ASHA
All around her, snow scythed relentlessly out of the iron-grey sky, turning the trees to wraiths and the world to shadow. She tasted it scouring in her mouth when she breathed, like sand, and it squeaked frigidly beneath her sodden boots. Asha Greyjoy was no expert on snow; her world was wrought of salt and stone and steel. Snow she left to Theon, the Starks' plaything and now the Boltons'. But it did not require a maester or a northerner to tell her that winter was coming, had come, was here, might never end. She'd had a bellyful of it on that march with the Baratheon host, but as a hostage of some importance, she'd been spared the worst of it. Now it was bent on killing her, would seep through her skin and stop her heart, would always find her, would always catch her – if Ramsay Bolton did not first.
She'd long since lost any idea of how long they had been running. Tormund would not let them halt or barely even slow, breaking trail in the massive drifts, always looking over his shoulder in a way that grated on her nerves even though the baying of hounds, the screams of men, and the clash of arms had long since faded. They had to get as far away as possible, as fast as possible, and Asha could not think about it, not if she wanted to keep going. It was hard to wrap her head around how quickly the whole thing had fallen apart. One moment she had been waiting below, hidden in the trees, watching Theon labor his way up the great stone walls toward Mance Rayder's crow cage. Her heart had been in her throat the entire time, and she gasped when the wind almost pitched them off into the snows far below.
Tormund, Soren Shieldbreaker, and Harle the Huntsman had already been absent, in charge of causing the diversion at the eastern gate, and when the two tiny figures vanished over the outer curtain wall, that was cue for the rest of them to follow suit at the main one. But something in Asha's instincts had been chirping at her, even as she watched Tall Toregg standing at the foot of the rope ladder, head craned back as he waited for the fugitives to reappear. Something is wrong. That was simply too easy.
And so, as the next vanguard of wildlings sounded their horns, bolted from cover, and rushed the gate, Asha had sprinted in the opposite direction. Away around the Broken Tower, toward the encroaching fringes of the wolfswood. It was a pissantly craven maneuver, to be sure, but Asha had always thought that extolling the virtues of a heroic death was all very well and good for some soft southron singer, sitting on his plump arse in a warm safe castle. The ironmen had always taken a harder and more practical look at the necessities of life, and the driving need to survive.
It was possible to pinpoint the moment that she knew the trap sprung for certain. The unholy racket the wildlings were making in the distance changed tenor somehow, and she looked back just in time to see Tall Toregg get shot, felled by the barrage of arrows hissing off the battlements. She glanced up to see the pink banners with their flayed men, flapping over the merlons – and, horribly, understood.
After that, everything turned into a free-for-all. Suddenly she felt Theon's terror, his broken voice whispering of Ramsay Bolton come hunting in the dark, and she struggled through the grasping dim trees, twisting her ankle but not caring, only fleeing. She was alone, alone, she'd die out here, and worse, she'd lost Theon. Sundered the promise she'd made to him and to herself and their mother. For a moment, the grief and the guilt were so overwhelming that she stumbled to a halt, seriously considering the idea of lying down and waiting for the end. Death by cold was said to be a gentle one; gentler for certain than fire, and gentler in spades than Ramsay Bolton. It would be better than any of the alternatives, and at least she could say she'd chosen it on her terms.
Then, like a good hard cuff across the face, sense returned. Hadn't she just been deriding the bards of foolish paeans for heroic deaths? Bad they very well might be, but a coward's death was lauded by no singer that bestrode the earth, greenlander or ironborn. And she was a Greyjoy, Lord Balon's blood and seed, the rightful heiress to the Seastone Chair. I cannot die and let the Crow's Eye win. Him and his motley gang of mutes and monsters, crawling over her homeland and choking it as blue as her dearest nuncle's lips. And his eye. That smiling mad eye, blue as blue. . . there are tales of other creatures with such eyes, and he is said to have known that which no other mortal man would have dared. . .
And that was when, with diabolically perfect timing, a hand grabbed her shoulder.
Biting a scream, Asha spun around, scrabbling for her dagger. She'd thought all sorts of things in that instant, and it took several instants more for her surging adrenaline to subside long enough to recognize Tormund Giantsbane. They stared at each other in paralyzed incomprehension, and then he grabbed her arm in his great paw and dragged them away into the wilderness.
That had been hours ago. At first Asha had held out a forlorn hope that other survivors might straggle in. She'd stopped hoping that by now.
Twilight was shrouding the woods in hoary violet by the time they simply had to stop. In fact, Asha's ankle had begun to give out several miles earlier, and Tormund was carrying her on his back. The old wildling was stout and strong and steely-hearted, but she could feel him shaking with exhaustion as he put her down. Her feet were numb, her fingers useless, and her very blood felt chilled and sluggish; she could no longer even shiver. Dully, Asha knew that this meant she was dangerously close to freezing.
"What's our plan now?" Even the soft words sounded as loud as a shout in the darkening forest, her speech clumsy and slurred. She thought of the ruined holdfast, singing to Theon as the snow scratched at the walls. "Where are we going?"
"I'm not after having a plan just now, lass," Tormund admitted. Great spears of hoarfrost clung in his white beard, giving him the look of some vengeful winter god. "After all, the last one didn't quite go as expected. Har."
"No. No, it didn't." Hugging herself, Asha tried to get back to her feet and walk a few paces, but her legs wouldn't hold up, and she collapsed again. She watched as Tormund struggled to make a fire, brushing snow off bent tree branches and piling them up at the center of the clearing. "Are you sure that's – ?"
"It's death for sure without it, lass." Tormund fumbled in his voluminous skin cloak, extracted a pair of flints, and produced a spark in one go, a skill that Asha had to admire. "But you're right. The wolves will be hunting tonight, and not all of 'em on four feet."
Asha absorbed this in an abstract sort of way. "We're dead out here," she said. "Even if they don't catch us. Unless we find some sort of shelter, we're dead within two days."
"Ah, lass. Nonsense. You and I could make it for a week." The grimness in Tormund's eyes belied his attempted jest. "Nothing we meet is like to be our friends, though. The Bastard's boys, or Stannis, or – "
"Stannis." Asha suddenly felt the cold again, riving through her to the heart. She started to shiver uncontrollably, her frozen sweat melting in the heat of the blaze Tormund was now industriously kindling. "My brother was left behind in Winterfell."
"So was my son." Tormund's booming deep voice was the closest thing to soft it could ever come. "And men I've hunted with, drank with, bled with, all these many years. You know what's become of them, lass."
"They could still. . . some of them could have. . ." She was clinging to delusions, Asha knew, but she could not entirely shake the hunch. "The Boltons still hold the castle, but Stannis is tightening the noose. And aye, if he found them, he'd kill them. But not if. . ."
Tormund frowned at her. "I'm not seeing where you're leading wi' this, lass. You and your brother scarce escaped from Stannis once with your skin. You try again, in hopes of getting your brother's flayed corpse out to kiss goodbye, your arse will be toasted for that demon god o' theirs before you can say – "
"That's it." It felt as if there was something stuck in her throat. "We know we'll die out here alone, and we certainly can't go back to the Boltons. Theon and I were valuable pieces to Stannis. He needs us. If we found his army, it might be he'd agree to march on Winterfell in all his strength at last."
"Why?"
"Because of me." The coldness Asha felt now was one the fire could not touch. "If I offered myself back to them, Stannis might agree to let Theon go. I. . . I have several different uses. I could marry Ser Justin, I could burn to death, I could tell everyone how decisively he defeated the ironborn. . ."
"If they find us out here, lass, they'll have us prisoner whether we agree to it or not."
"I. . . I know." Her leverage was indeed horrendously flimsy. But she had to hope that Stannis Baratheon, lord and master of all things law and order, might just hold to such an arrangement. If I told Stannis that I was his to do with as he wished. . . returned forever to his power and sworn not to try another escape, to become Lady Massey and bear half a dozen blonde smirking sons. Sons who would wear the Baratheon stag on their breasts, and worship the Lord of Light.
As a woman of the Iron Islands, who had captained her own longship and killed men in battle, whose blood was salt and whose god held court in the great halls of the sea, who bedded the men she chose and drank moon tea afterwards, this sounded to Asha a fate almost worse than death. And yet once more she thought of Theon – desperate to know his name, his identity, a prize lost since that scared scrawny nine-year-old had stepped onto the ship with Ned Stark and left his home forever, and beaten almost beyond recall by Ramsay. I have to.
Tormund was watching her curiously. He must have mirrored her thoughts uncannily to their conclusion, for he spoke suddenly, surprising her. "There was a time when I could never imagine having the least bit to do with a crow. I knew they were black-hearted devils and thieves and tricksters, and they'd rip out me heart and have it to supper, as quick as I'd do it myself. But then, the rum thing happened."
"What?" Asha asked, confused.
"I met one." Tormund guffawed. "Truly met one, that is, not on t' other end of a blade. And I learned what he was, and he learned what I was. And then the day dawned, it should happen, when Mance Rayder's good-sister rode up to me on behalf o' that crow, and said that he'd agreed to let us pass the Wall to safety. I'll tell you, it sounded as full as queer to my ears as this idea o' yours sounds now. Crows and wildlings, you and Stannis Baratheon. . . they go about as well together. But in the end, lass, it was the only way."
Asha blinked. "The crow? That would be. . . Jon Snow? What happened?"
"They killed him," Tormund said sadly. As Asha was about to protest that this seemed to undo the entire point of his story, the wildling went on, "Not my folk, his own. Stabbed him in the courtyard. It was for his sake as much as mine that I came south to Winterfell. And no matter whether it's with Stannis or without him, I'll not be crawling back home like a cur and a craven."
Asha was quiet. It was an atrociously dangerous gamble to make, on the threadbare possibility that Theon was still alive. But if he was dead, her value to Stannis increased tenfold. She was his last chance to prove how he'd brought down Greyjoy power, and it would be wiser to keep her alive, always around to display, than waste her blood on a nightfire. She even imagined that if she was allied to Stannis by dint of marriage to his loyal knight, he would feel honor-bound to assist her in the fight for her inheritance. Indeed, he'd have to. It would bring the Iron Islands under the purview of his crown, the same Iron Islands that had once risen up against his brother, and rid him of a dangerous enemy in Euron Crow's Eye. And if when it was done, I should find marriage to Massey too intolerable, the bridges of Pyke are known to be dangerous. My own lord father died by falling from one.
At that moment, Asha made up her mind. "Tormund," she said. "If you sleep a few hours, may we leave at moonrise?"
The wildling squinted at the sky. "Could be moonrise now, for all I can tell in this muck. And Toregg – " his voice caught briefly at the mention of his son, but he coughed and went on – "Toregg said that the Baratheon men were in the woods all around Winterfell. It's dumb luck we haven't struck on them yet."
"Dumb luck favors the wise." Asha got to her knees, then tried her ankle again. Blinding pain promptly lanced through it, and Tormund had to catch her. Well, that was encouraging. She gritted her teeth. "And if that's so, how hard can it be?"
Tormund looked at her a long moment, then sighed, put his hands under her legs, and lifted her up. She clung to him pig-a-back, like a small child, and held tight as he wearily lurched into motion once more. Apparently sleep would have to wait.
They'd been traveling for another hour at least, the woods dark as ink and a thin crescent moon scoring the clouds, when they spotted a witchy halo of torchlight not that far ahead. Voices drifted after it, muffled by the wind, and Asha found herself holding her breath. It could just as well be Freys, if not Boltons, and then it wouldn't matter how many plans she or anyone had in mind. They'd still be –
"Halt!"
Asha had never been so glad to see the wrong end of a longaxe in her life. Two longaxes, actually. They were heavy dark steel, crossed in their path by a pair of short, squat, fur-clad mountain clansmen who looked half bear themselves; it made her think of Alysane Mormont, and wonder if she'd ever made it to the Wall with Lady Arya. These two were not Mormonts, however, but Flints or Liddles or Wulls. Stannis.
"Har," Tormund said. "Cold night, is it, lads?"
The clansmen peered at him suspiciously. His cloth was in no better estate than their own, and in fact Asha would have been hard pressed to tell the difference between any of them, but they seemed to know that he was a wildling. They would; they'd grown up in the wilderness of the far north, skirmishing with the raiders who happened along periodically to filch their livestock and womenfolk. Both of them took a firmer grip on their axes, and Left growled, "You come to join up with us after all?"
"I'd chop both me feet off first," said Tormund, with admirable if ill-advised honesty. "It wasn't my own idea. The woman's. Where's the king?"
The clansmen exchanged a startled look. "None of your business. What woman?"
"Me," Asha rasped from Tormund's back. "Fetch Ser Clayton Suggs. He'll confirm that I am, in fact, a cunt."
"You?" Left nearly dropped his axe, while Right's jaw fell open and stayed that way. "The Greyjoy chit? Piss and damnation, you gave Stannis the bloody slip! What are you doing here now?"
"I can always go back, if you like. But I won't. Where's the bloody king?"
The two glanced at each other much longer this time before they finally answered. "Camped a mile distant," Right said. "We'll take you."
Asha had never thought that she would ever in her life have been grateful to hear that Stannis Baratheon was in the vicinity, but she was. Tormund put her down, and her arms were immediately taken by the corresponding clansmen. They were both shorter than her, but wiry strong, and her feet skimmed the snow like a broken puppet's as they hustled her through the fortified ring of tents and sentinels. The army seemed a deal smaller than the last time Asha had seen it, and she wondered just what Stannis had managed to pull over on Ramsay. She had no intention of underestimating him. After watching Arnolf Karstark transform into the king's double, she had known for certain that something more than merely mortal gave weight to his claim, that it wasn't only his tenacity and rock-headedness that had gotten him this far. It was easy to dismiss scurrilous gossip when it was only that, gossip.
Stannis' tent flew no banner, and was staked to all sides with a double palisade of sharpened sticks and torches. Two more clansmen stood on guard outside, and did not succeed in disguising their astonishment on sight of Asha. But at a brusque nod from their fellows, they pulled the flap aside without a word.
Inside, a skeleton clad in fur was bent over a brazier, scratching out a letter by the dim,, smoky light. He had to periodically move the inkhorn closer to thaw it out, and the shadows caught in his gaunt cheeks like depthless pits. But when he lifted his head and regarded her with eyes that were still as blue as cornflowers, Asha knew that it was him beyond any doubt. Why is it that all my foes have such eyes?
If King Stannis was shocked by her return, he gave no sign of it aside from a blink. Then he inclined his head half an inch. "Lady Asha. The hour is late."
"It is, Your Grace." Asha went to a knee, partly from a desire to hedge her bets and partly because her ankle had just given out again. "I would parley with you."
"Parley?" Stannis snorted. Laying aside his quill, he rose to his feet. "Is that what you call what you did? Tricking my men and fleeing with your traitor brother? By law, you forfeited the right to parley then and there."
Speak quickly. And carefully. Asha prided herself on having a way with words, but those were always glib witticisms and sarcastic rejoinders, the sort of banter exchanged at the helm of a ship or in the hall at drink. Nothing to treat with this man the way she now needed to treat with him. "I have just arrived from Winterfell, it may interest you to learn. Mance Rayder has been freed and Ramsay Bolton has returned."
Stannis's eyes, if possible, narrowed further. "I am aware. Of the latter, at least. I suspect he will not find his homecoming as triumphant as he expects."
This was not welcome news to Asha. If Stannis already had a plan in train to deal with the Bastard, that severely lessened the chances of his departing to rescue Theon, Mance, or any of the others. "What do you mean?"
A thin smile curled Stannis' fleshless lips. "All the feints and attacks we made on him were not in vain. There are several of my clansmen gone down beneath the castle; they were able to sneak in while he was out hunting us. Your turncloak brother told me of how a spate of mysterious murders gripped it before, how it sowed division and mistrust among Manderly and Bolton and Frey. I see no reason not to continue."
"There are clansmen hiding under Winterfell?" Asha repeated, startled. Mayhaps the prognosis was not so dim after all. Or more dim than ever, who bloody knew. "And my brother. . . Your Grace, I have come to make an offer to you."
"Have you?" Stannis' tone did not change. "What can you possibly give me, Lady Asha?"
She took a deep breath. "Myself. As bride for Ser Justin. And the Iron Islands."
Stannis laughed, a sound like breaking icicles. "The Iron Islands rightfully belong to me. You have no authority to give them or withhold them."
"Aye, but you will still have to take them. And the blood in the sea will be yours and your men's, if you intend to do so by force. I can make it much the easier."
"Why would you do this?" Those pitted eyes trained on her. "I understand how bargains are made, Lady Asha. Favors are given for favors paid. What do you want?"
Another breath. "My brother's life."
That startled him. He opened his mouth, shut it, then turned away. "Your brother – "
"Rescued Mance Rayder from his crow cage, and may yet be alive in the dark places beneath Winterfell. May even have met up with your clansmen, if they are still down there. But neither he nor they will be able to get out, with Ramsay Bolton returned. You will lose them all, and for what purpose?"
Stannis' jaw clenched. "I mean to burn your brother for his crimes."
"Your Grace." Asha took a step forward. "I. . . after we fled, Theon told me a peculiar tale. He said that Bran and Rickon Stark are still alive, that it was not them he killed but a pair of common miller's boys. I do not understand it myself, but I do not believe he was lying. I don't know where the Starks would be if it was true, but he never did it. I swear."
"Still alive?" Stannis could not dismiss that out of hand, she could see, but he was plainly unwilling to place much weight on the tale of a shattered, more-than-half-mad creature like Reek. Not Reek, Theon. "Your brother was raving."
"Aye, he was. But not about this."
"Even if it was so, he still killed two innocent children. And my clansmen all believe that he – "
Nothing for it. Asha looked the king straight in the eye. "Fratricide is a mortal sin, Your Grace."
The silence in the wake of those words was crackling. For an instant she thought he was going to jump at her, that he might draw the supposedly magic sword that lay in its sheath on the table, cut out her heart and bring a prompt end to anything she had dared to suppose about him. But she'd heard all the stories from his men as they labored north. Stories of shadows and swords and what they knew, or suspected, of how Renly Baratheon had met his end in the tent that night. She thought of the ruby glimmering as it glamoured Arnolf Karstark. I know.
"You. . ." Stannis had not been prepared for that. "You dare lay that charge at my feet, as if it was. . ."
"Theon is my brother as Renly was yours. Whatever I have thought of him in the past, he is my own flesh and blood. Leaving him to die at the hands of the Boltons would be the same as killing him myself."
Stannis' face was as pale as if he was a corpse himself. He does look one. "I – when my brother died, I was sleeping in my tent. I dreamed of shades, and blood on green plate, and a woman screaming. But when I woke, my hands were clean. I did not – " He gave his head an angry shake, as if he could not believe that he was wasting his time by vindicating himself to her. "He was a traitor. A traitor in arms. It was just."
"Justice is not all there is in the world, Your Grace," Asha said, knowing that to Stannis this would sound as if someone was informing him that there were other things besides air to breathe. "This is my bargain. I will marry Ser Justin with no word of complaint, and when I am Lady of the Iron Islands, swear to you as my liege lord and king. In return, I ask that you grant me military support in claiming it from my uncle Euron, and that you bring your army back to Winterfell and clean the Boltons out of there for good. And that if and when my brother should be found, you spare him and return him to my keeping, after having him tell your clansmen what he has told me."
"The clans. . . they grow restless." Stannis turned away again. "They increasingly mislike the Lord of Light and they increasingly mislike me."
"I should imagine that has something to do with the Lord of Light's fondness for burning innocent folk to death on pyres, Your Grace."
"Your brother is not innocent, Lady Asha," Stannis snapped. "And the Lord of Light has chosen me for his champion, I cannot – "
"I never claimed that Theon was innocent." Asha took another step forward. Her voice was growing heated. "Only innocent of what you would kill him for. You already did away with your own brother, but no matter what you tell yourself, that does not give you the right to do away with – "
"Silence!" Stannis roared, his voice smashing the air like a fist. "Your insolence most badly becomes a woman in your place, Lady Asha. Everything you offer is mine already. Everything you want is within my power to grant or take away already. What do you give me but words and wind?"
"I give you peace, Your Grace." Asha spread her hands. "Forgive me for saying so, but I see no peace about you now."
Stannis stared at her for a nerve-racking moment. She wondered if the guards were pretending to play deaf. Then he said, "The attack is almost prepared already. I do not intend to let Ramsay Bolton sit in the Starks' seat an instant longer than I must, you may believe that."
"I am gladdened to hear it, Your Grace. But my part in this is not the battle. You promised Ser Justin my hand. I know you did not mean to break it."
Stannis was plainly discomfited. At last he said, "You haggle like a fishwife, which I suppose is fitting for a Greyjoy of Pyke. I must – consult." By the way his eyes slid toward the burning brazier, she knew who he meant with.
"Must you, Your Grace? Or should you remember that you are the king, and as you were just telling me, no woman masters you?"
"Your tongue is your own worst enemy. Mayhaps I should order it cut out." Stannis lowered one hand just above the glowing coals. "Yet it does seem. . . strange. There are times when I feel almost that I am walking in a dream, that I never woke when I went to sleep that night before Renly died. I do not expect you to believe this, Lady Asha, nor do I much care if you do, but I loved my brother as you love yours. If I should not have a son, I would have had him follow me. It was his right, inasmuch as the throne is my right now. If he had but waited, if he had been more prudent. . ."
Renly Baratheon couldn't have found prudent with a dozen bloodhounds. Nor a woman's bed, as the tales would have it. There had never been much affection between the Baratheon brothers, Asha knew, even as there had been little between the Greyjoys. Yet something in Stannis' voice told her that he was not lying, that he was barely even capable of doing so. "I am sorry, Your Grace. You will have had enough of me for the nonce, I am certain. May I find a bed?"
Stannis continued to look at her with those unsettling eyes. Then he nodded once, dismissing her.
Stumbling out into the night air, which felt more frigid than ever after the stifling closeness of the tent, Asha hunted among the hodgepodge of disreputable-looking shelters until she found one that looked marginally less likely to fall on her head. There were furs enough inside, and sleep was already clutching at her like a murky black well. She fell headfirst and, fittingly, drowned.
She had no idea how much later it was when her sticky eyes finally opened. A day, perhaps more. Grey light sliced across her face, and there were shouts and crunching footsteps outside. It took her a small eternity to remember where she was, and then it all came crashing back. Heedless of her grogginess, her uncertainty, her likely betrothal and potential sacrifice, she pulled her cloak and boots back on and staggered out into the camp. It was alive with a riot of activity, clansmen scooting here and there like furry beetles and shouting at each other. And a sledge hauled by several more of them was just edging through the snow, and on it lay some immense motionless. . .
Man? Asha hadn't expected that. As she came closer, however, she saw that it was: a great fat man pale and wan with pain, blood soaking through the furs and bandages that he had been clumsily swaddled in. His eyes were closed, but they fluttered slightly at the noise. Someone was shouting for Stannis.
The king emerged a moment later, glanced around, stopped short, and stared. Then he turned his attention to the clansmen pulling the sledge. "Goodmen," he said. "I left you in Winterfell."
"Sorry, Y'Grace." One of the men shrugged. "We had to come back. You'll be pleased, though. Three of the Bastard's boys killed, and this one here saved. Bravest man I've ever seen, 'specially considering what they done to him. We heard him say as well, when we were hiding. . . we heard him say the Starks, that they was alive."
"I heard something similar last night." Stannis did not look at Asha as he spoke. "And there cannot be two men in the Seven Kingdoms of the same. . stature. Lord Wyman Manderly?"
The fat lord's eyelashes fluttered again, weakly. "My lord of Baratheon," he whispered. "I am most indebted. To you, and your clansmen."
Stannis acknowledged the words with a curt nod. "They have served their purpose. But I do wonder why they've chosen to save you. Were you not the very one who mounted Ser Davos's head and hands over White Harbor? If that is so, nothing you can possibly say will stop me from killing you here."
At that, Lord Manderly's pain-bleared eyes opened fully. "My lord," he said. "Davos Seaworth is alive. I know. I saved him myself."
Asha watched Stannis' face closely. Even that man could not disguise his emotions entirely, and it took him a moment to get himself back under his usual impeccable control. He said only, "How?"
"Long. . . tale." Lord Manderly coughed. Blood showed glistening on his lips. "No. . . time. But it's so. I sent him to find. . . Rickon Stark. Who is. Alive in the wild. If this was done. . . I pledged. . . I would take you for my king."
"I am your king," Stannis said, but without some of his usual asperity.
Lord Manderly smiled, agonized. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and the clansmen put their shoulders back to the harness of the makeshift travois and clipped away. Stannis watched them go, wearing an expression not dissimilar to one he might have worn if he had just been hit very hard in the face.
Asha wanted to remind him that she had told him, but it was plain that he already knew. He whirled on her, his heavy cloak trailing in the snow, and scrutinized her until it felt almost painful. Then he said, as if merely concluding the conversation they had been having last night, "It seems there are yet a few surprises left in store after all. Very well, Lady Asha, you have your bargain. You will marry Ser Justin, you will take the Iron Islands back in your name and then swear fealty to me, and you will have your brother's life. For then, as soon as aught is prepared, we will march on Winterfell once and for all, and make an end of every Bolton that walks this earth."