GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 419 - Arrival at Bear Island

Half a month later, Bear Island.

This island, stranded off the western coast of the North, was like a forgotten stone , enduring the relentless pounding of the Sunset Sea year after year.

The sea wind here carried salt and bone-deep cold.

The land here was barren and hard.

But the people who lived here were like the island's black pines.

Tough. Upright. Never bending.

House Mormont's keep sat at the island's highest point. Not built of stone, but of massive logs. On the gate was carved a standing black bear, and below it the family words that had been passed down for centuries.

Today, an unprecedented panic had settled over that ancient wooden keep.

The great hall was packed with islanders. White-haired veterans. Half-grown children who had just picked up weapons. Fishermen with faces carved by years of wind and sea. Every eye was fixed on the center of the hall, on the one man who had made it back from the water , soaked through, lips purple, shaking so hard the hot soup sloshed in his bowl.

He was the only survivor.

"...Black sails. Black sails everywhere..."

His voice broke on the words, raw with terror. The wooden bowl slipped from his hands and hit the floor. Hot soup spread across the stone.

"A kraken banner. It's the Ironborn! Those damned Ironborn!"

"Their ships — more than all the fishing boats on Bear Island put together..."

"They're coming. They're heading straight for us!"

Dead silence.

Ironborn.

That name meant one thing to every Northerner on the western coast. Raiding. Slaughter. Ruin.

"We — how many men can we put up?" An old veteran forced the words out.

The garrison captain's face had gone the color of ash. "Less than a hundred. Lady Maege answered Lord Lynn's call. She took all our best fighters with her."

Less than a hundred.

The Ironborn fleet had at least a hundred longships. Several thousand men who killed for sport.

Despair moved through the crowd like cold water.

"We can't hold it. There's no way we hold it!"

"Quick , pack what you can! We take boats from the far side and run for Deepwood Motte!"

"Run? You think the Ironborn's ships are decoration? We won't even clear the harbor before they're on us!"

"Then what? Stay and die?!"

Panic became argument. Argument became shouting. The hall dissolved into chaos.

Then a voice cut through it.

Clear. Sharp. Carrying a weight that had no business coming from someone so small.

"All of you. Quiet."

Every mouth closed.

Every head turned.

On the lord's seat sat a girl.

A little girl.

Lyanna Mormont.

She wore black leather armor that didn't quite fit her frame, her small body nearly swallowed by the great bear-skin chair. Taken together, it should have looked absurd.

It didn't.

Her grey eyes moved across the hall like two chips of cold slate, passing over every adult face without flinching.

"Run away?"

Her voice was not loud. It didn't need to be.

"That word does not exist in House Mormont's vocabulary."

"Our ancestors stood here."

"Our fathers stood here."

"Now it is our turn."

One of the men who had been loudest in the shouting found his nerve. "But my lady , we can't win this! Staying is a death sentence!"

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd.

"I'm not asking you to die."

Lyanna rose from the chair. She crossed the hall and stopped in front of the man, tilting her head back to look him in the eye. He looked away. She didn't.

"I want to ask you something."

"Who made sure we had enough to eat this winter?"

"Who gave us the coal and the warm clothes to survive it?"

"Who gave our children , our children , the chance to read and write, like the highborn do?"

The hall went quiet.

They knew the answer.

Lynn.

The young king who had come to the North like something out of legend. He had brought more than grain and warmth. He had brought them a way of living they hadn't known to want.

"The King in the North does not abandon his people." Lyanna's words came out slow and deliberate, one at a time. "He may already be on his way."

"He gave us our dignity. He gave us hope. And what we are going to do now is not tuck our tails and run like cowards."

She turned to face the whole hall. Her small fists were clenched at her sides.

"We are going to hold this place. We are going to hold our home."

"We are going to make those damned Ironborn understand that the land of the North , even a single rock of it , is not theirs to touch."

"We will make them bleed for every step they take on our shore."

"We will stand. Right here. Until Lynn comes."

"For the North!"

Lyanna drew the longsword from her hip , a blade nearly as tall as she was , and drove it into the air above her head with everything she had.

"For the North!!"

The man who had been shouting loudest was the first to raise his axe.

His face was scarlet. His eyes were wet with shame.

"For King Lynn!!"

"We stand!!"

"Death to those Ironborn bastards!!"

That little girl had set every person in that room on fire.

The despair burned away. The fear burned away. In their place rose something harder , the rage of people defending what was theirs, and the stubborn refusal to go down without making it cost.

They might die.

But they would die as Northerners.

Bear Island became a fortress in hours. The veterans pulled out their old armor and worked the rust off blade and buckle, hauling barrels of boiling oil and heavy timber up to the walls. The women tore every spare scrap of cloth into bandage strips and set them in order. The children fanned out through the forest, gathering anything that would burn.

A killing stillness settled over the island.

Lyanna stood on the keep's highest tower. In the sea wind, her small silhouette looked very alone.

The old maester at her shoulder studied her profile , jaw set, eyes fixed on the horizon , and tried one more time.

"My lady. Please, the cellar would be safer. This is no place for—"

"Maester."

She didn't turn around.

"A Mormont does not retreat."

He sighed and said nothing more. He had known her long enough to understand. Whatever lived inside that small body, it was harder than most men ever managed to be.

Dusk.

The last light of the sun was bleeding into the sea when the black spots appeared on the horizon.

Small at first. Then larger. Then more.

They kept coming until they merged into a single shadow that blotted out the horizon , a darkness that stretched as far as the eye could reach. Hundreds of pitch-black longships, kraken banners snapping at their masts, bearing down on Bear Island like something clawed up from the deep.

The war horns hit first. Then the roaring , raw and savage, the sound of men who lived for this. It felt like it could split the sky open.

On the walls below, the defenders had gone pale, sweat slicking their palms where they gripped their weapons. They all understood what they were looking at.

There was no question of how this ended. There was only the question of how long.

Lyanna's hands closed around the cold stone of the battlement. The fleet pressed closer, dark as a stormcloud rolling in off the sea.

Lynn...

Will you really come?

That was the moment , her faith finally beginning to crack , when she heard it.

Hoofbeats. From the forest path behind the keep.

Slow. Unhurried. And somehow, impossibly, cutting clean through the horns and the roaring and the crash of the sea. Every person on the walls heard it.

Lyanna turned.

Out of the shadow of the trees, a man on a horse was walking toward the keep.

He wore plain black leather armor. Black hair moved in the wind.

He was smiling. That easy, unhurried smile, like a man taking a walk through his own garden with nowhere else to be.

No army. No escort. Just him.

"Sorry I'm late."

Lyanna's tears came before she could stop them.

He had come.

The King in the North had come.

➤ Next: Frozen Sea