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POV: Arthur Snow
Location: Wolfsblood Ridge – Camp
The scroll was already ash in the fire.
Arthur watched the last curl of blackened parchment collapse inward, the wax seal of House Dustin melting into nothing. It hadn't fooled him. The ink had been too dark. The wax too soft. And Barrowton didn't send ravens at first light—not to bastards, not with unsigned orders.
It hadn't mattered.
Not until Maelen came stumbling out of the trees, breath ragged.
The Clearing
Lyanna was the first to speak, her breath frosting in the dawn air. "Since when does Barrowton send ravens at first light?" Her fingers rested on the pommel of her sword, the motion as natural as breathing.
Sarra cracked her knuckles, the sound like breaking twigs. "Since never. Their maester sleeps till noon."
Garron's massive frame blocked the rising sun as he leaned on his hammer. "Could be poachers. Or mountain clans."
Vaeren snorted, rolling one of his glass vials between slender fingers. "Poachers don't use Dustin seals. And clansmen can't write."
Thom rubbed his arms against the cold, his healer's hands pale in the morning light. "If it's false... why would anyone want us at Rimehall?"
Redna said nothing. She simply nocked an arrow and stared southward, toward where the old fort lay.
Maelen's eyes went distant, his voice hollow. "I'll see try to see once more."
The Hawk's Flight
The bird's vision came in fragments:
Rimehall's broken towers jutted from the snow like rotten teeth. The courtyard lay buried under drifts, but here and there, the wind had exposed patches of blackened stone where fires had burned too hot, too long. A rusted cooking pot lay overturned near what might have been a storehouse, its contents long since eaten by frost and time.
Near the eastern wall, something glinted beneath a mound of snow-covered bones. The hawk's sharp eyes caught the telltale sheen of steel—not the crude iron of wildlings, but proper castle-forged metal. The hilt of a dagger, perhaps. Or an axe.
Then movement. Faint, at the edge of vision. A shadow slipping between the broken walls. Not animal. Not quite human.
Maelen gasped back into his own skin, his fingers digging into the frozen earth. "There's something there," he rasped. "Not just ruins."
The Decision
Arthur stood, his shadow long in the morning light. "We go. Light packs. Cold camp." His gaze swept over them—Lyanna's steady calm, Sarra's coiled energy, Garron's brute strength, Vaeren's cunning, Thom's quiet resolve, Redna's lethal patience. "Assume it's a trap."
Lyanna nodded. "And if it is?"
Arthur's hand rested on the hilt of his sword. "Then we spring it properly."
Interlude: The Ironborn Deception
The deck of the Foam-Singer rolled beneath Dagmer Black-Tide's boots as he crushed the false scroll in his fist. Around him, the salt wind carried the stink of tar and lies.
"It's done," he told the raven on his shoulder. The bird cocked its head, one beady eye reflecting the rising sun. "Let the wolves chase shadows while we take their keep."
The raven said nothing. It never did. But in the depths of its black eyes, something darker than bird-wit stirred.