Chapter 13 – "The Wolf Crosses the Sea"
The moon was high above Frosthall when Cregan Stark vanished.
He left no word for Ned, no farewell to his siblings, not even a whispered goodbye to Robb or Arya. Only Jon knew—because Cregan had placed the weight of a keep on his shoulders and trusted him to carry it.
"Watch over it, Jon," he'd said the night before. "Watch over them."
And then, like a shadow slipping between the trees, he was gone. North no longer held what he sought. Cregan Stark needed gold, knowledge, and power—and those things lived in the East.
---
Essos.
Cregan's first days on foreign shores were harsh. Braavos was too loud, too wet. Pentos too soft. Myr too crowded. But he learned quickly.
He sold a few Northern blades he had brought with him—gifts from Jon, heirlooms from Frosthall—and used the coin to buy armor, a warhorse, and papers. He lied about his name to most, calling himself simply Cregan of the North. But those with sharp eyes knew better.
Soon, he found them.
The Company of the Rose.
Mercenaries of repute—half noble exiles, half killers for coin. They were skeptical of him at first. He was young. Quiet. Northern. But when he sparred with three men at once in the training yard and left all three bruised and disarmed, they stopped laughing.
He fought in his first skirmish a week later—a dispute over land near Qohor. He fought with an axe in one hand, a sword in the other, moving like a storm through the chaos.
Men remembered that.
He didn't scream in battle—he moved. Swift and bloody. Left-handed axe strikes, right-handed sword thrusts, his body flowing like a river of ice through the battlefield.
They gave him a name.
Bloodthirsty Wolf
---
Over the next year, Cregan carved a place for himself in Essos. He became one of the Roses' most reliable captains. Not just for his swordplay—but his mind. He kept his men alive. He studied maps, asked about grain routes, watched how merchants haggled in markets.
"A good sword earns coin once," he told one of his companions. "A good trade earns it a hundred times."
He learned from blacksmiths in Tyrosh, from shipbuilders in Lys, from caravan masters in Volantis. He kept a journal—drawings of forts, notes on prices, lists of raw materials. Every lesson was inked in careful Northern hand.
Cregan didn't fight for glory. He fought for knowledge.
For the North.
---
He sent letters. Long, infrequent letters carried by merchant ships or Rose envoys.
Jon received the first one six moons after Cregan's departure.
> "Jon,
If I die in this place,You are my hier let it be known I went for us. For Frosthall. For the North. I've seen things—castles that float, markets built on pillars of marble.
I want you to learn everything. Study smithing. Learn how walls are made to last a thousand years. Not the southern way. The strong way. Stone, steel, and blood.
Keep Frosthall safe. Grow it. Trust no one except our brothers. And give Kael a bone for me.
– Cregan."
Jon showed the letter to no one.
But he built a forge that winter.
And Kael never left his side.
---
The Company of the Rose thrived in those years. Their banners flew in battles near Norvos, defended caravans into Slaver's Bay, and even stood guard in Lys for a corrupt prince.
Cregan led a warband of forty by the end of the second year—loyal men, dangerous ones. They followed him because he bled with them. Because when the fighting began, he was the first to charge and the last to retreat.
But he never gave up his Northern ways.
He drank sparingly. Slept with one eye open. Kept a wolf carving at his side and his cloak trimmed in fur. He carved the Stark sigil into the haft of his axe and painted it on his shield. He started wearing a simple black ring with a wolf howling on it.
The Roses knew who he was.
They just didn't speak it aloud.
They didn't need to.
---
Cregan made friends.
A Volantene sailor who taught him trade law. A Qohorik smith who let him apprentice at night. A sellsword from Dorne who sparred with him in silence and called him brother.
But he made enemies, too.
A rival Rose captain who tried to steal his coin. A Pentoshi noble who offered to buy his wolf carving. A Myrish commander who mocked the North.
The first was exiled. The second vanished. The third died.
Three years passed.
Cregan Stark had not just survived.
He had flourished.
And the wolves of Essos whispered his name in fear and respect.
The bloodthirsty Wolf.
The Wolf of Frost.
The Stark Outlaw.
He hadn't returned home.
Not yet.
But every coin he earned, every lesson he learned, every scar he earned on blood-soaked soil...
...was for the day he did.
And when he returned, the North would not just remember.
It would rise.
---