Chapter Text
The axe had ripped a hole in his armour, but somehow he had remained standing. Torrhen had come running at him, slack-jawed and demented, empty of all his former energy and humour. Killing him had been almost an accident, reeling and wounded as Jaime was, but it felt like setting the wildling’s ghost to rest. Before the wight which had once been Ser Dard Waynwood came close enough to strike a blow, Inett came charging out of the undergrowth, hatchets swinging, and leapt onto the former knight’s back. They had stabbed dragonglass into the corpses, then burnt them for good measure. Afterwards, they wished they had just buried them. The smoke could easily have given them away.
Unable to think or breathe properly from the pain, Jaime had collapsed, and remained useless for an hour at least while the light had faded. Inett had dragged him away from the top of the hill in the forest and deposited him against that tree, pulling out the throwing axe and stuffing ripped cloth into the gap to stem the blood flow. She had put out the fire, climbed a tree on the other side of the hill, and saw the assembled group of wights gathered in the distance.
If Brienne had not come looking for him, Jaime wondered if he would have died there. Inett might have left him eventually, if the choice was between her own survival and his. Not that he would have blamed her.
The rock formation came into view ahead of them, wreathed in moonlight, as familiar as Casterly Rock would be, if he ever saw it again. He felt the steady strength of Brienne’s arm keeping him upright, and tried not to think of the blood continuing to leak from his chest, or the sharp metal of his armour still pressing against his wound. The pain intensified with every step, but they had been walking for over an hour now, and he ceased to care about it. Losing his hand had been a far worse pain, a rotten, agonising one which lasted weeks.
“We’re back now,” Brienne whispered, clearly relieved.
“I’m wounded, not blind,” Jaime chuckled. “Where’s the marker? I don’t fancy landing on sharp stakes in the dark.”
Inett, who had gone ahead with their dying torch, found the marker, and they carefully stepped across the perimeter in single file, Brienne turning sideways so she could continue supporting him. Halfway across, he noticed the reflective eyes of the wolf pack in the treeline, watching warily and pacing. After they made it across, there was a hurried scramble up the path, Inett and Clegane going ahead to inform the others of the imminent threat.
“You look like shit, milord,” Bronn laughed when they reached the top.
“Still better than you,” Jaime retorted at once, but the effort of speaking loudly caused another wave of pain and breathlessness. “I thought Ser Harry was on guard duty,” he whispered to Brienne as they limped past the former sellsword to the entrance.
“Harry had a bit of a turn earlier,” Brienne explained.
“Cracked up like a broken egg, you mean,” Bronn added over his shoulder, still overly amused given the circumstances.
The relative warmth of the Cavern enveloped Jaime’s chilled extremities as Brienne lifted the layer of ice and bracken hiding the entrance. Inside, it seemed that everyone had gathered together, and it also seemed that packing was well underway. He noticed Harry Stone sitting not far away with hands roped together, gagged and furious. Jasper Snow was paused in the creation of some kind of carved list in the cave wall, and Ghost was lying next to the feet of the Stark girls, both of whom were standing while Inett and Clegane explained the situation in the centre of the group.
Brienne gently lowered Jaime to the ground, and gestured at Samwell Tarly to come over quickly. The portly almost-maester rushed across the cave, and Jaime winced in preparation for what would undoubtedly be an unpleasant remedy.
“Did I hear you right?” Sansa was saying, with a surprisingly calm tone. “A hundred?”
Inett cleared her throat. Stix was by her side, likely out of his mind with relief that he had only lost a friend, not a wife as well. “My counting’s not so good,” the wildling woman admitted. “But there were a lot of them. Not far, either. For all we know, they’re coming this way now.”
“And the Walkers are back,” Clegane added in a gravelly voice. “They turned Torrhen and Waynwood.”
There was a pause before Meg uttered a sudden moan of fear or grief, and that appeared to act as a catalyst. Everyone developed a strong opinion which immediately had to be voiced. Voices clamoured for supremacy, bouncing off the damp walls, before the children began to cry, Ghost got up and growled, and Jaime noticed Bronn poking his head into the cave, curious about the noise.
Samwell pulled the bloodied rags out of the gap in his rent plate armour, and pulled a very disconcerting face at whatever he saw.
“Could you try to look a little less like you’ve noticed I’m missing a lung?” Jaime grunted, never having liked maesters or healers and the way they generally viewed people as meat or experiments.
However, he was thankful that Tarly’s wide girth was shielding him from inquisitive viewing by the rest of the Cavern. At least they were all too distracted at present to notice if he screamed. Brienne had left his side, presumably to speak to her precious Lady Sansa, and he found his pain-addled, selfish mind pining for her strong presence, even if all she could have done was hold his hand. I will never deserve that woman…
“Removing this won’t be easy,” Samwell said, ignoring Jaime’s previous comment. “I’ll need to peel this metal back to prevent it tearing away more of your flesh when we unclasp the…”
“Whatever you have to do, just do it,” Jaime snapped. “Don’t make a song about it.”
Samwell turned and called out to Gendry, and the blacksmith hurried over, also pulling a disgusted face at the sight of the wound.
“I’m going to need you to prise this bit back here,” Tarly explained. “Quickly, get whatever you need, and come back.”
Jaime waited while Gendry rushed off, came back, stuck some kind of implement into the gap in his armour, and wrenched the metal back. Then the two men helped him to unclasp the breastplate, and strip off his ripped tunic. All the while, the Cavern was a mass of sound and chaos. Ser Harry, not far to Jaime’s left, was rocking back and forward, making low moaning noises.
“We have to leave now, before it’s too late!”
“They’ll pick us off one by one as we run!”
“The Walkers will trap us down here to die of starvation and thirst!”
Little Sam ran over at one stage to tug at his stepfather’s leg, and Tarly leaned over to comfort the child.
“Are we going to die?” the boy whimpered. “They’re saying we’re going to die, da.”
“Of course not,” Tarly shook his head firmly, pasting on a comforting, fatherly smile. “Go to your mother, she’ll tell you exactly the same. Don’t you worry. We’re all going to be just fine.”
Jaime watched the child rush away towards Gilly, ignoring the stinging and ache as Samwell cleaned out the crimson, weeping flap of skin over the centre of his chest. He was reminded unwelcomely of Tommen, when he was small, or Myrcella with white ribbons in her beautiful golden hair. He could almost see them now, with his open eyes, skipping across cobblestones in the Red Keep and clapping their pudgy little toddler hands, calling him Uncle Jaime and laughing when he joked. Naturally, while his wound was bound up, Cersei’s smirking face came to haunt him again. Leave me alone, sweet sister. She was dead, he told himself, and all of these spectres were ghosts of a forgotten past. Let them go.
Sadly, he searched for Brienne’s shining sapphire eyes. She was, predictably, standing next to Sansa and Royce while the Vale lord demanded in a booming voice for quiet and calm in the Cavern. And, eventually, the cacophony died down. Even the loudest speakers decided they had wasted enough breath on getting their points across. Some sat, some stood, all grim and tired and needing a clear answer.
“Silence and listen to your Queen!” Yohn Royce thundered, and offered the apparent floor to Sansa.
Quite the regal figure, she stepped into the centre of the group and briefly looked at everyone around her before speaking. Her long red hair was tied back, and Jaime noted that her dress had new panels of leather stitched into its warm fabric. “Thank you, Lord Royce,” she said politely. “I think the most important thing for all of us to remember now is that we don’t stand any chance at all if we fight with each other.”
“What should we do, my lady?” Lance Manderly asked, sitting with his hands folded over his knees, clad in faded yellow britches.
“We need to weigh up this decision carefully,” Sansa stated diplomatically. “It seems we have two options at present; leave or stay.”
“If we leave, they’ll pick us off,” the normally quiet Stix muttered. He and Inett were standing side by side, united in their shared opinion. “There are too many of them, and we can’t hope to outrun them in this weather with wounded to drag along.”
“But if we stay, they’ll trap us here and slaughter us in this cave!” Meg wailed, her face smudged and red with tears.
“We can defend this cave better than we can defend ourselves out there,” Bronn pointed out, having come in and quickly grasped the situation.
“Shouldn’t you be watching for the enemy outside?” Royce asked him gruffly.
“Seems to me my opinion’s just as valuable as that of a washerwoman or an old woman,” the sellsword spat sarcastically. “We’d be fools to leave.”
“Thank you, ser,” Sansa said sternly, “Your opinion has been noted. Please return to your post.”
Bronn had the audacity to wink at her before doing as she commanded, and sauntered off with a self-satisfied smirk. While the debate continued, in more hushed tones than before, Jaime glanced at Samwell’s work bandaging his wound. The crimson staining had stopped spreading on the fabric, and the throbbing sensation around the skin flap had started to pulse a little gentler.
“Nearly done,” the healer informed him, before roughly pulling a tight knot in the bandage just under his arm. “There you go.”
Jaime steadied himself against the cave wall, his head swimming with exhaustion and blood loss. Nonetheless, he had enough strength to get to his feet, and pull his tunic back on. It was difficult to sensibly convey a military opinion when shirtless, and he had to tell everyone the harsh truth.
“We have to stay now,” he said loudly, startling the group to attention. “We dug those trenches on the perimeter for a reason, and we have the high ground here. We could defend this cave against a hundred wights, but there’s no defence on the open road if we're discovered by the Walkers. Earlier, I advised Lady Sansa that we should leave, but now is not the time. Not with so many of them right on the doorstep.”
Yohn Royce stepped forward next to Sansa and nodded his grey head.
“Ser Jaime speaks truthfully,” he said gravely. “We have to make our stand here.”
Another voice cut in.
“I say we take it to a vote,” Arya Stark suggested, sitting cross-legged next to Ghost. “Everyone here deserves a chance to decide what we do.”
Lady Sansa blinked, and planted her hands on her slender waist. “As long as each of us agrees to obey the decision of the majority,” she conceded. “I see no problem with that.” There was a wave of approval for once, and much to Jaime’s relief, a decision was made. The vote was taken, discounting the children of course, and Brandon Stark, who was, for obvious reasons, incapable of taking part.
“All those in favour of leaving and taking our chances on the road.”
The raised hands were counted. Five, ignoring Ser Harry’s waving tied hands.
“And all those in favour of staying and defending the Cavern.”
Twelve, counting Bronn, who had clearly been listening just outside.
“In that case,” boomed Royce, with commanding power. “Let us prepare to defend ourselves. Men, form a war council so we can discuss our strategy!”
Jaime tried to catch Brienne’s eye across the cave, but she was occupied, listening to something Sansa was whispering to her guardian and younger sister. There was a similar expression of general disbelief and incredulity on most faces, as if the length of time they had spent here had removed their notions of what the true danger, the one they lost their homes to, even looked like. Meg continued to weep, mourning more vocally than most. Would Brienne cry like that, if he died?
He walked over to the place where Royce was pontificating about their “final stand”, and the bravery each man had to find within himself. His own mind started racing over the various uses of fire, torches, dragonglass, and the thing they had in greatest abundance; rocks. They had a few barrels of pitch taken from a nearby village, and the wildlings had made arrows, while Gendry was a useful asset when it came to fixing broken objects, and everyone here had battle experience. Perhaps all was not as hopeless as it seemed.
No. This would not be their final stand. This is only the beginning.