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The Northern Hunt
“The one who passes the sentence should swing the sword.” -Eddard “Ned” Stark
The North had a long history steeped in traditions and magic that ran deeper than the roots of the weir wood trees. The wargs and skin changers of the Northman and the Wildlings being one of the most prominent of the legends. Countless stories of the Children of the Forest are told around the hearth fire from elders to children. The North remembers its magic through all the stories it tells. Each family had its own story of the family magic. The Reed Green Seers, The Bolton Blood Magic (now outlawed), The Mormont Berserkers, and the Flint Earthsingers. The Starks of course have wargs in their bloodline but, the Starks also have another magic in their blood. “Blessed” by the Old Gods as the protectors of the North the Starks were the lords and rulers of the North, and the Old Gods decided that they needed the ability to embody the passing of the sentence and their right and duty to see it carried out. Spoken of only in whispers amongst the people of North is the Wild Hunt.
The Wild Hunt it was whispered was a group of spectral wolfs and hunters lead by an Old God. The hunt hunted only the wicked and those who broke the sacred laws of the North. They were relentless, unstoppable and without mercy in their hearts. They never lost their prey and they were confined to North. This is the story known to the all the northern people, but as is the case with all stories it is not the complete one. What the people do not know is that the leader of the hunt is always a Stark, and many Starks have lead the hunt, for there have been many leaders of the hunt over the centuries. The wildest of the Starks with the strongest wolf’s blood were always called to act as leaders of the hunt and acting as the leader imbued them with certain powers. Endless stamina during the hunt, enhanced senses, command of a pack of spectral hounds, enhanced healing, and command of a group hunters made up of the spirits of past Starks.
Rickard Stark lead the hunt several times in his lifetime as the only Stark of his generation, but he did not have the aptitude so called the hunt as little as possible. Brandon Stark took over the duties of the hunt when he was ten and five leading the hunt several times a year leading to some of the lowest bandit and criminal populations in the North in a century. Lyanna Stark for all that she heard the call and had the desire to run with her brother was forbidden by her father to join in. Neither Eddard or Benjen ever heard the call but, they had both seen their brother Brandon come home from leading a hunt. Brandon eyes had been fever bright, he walked silently, his ears had been pointed, and he had a pair of upper and lower fangs bared to the world. He had been even more wild then he usually was though the traits of the hunt had faded come the morning. Benjen had heard the call with the death of his sibling, but it was faint, and he never answered.
Even with the death of his father and siblings and Benjen’s self-exile to the Night’s Watch Ned was not called to lead the hunt. So, he decided with the birth of his children that he would not tell them of the hunt unless one of them felt the call. Ned was on pins and needles on the eve of both Jon and then Robb’s fifteenth birthdays. He watched them all day and stayed awake in the great hall all night but neither of them had felt call, neither of them roamed with the wolves. Ned wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that, with relief or trepidation that the call had not yet gone out to a new generation of Stark Huntsman. It is not until his daughter Arya his little she-wolf turns eight that Ned can see the way the winds are turning. He would never get see his cub answer the call. Ned would never see his daughter turn into an entirely new type of hunter.
Rickard
Rickard did not like this aspect of being a Stark. He was running faster then a human should be capable of with a foreign power riding his senses and driving his body onward. Surrounded by spectral wolves and the shadows of long dead Starks he ran on. Rickard hated the feeling of wild fire filling his veins and hunting howls echoing in his mind. He was a man not a beast, but in this he was the unrelenting creature of the hunt. All that mattered in this moment was the packs prey. Of bringing down the kin-slayer responsible for the slaughter of his own family including a young child not even reaching ten years.
Rickard could feel his ears pointing and his teeth extending into fangs as the wolves started to howl. They had scented their prey and now they wanted him to know they were coming for him. There would be no escape and no mercy. Rickard split the pack to start flanking their prey, the wolves falling silent as they closed in on the target. He could feel the power in his veins reach a fever pitch the voices of past hunters resounding in his mind like the braying of hounds. Rickard catches a glimpse of the kin-slayer and between one instant and the next his mind goes blank as he lunges forward hamstringing the prey with claws he didn’t have. He comes back to himself just as the wolves descend on their wounded prey. Rickard wrinkles his nose in disgust as he feels the powers of the hunt loosen its grip.
Brandon
Brandon reveled in the power raging in his blood. There was no better feeling in the world than the wild power riding in his soul during the hunt. The power, the surety and inevitability of bringing down that which you are hunting. The wolves at his side ever faithful companions and his kinsmen whispering of past hunts in his mind. Brandon loved the feeling of rightness and the righteousness of what he was doing, and with the hunt there was no chance he would ever lose. His father was forever telling him to take caution, telling him he only needed to host a hunt a single time a year. Brandon did not want to hear it! He was the lord of hunt now! He did not need to be told how to lead his pack or how to hunt his prey! The North had never been safer since he had taken over the hunts from his father.
The wolves began howling and Brandon grinned with a smile full of fangs, eyes feverish. He sped forward letting lose a howl of his own its sound jagged and blood thirsty. He could hear the heavy breathing and thundering footsteps of his prey, a bandit the last one of a group that had been raiding farmsteads. The pack had already taken care of the others. Now, this one was his. Brandon surged forward just as the back of a large set man came into view. He hooked clawed hands into the front of the mans throat from behind, tearing it open. Brandon slipped back to let the wolves feed as he let loose a howl of triumph.
Eddard
Eddard had conflicting feelings on the hunt. He had never felt the call, never had the desire to be called. He knew his father looked at it as a burden, a duty of the house of Stark in their dominion over the North. Brandon viewed it as a gift from the Old Gods. A gift of power to be able to better protect their people. Eddard supposed he didn’t have to worry about it since Brandon was the heir and had already taken on the duties of hunts master. He also worried what it would do to him. Brandon had always been wild, but he had never looked as savage as he did when he came in from a hunt with fangs on full display, clawed hands, pointed ears, and eyes that shimmered silver/gold light. It was like it wasn’t even his brother standing before him anymore, it was a wolf wearing his brother’s skin.
Lyanna
She was angry, but then lately she was always angry. Lyanna paced in the great hall, it was late, and the hall was empty of all save Benjen and herself. Energy buzzed through her body creating a need to be constantly moving, if she stopped it felt like she would come out of her skin. Benjen sat at a bench watching her pace with concern. Lyanna’s eyes started to itch and she didn’t need a mirror to know her eyes were glowing. She wanted to run, to leave the hall and grounds of Winterfell and go running in the Wolf’s Wood. She wanted to hunt with Brandon and carouse with the pack. She could not though her father had forbidden it, had hamstrung her, curtailing her freedom. She was a pet in gilded cage, collared and de-fanged. Lyanna waited as often as she could get away with for Brandon’s return from the hunt. Anything to get as close to the hunt as possible, what should be her right (she felt the call, she should be running with Brandon and the pack!). Lyanna paced in her cage growing ever more discontent.
Benjen
Benjen never felt the call while his Brother and Sister were alive. He and Eddard weren’t the ones that would have to worry about leading the hunt. He sometimes felt wistful about what his siblings must feel when in the throes of power. Brandon had never been more wild, fierce, and free then in the moment he was with his wolfen brothers. Lyanna had never been more envious than when she watch Brandon leave without her time and again. He watched as she grew more and more desolate and angry each time she was left behind on their father’s orders.
When his eldest brother and only sister (and favorite sibling) died Benjen felt it. It was a gentle call offering purpose and comfort with the pack. He ran, he ran from the call with every ounce of will he possessed. He couldn’t lead the hunt! It was Brandon’s place and he couldn’t bear to see his brothers face among the hunt a ghostly shadow of his former self (what he feared most was the possibility that Lyanna might be there too standing next to Brandon waiting). In his dreams he relived the memories of Lyanna furiously pacing the great hall eyes glowing and fiercely beautiful as she listened to the call she could not answer. He couldn’t stand in the place that was never supposed to be his. His heart bleed at the loss.
Arya
As she got older Arya began to feel stifled in Winterfell. Her mother wanted her to be a Lady and her father wanted her to try to be the same (more for the sake of a peaceful household than wanting Arya to follow that path though). As time went on she developed a restlessness, it plagued her every time she saw her brothers leave with her father to deal with a deserter or reports of bandit activity. She should have been out there with them protecting the North, she almost lost her temper entirely when Bran was taken along to deal with a deserter, she was older, but the dire wolf pups brought back soothed her ire and refocused her energy for now. The itch and restless energy waned a little once she left the North for the south, but she was not completely calmed. Arya always felt the call to return North, though it got easier to put it aside when she started Water Dancing lessons with Syrio. Still she always felt the longing for home, for Winterfell and the North. It was almost painful to turn away from the North when she was so close, but with the deaths of her Mother and Brother she had no choice but to turn South again. In Braavos there was no pull, no restless energy, just a quite barely there humming in the back of her mind on occasion. Arya forgot for a time, her days consumed by training and mission for the House of Black and White. But the North never let go, and the hunt was no longer content to be silent.
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Arya
Arya lay in a low-slung cot, she slept fitfully, tossing and turning in the cot her bangs plastered to her sweaty forehead. She stills, and her eyes open wide showing shimmering silver were there was Valyrian steel grey. She sits up in the cot and swings her legs over the side of the cot throwing the blankets back. Arya has a snarl pulling at her lips, and molten silver eyes have a fevered sheen to them. She gets up and pulls on a pair of leather pants and a black cotton tunic. Arya leaves her boots behind on the floor of her room as she leaves, her steps silent. She continues walking along the empty halls and quite rooms toward the door of the House. The waif passes her by in on her way out the door, the waif’s eyes passing over her as if she was not even there.
Outside of the doors to the House waiting for her at the bottom of the steps were a pair of large dogs, there forms flickering occasionally showing overlapping ghostly wolves over their normal forms. Arya walked down the steps and strode forward into the darkened city of Braavos the possessed hounds on either side of her. She stalks confidently through the mostly empty streets of the city, unacknowledged by what little people are on the streets, eyes sliding past her and the dogs as if they don’t exist. Arya’s blood feels like its boiling in her veins, hot and wild. In the back of her mind she can feel Nymeria, clearly for the first since she set foot on the boat to Braavos, take up a hunter’s song echoed by a chorus of lesser cousins twenty strong. Arya pauses at the mouth of an alleyway, the dogs split off from her side and trot off. She turns down the alleyway with all the lethal intent of a wolf on the hunt, subconsciously echoing Nymeria’s hunt in the North.
Arya could hear people in the distance shuffling off home and she could hear boisterous chatter closer from Tavern she was walking towards. She paused in her steps, her head tilted to the side ever so slightly, her query was coming to her it seems. She started forward again as a handsome drunk young man spills out from a tavern door slurred singing burst forth from his lips. He started ambling down the alley towards Arya, not yet seeing her, and not seeing the dogs quietly cut off his escape from behind. The young man continued to stagger forward unaware as to the danger he was now in. Arya stopped in the middle of the alley and let the young man come the rest of the way to her. He did come the rest of the way to her, in fact he walked into her and bounced off like he had walked into a solid brick wall.
Dareon looked up from the ground he had fallen to and into the glowing eyes of a beast and screamed. He scrabbled up from the cobblestone, turned, and ran. He didn’t get far down the alley way before he was forced to stop as the possessed dogs made their presence known by lunging forward with snaps and snarls to cut off Dareon’s escape. He turned from the dogs to see the beast with the hellfire eyes two steps behind him.
“Please.” He begged knees weak and head swimming with drink, “Please don’t kill me, I’ve done nothing to you.”
Arya looked at this weak and traitorous fool, the voices and the baying of wolves in her mind silent and waiting. For all the power running through her veins urging her forward she felt no bloodlust, this hunt was not about vengeance, but duty. Duty as a Stark to see an oath breaker and deserter executed. Arya spoke with a deathly calm, “This is not personal, simply duty. Dareon late of the night’s watch, you are hereby ordered to death for the desertion of your post and the breaking of your oath.”
Arya swiftly sliced open Dareon’s throat with a clawed hand, leaving him to collapse clutching at the bloody ruin of his throat. She turned and walked off back down the alley, hearing the dogs rip into Dareon as she left.
Arya walked back to the House of Black and White listening to the now quite murmuring of voices in her mind, absorbing what they had to say. She stopped when she came to Weirwood and Ebony doors and let the power humming in her veins reach out into the House taking in the souls inside. Arya nearly recoiled in disgust, a snarl curling on her lips. It seemed she had more work to do before returning home. Arya walked through the doors, hearing Nymeria’s hunting howl echo through her mind as the doors closed behind her.