The fire burned lower, the night deepening around the circle. The map of Harlaw's coast lay between them, pebbles marking cliffs, towers, and gates. Jinx crouched low, a gloved hand hovering over the pieces.
"Three parts," he said, voice crisp, "and each must play their role without faltering."
Group One: The Distraction
His finger tapped the carved block that marked the main gates of Harlaw's holdfast.
"This will be the hammer that draws blood. Lord Stark, you will lead this party. Take men who are disciplined enough not to rout when the Ironborn pour out. Numbers matter here—fifty to sixty, no more. Any larger, and the game is up too soon."
Eddard gave a single nod, though the weight of command pressed heavily on his shoulders.
Maege Mormont crossed her arms, growling, "My women will go with him. If the wolves need steel to keep the gate, the bears will be there."
Jinx inclined his head. "Good. The Ironborn know fear of Mormont steel. Let them see it first and believe they've found their prey."
Group Two: The Hidden Ambush
Jinx's hand slid to the side of the map, where a narrow track wound through sparse forest.
"Here. When the Ironborn rally to break Stark's force, they will send riders down this path. I want a second group lying in wait. Two dozen. They will not expect resistance here, which makes it the perfect place to cut their knees out from under them."
The Greatjon, sitting broad-shouldered and restless, slammed his fist against his chest. "Then give it to me. My boy Smalljon and I will take it. No kraken will slip past an Umber's ambush."
"Just remember," Jinx said smoothly, "this is not about glory. Hit them hard, and fade into shadow. Too long in the open, and you'll be cut down."
The Greatjon only grinned wider. "Aye, but they'll remember who bit them."
Group Three: The Sea-Climb Strike
At last, Jinx pointed to the jagged cliff-face on the map, where waves struck against hidden coves.
"This is the knife's edge. A small band, twelve to twenty men at most. We climb from the sea, scale the cliffs, and strike at the food stores. Starve the island, break their lord, and the holdfast will fall without a siege."
He looked at Oberyn, whose smirk had returned, sharp as a blade. "You asked for blood and vengeance. You'll get it at my side."
"By the Seven, or whatever gods you pray to," Oberyn drawled, "if this goes wrong, I will haunt your dreams with worse than words."
"You won't live long enough for that," Jinx retorted, the faint curve of amusement beneath the mask.
Skepticism and Reassurance
Lady Barbrey Dustin scowled from across the fire. "You speak as though the Ironborn are cattle. One mistake, and we'll all be drowned in salt."
Eddard's jaw tightened, but Jinx leaned back casually, resting his forearm on his knee.
"Then we make no mistakes. The Pearl gives us speed, the dark gives us cover, and surprise will be our greatest ally. I've fought wars against foes who commanded entire starfleets, Lady Dustin. Do not think a brood of raiders frightens me."
The council fell into tense silence, but the logic was iron. Each lord weighed it, and though they scowled or muttered, not one spoke outright against him.
Finally, Jinx clapped his hands softly, decisive. "Then it is settled. Three groups, three roles. And when the krakens wake tomorrow night, they'll find the wolves, the bears, and the vipers already in their blood."
The sea lapped in hushed rhythm against the dinghy as it cut silently through the fog. The world had shrunk to pale mist, muffling even the sound of the oars. The only sure things were the drip of water off the blades, the slick sheen of salt spray clinging to their cloaks, and the dark, jagged outline of the cliffs looming ahead.
The two Northmen at the oars rowed in silence, their faces pale in the lanternless gloom. Between them sat Oberyn Martell, his usual fire subdued, though his eyes still gleamed with dangerous delight at the promise of battle. Jinx crouched near the prow, mask angled upward as if already measuring the cliff face.
When the boat crunched softly against submerged stone, Jinx rose. The men froze, glancing to him as if waiting for orders from something more than a man. He didn't waste words.
"Here." His voice was low, even, carrying over the mist like a blade slipping from its sheath. He began fastening the climbing gear — a coil of thick rope, iron hooks forged in Winterfell's smithies, leather harnesses reinforced with steel rings. The equipment looked crude by the standards of the galaxy he'd once known, yet sufficient for this task.
Oberyn smirked as he tightened his own harness. "You look far too comfortable, stranger. Almost as if you've scaled worse walls than this."
Jinx tilted his masked face toward him. "I once climbed a fortress where the cliffs glowed with molten fire. Compared to that, this is child's play."
The words hung between them, half-boast, half-warning, before Jinx stepped forward and pressed his gloved hands to the stone.
He went first, as he had promised. With effortless precision, Jinx drove the first hook into a seam of rock and tested it with a single tug. Then he hauled himself upward, feet finding holds as if the cliff itself were guiding him. The rope snaked out behind him, anchored firmly for the others to follow.
Every movement was deliberate, silent, fluid. To the soldiers below, it seemed less like climbing and more like the cliff was yielding to him.
Oberyn followed next, his lean frame agile, catlike. His breath came heavier than Jinx's, but his skill with spear and sand had translated well enough to stone and rope. He muttered a curse in Dornish under his breath when his boot slipped on a slick patch, but he caught himself with a grin, daring the abyss to try and take him.
Behind them, one by one, the Northmen began their ascent. Boots scraped against stone, leather creaked, ropes swayed. Now and again a pebble clattered down into the surf, vanishing into the fog. The men stiffened each time, but the sound vanished quickly, swallowed by the night.
Halfway up, the world narrowed to mist and muscle. The sea was gone, the sky hidden, only the dark rock close enough to taste. Jinx paused on a narrow ledge, waiting until Oberyn pulled himself alongside.
"Not so bad," Oberyn panted, his grin wolfish even through sweat.
"You've yet to bleed," Jinx murmured, then looked down at the men climbing below. "Keep moving. The fog will not last forever."
The Summit
At last, after what felt like an eternity of stone and silence, Jinx's hand touched the lip of the cliff. With a final surge he vaulted up, landing in a crouch on the damp grass above. For a long moment he was still, listening. The fog curled across the holdfast's edge, muffling sight but not sound. He could hear faint voices in the distance, the bark of a dog, the clang of steel on stone — but none near enough to notice them.
One by one, Oberyn and the Northmen hauled themselves over the edge, collapsing into the mist with muted breaths. Their faces shone with sweat, but their eyes glittered with the same anticipation.
Jinx raised a hand, gloved finger pointing toward the looming shadow of Harlaw's food stores.
"There," he whispered, voice cutting through the fog like a knife. "The heart of the kraken's belly. Tonight, we carve it out."
A low wind ran off the sea and knifed through the ropes and canvas on the quay. Where Jinx's party crept in the mist and scaled cliff like a ghost, Eddard Stark's force moved like a drumbeat — steady, deliberate, and visible.
By the time the Black Pearl slipped its lines and slid away toward the fog-shrouded headland, Eddard had his men arrayed along the nearest strand: fifty, maybe sixty, made up of House Stark's own household, a handful of Umber spearmen, a company of Mormont fighters, and a spare levy cobbled together from Barrowton and nearby holds. Rodrik Cassel stood at his shoulder, the old master-at-arms' face as hard as whetstone; Jory Cassel and Smalljon Umber grinned like boys who had been fed their first mead too early. Maege Mormont's contingent bristled by the carts, daughters and sworn women in thick furs with axes and furled banners. Even Jorah Mormont, newly arrived from the south with his clean-cut, patient manner, had a savage light in his eyes.
Eddard walked among them as men count the cost of an oath. He touched shoulders, straightened a strap here, adjusted a gauntlet there. He spoke little; he never did when his heart had to muscle through difficult things. His voice, when it came, was the command of a captain used to being obeyed.
"Remember this," he told them. "This is not a charge to glory. This is a blow to bait their pride. Make sure the first strike is loud. Make them think we intend to take their walls. Give them smoke, show them banners, and when they come — pull back. Do not give them time to form ranks. Draw them out, and they will leave their watches exposed."
Rodrik grunted. "We'll make enough noise to wake the dead, my lord." His hand drifted to the hilt of a short, honest sword he'd carried since the days he trained tanners' sons into men. "They'll think they've pulled the North down upon them."
Eddard's mouth compressed; his hand found the carved wolf token lying at his hip, a small habit that steadied him. Jinx's lessons sat in his head like flint ready to spark: better to act and repent than to sit and regret; change with the times; wars begin when you will, but do not end when you please. Jinx had said them bluntly in the godswood, had pushed him until his wolf-blood rose, until he felt more than duty answering the call. He had never liked the last lesson. He had never liked the idea of ordering men into harm's way. Now, with a kingly letter from Robert lying unread in his chest and the cries of coastal villages still in his ears, he tasted the logic: there was action to do, and if he did not do it the cost would be paid one way or another.
"Lord Stark," Rodrik said softly, following the line of Eddard's stare out to the black horizon. "What if the men break? If they see the Harlaw banners and the walls, if the reavers hold fast—"
"If they hold fast, they stay behind stone," Eddard answered. "If they run, they reveal the flank." He looked up, past Rodrik, to the low cloud-hang where the Pearl had disappeared. "Make them choose. Force the choice."
He turned then to his captains and lords. Greatjon Umber swaggered in the back, his grin an animal thing; he wanted blood and would follow wherever the fight promised it. Barbrey Dustin — her face a cliff of iron — spat a curt refusal at his cheer as if the man's joy itself were an insult; she had brought her own dozen riders out of pride and grievance, and every word she spoke smelled of ash and old wound. The presence of the Dornish and the Mormont women had stiffened the blood in the field. Each banner was a promise.
Eddard handed commands out like blunt iron tools. Rodrik took fifty men for the main show. "Make it look like we mean to break the main gate," he said. "Shouts, drums, wounded men, the whole theatre." He named men to the faked assault party who were steady and not irreplaceable: old men who had seen many winters, veterans who knew a retreat as well as a stand. He chose for discipline rather than bravado. That decision cost him a prickle under the skin, but he trusted the long memory of Rodrik Cassel.
To Littlejon Umber he gave the second cordon—the ambush line in the narrow approach. "You and Smalljon take the stone track," Eddard told them. "Hide in the gullies. Wait for the clatter of shields. When they come, break their charge with spears at the knees. Take prisoners if you can." The Umber's eyes flashed; the plan suited his taste for sudden and savage things.
Maege and her women would be at the gate with Rodrik but set to fall back as the plan required. Eddard had insisted they bring firebrands and loud instruments — trumpets and drums and a pair of small petards that had been smuggled up from a trade ship. He thought of the smoke as a curtain, the noise as a bell that would ring the islanders' pride awake.
"You will give ground," he told them plainly. "Not to rout. Pull back. Lure them toward the stone track. There will be men in the gullies. There will be spears and axes waiting. When the first of them breaks, the rest will follow like a wolfpack with no sense of caution. That is when the ambush does its work."
Rodrik's jaw flexed. "And if they turn and trap us, my lord?"
"Then we fight," Eddard said, the old certainty in his voice. "We cut until we can get away or we die here. But remember why we do this. Not for glory—for an opening. For their lord. For the food stores. For those who cannot fight."
There was an awkwardness in giving that last detail, a rawness that he could not hide. He thought of the farmers, of the child who had come to Wintertown two weeks prior begging for salt and tools. War was not a game of banners. It was bread, and bones, and women left to stitch banners into funerary shrouds. He had seen that before, and the memory sat like lead.
They made the preparations in a small, grim choreography. Men took improvised ladders and dragged them to the shoreline like a butcher's crew setting up for a feast. A pair of flat-bottomed boats would stay behind the diversion — meant to carry away those they could grab in the confusion if it turned sour. They packed the carts with lashings to fake wounded, with drums to pound and banners to growl in the wind.
Eddard walked the line. He checked shoulders, adjusted a strap on a boy who had none but courage. He asked names and answered with his own steadiness; a lord must put a face to the men he hid behind. He stood before a young spearman, barely a man, and placed his hand on the boy's cheek. "You will do as you are told," he said. "You will not break. For home."
The boy's jaw worked and then he nodded like a man who took his last oath.
A cloud of smoke and the smell of pitch were part of the theatre too. Soldiers torched a spare pile of rags and tied them to poles, then wrapped the poles in oil-soaked cloth so the fire would burn bright and black. They practiced a controlled fall back, two paces and then turning to swing, then two more and duck. Each man in Rodrik's company learned it until the motion was muscle.
And all the while Eddard felt a new current under his ribs: the wolf-blood Jinx had coaxed awake. It thrummed now, not like reckless hunger but as a tool to be used. He had given his word; he would be the man who used it for his people. He had not been born to revel in such calculations, but he would bear them.
When the hour came and the lamps on the Black Pearl thinning to a smudge on the horizon, they moved. Rodrik's drums began a slow wall of sound, and the beating of them was like a heartbeat in the chest of the beach. Eddard's voice rose above it, calm and clear, the cadence of command and comfort.
"On me," he said. "Keep formation. Shout. Make them think we mean to batter the gate. If they come out, draw them."
They marched in, banners snapping, a pale parade against the cliffs. Maege's women rode forward like specters, their axes glinting. The Umber contingent beat a raw tempo; Greatjon's men howled. From his place on the beach Eddard watched the holdfast loom up through the fog—stone and torchlight and a watchtower throwing thin stares into the gray.
At the gate they gave their show. Rodrik led a feigned assault: a loud crash against the oaken doors, a battering-ram of men jumping and pounding, some clutching cloth in one hand and a short blade in the other, as if wounded. They shouted names, cried for hosts to come, called for parley one moment and then screamed for the gods the next. The torchlight leaped across the faces of armor.
It worked. A squad of Harlaw men — pickets from the walls and a band of young reavers — poured out, first cautious and then furious, their shields a mirror of salt and leather. The islanders thought they had the North on the ropes. Pride makes men bold, and the Ironborn were all pride. They chased. They wanted to break a Stark party and take their skulls to hold as trophies on the prow.
Eddard gave the signal and Rodrik's men began to fall back in measured steps — not a panicked rout but a disciplined withdraw. Spears flashed, men threw down smoke and stoked the oil-soaked poles. At the right moment, Rodrik executed the practiced turn and the men pivoted, driving their momentum into the gullies where the second cordon lay hidden.
That was when the true trap closed.
From the stone track the Umber riders surged: spears glittering like a sudden storm. They struck the islanders' knees with careful aim, the long blades finding soft gaps in mail and leather. Where the Ironborn expected a rout, they met a wall of steel and axes. Men fell with surprised curses; others tried to rally and found Umber iron in their shields. The gullies swallowed the sound, turned it into the ragged noise of men dying or calling for help. Greatjon laughed a terrible laugh as he pushed through, blood and salt mixing on his beard.
Eddard stood in the thinning smoke and watched the ambush unfold. He felt the sick pang of relief at seeing the plan work, and a sharper guilt because the fight was, by design, bloody. He had sent men into danger to unmask the belly of Harlaw; now he stood and watched as his bait took its dues. He wondered, briefly and selfishly, if he had simply traded one kind of suffering for another.
There, in the whirl of combat, Rodrik's voice rose with a command—a clean order—and knives flashed. The diversion had lured more than the pickets; a larger company from the inner yard was forming to take them. The two hidden companies slid back and engaged, cutting faster and harder. Men screamed and were hauled into the earth. The plan grew teeth.
On the beach, Eddard had ordered a pair of boats to be ready should they need a sudden withdrawal. That was the ugly honesty of his command: they might fight and die; they might live and carry the story back. He thought of Ashara — the phantom name that Jinx had once named like a blade — and of the statues in Winterfell's halls, of the cold faces of those he had loved and failed. He squared his jaw. War required hairline choices that broke hearts. He would break his if it meant keeping the North whole.
And then, as the tide of the diversion built toward its fever, the unmistakable signal came — a handkerchief waved from a small rise, the code they'd set with Jinx's shore party. The cliff team had made its move. Jinx's plan was bleeding into motion across the islands.
Eddard's men tightened, and his men fought with a grim rhythm. Some Harlaw men, seeing the ambush and fearing for their lord's safety, began to pull toward the cliff path. That was what Eddard had wanted: the defenders to unbalance themselves, to leave their food stores and gates less watched. Even as spears struck and men bled in the gullies, even as a young Umber fell with a gash in his throat and a prayer on his lips, Eddard felt the cold, precise click of the plan setting like locks falling into place.
He did not gloat. He did not shout victory. He moved through the ranks, lifting a wounded man's helm, gathering a fallen standard and handing it to a sergeant. He saw Rodrik sweep a blade in a clean arc and fall back grimly, then meet Eddard's eyes for a beat. In that shadowed glance Rodrik both questioned and confirmed — the captain's duty had been done.
At the appointed hour, when the reavers were fully committed and the cliff signal could be seen as a shadow of motion in the mist, Eddard gave the word: "Withdraw." Not a rout, not a broken retreat, but a hard pull that preserved order. Drums beat a single measured pound, and men turned away from the open field to the prearranged landing places where boats waited like black mouths. They left behind the bodies of the dead — the harsh, unavoidable truth of any battle — but they also left behind an island shaken and an enemy drawn thin with effort.
Eddard watched as his men fell back and the cliffs took the shape of moving figures. The ambush had worked. The gullies had cut a path through the Ironborn, and though the cost was not small, it was contained and purposeful. He thought of the boy with the new sword whose hands trembled. He thought of the farmers who would sleep easier that night if Harlaw's stores emptied into Northern hands.
By the time the last of his men climbed into the boats, the night's calculations had been carved into lives and lungs. The drums stuttered, then cut off. The mist swallowed the sound. A hush wrapped around Eddard like a cloak that did not warm.
He looked at Rodrik Cassel, then at Rodrik's young nephew Jory, and in their faces he saw the measure of what he had asked and what they had given. Rodrik's mouth was a hard line, but his eyes were clear. "You made them move, my lord," Rodrik said simply. "You gave us the choice to bite or be bitten."
Eddard let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. "We did what we had to," he answered. "We will do more, if we must."
They rowed into the fog toward the Black Pearl's waiting shadow with the taste of copper and salt in their mouths. Behind them on the shore Harlaw reeled, its men hunting ghosts and wondering how a ragged, roaring force had vanished like steam into the night. Ahead lay dark water, a single small pleasure on Eddard's mind: the cliffside signal that Jinx had sent up was only the first note. If the Pearl and the sea-climb had done their part, Harlaw's belly would be exposed when dawn came — and exposed bellies starve a fortress faster than any siege engine.
Eddard's hands ached from the oar, and the membranes of his conscience throbbed with what had been spent. He had given a command that would cost lives. He had done it because the North demanded action. He told himself, as he had told so many men in their sleep, that such burdens were the lord's to bear.
The caverns smelled of salt, grain-gut and oil — a sour, cloying odor that stuck to the back of the throat. Lanternlight painted the wet stone in sickly yellow, and men's breath fogged in short white puffs as they worked. Below the cliff, oars whispered against the hull of the boats; ropes creaked and snaps of canvas came like distant thunder. Up here, wrapped in the fog and the cliff's cold breath, the raiding party moved like a single, well-oiled machine.
Daemon Sand ran the operation with a surprising combination of boyish eagerness and pinch-faced exactness. He barked orders in a voice that still held the high pitch of youth but carried the clipped authority of the field: two men at the pulley, three at the lowering hooks, a pair to tie off the rafts while others shoved laden sacks toward the lip and watched them fall, controlled, into the waiting water. Men below pushed off, paddled, and hauled the burden toward the Black Pearl. The rhythm was brisk, efficient — the music of theft done by people who had learned to move quicker than the law.
Oberyn stood a little apart, torchlight catching the corner of his grin. He watched the men with an amused, almost predatory interest. The Dornishman loved a spectacle — even if the spectacle was a midnight theft — and he luxuriated in the hush of fog that made every movement feel like a scene from a well-staged play. He had his spear across one shoulder, the tip glinting now and then like a question.
Jinx moved among them as if the cold was nothing to him. His gloved hands took rope, steadied men, slapped a shoulder here, guided a slack line there. He praised quietly and seldom; when he did it landed like a blade — precise, memorable. "Good," he told Daemon after the boy called out the tally. "Quick mind. Faster hands. You'll go far." Daemon bowed—half show of deference, half naked pride—then scrambled back into his work.
After the last of the sacks thudded against packed earth and dropped into the waiting night, Daemon came up breathless to Jinx and Oberyn. His face glowed with the excitement of one who has just made numbers add up in favor of hunger and safety.
"We've enough for two weeks," he reported, voice cracking with the strain and the triumph. "If we—if they ration—maybe four. Depends on the men." He glanced at Oberyn, seeking the endorsement of a man he'd known as a patron's nephew, then at Jinx, whose face was still as inscrutable as a polished stone.
Jinx's reply was slow, almost indulgent. He let the fog shrink around them like a curtain and the words come out as if tasting them. "Two weeks is fine," he said, and Daemon's chest puffed a little at the reassurance. "Four will never be necessary. We will not linger here."
Oberyn laughed softly. "A cruel practicality," he said, adding the comment with the grin of a man who liked to sharpen other people's edges.
Then Jinx did something the two Dornishmen and the boy did not expect. He unsheathed Red Rain.
The sword came free with a whisper of steel. Torchlight clung to the blade like a second flame, reflected into a slash of black and red that seemed to drink the light around it. For a breathless moment the cavern held its collective breath; the men froze in their task, the wind's hiss and the sea's whispering arrested by the magnetism of that gleam.
Jinx turned Red Rain in his hand, admiring its line — not with the crude hunger of a collector but with the intimate appraisal of an old friend. "She was found in a wrecked hold," he murmured to no one and everyone. "Cold iron, older than most names. She likes blood but she has a purer hunger — a maker's hunger."
Oberyn's eyes flicked to the sword and back, an appreciative, hungry glint in them. Daemon's mouth went dry.
Then Jinx seized a torch, snatched it up like a man who had decided something small and final, and slung it against the stacks of grain and wood in the cavern's upper store. The torch hit with a crack and a spray of sparks. For a moment nothing happened — then oil-fed smoke kissed the flame and the stores took. Dry sacks swallowed the first tongues of fire and spat them out higher, and the cavern filled with a raw, choking heat.
"No!" Daemon started, but Jinx's hand rose and a single look chilled the boy's tongue. Oberyn's smile dimmed; something of the man's thrill at spectacle was checked by the primal horror of the act. The fire threw light, first a glow, then a guttering furnace that turned the night into a great inferno. The grain, lit and ignited, flamed like a mock-sun and the smoke rolled up the cliff in a black, hungry column.
Jinx did not hesitate. He watched the fire for a heartbeat and then he laughed, low and uncaring. "Let it burn," he said. The voice had the ring of a bell rung for no funeral. "The more Ironborn who die here—by blade or by hunger—the better. Let the islanders feed on their own arrogance." His tone was pragmatic to the point of cruelty, as if he were tending a garden that needed pruning by hunger and culling.
"What—" Oberyn began, but the sound of men down below pulling with oars and the urgent cry of the rope-runners cut him off. The fog swallowed the words that might have followed.
Daemon stared with wide eyes at the conflagration then looked back at Jinx. "You—why burn it now? We could have taken more. We could—" His voice trailed into the clack of rope and the hiss of the fire.
Jinx sheathed Red Rain with a calmness that made his companions' blood go cold. The blade slid home as if it had never left. "Because a burning store is a language," he said simply. "It speaks louder than a thousand banners. Food is a fortress as much as stone. Fire is the fastest messenger for fear. We leave them with less and with the knowledge that what they possessed can be taken in a night. They will not trust their eyes. Their men will scatter to guard what remains. Panic multiplies what swords cannot cut."
Oberyn's face tightened in a satisfied, savage way. The Dornishman loved a bold stroke that bent the psychology of war. "I like it," he said, low. "The trickster who talks to the dark teaches the islanders a new fear."
Daemon, still trembling, asked what he meant aloud: "But your men—those we left below—how will they move the stores? How will we prevent men throwing themselves into boats with axes and knives because they smell the smoke?"
Jinx's eyes floated across the blown ravine of torches, the men lowering the last roped sacks, the oars striking foam. "Because they are already moving," he said. "Because hunger makes the wise clumsy and the clumsy desperate. Because a burning belly is a simpler call to arms than an armored lord in a great hall. And because when their attention is fixed on the fire, the knife under their ribs is where it will do the most work." He pointed once at the distant silhouette of the keep, black and solid against the fog. "And now," he added, voice dropping like a stone hitting quiet water, "we breach."
At the word, the men's motions shifted to a new tempo. Chains rattled, feet pounded, ropes were coiled and slung. Those who had the lighter packs — the pick-harnesses, thin ladders, grapnels and hooks — slotted them into waiting hands. Oberyn's grin returned, sharp and fever-bright; he had been born hungry for the edge of spectacle and war's intimate cruelty. Daemon, still young but steadier, ran a hand along a long pole fitted with an iron claw, the tool for hooking shutters or pulling down ladders. He had the look now of a boy who was learning the serious joy of efficient violence.
Jinx walked to the lip and looked over the wavering, smoking mouth of the cavern. Below, silhouetted shadows dashed in the orange wash; figures shoved at boats with frantic arms; men cried out, some fell, some dove for cover. The island was waking in chaos — exactly as the plan had intended. With the defenders distracted and thinned, the keep's soft underbelly would be vulnerable.
He turned then to the men chosen for the breach — the climbing crew, the fighters with the short blades and grapples — and spoke the only words they needed. "Silence until the ropes are taut. Then noise. Then steel. We take the inner yard or we die trying." The thin band that surrounded him answered with small nods, faces lit in the glow of the blaze, resolve hard as flint.
They moved like ghosts anew. Two men shouldered the ladder; one flung a grapnel that caught on the jagged edge of a parapet with a hollow clang like a cry in the dark. The rope strained, then held. The first of them swung and climbed, boot finding stone, hand finding stone, breath a measured rhythm. Jinx followed, Red Rain's hilt warm against his palm even as it stayed sheathed. He moved up the rope with a dancer's grace, boots finding purchase even where the rock was slick from salt and smoke.
Oberyn, by contrast, hugged the cliff and climbed with a fluid, almost rakish grace, the spear jutting beside him like a poem of killing. He made a mock bow as he reached the top, then gathered himself, and the two men took their places on the parapet like predators claiming their vantage.
Below, the remaining men — those who were not to climb — began to make the noise. Rodrik's drums, carried on the fog, changed their beat and in response the island's remaining defenders poured from inner yards and courtyards like water pushed through sluices. They came armed and angry, shouting orders into the smoke, pulling men into ranks to see off what they imagined would be a direct assault on their gate.
But above them, Jinx and Oberyn crouched on the lip and readied a smaller, fiercer theater.
Oberyn's spear flashed; he prodded the first sentry who had stumbled to the parapet, dropping him with a precise strike that took no more than a breath. Jinx moved like cold lightning — quiet, economical. His sword came free like a swallowing shadow; Red Rain left its sheath for a second, a red ghost in the dark, and an Ironborn throat found it. No cry. A small, wet sound; then silence. The deed was close and clinical — and even as a body slumped, it brought in new movement: other sentries pivoted, blades rang, and the parapet became a place for the loud, sudden business of war.
They did not wait for the defenders to form. Oberyn drove forward with a slicing cruelty; Jinx stepped behind him and cut with the clean, terrible economy of one who conserved energy for a long war. Men fell. The breach widened. Chains were thrown, portcullises were tested — and in the inner yard, where the defenders had thought themselves safest, a cluster of men with lanterns were already trying to form a response. Daemon, from below, could be heard shouting directions, his voice surprisingly steady, commanding the raft-men to shuttle more sacks and, where needed, pull bodies away so they would not clog the exit.
Within the first ten minutes, the situation on the island had transformed. Harlaw's defenders had been tricked into moving away from their strongest points. Fires licked across stacked grain. The keep's yard, once thought secure, became the stage for close quarters slaughter before the defenders could re-align. The raiders' stealth had delivered them to the throat of the beast, and the beast had not yet found its maw.
Jinx felt the surge of things he had not allowed himself too often. This — the calibrated sting of movement, the sacral geometry of a plan unfolding — pleased him. But beneath the pleasure was that other, cooler current; even as men fell and smoke rose, he watched the horizon for the slow shadow of the Black Pearl, for the contingencies that would make the strike mean more than just a night's blood. The ship would gather the taken sacks; the keep's panic would make it preyable to other strikes if they pressed the advantage. And most of all, the burning stores would whisper the right rumor in the right ears: House Harlaw was weak at its belly.
When the final hook was clinched and the last ladder found foot, Jinx climbed to the highest parapet and looked over the burning island. He let the chaos roll out like a living thing. Then, with the cold, clinical calm of a man who had chosen this life in a thousand different shapes, he called out one sharp command: "To the inner hall. Take the lord or take his head. Make the walls fall in their dreams."
The echo of his order was the match to the tinder already laid. Men rallied, and the keep — hulking, proud, and for the moment bewildered — began to crack under the quiet and savage pressure of the night.
Below, in the watery darkness, rafts bumped, oars dipped, and the last of the sacks tumbled into the cups of the Black Pearl's hungering hold. Above, on the parapet, Jinx set Red Rain back into its sheath. He did not gloat. He only let the heat of the conflagration warm his face for a moment, and in that heat something like a thought passed: this was only an opening move. The true tests were the ones to come.
The heavy oaken doors of the great hall slammed against the stone walls as Jinx and his vanguard pushed through. Firelight danced off carved beams overhead, smoke from hastily lit braziers hanging thick in the rafters. At the far end, beneath a banner of black and silver, the Harlaws waited: their lord, Castion Harlaw, tall but gaunt from years of salt air, his dark hair streaked with white; his wife, pale and proud, clutching two terrified children by the shoulders; and three women with salt-stained dresses and jeweled collars — salt wives, their eyes cast to the ground. A half-circle of ten mailed guards stood before them, swords drawn, shields raised, forming a human wall of defiance.
The air shifted as Jinx entered. His violet-tinged eyes burned like coals behind his mask, and when his hand lifted, invisible pressure coiled through the chamber. Two guards staggered, choking, their weapons clattering to the floor. With a flick of his wrist, Jinx hurled them against the stone pillars — the crack of bone echoed above the fire's crackle.
He did not stop walking.
Red Rain gleamed in one hand, its blood-red ripples catching the torchlight, while his other hand gestured lazily, but each movement carried devastation. A shield ripped from its bearer and spun across the hall like a sawblade, cleaving through another man's arm. A table shattered as two guards were slammed into it, their screams cut short as splinters drove into flesh.
Oberyn moved beside him, spear spinning in elegant arcs. Where Jinx was raw power, Oberyn was poetry in motion — his thrusts puncturing gaps in armor, his laughter ringing like a blade's edge. Between them, the guards were nothing more than an inconvenience.
When the last man hit the ground, choking on his own blood, Jinx finally turned his attention to the dais where the family huddled. His voice was calm, almost conversational, though it cut through the hall like ice.
"Cripple the lord," he ordered, pointing Red Rain at Castion Harlaw. "Kill everyone else — save the children and the salt wives. The Mormonts would love taking care of the little ones." His tone dripped with sarcasm, a cruel parody of charity.
Shock rippled through the chamber. Castion snarled and stepped forward, but before he could even lift his blade, two of Jinx's men seized him, driving him to his knees. His wife screamed, launching herself forward — and Oberyn's spear intercepted, clean and merciless. The point pierced her chest; she crumpled with a gasp that echoed through the chamber. The salt wives wailed but did not resist; they knew the fate of women in halls such as this.
Jinx raised his hand once more and gestured toward the shadows. A soldier stepped out, nocked a flaming arrow, and drew the string back. The hiss and snap as it was loosed carried up into the rafters.
The arrow soared high, then burst into sparks against the stone — a signal flare, bright and unmistakable.
"Now," Jinx said softly, his voice reverberating like a hammer blow, "let the wolves in."
Beyond the hall, the sounds of chaos stirred anew: horns braying, boots thundering, steel clashing. Eddard Stark and his band of Northmen would be flooding through the outer gates even now, drawn by the fire-bright signal.
Inside, Jinx turned back to Lord Castion, his eyes narrowing behind the mask. He crouched, lowering Red Rain until its edge hovered just above the man's knee. "A king's hall should never be left so poorly defended," he whispered. Then, with a flick, the sword came down.
The lord's scream tore through the hall as bone split.
And the night of blood truly began.
The great hall stank of blood and smoke. Bodies lay strewn across the stone floor, guards broken and butchered, Castion Harlaw groaning where Jinx's stroke had ruined his knee. The salt wives huddled against the wall, clutching the children to their breasts, silent but trembling. Torches sputtered in sconces, their flames bending toward the black-masked figure who still commanded the room.
Jinx had removed his mask, laying it on the high table beside Red Rain. His violet eyes glimmered like cold stars, unblinking as he swept his gaze across the Northerners who now filed in — Eddard Stark at their head, Ice resting on his shoulder, with Maege Mormont, Greatjon Umber, and a score of hard men flanking him. Behind them came Oberyn Martell, spear still streaked with gore, his expression both wary and curious.
Jinx's voice was smooth, almost casual, as he broke the silence.
"Tell me, Lord Stark… when conquest is made, how are the slaves divided?"
The words struck the hall like a hammer. For a heartbeat there was only stunned silence. Then outrage exploded all at once.
Eddard's face hardened, his grey eyes blazing. "Slavery is banned in Westeros! It is outlawed in the North, and has been since the First Men bent the knee to the Starks. Do not dare speak of such filth beneath my roof!" His voice cracked like thunder.
Maege spat on the floor, hand tightening on her axe. "Aye! To speak of such shame is an insult to the blood of every man and woman who died in chains when the Andals came!"
Even old Rodrik Cassel, loyal and stolid, stepped forward, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword though he did not draw it. "It goes against the gods and the honor of men alike. We are no Ghiscari slavers."
The hall roared with voices of condemnation — talk of outrage, blasphemy, defilement of the Old Gods.
And through it all, Jinx only sat, elbows on his knees, chin resting lightly in his gloved hands. His face was unreadable. When at last their fury subsided into ragged breaths, he spoke again — quiet, but every word was a blade.
"I have never heard such idiocy in all my lives."
The Northerners froze. Even Oberyn blinked. Jinx leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
"Buying slaves, yes. Pathetic. Weak. It disgusts me. To purchase the chains of another, to fatten merchants who profit on misery? I would burn such men alive. But to take them in conquest… that is fair game. That is how I was raised, and how those who follow the gods of my homeland — the Aesir — still hold. When you conquer a man's hall, you seize his fate as surely as his sword. His life, his kin, his labor… all are yours by right. To deny this is to deny the truth of war itself."
Murmurs rippled uneasily through the lords. Eddard's jaw tightened, but Jinx was not finished.
He reached into his cloak and drew forth something wrapped in oiled cloth. Slowly, he unfurled it upon the blood-spattered table. It was a book — old, the leather cracked and the pages yellowed, but still whole. The sight alone drew startled breaths, for such relics from the Age of Heroes were almost unheard of.
"I found this," Jinx said, "before we left Winterfell. A maester's hand, thousands of years old. He served your house when the Kings of Winter still ruled. He wrote of the Old Gods — truths now forgotten. Records from the First Men. And here, in his own words, he describes how the Starks of old supported conquest slaves. How it saved them in winters too long for memory. The expendable labored, the bloodline endured. And visions came to the kings, sent by the Old Gods themselves, guiding them to build the castles and towns that still stand."
He slid the open tome across the table. The script was faded, but legible. Symbols of weirwoods marked the margins, alongside notes on raids, captures, and "the taking of thralls to hold until their bones broke in service."
"Your gods," Jinx continued, his voice low and iron-bound, "are not strangers to this. They are kin to mine. Two faces of the same pantheon. Where I come from, the Aesir blessed conquerors who bound their foes and made them serve. And what do I see in these pages? The same. You think yourselves pure, honorable, above such things. But you are not. Your blood is born of conquest, your halls are built on the backs of thralls your ancestors broke."
He stood, Red Rain sliding back into his hand, and the torchlight caught the violet fire in his eyes.
"Do not preach to me of gods and men. I have read your own forgotten history. I have seen the truth your line buried."
Silence fell. Eddard's knuckles whitened on Ice's hilt. Maege glared, fury in her face, but behind it something uneasy stirred. Oberyn only smiled thinly, as though relishing the storm that brewed.
Jinx tapped a finger against the open book. "Your choice is simple. Keep pretending your honor is untarnished, or face the truth of what your gods demanded in ages past. Either way…" His smile was thin, cruel. "…the dead do not care. Only the living must decide whether they will survive."
The silence in the hall was thick enough to choke on, broken only by the crackle of the torch Jinx had hurled onto the ruined grain stores below. Eddard's jaw was set like stone, his hand resting on Ice, but his eyes betrayed the storm of doubt that churned within.
Then Greatjon Umber's booming voice cut through the tension.
"Seven hells," he muttered, loud enough for all to hear. "When I first heard the Stranger speak of thralls, I near thought him mad. But…" He stroked his thick beard, gaze drifting to the old tome Jinx had placed on the table. "The winters of old were harsher than we see now. Whole villages starved when the snows didn't break for years. My grandsire told me tales — not songs, tales — of wolves eating men in those days. If the Kings of Winter took captives in war and made them serve, I'd not be surprised. Better a few strangers bent to labor than the whole North frozen stiff in their graves."
Murmurs ran through the gathered lords — some nodding slowly, others stiffening in outrage.
Maege Mormont bristled, slamming the butt of her axe on the stone floor. "So you'd chain men like cattle because it makes life easier? That's not the North I swore to defend. My house bleeds for its honor, Greatjon, not for convenience!"
Greatjon growled, his voice low but carrying. "Honor doesn't keep children's bellies full in the dead of winter."
The two glared at one another, their words striking sparks that threatened to flare into fire.
Rodrik Cassel stepped forward, face pale. "Even if it were true — even if our forebears once did such things — does that mean we should return to it now? Are we not better than them? Have we not moved beyond the savagery of the Age of Heroes?"
Jinx leaned back in his chair, watching the clash with an almost feline amusement. His violet eyes gleamed in the torchlight. "Better? Worse? Those are southern words. In my experience, there is only what keeps your people alive, and what kills them. Do you imagine the Old Gods care whether you feed your young with clean hands or bloody? Blood feeds the roots all the same."
Eddard's knuckles whitened on Ice's pommel. His mind was torn, as though half of him wanted to shout Jinx down and the other half wanted to hear more — to weigh this dangerous truth against the honor he had sworn to uphold.
Oberyn, leaning against a pillar with his spear across his shoulders, chuckled. "Your Northmen are more entertaining than I was told. Half ready to cut their tongues out for speaking of slavery, half tempted to bring it back if it saves them from hunger. You should all drink more wine. It makes such debates easier."
The hall stirred uneasily. Jinx tapped the old tome with a single finger.
"The First Men remembered what you have forgotten. You call it slavery, but they called it survival. You can curse me, you can deny your past, but the words are here — written by your own maesters, blessed by your own gods."
He leaned forward, locking eyes with Eddard. "The question is not whether it was done. It is whether you are strong enough to face the truth, or whether you will cling to lies while the world grows colder around you."
The debate in the hall was still burning, voices raised, steel scraped against stone, when Eddard suddenly swayed where he stood. His hand flew to his temple, eyes squeezing shut as if pierced by an unseen blade. The lords around him froze. Maege called his name, and Greatjon half-rose from his bench, but Eddard staggered, gripping Ice for balance until he was forced to sink heavily into the nearest chair.
"Lord Stark!" Rodrik Cassel cried, stepping forward, fear etched across his weathered face.
But Jinx didn't move. He only watched, violet eyes narrowing behind the faint shimmer of his mask. He could feel it — the Force surging, roiling within the Wolf of Winterfell like a river bursting its banks. It was far stronger than the usual flicker that coursed through Eddard. This was deliberate. Guided.
Jinx tilted his head. "What are the gods showing you, wolf?" His tone was calm, curious, as though he were a teacher watching a student stumble onto a hidden lesson.
Eddard's chest heaved. For a long moment he said nothing, lips pressed tight against the pain. Then, with a voice hoarse and rough, he spoke.
"A wolf," he rasped. "A great wolf… larger than the rest. It sank its teeth into the pack leader of another, and tore him down. Then it took the conquered pack for its own. But…" His eyes flickered open, pupils wide with the vision's grip. "It killed half. The others it let live. The choice was his. Life or death, by the wolf's will."
The hall was silent, the fire crackling like distant thunder. Even Oberyn Martell, leaning against the wall, no longer smirked.
Jinx's mask tilted, and his voice came quiet but sharp, cutting through the hush. "The gods speak plainly to those they favor. They told the Kings of Winter much the same in ages past: conquest is not cruelty, it is destiny. To take what you need, to bend the living to your will, to choose who serves and who falls. That is the right of the wolf."
Eddard's hand trembled on the arm of his chair. The words clashed against every lesson he had ever been taught in the Vale, every oath he had sworn before a septon or a godswood. And yet… the vision's weight pressed down heavier than steel. He had seen it. Felt it. The old gods had not whispered, they had roared.
The northern lords shifted uneasily, exchanging glances. Some were pale with fear. Others — Greatjon, especially — looked almost enthralled, as if the gods themselves had blessed what Jinx had spoken.
Jinx leaned closer, voice dropping low, meant only for Eddard though all could hear. "Your ancestors understood. They listened. That is why their lines endured through winters that would have broken lesser men. You feel it too, wolf. Don't deny it. The gods have marked you. And they have shown you the way."
Eddard Stark stepped forward, Ice gleaming in his grasp. The greatsword seemed to carry the cold of the old gods themselves, heavy with judgement. His voice was steady, though his heart carried the burden of what he was about to command.
"Ice has always been the tool of justice in my house," he said, looking across the dimly lit hall, where the battered Lord of Harlaw sat broken and trembling. "But not every stroke must be my own. Maege Mormont—" his grey eyes turned to the Lady of Bear Island, "—your life has been spent resisting these ironborn raiders. You've buried kin and kinsmen because of their cruelty. Let it be your hand that carries justice this day."
Maege Mormont stiffened. For a heartbeat, silence stretched as the gathered northern lords, soldiers, and even Oberyn Martell glanced between them. The lady's jaw tightened, pride swelling in her chest at the weight of the honor. She took Ice from Eddard's hands as though it were a relic, her knuckles whitening around the hilt.
Before her sat Lord Castion Harlaw—once a proud man of ironborn lineage, now pale, bloodied, and near broken. His eyes widened when he realized what was coming. He thrashed against his bonds, screaming curses in the harsh tongue of the islands.
Maege looked at him, and for a moment the hall held its breath. She thought of her daughters—of Dacey, Alysane, Lyra, Jorelle—how many times had she told them of the raids, of the losses they endured? How many nights had she prayed to the old gods for justice?
A growl left her throat. With a single swing, steady and merciless, she brought Ice down—not upon his neck, but between his legs.
The strike was clean, brutal, final.
The hall erupted. Castion's scream was like a dying animal, high and shrill. Blood spilled across the stone floor. Every man in the room winced, even hardened warriors who had seen battlefields soaked red. A few shifted uncomfortably, as if they themselves had been struck.
Even Jinx—mask off, violet eyes gleaming with something between amusement and disgust—grimaced and tilted his head. "Effective," he muttered dryly, though his tone carried a trace of mockery for the lord's pitiful shrieks.
Some of the gathered northmen glanced at one another, unsure whether to pity the ironborn lord or laugh at the cruel irony. A few spat on the ground, muttering that it was more mercy than his kind deserved.
Maege stood over him, Ice resting by her side, her chest heaving. Her face was set like carved stone, yet her eyes blazed with grim satisfaction. She turned back to Eddard, voice rough but steady:
"It is done."
Eddard inclined his head in solemn respect. "The justice of the North has been answered."
The lord's continued screaming echoed through the hall, but his voice was weaker now, broken along with his body.
For the first time, even Jory Cassel—loyal nephew and warrior—looked away, muttering a prayer under his breath. Oberyn Martell, however, smirked faintly, swirling his wine. "A harsh sentence," he drawled, "but fitting. I confess, even the Dornish might have flinched at that stroke."
Jinx chuckled softly, crossing his arms. "Wars are not won by mercy. Nor are lessons remembered by clean deaths. Let him live with his shame."
And as the northern lords filed out of the hall, grim but resolute, the ironborn lord's screams lingered, becoming a song of defeat that would echo in the minds of all who bore witness.
The lord's screams still echoed faintly as Eddard Stark stepped into the torchlit courtyard of Harlaw's holdfast. The air reeked of smoke and seawater, mingling with the metallic tang of blood. The battle was done, the keep broken, and now came the grim work of spoils and judgement.
Eddard raised his voice, cutting through the din of looting soldiers.
"Take seventy-five percent of the riches. Leave the rest. The Ironborn may keep enough to remind them they once lived, but no more."
A chorus of "Aye, my lord!" rippled through the northern men as they surged into the vaults and treasuries, carrying out Stark justice with cold efficiency. Coins clinked, jewels glimmered, and bolts of fine cloth were bundled into waiting carts. Daemon Sand, face alight with the chance to prove himself, directed the work at Jinx's quiet command, noting what was seized and what was spared.
Then came the children.
Five stood in the wreckage of their father's hall—three girls, two boys. Their eyes were wide, their clothes torn, cheeks streaked with dirt and tears. The eldest boy tried to stand tall, though his lip trembled; one of the girls clutched a younger sister's hand, trying to shield her.
Eddard Stark did not waver. His voice was steel, meant for all to hear.
"The two boys and one girl will be taken north, to Bear Island. They will serve as wards of House Mormont. Their fates will lie in Maege's hands. Let them grow where the sea cannot spoil them."
Maege Mormont's face was unreadable, but there was no mistaking the grim pride in her eyes. She nodded once, solid and sure. "They will be raised hard, but strong. The island will make them more than their father ever was."
Eddard turned to the remaining two girls, both young enough to have seen little of life beyond these halls. He inclined his head toward Prince Oberyn, his words formal, deliberate.
"The rest will go to Dorne. A gift to House Martell, in recognition of their part in securing this battle and its stores."
Oberyn's dark eyes glimmered with amusement, though there was a heat behind them too—a predator's spark. He accepted with a slow, dramatic bow, ever the performer even in war.
"My lord Stark, your generosity outpaces even the northern winds. My daughters will appreciate such company. And perhaps these children of lords will learn what true nobility means, far from the damp rot of their ironborn halls."
His words dripped charm, but the edge of cruelty in them was sharp. The lords present shifted uneasily, but none challenged Eddard's decree. Justice had been dealt, spoils divided, and the old gods themselves seemed to watch in silent judgement from the stone walls.
Jinx, standing just behind, mask in hand and violet eyes gleaming in the torchlight, tilted his head at the children. "So," he murmured, his tone carrying to Eddard and Oberyn both, "wolves and vipers alike will raise the cubs of the drowned. That, my friends, is a story worth telling."
And with that, the night's work was sealed.