A weak, pitiful, and adorable little girl almost instantly touched the old rancher's heart.
The burly men, however, paid her little attention, dragging their dogs around noisily as they continued searching for the sheep thief. The rancher’s wife led Ghost inside the small cottage and seated her before a wide, battered trestle table. The hardwood bench was far too high, leaving the old woman with no choice but to find a wooden block for her to rest her feet upon.
Prolonged semi-starvation and malnutrition had left Ghost extremely emaciated in both her human and wolf forms. While it was harder to tell with her wolf shape, in her human form now, nobody would have believed she was eight years old.
She was simply far too thin, her skin as pale as the first snow of deep winter, making the veins beneath it clearly visible one by one. It was much like the slender, withered branches buried beneath the snow during the bitter cold of winter.
At any rate, the rancher's wife felt her heart ache fiercely the moment she laid eyes on the child, and she promptly set out a table laden with food.
Ghost looked on with eager eyes, yet made no move to grab anything. Instead, she turned her head toward them and asked in a tiny, gentle voice:
"Excuse me, is this for me to eat?"
The old woman instantly clutched her chest, then covered her face, and cried with emotion: "Of course, good child, go ahead and eat. It is all for you."
Ghost broke into a bright, happy smile: "Thank you, ma'am, you are truly a kind person."
The rancher himself could not help pressing a hand to his chest, the two of them nearly melted by her cuteness.
Wh-what an adorable and polite child! Surely she must be the offspring of some noble lord! Who knows how she ended up wandering into the remote wilderness, poor thing.
Fearing the little girl might feel shy, the couple stepped outside to continue their discussion.
The townspeople who had come to help had already headed back, but the rough-looking fellows outside with the dogs were not so easily dismissed.
They would demand a hefty sum. Even though they hadn't caught the thief, they had been keeping watch outside the sheepfold for several days now, and hard-earned wages were certainly unavoidable.
The two hounds kept barking furiously toward the direction of the inner room, howling with saliva flying everywhere. The ropes around their necks dug deep into their flesh under the immense force, the dogs rearing straight up on their hind legs as if completely devoid of pain.
The two men struggling to hold the dogs were in a frantic scramble, nearly dragged right inside. They couldn't help cursing violently: "What the hell is wrong with these dogs?"
"Damn it, didn't you feed the hounds again last night?"
"By the Seven! I tend to them with more care than I give my own flesh and blood."
The ranching couple produced a grimy, tattered cloth pouch, slowly and reluctantly handing it over to the man carrying a longbow and quiver.
Ghost’s seat sat at an oblique angle to the outer doorway, allowing her to eat while keeping an eye on the commotion outside.
Their attire consisted of rugged gear suited for hunting, with leather garments and tight trousers, all bundled in heavy pelts.
Even their gloves were crafted from fine, oil-slick leather, with the knuckle joints exceptionally well-protected; the material was slightly thinner right over the middle joints to maximize flexibility.
The hunter holding the money had a piercing gaze. Not only did he carry a longbow nearly his own height, but a short sword also hung at his waist.
He did not look young, and the skin of his face was pulled taut. His face was long and narrow, giving the impression that his cheeks had each been shaved away by a single knife stroke.
He had single eyelids, his eyes long and narrow, narrowed almost into slits like someone with poor eyesight. His nasal bridge was high, though somewhat aquiline, and the corners of his mouth and eyes drooped slightly.
When he lowered his eyelids, he looked as though he were dozing off.
Unlike the typical European features of the others, his appearance was thoroughly unappealing. Though neither particularly tall nor broad-shouldered, he wore a massive, lifelike animal skull helmet.
Ghost could sense that his gaze kept revolving around her. That was not the way one looked at a person—it was the look one cast upon a harvest of game.
This man filled Ghost with a sense of alarm, a deep-seated revulsion and wariness welling up from the bottom of her heart.
"Master Harley, this is all the money we have. What do you think?"
Harley, nicknamed the Cunning Wolf, shifted his gaze away from Ghost, weighed the pouch in his hand, and remained silent.
The two men holding the dogs caught his meaning and immediately began shouting curses:
"Old Bill, what do you mean by this? Are you looking down on us?"
"Just this little bit of silver isn't even enough for us to go out for a drink! Look at this, my feet are frostbitten, and I still need to go into town to see a maester!"
With that, he put on a false display of stretching out a foot clad in a thick-soled fur boot, the footwear brand-new and gleaming...
Harley tucked the purse away and let out a sigh. "Very well, Old Bill has it hard enough. We'll take sheep in trade."
Ignoring the bitter pleas of the elderly couple, Harley shoved the door open roughly and strode right up to Ghost.
Inside, Ghost's heart was fluttering like a frightened dog's, but not a trace of it showed on her face. Instead, she offered Harley a sweet smile, a tiny scrap of leafy green still caught between her teeth.
Harley twitched the corner of his mouth in a joyless smirk, reached out to ruffle her hair with a heavy hand, and turned to walk outside.
The baying of the hounds and the shouts of the hunters gradually faded into the distance, occasionally interspersed with the faint bleating of sheep.
...Ghost patted her chest. That smile was utterly terrifying.
The ranch couple asked Ghost a few simple questions: Where had she come from? How old was she? Was the food good, and so on.
Then, remarking that children needed plenty of sleep, they led her away to rest.
There was no bed to speak of in their cottage, so they cleared out a spot for Ghost to sleep in the feed room right beside the sheepfold.
The old woman laid down a very thick layer of straw and coarse cloth for Ghost, even instructing her that if she felt cold, she should sleep curled up against the lambs.
Ghost obediently agreed to every word, offered her thanks, and politely wished her a good night.
Overjoyed, the old woman kissed her on the forehead before blowing out the oil lamp and heading outside.
"What a lovely little creature," the woman's voice drifted away into the distance.
Amidst the pitch black, Ghost's eyes opened wide, reflecting two deep pools of green light.
The little lambs were terrified of her, huddling together in a pitiful cluster far off in the corner.
Ghost held her breath and listened for a moment. Finding the surrounding environment secure, she slowly allowed herself to revert to her wolf form.
She could not maintain her human shape for too long.
To put it into perspective, it felt like forcing oneself into a tiny, cramped vessel; after a while, it was not only unbearable, but could even induce suffocation.
Naturally, it wasn't severe enough to kill her, but it was deeply uncomfortable, leaving the muscles and bones throughout her body aching fiercely.
Knowing that she had caused loss and trouble for the rancher filled her with guilt.
It was clear that the husband and wife were good people, and judging by their pleading words, those sheep did not even belong to them.
They were tending flocks for some noble lord.
The hunters must have been hired by the ranching couple as muscle, though dealing with mere men wouldn't have required such a force, complete with two hounds.
She must have slipped up somewhere and let her true nature show, tipping someone off.
That fellow Harley gave her a thoroughly bad feeling, especially the wolf-skin cap he wore, which made her deeply uneasy.
Ghost had a premonition that the man named Harley would return, and that he might well prove to be a major source of trouble.
Next door, the elderly couple were still murmuring in low voices, discussing this year's harvest, the taxes owed to the noble lords, and this damned weather...
Only when they spoke of their son did their tone grow considerably more cheerful.
It was said the master was merciful, permitting young Rao to learn horsemanship and swordsmanship, and had even rewarded him with no shortage of fine things for his diligence.
Every few sentences, they would interject with a sigh of praise—"The Starks are good lords indeed..."
Ghost slowly closed her eyes, a strange sense of finality settling deep within her heart.
The appearance of those two wildlings drifted back before her eyes once more: the snow-capped mountain ranges, the emerald-green forests of The North... and the wolf packs roaming like ghosts across the wilderness.
Winter is coming...
In truth, she had long harbored her suspicions, but now, faced with certainty, she sank into a profound state of bewilderment.
The Starks? Winter is coming—so what time period is this precisely?
Having left Old Bill's ranch, the hunters headed straight for the tavern to carouse and drink.
Inside the tavern at Dreadfort, the coarse language of men and the sweet laughter of women rose and fell like waves, completely drowning out the pathetic strumming of the music.
The minstrel and musicians were forced to strain their voices even louder in song, their soaring, cracked notes drawing loud jeers from the drunken patrons.
The waves of heat laden with sweat, the drifting, pungent reek of cheap perfume, and the harsh, sour stench of inferior liquor comprised all the alluring charm of the tavern.
When he had no work, Cunning Wolf Harley loved to pass his time right here.
He was quite generous with the camp followers and tavern wenches, and knowing just what sweetharts to whisper to amuse them, he was always surrounded by a flock of fluttering admirers whenever he was around.
Yet tonight, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, not a single woman accompanied him.
Everyone who approached to flirt with him, regardless of gender, was chased off.
Carefully, Harley extracted a few platinum-blond hairs from the seams of his glove, brought them before his eyes, and inspected them meticulously...
Then, he raised the long strands beneath the tip of his nose and inhaled deeply...
Harley lunged forward abruptly, nearly snapping the hairs in his grasp. A drunkard who bumped into him scrambled up with a grinning face and raised his mug toward him: "H-Harley, you son of a bitch..."
Harley sprang to his feet with a start, clenched his fist, and wheeled around to smash a heavy blow straight into that ugly face.
Sent flying by the immense force, the drunkard crashed through two tables before rolling into a far corner.
Everything around them froze as if someone had hit a pause button, falling abruptly silent. Then the chaotic atmosphere rushed back in, whistles and shrill laughter echoing loudly.
Cunning Wolf Harley leisurely pulled his wolf-head cap back on, spat a thick glob of phlegm at the drunkard, and strode outside.
The wall of noise inside the tavern swelled up in a disorderly din once more, and patrons whose tables had been smashed simply shifted to another without a second thought.
Not a soul bothered to check on the knocked-out drunkard...
Stepping out from the warmth into the bitter chill of the night, Harley involuntarily shivered, exhaling a puff of white frost.
Back in his room, Harley sat in silence for a while. From the cabinet drawer, he retrieved a bone-white wolf's fang as long as an index finger.
He wound the platinum-blond hair tightly around the fang and tucked it close against his chest.