Hey guys, Just to let you all know, I'm going to start posting the character images in the Stark family Auxiliary chapter, and in the future i plan to create another auxiliary chapter to ocnsoldiate all of the images in one chapter for ease of access.
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[The morning of the Assault on Pyke, 7th moon, 289AC]
The sound of the sea was distant in his ears, a muffled thrum beyond the canvas of the command tent. The salt air bit through the cold morning mist, but Ned Stark felt none of it. He sat at the edge of the small cot, forearms resting on his knees, his hands clasped tightly together. A single oil lamp flickered overhead, casting wavering shadows across the maps spread out on the table beside him.
He had not slept. He rarely did before battle, but this night had weighed heavier than most. The camp beyond stirred like a sleeping giant, tense with the promise of blood. His armor, blackened steel and dull mail, lay assembled at his feet, and yet it was not war or death that gnawed at his thoughts; it was Alaric.
His nephew. His blood. The Lord of Winterfell.
How long had it been since he'd seen the boy smile without the edge of calculation behind his eyes? When had the light dimmed from those gray orbs, only to be replaced by a cold, resolute steel?
Ten years old, and already a warleader. A Stark born of Umber fire and something older, deeper, Ned could not name it, only feel its weight when Alaric spoke.
He had thought to shield the boy after Ned's Lord-Father and Brandon's deaths. Had tried. The gods knew he'd tried.
But Alaric had not needed shielding.
He'd needed space.
And war, it seemed, had given it to him.
Ned ran a hand through his hair, rougher than necessary, as if the motion might clear the fog in his thoughts. He recalled watching the boy during the early stages of the siege, giving orders with a voice colder than any Northern winter, calmly discussing logistics and rations while dead men burned on pyres not a hundred yards away.
It wasn't cruelty. That was what disturbed Ned most. There was no joy in it. No sorrow, either. Only purpose.
Only the burden of rule.
Footsteps scraped outside the tent. A moment later, the flap opened, revealing Ser Torrhen Stark, his dark hair tied back and his breastplate freshly polished. He inclined his head in respect.
"It's time, Ned. The vanguard awaits you."
Ned rose and nodded silently, sliding his father's sword, Ice, into its scabbard across his back.
Although the rightful weapon of the Lord of Winterfell, his nephew saw fit that he wield the longsword Nightfall while granting the honor of wielding their family's ancestral sword to Ned, until Alaric grew older and larger, Ned would be the custodian of Ice.
Outside, the camp was stirring into readiness. The gray light of dawn smeared the horizon, catching on helms and spears like the first glint of steel from a coming blade. The air was thick with smoke from cookfires and the acrid tang of pitch being readied for the final bombardment.
Banners snapped in the wind, House's Flint of the Mountains and Flint's Finger, Cerwyn, Glover, Mormont, Tallhart. And there, front and center, the direwolf of House Stark, the ever-imposing Gray Direwolf against a field of white.
They stood at the edge of Castle Pyke's ruined outer defenses, where the Ironborn had dug in behind crumbling walls and scorched barricades, the first line of defense set between them and Pyke's interior. Soon, the King's signal would come, a volley of boulders and flaming pots from the royal trebuchets and Redwyne galleys, and the breach would open.
The North would lead the charge.
Ned walked the line of Northern men. Not just Winterfell's, but all the North's. He saw the aging Lord Walton Flint speaking quietly to his sons. Maege Mormont adjusted the shield straps of her eldest daughter, Dacey. Cregan Umber, the Greatjon's younger brother and also an Uncle of Alaric through his mother, the younger Umber having come with a retinue of 500 Umber heavy infantry as the Greatjon's representative, laughed with two of his men, great hands slapping shoulders like thunder. Lord Tytos Blackwood, though not of the North, stood among them with a quiet reverence, his black-feathered cloak unmoving in the breeze.
Men whispered greetings as he passed. Some bowed. Others nodded with quiet respect. Ned returned each gesture, but his eyes were ever searching for him.
Alaric stood atop a small hillock beyond the vanguard, alone but for the wolf-hound crouched at his side. He wore no helm, only a steel cuirass bearing the direwolf of Stark. His eyes were on the sea, watching the distant sails of the royal fleet draw into range.
When he turned, the wind caught his black cloak and bore it out behind him like wings.
He walked down to the vanguard, steps measured, sure.
Men turned to watch.
Silence fell.
Even the wind seemed to hush.
Ned stood with Torrhen and the rest of the Starks, eyes fixed on the boy who was somehow already a lord.
Alaric faced them, seven thousand Northerners, hard men and women of the cold, sons of snow and ice.
And then he spoke.
"You have stood beneath the banners of your fathers," Alaric began, his voice carrying impossibly far. "You have bled on these rocks, and lost good kin to Ironborn spears. You have suffered, marched, starved, and endured."
He paused.
"And now I ask you to lead the charge, I ask the sons of the North to bleed and fight in the thick of it while the flowery southerners follow our lead."
A murmur swept the vanguard.
Alaric raised his hand.
"Let them."
Silence again.
His eyes swept the crowd.
"Some say we are fools. That we Northerners are too proud. That we charge when wiser men hold back. Perhaps they are right."
A grim chuckle ran through the line.
"But I say this: there are moments in a man's life when he must decide whether to die on his feet, or live on his knees. And if the songs of tomorrow are to speak of us, they must know that we did not kneel."
His voice grew colder now. Sharper.
"The Ironborn think their walls will save them. That stone will shelter them from Northern wrath. But stone breaks. Fire burns. And wolves… wolves do not ask permission."
A cheer swelled, but he held up his hand again, cutting it short.
"I do not ask you to fight. You are Northerners. I do not need to ask. You know your duty. And it is not to glory. It is not to coin or conquest."
His voice thundered.
"It is to each other. To the man to your left, and to the man to your right. When the gates fall, we move as one pack. One fury. One Winter."
He drew his sword, an old, Valyrian steel blade, Nightfall, black and gray in the light. He pointed it toward the breach.
"We are the tip of the spear. We are the howl before the storm. We are the North, and Winter does not wait."
The North roared.
Some slammed spear to shield, others cried out with raw, feral pride. The ground itself seemed to tremble beneath their voices.
Ned stood among them, struck speechless.
Beside him, Ser Torrhen whispered, "He speaks like a king."
No. Ned's thoughts were darker.
He speaks like something older.
Far above, the signal came. A flaming boulder streaked across the sky, red and gold. The first volley.
The final assault had begun.
Alaric turned without a word and marched toward the breach.
And the North followed.
The roar of the bombardment swallowed thought.
Stone shattered against stone, fire pots arched in trails of red and gold, and the walls of Pyke quaked beneath the might of Westeros. Ned Stark charged with the vanguard, the chill of the sea air clinging to his beard, the salt tang thick in his throat. The wind whipped through the breaches as they opened, smoke and dust pouring outward in black clouds.
He ran with the direwolf banners, alongside Torrhen and Benjen, Ser Harald and Ser Benjicot, Lord Artos at their rear, old blood, ancient blood, Stark blood. Ironborn defenders atop the walls loosed arrows and hurled rocks, but the North did not break.
Ned had fought in battles before. The Trident being the bloodiest. But this, this was something else. This was fury unbound.
The first breach came down in a thunderclap of broken stone, and the North poured through like a flood.
Ned ducked beneath a falling beam, rising just in time to parry a howling Ironborn raider's axe. Ice bit through flesh and bone, and the man crumpled. He had no time to breathe, another came, and another. Ser Torrhen was at his side, sword flashing in brutal, clean arcs. Benjen leapt past them both to gut a charging axeman.
The battle fractured around them. The second breach fell. Robert's voice echoed distantly over the din, a great roar as the King himself surged forward with the storming southerners.
"TO ME! TO ME, YOU BASTARDS!"
Ned saw him then, a black storm in gilded plate, warhammer a blur of death. Robert Baratheon crashed into the defenders like a tempest. Three men fell before he could be checked. He swung wide and crushed a helmet into scrap metal, his laughter mad and joyous. A swirl of Kingsguard followed, Ser Barristan, white cloak streaked with soot, silent and deadly as a ghost.
Despite the carnage, the Kingsguard were still but mortal men, Ned saw as Ser Derrick Morrigen was run through by an Ironborn's sword as he failed to best four men at once, his death soon avenged by Robert himself.
But Ned had no time to watch.
He saw Alaric.
The boy, no, the lord, was cutting a path of devastation. Nightfall glimmered like a living shadow in his hands, carving through Ironborn in relentless, clinical strikes. There was no anger in him, no triumph. Only that same grim purpose.
He watched Alaric duck a clumsy spear thrust and drive his sword clean through Maron Greyjoy's chest, the short-lived prince already half dead from falling debris. The prince of Pyke gasped, blood bubbling from his lips. Alaric didn't hesitate. He pulled free, turned, and moved on.
Ned felt a lurch of pride and unease.
"Maron's down!" Benjen shouted as he appeared at Ned's side, slick with blood. "We push now!"
Together, the Starks reformed.
Ned, Ser Torrhen, Benjen, Ser Harald, Ser Benjicot, and Lord Artos. Alaric joined them at the center. The wolf pack. A line of iron resolve.
The Ironborn saw them. Recognized them.
And they broke.
Not all, but enough.
The Starks moved like a scythe, carving through the defenses of Pyke's inner walls. Ser Torrhen's shield took a blow that would have felled another man. Ser Harald's axe shattered bone and helm alike. Lord Artos fought with the bitter precision of a man who had a family to return to.
Ser Benjicot laughed as he split a shield and the man behind it, shouting, "For Winterfell!"
The cry was taken up. Northern throats, raw with smoke and salt, roared it again and again.
The Ironborn fled into the keep.
Victory was not yet certain. But its scent was in the air, thick as blood.
Through shattered gates and broken causeways, they stormed the stronghold's final holdfast.
The fighting turned brutal in the tight corridors, blades flashing in close quarters, screams echoing through halls that had once held the reaving lords of the Iron Islands. Ned fought with Ice in narrow stairwells and blood-slick halls, always pressing forward, always with the others.
They burst into the inner sanctum. A final stand.
Victarion Greyjoy roared, wielding a great axe with terrifying strength, carving down two men before he even saw who had come. Balon stood beside him, clad in mail, a short sword in hand, face pale but resolute.
Alaric didn't wait. He darted for Balon with the precision of a serpent.
Victarion intercepted.
"Take him!" Ned shouted.
Benjen, Ser Torrhen, and Lord Artos lunged for Victarion together.
Steel clashed. Blood sprayed. Ser Torrhen took a glancing blow to the ribs. Benjen drove a dagger beneath Victarion's arm. Artos struck with his sword, forcing the kraken warrior back.
Alaric dueled Balon. The boy was relentless, methodical. Balon fought like a cornered animal, desperate and wild. He landed a cut along Alaric's cheek.
Ned surged forward, Ice raised—
—But Alaric finished it alone.
A feint. A sidestep. A precise thrust.
Balon's blade clattered to the floor, and the Lord of the Iron Islands fell to one knee, clutching his shoulder as he fell.
Victarion, bloodied and broken, yet still breathing, yielded next.
Silence fell. The chamber was littered with corpses.
And then came the King.
Robert Baratheon, face blackened with soot, blood on his chest, stormed into the throne room with his Kingsguard. His warhammer was slick with gore, his eyes ablaze.
He took in the scene, the kneeling krakens, the battered Starks, and grinned.
"Well," he said, voice like thunder. "Looks like you lot left me scraps."
The battle for Pyke was over.
The North had led the charge.
And Winter had come.