Chapter Text
The small figure in black stood at the edge of the camp, narrow shoulders hunched as she stood in the bitter cold, a splash of sombre colour against the whiteness of the snowy landscape.
"What are you doing, Lady Bear?" Jon asked impulsively and the young girl whipped around and glared at him defiantly.
"What did you call me?" she demanded incredulously.
"I'd be cautious if I was you, my lord," Davos murmured, biting back a smile. Unlike most of Westeros, the women of Bear Island were trained in the use of weapons and armour, as they were expected to defend hearth and home should wildling raiders from the Frozen Shore to the north attack. "Wouldn't do for you to survive the battle just to be gutted like a fish by the Lady of Bear Island …"
"It would be treason to gut my liege lord," Lady Lyanna Mormont retorted, making Jon smile a rare smile. His smile faded as he saw that the young girl was standing beside the bodies of half a dozen fallen men. The sigils on their armour proclaimed that they had been fighting men of Bear Island … as promised by their lady, they had fought with the ferocity and bravery of ten mainlanders.
He watched as Lady Mormont bowed over the body of one of the men and used a sharp dagger to cut hair from his head and hand it to the maester who stood at her side. She reached down to remove the amulet from around the man's throat, also handing it to her Maester who placed it into a small, brown cloth, along with the lock of hair.
Jon watched silently as the young lady of Bear Island attended to the remaining five bodies at her feet. He dropped to one knee beside their corpses, face reverent. "I express my heartfelt gratitude for their sacrifice," he murmured.
"They all had wives … children …" Lady Lyanna murmured, her ordinarily expressionless voice touched with sorrow.
"They fought bravely, my lady – and brought you much honour."
"Of course they did," she replied absently, staring at their bodies with a distant expression on their face.
Jon watched as Lady Mormont and her men dragged the bodies of the fallen to the funeral pyres. When he would have aided her in dragging a heavy man's body, she shook her head. "We tend our own dead, my lord," she told him briefly and with great effort, hauled the body of a man more than twice her size to the pyre.
Long after the fires had turned cold and Lady Lyanna continued to stand by the charred remains of her fighting men. "You may leave me," she ordered her men.
"I cannot leave you alone out here, my lady," her commander began to speak.
Jon Snow nodded at the older man. "I will keep her safe," and the promise in his eyes and voice overcame the hesitation of Bear Island's commander and he left with the others, although he stood in the doorway of his tent, watching over his lady from a distance.
The two stood side by side in silence for some time. The former member of the Night's Watch, tall and straight beside the lady of Bear Island, dressed all in black cloth that contrasted starkly with her pale face.
"I am sorry about your brother, Rickon," she spoke unexpectedly.
Grief flickered across Jon's face. "Thank you my lady … I failed him … as I have failed so many others …" Self-recrimination and guilt coloured his voice.
"As we who follow you keep faith, then so must you," she reminded him, a note of stern reproof in her voice.
"I stand corrected, Lady Bear," he replied, a flicker of amusement in his dark eyes.
"That's not my name."