Games of Thrones: The Heavenly Demon of North

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POVs: Garron, Thom

Location: Winterfell and its outer fields

The morning air was sharp with frost, biting at metal and breath alike. Winterfell's outer field had been cleared of snow in long lines, forming makeshift lanes marked by stone posts, old carts, and bundles of straw.

A crowd had begun to gather.

Farmhands leaned on fence rails. Lords on horseback watched from a distance. A few maesters scribbled furiously. Rickard Stark had ordered the demonstration days earlier—not as spectacle, but as proof. The North was changing. And some still needed convincing.

POV: Garron

Garron Blackforge stood at the field's edge, sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms smudged with soot and chalk. Beside him stood his designs: wooden structures fashioned to mimic enemy lines—some tall and narrow like pike walls, others sprawling and jagged like raider camps. Days of labor, all of it.

"Do they know what to do with them?" asked a gruff voice.

Garron turned. Lord Cerwyn approached, eyeing the strange constructs.

"They've trained for weeks," Garron replied, voice flat. "We'll see."

The lord gave a dismissive snort and rode on.

Garron knelt beside one of the structures and tapped the corner where four logs met. Inside was a tension lock—push too hard, and the platform would collapse. A trap for arrogance. A lesson in overreliance.

He stood and whistled.

From the far side, a column of soldiers emerged—commonfolk, mostly. They held spears and short blades, clad in mismatched armor, but moved with synchronized precision. Their steps were light. Their spacing clean. Their eyes forward.

This was no household guard.

This was Arthur's making.

POV: Thom

Thom steadied his breath as he moved between the infirmary tent and the shaded viewing area, where a few observing nobles now whispered among themselves.

"Bandages, quick," he muttered, passing a table where apprentices sorted cloth, salves, and ash-dusted water.

He caught sight of a younger girl—no older than twelve—binding the ankle of a volunteer with calm efficiency. He nodded to her. She straightened under his gaze. Progress.

Back on the training ground, the first mock skirmish had begun. Garron's terrain traps forced the levies to adapt. Instead of charging in lines, they flanked. Instead of retreating when boxed in, they compressed and counter-thrust—Arthur's compact defense maneuver.

Thom frowned as a spear clattered off a wooden shield, sending splinters flying. A man went down.

Two soldiers dropped beside him—not in panic, but in practice.

"A pressure wrap, tight above the wound," one said.

The other checked for breath.

Thom nodded. "Good."

He climbed the slope, where a few noble youths stood in polished armor, watching the mud-footed levies outperform them.

One of them—a Flint heir in a stiff crimson cloak—muttered, "Is this what we've come to? Mud-legged peasants taught to fight like knights?"

Thom said nothing.

Another leaned close. "They move like mercenaries. Too clean. Too quick."

"That's the point," Thom said at last. "They don't fight for pride. They fight to live."

He turned and walked back down the slope, cloak snapping in the wind.

Later

The field bore signs of practiced violence. Wooden dummies lay shattered. Training structures sagged under use. Men and women sat nearby, breath fogging, sweat freezing on their brows.

Garron stepped forward, chalk in hand, and began sketching on a slab of slate balanced against a cart.

"This," he said, pointing to a circular structure, "was held for six full minutes. The terrain's rise favored attackers. They adapted. Used their own shields to create blind zones. Blocked the top arc. Countered low."

He nodded once, satisfied.

"They're not soldiers," he said plainly. "They're survivors. Taught not just to fight—but to think while doing it."

Rickard Stark stood nearby, arms crossed, silent. His gaze drifted across the crowd—not to the commoners, but the lords who watched them.

Some faces were uncertain. Others bitter. But a few—Locke, Tallhart, even Manderly—looked thoughtful.

Arthur Snow wasn't present.

And that, more than anything, set the tone.

In the Great Hall, that evening

Thom sat beside Garron at the long table, firelight flickering against stone. Rickard's banner hung above, unmoved in the windless hall. Conversation was cautious. Tense.

Lord Glover leaned forward. "Tell me true," he said to Rickard, voice sharp. "Do you mean to have this... warrior teach the next generation of Northern command?"

Rickard didn't flinch. "I mean to have those who can lead—lead. Regardless of name."

Another voice: "And what of the Crown? If the South hears we arm farmers—"

"We don't arm farmers," Thom said, surprising himself. "We give them a reason not to die like sheep."

Garron grunted in approval.

Someone scoffed. "A smith and a healer. Advising the lords now?"

Rickard raised a hand.

"They advise because they act," he said. "Let that be the measure."

The silence afterward was telling.

Outside

Garron walked toward the forge, where embers still pulsed in the dark.

He thought of the walls he'd reinforced. The hidden caches Arthur had placed along the eastern ridges. The tunnels cleared. The weapons forged not to gleam—but to endure.

He laid a calloused palm on the iron door, warm beneath his touch.

The North was changing. Quietly. Relentlessly.

And if the South ever marched again, they'd find more than howling wolves and snow waiting for them.

They'd find a land that had remembered how to survive.

And this time—it had teeth.