Hilda
The cold wind needled Hilda's bare arms, like a thousand icy pinpricks. She inhaled the frigid air until her lungs burned, closed her eyes, and felt tears trickle slowly down her cheeks.
I shouldn't cry, she thought.
Tears are useless.
And yet, the tears still came, burning cold trails down her face, one after the other, as if marching solemnly to a dreadful death.
To the west, a hundred coves and inlets, the rocky outcroppings blanketed by grey-green moss, cradled the churning western sea that stretched endlessly beyond the horizon. Jagged mountains rose in the northeast, beyond the Wolfswood, fading from grey to white as they climbed past the Wall into the frozen far north. Surrounded by ancient spruce, ironwood, and soldier pines, shrouded in thick mist, eyes closed, Hilda saw neither the sea nor the mountains nor the sky, but she could feel them, hear them, as surely as she could feel the wool of her gown, the leather of her breeches, hear her heart beating in her chest.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Death has claimed one of your blood, the sea had whispered to her the week before, as she stood upon the beach and watched the dark waves break green and white against the outcroppings.
And death comes for you, the mountains had rumbled. The sky only ever told her to rejoice, even when black and angry. In each of them she saw Kyne, the mother of all Nords, master of all elements. She could feel the goddess reaching into her soul, speaking directly into her heart.
Death comes for you, she heard again.
Rejoice.
The morning was cold and crisp, the wind biting, the sky grey and somber. Hilda's breath misted in the air, and as she listened for new omens, as the crows sang their mournful song, and the waves churned, more tears marched down her cheeks. She wept for her the loss of her lord grandfather, whose death the sea had foretold. His bones and belongings had arrived with the dawn, ferried across the Narrow Sea by her cousin and Thane, Thorfinn Deathbrand.
But that was not all she wept for.
Her cousin, Gunnar, one of her housecarls, who had returned west with Thorfinn, told her that her grandfather had killed a hundred men before one of them put a sword through his belly. He said that Old Vjorn had shouted them to death even as his innards seeped out of him, crushed them beneath the weight of his mace and the might of his thu'um. Gunnar's twin and her second housecarl, Gunther, said that Vjorn was drunk on mead and still buried in a woman when the battle came, tit in one hand, mace in the other.
Hilda couldn't be sure which of her housecarls was telling the truth, if either of them were, knowing the sort of man her grandfather was, and the sort of men they were, given to grand boasts and fanciful tales. All she knew for certain was that her grandfather was dead, had known it since the sea warned her.
He sups in the halls of Sovngarde now, she thought solemnly, as the wind twisted about her bare feet, curling around her toes, chilling them, sending her gown aflutter. Sovngarde was home to all Nords who died valiantly; the castle-city she ruled had been named for it.
That's why he went east, she told herself.
So that he might achieve glory and spend eternity with our fallen kin in Shor's hall. Hilda had been sad, at first, when Thorfinn brought his bones to her, but now, in the forest, as she cried beneath the gray sky, blonde tresses wisping in the wind, her sadness and frustration turned to anger, for now she had to bear the weight of the dead, and the living, all alone.
She was the Keeper of Sovngarde, the Dovahkiin, chosen of Shor and his wife Kyne, the Hero-God Ysmir made flesh. She had assumed all the titles when her grandfather went east, seven years hence when she was but a girl of eleven, but they had shared the responsibility, back then. Now, all that weight, all those expectations and beliefs, were as anvils chained to her limbs and neck, strangling her, drowning her beneath haunted, black seas.
Damn him, she thought, and took another deep breath. She scented pine in the air, felt cool earth beneath her feet. The wind rose to a piercing whistle, swept green-gold spruce and pine needles from their branches, sent them fluttering to the forest floor. Beneath the wind, a queer sound reached her ears, a low rumble like quaking stone, rising up out of the shadows. For a moment her breath stopped, mind leaping to the tales she had heard shared amongst her people, of draugr and daedra.
They're dead and gone, she told herself, heart quickening.
Or far away besides, beyond sea and ice.
She opened her eyes, finally, and looked out into the forest. The mist stretched and coiled through the woods like ghostly fingers. Glowing yellow eyes stared at her through the fog, dozens of glittering topaz gems that shined as bright and golden as the moon. She recognized them immediately.
Gods damned wolves. Can I get no peace? There were half a dozen that she could see; all of Jorrvaskr, no doubt. Even wolves born outside the clan took up residence in their mountain holdfasts. The small pack prowled the gauzy shadows, utterly silent as they encircled her, except for the rumbling growls, low and constant.
Hilda grabbed her sword, the leather grip cold and stiff in her palm. Her grandfather had had the sword commissioned for her shortly before her thirteenth year, after her woman's blood came. It was a truly beautiful sword, with a hand and a half hilt, twin blood grooves running the length of the blue steel. The black gem set in its pommel didn't shine so much as it absorbed light, a dark abyss fashioned into a jewel.
I have another sword now, she thought.
My grandfather's sword, the legendary Miraak, the blade of the first Dragonborn. Thorfinn had presented it to her, but she hadn't the heart to wield it just yet. It was still in her chambers, wrapped in a white lion's pelt, along with her grandfather's other spoils of war; great chests of gold and silver, jewelry and gems, diamonds, pearls, finery, tapestries, weapons, and half a hundred other things. Even a few women, little more than girls really, for all that they were her age or older, beautiful and weak in the way that pampered women were.
And all with child. I would send them back east elsewise. Grandmother will not approve.
They would be her aunts and uncles, those children, and they would never truly know their father, save through her, until they died themselves. Her sadness crept back, slowly, and her lip began to tremble.
"Leave me to my sorrow," she commanded the wolves, seizing the annoyance their presence wrought, using it to stifle her sadness. At the sound of her voice, a stillness fell over the wolves; their breath rose to join the fog, mixing in the chill air. The largest of them, a great, broad-shouldered, copper furred she-wolf with long, slender, muscled limbs, crept closer.
"Leave," Hilda said again, scowling. "You need not know my wrath on this day." If her breath hitched, the wolves gave no indication that they had heard. She pulled her sword from its sheath, the weight of it in her hand as comforting as a mother's caress. "Hircine could always use more beasts for his hunts," she threatened. "Perhaps I should send you to him."
The she-wolf crept closer still, head bent low. Her shoulders reached as high as Hilda's chest, and her teeth were like curved daggers, sharp and gleaming. And yet Hilda showed no fear; she bared her teeth and raised her sword as if to swing, and the she-wolf, a killer of men and beasts alike, rolled to her back and let out a long keening whine.
Hilda dropped her sword arm and breathed out sharply, huffing. "Fine, Maela. You may stay. The rest of you leave.
Now." Sulking, whining, snapping at one another's heels, the pack left her, fading into the mist like ghosts. She waited until the dark shapes were completely gone before she spoke. "Jarl Wulfgar sent you?" She watched the beast shift and shrink, fur shedding, bones snapping, melding, reshaping beneath the skin, claws melting into fingers. The sound was wretched, the sight even worse, but Hilda had seen the change hundreds of times. Thousands, even. She was used to it.
"No," answered Maela Jorrvaskr, when the change was done. Hilda was tall, but even she had to look up at Maela. She had strong, almost masculine features, but her lips were plump, and the curves of her tall, muscled body left no doubt as to her femininity. "I came of my own volition, as soon as I heard about Vjorn." Maela dipped her head in respect, then stepped closer to Hilda, the mist clinging to her naked form. Her thick red hair, seemingly braided with pine needles and bits of bark, hung down her back, and her pale skin was patterned with winding tattoos from her shoulders to her feet. "Have you-"
"No, not yet," Hilda said, already knowing what Maela was about to ask. "I would properly mourn his life before I seek him out in death. Even though I hardly knew him."
Maela frowned. "Your grandfather loved you more than you could ever know."
"Then why did he abandon me when I needed him most?"
His wisdom, his sword. His name, and the history behind it. I need them all. Especially now.
Slowly, the sun began to peek out from the slate grey cover of clouds that dominated the sky, and a trickle of golden light spilled through the trees. "He did not abandon you, my lady," Maela protested. "He sups in Sovngarde now. His counsel is yours, until-"
"Until I walk the halls of Sovngarde myself. I know, Maela. I'm the Keeper, now. The only Keeper. I
know. Even now I can feel him. He is sitting with the gods, with his kinsmen, with his ancestors, and he is happy."
"Then go and see him," Maela urged her. "There's no need to mourn him. Celebrate him instead, for the great life he lived and the glorious death he sought. Eternity is his now. Rejoice."
She does not understand, Hilda thought, even as her spine tingled at the reminder of Kyne's words to her.
None of them do.
Not her, not mother… Sovngarde was all her people seemed to care for, save for the wolves, who, upon death, were claimed by Hircine, Lord of the Hunt.
Nords lived and loved and died to reach Shor's Hall, to live amongst their ancestors and kinsmen, drinking and fighting their way through eternity.
But life is more than death. Hilda wanted more than that. Needed more than that. She preferred the castle Sovngarde in the living realm, as opposed to the great hall of death that her seat had been named after.
"He is of little use to me in Sovngarde," she said. Her tears were gone now. "We live in the realm of men, not spirits. The northern and southron lords cannot reach him in Sovngarde. They respected him, respected his word, his sword-"
"His blood," said Maela. "You are of his blood."
"Aye, I am."
"Then why do you weep? I watched the Hagraven pull you from your mother's womb. I have known you since your first breath. Never once have I seen you cry."
Hilda pushed her thick golden braids over her shoulder and started to pace, back and forth, back and forth. Her grandfather had worn his hair like hers, braided and wrapped in strips of leather, in the Nordic tradition. It was another reminder of what she had lost, and what she yet stood to lose. "Magnus sent word from King's Landing," she began. "The king's Hand is dead, and the king himself rides north for Winterfell as we speak, presumably to appoint our liege as his new Hand." She felt a twinge of pain in her palms, and only just realized how tightly she was clenching her fists. "He means to take Wulfric hostage."
Wulfric Ysmir. Lord of Sovngarde. Her younger brother.
Maela loosed a rumbling growl, fingers lengthening into claws, teeth growing into fangs. "I won't allow it," she ground out, voice deep and guttural. "I'll kill him before he puts a hand on that boy. I'll rip out his heart and feast on his fat, kingly flesh."
The decision isn't yours to make. "You won't ask why he wants Wulfric as a hostage?"
Maela shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He can't have him. Right?"
Hilda wished it were that easy. "Thorunn wed Daenarys Targaryen," she said. "The Mad King's daughter. Thorfinn believes that he has pledged his men to help Viserys Targaryen claim his birthright, the very throne that Robert Baratheon sits. A throne that we helped sit him on."
Maela dropped her head. "Aye, I know, I was there. I fought alongside your father. Stood with him, when he died."
Hilda smiled. Her mother had told her the story dozens of times, of how her father had fallen against the white knight, Ser Barristan the Bold, on the banks of the Ruby Ford. "And I thank you for that. I always have and I always will." She leaned against a crooked ironwood, the bark still damp with morning frost, and her smiled turned melancholic. "Thorunn has warred his entire life. He was weaned on war; it is all he has ever known or desired. He yearns for it as a hungry babe yearns for his mother's milk." She looked down at her hands, as if she might find some answer in the lines of her palms. "I imagine he's somewhere fighting now; a pitched battle against sellswords, a tavern brawl, perhaps even in one of the slavers' arenas."
Maela almost snarled. "And knowing the sort of man Thorunn is, you still mean to send Wulfric south. To let him be taken."
Hilda sighed. "For now. I can do little else."
Maela was silent for a very long while. "And what of Thorunn?" she asked finally, almost painfully. Thorunn, like her, was of Clan Jorrvaskr, though he had spent most of his life in the far east. They were blood kin, and no Nord would ever wish ill on their own blood. And yet, she asked, "Will you perform the Sacrament?"
Hilda was reluctant to use the Black Hand against her own people, but she could not ignore the danger Thorunn represented. "If no other option presents itself," she admitted.
"You'll find another way. You're a clever girl, and tenacious. You've your mother's wit."
"Thorunn cares nothing for my wit. He only respects strength."
"Aye, he does. But you have that too."
"Only just. My grandfather could have stopped him. Curbed his stupidity, or his lust, whichever led him to wed the Targaryen girl. King Robert trusted my grandfather. Loved him. Even if Vjorn couldn't have stopped Thorunn, he could have dissuaded the king from taking my brother, reassured him,
something. King Robert has neither trust nor love for me, for all that my father died for him. If Thorunn makes an attempt for the throne my brother will die." She looked towards the heavens; only slivers of the sky were visible through the canopy. "Now do you see how my grandfather abandoned me? Do you see why I weep? He couldn't have died at a worse time."
"If King Robert kills Wulfric, he and his won't be long for this world," Maela promised. "Every Nord would take up arms, old and young alike. We would burn this land to ash."
Some of it, Hilda thought
. But not all. Westeros is too large. "You asked why I weep? I weep because I am afraid. Because I am angry, and frustrated, and alone. Because I don't know what to do, or where to turn. My people know war. We know death. But for the two centuries we've lived here, for the Houses we've married, and the seas we've explored, we are still strangers to this land. Outsiders, to all the lords below the Neck. A war with the crown would spell our demise. Thorunn must know this."
"He knows that with our full strength, and his full strength, we could carve ourselves a great portion of this land. The North, the Iron Islands, the West... all could be ours. Call upon the Blood Flower, and the rangers, and all the Nords who went south. You need not fear a war against the throne."
Hilda shook her head, annoyed at Maela's insistence on battle. "I would rather stop war, not encourage it."
Maela scoffed. "We are Nords. We aren't meant to stop wars. We are meant to end them."
Hilda said nothing to that, standing still for several breaths before she turned away to start the long, familiar trek back to Sovngarde. The trail seemed to sprout up out of the ancient forest, twisting for a little over a mile through dense woods and sparse, wet meadows, out into the misty, moss covered bog, where the trailed died and the road began. Maela shifted back to her wolf form and followed behind her, padding silently through the undergrowth. Hilda heard the other wolves return, heard their yips and snarls, but they kept to the trees; she was equally irked and touched by their devotion and discretion. The bog soil was moist and spongy; she had to walk quickly and lightly lest she sink into the muck, until she reached the solid road. She saw what looked like moose tracks cutting across the trail. Two of the wolves stopped to sniff at the tracks, then took off deeper into the woods.
The road was wide, pitched in places and cobbled in others, with ditches dug along the sides for rainwater, markers for distance, and bridges that arced over the more treacherous stretches of the bogs. The road was busy too, as traders and travelers made their way from Sovngarde to Winterfell and beyond. It stretched east for over a hundred leagues, dotted here and there with small villages and hamlets, cutting through the Wolfswood and all the way to Winterfell, with several branches: one curved down through Torrhen's Square, around Salt lake, and on to Barrowton through the hills, and another wound down to the Stony Shore and the lands of House Blackbriar, across the Rillwater and through the rills to the seat of House Ryswell.
She wondered, as she walked, Maela trotting behind her, if her grandmother might want to visit her brother and nephews at the Rills, and if her mother would return now from Dawnfort, in the far North. Wulfric would want to see her, she knew. No doubt he had heard by now what the king had demanded of him. The Hrothgar would have told him at the first opportunity.
Heavily laden wagons rumbled up and down the road, a couple pulled by upwards of twenty horses, passing every half hour or so. Traders and merchants traveled absent guards through New Skyrim, for even before the roads had been built, Hilda's five times great grandfather, Thorvard the Mighty - who wed Sarra Stark and sired Helga the Heavenly, the Axe-maiden and third Dovahkiin to rule Sovngarde - had tasked his warriors with regularly patrolling the lands as far east as the western fork of the White Knife.
The drivers, as she came upon them, called out blessings and prayers, for her, her father, and her grandfather, and forced gifts upon her, as it was considered a bad omen amongst Nords, traders and merchants especially, to not share their goods with the Dovahkiin whenever possible. It was considered an even worse omen for the Dovahkiin to reject them.
She received a lovely tan mare from the first merchant, a tall, wrinkled woman with stark white hair named Agatha who refused to let her walk barefoot all the way to Sovngarde and berated Maela for not demanding Hilda ride her. "Shor's beard!" she had exclaimed upon recognizing Hilda. "Dovahjud, you mustn't ruin those feet of yours on this hard earth! And you, wolf! What use are you, eh? A shame to the Jorrvaskr name! Lord Markus should have you shaved. Take one of my horses, Dovahjud, please; I would be honored for you to ride her."
The second merchant gave her a beautiful shadowskin cloak, a deep black that was slashed with white; he was a ranger too, by the faces of Kyne woven into his garments, and he scolded her for being out in the cold with little more than a sleeping gown. "We Nords were born of the ice, it is true," he had said, his beard so thick that Hilda couldn't see his mouth move, "but that is no excuse to be out in your undergarments, Dovahkiin!"
The third merchant, another woman, heavy-set and almost as tall as Maela, gave her a wool gown and a wineskin; the fourth, a man in fox and ferret furs, cooked her a much needed meal of grilled leeks and cabbage, mutton, fried potatoes, and shrimp paste on hard bread, washed down with honeyed mead. The fifth gave her a silver brooch to fasten her cloak, and a ring with a beautifully cut garnet; the sixth, who rode with her two young sons, gave her a pair of sturdy boots to better spur her horse, but only after cleaning her feet and making her a rasher of whale bacon. She thanked each of them, genuinely, prayed with them and for them, ate with the one, blessed the woman's sons, and all the while the sun continued its slow journey through the northern skies.
With the horse beneath her, who she decided to call Qonos, Lightning strike in the common tongue, she made much better time back to the castle-city, and Maela seemed to enjoy the opportunity to run.
A few of the travelers Hilda came across weren't Nords, and even she could smell their fear when they looked upon Maela, who, on four legs, looked like nothing so much as a direwolf with the musculature of a bear.
And then, there it was, beyond the wetlands, half hidden in the heavy fog: Sovngarde, the seat of House Ysmir. The castle itself had been built on the southern arm of Sea Dragon Point, atop ancient First Men ruins. The city around it sprawled across a vast tract of land, in the center of which was a high hill crested by seven ancient weirwoods, left untouched after the Carving.
The Nords called it "Seventree Hill"; back during the reign of Ragnar Redbeard, a great hero and the son of the first Dovahkiin to rule, carpenters had carved the Nordic Gods into the bone white boles above the solemn faces of the northern Gods, only to watch them weep blood.
Thinking them some strange, northern magic, Ragnar had wanted the trees burned out root and stem, but a Northman showed him that the blood was only sap, and the wood was valuable, for it never rotted. After learning this, Ragnar cut down all but seven of the trees, and used the wood to fashion rafters, furniture, and weapons. His seven foot longbow still hung in Sovngarde's great hall, beneath rafters fashioned from the same trees.
Massive walls of slate grey stone as tall as old spruce trees rose out of the earth and stretched for a mile in either direction, with towers that were spaced every few hundred or so yards. Hilda smiled as the city came into view, for she loved her people as much as they loved her, despite the burden of her responsibilities. The din of the city was as a siren's song, calming her nerves and settling her thoughts so much that she smiled widely, almost overcome.
She knew, suddenly, exactly what she would do, how she would placate the king, how she would curb Thorunn's aggression. She heard wrens and warblers chirping almost frantically, and Maela, sensing her changed mood, loped closer and yipped at her like some wet-behind-the-ears pup. Beneath the midday sun, the city seemed to glow, and even Qonos was unbothered by the massive wolf trotting at her side.
The outer wall branched out from the barbican, with its turreted corners and dragon's head crenellations; behind the stout structure was the city, whose tallest towers and buildings seemed as if to disappear into the heavens, standing proudly above a second inner wall that was even taller than the first, crested in black iron, black dragon banners flying high above the conical spires, roiling in the wind.
The portcullis, so wide that fifty horseman abreast could comfortably ride through, was wrought from latticed steel, and monstrous moats had been dug around both the outer and inner city walls, each moat several dozen feet deep and wide. Hilda saw otters swimming in the outer moat as she crossed the black oak bridge into the barbican, knifing through the dark waters. There was a loud splash; she looked back and saw one of Maela's wolves frolicking in the water, chasing after otters.
Sovngarde, she had heard spoken, was the grandest castle in all of the north, grander even then Harrenhal, some whispered, for the great builders who had sculpted the castle had put their souls into the stone and made it living, to be shaped as easily as clay, and giants and mammoths had set the living stone, stacked its mountainous walls and dizzying towers. It stretched across several thousand acres; if not the grandest castle, Hilda thought, it was certainly the grandest city. According to the many travelers who visited Sovngarde, only the capital, King's Landing, and Oldtown were more populous.
The citizens and soldiers milling about at the gate all bowed as she passed, giving blessings, condolences, and one of them asked if she might see fit to take a message to his dead kinsmen.
"Write down your message," she told him, and all the rest who might have been afraid to ask, already feeling the headache that would come when she ventured to Shor's Hall, "and the name of who you wish to receive it, and leave it for me at the temple."
The portcullis rattled and clanked its way shut; she continued across the second, longer bridge, and into Sovngarde, pushing Qonos into a gallop.
She had messages to send, and dead souls to visit.
/~/~/
