THEON
The further north they foraged, the harder the snow came down. Theon had known that this would be the case, had seen everything of a northern winter that he cared to and then some, but all his protestations and all his warnings went blithely disregarded by the wildlings. "We come from beyond the Wall, turncloak," Tormund Giantsbane snorted. "There, we don't have no comfortable stone castles and nice warm fires and kneeler servants to kiss our arses. In fact at home, they'd call this a lovely spring day! Har!" And so they barreled on full bore ahead.
It was true that the snow did not daunt the wildlings in the slightest, and neither did anything else. Theon was horrified by their habit of singing shanties in the Old Tongue as they marched, always at the top of their lungs; the stone kings in the crypts under Winterfell were waking to complain of the noise, he imagined. But when he'd stammered to Tormund that this would bring Ramsay down on their heads at once, the white-bearded wildling had replied, "Aye, and I would damned well hope it does. There's a gulp or three of the Bastard's blood that my axe needs drinking, turncloak."
"But Ramsay. . . Lord Ramsay. . ." Theon fumbled to find the words. He'd already tried to tell them about the fingers, had even showed them his mutilated hands, he couldn't understand why they wouldn't listen. He tried to get Asha to explain for him, but she told him that they knew perfectly well. She was no happier about being caught than he was, she said, but it could have been far worse.
That Theon could not dispute. The wildlings called him "turncloak" instead of his name, which he didn't like, but there was no real malice in it, only a matter-of-factness and at times a drop of pity. He feared to know what they intended for him, however. They'd said that they were making for Winterfell, to free Mance Rayder, and the only way Theon could conceive of how they would accomplish that was to barter him back to the Boltons. Ramsay might be afield, hunting Baratheons, but Roose had remained behind to hold the fortress and ensure that the Manderlys minded their manners. Theon was unwilling to clutch too closely onto this as his potential salvation, but it was true that the elder Bolton disapproved of his son's sadistic games with "Reek," and would likely not release a prisoner of Mance Rayder's importance in exchange for a used-up plaything. The fact that he was putting his hopes in Roose bloody Bolton, Theon thought, was an indication of just how dire his prospects really were.
His one solace was Asha. The wildlings set a hard pace, and Theon would have fallen behind in a matter of hours if she hadn't taken it upon herself to carry him when she could, or put him up on one of the wildlings' shaggy ponies when she couldn't; she had haggled it out of Soren Shieldbreaker yesterday, an episode which had left the wildling with a disgruntled and confused look on his face for some time afterwards. (Their own horse had proved as disreputable as advertised, and collapsed and died in the snow not long after they'd left the holdfast.) But Theon seriously doubted that she'd be able to contrive a second miracle escape for them – a third, for him – and was likewise forced to admit that abandoning the wildlings would do them, at this point, no good at all. Leave and die now, or stay and die later.
The landscape grew more and more forbidding. They hadn't seen the sun in days. Theon tried to judge where they were, but everything looked different when it was buried in white. We can't be far. It put his remaining teeth on edge. Even the wildlings, for all their bravado, had adopted a cautious approach; there was no more singing, no more swaggering. The world had become silence and snow and searing cold, and to his horror, Theon caught himself thinking longingly of how warm it had been to bed down with Ramsay's bitches. It would have been plenty warm if Stannis burned you to death, too.
That night, the snow falling so fast that they couldn't even build a cookfire, Tormund announced that the time was in fact at hand. "We're less than three leagues off from Winterfell, lads, and we'd all best be ready to do our part on the morrow. My boy Toregg here – " he nodded at the tall young wildling who'd been serving as their scout, running across the tops of the drifts with bearclaws strapped to his feet, miles and miles every day without ever seeming to tire – "tells us that the Boltons still hold the castle. They've got that little pink girl o' theirs flapping off the towers, at least. And there's a pissing lot of dead men piled up a few miles from here. Some with the Boltons' badge on 'em, some with that bloody stag. Which means King Stannis, long may he reign." Tormund spat, as the wildlings tended to do at any mention of Stannis. "As for where Stannis or the Bastard might be in their lordly selves, well, Toregg couldn't tell us that. So we'd best be prepared for anything."
Ramsay, Theon almost said, Lord Ramsay, not the Bastard, never the Bastard. Ramsay would have taken another finger for that insolence. But for the first time, he was able to hold back. It wasn't that the fear had gone away; it would never go away. But he was, in that moment, suddenly able to see Ramsay Snow as he was: a man. A man of unmatched depravity and vileness, it was true, but still a man. Not an all-knowing, all-seeing malevolent deity who might be lurking behind any tree. He is not here, he is not. Theon took a shaky breath. Roose won't agree to trade Mance for me, he won't, he won't. That did not mean he was safe by any stretch of the imagination, but –
"Toregg was able to get close enough to the castle t' see where Mance is hung," Tormund went on. "He's in a crow cage suspended from the outer wall on the northern corner. He's alive, but he isn't looking so well, not at all. We'll steal up that way, give us time to cause the distraction and for the turncloak to shimmy up the tower and break him out."
For a moment, silence. Theon was utterly sure that he had misheard, and prayed fervently that he had. "What – what did you say?"
"I only told as what's going to happen, boy. Weren't you paying attention?"
"Yes – but – " Theon's horror almost overwhelmed him. "I can't do that, I can't climb – the, the missing toes, the fingers – I can't – they'd see me, they know who I was, they'd kill me on sight – "
"Thunderfist," Asha broke in. "He has a point. I'll do it, I'll climb up there. If Mance can't walk, I'll have to carry him down. Theon can't do that."
"Sorry, lass, but that isn't how it'll be," Tormund said. "The turncloak knows the castle inside and out. None of us do. And we have the rope ladders that our folk use t' scale the Wall, we'll throw the grapnel-hooks over them – what d'ye call 'em – crenels, and it'll be quick as that. We plan on causing a very big distraction, don't you worry. And if it should go cat-a-wampus. . ." The wildling shrugged. "He's the one we can most afford to lose."
"Not to me," Asha said. "Not to my mother."
Tormund shrugged again. "Your mother's a bloody long way away, lass. And besides, your brother's the one got us all into this mess in the first place. Seems only fair he should help to make it right."
"He's done enough. He's endured enough. They'll kill him if they take him."
"Seems to me they'll kill us all, if they can." Tormund broke icicles out of his beard. "It isn't us that are the monsters here. Your ancestors built that bloody Wall as high as they could, but it wasn't us they was trying to keep out. Aye, we don't bend the knee and we don't pander and grovel and none of us are no pretty knightly knights, but we know what's at stake. Here." He unsheathed his rune-engraved knife, and offered it to Theon.
Theon took it clumsily. He couldn't grasp it quite right, but he liked the feeling of it nonetheless. It was a long time since he'd been armed, a long time since he'd been the predator instead of the prey. But still. . . "If they catch me, I'll never be able to hold them off, never. . ."
"Nor did I think you could," Tormund said. "If it comes to that, at least you won't have to go back to them. Every man makes a choice, turncloak. Whether to die, or live. There's yours."
A chill even colder than the snow went down Theon's back. My choice. He stared at it intently. It was pretty, with the bronze blade and the bone hilt. Ramsay will never have me back. One way or the other. Nor would Stannis. All that was left to him was to live.
He did not sleep that night. The wildlings had given him and Asha a big furry robe to share, which kept out the worst of the weather, but it was still impossible to get very warm. He peered through the dark trees at the sky. He wanted to see the stars, or the moon; he'd begun to forget what it was like to look at them, in the horror of his imprisonment in the bowels of the Dreadfort. But all he saw was snow.
It was not yet dawn when the wildlings roused them. No torches were lit, no sound was made. The air was so cold that it was almost crystalline, as if he could put a fist through it and shatter it. His hands were even clumsier than usual. I'll fall, I won't be able to climb, they'll catch me. They'll see. He struggled to recall the moment of clarity he had found last night. I am the ghost in Winterfell, he reminded himself. I flew from the towers with Jeyne.
The snow was almost over their head in places. Tormund and the Great Walrus went first, clearing a path that the others could follow. Theon came in the middle, holding onto Asha. The sky was pink, printed starkly with the black wet stamps of trees. The storm is over. And, perversely, right at the wrong time. If it had kept snowing fit to beat the band, at least it would have given them some cover.
It was almost light by the time they finally caught sight of Winterfell's massive grey battlements, looming out of the whiteness of the world. Its gates were scarred and soot-stained, drifts climbed the curtain wall almost halfway, and windows stared like empty eye sockets. A few of what were unmistakably bodies lay half-buried in the lee of the towers, and the Bolton banners hung still and lifeless from the merlons.
A frisson of shock went through Theon. I'm back here, after everything, I'm back here, I'm seeing it. There were small figures patrolling the tops of the wallwalks, but the wildlings were well hidden in the tangled trees. The last he'd set foot here, the old gods had whispered his name, and he thought he'd glimpsed Bran's face. I am far away from the sea, the Drowned God has no sway here. These are the gods of the north, the gods of the Starks. "Theon," he chanted under his breath. "Theon, my name is Theon." And I carry my own fate in a sheath.
Up ahead, Tormund signaled for a halt, and the raiding party gathered around him. Through the thick trees and the jagged veils of icicles, they could just make out the shape of a crow cage, dangling dizzyingly high from the Broken Tower above the north gate. Theon felt nauseous. I will never climb that far.
"Right," Tormund whispered. "We're as close as we can get. Turncloak, what's that big round tower just behind the broken one, the one with the gargoyles?"
"That's. . ." Theon had to think a moment. "The First Keep. It's ruined. Nobody uses it. The – Lord Ramsay, he didn't – "
Tormund waved a hand, cutting him off. "No matter, I didn't need its bloody history. On the signal, myself, Soren, and Harle the Huntsman will cause the distraction. Toregg will take you along the walls and throw the ladder. All you have to do is climb it and unlock the cage, then climb down. A blind babe could manage it. If by mischance something should go wrong, Toregg will meet you in the northwest corner, by the godswood."
Theon nodded dumbly. "It's by the glass gardens," he said to Toregg. "And – " Suddenly panicking, he turned to Asha. "You won't leave, will you? You won't leave me."
His sister's face was very still, unreadable. "No," she promised. "I won't leave you."
"Hurry now." Tormund unslung a great horn from his belt, beckoned Soren and Harle around toward the eastern side. "We'll give you what time we can, but it's best you didn't linger. Get Mance down and get into the trees."
"Aye," Tall Toregg said, clapping a strong hand on Theon's shoulder and nearly knocking him off his feet. "We'll see to it."
He thinks I can do it. Theon was absurdly proud of that thought, and for that one brief moment, he forgot to be afraid. Then Tormund raised his furry fist and brought it down, the woods exploded in a cacophony of winding horns and eldritch shrieks and stone axes clashing together, and the wildlings were sprinting and scattering like someone had poured water on an anthill. And there was something else he should have said to Asha but he couldn't remember, and then he and Toregg were running for their lives underneath the frowning stone brows of the Broken Tower.
The snow must have been almost thirty feet deep here on the windward side, giving them a head start up the eighty-foot outer curtain wall, and it had frozen almost as hard as rock. No wonder Jeyne broke her rib when we leapt. Theon was aghast at how horribly exposed they were, but Tall Toregg kept pulling him on, until they were almost directly beneath the crow cage dangling overhead.
Where is the one with Arnolf Karstark? Theon wondered, but decided he would rather not know. If there had been battles between Boltons and Baratheons, it was possible that Ramsay had discovered the deception by now, though Theon did not know how either. And would rather not know, as well.
Tall Toregg, kneeling lightly on the cavernous drifts, pulled the rolled ladder from his pack, attached the rope and grapnel to each end, and swung it over his head. Theon watched it go up and up and up, and somehow catch on the crenel of the wall. One and then the other.
"Go, turncloak," Toregg said, and handed Theon some sort of strange iron tool. "That should break the lock well enough. He's not chained inside the cage, I saw. Climb."
I can't, I can't, Theon wanted to cry, but somehow he was putting one foot on the ladder, and then the other, and he was off the snow and climbing, and the grey stone walls were all around him, laced with hoarfrost. Toregg grew small and then smaller beneath him, and his toeless feet slipped and stumbled but he didn't fall. I can fly. He'd leapt down these walls before, surely he could go up them.
The crow cage grew steadily closer. No arrows hissed down. He could hear the clamor made by Tormund and the others, somewhere down below, but it didn't matter any more.
There was a wallwalk at the top of the ladder, and Theon swung one leg onto it, then the other. From here, he was no more than five feet from the crow cage. I will have to climb down onto it. Oh, gods.
Inside the frozen iron bars, a man huddled underneath a cloak of skins. The sight of it turned Theon's stomach; he fell to his knees on the narrow wallwalk, hideously aware of the equally vertiginous drop down to the courtyard on the other side. The skins were still recognizable as having belonged to women; the hair remained attached, and one of them had an arm and dangling fingers. Theon tasted vomit in the back of his throat, clutched at his face with his own damaged hands, did not dare to look behind him. They see me. They're coming. Gods, I can't do this.
Still the distant uproar continued. I'm not caught yet, he thought dumbly. He clambered up onto the merlon, grasped the chain, and dropped.
It was only five feet, but it was the longest five feet of his life. The world opened up below him. He fumbled the implement off his belt. He slid sideways and the lock was in his hand. I'm going to fall, I can't do it. Then he was hitting it, and crying, and hitting it again, and his limbs were as weak as water and it was too far to fall, too far, and he was hitting it a third time and wrenching for everything his miserable flayed skin had ever been worth.
The lock was frozen through, and on his fourth blow, it split like a crack in the surface of a lake. He pulled it off, and watched it drop out of sight into the snow below. Then he got his seven fingers into the crack between cage and door, and yanked it wide.
The man in the cloak of women only then seemed to take notice of him. His hair was brown, heavily streaked with grey, and his face was ravaged with frostbite, a strip of skin missing from his nose and cheek. Whether Ramsay had taken it, or the cold, Theon did not know. "Get out, climb up," he hissed. "Onto the top. Come on." If Mance was not able, then their only choice would be to leap again.
The wildling blinked at him with eyes dull and mazy from pain and confusion. A gust of wind caught them, sending Theon's heart into his throat, and Mance slid precipitously toward the open side of the cage, barely stopping himself from plunging out. "Turncloak. What in hell are you doing here?"
"No time. Come on." Theon clambered back up the chain, toward the dubious safety of the wallwalks. He wasn't strong enough to pull Mance over if he couldn't do it, hated his own frailty, hated it. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with weak. But then he got one leg back over the crenel and then the other, and lay flat, gasping.
After a nerve-rending moment, Mance's hands appeared, gripping white on the stone. He struggled over the edge with an audible grunt of agony and collapsed next to Theon. "You should have stayed away," he said, eyes closed. "You got away."
"I. . . did, but they. . . they caught me." Theon knew he wasn't making much sense, but the Others could take sense. "There's the ladder. Right there. We just need to climb down it. Tormund. The wildlings. They're here. They brought me."
"Tormund?" That appeared to amuse the King-beyond-the-Wall. "Of all the men? The great growling bag of wind? Well then. It would be uncouth. To waste all this work." He seemed able only to speak in brief punching bursts, and as he got up and staggered along the wallwalk, Theon could see the dried blood on his stomach and chest. "So, turncloak. We have. To pay him a call."
Theon got to his knees, then pushed to his feet. "Abel," he said. "You were Abel, and I was Reek. Why did. . . why were you here?" He couldn't possibly imagine.
"Later." Mance crawled up onto the merlon. "Down here?"
"Aye." Theon peered over the edge. He could just see Tall Toregg below, waving furiously at them to hurry. "I'll tell – you'll tell, and then we can – "
There was a hissing whiz and thump from somewhere very near at hand. In his life before, Theon had been an expert archer. He knew what that was. And he had just enough time to know it before Tall Toregg froze, then slowly reached to touch the arrow sunk to the fletching in his shoulder.
Theon looked from it, up to the merlon thirty yards away, where a man in Bolton colors was standing with another already nocked to his bow. And looked back down as the second arrow was loosed. This one took Tall Toregg through the stomach, and he grunted, staggered, and fell.
Theon ran. He somehow dragged Mance's arm over his shoulders, and the two of them lurched along the wallwalk like a pair of drunken cripples on the lam from the sheriff. A blind man leading a blind man. He was almost carrying Mance; the wildling king seemed unable to put any weight on his right leg. Jump, turncloak. Jump. But below him were only the grasping fingers of trees. I can't really fly. I can't. The fall from here would kill one or both of them.
There were shouts in the courtyard below. An arrow flew over his head, then another one. They know we're here. It was too easy to get up to the cage, it was too easy. Yet somehow they were still running. They must be nearly above the eastern gate by now, and still he was supporting Mance. His washerwomen gave their lives for me and Jeyne, I will die for him if I have to. Then all at once, the tower of the Great Keep was in front of him, and a window, and a door.
Theon threw his weight against it. "Help me," he cried at Mance, and somehow the wildling king did. The two of them crashed into it, icy splinters digging into neck and shoulders, and then fell through into almost complete darkness.
The door slammed shut above them. Theon tasted blood and bile, lay there unmoving, could hear Mance's gulping gasps. And then something else, another voice he knew, said, "Who's there?"
Theon rolled over. He struggled forward. "Lord Wyman?" he croaked. "Wyman Manderly?"
"Who's that? Who's there?"
"It's – " Me? Wyman Manderly was not like to be overly enthused by the sudden appearance of Lord Ramsay's flayed monstrosity. "It's. . . Theon."
Silence. Then the Lord of White Harbor said only, "Gods."
"I know. We. . . it. . . we have to get out, I was. . . the wildlings. . ."
"Lady Arya," Wyman Manderly interrupted. "Arya Stark. Seven hells, Theon Turncloak, tell me the girl got away. Anything else, I don't care."
"She. . ." No, I can't tell, I can't tell him that she isn't Arya. "She. . . did."
He heard the fat man exhale shakily. Then a candle was struck, and Theon Greyjoy gazed onto the face of the one soul who might look worse than he did.
Manderly's throat had nearly been slashed open by Hosteen Frey after the murder of Little Walder, and it was still healing, slowly and badly. He had lost a good deal of weight after being confined as a hostage, and his skin hung on him in bags and wrinkles. His eyes were hollowed out of the formerly vast terrain of his face, and at least half of his chins were gone. His clothes were unkempt and dirty, and while not quite as bad as Reek's had been, his smell was nothing to appeal. He sat on his bed, staring at them.
"You," he said at last. "You and Abel. But it wasn't Abel, was it?"
Mance Rayder had made no move to get up off the filthy, rush-strewn floor of Manderly's prison. But at this, he looked up at the Lamprey Lord. "No. It wasn't."
Wyman Manderly shook his head. "You're fools, both of you. Fools. Particularly you, Turncloak. If you fled, why on the gods' earth would you come back?"
No reason I could explain. Nonetheless, he opened his mouth in a futile attempt to do so. But before he could, they all heard angry footsteps coming fast and hard, up the corridor outside the door.
Lord Manderly snapped out of his paralysis. "Into the bed!" With greater dexterity than Theon could ever have imagined, he jumped up from the disordered covers and herded them both onto it, half-lifting Mance when the wildling king almost collapsed again. Then he flung the quilts over them just in the nick of time. The next instant, Theon heard the door open.
"Manderly," the voice said. "See if you can haul yourself out of your own shit and get dressed. M'lord of Bolton wants a word with you about the fates of our friends of Frey."
"I have already informed Lord Roose," Manderly replied, in the same cold tone, "that the deaths of Rhaegar, Symond, and Jared, while regrettable beyond all doubt, were nothing to do with me."
"My arse. You see, there's some things Lord Roose has been thinking about, going over. Some things which are making a certain sort of sense, now he sees them twice. Three great pies. Three missing Freys. And you asking the singer for songs about the Rat Cook. That ring any bells, you bloody sack of suet?"
Beside him Theon felt Mance, who'd been that singer, convulse slightly.
"I am afraid," Manderly said, "that it does not."
"Liar. Well, we'll find the truth of it soon enough. The trap was finally sprung, so his lordship has returned. He'll be the one helping question you."
Trap, Theon thought. Trap. Trap. Trap. He stuffed a fist into his mouth to keep from crying aloud.
There was a fathomless moment. Then Manderly said, "Yes. I see. We would not want to deny Lord Ramsay the pleasure of my company. Or me of his. I will come."
One word. Theon's world stopped turning.
Ramsay.
Ramsay was here. Had come back, had actually been lying in wait, had been hoping for someone to try to rescue Mance. Had known, had known, had known. Might have seen him scaling the walls toward the cage. The world shut down around him, hidden there in the fetid heaps of Manderly's bedclothes, and he was only Reek again, Reek keening in the dark, Reek who wasn't even a man. No, he thought, no, I'm Theon, I'm Theon. . . but he was shaking so hard that surely, surely the Bolton man would notice.
"I need a moment to prepare myself," Manderly said coolly. "I will attend you then." And Theon heard the door shut with a snap.
Lord Wyman let out a slow, shuddering breath. He knows, he knows what this means as well as I do. Yet even facing the unthinkable, Manderly did not abandon himself to despair. He made a great show of rustling about and causing a racket, and then bent low to the bed; Theon could just see his broad shadow. "The Kings of Winter," Manderly breathed. "Bael the Bard. The rose of Winterfell. They dare not go there. Run there. Run."
The kings of winter. The ultimate Stark place, and I am no Stark. Yet Theon seized it, clutched at it the way he'd clutched at Tormund's knife. Bael the Bard. Mance must know the tale. It was faintly, vaguely familiar, but he couldn't pin it down.
The door opened. Manderly walked through it. It closed.
He is dead, Theon thought, he is a dead man and I soon will be as well. But somehow, the same as he had climbed the ladder, he was crawling out and pulling Mance with him, and waiting until the corridor had gone silent before he opened the door. Manderly had left it unlocked. Our only chance. To cross a castle with Roose Bolton in it, Roose and Ramsay, Ramsay, Ramsay.
If he gave himself even a moment to think about it, he would lose all heart. They toppled out into the corridor, scrambled down the stairs. Theon's arms ached and burned with Mance's dead weight, and his feet almost went out from under him. Still he did not stop. I have the knife. I have my choice.
They decanted into the bailey in a mad scramble. Torches flared, terrifyingly close. They reversed course and fetched against a locked portcullis, scrambled back, dodged around the bulwark of the guards' hall. Behind them Theon glimpsed the East Gate opening, had just the briefest glimpse of the heads of Soren Shieldbreaker, Harle the Huntsman, and Tall Toregg mounted on spears. Not Tormund. Not Asha. The gods alone knew what that meant. Run. Damn you, Greyjoy. Run.
The ironwood door that led underground was broken. He threw it aside with the last of his strength, and fell headlong down the twisting steps, still clutching Mance. The Kings of Winter. The rose of Winterfell. Something is down here, something Manderly wants us to find. . . he said the Boltons don't dare go here, the old gods know, they know. . .
He lay at the bottom, crumpled and gasping and bleeding. Bael the Bard comes home. The darkness before them was complete, and the stone breathed the freezing breath of the Long Night.
"Now," Mance's voice rasped. "Now, Turncloak. Someone will have seen us. Someone will brave it down here. Come. Come."
Theon struggled to his knees. There was not a part of him that did not ache as if he had been bludgeoned. But then it was Mance's arm under his shoulders, Mance pulling him up as he had carried Mance, and it was no longer Abel and Reek, it was Mance, Mance and Theon, and they struggled to their broken feet and fled into the darkness of the crypt.