Chapter 68 - Hunting Wildlings 01.

 

[Chapter Size: 3000 Words.]

---------------------------------------

Third Person POV

North, 105 AC.

---------------------------------------

The snow was falling that cold morning, while a young man stepped on the layer of snow that already covered the ground. The white mass was crushed beneath his feet, which sank without any difficulty as he walked until he found other footprints.

His green eyes examined the large number of tracks there, while other sounds came from just behind: horses and men approaching.

However, the first to reach Jon's side was an enormous white creature, approaching until it stood beside him, staring at the marks on the ground. Ghost also observed the tracks.

"Did you find the tracks?" A voice echoed from the distance, as a horse approached.

"Yes. It seems to be a group of thirty..." Jon said, still looking at the tracks for a moment before turning his attention to the other young man.

"Uncle," the boy said to him, who was none other than Rickon Stark, heir to Winterfell and now fourteen years old.

Another older man, Rodrik Stark, Benjen Stark's brother, approached the group. He observed the tracks for a moment.

"Now we no longer need the direwolves. We've already found the trail," he said approvingly.

"Yes, but we should still be careful. It would be good if we could catch them by surprise," Rickon suggested.

"It will be difficult, nephew. Our group is just as large, if we're dealing with thirty men, as Jon believes. We'd be noticed from 100 meters away before we could truly get close."

"There's a village to the south, about thirty kilometers from here. We can head straight there and get ahead of them. Setting a trap to catch them would be much better, wouldn't it?" Rickon suggested once again.

Jon shook his head beside him. "That could work, but we'd have to assume the wildlings know the North well enough for that, which is hard to say. I believe we should follow their tracks. We can send the direwolves, and I also have some birds flying over the forest..." Jon said, though this last part was spoken loudly enough only for the Starks to hear.

"My suggestion is to follow the tracks. The animals will find them long before we do, and I can get a better look at the group. Then we'll know what to do and even where they're going..." Jon gave his opinion.

"That could work. Let's talk to Othmar and ask for his opinion as well." Rickard said, Othmar was Winterfell's master-at-arms who had come along, not allowing the 2 Starks to venture out on this hunt alone.

Then quickly, others also joined the discussion. In the end, Jon's suggestion was accepted.

Although the part about using his warg abilities wasn't discussed, even though it was an open secret, after all, how could a boy have a collection of animals inside and outside Winterfell and no one else know how to explain this phenomenon that no one else could accomplish...#

"Let's go, then. We'll continue through the forest."

They moved forward quickly. The direwolves were sent ahead. Not just one, but around ten direwolves appeared among the group of forty Stark guards.

Jon couldn't help but feel proud as he mounted his Dothraki horse, which he had bought years ago as a small foal, and which had grown into a powerful and swift mount since he had returned to the North.

Besides that, at the time, he had spent an entire moon with his parents, helping on the farm and spending time with them, before returning to Winterfell.

One of the first things he had done upon returning was investigate the wolfswood again, in that deeper area where not even hunters dared to venture. Ghost had led him there once again, and Jon had confirmed that the direwolves had not left the place. There were signs of their passage throughout that entire region.

Jon had spoken with Lord Stark and convinced him to let him go to the place alone.

Obviously, Lord Stark initially refused. But Jon insisted heavily on it, claiming that he could bring direwolves to Winterfell after centuries without any connection to the Starks.

But that alone wasn't enough, and he only managed to convince him when he conjured a ball of fire in his hand to show that he would be safe spending days and even weeks inside the woods, startling the man with that display of magic. Lord Stark stared at the ball of fire with wide and even frightened eyes, Jon saw nothing strange about showing that he could generate flames, the man had seen him transform into a bear and then a wolf. And the wolf transformation was more than enough to keep him alive alongside Ghost in the forest during his journey.

After Jon assured him not only that he would be safe, but also that he had ways to survive on his own, Lord Stark eventually gave in.

Jon gave the excuse that he would return home and, after two weeks, came back. He had entered the wolfswood and gone to its deepest part at the center, staying there for 2 weeks, either transforming into a direwolf or using only Ghost as a mount.

Finding the direwolves during that period wasn't difficult. They immediately became alert at his and Ghost's arrival, while Jon, already knowing how to better apply his powers, quickly managed to communicate with them and form a bond.

He entered that forest bonded to only one direwolf and, when he returned, he had already bonded with eight of them. He had also brought some pups from a new litter that one of the she-wolves had given birth to two moons ago.

Then he returned to Winterfell, leaving all the Starks astonished. Jon gave one of the pups to Rickon and another to Lyra. Even Bennard received one, and despite all his ego, he had to thank Jon.

It could no longer be said that the Starks were without their direwolves after centuries... Later, Lord Stark and his brothers, Rickard and Walton, at the Wall, also received theirs from a new litter.

Only Alys and Lyarra had no way of forming a bond with a direwolf, since they didn't possess Stark blood, but they still lived alongside them daily.

Winterfell had become a true home of direwolves. It was normal to see them walking and roaming around the courtyard and even inside the castle, since the children insisted on sleeping with their wolves. Even Ghost began to receive permission to enter. Despite his size and having some difficulty moving through certain places, and making everyone shudder in the corridors, he slept with Jon.

Jon, in particular, had managed to practically claim the entire pack for himself. Despite not wanting to show it too much, they all obeyed him as they went out every day to run alongside Jon and Rickon.

Jon had control over more than 16 direwolves, although the largest of them was half the size of Ghost. No direwolf exceeded 90 cm in height, after all, that was their genetics. Ghost was the largest direwolf ever seen in history, and he himself had tamed the pack as its alpha, which could explain why most of the direwolves followed Jon.

After that, Jon spent the next four years training everything he could. Not only with blades, but in his studies as well, with him having practically gone through the entire Winterfell library, spending around eight to twelve hours a day studying.

After some time, he even stopped part of his training with the maesters. He no longer saw much point in learning manners and other basic knowledge, as he didn't need much beyond what he already possessed at that moment.

Obviously, he still needed to update himself, or rather, become outdated on the houses of that era. He needed to know the current political situation and even discover which houses he knew from his other life had not yet gone extinct at that time.

His real training during those years was with magic, also developing a kind of magical core that had existed in the other world, he could create artifacts and had also been helping the North alongside Lord Stark however he could.

The dreams didn't stop, but despite that, they ceased to be a great surprise for a boy who knew nothing and became more like memories. Whenever he needed something or was thinking about something specific, they came, as if his previous life wanted to help him. He always had an answer for something, no matter what it was.

Time passed quickly. When Jon realized it, he was already there in that forest that day, after they received a report that wildlings had been seen and had attacked a village to the north.

Both a letter from the Night's Watch and Lord Glover's men said that they were attacking in the north, but were unable to find them.

It was Jon who realized that it was a tactic of the wildlings, after all, the village they attacked, they hadn't looted it, killing both the men and women, with their homes burned, the Glovers sent forces north, but they were wrong.

Jon knew they were heading even farther south of the Wall and had entered the Wolfswood. And it wasn't a small group. They had been clever enough to travel through a good part of the North without causing trouble, and now they were in Stark territory.

Why wasn't the Lord of Winterfell there? Because Lord Stark was at the seat of House Locke at that very moment to negotiate a few things with the house. Jon hadn't known before, but he had discovered, during those last four years, that Lord Stark had had a betrothed before Alys Stark. He was supposed to marry a Lady Locke, who ended up dying of winter fever. He also learned that the man had truly cared for that girl, and mourned her death, before continuing with his duty and marrying his current wife. Whom Jon knew he also loved and respected.

With Lord Stark absent, his brother Rickard had to take charge of Winterfell alongside their mother, when he learned of the invasion, he summoned Jon and his nephew, Jon quickly returned with his answer hours later, stating that the wildlings weren't fleeing north, but instead heading farther south.

They were then called upon to hunt them down. Jon was already the best tracker in Winterfell, thanks to Ghost. The Starks had also developed many skills with their wolves, becoming impeccable during hunts, thanks to Jon's training and advice. But they were still far behind Jon's true abilities.

The men traveled through the forest for about two hours until, suddenly, Jon blinked as he received another vision beyond the one provided by his own eyes. His brain received real-time images from several other pairs of eyes with which he maintained a connection.

Rickon and Rickard had sent their wolves, but Jon had sent another seven, besides Ghost. They circled the group of wildlings walking through the forest as they headed south. They didn't seem to intend to head toward the village Rickon had mentioned, but, coincidentally, they were moving closer and closer in that direction.

Jon quickly stopped paying attention to the wolves and shifted to some birds he had quickly connected with in the middle of the forest. One of them landed on a branch near the wildlings, startling part of the group with the sudden beating of its wings.

"By the gods! I almost buried my axe in that thing!" one of them growled, taking a step back.

"Ha! A crow nearly made you piss your furs?" another mocked. "And you call yourself a free man?"

"Go fuck yourself. It came out of nowhere."

"Keep making that much noise and we won't need crows to tell the North where we are," said a third wildling, a woman, casting an irritated look at the two.

But the bird turned its head, watching them with curious eyes. Jon noticed something at that moment, they were speaking the Old Tongue.

"Watch your tongue before I knock your teeth out," the first man muttered, turning toward the one who had mocked him.

"You can try. Maybe the crow will save you when your face is buried in the snow."

"Enough!" the woman interrupted, again in the Old Tongue. "Save that shit for when we're back north of the Wall. Down here, every shout from you could bring a pack of kneelers after us."

Jon was surprised. Those wildlings were fluent in that language. They must belong to a tribe ancient enough for that. Even in that era, speaking the Old Tongue fluently shouldn't be all that common, not even north of the Wall.

Jon continued observing them. They were certainly heading south to gather a large amount of spoils before returning North. That was why they had distracted everyone with a destroyed village to the north, while they would be doing their real plundering here in the south, they were already preparing to launch some attack and steal women, since that was the custom of the Free Folk.

"I don't like that bird. Is it following us, or am I imagining things?" another said, pointing at the animal still perched on the branch.

"Maybe it's a warg," the woman said, letting out a mocking laugh. "A warg south of the Wall... That would be something."

"The kneelers have the blood of the First Men too," another reminded them.

"Blood, maybe. But they've forgotten almost everything that came with it," she replied. "Old gods, Old Tongue, skinchanging... The kneelers let the maesters fill their heads with shit, and now they call our arts stories meant to frighten children."

"What do you think, Break?" one of them asked one of the bearded men at the front of the group, who had stopped and couldn't take his eyes off the bird.

He seemed to be a warg as well and, from the way his eyes carefully studied the bird, he understood them very well.

"There's a warg inside that bird," the man stated, breaking into a grin as the others immediately became more alert. "But you don't need to soil your furs over it. He's not the only skinchanger in this forest."

The bird flapped its wings to fly away, but that was when something appeared behind it and seized it. Another bird, a hawk, threw it to the ground with its talons locked around the small crow, while the group moved back, surprised by the sudden movement. The warg simply ran to where the two animals were and stepped on Jon's bird.

"Get out," he ordered the hawk.

The hawk immediately released the injured little crow and hopped aside. The man drew his axe and, without any hesitation, delivered a brutal blow to the head of Jon's bird. Blood sprayed across the snow, staining the white layer beneath his feet red.

"There. The warg who was inside it is dead," he replied with certainty. "I don't know who it was, but we'd better be careful from now on, we might be being hunted, we should act quickly after finding a village...."

Meanwhile, Jon couldn't help but grit his teeth at that exact moment, feeling a severe headache. That clearly wouldn't kill him, but he hadn't expected an outcome like that.

"Jon, are you all right?" Rickon looked at him.

"I am," Jon replied, still holding one hand against his forehead as he opened his eyes. "One of my birds was just killed," he said quietly.

"Oh, no..." Rickon couldn't help but look at Jon with concern.

He knew the dangers of having an animal killed while a warg was inside it. By this point, Jon had already revealed some of his abilities to the Starks. Rickon, as his closest friend, even more so than his own brother Sam, knew a great deal about him.

"I'm fine. Let's just keep going. I was a fool to think I could spy on them that way, it was just a bird I borrowed here in the forest, but its death..." Jon said with a certain anger.

He might have all the knowledge of a past life, but that also gave him an excess of confidence and, this time, he had ended up paying for it. Jon sighed as his eyes grew cold.

"Let's keep going," he simply said to Rickon.

The boy nodded, despite casting him a cautious look. After so many years together, Rickon already knew what Jon was capable of when he was angry. He could be practically ruthless.

And, if there was one thing Jon truly cared about, it was his animals, even those he had only just met. He collected hundreds of birds, even though almost no one knew about it. Rickon knew that Jon cared for every single one of them when no one else was looking.

He would certainly be cruel to anyone who harmed them.

Rickon said nothing, it was better not to get involved. And he knew that Jon was seeking revenge at that moment.

Jon then turned to Rickard. "I already know where they're going. Why don't we go around the forest and catch them along the way?" Jon suggested. They were on horseback, so it would be much easier for them to move around, especially since they were already quite close to the edge of the forest.

"If Jon figured that out, we can do it. What do you think?" Rickon asked his uncle.

"It can be done..." Jon continued. "It would be better. Instead of trying to surprise them in the open, we can wait for them to come to us."

"I like that," Rickon replied, looking at Jon approvingly.

"Good. Then let's turn the horses around. We'll leave the direwolves circling the area. Jon, can you keep them there?" the man asked.

"Of course," Jon replied.

And so, they turned their horses around and rode out of the forest.

◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆

🦝 Raccoon here: 🦝

I deeply appreciate your support since the beginning of this exciting journey!

🌟 RaccoonLeague | Patreon🌟

Visit our Patreon for more: https://www.patreon.com/RaccoonLeague

Extra Content Already Available:

🏴‍☠️ One Piece - I Am a Different Luffy!: 30 extra chapters!

👑 Game of Thrones: The Legend of Jon Arctic!: 30 extra chapters!

👑 HOTD: Jon Arctic! 30 extra chapters!

 

🌀 Naruto - Minato Namikaze SI!: 30 extra chapters!

🗡️ The Witcher - As Uchiha Madara! 30 extra chapters!

⚡HP - Jon Arctic as Severus Snape! 30 extra chapters!

⚡ Harry Potter - Shadow Monarch! Finished! [100%]

👑 Game of Thrones: DragonBorn! [Chap: 311 - 100%]

⚡Danmachi – The Alchemist! [Coming Soon.]

Visit our Patreon for more!!

◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆