A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

Ninth Day of the Second Month 294 AC

Brynden Tully knew he would die with sword in hand. He had known it at fifteen, looking out over the bloody field and struggling to keep his breakfast down with all the pride and stubbornness of a squire new to war. He had known it at thirty five when he had told Hoster where he could shove his marriage offers, that there was no soft bed with silken sheets waiting for him, no lady wife with a soft smile.

Now at fifty, riding through sharp vales, ravines carved into the face of the mountains as though by the claws of some angry god, that there could be a clansmen behind every rock and twenty more in every cave, he knew it just as well. But he would be damned if he did not do all he could to keep alive as many of the young knights who had followed him. Andrew Tollet wasn't dead or worse the last time someone saw him, neither were a few others of that column, boys with their whole life ahead of them for all they would hate him for calling them that.

So Brynden had saddled his horse and made off down the path into the veil. Heartened by the the choice and shamed by their earlier fear, more than two dozen knights followed in the vanguard, with many more daring to step in their wake, the whole prong of the advance really. Warrior grant that we don't find something nastier than we can chew... or that chews us up. The moment of grim humor that he dare not speak aloud had the gift of drawing a smile from the old knight. Some things hadn't changed since the War of the Ninepeny Kings.

He did not notice the fog, at first thin wisps of it curling around the horses legs. The the beast shivered under him, and not from cold, as a howl sounded in the distance not like any beast Brynden had ever known.

"Stand, stand knights of the Vale!" he called out in a voice accustomed to making itself heard and obeyed over battlefields far and wide. "We'll not flee with our tails between our legs, no matter what witchery the wildlings bring." In his heart, Brynden doubted this was wildlings. He hadn't heard of them raising wights, but it was good to give men familiar foes when they doubted themselves.

Before he could say another thing, the hills came alive with the moans and groans out of nightmare. Beasts, dead and rotting, charged at them from all around, including places they couldn't have hidden in. All with eyes blue as winter's ice. The words of that singer Edmure made a friend of came back at him clear as the day he first heard them. Northmen will be coming south next winter, both sorts, and you had best let them in because you'll need every living hand against what's coming on their tail.

But it wasn't winter, Brynden thought desperately as he cut down something that may have been a deer once, though only one antler and about half the skull remained festooned with pieces of rotting flesh. There were too many of them... too damn many...

Brynden saw Henry Melcome bound with ropes of shadow and ripped apart by the beasts. He saw Sam Upclif, the oldest here save him, frozen in place as though from terror, his horse with him, before the dead tore him apart.

"I smell her blood... traitor... betrayer... smells sweet..." A voice soft as the hissing wind passed over the battle yet clear as if it had beem whsipered in their ears. "I smell you, scales black and scales withered, black fish rotting on the bank!"

Brynden turned to see it, a giant of ice and withered flesh, its great clawed hands too large even for its titanic body. A reasonable man might be looking for a path away from the damn thing that had appeared from the fog like some nightmare out the the Age of Heroes. No one had ever accused Brynden of being reasonable. "What buisness have you with me!"


"The False Queen's debt, a child she asked for, a child we gave her, and yet she still thinks to defy us." A dreadful sound like breaking ice filled the air and the beasts drew back.

Oh Lysa what did you do? A part of Brynden, a very small part, found a sort of comfort in the familiarity of the thought.

"Aye, you look like you could have much to do with wombs and babes," the Blackfish said in as scathing a tone as he could manage. Could you taunt something like this?

"We do not lie. Only mortals lie and deceive, look to thine kin for it," the creature replied. "Come and face me, spill your blood upon my claws. No matter the outcome, I will allow the reminder of thy fellows to part in peace."

Not like he wasn't planning to kill it anyway, Brynden thought. "I'll take that bargain, monster, but know I won't be sparing your pets if it comes to it!" With these words the Blackfish charged, the skills of a lifetime against whatever horror stood before him. Twice the steel bit into withered flesh, though when it struck the ice he did not hear it shattering, but for each blow he paid a price.

First his horse died under him from a stomp of the giant foot, then his sword arm shattered under the steel guard. As he struggled to draw his dagger in his left, the claw came for him again. He rammed the blade in its palm and then he fell down and down into the dark. His wounds didn't hurt anymore and the stone was soft as silk beneath his head.

What next?

[] Receive an operational report (Interlude chain)
-[] City of Brass, where the foundations are laid for a most perilous raid
-[] Slaver's Bay, where devils plot in the shadows
-[] Qohor, where dreams of madness spill into the waking world
-[] Vialesk, where enemies overt and hidden move against your envoys -
-[] Investigation into the hostile fey of the Braavosi hinterlands
-[] Write in

[] Receive a research report (Interlude chain)
-[] Study of the Serpentstone
-[] Developing Imperial Powered Armor
-[] Write in

[] Continue with Viserys
-[] Write in

OOC: I thought about doing the part with Lysa and her son next, but that will happen towards the end of the month, it will take time for what was witnessed here to make the rounds in the Vale.Not yet edited.