Beneath the Painted Sky

The Great Hall of Winterfell was a place of ghosts and echoes. Though the masons had worked tirelessly to raise its walls anew from the ashes of the Bolton occupation and the ruin of the Great War, the chill that clung to the stones had little to do with the northern air. It was a coldness of memory. Scars remained, visible in the darker patches of stone where fire had licked highest and in the solemn faces of the lords and ladies gathered beneath the newly carved rafters.

At the high table, Queen Sansa Stark presided, her auburn hair a slash of warmth against the grey tapestries. Her face, once a mask of careful neutrality, now wore the open, weary strength of a ruler who had earned her crown through fire and loss. Her gaze was fixed on the small figure standing before her in the center of the hall.

Lady Lyanna Mormont stood as if rooted to the very bedrock of the North. She was still a girl in years, but the war had scoured every trace of childhood from her face, leaving behind the grim, set lines of a veteran commander. Her dark hair was pulled back severely, and she wore a simple leather jerkin over wool, a heavy bearskin cloak clasped at her shoulders. Her hand rested on the pommel of a short sword at her hip, a warrior’s habit she had not unlearned in the fragile peace.

“The fishing fleets are at half strength, Your Grace,” Lyanna said, her voice clear and sharp, cutting through the hall’s low murmur. It was a child’s voice, yet it carried the weight of a hundred winters. “We lost too many to the Night King’s army, and the ships we have left are in need of constant repair. The sea ice lingered long this year, and the catch has been poor.”

She didn’t consult a scroll or parchment. The facts were etched into her mind, as raw as wounds.

“The forests on Bear Island suffered in the Long Night. The cold killed saplings and sickened ancient trees. Our lumber stores are low, and the hunt yields less than it once did. Every man, woman, and child old enough to hold an axe or a needle works from dawn until the light fails, but there are not enough of us. We have the will, Your Grace. We do not lack for courage. But we lack hands. We lack supplies.”

A few of the lords shifted in their seats. Lord Manderly stroked his great white beard, his expression troubled. Lord Cerwyn, whose own lands had been ravaged, nodded in grim understanding. Others looked merely impatient, more concerned with their own ledgers and granaries.

Lyanna’s dark eyes swept over them, missing nothing. She had never been one for platitudes, and she would not start now. The North had survived, but survival was a battle fought every day.

“My people are not beggars,” she stated, her chin lifting with the fierce pride of her house. “We will not starve. We will not freeze. We are Mormonts. We are of the North. But the recovery is slow, and the coming winter will be a test. We need more grain than our own fields can provide to see us through. We need pitch and seasoned timber to make our fleet whole again. We gave sixty-two of our fighting men to the cause. We do not regret the price. But we feel their absence in every empty chair and every task that requires one more pair of hands than we possess.”

She finished, her small frame held ramrod straight. The silence that followed was heavy with the truth of her words. She had not come to Winterfell to complain, but to report, to lay the bare, unvarnished facts before her Queen. It was the duty of a loyal vassal, and Lyanna Mormont had never once shirked her duty. She stood her ground, a tiny, unshakeable island of resolve in the vast hall, waiting. The weight of her people, of their hunger and their future, rested squarely on her narrow shoulders, and she would not let them see her bend.

Sansa’s gaze softened as she looked at the young Lady of Bear Island. “Your House has always given more than its share, Lady Lyanna,” she said, her voice carrying the same quiet authority as her father’s once had. “The North does not forget. Winterfell will see that Bear Island receives the grain and timber it needs. Maester Wolkan will coordinate the shipments.”

A collective sigh of relief, faint but audible, passed through the handful of Mormont men-at-arms standing near the hall’s entrance. Lyanna gave a single, sharp nod of acknowledgment. It was not gratitude; it was the acceptance of what was right and just. Before she could step back, however, the great oaken doors at the far end of the hall were thrown open with a crash that echoed off the high ceiling.

All heads turned. A man stumbled in, his face caked with mud and streaked with sweat, his clothes torn and stained from hard travel. He was one of Winterfell’s own outriders, and he collapsed to one knee just inside the doorway, gasping for breath. Two guards rushed to help him, but he waved them off, his eyes fixed on the high table.

“Your Grace!” he rasped, his voice raw. “A message… from the northern patrols. Near the Gift.”

A nervous murmur rippled through the assembled lords. The Gift was the land that once belonged to the Night’s Watch, now largely deserted, a gray and empty buffer between the realms of men and the lands beyond the Wall.

“Speak,” Sansa commanded, her posture stiffening.

“Wildlings, Your Grace,” the man choked out, finally finding his wind. “They’re raiding again. Not just taking livestock. They burned the homestead of the Fenn family. All of it. And two more farms near the Antler River. They came in the night, fast and brutal. Took all the food, the tools, anything of value. They killed those who resisted.”

The air in the hall turned to ice. The ghosts that haunted the stones seemed to draw closer, whispering of ancient hatreds and terrors that were supposed to have been buried beneath the winter snows alongside the Night King.

“Savages!” a voice boomed. It was Jon Umber, the new Lord of the Last Hearth, a young man with an old man’s scowl. His father had died fighting for Jon Snow, but the family’s historic animosity toward the Free Folk was a legacy he carried with pride. “We bled for them! We fought alongside them, and this is how they repay us? With fire and theft?”

“They are desperate, most likely,” Lord Manderly countered, his voice a low rumble. “The Long Night was not kind to them, either. Their lands are even harsher than our own.”

“Desperation is no excuse for murder!” Lord Cerwyn snapped, his hand tightening on the arm of his chair. “My own tenants are terrified. They hear whispers on the wind, see shadows in the woods. How are we to rebuild the North if we must fear raiders at our backs? The Queen must act!”

The hall erupted. Voices rose in a clamor of fear and anger. Shouts for retribution mixed with calls for caution. The fragile unity forged in the face of an existential threat was cracking, revealing the deep fissures of old prejudices. The lords spoke of the Free Folk not as the allies who had stood with them at Winterfell, but as the wildling reavers of songs and stories—a faceless, primitive horde that understood only strength.

“We should send a punitive force,” Umber insisted, his voice rising above the din. “Ride north and burn their villages as they have burned our farms. Remind them where the Wall stands and why it was built!”

“And how many men can you spare, Lord Umber?” Lyanna Mormont’s sharp voice cut through the noise like a shard of obsidian. She had not moved from her spot, but her small frame seemed to radiate a cold fury. Her dark eyes, burning with intensity, were fixed on the Lord of the Last Hearth. “How many of your people are you willing to lose fighting men who are likely starving? We just finished one war. Are you so eager to start another?”

Umber glared at her, taken aback by the ferocity in the girl’s tone. “It is a matter of justice, Lady Mormont. Of security.”

“It is a matter of survival,” she shot back, her voice ringing with the absolute certainty of her own recent report. “For all of us. Another war will bleed us dry. It will empty the granaries we are trying so desperately to fill. We have no men to spare for vengeance.”

The debate raged on, a fire rekindled in the heart of Winterfell. Fear, anger, and the bitter memory of loss swirled through the Great Hall, a storm of words that threatened to tear the North apart once more. Lyanna stood her ground, a lone rock in a turbulent sea, her face a mask of grim resolve as the lords she had fought beside demanded a return to the old ways of blood and iron.

“ENOUGH!”

Sansa’s voice was not loud, but it possessed a chilling quiet that sliced through the angry shouts more effectively than any roar. The lords fell silent, turning their faces back to the high table. The Queen of the North sat perfectly still, her hands resting flat on the dark wood before her. She had let them vent their fury, let the poison of their fear spill onto the stone floor. Now, she would command.

“I hear your anger, Lord Umber. I hear your fear, Lord Cerwyn,” she began, her gaze moving from one man to the next, acknowledging them, disarming them. “You speak of justice for your people, and you are right to do so. Every Northern life lost is an outrage. Every farm burned is an attack on us all.”

She paused, letting her words settle. “But you also speak of war. You speak of sending men north, of burning and killing in turn. Lady Mormont is right. What men will you send? The boys who are just now learning to swing a sword? The old men who have already seen too many battles? Our strength is in our fields and our fleets, in the rebuilding of our homes. To march north now would be to trade a farmer for a corpse, to trade a bushel of wheat for a shovelful of grave dirt.”

Her logic was cold and unassailable. The lords shifted, their righteous anger deflating slightly under the weight of hard truth. They had no army to spare. They knew it.

“Vengeance is a luxury for those who can afford the price,” Sansa continued, her voice hardening. “We cannot. Not now. But we are not helpless, and we will not be victims.” She leaned forward, her eyes sweeping across the hall, a flicker of the wolf in their depths. “We fought the dead alongside the Free Folk. Some of them died to protect this very castle. Are we to believe they all turned to savagery overnight? Or is it more likely, as Lord Manderly suggested, that they are desperate? That their situation beyond the Wall is even more dire than our own?”

Lord Umber scoffed, a raw, ugly sound. “Desperate or not, they are killing our people. What would you have us do, Your Grace? Send them a cart of grain so they can grow strong enough to raid us again in the spring?”

A few lords grunted in agreement. The idea was absurd to them.

“No,” Sansa said, her expression unreadable. “I would not send a cart of grain.” She took a breath, her gaze steady and unwavering. “I would send an envoy.”

The silence in the hall was absolute, a thick, disbelieving void. Even the crackle of the hearths seemed to have ceased. Lyanna Mormont, who had remained as still as a statue, felt her jaw tighten. An envoy? North of the Wall?

Lord Umber was the first to find his voice, sputtering with incredulity. “An envoy? You want to talk to them? To the murderers and thieves?”

“I want to understand them,” Sansa corrected, her tone sharp. “I want to know who leads them. I want to know why they raid. I want to know if this is the act of a united people, or a few rogue clans driven by hunger. Sending an army in blind is folly. It is how you lose wars before they have even begun. An envoy can gather intelligence. They can gauge strength. And yes, Lord Umber,” she added, her eyes locking with his, “they can talk. They can present an ultimatum. They can offer a path that is not blade and fire. A path to peace, if it can be found. And if it cannot,” her voice dropped, becoming as cold as the winter wind, “then we will know our enemy, and we will know exactly where and how to strike.”

It was a masterful stroke of politics, framing diplomacy not as a weakness, but as a strategic weapon. Still, the skepticism in the room was a palpable force. These were men of the North, men who understood swords and shields, not words and treaties with those they had always considered their ancestral enemies. They saw it as a fool’s errand, a suicide mission that would achieve nothing but getting the envoys killed.

“And who would be mad enough to lead such a party?” Lord Cerwyn asked, his voice dripping with scorn. “What Southerner’s fool would you send to die in the snow?”

Lyanna watched the Queen. Sansa’s face gave nothing away, but Lyanna saw the subtle calculation in her eyes. She was not just proposing an idea; she was testing them. She was looking for something more than just agreement. She was looking for courage that went beyond the battlefield. Lyanna felt a strange, cold knot form in her stomach. She had argued against war out of pure, hard pragmatism. She had not for a moment considered that the alternative might be even more dangerous. To walk willingly into a wildling camp armed only with words seemed a greater gamble than facing them across a field of battle. Yet, the Queen’s logic was sound. War would cripple them. This… this was a risk, but it was a calculated one. A terrible, necessary risk.

Sansa’s gaze shifted from Lord Cerwyn and settled, with deliberate weight, upon Lyanna Mormont. The look was not one of command, not yet. It was an appraisal, sharp and knowing, and in that silent moment, the entire hall seemed to hold its breath. Lyanna felt the eyes of every lord turn to her, a crushing pressure that made the very air thick and hard to breathe. The cold knot in her stomach tightened into a block of ice. She knew, with a sudden, dreadful clarity, what was coming.

“You ask who would lead such a mission, my lords,” Sansa said, her voice calm and measured, yet it carried to every corner of the hall. “You ask for someone who will not be seen as a fool. Someone the Free Folk might respect. I will not send a man who thinks of them only as savages, for he would be dead before his first parley. I will not send a diplomat who speaks in riddles, for they respect plain talk. I will send a warrior they have seen fight. I will send a leader they know fears nothing.”

Her blue eyes remained locked on Lyanna. “The Free Folk do not measure worth by age or size, but by strength and courage. They saw Lady Lyanna Mormont stand before the army of the dead. They heard her speak in this very hall and pledge her house when others wavered. They will not see a child. They will see the She-Bear of Bear Island. They will see the steel of the North.”

A wave of murmurs swept through the assembled lords. Surprise, shock, and a dawning, grudging understanding. To send the fierce little Mormont girl… it was audacious. It was unexpected. And it made a certain, terrible kind of sense. Her name carried the weight of her house, her reputation preceded her, and her youth, which so many saw as a weakness, might be perceived by the wildlings as a testament to her proven strength. She was not a pampered lady from a southern court; she was hard, forged in the same brutal winters as they were.

Lyanna stood frozen, the Queen’s words washing over her. Each sentence was a stone being laid upon her shoulders, a weight of expectation and duty that threatened to buckle her knees. She thought of her people, of the hungry faces and the struggle to rebuild. She thought of the burned homestead, of the stories of fear and loss. The Queen was asking her to walk into the heart of that danger, to face the very people her vassals were demanding she make war upon. It was a terrifying prospect, a journey into a land of myth and shadow, to treat with killers.

Yet… Sansa was right. Who else could go? Lord Umber’s hatred would doom the mission from the start. Lord Manderly was a man of trade and ships, not of the frozen wastes. She, Lyanna Mormont, was of the North. Her blood was as ancient and unyielding as the rock of her island home. Duty was the air she breathed, the iron in her bones. It was a legacy passed down from her mother, Maege, a woman who had died fighting for the North, for this very Queen’s family. To refuse would be to dishonor that memory. It would be to betray the sixty-two men who had marched south with her, their faith in her absolute.

She felt the fear, a cold serpent coiling in her gut. But she pushed it down, burying it deep beneath layers of resolve and pride. The She-Bear did not show fear. The Lady of Bear Island did not shirk her duty.

Slowly, deliberately, Lyanna drew herself up to her full, unimposing height. She straightened her leather tunic, lifted her chin, and met the Queen’s gaze across the expanse of the Great Hall. Her own eyes, dark and fierce, held no trace of the shock or terror she felt inside. They held only the unbending will of her house.

“The North is my home,” Lyanna said, her voice clear and strong, ringing with a conviction that silenced the last of the murmurs. “My people are suffering. If there is a path to peace, I will find it. If there is a treaty to be made, I will make it.” She took a steadying breath, her small hand clenching into a fist at her side. “I will lead the envoy, Your Grace. For the North.”

Sansa Stark inclined her head, a flicker of something—relief, admiration—in her eyes before her queenly mask was back in place. “The North thanks you, Lady Mormont. Your courage does you and your house great honor.” The decision was made. A path was set. Lyanna felt as if she were standing on the edge of a cliff, the wind of an unknown future whipping at her face, and she had just taken her first, irrevocable step into the abyss.

Sansa’s words hung in the air, sealing the pact. The lords looked from their Queen to the small girl who stood defiant and ready, and a quiet, grudging respect settled over the hall. They might think the mission was madness, but they could not fault the courage of the one who had accepted it.

“You will not go alone, of course,” Sansa said, her voice pulling Lyanna from the precipice of her thoughts. The Queen’s gaze left her and scanned the assembled knights and guards standing along the walls of the Great Hall. “This mission requires more than just a warrior’s heart. It requires a keen eye, a steady hand, and a quiet tongue. It needs someone who has seen the world beyond the North, who understands that battles can be won with more than steel.”

Lyanna’s brow furrowed slightly. She would have her own guards, men from Bear Island she trusted with her life. She needed no one else. She needed no ‘minder’ chosen by the Queen.

“Ser Podrick Payne,” Sansa called out.

The name was familiar, but not one Lyanna would have ever associated with a perilous mission. From the ranks of the Stark household guards, a man stepped forward. He was taller than she remembered, the softness of his squire’s youth burned away by the hardships of war and the rigors of knighthood. He was no longer clumsy; his movements were economical and sure as he came to the center of the hall and knelt before the Queen. He was dressed in dark leather and wool, the snarling direwolf of House Stark stitched over his heart. His face was still plain, earnest, but there was a new gravity in his eyes, a quiet competence in the way he held himself. He had seen things. Lyanna could see it in the lines around his mouth, in the way his gaze never wavered.

Still, he was Podrick Payne. Tyrion Lannister’s squire. She remembered the stories—a boy who had stumbled his way through the world, seemingly by accident. A knighthood from Brienne of Tarth was no small thing, Lyanna knew, but he was not a great northern champion. He was not a household name like the Blackfish or a legendary fighter like the Hound. He was… quiet. Unassuming.

“Ser Podrick served Lord Tyrion Lannister,” Sansa explained to the hall, though her words were clearly for Lyanna’s benefit. “He saw diplomacy and intrigue firsthand in King’s Landing. He traveled the length of Westeros with Lady Brienne, surviving on his wits and his loyalty. He fought with honor in the Battle for the Dawn and has served House Stark faithfully ever since. He is a knight, but he is also an observer. He will be your sworn shield, Lady Mormont. And your advisor.”

Advisor. The word landed like a stone in Lyanna’s gut. It was a slight. A clear message that the Queen, for all her praise, did not believe a girl of fourteen could handle this alone. Lyanna’s pride, as fierce and jagged as the shores of her home, bristled. She felt her jaw clench, a muscle twitching in her cheek. She stared at the kneeling knight, at the back of his brown head, and saw not a protector, but a shadow she did not ask for, a leash from Winterfell to keep her in check. She had just sworn to walk into a nest of wildlings, and the Queen’s response was to give her a babysitter.

She did not speak, of course. To argue now would be to show weakness, to undermine the very authority she had just claimed. She had accepted the mission; she had to accept the terms. But she made a silent vow that this Ser Podrick Payne would be her shield and nothing more. She would listen to no advice she did not solicit, and she would lead this mission her way.

“I am yours to command, Your Grace,” Podrick said, his voice steady and clear, without a hint of arrogance or false modesty. It was the simple, solid statement of a man who understood duty.

“Your duty is to Lady Mormont,” Sansa corrected gently. “You will guard her with your life. You will lend her your counsel. You will see her safely through this mission and safely home. Do you accept this charge?”

Podrick turned his head, his gaze lifting to meet Lyanna’s for the first time. His eyes were a calm, unassuming brown, but they held a depth she hadn’t expected. There was no pity in them, no condescension. There was only a quiet, solemn appraisal. He was looking at her not as a child, but as his commander.

“I do, Your Grace,” he said, his eyes still on Lyanna. “My life for the Lady of Bear Island.”

Sansa nodded, satisfied. “Then it is settled. The court is dismissed. Lady Mormont, Ser Podrick, attend me in my solar. We have plans to make.”

The lords began to rise, the tension in the hall finally breaking as they shuffled out, their voices a low buzz of conversation. Lyanna remained rooted to the spot, watching as Podrick Payne rose smoothly to his feet. He took a step back, positioning himself slightly behind her and to her left, a silent, unobtrusive presence already assuming his role. She felt the weight of his gaze on her back, a silent testament to his new vow. It did not feel comforting. It felt like a cage, slowly closing around her. The mission was no longer just a diplomatic gamble; it was now a test of her own authority against the quiet knight the Queen had placed at her side.