The King of Winters

Chapter-86

Andrew

The armoury doors of Riverrun were open from dawn, and Andrew stood with Mikken at the forge of Colren, his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest. Colren the armourer of Riverrun had graciously given them the armoury of Riverrun to work on the scorpion bolts. Andrew had come back to the cavernous stone barn where the work was done to help Mikken and Colren with the bellows and look at their work himself.

He had joined them in the forge before dawn could arrive when the world was still shrouded in dark. He had been having a restless sleep for days now. Andrew always slept better with the great white wolf beside him; there was comfort in the smell of him, and welcome warmth in that shaggy pale fur. Last night, though, as Andrew called for the wolf to follow him back to the chambers, Ghost did no more than look at him. Then he had turned away and padded across the outer bailey of Riverrun, and quick as that he was gone. He wants to hunt, Andrew had thought then and left to his chambers alone. There were deers and aurochs to be had in the lands around Riverrun. Sometimes he even heard the howl of wolves. There must be something for him to hunt. Ghost was about the age and size to fear nothing. The direwolf would not even balk at the sight of full grown bears. Andrew had hoped that he would not go chasing after one though. Even for a direwolf, that would be dangerous.

Of late, he often dreamed of wolves. The wolf dreams had been growing stronger, and he found himself remembering them even when awake. Sometimes it was as if Ghost was talking to him, brother to brother, he told himself but come the morn the direwolf would not even make a sound. In his dreams he could almost understand the wolf. All his dreams were of Winterfell and his family and his name. Sometimes he heard his mother's voice, and my father's, as if they were at a feast, other times the whisper turned to have come from Joy. That night he had heard his mother calling for him yet again. But there was a wall between them, and he couldn't get past it no matter how hard he tried. When he knew he could never get past it and he was all alone once again, Andrew had woken up on his bed in the dead of night. He had felt like a little boy then, the little boy from Winterfell who had depended upon his mother in everything.

Once he had dreamed that he was Ghost, climbing up cliffs and running down the slopes of the hills and hunting elk amongst the trees of the Wolfswood, and that dream had turned out to be true. But he was not dreaming now, and that left him only words. She is gone now, Andrew thought to himself. All of them are gone now. Rhaegar killed his mother and father and he had buried Joy himself.

When the armourer opened the door of the furnace to feed the fire, the blast of hot air that came through made Andrew feel as though he were touching and battling the dragon at Winterfell once again. A dozen forges blazed in each corner, and the air stank of smoke and sulfur. Other armourers glanced up from their hammers and tongs just long enough to wipe the sweat from their brows, while bare-chested apprentice boys worked the bellows.

The gaggle of smiths, armourers, and ironmongers that had come with their lords from the North and the Vale and the Riverlands were all toiling hard in the forge of Riverrun crafting swords and mails and armours for the war. At times Andrew saw some of the boys gazing at him working in the bellows with wide eyes, as if they had never seen someone like him. He could never fault them however. Hardly ever does someone see a King working alongside them in the forge. He was content to work with them there. It gave him something to do and he had promised his men to bring the dragon down.

He hoisted the iron rod up into the air above his head and examined it under the light the came through the round window. "This is good work, Mikken. But I don't know if this is enough to pierce the scales of a dragon. We ought to have bigger ones than these." He handed the iron over to Mikken so that he could examine it and note the size that Andrew wanted for the bolt to be. Andrew took a sack he had hung at the wall, yanked the drawstring and upended the bag. Its contents spilled onto the rug with a muffled thunk of metal on earth. "I had seen bolts like these on the scorpions of a Braavosi warship. We would want a hundred more just like them."