Winterfell

“AGAIN!” Eadhelm screamed. Winterfell’s master-at-arms looked over the garrison men. Regular training was key to a well-oiled fighting force, and Eadhelm prided himself on being vigorous. Today was a sparring day, and he had set the men against one another in decently sized pens with wooden swords and spears. They smashed into one another, some more artfully than others. The newer recruits could be told apart well enough – they were always the ones to drop their arms, to misplace their shields, to slip under light pressure. The fighting went on for a short while before the last man surrendered.

“AGAIN!” Eadhelm ordered. And again they went. This would be the last round of the day. Eadhelm sighed as the fighting went on and looked to the sky. He was a boy when they first brought him here. Punishment for a father whose face he had only seen briefly at gatherings in the years since. Sometimes he wondered if he ought to be bitter about the arrangement, but he had never quite been able to muster up the anger. For all the terror and tears of his earlier years as “ward” to House Stark, Eadhelm appreciated that they had given him training, given him a chance, a position.

Still, he had begun feeling a certain yearning. Again, Eadhelm sighed. Perhaps if he was married there would be someone to share his burdens with. Perhaps if he had bothered to stay in contact with his sisters. But perhapses and could-haves were silly to dwell on. For now, he had men to train.

Hornwood

Hrothwell sat at the corner of the council table. His bones creaked with every move, sending waves of pain all throughout his body. Sixty years piled onto one another with a certain, wanton cruelty. Quaking hands and vision blurred nearly to impossibility had become the trademark of Hrothwell’s evening years. Maester Emmon said it was a mix of stress and the standards symptoms of men his age and from his House. Still, Hrothwell strained against his own withering.

The Lady Hornwood had made some salves that had reduced a modicum of the joint and bone pains, but they were proving insufficient. It had been a month since Cynedunne had emerged from her Nameless Groves. With the children all grown, dead, or as the case was with Eadhelm, departed from Hornwood, Lady Hornwood had steadily receded from the castle and back to her little coven with their daughter Serena.

That left Hrothwell Hornwood alone. His nephew Hallis was somewhere in the south playing bandit and his other brother Errol was in King's Landing in the service of Torrhen Manderly. In the quiet of the halls, and in the gentle proceedings of Hornwood’s small court, Hrothwell felt absence. In his youth, during his father’s time, the House of Hornwood had bounded with energy. Siblings and nieces and nephews, cousins, had filled the space with life.

Hrothwell had tried to find something to pass the time. The particulars of the Hornwood had fallen into the hands of the council, leaving the Lord with even more time on his hands than before. Hunts and readings and small trips around his lands did little to assuage a deep, growing loneliness.

His thoughts drifted to Eadhelm, as they usually did when Lord Hornwood was alone. When his wardship had ended, Hrothwell had thought his son would return home, would embrace him and call him father. Instead, he had stayed in Winterfell, not sending anything more than a single letter. The cold cut into his bones deeper when he thought of his son.

The Hornwood

Cynedunne took a single, deep breath.

The rites began just as the moon crested over the clearing. Serena was in one of the outer circles, painted and adorned in ritual garb. Tonight’s was a standard ceremony: some light chanting, a mushroom brew, and a walk in the woods.

The evening moved quick. Serena had taken well to the covens’ rites and works. Cynedunne had worried her daughter would remain distant from the affairs of this gaggle of women, but she had joined in with them like a fish to water.

The thought of her husband occasionally crossed Cynedunne’s mind, but she found it came with nothing more than passing consideration. How curious.

She sighed.

The night went on.

The Riverlands, south bank of the Red Fork

The mailed fist landed hard on Hallis’ stomach, sending him flying.

“Fucker!” Mad Hal yelled as he rose back up. Another day, another night of drinking, another fight. A hedge knight, by Hal’s reckoning, young and full of piss, had decided to egg the nobleman on. The knight had taken notice of Hal’s coat and sword, and continued to make comment about “the little lost lord.” Hal had taken the first swing, getting the better of the peasant and knocking the man to the floor.

“Yield!” the knight yelled, the booze on his breath radiating across the room.

“Fuck off,” Hal said, getting low and shoulder-charging the knight. Contact hurt, and Hal could feel his shoulder bone creak under the impact pressure, but he caught the knight just where his cheap iron plate was weakest. The knight gasped and bent down, the wind knocked out of his chest. Before he could recover, Hal grabbed his head, wrapping his fingers in the man’s hair, and slammed it hard against the counter.

The knight crumpled to the ground, moaning. Hal coughed and looked around. The few other tenants had stayed silent, watching the brawl. With it concluded, no one seemed to know what to do. Hal laughed a lone, hard laugh, finished his drink, and left.

The night’s sky was clear, and the rush of the Red Fork filled the air. Another night bloodied and exhausted. Hal had gone south to find a name, to find a life. And here he had only found brawls, drinking, whores, the occasional roadside theft, and nights alone on the road. He never thought he would be homesick, but his dreams of late were filled with the Hornwood. With home.

Grabbing his horse, Hal thought that maybe it was time. The Kingsroad wasn’t too far.