A Time for Wolves

Rickon III

Rickon had eventually gotten used to his new home, and he felt almost as if he had been born there. He barely remembered what his life had been like before he got to Skagos. That was his home, and Osha was his mother. He could even call her 'mom', because she had told everyone that he was her son. He had learned almost everything a child of the free folk needed to know. He spoke in the Old Tongue almost perfectly, he could use a spear (not very well, of course, but more than acceptably for a five-year-old boy) he played the same games that the other children played and he knew by hard the legends and stories that they told around the fire at dusk.

Shaggydog was also happy in the village. Sometimes he went out to hunt in the nearby woods, but Rickon knew that he would always come back. He could see him at night, when he got into him in his dreams. Once he had told his mother and grandmother (Osha and Keyllie) about his wolf dreams. Far from seeming surprised, they had reacted as if they already knew it.

"You are a skinchanger, Rickon. You can get into your wolf's skin. If you focused on it, you could do it whenever you wanted, and not only in your sleep," his grandmother had told him. From that moment on, Rickon had tried to enter his wolf's skin intentionally. Many days went by before he could do it, but from that first time on it was easier every day.

There he was then, running around the village in Shaggy's skin, when he found two strangers approaching him. They were a grown, almost old man with brown hair and a beard that was part brown and part grey, and a young one with dark brown hair and dark eyes. They stopped as soon as they saw Shaggydog, probably fearing an attack. The wolf saw they were armed, and that scared and angered him. Did they want to attack his house? Kill his family? He decided not to allow these men to get to the village. But then the oldest one spoke.

"This must be Rickon's wolf. The boy must be in that village, then. If the direwolf doesn't kill us, we will find him today." The young one did not say anything; maybe he was too terrified to speak.

Shaggydog then got ready to attack those men who meant to attack Rickon. It was a short and not very difficult fight. Shaggydog took some shallow wounds in his back where they stuck it with their swords, but he could leave his two opponents unconscious. He could have killed them or left them right there, but Rickon preferred to take them to the village, to see why they were looking for him, and who they were. So he told the wolf to drag them to his mother's house.

"Who are them, Rickon?" Osha asked, a little upset, looking at the bloody men who were lying on the ground. "Was it Shaggydog who attacked them?"

"We were both of us. I was in his skin when it happened. I don't know who they are, but they were looking for me. I brought them so they can tell us who they are when they wake up."

"Are you sure they were looking for you?" Osha seemed worried.

"Yes. They said my name, and that Shaggy was my direwolf. And they were looking for me."

Osha stared silently at him, deciding what to do with that situation. "Go and play with the other kids, Rickon," she resolved with a sigh in the end. "My mother will see to them. Don't worry."

"But mom, what if there are more people looking for me? What if they find out where I am?" Rickon asked her, suddenly worried. He could hear his heart beating faster, and his hands were sweating in spite of the cold weather. "I don't want to go away from home! I don't want to leave the village!" He felt tears running down his cheeks while he said that. He was suddenly scared and angry, facing the possibility of losing everything again, and being unable to do anything about it. He could not hold back his tears, but he also did not want to be seen crying like a baby, so he ran to the woods to be alone for some time.

He picked a big branch that had fallen to the ground and started hitting a tree with it, as if this way he could solve anything. He could not, of course, but at least it helped him stop crying, and it tired him out enough to make him sit down for a minute and settle down. When he stopped panting and he could no longer hear his heart's fast and hard beats, he started walking towards the weirwoods. Osha had told him that they could see and hear, and that sometimes they answered to what people said to them. He had never heard them, but he wanted to try. Besides, he did not want to come back home yet, where the wounded men would be waiting for him.

But when he found the weirwoods, he saw that he did not have them all for himself. His friends were already there. Rickon wondered why they were there, but he soon remembered that their father had recently had an accident in a hunting party. They were probably praying for his recovery. But that did not change the fact that he wanted to be alone.

When she saw him, Lyra told his brother "I think that was enough praying for today. Come, Deiro. Let's go back."

"But I don't want to…" the boy started to complain.

"Only praying is no good," she cut him off. "We should go with father, and see if he needs something. We must look after him and be by his side too. Come."

She turned to leave, and her brother followed her. Keit also rose to his feet and started to follow, but she asked him to stay a little more. Lyra whispered something in his ear before she left, and he nodded and said goodbye to his siblings. Rickon followed Lyra with his gaze while she walked away, and he saw that she turned her face and looked back at him, as if she wanted to stay too, to ask him what had happened to him, and to comfort him.

If he was not so angry and so scared, he would feel offended by the secret they did not share with him, and he would demand that they tell him about it. But at that moment, the only thing he wanted to listen to was the silence, and the leaves moving with the wind. Keit granted him that for many minutes, during which they sat next to each other without saying a word.

"What happened," Keit asked Rickon in the end.

"Some men I don't know are looking for me."

"And why is that?" he asked, bewildered.

"I don't know," he truthfully answered. "I don't know why they killed my family. I don't know why they destroyed my house. And now that I have run away, I don't know who are looking for me, and what for."

"I don't understand. Isn't Osha your mother? What family are you talking about? What house?"

"House Stark, of Winterfell. I am not really Osha's son. But it doesn't matter. She is the closest thing to a mother that I have now, and you are the only family I have left. I don't want to be forced to move away from here. To leave the village so that they will not find me." After he said that he broke off, and started to sob.

"Don't cry. You will not have to go, you'll see. We are your family, no matter who you were before. If they want to kill you, we will protect you. And if you must leave, you will not go alone. I will go with you, with Lyra and Osha. For as long as we are alive, Rickon, you will not lose us." Keit hugged Rickon then, and the child cried on his shoulder for a short while. Soon, however, he calmed down, stopped sobbing and wiped his tears away from his face, ashamed for his babyish behavior.

When they got back to the village, Keit accompanied Rickon home. There they found Osha, who was talking outside with Deiro and Lyra. The door was closed. Osha explained that her mother had preferred to be alone while she questioned the strangers. They sat down then, to wait until Keyllie came out.

"Osha, Rickon, please come in," she told them when she appeared.

Rickon and Osha went in behind Keyllie, and they sat on wooden chairs that surrounded the only table in the house, as the old woman told them to do. The oldest man was also sitting at the table.

"Rickon, this man says he is called ser Davos Seaworth. Have you ever heard of him?" Keyllie asked him. Rickon shook his head.

"He claims to serve King Stannis Baratheon as his Hand of the King. He told me that he has spoken with a man called Lord Wyman Manderly to get his loyalty for Stannis, and that he has sent him to look for you in return for his support. The North wants to have a Stark in Winterfell again, Davos says."

Rickon thought about what she said. He knew about House Manderly, and he had met Lord Wyman. He also knew about King Stannis, who had been the brother of King Robert Baratheon. Probably this Lord Davos was telling the truth, he thought. But still, Rickon did not like it.

"I don't want to come back to Winterfell. It has been destroyed, and my family doesn't live there anymore. This is my home now. If you want a Stark in Winterfell, you should tell my brother Robb."

"Child, your brother has been killed. He will not be able to go back to Winterfell." This time it was Davos himself who spoke, and he seemed sad to have to tell him that.

Rickon was sad too, because Robb was one of the few siblings he actually remembered, and now he had lost him forever. But this time he could stop his tears from falling, and answer naturally and maturely in spite of that.

"Then you should go and look for Bran. He is older than me. Bran is the one who should be Lord of Winterfell."

"I would gladly look for your brother, Rickon. But I don't know where he is. Lord Manderly could tell me you were in Skagos, but the only thing he knew about Brandon was that he had escaped from Theon Greyjoy."

"What do you want to do with me, Lord Davos?" Rickon asked then.

"I only want to take you to White Harbor so that the Manderlys can see you, and then to the Wall, with my King and with your brother. There Stannis will bid you to kneel before him, and he will keep you safe for the rest of the war in return. And when he conquers Winterfell, he will give it back to you, so that there is a Lord Stark in Winterfell once more," Lord Davos assured.

The words that got Rickon's attention the most were "to the Wall… with your brother." This man claimed he did not know where Bran was, but he seemed to believe he was at the Wall.

Rickon had been waiting for the man in Lyra's dream for weeks, and in the end he had almost forgotten him. But now that Lord Davos had said that, he suddenly remembered it. So he asked Davos whether he had a ship with an onion drawn in its sails. He admitted that he did not, but that it was the sigil of his House, of which he himself was the founder. That answer was enough for Rickon to know for sure that he was before the man of his friend's dream.

"I'll only agree to go with you if my family can also come. I want Osha, my mother, to go along with me. And I want my brother Keit to come with me as well. And Lyra, if she wants to come, too," Rickon decided at last.

"You can take whoever you want, Lord Stark," said Davos, smiling as someone who has just finished a long and hard mission.