[Chapter Size: 4400 Words.]
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Third Person POV
Last Hearth, 300 AC.
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The ravens flew and approached each of their destinations.
The first had arrived at the Wall, where all the confusion had happened with a maester who was discovered to be a spy keeping watch on the mysterious kingdom beyond the Wall, which had been rising for a long time, implanted by the Citadel even before the trouble in Oldtown or Arctic's first voyage to create trade outside the kingdom.
This had been done because they had to replace Aemon at the time, who had been taken north of the Wall.
The second castle where the ravens arrived was House Umber at Last Hearth, which first received the ravens with the official documents about the schemes of the Order of Maesters.
Mors Umber, who had been taking care of the house while his nephew and great-nephew were warring in the south with Robb Stark, looked at the letters with a frown.
The letter clearly stated that the Rebellion had been a scheme that the maesters had manipulated to happen. After all, the starting point of the rebellion was the news that Prince Rhaegar had kidnapped Lyanna Stark.
That caused a chain of events to happen like a cascade, such as Brandon and Rickard perishing in King's Landing under the orders of the Mad King, and then the order to kill Ned and Robert.
If Lyanna's letter had truly reached Brandon and Rickard, the events would have been different, but that had been prevented by the maesters.
Mors could not help but frown. The lord called the maester of Last Hearth and showed the papers to him.
"My lord, I knew nothing about this," he said defensively.
In the end, he could not go against those documents. The maesters had left many records signed by themselves. That allowed Mors to spread the information throughout the entire North, with a request that those sheets not be destroyed, because, as they were originals, he wanted to use them later simply as proof of good faith to show how Westeros had been manipulated.
Mors could no longer look at the maester the same way after that. Until then he had always trusted his maester, but after what he had read, he could not help but look at him and know that there was an organization behind him that simply wanted to change the world.
As Jon had written in his own words in that letter, they wanted to destroy Arctic because it was a threat to the world they wanted to create: a world without magic, where the order would manipulate all its lords from the shadows, and all maesters would always give their loyalty to the order even before their own families or the lords they served.
"Tell me the truth, maester. Do you answer to me or to that order you swore loyalty to? I hope you tell the truth, because otherwise you will take the road and leave," Mors growled at the maester.
In the end, between deciding to leave in the middle of a kingdom at war or admitting the truth, the man cowered and openly said that he followed the order before anything else.
Mors became angry, very angry about this. In the end, he had someone he could not trust and, because of that, from then on he only sought the maester when it was necessary, but he no longer gave any information about his house.
He even told Ned, the current heir, since there had been no news about the two Jons in the south...
Mors had also been thinking about the papers and the raven that left shortly after delivering the letter to him.
The letter came in the name of Arctic, the kingdom beyond the Wall, and the documents said nothing more. Mors let out a sigh without thinking as he looked to the north.
Since Ned's daughter had left Winterfell and gone beyond the Wall, everything about the kingdom had suddenly become mysterious. No one got close. The nights had suddenly become endless, with only a few hours of sun. They only knew that something was being faced in the north, beyond the Wall, and that more than one force was there fighting against ancient legends.
And when the cold began to lessen and the days grew longer, they finally began to appear again.
First came the story that Jon Arctic had appeared in front of the Wall demanding to know what was happening in the south. That was what the Night's Watch reported at the time of Lord Stark's death. He became furious upon learning of Ned's death. They say that even the ice danced under his fury and that he killed one of the men of the Night's Watch who had called his uncle a traitor.
He had left resources for the Night's Watch in the forest a few days later: clothes, weapons, and food, more than the kingdoms had sent in years. Mors felt embarrassed and even envious. Whatever was beyond the Wall had resources to spare. They gave in great quantities when it was for the North, which should have been the one offering that to the Wall.
In any case, one moon later, another visit from him came, when Winterfell had been besieged by Theon Greyjoy.
They say he appeared with a giant white dragon behind Winterfell after that, according to some witnesses, and disappeared saying that the bones were not those of the Stark children. After that, there was no more news of him.
It was a moon and a half later that the members of the Night's Watch returned, coming with Arctican ships, all wearing armor and weapons they had obtained from the Arcticans.
Mors sent some men to understand what was happening and to speak directly with Benjen Stark. He openly said that they had fought against the Long Night and that the whole matter of the lack of sun came directly from the powers of the Night King, who had created a storm that tried to besiege Arctic for almost a year, but never passed the defenses.
And they were destroyed when Arctic had set aside its defenses and moved to attack. After moons of preparation, they faced the final charges of the dead, before his nephew, the same one Lord Stark declared as the king of the Seven Kingdoms and the son of Lyanna, drove a sword straight into the chest of a monster.
It exploded into pieces, just as his entire army was destroyed.
An army that was now nothing more than a shadow compared to what it had been at the beginning of the war. Arctic had defeated the Long Night and Benjen, along with the other members of the Night's Watch, emerged victorious and rewarded.
But there was also one last message that Benjen delivered.
He could not intervene in the south. He was part of the Night's Watch and had fought with Arctic precisely because that did not exceed his oath, together with others of the order, even alongside former enemies.
He also said that the North should have obeyed the wish of his brother, Lord Stark. He had died announcing to the world that Lyanna's son was the king of the Seven Kingdoms, and that those who attempted independence were paying the price. The North was now suffering from betrayal and wars that were destroying everything.
As for the ironborn, or those who are betraying the North, or even those who do not accept Jon as the legitimate king, know that Arctic is now coming, turning its eyes back to the south. And Jon will clean up all the mess that all these self-declared kings tried to make.
Mors thought a lot about what his men had heard from Benjen. It seemed that he was taking sides, but he could do nothing except announce that the Night's Watch had been declared a friend of Arctic.
Which was surprising.
The Lord Commander said that he had nothing against Arctic and that the Night's Watch owed them a great deal, just as Benjen was respected and held a high position in the order.
It was even bizarre to think about it, but it seemed that the Night's Watch really had a side this time. They were more willing to support a kingdom made of tribes of wildlings, against whom they had fought so much, than the North itself.
That was a problem, because the Watch was supposed to be the guardian between the North and the lands south of the Wall.
What would prevent an entire army from marching through the opening in the Wall into the North now, especially when it was already in such a bad situation?
Another statement from Benjen was that his nephews were alive and very well.
Bran and Rickon were with the newborn son of Eddard Stark, Ned, being taught in the kingdom beyond the Wall now. What they were learning in that place, Mors had no idea. No one had truly gone there to know.
Arya only said that it was a city, but a city different from the rest of the world, and that the ancient tribes of the free folk — as she liked to call them, instead of calling them wildlings — lived in a civilized way.
They were learning concepts of trade, currency, and product exchange, while scholars and teachers who had been hired from Dorne, the Reach, and coastal cities of Essos were teaching all the common people, without discrimination, from a farmer in the farms of Arctic to even the son of someone who held a high position in the kingdom's senate.
Mors could not say that he understood very well what Lady Arya spoke about when she visited Last Hearth. It did not even seem that her father or her brother understood very well how the structure of that kingdom worked. It was different from Westeros and, according to her, it functioned in another way.
Mors never really gave that much importance to it. He was skeptical about most of the information, even though the rumors and the events suggested very much the opposite.
Then other news came.
Stannis appeared at the Wall and took control of it. Mors even felt a little satisfied about that. This way, the North would not be so vulnerable to an army coming from beyond the Wall, which had already demonstrated having at least 40 thousand soldiers, according to the reports of Arctic's wars in the Dothraki Sea and, according to some whispered comments in the Watch, that was only a part of the real army that that kingdom possessed.
They said there were more than 100 thousand armored soldiers, that was madness! Mors refused to believe in such a force there, so close to them...
Even so, they had already demonstrated that they had more soldiers than the North before this war with those 45 thousand soldiers. Mors had already understood that part.
But then came the news that Stannis had gone beyond the Wall to recruit wildlings. That displeased Mors immediately.
Soon after, however, another piece of news came: Stannis had enraged the king of Arctic, because the stag king had taken the armor of Benjen Stark himself, something that not even the North would accept.
Arctic acted.
When Stannis was found north of the Wall, his army was taken and he received a sword through the heart. According to the reports, Jon Arctic himself killed him after jumping alone onto the deck from the back of a dragon and fighting against all of Stannis's greatest warriors by himself.
Something that made Mors scoff. Whoever invents these things certainly does not spare absurdities to make the story more heroic than it should be.
And so, while they waited for any army of Stannis coming from the north, they saw only Arctican ships, with men marching toward the Wall under the command of a man Mors had heard was a northerner who traveled with the then Jon Snow beyond the Wall for the first time.
They said he was a common northern soldier who began serving that boy and followed him. He stood out a little in the battle of Pyke and also did not leave the boy's side when they faced the slavers.
But when he went to fetch Shireen Baratheon at the Wall, they say he became someone powerful in Arctic, a general who could control the kingdom's army after the king himself.
A common man of the North, a common guard, as they had investigated, had become one of the most powerful figures of that kingdom beyond the Wall, holding all the military power in a system somewhat different from what the Seven Kingdoms had.
And everything fell silent for a while.
Then that raven arrived with the messages about the maesters.
But a few days later, another message arrived, written by the hand of the king of Arctic himself.
An impeccable handwriting that Mors had never seen before, with the symbol of the kingdom seeming to almost shine, using a kind of seal like ink that he had never seen.
It was a kind of glow, almost like stardust, that seemed to shimmer even in the darkness — something that, according to what they said, only Arctic produced in its own kingdom with alchemical knowledge.
Mors still remembered very well when he picked up that letter and broke the seal. The handwriting was there.
[I speak in the name of Arctic as its king and come to inform House Umber about the future of the Seven Kingdoms. I know that the one leading is Mors Umber. You are probably reading this letter at this moment.
I am writing because we are leaving Bear Island. It was our first stop since we descended south, clearing out as many ironborn as we could find along the way.
I say this because our cleansing of the islands was simple and decisive. We killed all the ironborn. We left none alive. Even those who escaped the Arctican soldiers during the charges were hunted down in the forests or in the holes where they tried to hide...
There were around four thousand ironborn on the islands, but now there is not a single one still breathing.
It may seem like a radical decision to many, perhaps even to you, Mors Umber. But I see no other solution for raiders who are more like a plague. I want to cut the evil out by the root.
I intend to go to Pyke at this exact moment. I will make Balon regret and realize the last mistake of his life by believing he could follow the old path of the ironborn.
But let us leave the ironborn aside. House Umber does not need to worry about that anymore.
What I want to inform you, Lord Umber, is that I am sending a force to the south led by Bran Stark, whom I managed to rescue and who accepted to serve in my name.
Robb chose the path of becoming a king when the Seven Kingdoms already belong to me, so I am removing him from the official succession of Winterfell and passing it to Bran.
If the people will not accept that I am the rightful king by birth, then they will accept it by conquest.
The attack in the west is only the first, and now force will fall upon the North, whether against the invaders, against the traitors, and those who do not wish to recognize me as king. As I said, Bran, Ned's second son, will be representing me.
I hope House Umber chooses the right path.
You may say that we are a force of wildlings, but remember that Arctic is a kingdom built by people who were changed from the free tribes, who made a choice: to grow stronger and live in a civilized way.
And more than that, I dare say that we are the pinnacle of civilization among all the kingdoms of the world.
We are the most powerful people in the world.
We are still very far from reaching our peak, but that is why I tell you: we are no longer those wildlings you once knew, who raid, kill, and rape like the ironborn do.
We live under discipline, order, and technology beyond anything the Seven Kingdoms have ever had even for a single day...
And I intend to conquer all the kingdoms.
There will be those who accept my reign and those who will need to be conquered. Not to mention those who need to be destroyed...
That is why I ask that you make the right decision. That you yield once again to House Stark and renew your oaths to Bran Stark.
Until then, regardless of whether Robb is alive or not in the south, he will lose all his rights to Winterfell...
I will deal with each one who trampled on the will of my uncle, who wished the North to remain turned toward Arctic while we were at war, and who decided to act on their own, even attempting an independence that only led to the despair of all the northern people and to the destruction of their army.
If they had been waiting for us, the raiders would have found only the northern army, preventing them from causing the chaos they brought upon the kingdom. We could have prevented the betrayal of Roose Bolton and we could be together, marching side by side against those who killed Lord Stark and trampled the North.
But unfortunately, the actions of one led a king to his fall.
And now, it is time for us to rise. That is why Bran Stark has the objective of gathering all the houses once again to join House Stark and fight against the traitors.
I will be watching House Umber. I hope you, Mors, make the best decision for your house...]
These words ended the letter.
Mors could not help but frown at all that information. It was basically an ultimatum: kneel, renew your oath to House Stark, or fall.
But there was nothing he could do at that moment. The raven that had delivered the letter only watched him with unusual intelligence, as if it were paying attention to every trace of displeasure on his face as he read it.
He swallowed dryly, with a voice in his mind telling him that he was being watched by Jon Arctic himself, with his control over animals. Something so abnormal that even the skinchangers of the northern legends might call Jon a demon.
Mors had a lot to think about.
He had invited Benjen to come to Last Hearth under bread and salt. He wanted to speak with him and better understand the situation.
It did not take long for what he had read in the letter to be confirmed by messengers or by people who had left Bear Island and even by the mountain clans who appeared at Last Hearth.
They began to report about the Arctican ships that had appeared on the coast, helping the mountain clans. They also spoke of the very men who had survived the ironborn attacks on the islands and who reported what they had seen.
"I'm telling you, my lord, those men ran over the ironborn without mercy. They wore heavy armor I had never seen before. They were like walls of death."
"Even their horses had armor. Powerful horses I had never seen before."
"They said they were the same horses they had bought from the Reach a long time ago and that they bred them in large numbers in the kingdom," several common men said, guards who had been on Bear Island when they saw the Arcticans finally destroy the ironborn.
Mors pondered this. A cavalry with fifteen hundred armored men... that was madness.
He had heard that even the fearsome Tywin Lannister had at most only three hundred of those fully armored knights in the Riverlands fighting the North, because it was very expensive to maintain and acquire heavy armor and horses strong enough to carry a man wearing it.
To think that these Arcticans had fifteen hundred of them — or at least that was what they had shown — because it was very likely that there were more.
"You are saying that fifteen hundred men defeated four thousand ironborn?" the castle's master-at-arms could not help but raise his voice in mockery.
"I'm saying it wasn't just that. There were at least about three thousand Arctican soldiers, but the cavalry was the one that broke all the defenses after the infantry advanced. You should have seen the ironborn fleeing in despair, especially when the giants came."
"The giants? The same ones we heard about who massacred the Dothraki like they were cheese... when there was the war in Essos?" Mors asked.
"Yes, my lord, we saw a hundred of them, all armored. I have never seen anything like it. They crushed men as if they were nothing."
"Is that why you are going to the Wall?" Mors asked carefully.
Even though he had a lot to think about regarding the giants and the fearsome cavalry. In no account were giants treated as ordinary creatures. Everyone spoke of monsters in full armor that were impossible to defeat.
Just thinking about it made Mors shiver.
If he chose not to ally with the Arcticans and Bran Stark, would Last Hearth endure?
Little Ned, beside Mors, seemed nervous and also fascinated. Obviously he was leaning more toward the Arcticans as if he were seeing heroes, but Mors still had to make a final decision.
He waited and then one of them answered his question. The man nodded, confirming.
"Yes. I intend to wait for the Arctican army. As we heard, Bran, the son of Ned Stark, will lead along with the Arcticans an army to sweep away the traitors and the remaining ironborn, while the king of Arctic himself will be in Pyke destroying them once and for all."
He spoke as if he were about to enter an event that would be told for a thousand years.
Maybe it truly was greater, Mors thought.
"You know that this could also put you against Robb Stark. The Arctican king, in his letter, was stripping Robb of all rights to Winterfell."
The men there simply did not lower their heads. "Forgive me, my lord, but I do not know Robb, the first son of Ned Stark. But you can be sure that, between the two, I prefer to place my loyalty with Jon Arctic.
"He was the king who came to help us when we were in a terrible situation, when the North had simply lost its army or had set us aside to seek an empty crown, which made all our men suffer."
"I lost two brothers and a sister. That sister must be being used in the Iron Islands right now. Where was Robb Stark when my family was taken, my lord?" another man among them asked.
He challenged him in front of everyone, many looking alarmed at seeing a simple soldier speaking that way to a northern noble.
"Unlike what many thought, Bear Island was helped by the Arcticans. That is why I intend to serve along with all the men who came with me. We intend to place our swords under the leadership of Bran Stark, supported by the Arcticans, and we will kneel, just as Lady Jorelle and Lady Lyanna did in the name of House Mormont, declaring their oath to Jon Arctic as the future king of the Seven Kingdoms," he said, leaving the hall of Last Hearth filled with whispers.
"I understand. You may go now," Mors simply said.
He gave them some supplies so they could reach the Wall.
"My lord, what are you going to do?" the master-at-arms asked.
"Maester, is it true that Smalljon is with Roose Bolton?" he asked the maester, who nodded.
"Yes. According to what we received, little Ned demands that we send a force to Winterfell and ally ourselves with Roose Bolton..."
Mors thought about it and shook his head. "No. We will not do that. We will first see what the Arcticans will do."
He said that, but it was obvious that he had no desire to fight them.
If Bran Stark came to lead the North using the Stark name, many would swear loyalty, even knowing that Robb, the true heir, might still be alive. The Umbers' own soldiers would be more inclined to serve the Arcticans than Smalljon himself, moved by the men from Bear Island from before.
And it would be easier to pass the leadership of Last Hearth directly to Ned than to continue with Smalljon.
And so the days passed, and the reports began to arrive.
Asha Greyjoy had been captured and taken in front of Deepwood Motte, with a deadly and precise attack during a night. They said giants destroyed the camps while the infantry massacred all the ironborn.
They took Asha Greyjoy and disappeared, leaving only ironborn corpses behind.
Then came even more demonic reports.
The animals of the Wolfswood went mad, as if the old gods themselves were invoking their wrath against the ironborn.
They said that packs with hundreds of wolves simply rushed through the ironborn camps, sinking their teeth into the sea men without mercy.
Birds descended from the sky in towns besieged by the raiders, tearing at their eyes and faces.
Bears, shadowcats, and even small rodents began attacking and massacring the ironborn mercilessly during the night.
There is a report of one thousand small rodents that entered one of the camps and simply attacked the raiders' eyes, tearing them out and leaving them to die from hemorrhage.
The ironborn who somehow managed to survive in the face of this crisis fled as far as possible from the Wolfswood.
Fear began to take hold of the raiders across the North.
As they heard the rumors, many began to flee. They no longer wanted to stay there. Victarion had been publicly executed by the Arctican king on Bear Island, and Asha had been captured alive — if she was even still alive now.
The Greyjoy leadership in the North had disappeared, and the ironborn were lost. And the reports and rumors about the fury of the old gods did nothing to calm them.
Mors watched all of this with dark thoughts, pondering what to do.
It was obvious that he already had a side to choose.
House Umber, at that moment, would already be more than willing to renew its oaths to House Stark, under the leadership of the powerful kingdom beyond the Wall.
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