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He could feel the cold even through the fur wrapped around his boots, the crunch of the snow under-foot. The winter chill cut through the air, so cold that it burned exposed skin, the wind finding its way through every gap in his clothing. His chest heaved but his throat burned with the dry, frozen air that rasped through his throat. 

The coast of Bear Island was as it always was, stormy and gray-blue against pine and rock. There was little here of worth but fish and wood, but that was plenty enough for wildlings fleeing the winter in search of food and warmth. Foam and chunks of ice rolled up against the shore. Here were the boats and the raiders, the boats themselves hit the shore with a scrape against the snow. Wildlings came to raid Bear Island, it was a way of life, but that didn't mean that Bear Island rolled over for the raiders. Wildling or Ironman, it made little difference. There was the bitter cold.

Wildlings climbed over the gunwales and jumped off the craft, boats more so than ships, and shambled ashore through the ice and snow accumulated on the beach. The raiders were clad in the shaggy furs and carried an array of weapons; stone, bone, old iron, crudely wrought weapon with the gleam of good steel here and there. There were no sers up here, and there were no fainting maidens or fluttering banners. This was not the stuff of song, though it was the stuff of story in the North.  

Steffon and the other men and women of Bear Island alongside him were clad similarly, in fur and wrappings over what armor they might have. It made them look massive, when it was really a shivering wretch beneath all that. The wind was an icy razor, and it only seemed to be picking up more of an edge as the sun started to sink. They stood in a loose line, ready to meet the raiders with weapons in hand. Here, on the edge of the world, there was no Lannisport pike lines or Marcher bowmen or reach knights. There were a bunch of hardy Bear Island smallfolk with harpoons, spears, billhooks and wood axes. Steffon had a battle axe, with a steel-reinforced handle and a counterweight, but he was one of the few. He'd grown too quickly and didn't have plate armor that fit anymore; what he had was a ringmail shirt like some of the other more experienced fighters.

With the dying of the light, as the raiders struggled for a foothold in the icy sand and snow, Steffon's eyes went up; he was jarred. There was only one bird in the air, not a gull or anything of the sort, but a single raven. It didn't caw out. The crash of the waves was drowned out by the howling of the wind and the sudden sepulchral chill that permeated everything. Even with gloves on, he could feel the chill on the ring mail under the fur and through the tunic beneath that.

It was the space of a couple breaths and then the enemy was upon them; a particularly large and brutal specimen of wildling with a crude shield hewn from some ancient tree trunk. He could feel his breath creating moisture in the scarf over his face as he huffed out his breaths from the exertion of the clash. Sweat rolled down his body beneath the layers of fur and wool, despite the chill in the air.

His axe, the wildling's sword. He was not as large as the wildling, but he was strapping and fierce, just come into his youth's full flower. His blood sang and he felt the surge of loose, confidence strength move through his limbs as he parried, dodged and kept swinging at that damned knotty oak-stump of a shield that his foe brandished. It felt like an hour of trading blows, of hacking the shield down with his axe, with his arms feeling numb from the exertion, before he felt the axe crunch into the wildling's head, shearing the helmet.

The man did not go down. Instead, two blue eyes bored into him, staring balefully, as Steffon tried to get the axe out in time, even as his foe swung his club, forcing him to relinquish the axe and fumble for his knife. As he backpedaled, he felt pure cold cutting into his side. He staggered and felt his knees give out from under him as his life's blood gushed into the cold, steaming. He saw the sight of the blood freezing upon a thin blade of ice, and a black hand that held it. He pulled his axe free and tried to swing with the last of his strength, but his attacker was too nimble and too graceful; cold blue eyes. The blade sheared through his axe's haft cleanly and bit into him again. He saw the terrible beauty of his assailant even as his vision faded. 

Behind him, he felt the sting of terrible fire, the flames licking his back. Overhead, he could hear the raven's caw.

[i]But this isn't how it actually happened,[/i] he heard his own voice protest, disembodied, disassociated.

[i]This isn't about what was, it is about what will be,[/i] a voice from above replied.

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He awoke with the lingering impressions of cold and heat, the sweat of the night and the need to forget the night's dream. The house was a drafty old manor in King's Landing, built by Orys during the years of Aegon the Conqueror's reign. It was essentially a manor keep near Aegon's Hill that allowed the Baratheons to stay in King's Landing when needs must dictate their presence there. The place was built timber as things were in the early days of Aegon's reign, before the Red Keep was completed and it never really was updated. There were, of course, more impressive manors owned by families that came later, but it was the Baratheons that fought alongside Aegon from the start and were, indeed, rumored to be related through the blood of Aerion, Aegon's father. The family took pride in the house's modest construction as one might in a tapestry or a Valyrian steel blade. Set near Aegon's hill, it faced the Dragonpit on Rhaenys's Hill...which was to say, Flea Bottom. 

He enjoyed that particular view and he enjoyed the manor. It was an unpretentious sort of house, and he always liked that about the place. It had character, even if it was peeling paint and old boards that creaked at times. The furniture was fancy enough, though the house itself was not designed to hold as many people as had come with him to King's Landing. The city itself was a bit of a festering pit, one that his father never liked, but he'd always appreciated the vitality of the place, the ability to find interesting new people and get into trouble. They'd ridden in the day before and, of course, had gotten the mocking cheers of the jaded Kingslanders, including the whores, the carters and the others. When they gave their mouth-farts and mock-applause, he gave them a big grin and a wave when others would pucker up in the saddle, or perhaps, if particularly odious, set a man at arms on a particularly offensive example.

He cast off the furs from the bed and the night's concerns; it was early spring, and there was a slight chill to the air that prickled his skin, though it was nothing like the chill that he'd woken up with. Here in the South, it was warm compared to Bear Island, where he'd fostered with his mother's family. The creaking of the floorboards gave warning to his rise, though it was possible that the house's servants, used to a lax standard of tending to the house without inhabitants, were hoping that the new Lord Baratheon would stay abed longer in the morning, especially after arriving through the King's Gate only the previous afternoon. 

Little did they know of Steffon. He'd come through the King's Gate alright, with a small procession of mounted warriors and squires, boar and deer taken in the hunt strapped across the backs of packhorses, after a long and winding tour on horseback of the Stormlands, starting with Nightsong and the Marches. They subdued bandits, they cleaned out jails and they rounded up a procession, behind them, of men to be consigned to the Night's Watch, an escort for his cousin, Rickard, on his way north. They traded the hunt's bounty for the wares of the farmers, that they might have cabbage and carrots and onions to go with their deer liver and other meats, or butter to sear their fish with. It was a rugged sort of way to live and hold court, having the couriers chase them down, and sending them back out with business, but it allowed him a good sense of what was going on in his Stormlands while enjoying life away from the confines of walls. 

They lived rough, they enjoyed the company of hedge knights. They helped smallfolk dig their ditches with a laugh. They drank in the taverns along the way. There were some houses too noble to shit, but that wasn't the Baratheon way at all. Open hands and open demeanors, loud voices that spoke the truth, rather than the dainty and silken ways of a more preoccupied sort of nobility that didn't know their balls from their chins. Tall and built large as his family was wont to be, he had little patience for the niceties. There was more to a Lord's work than prancing in silk and farting on cushions. There was, in the essence, the duty to wage war and give justice, to provide stewardship. To ensure that the lands were being run properly, that they would be prosperous. Attending the coronation gave him the excuse to leave matters in the hands of his seneschal, maester and mother and to venture out. It wasn't an abrogation of duty, but rather the essence. The Stormlands were smaller and poorer than the other kingdoms, and its smallfolk, doughty and hard-headed, weren't the sort to just follow someone because His Lordship said so. They had to have a reason to follow.

The first order of business in the morning was a good sweat. And so the morning's repast was prepared by the squires themselves, who knew well enough how to cook an egg, rather than the house servants that were unused to the disruption of their live. The knights got right to it, stretching limbs, getting the blood flowing. Exercises, drill, practice. Right in the courtyard of the manor house, which was given over to weapons and straw men on posts, hastily assembled, and a clear area for men to train. Part of the reason there were so many damned hedge knights was the offer that Steffon made in every alehouse and along the road; beat him in the yard, take a reward. Fight well, and be considered for service. He wanted to stay sharp against tough men, not merely beat on courtiers intent on kissing his backside. He wanted a real fight, not some scripted farce.

And so it was a mixed group out in that yard; sons of noble houses and hedge knights, grizzled men-at-arms and squires caught up in the chaos of Lord Steffon's morning routines with gusto. The yard, the clash of weapons, the exhilaration of a good sweat in the morning. Some were sweating out the last evening's drink, but there was little mercy for that habit. He'd learned, in fighting during the winter, that real battle rarely gave a tinker's damn if a man was feeling perfectly well or not when the foe came knocking. Axe, sword, polearms, he preferred the variety of weapons in his hands and in the hands of those he met in the yard.

It was easy enough, in the course of squaring off against his cousin Rickard, to lose track of the time, even to lose track of the small bruises that the wooden weapons raised. There was, of course, the opportunity to fight, later, with tourney weapons and to train with live steel against the straw men, but that was generally after the breakfast was done. The sweat from the morning's duels made them easy targets for the dust and clay of the courtyard to cling to them, and so Steffon was dumping water over himself when the servant arrived with the message. He didn't bother to pull a tunic back on.

He raised an eyebrow at the color of the message, in rose hue with a scent to it, but opened it all the same, even as he strode toward a brazier. He read and he walked, managing not to trip, but once he arrived at the brazier, he dropped the note in the flame.

"What's that?" Rickard asked him. Stockier and slightly shorter, there was still a family resemblance on the Mormont side. The man was stockier, barrel-chested and built low to the ground, deceptively fast for a man that looked like he could take a Crakehall on in a wrestling match and win.

"A bit of business."

"What sort?"

"Nothing to worry over. Best we cut off the morning routine early, we'll need to dress to present at court," he told his cousin gruffly as he carefully replaced his practice weapon to its place.

That, of course, hadn't been the plan before he'd gotten the note. But plans changed.