Pyke was not a castle meant to be taken. It was a defiant, ugly fist of stone thrusting up from the churning sea, connected by swaying rope bridges that defied sanity. To reach the inner keeps, an army first had to break the curtain wall—a massive, curved bulwark that guarded the headland.
For three days, the Royalist forces had thrown themselves against it and bled.
But tonight was different. Tonight, King Robert Baratheon was not trying to win a tactical victory. He was trying to put on a show.
The night sky over the Iron Islands was usually pitch black, swallowed by storm clouds and freezing rain. Tonight, it was lit in hues of hellish orange.
THOOM!
A massive trebuchet, dragged all the way from the Riverlands and assembled in the mud, unleashed its payload. A boulder the size of a wagon, wrapped in pitch-soaked rags and set ablaze, arced through the sky like a falling star. It smashed into the upper battlements of the gatehouse, shattering stone and sending screaming Ironborn tumbling into the darkness below.
"AGAIN!" King Robert roared.
He stood at the very front of the vanguard, a behemoth in dented plate armor, the great antlered helm upon his head. He didn't care about the arrows raining down into the mud around him. He didn't care about the iron bolts thudding into the wooden mantlets of his siege engineers. He was completely, gloriously in his element.
"Give them fire!" Robert bellowed to the ranks behind him. "Give the squids a taste of the sun!"
Beside him rode a madman.
Thoros of Myr, the red priest who had become Robert's favorite drinking companion, wore a faded red robe over his chainmail. In his hand, he held a longsword. With a wild, cackling laugh, Thoros ran a piece of rough leather down the length of the steel.
The blade erupted into brilliant, roaring flames.
The fire burned with a fierce light, casting long, dancing shadows across the faces of the terrified Ironborn defenders looking down from the walls.
"THE LORD OF LIGHT COMMANDS YOU TO BURN!" Thoros screamed, raising the flaming sword high, spurring his horse forward into the muddy killing ground before the gates.
"THE STAG COMMANDS IT TOO!" Robert roared in unison, hefting his massive warhammer.
Thousands of men from the Stormlands, the Westerlands, the Riverlands, and the Vale surged forward. They beat their swords against their shields, creating a deafening, rhythmic thunder that shook the ground.
Desperate, screaming men dragged forward siege ladders. Battering rams carved from whole tree trunks were rolled toward the iron-reinforced oak of the main doors.
On the walls of Pyke, chaos reigned. Balon Greyjoy had stripped every other tower and keep of its defenders, rushing every available man to the front curtain wall to repel the massive, seemingly suicidal assault. Archers fired blindly into the mass of men. Men-at-arms hurled rocks, boiling oil, and curses.
The noise was absolute. It was a cacophony of shattering wood, ringing steel, and dying men. The attention of every single soul within the fortress of Pyke was locked entirely on the front gate.
Which was exactly what Ned Stark had planned.
---
On the far side of the island, where the sea chewed relentlessly against the sheer, vertical cliffs beneath the Great Keep, there was no fire. There was no shouting.
There was only the darkness, the howling wind, and the crashing surf.
At the base of the cliff, standing on a jagged, slippery shelf of rock barely wide enough to hold them, stood twenty-one shadows.
Benjen Stark looked up.
The cliff face was a terrifying sight. It was a sheer drop of nearly two hundred feet, slick with centuries of moss, sea spray, and bird guano. The rock was dark and unforgiving. Above them, the stone walls of the Great Keep seamlessly merged with the natural cliff, creating an unbroken vertical line that disappeared into the pitch-black sky.
The waning moon offered no light. They were operating by touch and instinct.
"Ready?" Benjen whispered. His voice was entirely swallowed by the crashing of a wave against the rocks, but the man next to him nodded.
Willam, the captain of the Wolfguard, was adjusting his harness.
It was a strange contraption, designed by Lord Ned himself. Thick straps of boiled leather wrapped around the thighs and the waist, buckling tightly at the center of the chest. Attached to this harness were thick coils of braided hemp rope, and a series of heavy iron rings forged with spring-loaded clasps.
They wore no mail. No plate. Only soft, dark leather and thick wool. Their boots were soled with a soft, grooved leather designed to find friction on wet stone. Their weapons—short swords and long daggers—were strapped tightly to their backs or thighs to prevent snagging.
Benjen carried Red Rain, but the Valyrian steel blade was bound tight in a dark leather sheath to hide its crimson pommel.
"We climb," Benjen commanded, signaling the men.
Willam went first. He reached up, his chalk-coated fingers finding a small, jagged fissure in the rock. He pulled himself up with a terrifying, smooth display of upper-body strength. He found a footing, braced himself, and pulled a heavy iron piton from his belt.
Using a muffled iron hammer wrapped in thick cloth, Willam drove the spike into a crack in the stone. Thwack. Thwack. The sound was entirely masked by the roar of the sea below and the battle raging miles away.
He clipped one of his sprung iron rings through the eye of the piton, threading the main line of rope through it.
The ascent began.
It was a slow, grueling process. The Wolfguard moved like a chain of spiders, following Willam's lead. Drive the spike, clip the ring, pull the body upward. Find a handhold that felt like razor blades, dig the soft boots into a depression no wider than a coin, and push.
Benjen was the fifth man on the line.
He didn't look down. He knew the freezing, violent death that waited in the black waters below. He focused entirely on the stone in front of his face. His fingers were already bleeding, the rough granite tearing through his callouses despite the chalk. His forearms burned with a deep, searing ache that begged him to let go.
Breathe, Benjen told himself, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second, his face pressed against the cold, wet rock.
He pushed his awareness inward. The burning in his muscles dulled to a distant ache. His grip on the stone became absolute, his fingers locking into place like iron clamps.
They reached the halfway point—one hundred feet of empty air below them.
The wind suddenly shifted, hitting the cliff face with a violent, freezing gust that sought to peel them off the rock like dead leaves.
Above Benjen, the fourth climber—a sixteen-year-old boy named Tym—made a mistake.
His boot slipped on a patch of black moss. Tym panicked, overcompensating by lunging upward for a handhold that wasn't there. His fingers scrabbled uselessly against smooth, wet stone.
With a muffled, terrified gasp, Tym peeled off the wall.
He fell.
The safety rope tied to his harness snapped taut, pulling violently against the iron piton Willam had driven into the rock above them.
The piton groaned. The rock around it, fractured by centuries of ice and salt, shattered.
The spike pulled free.
Tym plummeted, falling past Benjen in a blur of dark leather, his eyes wide with silent, absolute terror. He was going to fall all the way to the rocks below, and his weight would likely rip the men below him off the wall as well.
Benjen didn't think. He reacted.
In the space of a heartbeat, Benjen drove his right boot deep into a narrow crevice. He shoved his left forearm into a crack, twisting his bones to lock himself into the stone. He poured every ounce of his energy into his center of gravity, making himself as heavy and immovable as the cliff itself.
With his free right hand, Benjen lunged outward.
He didn't try to catch Tym's falling body; he caught the safety rope whipping violently past him.
The sheer, violent force of a falling human body hitting the end of a slack line should have ripped Benjen's arm from its socket or torn him cleanly off the wall.
When the rope pulled taut in his bare hand, the friction instantly burned through the tough leather of his glove, searing the skin of his palm.
But Benjen did not budge.
He gritted his teeth, a low, guttural snarl escaping his lips as the immense weight hit his arm. The muscles in his shoulder screamed, tearing under the strain, but his skeletal structure, fortified by the invisible flow of the earth's energy, held firm. He hung suspended over the abyss, anchoring the boy's life with one hand and the magic of the Old Gods.
Below him, Tym swung wildly, dangling by his harness over the churning sea, hyperventilating.
The other Wolfguards above and below froze, staring in absolute awe. To their eyes, Benjen Stark had just defied the laws of nature, catching a falling man with one hand without losing his grip on the slick rock. He looked like a god of iron.
"Climb!" Benjen hissed through gritted teeth, his arm trembling violently. "Grab the rock, Tym! Now!"
Tym, snapping out of his shock, reached out frantically and grabbed a jagged outcropping, pulling his weight off the rope.
Benjen let out a ragged breath, releasing the line. His hand was a bloody, blistered mess, but the line held.
"Secure the next spike," Benjen ordered quietly, looking up at Willam. "Move."
They climbed the rest of the way in terrified, awed silence. The boys from the Winter Town had respected their Lord's brother before; now, they revered him as something more than human.
---
They reached the lip of the outer wall that surrounded the Great Keep. The stone here transitioned from natural cliff to worked block, ending in a low parapet designed to prevent men from falling into the sea, rather than to keep armies out.
Balon Greyjoy, in his arrogant certainty, had left the sea-facing wall practically unguarded. There were no archer blinds, no boiling oil grates. Only a solitary sentry, pacing a hundred-yard stretch of the narrow walkway.
Willam crested the wall first, pulling himself over the stone lip with absolute silence. He lay flat against the cold flagstones, blending into the shadows.
The sentry was walking away from him, a heavy iron battle-axe resting on his shoulder. He was looking out toward the front of the castle, watching the distant glow of Thoros's flaming sword illuminating the night sky, completely distracted by the noise of the siege.
Willam rose like smoke. He drew a long, thin dagger from his thigh sheath.
He closed the distance in three silent strides. He clamped his left hand hard over the sentry's mouth, simultaneously driving the dagger up under the man's ribs, angling sharply into the heart.
The sentry stiffened, a muted gurgle escaping his lips against Willam's leather glove. In three seconds, he was dead. Willam lowered the heavy body gently to the stones without a sound.
Benjen pulled himself over the wall a moment later, followed by the rest of the team.
"Strip him," Benjen whispered.
Two Wolfguards worked quickly in the dark, pulling the heavy boiled leather tunic—stamped with the golden kraken of House Greyjoy—off the corpse. They took his iron half-helm and his heavy sea-cloak.
Willam shed his own grey cloak and pulled the Ironborn gear over his clothes. It was a tight fit, but in the dark, he looked like any other reaver of Pyke.
Benjen gathered the men in the shadow of a high watchtower.
"The outer wall is taken," Benjen said softly, tying a rag tightly around his bleeding right hand. "The diversion is working. The castle is looking outward. We move inward."
He looked at Willam. "You are on point. Scout the next walkway. If anyone questions you, you are a runner from the front lines. Do not speak unless spoken to."
Willam nodded, adjusting the heavy iron helm. He stepped out of the shadows and began walking briskly down the lit corridor toward the inner bailey, mimicking the heavy, rolling gait of a sailor.
The rest of the pack waited in the dark.
A minute later, another sentry rounded the corner, carrying a torch. He saw Willam approaching.
"You there!" the sentry called out over the distant roar of the trebuchets. "What's the word from the main gate? Are the greenland bastards breaking through?"
Willam didn't answer immediately. He kept walking, closing the distance rapidly, head down.
"I said, what's the word?" the sentry demanded, stopping and raising his torch to see the man's face.
Willam stepped into the light. He didn't slow down. He lunged.
Before the sentry could process the unfamiliar face beneath the helm, Willam's short sword flashed. He drove the blade clean through the man's throat, severing the vocal cords and the artery in one brutal, practiced motion.
The sentry dropped the torch. Willam caught it before it hit the ground, keeping the light steady as the man collapsed in a pool of his own blood.
Willam looked back toward the shadows and gave a sharp, two-fingered whistle.
The Wolfguard emerged, jogging silently down the walkway. A second guard quickly stripped the dead sentry, pulling on his kraken tunic and helm.
Now, they had two ghosts in Ironborn skin.
---
Benjen knelt in the shadows of the inner bailey, the massive structure of the Great Keep looming above them.
"We split here," Benjen ordered, using rapid hand signals to emphasize his quiet words. "Willam, take ten men. Move through the armory corridors. Take out any runners or supply lines you find. I will take the remaining ten through the lower courtyards."
Benjen drew his finger across the map he had studied endlessly in his mind.
"We avoid the main barracks. We avoid the Great Hall. Our only objective is the gatehouse. We meet at the base of the stairs leading to the winch room in twenty minutes. If you are engaged, you silence them instantly. If an alarm is raised, the mission fails and we die. Understood?"
The twenty boys—lethal, silent killers forged by Ned Stark's ruthless pragmatism—nodded in unison.
The pack split.
Benjen led his squad through the twisting, damp corridors of Pyke. The castle was a miserable place, smelling of stale ale, rust, and salt rot. It was clear the Ironborn put little stock in comfort or sanitation.
The distraction at the front was their salvation. They passed open doors where they could hear servants and stragglers arguing about the battle, their attention entirely consumed by the thunderous impacts of the royal trebuchets shaking the walls.
They moved like a single organism, flowing from shadow to shadow.
They encountered a group of three reavers struggling to carry a massive crate of heavy iron quarrels toward the front lines. The Ironborn were swearing loudly, complaining about the weight.
Benjen signaled.
Three Wolfguards dropped from the low stone rafters above the archway. They fell upon the reavers with synchronized, terrifying precision. Knives found gaps in armor. Hands snapped necks. The three Ironborn were dead before the crate they were carrying hit the floor. The Wolfguards caught the heavy wooden box, lowering it silently to the stones, and dragged the bodies into an empty store room.
They kept moving.
They were nearing the objective. The noise of the battle was deafening now. They were directly behind the massive curtain wall that separated the castle from the land bridge.
Benjen signaled for a halt near a sharp turn in the corridor. He peeked around the stone corner.
His blood ran cold.
An Ironborn captain, wearing heavy scale armor and a cape of woven iron rings, was walking out of a side room, a torch in one hand and a half-eaten leg of mutton in the other. He was walking directly toward them.
Benjen pulled his head back. There was nowhere to hide. The corridor was narrow and empty. If they retreated, the captain would hear their boots. If they charged, the heavy armor would slow them down long enough for the man to shout.
The heavy footsteps of the captain drew closer. The flickering orange light of his torch began to cast long shadows around the corner.
Benjen made a split-second decision. He didn't draw a sword. He didn't signal his men.
He reached to his belt and drew a long, perfectly balanced throwing dagger.
He breathed in, channeling the unyielding stillness of his Force training. Time seemed to stretch and slow to a crawl. He could hear the captain tearing a chunk of meat from the bone. He could hear the exact cadence of the man's footsteps. He calculated the distance, the angle, the weight of the steel in his hand.
The captain turned the corner.
He stopped, his eyes widening as he saw the eleven figures clad in dark grey, standing in the shadows of his own castle. He dropped the mutton. He opened his mouth to scream a warning that would bring a hundred men down upon them.
Benjen threw the dagger.
He didn't just throw it; he pushed it with a silent surge of his hidden power. The blade flew with terrifying, unnatural speed. It was a straight line of silver cutting through the torchlight.
Before the captain could form the first syllable of his shout, the dagger buried itself to the hilt directly into the center of his throat, punching through the soft leather gorget and severing his spine.
The captain's eyes rolled back. A spray of blood hit the stone wall behind him. He collapsed backward, a heavy, clattering heap of iron and dead flesh.
Benjen exhaled sharply, the focused energy leaving his system.
"Drag him," Benjen whispered.
Two guards rushed forward, pulling the heavy corpse into the side room, kicking dirt over the bloodstain.
They moved on.
---
They reached the rendezvous point—a wide, circular stairwell that led up into the belly of the massive gatehouse.
Willam and his ten men were already there, waiting in the shadows. The two disguised Wolfguards stood near the front. Willam held up two fingers, indicating they had eliminated two patrols without incident.
Benjen pointed up the stairs.
At the top of the winding steps was a heavy door of solid oak, banded with thick iron. It was the entrance to the winch room—the iron heart that controlled the massive portcullis and the locking beams of the main gates below.
Standing guard outside the door were two heavily armored Ironborn sentries, holding long spears.
Benjen looked at Willam and the other disguised guard. He nodded.
Willam and his partner walked up the stairs. They didn't sneak. They stomped their boots heavily on the stone, making as much noise as they could to mask the silent approach of the nineteen wolves creeping up the steps behind them.
The two sentries lowered their halberds as the disguised men approached.
"Halt!" one sentry barked. "No one enters the winch room! Lord Balon's orders!"
"Orders from the front lines!" Willam shouted back, his voice rough and breathless, perfectly mimicking a panicked runner. "The greenlanders are bringing up a ram! The Captain says to ready the secondary chains!"
The sentries hesitated, glancing at each other. The noise outside was deafening; the story made perfect sense.
"We didn't hear no horn," the second sentry grumbled suspiciously.
"You can't hear shit over that flaming sword out there!" Willam yelled, closing the final few steps. "Open the damn door before they break the gates!"
The sentries lowered their weapons slightly, moving to unbar the door.
It was the only opening the pack needed.
Willam lunged, driving a dagger up under the first sentry's chin. His partner mirrored the move, stepping inside the reach of the halberd and burying a short sword in the second man's gut.
Both sentries went down without a cry.
Benjen bounded up the last few steps. "Open it."
Willam lifted the heavy iron latch and pushed the door open.
The winch room was massive, filled with the groaning, creaking sounds of the battle raging directly below them. The room was dominated by two enormous wooden capstans, wrapped in chains as thick as a man's arm, connected to the heavy counterweights that held the gate mechanisms in place.
Five Ironborn engineers were in the room. They were stripped to their waists, sweating profusely as they managed the boiling oil grates and the heavy gears.
They turned as the door opened, expecting runners or guards.
Instead, a tide of grey cloaks and drawn steel poured into the room.
The Wolfguard did not hesitate. They were absolute instruments of violence. They swarmed the engineers before the men could even reach for the heavy mallets and axes resting against the walls. It was a silent, brutal slaughter. Throats were cut, chests were pierced, and bodies were dropped onto the stone floor amidst the grinding gears.
In ten seconds, the room belonged to the North.
Benjen stepped over a bleeding corpse and walked to the edge of the murder hole, looking down.
Directly below him, the massive, iron-studded oak doors of Pyke's main gate were buckling under the repeated impacts of a battering ram. Outside, the Vanguard of the King was screaming for blood.
Benjen looked at the massive chains holding the locking beams in place, and the thick, tensioned ropes holding the counterweights that kept the portcullis locked down.
He drew Red Rain. The Valyrian steel seemed to hum in the torchlight, eager to taste the air.
"Cut them," Benjen ordered, his voice echoing in the stone chamber.
The Wolfguard fell upon the mechanisms. They swung their axes and short swords, hacking violently at the thick hemp ropes holding the massive stone counterweights.
SNAP.
The first rope gave way. A counterweight the size of a large wagon plummeted downward with a terrifying crash, releasing the tension on the locking mechanism of the main doors.
SNAP. SNAP.
Benjen swung Red Rain. The impossibly sharp Valyrian steel sheared straight through a bundle of thick ropes holding the portcullis lock in a single, devastating stroke.
The machinery shrieked. Deep within the walls, massive iron gears spun freely.
Down below, the heavy wooden locking beams that secured the main gates suddenly lifted away, pulled up by the released weights.
The gate was unbarred.
Benjen turned to the men. "The doors! Push!"
The Wolfguard threw down their weapons. Twenty-one men put their shoulders against the massive wooden capstans that controlled the gate hinges. They strained, their boots slipping on the bloody floor, pushing with every ounce of strength they possessed.
Slowly, agonizingly, the heavy gears began to turn.
Down in the courtyard below, the Ironborn defenders braced against the massive oak doors, mocking the booming impacts of Robert's battering ram. Pyke had never fallen. The sea protected their rear, and these thick walls protected their front.
But then, deep within the stone, the massive counterweights let out a deafening, unspooling shriek. The heavy wooden locking beams lifted themselves smoothly, as if pulled by unseen, ghostly hands.
The Ironborn stared in absolute, mind-breaking horror. Suddenly, the ram hit the doors from the outside, and the doors yielded completely. With a loud, groaning screech of rusted hinges, the impregnable gates slowly swung outward toward the enemy, seemingly entirely on their own. They hadn't been breached by the stag; they had been betrayed by the shadows.
Robert Baratheon froze for a second, looking at the widening gap. He saw the dark courtyard of Pyke beyond. He saw the terrified faces of the Ironborn staring at their own open gates.
A savage, roaring laugh ripped from the King's throat.
"THE WOLVES HAVE BITTEN!" Robert bellowed to the heavens. He lowered his helm, hoisted his hammer, and spurred his horse forward.
"CHARGE! CHARGE AND KILL THEM ALL!"
Thoros of Myr rode beside him, his flaming sword lighting the way. Behind them, a tide of tens of thousands of screaming, blood-mad soldiers poured through the open gates, flooding into the fortress of Pyke.
High above in the winch room, Benjen Stark leaned heavily against the wooden capstan, listening to the screams of the Ironborn below as the Royal army annihilated them. He looked at his bleeding hand, at the exhausted faces of his young guards, and wiped a smear of soot from his cheek.
The fortress was broken. The diversion had become the execution.
"Secure the room," Benjen commanded quietly, resting Red Rain over his shoulder. "We hold here. Let the King have his fun."