The King of Winters

Chapter 56

Andrew

The white wolf raced through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.

"Andrew," the moon murmured in a strangely familier voice. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees.

Far off, he could hear his small grey cousins calling to him, but he ignored them. They were hunting too. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food.

"Andrew," the moon called down again, gentle in his mother's voice now. The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once he had been with his mother, whimpering blind in the snow beside his dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples. But this one belonged to his other half, his human half.

"Andrew," the moon insisted.

The white wolf ran from it, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. The voice came from the other side where the wind was warmer, the wolf sensed. That was where the voice was, and the violet air smelled of roses.

An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned and bared his teeth. His fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him and Andrew Stark woke up upon his bed.

The room was dim, his bed soft. Grey light leaked through the shutters, showing that the day has broken just now. Andrew wriggled from under his blankets and moved to open the windows. Winterfell was calm and quiet even with all the men it hosted. Camps with different banners flying from the tents filled the outskirts of Winterfell. He could not see them all from the Great Keep but Andrew knew that it extended past Winter Town. He turned around to walk to the door just as Edric Dayne poked his head through the door. "Beg pardon," he said, "shall I fetch your grace some breakfast?"

So it is his day to wake me up today. "A bloody feast would do good," Andrew suggested. "And half a pint of ale." He was hungry for food. The dream of Ghost hunting and the taste of blood on his tongue awoke a new fit of hunger in him. Having a man fetch and serve for him still felt strange; back at Braavos, it would have been him serving food to the men at the inn when he was a young boy.

"Later, cousin," Andrew told him. "I will break my fast in the solar after meeting with the lords. And enough with this 'Your Grace' thing. We are family after all."

"Yes, my ki... Cousin," Edric said as he entered the room. "I'm glad to see you back again."

"See me alive you mean," Andrew chuckled.

"Alive," Edric said and they shared a laugh, "and good."

"You don't seem so bad yourself, coz." Andrew poured wine into two cups from his flagon on the table. "The last I saw you, I remember telling my mother that you were too little to play with."

"You wouldn't have found me so amusing then."

Andrew smiled and gave the cup of wine to his cousin. "As a babe, I never found any babes amusing besides myself. All they ever did was eat and sleep and I found it boring when I did them myself."

"It is hard to see yourself sleeping and getting annoyed because of it."

Andrew took a sip of his wine. "How is your father?"