The clamor that had filled Winterfell for days gradually faded as the bannermen rode out.
The North's war machine had begun to turn.
In seven days, it would roll south like a hammer blow.
In the main courtyard, Arya was practicing thrusts with Needle, one careful motion at a time. Snowflakes settled on her hair and shoulders. She didn't notice.
Her grey eyes kept drifting toward the courtyard gate.
"Stop looking. He's leaving. You can't stop him."
Myrcella's voice came from behind her.
She was wrapped in a thick white fox-fur cloak, holding a steaming cup of milk, which she held out to Arya.
Arya didn't take it. She sheathed Needle with a flicker of irritation.
"I wasn't trying to stop him."
"Your eyes say different."
Myrcella blew gently on the steam.
"He needs to go prepare his army. It's important."
Arya knew it was important.
She just... she had only just become Lynn's wife. She hadn't even had time to settle into what that meant, and now he was leaving again.
Then a tall figure appeared at the courtyard gate.
Lynn.
Arya's eyes lit up instantly.
But she turned her head away, stubborn as ever, pretending to study the snow piled on the distant battlements.
Lynn walked over to her. He took one look at her expression — I'm not angry, but you'd better start talking — and couldn't help smiling.
He didn't say anything. He just reached out and stroked her hair.
"I need to go back to the Gift," he said.
"Mm."
The sound came through her nose.
"To bring my army back."
"Mm."
"Do you want to come see?"
Arya's head snapped around. Her eyes went wide with something she didn't quite dare believe.
"I... I can go?"
"You're the lady of that place now."
Lynn tapped her nose.
"Of course you can."
Arya's heart skipped a beat.
Lady.
The word burned in her cheeks. It also felt like her whole heart had been dropped into warm honey.
Half an hour later, a dragon's roar split the sky above Winterfell.
A massive shadow swallowed the castle whole.
Winter surged into the air. The gale from its wings tore the snow off the battlements and sent it spinning in every direction.
Arya locked her arms around Lynn's waist, her face pressed into the solid warmth of his back.
Winter was faster than she'd imagined. The wind hit her face like a blade, but Lynn's body blocked most of it. She cracked one eye open and looked down.
Winterfell shrank beneath her, collapsing into a grey smudge of stone, then into the white sprawl of the snowfields and the dark ink of the forests beyond.
The entire North spread open below her in a way she had never seen before. Vast. Endless.
A hundred times better than any horse she'd ever ridden.
She couldn't hold it in. She let out a whoop, arms tightening around him.
It felt less like flying and more like holding the whole world.
Just over two hours later, the Gift appeared on the horizon.
Arya had expected a wildling camp. Dirty tents. Campfires burning wherever someone had felt like lighting one. The usual chaos.
What she saw instead stopped the breath in her throat.
That was no camp.
That was a fortress city rising out of the earth.
A black castle sat at the center, and radiating outward from it, black tents and timber barracks stretched in neat, ordered rows, precise as squares on a chessboard. Broad roads cut through the whole thing, and wildling patrols moved along them in steady rotation. On the watchtowers, Lynn's three-headed black dragon banner snapped in the wind.
Along the outermost edge, a temporary wall of timber and ice was still going up. Hundreds of wildlings worked in rhythm, chanting as they heaved massive ice blocks into place.
These were the savage, bloodthirsty wildlings?
This was a disciplined army.
Winter settled in front of the largest fortress, the one Lynn had named Dragon's Hold. The landing sent a ripple through the whole town. Then someone recognized the figure on the dragon's back, and the ripple became a wave.
"Lynn!"
"The King-Beyond-the-Wall has returned!"
Wildlings dropped their tools and dropped to their knees, turning toward Winter with something blazing in their eyes that went beyond respect.
Lynn swung down from Winter's back and set Arya on her feet.
A woman was already striding toward them, red leather armor, longbow across her back, red hair that moved like fire. Her eyes found Lynn and lit up with something sharp and hungry.
Ygritte.
Behind her came a man built like a bear, with a great red beard and a grin that took up most of his face.
"Lynn! You're finally back!"
Tormund grabbed him in a bear hug that could have cracked ribs.
"I was starting to think those southern women had scrambled your head so bad you forgot which way was north!"
Ygritte wasn't looking at Lynn anymore. She was looking at Arya.
She took her time about it. Looked the girl up and down, small, slender sword on her hip, grey eyes like a wolf pup that hadn't learned to be afraid yet, and a slow, amused smile pulled at her mouth.
"Well. Got yourself a new wife?"
Ygritte had no filter.
"Looks less sturdy than a deer I dropped with one arrow."
Arya's brows went flat. Her hand moved to Needle's hilt.
"Ygritte." Lynn shot her a look.
Ygritte shrugged and said nothing else.
But she walked up to Arya, leaned in close, and looked her dead in the eyes.
Arya didn't blink.
Ygritte gave a single nod.
Then she turned her back on Arya entirely and started reporting military matters to Lynn.
Arya stood there, not quite sure what had just happened.
"Don't mind her." Tormund appeared at her elbow, voice dropped low, a wall of alcohol fumes hitting her in the face. "She's all mouth. Needs a good slap, that one."
He was clearly still nursing a grudge over whatever Ygritte had said about him liking them hairy.
"Lynn." Tormund raised his voice again. "This trip back — are we finally doing something big?"
"Gather the army, Tormund."
No preamble.
"I want to review them."
"Now we're talking!"
Tormund slapped his thigh and went to give the order.
Horn blasts tore through the military town, one after another.
The wildling soldiers assembled with a speed that shouldn't have been possible.
Arya stood at Lynn's side and watched. Her heart was hammering.
The infantry came first.
Five full phalanxes of a thousand men each, drawn up across the snow outside the walls.
These were not the ragged mobs she had heard stories about, the ones with bone spears and stone axes. Every wildling wore standard plate armor, cold light running across every surface, animal hides layered underneath for warmth. Not the finely worked full plate of knights, but breastplates, shoulder guards, arm guards, leg guards, all of it present, all of it fitted. Chainmail covered the gaps. Closed iron helms left only their eyes exposed, and those eyes were sharp even in the biting cold.
Their weapons matched.
The first three rows carried pikes over five meters long. Under the flat grey sky, the spear tips made a forest of steel that hurt to look at. The rows behind them wore longswords and carried kite shields.
Arya's mouth fell open.
She had watched her father review the North's armies at Winterfell. Even the best of the Stark household guard had never pressed on her chest like this.
These were the free-spirited, undisciplined wildlings?
Most of them were still in leather, the plate armor had only been in production a short time, not long enough to outfit everyone. Those without plate carried bows instead. No armor meant ranged duty. Nothing wasted.
And this was only the beginning. Lynn intended to arm all of them, eventually.
"Roar!"
The ground shook.
Not a tremor. A sustained, building shudder, like something enormous walking.
Arya grabbed Lynn's arm without thinking.
Behind the infantry phalanxes, shapes were moving. Too large. Wrong scale entirely.
Giants.
At least a hundred. A closer count put it closer to three hundred.
Each one stood over four meters tall, moving like hills that had decided to go somewhere.
Twenty of them led the column, archers. The bows in their hands were not bows. They were entire trees stripped and bent, with bowstrings thicker than a man's forearm. The arrows in their quivers were the length of siege spears, tipped with heads forged for punching through armor.
One shot from one of those would pin a fully armored knight and his horse to the earth.
Behind the archers came thirty giants in full plate.
The armor had been forged by craftsmen at the Dreadfort, built from the Lannister iron reserves, hammered out specifically for each of them. The plates were obscenely thick, studded with crude rivets, edged with flanges. They moved like iron golems brought to life, swinging warhammers and maces that a normal man couldn't have lifted off the ground.
Just standing there, they crushed the air around them.
Arya forgot to breathe.
Then the ground groaned louder.
"MOO!"
The sound hit like a peal of thunder.
On the flanks of the armored giants, fifty shapes lumbered into view.
Mammoths.
Creatures out of legend, said to live only in the Lands of Always Winter beyond the Wall.
They were taller than the giants. Long shaggy hair swept the ground. Their tusks were curved and enormous, pale as old bone, catching what little light the sky offered.
They wore armor too. Heavy plates draped across their flanks and shoulders. And on their backs sat fighting platforms, massive wooden structures, each one carrying a giant knight with a flail the size of a wagon wheel.
Giant mammoth cavalry.
As the fifty war beasts advanced in formation, Arya felt the ground moan under her feet.
She could already see it. A battlefield. Those things moving through an enemy line. What would be left.
Infantry like a forest. Giants like mountains. Mammoths like moving fortresses.
This was Lynn's army.
A force that could make all of Westeros hold its breath.
Arya looked up at his face.
Lynn looked calm. Like this army, this thing that could unmake kingdoms, was a toy he'd put together without much effort.
Something settled in Arya's chest that she hadn't felt before. Not just admiration. Not just the warmth she'd been carrying since the wedding. Something deeper and quieter.
Safe.
With him here. With this army here. Whatever madmen were loose in the Riverlands, whatever Lannisters sat in King's Landing, they were nothing. Chickens waiting for the axe.
The review ended. Lynn left Tormund and Ygritte to finish preparing the army for the march south. Then he took Arya, still not fully back from the shock of it, and led her toward the rear of the military town.
A heavily guarded area. A cave mouth, sloping down into the earth.
The cold coming out of it was a different kind of cold. Deeper. Like the air itself had never been warm.
"Where are we going?"
"To show you the trump card that makes us unbeatable."
Inside, the temperature dropped further. Frost coated the walls in thick layers. The cave opened into a series of chambers cut from the ice, each one sealed off from the others.
In each chamber lay a body. Some, several.
Wildlings killed in battle. Criminals who had been executed. Enemy dead that Lynn had, in his words, recovered.
"What are you..." Arya looked at the faces, some peaceful, some not. The cold crawled up her spine. "What do you want with all of these?"
Lynn didn't answer.
He walked to the center of one chamber. A single body lay here, a wildling who had died in a brawl with another man. Lynn raised his hand, palm facing down toward the corpse.
"Watch."
His voice had dropped. There was something in it she couldn't name.
The temperature in the cave plunged.
A stream of deep blue cold erupted from his palm, visible as smoke, and it poured over the body in an instant. Frost raced across the skin. The air filled with a sharp cracking sound, the kind that set your teeth on edge.
Arya watched the corpse's skin go pale. Then tight. Then sunken, as if every drop of moisture was being pulled out of it in seconds.
Lynn's face had gone pale too. Sweat was beading at his hairline.
This was costing him something.
Just when it looked like the body would freeze solid, all the cold air snapped inward. It didn't dissipate. It poured into the corpse and vanished.
The cave went quiet.
The body lay there. Unchanged, as far as Arya could tell.
"And then?" she asked, barely above a whisper. "Did it not work?"
Lynn shook his head. The corner of his mouth twitched.
Then the corpse's eyes opened.
Not a living person's eyes.
No whites. No pupils. Just deep blue flame, burning steadily inside the sockets.
Arya screamed. Needle was in her hand before she'd decided to draw it.
The thing that had been a corpse sat up slowly, moving like a puppet with half its strings cut. It turned its head. Bone ground against bone, a sound that scraped along the inside of her skull.
The burning blue eyes found Lynn.
Lynn looked back at it without a trace of fear. And gave his first order.
"Kneel."
The White Walker knelt. No hesitation. Stiff joints bending, heavy impact as it hit the ground, head lowering before him.
Complete. Absolute. Submission.
Arya stared.
White Walkers.
Lynn.
He had made one. Made one that listened to him, that obeyed him, that knelt at his feet like a hound.
Was this right?
➤ Next: The Horn of Winter Summons the Frost Giant