Nerd In the North 6-18A

“Too ‘eavy.”

The road was ash; thick with it as choked as the air was with smoke.

Not the clean, grey hearth-ash from the kitchens of her home, not at all. This was the ash of the Riverlands, heavy enough to coat her tongue with the sour of burned thatch, burned horses and dried blood blown into her face.

Arya kept her chin tucked against the wind, hand resting heavy against the worn grip of her blade. Needle was long-gone, stolen by that rat Polliver, leaving her with only this heavy blade to call her own. The sweat-stained leather of the shortsword was the smallest comfort she had but it was a comfort still.

Crows flew overhead, only dropping to the ground to squabble over the bloated shapes floating in the murky water beside the fields. The trenches lined farmhouses, blackened things gutted to husks and left in the mud on both sides of her. 

She kept her eyes off them; not looking right or looking left. 

If she did, Arya knew she would remember; screaming, rats, the smell of burning hair. If she remembered, her hand would shake, and she needed her hand steady.

Boots sank into the grey dirt; one step after another.

 Left, right. Keep moving.

“Too ‘eavy, I swear it.” Gendry’s mutterings broke the rhythm of her boots, the words chewing themselves up before they made it past his teeth.

Arya snapped a glare at her side, Gendry trudging at her side with broad shoulders hunched up to his ears. A bull-horned helm sat in his thick hands, the newly-forged thing held away from his chest as if it was slick with the pus of rotting sores. 

“It’s steel.” The words bit off clean and hard. “Steel is heavy, stupid.”

“Not like this. Ain’t right, Arry.” Shadowed eyes stared at the helm as he held it, thumb dragging across the rim. Soot from two days ago was still dark across his jaw, smeared deep enough you could almost believe it a beard. ” Y’know it ain’t right. Shouldn’t look like this. Not even a proper anvil I used.”

Just a cracked stump. Arya kept her pace, lips tight in a thin line as she turned her head forward again. She had been there. She had watched him as he worked the metal with little heat. And a rusted hammer.

Two days past in a half-burned village smelling of dead pigs and stale piss, all they could do was hide for their lives. A collapsed smithy was their only hope with her savior on the hunt for something to fill their stomachs. A Lannister patrol clanked past on the main road, the red cloaks bright and bloody through the gaps in the rotting wood. By the time the killers had left them long behind, picking up pace as they heard the howling of wolves, they knew they could breathe again. Gendry had picked around the ruined smithy, a jagged piece of scrap iron falling into his hands after some time. 

The coals hadn’t burned hot enough and Gendry had nearly given up as the scrap barely even managed to redden. Yet, he swung the chipped hammer down anyway.

Brought it down on scrap that should have shattered.

Instead, the metal folded.

Like warm dough in the hand of a baker, Arya watched as Gendry sat atop the forge, orange and yellow tongues licking over his bare forearms. In less time than it took for bread to rise, working in silence, the scrap took shape.

Smoothed, polished, and curved into a masterwork any lord of the North would have worn proudly.

A bull’s head. 

Perfect and terrifying.

When the villagers finally crept out of where they had hid, all eyes had fallen on the soot-stained boy holding the shining helm. The Smith. An old woman with no teeth had fallen straight to her knees in the dirt, whispering words Arya still heard anyway. The Father breaks, the Warrior bleeds, but the Smith mends.

Gendry had dropped the hammer on his own boot.

“They thought you a god.” Arya kicked a charred rock out of her path, watching it tumble into the muddy water.

“I’m an apprentice!” Gendry’s voice got sharper, the panic enough to make him loud. “I ‘it things with a ‘ammer. I make nails. I don’t… the fire didn’t burn, Arry. It should’a burned. Fire burns. It ain’t right.”

“Nothing’s right anymore.” Arya stared straight ahead, hand tight on the sword hilt till her knuckles ached. “Put it on your head or throw it in the ditch. Just hush and walk.”

Gendry scowled, but he didn’t throw it in the ditch. The helmet hung from his leather belt as he walked, heavy metal clanking a dull rhythm against his thigh with every step.

Arya kept her eyes on the grey dirt, the girl grinding her teeth. Don’t care about the Smith.

She didn’t.

The gods hadn’t done a thing to save her father at the hands of Joffrey. The gods hadn’t stopped the Mountain from driving his sword through smallfolk. If Gendry wanted to play with magic and fire, let him. 

She had her own work to do.

Lips moved, Arya shaping the names, as she kept the breath in her throat from leaving her.

Joffrey. With the first name, the cold started. Cersei. 

It wasn’t the biting chill of winter blowing from the North, nor the ash-tasting wind.

This cold came from inside her, right behind the bone of her breast, and spread ever outward with each breath. Ser Ilyn. Ser Meryn.  Enough to freeze the blood in her veins, it bloomed from within — thick and creeping, numbing her dirty fingertips. The Tickler. The Hound.

The cold slowed the angry pace of her heart, hot rushing blood chilled to a sluggish, freezing slush that stretched out each beat. Polliver. Chiswyck. Raff the Sweetling.

The cold grew heavier, yet no fear overtook her.

Just the calm weight of laying in a freshly-dug grave.

Something she had never known, yet something that calmed her all the same. Wet earth pressing against her face, like a feather-stuffed pillow in her own bed, enough to block the sun in her face. It stole the air with the quiet calm promise that everything eventually stops. 

Breath. Screams. Bleeding.

All of it.

A relief.

Perfect stillness and peace.

Dead things did not shake. 

Dead things did not run.

Above them, a groan sounded loud; the protest of a thick branch from a massive oak. 

Gendry flinched, hand dropping straight to his own sword as a soot-smeared face jerked up to eye the thick green leaves. 

Arya didn’t bother searching  as she kept her stride, eyes firmly ahead as always. She knew exactly what roamed the tree tops.

The howl of wolves was something she had grown used to since Harrenhal, something Gendry could not claim. As they howled again, louder this time, and the trees groaned with the weight of a body too big to clamber atop them, the smith’s apprentice held the helm again to keep his hands from shaking.

Her guardian. 

The hulking shadow that had torn Lannister men to screaming ribbons of red in the walls of Harrenhall, snapping spines and tearing throats into bloody pieces just to pull her free from that nightmare. It tracked them from the trees, moving through the high branches with the silence of a ghost that failed to match its size. 

It left often but it never left for too long.

The earth shook as something hit the dirt road directly behind them, the landing enough to rattle the pebbles around Arya’s boots.

Gendry spun around in the dirt, a harsh curse slipping free as he pulled cheap steel halfway from the scabbard. 

“Don’t.” 

Arya stopped walking to deliver the order, the single word coming out of her mouth with a sternness her father would have been proud of. 

No anger, no fear, just ice.

Gendry froze, eyes white as he held a breath the same way he held his blade.

Arya didn’t turn around, heat running up her back enough to burn away the grave-cold. Hot breath washed straight over the back of her neck, lifting the fine hairs with the smell of copper, freshly torn meat, and pine.

Arya closed her eyes and let her hand slip completely off her sword, the shadow behind her still breathing heavy.

“We’ll be home soon.”