Nerd In the North 6-13B

Riverrun wept freely, the old castle stone damp and slick with nights of heavy rains and days of thicker fog. Eyes long dry and with no more tears to give, Rickard Karstark sat with his back pressed hard against the rock, dungeon walls bleeding wet down his spine. Long legs stretched out into the darkness of night, the cold of his cell nothing a true Northman would so much as flinch at.

The damp southern chill cared little for his strength as it settled deep into his old bones, even as the furnace of rage behind his ribs burned too hot to let him shiver.

Four nights he’d been here, watching the torch outside the iron bars spit pitch and smoke into flickering shadows. Four nights since he stood in the war council and demanded the boy-king stop his unnatural games and his foolish trust of foreigners. Four nights since he spoke the truth of dead men’s living sons to lords with ears to listen, and earned himself nothing but a cage for it.

His jaw locked beneath the grey ruin of his beard as he swallowed a heavybreath.

Harrion… Torrhen… He could almost feel their shifting weight, the bulk of his sons at his right and left. Instead, there was just the drip of water. His boys had been gone a fortnight now, bodies fallen in the mud and throats opened by the Kingslayer’s rescuers; a raid done in the black of the night. 

Robb Stark had kept the golden lion alive, seeking to use him and now Karstark blood soaked the earth.

Rickard pushed himself up even as the joints in his knees protested each motion, legs carrying him to the small slit of a window set high in the wall as he gripped the iron of the bars tight.

Down in the courtyard, torches fought against the night.

The Stark stalked past the smithy as Rickard’s eyes narrowed his way, the skin around them tightening into deeper lines. Fool boy. Karstark had no other word for him. Trusting a strange sorcerer with his sisters was stupid enough, but trusting an Ironborn? And where did that leave him but besieged on both sides, the keep of both their forebears held by the Iron Men themselves. Lost your sisters and your brothers and you think you can rule?

The boy had been angrier since the news from the North reached him, and angrier still with no news from the South. Rickard could see it now, in the air around him even… it was wrong. He could see the haze bleeding off the boy’s shoulders like the heat over a forge.

Beside him, that direwolf of his…

Rickard’s breath caught in his chest, a harsh scrape in his throat as he cast eyes upon the massive beast, another proof of unnatural acts. Never has any direwolf grown so large. The crown of its head brushed the height of a destrier’s withers, yet horses remained calm in the midst of a beast who could devour them as easily as any man could a chicken bone.

The men in the yard stopped; North and Rivermen alike bowing low, spines bent with eyes glued to the mud. Fear filled their eyes and gazes — fear of the boy King’s wolfblood and anger in recent days. News of the Greyjoy’s betrayal and sack of Winterfell had set its own fire in the boy and not even those nearest him wished to have his ire turn their way. 

A sorcerer. Teeth ground together as Rickard’s jaw clicked shut, the noise louder than his own beating heart. Just like the bastard he raised up. That Veder boy with his silver armor and his witch-fire. 

They had bewitched the whole bloody North, the two of them.

Rickard was far from a southron, but tales of demons and witches were spread far too wide and far too long to simply ignore them. 

The loss of his boys was a wound no different than a cruel man’s spear thrust, twisting in his chest. But this… this thing — this demon of Southern get — sitting as King of the North and casting their ways aside? 

That was a rot spreading through the roots of winter.

“Th’ North cannat be rrrruled by a monster.” His own words, as foolish as the boy’s actions, but his own words that very same night he had looked the boy in the eye in the council. He had demanded a man’s war. 

Steel against steel, not this dark, warping filth.

And the same boy had gripped him by the collar and thrashed him in front of all the lords before locking him away in the dark. A father grieving his murdered sons, caged by the king he had helped crown.

A sigh left his lips as footsteps scraped the corridor.

Rickard did not turn from the window as guards passed on the hour. Let them pass. It was nothing to think of, nothing worth his attention.

Yet the scuff of leather halted, right outside the iron.

A shadow blocked the guttering torchlight as Rickard cast an eye back to see a young guard, helmet pulled low and face hidden further in the dark. The silence remained as the lad thrust a hand through the bars.

A small square of folded parchment fell softly into the wet straw.

With no word, the guard turned and marched away, the sound of scraping boots fading down the hall.

Rickard stared at the parchment, jaw working silently as he remained still. Finally, he allowed himself a crouch, bones aching again as he scooped it up from the filth. Trembling hands unfolded it toward the dim light of the window and torchlight, eyes staring at the careful deliberate script, ink dark against the pale vellum.

The Wolf has changed. He is no longer a man. We must act.

A single letter at the bottom.

D.

Dustin.

Barbrey Dustin. The barrow-woman he had fought alongside against the Veder upstart, nursing a hatred for Starks that went straight down to the bone. Who else? Above all other, she would see the rot that carried on the wind.

Rickard stared at the ink as the phantom weight of his son’s hand rested heavy on his shoulders. Long fingers closed tight around the vellum, the message crushed flat in his large hand. Slowly, he crumbled it further until the parchment was nothing more than a ball and then he tore that ball further into tiny fragments. Small fingerful to fingerful came to his mouth and the old Karstark pushed the paper past his cracked lips as he chewed. 

The parchment was dry, tasting of dust and lye, but he forced himself to swallow all the same, feeling each lump slide down his throat. He would bury the evidence in the same stomach that held nothing but ash and vengeance.

As he finished, Lord Karstark leaned back against the wet stone, eyes closed as he thought of what to do.

The infection did not end with only the Stark boy. The Umber giant was ripping men apart in battle and the Mormont girl was poisoned with the very same devilry. They claimed it as a gift from ‘the Old Gods’ but Rickard Karstark knew better. All of them were warped, all of them mocking the blood of his sons with every breath of mercy they granted the Lannisters.

“Ma suhns died for men.” Rickard breathed to the dark, the words quiet with the finality of a closing tomb. “Th’ North will be saved. From sorcery. From monsters.”

His hands balled into fists, nails biting deep into his callouses.

“Even if I must damn m’self ta do it.”