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POV: Arthur Snow / Redna
Location: Rimehall Ridge – Near the Crags
The snow came down sideways, thick and wet, blotting out shapes faster than they formed.
Arthur stood at the tree line, unmoving. The wind howled. The scent of steel and old blood clung to the air—too faint for most, but not him.
He didn't blink.
His breath was calm. His hand rested loosely on the hilt of Reaper.
They were coming.
Not with horns or battle cries. Just shadows moving through trees, stepping softly over broken earth. Too many to be scouts. Too disorganized to be a warband.
"Garron," Arthur murmured.
The big man took two steps forward and slammed his hammer once against a stone. A dull boom echoed through the ravine.
The others snapped into motion.
Vaeren uncorked two smoke flasks and rolled them downslope. The fog thickened instantly with gray mist and stinging fumes. Thom gripped his sling and pulled a satchel of powder tight to his side. Sarra vanished behind the northern rock wall.
Arthur waited.
Then came the first scream.
POV: Redna
Redna was already moving, low to the ground, blade reversed in her palm.
She saw them emerge—bare-chested wildlings painted in red ash, faces cracked with cold, eyes glazed from weeks of something worse than hunger.
They had fire in them. But fire didn't matter when you couldn't see.
Vaeren's smoke crawled through the trees like a living thing. The wildlings ran blind.
Redna slipped behind one—a youth barely older than she was—kicked his knee inward, twisted his braid, and knocked him cold with the pommel.
Another came screaming at her. She ducked.
A second figure—Sarra—tackled him from the left and drove her blade into his side.
No time to speak.
The ambush was full.
Arthur moved through the chaos like it was drawn for him alone.
One wildling lunged. Reaper flashed. The man's legs gave out a second before the blade even touched him.
Another raised an axe.
Arthur struck with his palm—not blade—and the man crumpled, qi rippling through bone.
To the Ironborn scouts hiding in the rear, it must've looked like magic.
It wasn't. It was precision.
They'd been coordinating—two Ironborn crouched at the back ridge, signaling movements with short whistles. Arthur didn't approach them.
He vanished, then reappeared behind them, one step later.
The first didn't even have time to turn.
The second managed to draw—but not swing.
They died in silence.
In the mist, Redna found the girl.
Small. Thin. Wild hair and frost-bitten lips. Eyes full of something too still for her age.
The girl had no blade. But she didn't flinch when Redna grabbed her arm.
Instead, she smiled.
"Hrok will gut the kneelers at Winterfell," she whispered.
Redna tightened her grip. "What did you say?"
The girl just stared. Like she'd already said too much. Like she wasn't supposed to remember why.
Arthur arrived minutes later, the battlefield almost clear.
Corpses littered the slope. A few still groaned, but none resisted. Garron stood bruised but uninjured. Vaeren sat cross-legged, muttering about wasted powder.
Thom checked Sarra's shoulder—dislocated. Already set back into place.
And Lyanna wiped blood from her sword, hands steady, breath slow.
"We're clear," she said.
Arthur turned to Redna, who was still holding the girl.
"She said they're going to Winterfell," Redna said. "Hrok's name. Her voice… it didn't sound like her own."
Arthur crouched.
"Look at me," he said gently.
The girl didn't blink. But her eyes tracked him.
"What's your name?" he asked.
The girl opened her mouth—
—and screamed, not a child's scream, but raw, broken. Then collapsed unconscious.
Redna swore.
Arthur stood. "Let her sleep."
"What if she wakes like that again?" Redna asked.
Arthur didn't answer.
He looked to the sky.
The snow had stopped falling.
Later that night, as they burned the bodies, Arthur stared into the flames.
Sarra stood beside him.
"That wasn't a raid," she said.
"No," Arthur agreed. "It was a distraction."
"For what?"
His jaw clenched as the fire crackled.
"I hate rats the most"