Chapter Text
Rodrik remembered the day Lord Stark first brought his sons to the courtyards to begin their martial training, just as he remembered a similar day, decades ago, when it was the young Eddard’s first day in the yard, and his older brother’s first day before him still. The memory made him feel his age, and a sense of dulled grief lingered in his mind.
He considered it an honour to train not one, but two generations of Starks, a line as ancient as the mists and the rivers, and him, nothing more than an old soldier of a minor house with his best days behind him. There was the five-year-old heir, bright blue eyes wide with curiosity and head of auburn hair held high, then there was the lord’s base born son, though the lord told Rodrik to treat them both equally.
He never thought young, quiet Ned had it in him to betray his marriage vows, but war was hard and men were weak, even Starks. At the very least he had taken the boy in and given him a family, most men would have ignored the consequences of their lusts, others would have taken far darker paths.
At the time, he thought him quite unremarkable, a waif of a child, an inch or two shorter than his trueborn brother. In his first month, the boy struggled with the weight of the short wooden blade, his movements were clumsy and uncoordinated, and he failed to take to even simple instruction. In truth Rodrik imagined the boy would put down the blade after a year or two, mayhaps find himself better suited to letters or sums.
His trueborn brother was a different story, now there was the making of a lord; both kind and intelligent, strong and quick, the delight of both his family and the castle staff. He took to swordwork like a fish to water, but as a further testament to the young boy’s character, he did not lord his skill over baseborn brother. None cheered louder for young Jon in his spars, and none sooner rushed to his side when he was bested time after time.
Then one day, after war was called and won and winter had gone as quickly as it had arrived, a Greyjoy would become the newest addition to the training yards. His was a most despicable house, but Rodrik tried not to hold the child responsible for his family’s black past. Theon was a few years older than the boys, but still far too young to train with the men-at-arms or adolescents, and he gave the bastard something he seemed to need more than a helpful hand or a supportive word.
He gave him a villain.
For the young heir of the iron islands was unlike the heir to the north in every way, arrogant where the other was humble, harsh where the other kind. There was a mad glee in his eyes when he demolished his opponents, and even greater pleasure in mockery and ridicule, and none drew Theon’s ire as much as the bastard.
Some would have folded under the weight of his presence, taken any excuse to avoid training or even the yard itself, but pressure seemed to be where the young son of Lord Stark thrived.
He kept coming in day after day, no matter what the ward did or said, only, his eyes followed Rodrik rather than mindlessly gazing off, his questions to the other boys became commonplace. So too would young Snow become in the yard, running laps and repeating routines hours before the other boys, sometimes before even Rodrik managed to drag himself out of bed, and staying until long after the sun had set.
Rodrik tried to foster the growth, but did not expect much to come of it. Most likely the boy would give up, or at least slow down after a month, when it became clear that the results were not immediate. Young Jon would still occasionally lose to boys a couple years his junior and Greyjoy’s laughs still bellowed in the yard.
But he maintained the pace far longer than Rodrik had hoped, driven by something or another. Soon he stopped loosing bouts to boys younger than him, but still Luwin told him that the boy spent hours in the library studying ancient fighting manuscripts under candlelight.
His feet would fall into the rhythm of a perfect flurry of footwork for the first time, but still the servants told him that they saw a shadow dancing in the training yards under starlight.
Robb fell to him for the first time, but still the boy could be seen balancing along fences and the stables, climbing back to his feet no matter how many times he tumbled into the mud and summer snow.
And the better Jon grew, his talent was no longer shrouded under bad form, talent that Rodrik should have spotted sooner; reflexes that were almost animal in speed, a natural inclination towards explosive movement, and complete spontaneity in a fight. The boy did not relent, nor give his opponent a chance to think, something which was impossible to teach some but that came to the boy innately.
When combined with his growing technical skill, he became a terror the fields.
Soon even Theon would find himself choking on his words, but Jon did not stop. Dedication and potential so rarely mixed as they did within him, and it was a difficult thing for a mentor to turn away. Rodrik found himself spending more time with the boy, walking him through styles, feints and routines that would make any other boy his age give up after being told they were nowhere close even on their twentieth attempt.
But Jon was not other boys. There was a mania in his eyes when practicing an impossible flurry, and while mastery would remain beyond his grasp for years yet, his failure taught him all the same. Explosive attacks, a superior understanding an opponent’s range and near effortless movement became second nature over time.
There came a day where young Jon lost a bout, and then he did not lose again. It was not brought about by one single thing, no secret technique existed that guaranteed victory in every contest, natural talent alone was never enough to make someone unstoppable, nor had the countless hours of drilling fundamentals made him impossible to best. Rather a piece of the answer laid in every one of those things. It was the fruit of talent, determination and work that put him a league above the other kids.
That was when Lady Stark approached him and politely asked him to consider paying less attention to the boy. Rodrik respected the woman greatly, and there many things he liked about her, but the boy was his father’s ward, and he had decades of experience dealing with upset mothers.
She said something about Daemon Blackfyre being a better swordsman than his trueborn brother, but Rodrik had openly scoffed at the thought. Robb and Jon did not bear the seeds of Daemon and Daeron, rather there was a Daeron and Aemon, a Lyanna and Brandon. Bonds forged in blood that did not yield to the world entire.
The youth’s wolfblood did worry him however. The curse of acting before thinking, of peerless aggression in the face of opposition. It was what buried Brandon.
It was also what kept the Andals out of the North. What pushed the Ironmen from our shore. What gave the Starks the North.
His kindness, the honour and grace imparted to him by his father remained prevalent, regardless of his tainted blood. That went a long way to alleviate worries of his brutality.
The next day, Lord Stark himself had taken some time to come see the boys spar. A nod was all Greyjoy received for felling a boy. A rare, warm smile was Robb’s reward for besting a far larger boy. But his disbelief was palpable when Jon carved through three other boys as though they were wielding spoons. Rodrik’s heart sunk for a beat, but then the lord’s surprise would turn to a second warm smile, a genuine pride that came to any father watching their blood excel.
The boy gave his father a wink, but his happiness was easy to parse to any who knew him, or were above the age of ten.
Soon, a second Stark girl would join their household and become a regular at the training fields when her mother grew pregnant again. Sansa would come and go with his and Poole’s daughters sometimes, and he entirely disliked the giggles he heard when the boys teased the girls, but thankfully their visits grew rarer as they began their education of the womanly arts. The wild little stark lived on the field however, and keeping her away from the swords and padded armor was a challenge onto itself. She held none of the reservations her sister had about screaming at the top of her lungs for her brothers.
The girl kept up Jon’s sprits for a time, but the longer his reign of terror lasted, the more Rodrik started to see it. The death of discipline. The thing that had borne him so many fruits. Every day Jon showed up a little later and left a little sooner, he grew bored and distracted, and when there were none left who could even scratch him, the embers in his eye had faded.
Rodrik could have left it at that, he had already spent much effort on the boy, more than his lord had asked of him, and young Jon would still grow into great swordsman. And perhaps something would naturally come along and motivate him anew.
But there was the spark of something in the boy. Rodrik had hoped to see in Robb, or in a young Eddard Stark, even in his own nephew Jory or in any of the countless boys he trained. It was present in young Brandon an age ago, though in Jon it was as potent as wildfire. The seeds of whirlwind that could carve through great swordsmen, but if left to stagnate, especially at such a developmental age, the potential would remain forever unfulfilled.
Lord Stark had said to treat them equally, and were Jon and Robb’s positions reversed, Rodrik would not hesitate to afford the heir the effort.
So, one day, Jon would come in late once more and Rodrik would inform him that his training would start in the afternoon, and that his lessons with Luwin would be in the mornings instead. When the boy returned a few hours later, the field was filled with armoured men who towered overhead, alongside their boys of three and ten and four and ten who would soon join the household guard and men-at-arms.
Part of Rodrik expected the child to be frightened of the new, older people, of the absence of his brother and friends. But the boy’s spirit knew nothing of cowardice. An older boy of five and ten threw the young ten year old Jon off his feet and the fire in his eyes burned bright once more.
Jon’s fanatical training resumed, but now he was bigger, quicker, stronger. The grown men he fought had many wars behind them, and far more more to teach the lad than the summer children he was used to facing. His growth was then faster and his ceiling seemed higher still. Rodrik gave it a a month before Jon won his first bout, but a chubby boy of three and ten fell to him in the first week.
The pace remained same for the next few years. An grown guardsman fell to him in a spar his first year. It earned the man no small amount of ridicule, but he did not have to endure it for long, within another year more guardsmen had fallen to Jon than not. That outcome remained a rarity still until the year after, where his wins outnumbered his losses.
It was also the age where boys grew into men. His meals were enough for two, and there was no shortage of manual labour about the castle to help grow his strength, be it with the stonemasons, lumberjacks or smiths.
The North was a sparsely populated kingdom, but Winterfell was its capital castle, and many a traveling swordsmen would pass through the castle and town. It became a frequent jest among the men to employ some of them to give the lad some lessons, only to fall to him in a duel.
It was also during this time when he started trying different weapons, axes, hammers, spears, greatswords and maces. Perhaps he would wield a spear as tales told of the dornish legends of old, or a greatsword like the late great Arthur Dayne, or even a sword and a dagger like the kingslayer.
Horsemenship became a focus for him in those years, though to a more mediocre result. He crushed lances into stationary targets at first, then to bags of pebbles that swung loosely from tree branches, but his relatively riding never grew past average, and it would hold him back from being truly extraordinary with a lance.
That was when those days that started to occur. They were rare at first, but grew more frequent with time and age. Days when the potential Rodrik saw hints of a decade ago manifested into being.
The boy would integrate everything he had learned, the thousands of hours of practice, the countless words of instruction, the dozens of clashing styles and rhythms all morphed together into mastery. His weapons turned into limbs and instinct pulled at his strings.
On days like those no sword in Winterfell could match his. Not Joer, a man who had felled a dozen royalists during the rebellion and a hundred ironmen in Pyke, nor Hugh, a tower of a man with enough strength to toss about men around like dolls, some days he even managed to best Rodrik himself, and it was only experience that allowed Rodrick to hold the edge.
On one of those days, the Lord of Runestone himself was passing through the castle, escorting his youngest son to the wall. The boy fell to both Robb and Jon in the field, but it was the duel between the lord and the bastard that would be talked about in Winterfell for years to come.
Yohn Royce had already bested both Rodrik and Lord Stark, he offered to spar against young Robb. After his defeat, the boy quickly pointed to his baseborn brother, who the lord offered to fight all the same.
Royce went easy at first, then quickly realized the skill of his opponent, and was soon holding nothing back. By that time almost every soul in Winterfell had flooded the field to witness the spectacle.
Royce’s shield was impenetrable, and his young opponent could not find any opening. When Jon least expected it, the lord would ram it forward and create space. His sword helped compliment this defense when necessary but was otherwise wielded as a scorpion’s stinger. It movement was difficult to follow and impossible to predict, faster than a knight’s lance while never leaving the old lord exposed.
It was a greater mastery of the Andal style than Rodrik had ever seen before, one perfected over a long life of conflict and war.
But young Jon kept up longer than he or anyone else was expecting.
With no shield in hand, his greatsword blocked or battered aside blows, or the youth avoided them all together. Instead of shield bashes the boy swung the lump of dulled steel in unstoppable arcs to create space. A riskier proposition than a shield, but it created far more space, and Jon’s depth of skill and strength allowed him to weave the sword as though it were flowing water he wielded.
Royce jabbed his sword forward faster than most men could see, but Jon was not most men. The sword found only air, and then Jon swung his blade in a wide arc ahead of him while dashing back. The combination afforded him much space and made for quite the spectacle, something echoed by the crowd’s squeals.
Only Jon. Rodrik thought, No other man would ever think of such a move, let alone have the technical skill, coordination or plain confidence to execute it. How many hours did it take him to perfect?
It worked flawlessly, and Royce wore the same stunned expression he had the entire fight. Jon continued with a small crouch, and lunged the sword forward, its tip bearing the weight of a battering ram. The Lord of Runestone blocked it with his shield, but it took every ounce of strength in his old bones not to go flying into the mud.
His feet wobbled under him however, and Jon pounced. The greatsword rested on his shoulder, then swung forward in a brilliant arc. Rodrik half expected the shield take flight.
But Bronze Yohn had been fighting men since before Jon’s parents were even born. That wealth of experience allowed him to find his footing and tightened the grip on his board. Jon’s blade clanged against it as though it was a castle wall.
Royce moved to punish the youth’s over-extension, but the movement was sloppy. Jon noticed it before anyone else.
The old man still hasn’t recovered from that lunge. Rodrik realized, and dared to hope.
With blood in the water, Jon launched an unbelievable flurry of blows, one even Rodrik had never seen before. Devastating strikes from his greatsword endlessly battered the shield, and every move flowed seamlessly into the next. The steel was dancing before their eyes. The crowd roars were so loudly that the younger Starks would lost their voices come the morrow.
But the old lord found the presence of mind and speed to dash out of the way of a blow rather than blocking it. His shield bashed into the youth’s wrist. Jon faltered. Royce struck the greatsword out of his hand. His blade then hovered an inch from the boy’s throat.
A moment later, Jon’s his hands were raised in surrender.
Unfortunate, but likely. It looked close and Jon was fought as he never had before, but if the two were to fight ten more times, Yohn would win nine of those bouts. Experience made all the difference when skill and talent were evenly matched. The old lord had it in spades, while the boy had little to none.
Is there anything so humbling as the gap between a prodigy and a master?
Jon’s eyes burned however. It was the same cinder Rodrik had seen when the boy was first bested by Greyjoy. When he first started his training with the men at arms
A new mountain to overcome. And Rodrik couldn’t be the one to help him climb it. I’ve nothing left to teach him.
His pride could not be greater.