YOU LIKE THE WORK PLEASE SUPPORT 🙏
Please join the patreon and join the pack
www.patreon.com/Cregantheblackwolf
Thank you for your support and I am really grateful
---
Chapter 70: Loyal Wolf
Artos Stark stared at Greatjon as if the man had grown a second head.
"Fuck you, Ned," he muttered under his breath, though there was no real bite to it, only disbelief and a kind of irritated awe.
"You really are a giant piece of work, huh? You don't like me that much, brother, do you? Making me lord of this and that. Even Father knew better than to cross that line."
He paced a few steps away from the crypts, boots crunching on frozen earth, jaw tight. The wind tugged at his cloak, but he hardly felt it. It was not the cold that had him worked up. It was the nonsense of it. Lord of Sea Dragon Point. Lord. The word sat on him wrong, like a lord's chain on a butcher's neck.
Everyone in the North knew what sort of man he was. He could lead men, aye. He could fight, drink, curse, bleed, and survive. But he was not lordly. Never had been. Never wanted to be. He had been the youngest in the family, the spare of a spare, the one meant for little more than sharpening his teeth and making himself useful. Nobility had never sat in his bones the way it sat in Ned's, or Brandon's, or even Benjen's when duty caught him proper. And now this?
Now Ned had gone and tied a lordship around his neck like a bloody noose.
Artos turned back to Greatjon, brows low. "Any specific reason for this bullshit that you know of? Or is this just Ned being a prick for the sake of it?"
Greatjon snorted. "That depends on how much respect you wish to show your brother."
"Not much right now," Artos said flatly.
Greatjon gave a shrug. "Then I'll speak plain. It was not random. Not entirely. Maybe to calm the North after you left and the whole sept-building business. There was talk, aye. More than talk, actually. Some of your men and admirers stirred up a little trouble. Bert, my father, and I handled it before it turned into anything worth naming, but it was still enough to make people mutter."
Artos frowned. "A rebellion?"
"Not a rebellion," Greatjon said. "Not in truth. More like a little growling in the dark. Enough to disrespect Stark blood if left alone. Enough to make men think the North had forgotten you."
Artos let out a short laugh. "So Ned's got better at politics than I thought."
He shook his head, half amused, half annoyed. "Hadn't expected that out of him. Good for the North, I suppose. Even if he does bend too much for his wife's liking."
Greatjon laughed at that. "That was my first thought too. I said as much to Father. He laughed in my face."
Artos grinned despite himself. "Good."
Greatjon huffed. "He said I was thick as a wall. To be fair, he was polite enough not to say it exactly that way. But in plain words? He told me that if I thought Ned capable of doing this alone, I'd been drinking my own piss."
Artos barked a laugh at that. "That old man always had a tongue on him."
"Aye," Greatjon said. "Then he told me this: Ned is a good leader, and a talented general, and even a great soldier. But he is not a schemer. Not the sort to think three moves ahead and lay traps for men. That sort of cleverness, Father said, only ever really lived in you after Lord Rickard."
Artos snorted. "Me?"
Greatjon nodded. "Aye, you. He said Rickard had the wit for it, and you got enough of the same blood and the same stubbornness. But he also said you were too much of a brute to do it cleanly if you ever tried."
"Old bastard," Artos muttered, though there was a smile under it.
Greatjon grinned. "He said you spent too long with Brandon and then too much time with me and then thinking you could outgrow the family you came from. Said he did not know why Rickard left you with others instead of raising you himself or sending you straight to the Manderlys."
Artos was laughing now, shaking his head. "So the old man really called you a stupid brat, did he ? Indirectly "
Greatjon sighed. "That is what you are focusing on?"
"Aye," Artos said. "It's the important part."
"You are still a stubborn, disrespectful arse," Greatjon said, though his mouth was twitching. "Father was right about that too."
Artos smirked. "You know he loved me more than he loved you."
"Fuck off."
That earned them both a laugh, rough and easy, and for a moment the weight on Artos's shoulders seemed to ease.
Artos shook his head and looked back toward the keep. "Damn it all. Who knew I'd end up thinking so deep what Ned thought and planned? If it was war ,i would understand it but politics damm. Ned is grown up. Fuck it, I don't care about it. "
Greatjon's smirk faded into something more thoughtful. "You do care. You just hate admitting it."
Artos gave a grimace. "How is he, then?"
"Worried about you, you bastard,"
Greatjon said. "He is doing all right. Better than a lot of men expected, truth be told. He is a good lord, even if he still has some naivety clinging to him."
Artos nodded once. "Aye. He was Never was much of a liar, either."
"Still isn't," Greatjon said.
"Then let's stop talking about lords and lies and all this other shit," Artos said, clapping a hand on his own thigh. "Let us have a feast and fill our guts with alcohol before the night goes stale."
Greatjon's grin returned full force. "Aye, now there is a plan worth hearing."
So they went to the hall.
Last Hearth knew how to feed men properly. The tables were loaded with roast boar, salted fish, black bread, boiled roots, fat capons, turnips in butter, and great tankards of ale and mead that went down rough and warm. The Umbers ate like men who expected winter to kill them tomorrow and meant to spite it tonight. There was laughter, too much drink, and voices rising loud enough to shake dust from the beams overhead. Old soldiers told old lies, boys tried to sound brave, and men with too much ale in them tried to sound wiser than they were.
Artos drank with them all.
For once, he let himself relax.
He laughed at Greatjon's stories, shoved back with his own, and even let a few of the younger men needle him without tearing their ears off. The hall grew louder as the night went on. Cups were refilled. Horns emptied. Songs were mangled. Someone started a tale about an ironborn raid that ended with three different versions before the end of it. Someone else claimed he had once seen a giant piss through a hole in the clouds, which made half the hall roar and the other half demand proof.
Artos, for all his sharpness, let himself be one of them.
Not commander. Not sellsword. Not lord.
Just one of the North's men come home for a night.
Even Seraphine seemed to ease in the warmth of it, though she drank more slowly than the rest and watched the hall with a Braavosi sort of curiosity, taking in the rough laughter and the easy violence of northern men as if it were some strange and lovely thing. Rick perched near her shoulder, blinking at the smoke and noise with the patient disdain of a creature who believed himself above all mortal foolishness.
By the time the hall had grown thick with drink, all restraint had started to crack loose from tongues. Men who would have been quiet in daylight now laughed too hard, boasted too much, and said things they might regret come morning. Artos was no different. He had his horn in hand and a grin on his face, and for once he looked happier than he had in years.
Then some young fool, one of the lesser Nobles, with his kinsmen half-shouting over the noise, just a drunken thing blurted out with too much ale and too little sense.
"Artos the Demonwolf, The most dangerous man in the realm. Demon of the North." He yelled.
Everyone in the hall said "Aye , Aye , Aye " supporting him.
Even Artos in a druken spur , he roared like a wolf "Wooo , Aye, Aye."
"Should be Artos on Winterfell's seat anyway," the boy said, loud enough for several nearby tables to hear. But this time everyone grew quiet.
"Not that quiet one. Stark blood the real one ought to sit the walls."
The hall did go silent.
But the air shifted
The boy, encouraged by his own drink and the laughter of the men around him, kept going. "Ned's a good man, mayhaps, but he's soft. Artos has the fire for it. He should be Lord of Winterfell."
---
YOU LIKE THE WORK PLEASE SUPPORT 🙏
Please join the patreon and join the pack
www.patreon.com/Cregantheblackwolf
Thank you for your support and I am really grateful