Chapter 215

The North. Winterfell.

Jon Snow.

"Where is the Other now?" Robb asked.

"In the catacombs beneath the Wall." No words could capture the uproar when the five survivors had managed to drag that monster out of legend back with them. "We've got the bastard chained down with everything Castle Black had on hand, and there are men guarding him around the clock."

"Excellent." His brother's face lit up, though Jon didn't share the feeling. "Now we have proof. All that's left is to show it to the high lords. I'll take that part on myself."

"There's a problem, we can't move the Walker." That earned him a look of pure confusion. "I wanted to bring it to Winterfell at first, but the moment we tried to take it too far from the edge of the Wall, it started hissing and smoking. It looked exactly like what happened when its friend got struck with obsidian, so I left it where it was."

"...So there's no way at all?" Hardly anyone of importance would drop everything and travel all the way to the far north just to look at some old legend.

"I figured it was better to have something than nothing at all," Jon's jaw tightened with irritation.

The whole situation left him thoroughly furious. After the fight with the Walker, only eight of thirty good men had survived. Three more died of their wounds afterward. Five made it back to the Wall, himself included, and two of them would remain crippled for the rest of their lives. Ser Alliser was one of them. The frostbite had cost him his entire right hand and a couple of fingers on his left. A steep price, but they'd managed to accomplish what they'd set out to do. As it turned out, that accomplishment meant almost nothing, since the Walker couldn't even be brought south.

"Why did you agree to a deal with the Falcon's Eye?" And there it was, the subject of their most bitter arguments.

"We needed money, and we needed it fast." You couldn't afford to be stingy in a war against the dead, it would cost you dearly.

"We could have managed without it, the treasury could bear the strain." It irritated Jon that his brother was letting sentiment guide him on this.

"On paper, maybe, but in practice, it's always better to have the coin in hand."

"He's paying us with gold he plundered, ours and the river lords'."

"Gold doesn't carry a smell..." He'd lost count of how many times they'd argued over this exact point.

"Helping him, after everything he did to our allies?!"

"You mean the ones who abandoned the North the moment there was profit to be had?"

"Not all of them acted that way! My mother's kin suffered badly at Arryn's hands." That didn't move Jon in the slightest.

"It's time you remembered: you're a Stark of Winterfell, not a Tully of Riverrun! Act in the interests of your own people!" If Jon was being completely honest, he thought the Tullys had brought their troubles on themselves and earned the deserved wrath of one of the most powerful men on the continent.

"...Maybe you're right." Those words caught Jon off guard, his brother was as stubborn as they came. "When I rode south, I thought the fighting would be the hardest part. As it turned out... It was my choices that got father captured. I was the one who let Theon go, and now the ironborn are raiding our shores. I was the one who trusted Uncle Edmure, and now we're without gold. Now we don't even have the resources we need."

"That's..." Jon didn't agree, he considered those failures only indirectly Robb's fault, though his brother would hardly accept the argument. "Still, you cleared out the scum that had overrun the North."

"It was easier than most people would think." A muscle twitched in Jon's eye. If rooting out those bastards had truly been so simple, the region wouldn't still be suffering endless attacks. "Jon, I'm going to need your help, help me hold the North together. You'll be named my heir and regent, in case anything happens to me."

"Plenty of people will object to that." Lady Catelyn would be the first to cry out, she'd feared usurpation from him for years now.

"Let them! Their invariable opinions won't save us from the Long Night." Robb's temper flared. "If I learned anything in the south, it's how to stand firm in my decisions. Bran comes next in the line of succession, but he's a prisoner of Arryn's, and we can't give anyone the chance to build a puppet government around him. If I die, that creates a succession crisis. Rickon's still a child, he couldn't hold the North together. That leaves you: you have the knowledge for it, the experience too, the lords respect you, and most importantly, I trust you."

"I... I..." thank you, for your trust." A little boy's old dream had finally come true. Jon had become a Stark in everything but name.

In practice, nothing much changed for Jon, he would still do everything in his power for the good of the North, but now he carried an official title to back it. Still, that paled beside what lay ahead. The south had never been more fractured. Everyone was declaring himself king, fighting over the Iron Throne. Gods, even kin had marched to war against kin these past few years: three Targaryens (Viserys, Daenerys, Rhaenys) and three Baratheons (Stannis, Renly, Joffrey), each of them fighting one another in turn. Jon couldn't begin to imagine how anyone might put a stop to such senseless slaughter in the south long enough to focus on the war that actually mattered. No one would listen to them, not without solid proof.

The captured White Walker wouldn't do, it couldn't be carried beyond the edge of the Wall. But they needed proof... something tangible... like the Walker, but something they could actually send south... That's when Jon remembered his first fight against the wights at Castle Black. The dead hadn't been in any hurry to crumble to dust, even on the other side of the Wall, which meant the magic keeping them animated didn't depend on proximity. Capturing one, though, that was another matter entirely. But then, why make things harder than they needed to be?

"An Other can raise a wight, and a wight, unlike an Other, could be sent south." Jon thought it through aloud, under Robb's interested gaze. "A real corpse could convince anyone, but if we go around convincing lords one by one, that'll take years... So we need every powerful man gathered in one place..."

"A Great Council," Robb offered the idea. "We could show the proof there. Only I don't have the influence to call one, hardly anyone would even want to right now."

House Stark simply wasn't in a position to summon a Great Council: they'd been among those who started the rebellion against the Targaryens, they'd sacked the Westerlands, and they'd gone to war against King Renly's forces. Armies, gold, and influence earned a man that right, and the North was short on all three at the moment. They needed someone else to carry this through.

"I do have one idea about that, actually..."

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