sprouting from his neck.
Dacey was already in motion, vaulting onto Winter's back. "Stay behind me, Lyanna!" she roared, charging downhill. Her mace cracked against the helm of the nearest knight with a sound like a splitting melon.
Ignoring Dacey, Lyanna ran after her, stumbling, heart pounding in her ears. Her boot caught the corpse Howland had felled. A sword gleamed at the dead man's belt. It was plain steel, but steel all the same. Lyanna wrenched it free with both hands and forced herself forward.
Another of Howland's shafts whistled past her and buried itself in an eye-slit. The man toppled backward, dead before he struck earth. Dacey swung again, her strength splitting a shield clean through, but three men pressed around her, blades flashing in the firelight.
Howland held his bow taut, teeth gritted. "Too close — I might strike her if I loose."
That left only Lyanna. One of the talon knights broke from the ring and came at her. Their blades met with a jolt that numbed her arms. He sneered at the clumsy parry, swung again, and sparks flew as steel scraped.
"Root your stance," Lyanna remembered Jorah's voice. She bent her knees, braced, and when he lunged high, she ducked to slash low. Lyanna's blade bit into his thigh, and he bellowed, stumbling back in shock.
Dacey's mace caved in another helm, red mist spraying. She twisted, caught a second man beneath the chin, and he dropped twitching. Lyanna swung wildly at her foe again, the cut shallow but enough to send him reeling.
He turned to flee, but Howland's arrow took him clean through the back. Lyanna gasped, but Howland's eyes were steady on hers. "Never turn from an enemy until he no longer breathes," he said flatly. "Mercy has its time. A fight is not it."
When the last bandit "knight" fell, the smallfolk broke into cries of relief. A woman kissed the hem of Dacey's cloak, and children clung to Lyanna's legs, their faces streaked with dirt.
But fear lingered with their thanks. "They'll send more, m'lady," one man muttered. "House Lychester won't forgive blood."
Lyanna lifted the borrowed sword, still slick with red, and felt the weight of it in her hand. "Then let them come," she said, louder than she felt. "I take responsibility for these men. Not you."
The villagers bowed their heads. Dacey clapped her shoulder, grinning through blood and sweat. Howland only watched her and sighed, eyes dark and thoughtful, as though measuring what Lyanna had just become.
"Lovely as it might be to celebrate with these fine merchants, if we're going to anger a noble house, we should leave its lands as quickly as possible." Howland suggested.
"Okay grandfather," Dacey rolled her eyes. "Let's return to camp and pack up."
The local heroes left the smallfolk with their cart and their thanks. The three of them climbed the slope of High Heart again, the tall grass whispering around their legs. At the crest, the white stumps waited, pale and silent in the warming light of the morning. Lyanna sheathed the sword at her hip. It was not hers, not truly, but it no longer felt foreign either.