Harrion Karstark

He had no idea how long he had been rotting down here in the dungeons. Moons, mayhaps? Even years? With a mountain of effort and a small old bone found in a corner, he had managed to mark each day with a scratch on the granite wall. But eventually the bone was slowly worn down until it broke into fragments. The cowardly lord Mooton held him here instead of being confined in some guest room out of spite for the sacking of Maidenpool. But it was not like he was the one that sacked his shitty southern town. No, it had been that flayed cunt Roose Bolton and his men. In fact, he was here because the Leech Lord had set him up. He did not see it at the start, but when he spent a few moons thinking on it, he realised that the old Bolton had served them up for defeat in Duskendale by overreaching so deep in the crownlands.

Harrion only had rats for companions, and he had spent his time chasing them away or staring at the small and narrow window near the top of the eastern wall. While the other northerners fought and covered themselves in glory, he shamefully spent his time losing battles and being held captive instead. Before, he had some hope that his king would exchange some prisoners for him, but the news of the Red Wedding extinguished the last of it. He did not want to believe it at first, but as time passed, his belief was slowly chipped away. It even started to make sense after a while. The prissy southerners couldn't beat the Starks in a straight fight, so they decided to win through treachery instead. And the treacherous Bolton was surely in on it!

He tried thinking of ways to escape, but the room was made of solid stone. Even if he somehow managed to remove the thick steel bars that covered his tiny window, he had no hope of ever squeezing through it, despite his now thin frame. Not to mention that the small window was more than eight feet above the ground and he could scarcely reach it when jumping. He was stuck waiting for something, anything, to happen. He knew that he was a hostage for the good behaviour of House Karstark.

If the news of his father's demise was true, it would bode bad for his future. His cunt of an uncle, Arnolf, wouldn't hesitate to do something that would make Harrion a head shorter. Was his sweet little sister even still alive at this point?

Harrion had been feeling hungry for a long, long time, but the single serving of stale bread and gruel a day only stoked his hunger more. He could scarcely finish the rock-hard bread once he ran out of gruel, so it was left to the rats.

In fact, he was now watching a pair of rats eating the remains of his stale bread in a corner. How he missed the taste of meat. He would love to try and catch the little vermin, but he had grown slow and weak, and the manacles weighing him down made the task even more of an ordeal. Harrion had tried a few times before, but in the end, he only ended up even hungrier with empty hands and an emptier belly.

His limbs had grown thinner with each passing day, and now he could even count all of his ribs underneath his tattered robe.

Soon he might fall asleep and simply not wake up on the morrow. At this point, he would welcome the headsman's axe, being shipped to the Wall to join the Night's Watch or traded away. Anything to not die hungry, surrounded by his own piss, shit, and rats in this cell anymore.

He lay down drowsily on the thin straw bed in the clean corner, closed his eyes and slowly drifted into an uneasy sleep while wondering if he would see the blue sky again ever again...

BANG!

The door crashed open and Harrion opened his eyes groggily only to see a figures looming over him with a torch in hand. Was it time to face the block?

Moonlight, cold as a dead man's breath, seeps through the narrow slit high on the eastern wall. It’s the only light I’ve seen in moons, maybe years—I stopped counting after the bone wore down to a sliver, then to nothing. Once, I kept a tally with a knife, but the blade broke splitting a rat’s skull a fortnight ago. Now I have only the shadows of my own mind to whisper to, and the rats are my only audience, scurrying in the darkness like the secrets of the realm.

The cell is a box of granite, hewn from the spine of the world and dropped into the bowels of Maidenpool’s keep. My father, Lord Rickard Karstark, died a traitor’s death at the hand of the Robb Stark, and I, his son, have been given the same honor—only here, in the dungeons of the cowardly Lord Mooton, who has no honor at all. Mooton keeps me not for ransom or justice, but for spite. His keep was sacked by Roose Bolton and his flayed men, and he cannot bring his brother Roose’s head, so he let me rot in his dungeon instead. But the eternal truth of my death to the Roose is this: it was the Leech Lord who set me up. In Duskendale, he pushed our host too deep, too far, and the result was defeat, and I was captured, and my being here is his doing. He is not the friend of the North—he is a snake in wolf’s clothing.

I have heard, between the sobs and the madness, of the Red Wedding. The news came via a guard’s lips, dripped through the door crack like poison. King Robb dead. The Stark line dead. The ax fell on the neck of the North’s hope, and I am here, a prisoner of the south, wrapped in silence and hunger, my honor chipped away like my wall these marks. I have thought of escape a hundred times, but the cell is solid, the window too high and too narrow. I am a dead man walking, waiting for the ax that came for me. But the Boltons are not the only ones who plotted. The Freys, the Lannisters, all the prissy southern lords who cannot fight a battle without treachery. And I am left to die with the truth and no one to tell.

I have been here long enough to know every stone by its texture, every shadow by its depth. I have named the rats—the fat one I call Littlefinger because he steals what isn’t his; the bold one I call The Leech for the blood he takes. I talk to them, and they chatter back, and in the long hours it’s almost enough. But the silence always returns, pressing down like a dead weight, and I feel the darkness closing my throat, and I know that even if I never get out of this hole, I must one day see the light of the sun again—or the shadows of the North—before the end.

And in the night, I hear it—a new sound. Metal, a key in the lock, echoing down the corridor. I do not know if it is a friend or a spectral lord to my death. But this is a first in a long time. I am out of days to let them pass. I am out of hope.