A Vow Without Honor

Myra

There were sounds on the wind. Foul, frightening, unnatural. All things two-leggeds used were unnatural. The mountains they built, their shining fangs, but this was not those things. This was more, twisted and wrong. It was never meant to be.

They could not hear it. Only her brothers and sisters. Only they knew and kept watch.

A scent chased the sound, deeper than death and more wretched. It made the Quiet One nervous. He moved to the man; he was not used to being without his other.

"Something the matter, Ghost?" the man asked. For many days, she had heard his voice, but this was the first it meant something, a fire lighting dark corners of the mind, revealing memory, revealing...

Jon.

The world fell into focus. Old, wind-battered buildings rose in her periphery, neither magnificent nor spectacular. They were of the mundane nature of all things built out of necessity. Men bustled through an open, snow-pelted courtyard. Men in black clothing, men in armor bearing a stag encased in a burning heart, further still men of neither description with wild hair and suspect gazes. Wildings walked Castle Black unopposed.

She stepped toward Jon, ground suddenly cold on feet that should have been accustomed to it. He turned at her presence, and she felt the weight of the years upon her.

He was old, her brother, in spirit and countenance, with eyes that reminded her of their father more than the boy of her memories. A great sword hung by his side, with a wolf's head for a pommel. She could smell old blood on it still. They were all killers now.

"What is it, Brenna?"

Brenna. No, not Brenna. No, no someone else, someone far away...someone...someone...

.     .     .

Myra opened her eyes to the pale light of a morning yet to dawn, drawing deeply her breath as though for the first time. Her body felt small, cold and numb, until she remembered herself and her being fell back into place.

Jaime was beside her on the furs that lined their bed, chest rising to the slow rhythm of deep sleep. She'd rolled off him some time in the night, and his hand was stretched out to her. Part of her wanted to return to his grasp, curl up and forget that there was a world beyond their fragile walls, but she was pulled away by forces greater than herself.

She dressed quietly, watching her husband whenever she made a noise. It was the first time he'd slept through the night, free of the nightmares that left him drenched in sweat and gasping for breath, lost in the memory of his dying gasps. She would never forgive herself if she disturbed him now.

A chaotic sight greeted Myra as she stepped out from their quiet refuge. The scouts said they would be upon Casterly Rock by the evening, so Jaime had allowed the men to celebrate the night before - a reprieve he'd needed as much as they - and the consequences were strewn about the grass around her, snoring, clutching goblets and bottles, and not-so-quietly retching as they came to. Those still sober roused their companions to a variety of unsavory responses.

The stench of the evening's meal - and its charred, scattered remains - clung to the air, making her stomach roil. Smoke hung low in the encampment, in place of a fog, causing her eyes to sting and water. A sword stood upright on her left, half its blade buried in the ground, while an overturned saddle rested on her right. The horse it belonged to was snuffing the remnants of an impromptu campfire contained in a helm.

Podrick was passed out in the grass, gently wrapped in a Lannister banner and clutching a boot while Bronn threw twigs at him. Addam Marbrand was sitting on a stool with his head in his hands and Daven was humming with a skip in his step, despite a bloodied lip and a welt on his forehead. He'd somehow convinced Brienne of Tarth to abandon her decorum the night before, and prove her prowess against him. Despite the lion heraldry that colored their camp, the Lannister had not been the favored fighter.