The stables smelled of hay and horse sweat, the familiar scents doing little to settle the weight coiled in Mihawk's gut. His borrowed mare, a thick-necked garron more suited to pulling ploughs than raids snorted when he slung his saddle over her back. The sword at his hip felt alien, its length brushing against his thigh with every movement.
Ser Jory arrived with a dozen guardsmen in tow, their chainmail jingling like ill-tuned bells. "You look like a man headed to his own hanging," the captain remarked, tightening his horse's girth with a sharp tug. Mihawk said nothing, adjusting the unfamiliar straps of his scabbard. Ser Jory's gaze lingered on the sword. "That's a strange blade if I've ever seen one."
Mihawk's fingers twitched toward the hilt. "It'll cut."
A horn sounded from the gatehouse Lord Stark's party assembling. Ser Joy mounted, his horse sidestepping with pent-up energy. "Stay close. Watch the trees. And for the gods' sake, don't charge in like some green squire dreaming of glory." His smirk vanished as the gates groaned open. "This isn't a tourney, so be ready for anything."
The Wolfswood swallowed them whole by midday. Snow-laden branches clawed at Mihawk's cloak, their shadows stretching like skeletal fingers across the path. Lord Stark rode at the head of their column, his greatsword Ice across his back. The men spoke in murmurs when they spoke at all, their breath frosting in the cold.
Mihawk's first sight of the raiders' work came at dusk. The crofters' village was little more than charred timbers and trampled snow, the stench of burnt meat clinging to the ruins. A child's doll lay face-down in the mud, its stitching split open like a gutted hare. Lord Stark dismounted slowly, his gloved hand brushing the blackened doorframe of what had been a home.
The doll's button eyes stared up at Mihawk, glassy and accusatory. He nudged it with his boot, revealing a smear of something dark beneath too thick for mud. Ser Jory knelt nearby, running fingers through the ashes.
Ice whispered against leather as Lord Stark drew his greatsword, the Valyrian steel catching the fading light. "Spread out," he commanded, voice colder than the wind. "Search for tracks, we need to know what way they went."
Mihawk moved toward the tree line, his borrowed garron snorting nervously. The Wolfswood loomed ahead, its ancient oaks hunched like grieving sentinels. Something crunched underfoot—not snow. A broken arrow shaft, fletched with crow feathers.
"Here."
The guardsman's call brought them running. A trail of footprints, some booted, some bare led into the forest. Deep gouges marked where men had been dragged. Lord Stark's jaw tightened. "They're heading northeast. Toward the mountains."
Ser Jory spat. "Wildlings don't take prisoners."
"They do if they want thralls," said a grizzled guardsman, gripping his axe.
Mihawk's fingers flexed around his sword hilt. The weight still felt foreign, but the edge, when he tested it against his thumb, was sharper than any blade had a right to be.
Lord Stark's gaze swept over his men, lingering longest on Mihawk. "We ride at first light. Cassel, select three men to scout ahead. The rest dig graves."
No one protested digging duty.
Dawn came grey and grim. Mihawk found Ser Jory sharpening his sword by the embers of last night's fire. The captain didn't look up. "Ever killed a man, boy?"
Mihawk thought of the butcher's block behind his father's forge. "No."
Ser Jory's whetstone paused. "It's not like sparring."
The trail into the mountains was a jagged scar of trampled snow and broken branches. Twice, they found discarded scraps of clothing, a woolen cap, a child's tiny glove. Ser Jory's scowl deepened with each discovery.
Midmorning, the scouts returned at a dead run. "Thirty of them," panted the lead rider. "Half armed. They've got the crofters penned like sheep."
Lord Stark's gloved hand tightened on Ice's hilt. "Positions."
They attacked at dusk, when the slanting light blinded the lookouts.
Mihawk's first kill was an afterthought, a wildling turning too slow, his axe raised in clumsy defense. The black sword sheared through fur and flesh alike, painting the snow crimson. The man gaped at his own spilling guts spilling out before crumpling.
No time to dwell. Another raider lunged, teeth bared in a snarl. Mihawk pivoted, letting momentum carry his blade upward. Steel met throat with a wet crunch.
Chaos reigned. Screams echoed off the mountain walls some Northern, most not. Through the fray, Mihawk glimpsed Lord Stark moving like winter incarnate, Ice carving arcs of pale death.
Then, a child's wail.
Mihawk broke formation without thinking, charging toward a cluster of ragged tents. A wildling woman stood guard, her spear leveled at his chest. He feinted left, then drove his sword through her belly. She gasped, her free hand clutching at the blade as if to push it deeper.
Inside the tent, a dozen crofters huddled, men missing fingers, women with hollow eyes. A boy no older than Bran stared up at Mihawk, his face streaked with soot and tears.
"Stay down," Mihawk ordered, yanking his sword free. The boy nodded, clutching a younger sibling to his chest.
Outside, the clash of steel was fading. Mihawk stepped over the wildling woman's body, his boots leaving red prints in the snow.
Ser Jory found him leaning against a boulder, wiping his sword clean with a dead man's cloak. The captain's gambeson was slashed open at the shoulder, revealing an ugly gash beneath. "You're alive," he observed, breathing hard.
Mihawk studied the blood drying on his blade. "So are they." He jerked his chin toward the freed prisoners now stumbling into the moonlight.
The crofters' whispers carried farther than their shuffling footsteps in the snow. Mihawk watched them pass men with hollow cheeks gripping makeshift weapons, women clutching children who hadn't stopped crying in days. Their eyes lingered on his sword before skittering away, as though the blade's darkness reflected something they couldn't name.
Ser Jory spat a glob of blood onto the trampled snow. "First kills always taste like iron," he muttered, pressing a rag to his shoulder wound. His gaze flicked to the wildling woman's corpse, her unblinking eyes frozen wide. "Clean yours?"
Mihawk flexed his fingers around the sword's hilt. The leather grip was slick—with sweat or blood, he couldn't tell. "Good enough."
A commotion near the ravine drew their attention. Lord Stark stood over a bound captive, Ice's point resting against the wildling's throat. The man, bearded and missing an ear, spat at the lord's boots. Even from a distance, Mihawk saw the moment Ned Stark's jaw tightened. Ice flashed once in the moonlight.
The head rolled three paces before stopping face-up in the snow, mouth still twisted in defiance.
Ser Jory exhaled through his nose. "Well that's that, then." He clapped Mihawk's shoulder, ignoring the boy's flinch. "Go help round up the survivors. And wipe that blade properly rust'll ruin the temper."
The ride back to Winterfell was a silent procession of exhaustion and bloodstained cloaks. Mihawk's mare plodded alongside Ser Jory's mount, her head drooping low. The black sword still unnamedhung heavy at his hip, its scabbard tapping rhythmically against the saddle with each step. Lord Stark had ordered the crofters escorted to Last Hearth, but Mihawk's party turned southward, their duty done.
"You're quiet," Ser Jory remarked as they crossed a frozen stream. The captain's shoulder wound had been stitched with rough horsehair thread, the skin around it purpling with bruise.
Mihawk watched the water swirl beneath the ice. "Thinking."
"Don't." Ser Jory spat over his horse's flank. "First kills fester if you pick at them."
The gates of Winterfell loomed ahead, the torches flickering. Stableboys rushed forward to take their mounts, eyes wide at the blood crusting the riders' gear. Mihawk slid from the saddle, his legs stiff with cold and spent adrenaline. The sword's weight was familiar now.
Jon Snow awaited them in the training yard, his practice sword abandoned in the dirt. His gaze raked over Mihawk's torn gambeson, the dark stains on his boots. "Alive, then," he said, voice flat.
Mihawk unbuckled his scabbard. "Disappointed?"
Jon's lips thinned. He kicked the practice sword toward Mihawk—a challenge, an offering. It skidded to a halt between them, its worn grip facing outward.
Ser Jory groaned. "Seven hells, not this again." But he didn't interfere as Mihawk scooped up the wooden blade, its familiar weight laughably light compared to the steel he'd wielded in the mountains.
Jon attacked without preamble, his strokes precise as a headsman's axe. Mihawk parried mechanically, his muscles remembering the drills even as his mind lingered on split flesh and screaming wildlings. Their wooden swords cracked together once, twice before Jon feinted high and swept Mihawk's legs out from under him.
The impact jarred his spine. Above him, Jon's face was unreadable in the torchlight. "You're slow."
Mihawk rolled to his feet, ignoring the protest of bruised ribs. "Try me tomorrow."
Jon's nostrils flared. He opened his mouth then froze as a small figure darted between them. Arya Stark planted herself in the dirt, her needle-thin arms crossed. "You're both idiots," she announced, glaring up at them with Stark grey eyes. "Mihawk just got back from killing real people."
The silence stretched taut. Jon exhaled sharply through his nose and sheathed his practice sword. "Tomorrow, then," he muttered, turning on his heel.
Arya waited until Jon's footsteps faded before thrusting a bundle at Mihawk. "For you," she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. The cloth unfolded to reveal a fresh whetstone,smaller than her first gift, its surface unmarked. "For your real sword."
Mihawk turned it over in his palms. The gesture lodged in his throat like a fishbone. Arya grinned, her front teeth slightly crooked, then scampered off toward the keep before he could respond.
The forge fire burned low when Mihawk finally returned home. His father stood silhouetted against the embers, hammer idle in his grip. Neither spoke as Mihawk unbuckled the black sword and laid it across the anvil. The blade was dull with dried blood, its edge notched from mountain stone.
His father inspected it with a blacksmith's critical eye. "Clean your steel before you clean yourself," he grunted, thrusting a oiled rag at Mihawk's chest.
They worked in silence, father stoking the coals, son scrubbing gore from fuller to tip. When the blade gleamed darkly once more, Mihawk's father grunted approval and reached for his finest honing stone. The rasp of steel on rock filled the smithy, a sound Mihawk had fallen asleep to as a child.
"You kept your head," his father said at last, testing the edge with his thumb. "That's something."
Mihawk watched sparks dance up the chimney. "I didn't think."
His father's chuckle was a dry, rasping thing. "Good. Thinking gets men killed." He handed the sword back, its edge sharp enough to split moonlight. "Now name it."
Mihawk ran his fingers along the fuller, feeling the steel hum beneath his touch. "Yoru."
His father snorted. "Fancy southern name for a northern blade."
The naming ceremony was less a ceremony and more his father shoving a mug of ale into his hand at dawn. "Drink," the blacksmith grunted, tapping his own tankard against Mihawk's with a dull clank. The ale was bitter enough to make his eyes water, but he drained it in three gulps while his father watched, arms crossed over his soot-streaked apron.
"Yoru," the man repeated, testing the name like a poorly balanced hammer. He spat into the forge's embers, sending up a hiss of steam. "Better than 'Stark's Whore' or 'Wildling-Slayer,' I suppose."
Mihawk's knuckles whitened around the empty mug.
His father smirked. "Easy, boy. You'll hear worse." He turned back to the anvil, dismissing his son with a wave of his hammer. "Go bleed on someone else's time."
Winterfell's training yard was bustling when Mihawk arrived, Yoru's unfamiliar weight a constant presence at his hip. Ser Jory had the guardsmen running drills, shield walls breaking into flanking maneuvers, their shouts echoing off the stone walls. The captain noticed Mihawk immediately, his gaze lingering on the black sword before he barked, "Jon! Spar with our returning hero."
Jon came at him like a storm, relentless, biting, his sword a blur in the early light. Mihawk let him. He parried each strike with Yoru's flat, the loud *clink* of steel-on-steel sending vibrations up his forearm. Jon's breaths came sharp through gritted teeth, his boots kicking up puffs of frost with every pivot.
Then Mihawk moved.
A twist of his wrist sent Jon's sword skittering wide. Yoru's tip tapped Jon's ribs hard enough to bruise. Jon staggered, eyes widening as Mihawk flowed past his guard like water around stone. The black sword's pommel cracked against Jon's temple, sending him sprawling face-first into the dirt.
Silence pooled across the yard. Even Ser Jory's perpetual smirk vanished.
Jon pushed himself up slowly, blood welling from a split lip. His fingers twitched toward his discarded sword—then stilled. "That wasn't Northern style," he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
Mihawk flicked Yoru's tip downward, scattering drops of Jon's blood in the snow. "Wildlings don't fight by rules."
Arya's sudden crow of laughter shattered the tension. She perched on the fence like a scrawny bird, her legs swinging. "Told you he wouldn't go easy!"
Jon's glare could've frozen the Blackwater. He snatched up his sword and lunged again, only for Mihawk to sidestep, hooking a foot behind Jon's ankle. Jon hit the dirt a second time, his breath huffing out in a white cloud.
Ser Jory's chuckle broke the stillness. "Well. That settles who's polishing armor tonight." He tossed a rag at Jon's chest. "And clean your face before Lady Stark sees."
Jon spat crimson into the snow. His gaze, when it lifted to Mihawk's, held something darker than resentment. "You fight like a butcher," he muttered.
Mihawk sheathed Yoru with a soft *click*. "Butchers win."
Arya vaulted off the fence, landing between them with a thud. She snatched a wooden sword and thrust it at Mihawk. "Teach me that." Her eyes burned with the same feverish intensity.
Ser Jory groaned. "Gods spare us—"
Mihawk ignored him. He took Arya's wrist, adjusting her grip until her small fingers curled correctly. "You're not strong enough to pivot like that." He nudged her stance wider. "But you're fast. Use it."
Jon watched them, his jaw working silently. Then he turned and stalked toward the armory, his shoulders stiff beneath his black cloak.
Arya's first attempt sent her sprawling. She popped up immediately, dirt smeared across her nose. "Again."
Mihawk obliged.
By the third tumble, Ser Jory had dragged a stool outside and was sharpening his dagger with theatrical nonchalance. "Lord Stark'll have my head if you break her," he called.
Arya bared her teeth. "I'm not a baby." She lunged and this time, her wooden blade actually connected with Mihawk's thigh before he disarmed her.
The captain's whetstone paused. "Huh."
Arya beamed like she'd slain the Mountain herself. Mihawk flicked her forehead. "Tomorrow. Dawn."
She darted off before he finished speaking, no doubt to boast to Bran or pester Mikken for a real blade. Ser Joy sighed, sheathing his dagger. "You're creating a monster."
Mihawk watched Arya vanish into the keep, her laughter trailing behind her like a banner. "Better a monster than prey."
The words tasted like prophecy.