Rivers of Fire and Blood

Jon I

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to the Ice and Fire Novels, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon TV shows. However, I decided to have a little play around with the characters. I do not earn any money from writing these stories, it is for my entertainment and is something I like to share.

Hunting wild boar was a team effort, as the beasts were growing much larger since the snows had begun to melt in a few areas north of the wall. They were already larger than the ones south of the wall, as most animals were, but the melting snow leading to a greater abundance of food, was allowing the creatures to grow to their true potential. This was why it took a team of six to hunt a single one. Not because they were difficult to catch, between six of them, they could easily take a animal down within an hour of spotting it. The issue was returning it to camp. The boar tended to avoid the wildling camps, meaning the hunting teams had to track and return the beasts from distances of up to twenty miles, carrying the heavy creature back as they had very few horses available to them.

Every team sent out to hunt contained a warg, one of only eight left amongst what remained of the wildlings after the events of the long night. A warg was able to enter the mind of an animal and see through the eyes of the chosen creature, usually a bird when it came to hunting. When the boar was spotted, the warg would jump into the body of the beast and come to the group, placid and willing to be killed. The warg would leave the body of the prey and the rest of the team would shoot their arrows, disabling it before finally slitting its throat. Then it would be at least a five day walk back to camp, carrying the animal to feed the group. They rotated the hunting groups and there would always be a team out catching either boar or a stag to feed those who had made it through the long night, just over a year ago.

Jon had lost count how many times he had hunted for the boar in the cold snow, winds and ice, north of the wall to feed his people. At the beginning, the catch was easier. Snow is much easier to tread on when deep, but as of late, spring was taking over, which was good for the size of the boar, but walking was becoming much harder. Gone were shortcuts of frozen lakes and soft grippy snow. That had been replaced with tufts of grass, which could now be seen creeping through the once completely white landscape. Melting snow left ice and slush, which made the going tougher, slower and more dangerous. Soon, returning with the kill would take a week instead of five days, which was once three. Of course once all of the snows had melted, then the hunt would be quicker than in winter, but right now it was the worst kind of weather.

The warg on this particular hunt was a man called Horan. Like the rest of the wargs, he preferred to see through the eyes of an eagle, allowing him to soar the skies giving him a perspective like humans only dared imagine. Jon himself had warging abilities although his wasn't a skill which had been nurtured like Horan's. So far he had only ever been able to warg into his direwolf Ghost. He had tried on more than one occasion to enter the mind of a bird, but he had never quite mastered it, which up until recently had made him suspect his abilities were limited and he could only enter the mind of Ghost due to some connection they shared. Jon had always believed his time seeing through the eyes of Ghost were more like dreams than the full warging abilities as he wasn't able to control Ghost unlike Horan could with his eagle. As such, he never told anyone about what he could do with Ghost, it was something private between him and his direwolf. A time he could enjoy freedom without worrying someone would kill him at a weak point, and although he was now reluctantly the de-facto King beyond the wall, he still had many enemies who would like to see him dead. A few were north of the wall, but most lay elsewhere, Essos, the Summer Isles and Naarth, there were even those south of the wall who wanted him dead. Therefore Jon was always on the alert, except when in the mind of Ghost, for those short periods he was free, roaming the land, feeding and running. That being said, something recently had changed.