Chapter Text
The list of things Rhaenys spent her life preparing for did not in any way account for being abducted by wildings. This, she supposed, could be pinpointed at her own lust for adventure rather than any fault on the part of the Night’s Watch or even Meera. After all, when Meera returned in company of Maester Aemon from a two week jaunt north of the Wall, Rhaenys could feel nothing but envy. Her whole life she’d longed for adventures. She’d traveled to Essos, from Sunspear in the south to Castle Black in the north. She’d seen Pentos and Lys and Tyrosh and Volantis, dined with magisters and triarchs, watched Dothraki horselords accept tribute from behind the walls of expensive manses.
Even her mother who allowed her much freedoms, contained the worst of her wildness.
Rhaenys wanted to ride across the Dothraki Sea with a khalasar, sail the oceans with pirates, traverse the lands of endless winter with wildlings.
Or, perhaps, she wanted to do those things because her father wanted her to be more like Daenerys. Thoughtful, introspective, circumspect. Aunt Daenerys was a lady like Rhaenys’ own mother except nowhere near as calculating, as imposing, as dangerous. Rhaenys would never tolerate artless conversation, tittering nobility, or idle gossip near so well as Daenerys. She cared little frivolity and preferred the company of men, not unlike her cousin Arianne, who found men of most quality tended to speak in straightforward barbs rather than honeyed daggers as women. There was near as much trickery but not as much trifle, and Rhaenys appreciated the difference.
Aegon thought she disliked the company of women and longed for adventure because Rhaenys wanted to be contrary to hide her insecurities.
Rhaenys didn’t consider herself any great beauty; she was pretty enough, exotic in her Dornish complexion and sexy in her shapeliness. Yet she didn’t captivate as Daenerys, wasn’t ethereal as her mother, wasn’t as lovely as she’d heard of Sansa Stark. Arianne was striking. Margaery Tyrell known to be gorgeous. Myrcella Baratheon known to be a perfect golden-haired beauty like her siren lady mother. Rhaenys thought herself perfectly ordinary in looks, extraordinary in diplomacy, and exceptional in swordsmanship. Aegon thought she placed herself outside the sphere of her gender contemporaries so as never to set herself beside them and fail to measure up.
Egg thought she didn’t want adventure so much as their father—and Westeros’—respect and acknowledgement.
The longer Rhaenys had been in the north, the more she thought Aegon might have been something resembling correct, though she’d never say such a thing to him.
In Dorne, Rhaenys was surrounded by beautiful warrior women, which perhaps made her feel somewhat inadequate by comparison.
In the North, the women were fierce but no great beauties, perfectly adequate as she felt she was, and placed not much import on their physical beauty aside from, she’d heard, Lady Catelyn Stark who’d come to the North by way of Riverrun. They were a harsh, straightforward, honorable people, though not so much as they laughed about in the south. The things expected from Rhaenys in the north were things she could live up to with some degree or strive to achieve should she not possess them already: honor, integrity, grit, resilience. She was expected to do her duty, learn well, and fight for her friends as well as herself. Not doing so didn’t earn censure or scorn, but a keen disappointment from Lady Maege that pushed her to better herself without such cruelty.
The North remembers.
Her mother had said the words to her in warning before she left for Bear Island, but while their disdain and distrust for Targaryens remained deep and abiding, Rhaenys found she could earn their appreciation and respect in a way not commonly felt throughout the rest of Westeros. Doing her duty, learning well, defending herself and her friends, earned her approval and deep admiration that the north would remember as surely as her father tearing the realm apart for Lady Lyanna Stark, dishonoring her and the Starks grievously—few talked of her mother here, though not out of callous dislike but rather of simple disinterest, they didn’t know Queen Elia as they’d keenly known Lady Lyanna, she wasn’t theirs as Lady Lyanna had been.
Still, despite these starting realizations, Rhaenys longed to see the lands beyond the Wall with a passion that seemed almost unthinkable, unquenchable. She wanted this, certainly, with passion that seemed shocking and circumspect. She wanted to look out across that seemingly endless landscape of ivory and emerald at the lands of endless winter and dramatic mountain ranges that stretched on for miles. She wanted to breathe the landscape into her very being the way she could with the salt and sands of Dorne, but where Dorne was a part of her, its red sands and wild people flowing through her veins, the North wasn’t hers. The desire to understand it was a choice all her own.
Northerners were not so superior as southerners and yet not so free as the Dornish. They were wild and untamable but in a different manner than her people at the opposite end of Westeros. They were isolated by geography as much as choice, honorable in their own way, and disinterested in politics only insofar as it pertained to anything south of the Neck. That Lady Catelyn Tully’s wedding to Lord Brandon Stark, results notwithstanding, needed no declarations of its being a scheme to forge ties subverting King Aerys. The longer Rhaenys enjoyed her stay in the North, the longer Rhaenys realized the only thing differentiating Dorne from the North was the North’s lack of southern ambition. They had their own intrigues and feuds and power plays, their legendary honor as much a charade of superiority to southern kingmakers and kingslayers as it was designed to forge ties amongst their own.
Because winter wasn’t just coming in the North, it never truly left.
Winter hangs in the air like a creeping morning fog off a river, arriving and receding with no warning but leaving untold dangers in its wake.
Every day northerners woke to brisk chills and sometimes morning frost across the endless moors and remembered winter was coming. They tended their children and households as they tended to the food in their glass gardens, made their people strong and able to survive because while winter would cripple the south, it could devour the north. They were a strong, hardy people because they had to be, preoccupied more with food and survival and defense than southern politicking and thrones because they had to be, remembering each slight dealt upon them from outsider because, much like Rhaenys and her family, when winter came, all they may have is each other. They might bicker and scheme and feud amongst each other, but they remembered well enough that they were all of the North, of the First Men, just as Rhaenys came from the Rhoynar and Old Valyria, and it may well be that none would care of their suffering in the early stages of winter until the frost froze the last harvest in the Reach.
Dorne and the North, Rhaenys thought, were not so dissimilar, however much the suggestion might rankle even her uncle’s proud Dornish sensibilities. Even Arianne, whose own biases seemed far less than Uncle Oberyn’s, might turn up her nose at the mere suggestion. This was a kingdom that had not kowtowed in the wake of Lyanna Stark’s disgrace of Queen Elia of Dorne, Rhaenys’ own mother; they had closed ranks and challenged Dorne to cut ties with the North. Her mother had not allowed the rift between kingdoms to fester, but Rhaenys quite understood the North now that she’d lived amongst them. They might kowtow to Queen Elia Targaryen upon whom the slight had been bestowed, but Lyanna Stark was blood of the First Men, a descendant of the Kings of Winter, a Northerner, to bow to Dorne would castigate her in the eyes of the entirety of Westeros. They stood by their own.
Even still, venturing beyond the Wall was a dangerous endeavor.
Every day of their stay at Castle Black, Rhaenys and Meera had bickered, argued in tense whispers and heated exchanges over all manner of book and maps and ledgers, over Rhaenys’ notations to her mother over the finances and status of the Night’s Watch and renovations to make the worst of the castles habitable, over letters to Aegon about the profitability of the Gift to the Night’s Watch if only wildling attacks could become less frequent, over her morning cup of tea and their morning meals. They argued in the training yard where they sparred together and with a variety of the new recruits, and they argued even in their room, turning down the covers bed.
While Rhaenys was growing to consider Meera, perhaps, the dearest of her friends, certainly of the ones not blood related to her, she grew increasingly angry at Meera’s stubborn refusal allow her even a glimpse of the lands beyond the Wall, lands Meera spent near a fortnight traversing with none but a blind, aging maester for company and protection. If Meera managed to hunt, navigate, and protect the two of them on whatever journey they’d alighted upon, surely Rhaenys and Meera could manage a few hours together exploring the lands beyond the wall.
Meera had said no, shoved a newly forged, slight training sword in her hand, and ordered her to practice her swordsmanship.
How they’d arrived in their current predicament, though, could be blamed entirely upon Rhaenys.
The Mormonts, having returned to Bear Island a sennight earlier to meet with Domeric Bolton and his father Lord Roose on business, left them without an escort. Lord Commander Mormont made a generous if mutually beneficial offer to send a steward, Eddison Tollett, Othell Yarwyck, and Jaremy Rykker along with them as far as Westwatch-by-the-Bridge while Othell Yarwyck did an inspection of the repairs, renovations, and men newly stationed at the castles along the wall for the Warden of the North and the Queen. Having company made the journey longer and far more arduous than Rhaenys considered in any way necessary, though Edd proved decent company enough with his black humor and droll commentary.
Nightfort was her intended target, Nightfort and the Black Gate with a weirwood door imbued with Old Magic that led to the other side of the Wall and opened only for a man of the Night’s Watch.
Edd had been skeptical of her request, more skeptical still of Rhaenys asking to meet him in the depths of the palace, alone and at night, but he’d complied with her request.
Rhaenys, too, had been skeptical having come across a cryptic mention of the Black Gate’s location in one of her great uncle’s many books and scrolls collecting dust in the annals of Castle Black’s library. Her skepticism and the haunting dreams of endless snow, blue eyes, and gray animal hide clothes moving and blurring before she could get clear glimpses of the images. She always woke with a start these days, and Meera always watched her with that sort of quiet, knowing disapproval that frustrated Rhaenys eternally.
Neither she nor Edd expected the door to open.
Neither she nor Edd expected the tunnel to lead North of the Wall.
Neither she nor Edd expected Meera to find and follow them for a sound rebuking.
Neither she nor Edd nor even Meera expected the wildling raid.
Returning to the tunnel was as risky as it was improbable, the snows too thick and their fatigue too great to make any great progress before the wildlings caught up to them. Edd and Meera had protested regardless at the very idea of leading wildlings back to a secret Night’s Watch tunnel that may allow them unmitigated access to the lands south of the Wall. Rhaenys had argued magic, and Meera had commented that no one quite knew how the old magic of the First Men worked, that there was no guarantee whatever allowed only men of the Night’s Watch to open the door couldn’t be reworked or undone.
They’d run instead, making east into the forest away from the direction of Whitetree towards Castle Black.
They were no match for wildlings, not in such large number, not with such familiarity to the geography, not being so fatigued as they were.
The wildlings had come for an incursion, a harrowing nighttime climb over a 700ft tall ice wall imbued with magic and having stood for eight millennia.
Rhaenys had come for an adventure.
That is how Rhanys had ended up tied between Edd and Meera, listening to them taunt the former for being a crow while leering at her and Meera. The latter, they seemed somewhat weary of, eyeing Meera’s confiscated spear and ease walking in the thick snow piles with grudging respect. Where they’re being taken, Rhaenys heard only whispers around fires of a King Beyond the Wall, though what he could want of two girls and a captured brother of the Night’s Watch who’d blown their attempt to climb the wall Rhaenys could not begin to fathom.
When the sun began to sink beyond the horizon, the air became hostile, unbearable to breath, like shard of ice piercing her very lungs. She never feels more like the southerner they call her than when she drags heavy, half-frozen air into her lungs and shivers where she’s draped in furs and squished between Edd and Meera for warmth. The more north they journey, the colder the days seem to become, the thicker the snow, the more intolerable the weather as though the very north whispers to Rhaenys’ Dornish/Targaryen blood that she does not belong here.
“My mother will find us,” repeats Rhaenys like a mantra while Meera offers naught but pitying looks.
It’s days later, long after the sun rises and sun sets have blended into an endless, uncountable thing when the group dragging them along meets with another. The sharp-tongued, waspish redhead helping to lead the party escorting them laughing with ease when another redhead, this one a burly giant man with a big smile and vulgar cheek, steps forward to greet them. The man studies them from the fire while talking with his people, and Rhaenys feels a chill sweep through her.
“She won’t,” says Meera suddenly, starting Rhaenys. “The queen won’t find us. Nor the king. Nor Lord Stark, nobody. Nobody knows we’re here, fewer about the Black Gate. All they know is one moment we were traveling west with the Night’s Watch, and the next, we disappeared with Eddison Tollett, steward of the Night’s Watch.”
“Me?”
“You,” replies Meera curtly. “At best they’ll think he’s kidnapped us to sell us to slavers heading east, at worst, they’ll think us murdered and burnt by wildlings during the raid. And even if they did know, not even a southern army could find us this far north, not in this landscape, which brings me to another point. Don’t use your family name to cow them.”
“I’d not,” says Rhaenys, offended. “They’d neither know nor care anyway.”
“They might.” Rhaenys’ gaze swings to Edd with shock. He shrugs. “The King-Beyond-The-Wall, Mance Raydar, he used to be a brother of the Night’s Watch before abandoning the order in the north. He knows the name Targaryen well, your family, your name. He’s been gathering an army, moving south like they have intentions. Maester Aemon, Qhorin Halfhand, and Jeor Mormont believe he’s trying to move a large portion of the wildlings south beyond the Wall.”
Meera blanches while Rhaenys looked between her two companions, not quite grasping their immediate devastation of the circumstances.
“I don’t fully understand.”
“You think your father a simpleton and a dreamer, which is not entirely incorrect, but if Mance Raydar sent a missive he held you captive in the North and wanted to bring his people south beyond the Wall in exchange for you, even your simpleton father may consider it. He can’t bring his armies here. Southern armies aren’t ready for war this far north. The Northern army loves to fight wildlings but they wouldn’t abandon their homes and families on the eve of winter for a Targaryen princess not worth near so much as the Crown Prince. Dorne would demand your safe return and quarrel with the North over their reticence to ride to war to fetch you. The Night’s Watch would be criticized for doing nothing to help you, being unable to protect you, and refusing to join a side in this war. And there’s a risk you could be…violated and birth a wildling child with royal blood and a claim to the throne.” Meera lays out everything Rhaenys had already realized somewhat in a soft whisper while Edd nods. “But if he allowed them south of the Wall, the North would rebel. Wildlings have spent centuries raping and thieving and pillaging. They’re no better than the Ironborn, reaving and raping and collecting saltwives in the lands they desecrate, except the Ironborn keep to the seas and coasts, and are generally civilized enough if not decent by any stretch. The North loathe and fear the wildlings, believe wildlings are the reason for the 700ft magic ice wall and the existence of the Night’s Watch.”
“That’s not logical,” sighs Rhaenys.
“What else is there?” Edd asks with a disbelieving scoff, wilting when the girls look at him in outright confusion.
A brunette woman, trembling and far away from her companions, watches them with dark, frightened eyes that glittering dangerously in the firelight. Rhaenys flinches when she catches that empty-eyed, haunted stare, but the woman says nothing seeming to look through Rhaenys.
“They cannot be allowed past the Wall,” whispers Meera, expression hard and determined while the two redheads and a twitchy, dirty brunet approach them.
“You gotta name, then?” The redhaired girl asks, waving a hand before Edd can speak. “Not you, crow. You girl, and you, you ent got names?”
“Jeyne,” says Meera, voice strong and unable to feign weakness with her spear in their possession. “Jeyne of Flint’s Finger.”
It’s clear this means nothing to the wildlings but Rhaenys understands the precariousness of their position, of the fragile peace in Westeros. Meera had picked a common, ordinary name and a place near her home that she’s likely been to well enough to fool Mance Rayder. Rhaenys wonders how well she’ll be able to fool a former brother of the Night’s Watch she’s not a noble lady.
“And you?” The girl asks, tip of her spear raising Rhaenys’ chin to meet her eyes. “You gotta name, southerner?”
“Lyanna,” says Rhaenys boldly, hearing Meera’s inhale of surprise. “Lyanna Sand of Dorne.”