Chapter 16: The Silence of the Woods and the Howl of the Wolf
The forest that bordered the Gods Eye was ancient, a remnant of the primordial world that had existed long before the First Men ever set foot in Westeros. The trees were massive, their gnarled branches forming a dense canopy that starved the forest floor of light, leaving it in a perpetual state of twilight. The air was damp and heavy, thick with the smell of rich soil, decaying leaves, and the deep, ageless silence of the Old Gods. For Thor, it was the perfect place to disappear.
He had walked for a day and a night, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the festering wound of Harrenhal. He left his followers, the tourney, and the whole miserable, self-destructing world of men behind him. He walked until the sounds of their civilisation faded, replaced by the whisper of the wind through the leaves and the gentle lapping of the great lake's waters against its shore. He found a small, secluded cove, sheltered by a rocky outcrop and a clutch of ancient weirwoods, their pale bark like bone in the gloom, their carved faces watching him with a silent, impassive judgment he found infinitely preferable to the adoring gaze of his worshippers.
Here, he attempted to return to a state of primal simplicity. He set Stormbreaker against a rock, the weapon's cosmic power a jarring anomaly in the ancient quiet, and resolved not to touch it. He would live as a mortal animal. He hunted for his food, though his hunts were a mockery of the word. He didn't need traps or bows. He would simply stride through the forest until he found a wild boar or a stag, and his sheer, intimidating presence would often freeze the creature in place, allowing him to end its life with a swift, powerful blow from his fist. There was no sport in it, only a grim necessity. He would roast the meat over a fire started with a small, controlled spark of static electricity from his fingertip—a minor concession to his nature he allowed himself—and eat until he was full, the taste of the wild meat a clean, honest flavour compared to the cloying sweetness of the offerings he'd been given.
He drank. He had carried several waterskins of strongwine with him, but when those ran dry, he resorted to more desperate measures. He found a patch of nightshade berries, and using his knowledge of the flora of a thousand worlds, he devised a crude but potent fermentation process, creating a harsh, bitter poison-wine that would have killed any mortal man but which gave him the deep, dreamless sleep he craved.
For weeks, he existed in this state, a hermit-god living off the fat of the land. The days bled into one another, a monotonous cycle of hunting, eating, and drinking. He tried to empty his mind, to focus only on the physical sensations of the forest: the cold water of the lake on his skin, the rough bark of the trees under his hands, the satisfying ache in his muscles after a long day's wandering. He was trying to regress, to become a creature of instinct rather than memory.
But the silence of the woods was a treacherous thing. It gave him the solitude he craved, but it also gave his thoughts room to grow, to fester. The ghosts of Harrenhal followed him into his exile. He saw Rhaegar's foolish, noble face, crowning Lyanna with a circlet of death. He saw Robert's apoplectic rage, the promise of a bloody vengeance in his eyes. He saw Lyanna's own startled, terrified expression, a wild creature caught in a trap it hadn't seen.
And he saw his own role in it. His words. Be a warrior. Such a simple sentiment. He had meant to empower her, to give her a moment of self-worth. Instead, he had handed her a loaded crossbow and pointed it at the heart of the realm. He had seen himself as a bystander, a piece of driftwood on the river of this world's history. But now he saw the truth. He was not driftwood. He was a boulder, and his mere presence in the water had changed the course of the river, creating eddies and whirlpools that were dragging everyone under.
The guilt was a physical weight, heavier than any armour, more burdensome than any crown. It was the same guilt he had felt after Thanos, the same crushing sense of responsibility for a catastrophe he had not intended but had undeniably enabled. He had fled from it once, into a haze of video games and cheap beer in New Asgard. He had fled from it again, into the silence of this ancient forest. But he was beginning to learn a terrible lesson: there was no place in any universe remote enough to hide from yourself.
His solitude was broken one crisp morning, a month or more into his exile. He was sitting by the shore of the Gods Eye, staring out at the mist-shrouded Isle of Faces, when he heard a sound that did not belong: the snapping of a twig under a hesitant foot.
His head snapped up, a low growl rumbling in his chest. His first thought was that a lord's hunting party had stumbled upon him. He prepared himself for a confrontation, for the weary business of terrifying mortals into leaving him alone. But the figures who emerged from the trees were not knights in armour or lords in silk.
They were ragged, thin, and their faces were etched with weariness and fear. At their head stood the mummer, Leo, the Storm-Crier, his theatrical robes now tattered and mud-stained, his face stripped of its usual bombast and replaced with a haggard desperation. Beside him was the lame boy, Finn, who looked thinner than ever, his eyes wide and haunted. Behind them were two dozen others—the most devout, or perhaps simply the most lost, of his former followers.
They stopped when they saw him, their expressions a mixture of relief and terror.
Thor rose to his full height, a fearsome, wild-looking figure with his untamed beard and clothes made of stitched-together animal hides. "What are you doing here?" he roared, his voice the first sound he had made in weeks, a raw, grating thing. "I told you to leave me be!"
Leo fell to his knees, his forehead touching the damp earth. "My lord, we… we had nowhere else to go," he stammered, his voice breaking. "After you left… the other lords… they drove us from Harrenhal. They called us heretics, vagabonds. They beat us. They stole what little we had."
Finn limped forward, his usual awe replaced by a raw, pleading honesty. "We tried to go back to King's Landing, my lord. But the Gold Cloaks wouldn't let us in. The Spider's men, they call him. They said Flea Bottom was… cleansed. That the King had ordered it so. They told us to scatter, that the Cult of the Storm God was forbidden."
Thor stared at them, a cold, sick feeling spreading through his stomach. He had abandoned them. In his selfish flight, he had left them leaderless and vulnerable, and the powers of this world had descended upon them like wolves on scattered sheep. Varys's cage of whispers had become a true cage, and they were now locked out of it.
"That is not my concern," Thor said, his voice hard, trying to rebuild the wall of his apathy. "I am not your keeper. I am not your god. Go your own way."
"But we have no way!" cried a woman from the back of the group. It was Anya, the old woman who had prayed for peace. Her face was bruised, her eyes filled with a desperate, shattered faith. "We are hunted. The King… the Mad King… he has put a bounty on the head of any who preach your name. They call us the 'Thunder Crows'. They hunt us for sport."
The Thunder Crows. They had even given them a name. A brand for the slaughter.
"This is not my war," Thor snarled, turning his back on them, forcing himself to ignore the desperation in their faces. "I told you from the beginning. I want no part of it."
He walked towards the water's edge, hoping they would take the hint, that they would finally give up and leave him to his misery. But they didn't. They simply stood there, a small, pathetic huddle of broken believers, too afraid to go forward, too lost to go back.
He stood with his back to them for a long time, the silence stretching, broken only by the soft weeping of the old woman. He felt their collective gaze on his back, a weight of expectation that was physically painful. He closed his eyes and saw again their hopeful faces as they had begun their pilgrimage. He saw Finn's crude drawing of him as a hero. He saw Olyvar sneaking food to the hungry in his name.
What will you do then, Lord of Sorrow? Rhaegar's question returned, a ghost he could not exorcise.
With a roar of pure, agonized frustration that sent a flock of birds scattering from the trees, Thor spun around. "Fine!" he bellowed, his voice echoing across the lake. "Stay! Eat! But do not speak to me! Do not pray to me! And do not expect me to save you! The next time trouble comes, you are on your own!"
It was not acceptance. It was not kindness. It was a weary, resentful surrender. But to the small, ragged group of outcasts, it was everything. Relief washed over their faces. They had been acknowledged. Their god had not forsaken them entirely. They began to set up a crude camp a respectful distance from his own, gathering firewood, foraging for what little food the forest could offer.
Thor watched them, a feeling of being trapped more absolute than ever before. He had tried to be a stone, unmoved by the river. But the river had simply flowed around him, stranding a small, desperate handful of people on his shores. He was responsible for them. The realization was a bitter pill, a poison far more potent than the one he had been brewing.
The news, when it came, did not arrive by raven or royal messenger. It came on the back of a half-dead horse, ridden by a terrified farmer fleeing north.
Several days had passed. Thor had fallen back into a routine, but it was a different one now. He would hunt, but he would hunt for twenty-five, not for one. He would leave the carcass of a stag or a boar near their encampment without a word, and then retreat to his own solitude. He watched them from a distance, a reluctant, brooding guardian. He saw them sharing the food, caring for their sick, clinging together with a resilience that he found both pathetic and admirable.
He was returning from one such hunt, a massive boar slung over his shoulders, when he saw the horseman. The man was riding recklessly, his eyes wide with panic, his horse lathered and stumbling with exhaustion. He saw the smoke from the small campfires and veered towards it, desperate for sanctuary.
He practically fell from his saddle, babbling a panicked, incoherent story to Leo and the others. Thor strode into the camp, his presence silencing the man mid-sentence. The farmer looked up at the wild-looking giant emerging from the woods and his jaw dropped, his terror momentarily replaced by awe. He had heard the stories.
"You… you're him," the farmer stammered.
"What has happened?" Thor's voice was low, demanding.
"The wolves," the farmer gasped, his breath coming in ragged sobs. "The dragons… they're eating the wolves!"
Leo managed to calm the man, giving him water, and slowly, the story came out. It was a tale pieced together from panicked rumors heard on the road, but its core was clear and sharp as a shard of ice. Prince Rhaegar had disappeared. And with him, Lyanna Stark. The word being spread from the Red Keep was abduction. A kidnapping. The Dragon Prince had stolen the daughter of the Warden of the North.
Her brother, Brandon Stark, the hot-headed heir to Winterfell, had ridden south to King's Landing with a handful of companions, shouting for Rhaegar to come out and die. But Rhaegar was not there. Instead, Brandon and his friends had found the Mad King.
Aerys had arrested them all for treason. He had summoned Lord Rickard Stark from Winterfell to answer for his son's crimes. And then… then the farmer's story dissolved into nightmarish, half-believed horrors. He spoke of a trial by combat unlike any other. Of Lord Rickard being cooked alive in his own armour by pyromancers while his son was strangled by a Tyroshi device, trying to reach a sword just beyond his grasp.
Thor listened, his face a mask of stone, but inside him, a cold, cosmic fury was beginning to build. He looked at the small shield with the laughing weirwood painted on it, still leaning against the tree in his camp. He had told her to be a warrior. He had not told her to get herself stolen by a prophecy-addled prince. He had not intended for her father and brother to be roasted and strangled in the throne room of a lunatic.
The farmer's story was the final, missing piece of the puzzle. The crowning at Harrenhal had been the spark. This was the explosion. Robert's Rebellion was no longer a possibility. It was a fact. The war he had seen coming had arrived.
He looked at the small, terrified band of followers huddled around their fire. He looked at Anya, who prayed for peace. He looked at Finn, who drew pictures of heroes. He looked at the farmer, a refugee from a war that had just begun. This was the world Rhaegar had made with his song. This was the consequence of prophecy.
And he, Thor, was standing in the middle of it. He had tried to be a stone. He had tried to be an island. But the tide of war was rising, and it would drown everyone. His apathy had been a shield forged from grief, but the fires of this new war were hot enough to melt it.
He could still walk away. He could fly to the other side of this planet, find another forest, another cave, and wait for it all to end. He could leave these people to their fate.
He looked at Finn, who was staring at him, his young face filled with a terror that was fast eclipsing his faith. The boy was looking for a hero.
Thor closed his eyes. He thought of his own failure. You should have gone for the head. The words echoed in his memory, a testament to the cost of inaction. He had stood by while one madman with a grand design destroyed half the universe. Would he now stand by while another destroyed this small, pathetic, but stubbornly real world?
The answer came to him, not as a heroic epiphany, but as a grim, weary resignation. He was Thor, son of Odin, King of Asgard. And he was done running.
He turned and walked to the rock where Stormbreaker leaned. The weapon hummed as he approached, a low, eager thrum of power. He wrapped his hand around its handle. The familiar warmth spread through his arm, a feeling of purpose, of terrible, world-breaking power.
His followers watched in silence, their breath caught in their throats. He was no longer the slumped, drunken giant. He was something else now. The sorrow was still there, a vast ocean in his eyes, but now, a storm was gathering over its surface.
He turned to face the south, towards King's Landing, towards the heart of the madness.
"Leo," he said, his voice quiet, yet carrying the unmistakable weight of command. "Take these people north. To Winterfell. Tell them… tell them a friend of Lyanna Stark sent you. Tell them to find her brother. The quiet one. Ned. Tell him… the storm is coming to his aid."
He hefted Stormbreaker, its weight a familiar and terrible comfort. He had no love for these people, for their kings or their games. But he had seen enough fathers burned alive. He had seen enough sons strangled. He had seen enough mad kings on thrones of power.
Rhaegar had wanted a song of ice and fire. Aerys wanted a kingdom of ash. Robert wanted vengeance. Tywin wanted power. They could have their war. They could have their game.
But they had forgotten about the thunder. And the thunder was finally ready to answer.