55 Sorrowful men

Skagos, The North, First moon of 281 AC

Winterhold was a city that didn't sleep; day and night, its citizens worked for the betterment of either themselves or Skagos. Glass factories, distilleries, ship-building, husbandry, agriculture, mining, fishing, whaling, trading, building, etc were all industries that made Skagos rich. The trading of glass began three moons before the turning of the Year 280; and it was already the second most profitable trade in Skagos, only losing to Whaling, but whaling was an activity that demanded carefulness; if one went overboard, it would mean the extinction of whales.

As Skagos grew economically, it began importing more raw material needed for its goods from the Northern mainland, which meant the North also grew economically, and if the numbers were any indication, it would keep growing. By the End of 280 AC, Rickard Stark and Ragnar Dovahkiin presented a plan to make The North financially and militarily strong by creating a canal connecting the Fever River to the Bite, rebuilding the Western fleet, and constructing roads linking every major castle and town. The construction of said Canal was expected to be concluded by 289 AC, but the inclusion of Giants as workers cut the construction time by almost one-third, and so the canal was expected to be completed by 286 AC. The inclusion of Giants as subjects of The North took many people by surprise; out of the 500 Giants that came from North of the Wall, 400 decided to Stay in Skagos, and the remaining one hundred chose to move to the Neck, where they used to live before the arrival of the First Men. The North and Skagos were growing fast, having to depend less and less on the south. When Rickard Stark announced Brandon Stark's betrothal to Catelyn Tully, The North stopped buying grains from the Reach and began buying exclusively from Riverlands at a reasonable price for both The North and Riverlands. The Winds of change were favoring The North, and people realized that, which caused many people to migrate North, which in turn made many locals nervous, as they didn't want the corrupt faith of the south to spread in The North, which didn't happen as many of the immigrants converted to the Old faith, mainly because the Old Faith didn't request donations or service and that praying to a Heart-tree would cure some illness.

Ragnar time skip POV

Frostfall, House Dovahkiin's seat of power, was a magnificent castle surrounded by weirwood trees and as big as Winterfell. Ragnar was proud to call such a mighty castle his home, more so when Dacey finished furnishing the castle. Dacey spent a good amount of gold buying furniture from the north's mainland, especially from House Forrester, which sold Ironwood furniture. The only place in the castle Ragnar decorated himself was the Great Hall. Ragnar made Frostfall's great hall a mirrored image of Dragonsreach; Sahloknir's skull sat on the back wall, overlooking the hall and on top of the lord's highchair.

A few moons after giving birth to Lynara, Dacey began flying on her Dragon daily. She and Ragnar would fight mock battles and build strategies to help her think more strategically on how to use her Dragon in battle, which was working rather well as when the rumors about giants living in the North began, many slavers had the brilliant idea of attacking the North in hopes to kidnap a giant of two, between the Ice Dragon and the OldGods' Revenge no battle was supposed to take more than 20 minutes. Still, Ragnar ordered that all ships were to be taken instead of sunk, which resulted in 40 slaver-ships being captured and later on transformed into warships by the shipbuilders. Ragnar gave them all to bear island, only charging for the transportation, and now the west coast had a fleet. The Skagossi fleet also grew a lot; 50 more warships were built, with magic cannons on their front and back, as well as 70 more fishing ships and cargo ships were built. With his fleet stronger than ever, Ragnar traveled to Braavos to talk with the Braavosi Sealord about creating sanctions on Lys and arrange a meeting with both the Company of The Rose and The Golden Company. Ragnar contracted both companies to harass Lys and free as many slaves as they could from there as well; Ragnar sent 50 ships as well as the Revenge to bring all freed Slaves to Skagos, where they would be given a chance to become Skagos' citizens or be shipped to wherever they hailed from. This brought a good number of seventy thousand former slaves from Lys to Skagos; a few six thousand chose to go back to wherever they were born, which Ragnar happily paid for. Ragnar did to those seventy thousand as he did for the first former slaves that came to Skagos and shared with them his knowledge of the common tongue. This whole process stopped a few moons ago as Lys called upon Slavers bay to help them fend off the Company of the Rose and The Golden Company, but the damage was done; most of not all bed-slaves ran away, Ragnar stopped his secret war on Lys due to the political crisis happening on the Seven Kingdoms, The King's mental state had gone worse than before, the few executions by wildfire become common, on smallfolk and nobles alike. Rhaegar had written to him subtly asking for his support should war against his father come; Ragnar answered that as long he wasn't asked to take arms against any other House from The North, he would help.

With the stop of his secret war on Lys, Ragnar had more time to spend on his family and lands, which he used to fond over his baby daughter.

Ragnar POV

As he walked through his city, Dacey by his side and Lynara on his shoulders, Ragnar couldn't help but marvel at his city and its people. The former slaves from Lys were all beautiful, men and woman alike, and as most settled in Winterhold, the city was a contrast between the wild beauty of the Northerners and the refined beauty of the Valyrians. Ragnar looked at the College of Winterhold and saw the Children of the Forrest practicing Tamrielic magic with his students. Ragnar was proud of his Students; they would all graduate by 283 AC with expert-level magic in Restoration and alteration and novice level in destruction and illusion.

" Where is Benjen, my love?" Dacey said

" Ben?" Lynara said confusedly

" Benjen is at Frostfall, training for the Big Tourney of Harrenhall." Ragnar said as he squeezed his daughter's small feet, much to the little girl's amusement.

" Touney?" Lynara asked cutely

" Aye… big tourney! For southrons play-fight!" Ragnar said playfully

" Saut? Saut ewww" Lynara said, and Ragnar laughed; Dacey smiled at them

" Aye, my love! South is Ewww!" Dacey said, and Lynara nodded thoughtfully.

As they passed in front of two guards, which Ragnar had never seen before, Ragnar felt something was wrong; every soldier in his city watch was Northern, and those two guards were not Northern

" I'm sorry." Ragnar heard one of them say; he turned tried to turn fast, but he was afraid of hurting his Daughter, so he did what he could, he moved his upper body so any attack direct at Lynara would miss and prepared for the impact, and it came, a spear went trough his abdomen and another one missed Lynara by a hair.

" TIID KLO UL," Ragnar shouted and saw his world slow down; he slowly turned to the assassins and saw them frozen there; he grabbed his daughter and put his hands covering her ears and shouted again

" IIZ SLEN NUS " the should effect hit his would-be assassins before time returned to normal. He looked at Dacey and saw her eyes as wide as an Apple and her completely fear-struck face, he could feel the spear on his abdomen, and he knew it would hurt to take it out.

Then time returned to normal; Dacey was screaming as she saw a spear in Ragnar's abdomen; Lynara got scared of her mother's scream and began crying; she didn't understand what was happening but didn't feel anything weird; she was only afraid. Dacey stoped screaming as she saw the frozen assassin on the floor and her daughter unharmed in Ragnar's arms

" Ragnar? Ragnar, What happened? Who are those two? What happened? You are bleeding!!" Dacey began but was interrupted by Ragnar.

" Grab Lynara; I need to take this spear out of me!" Ragnar said as he handed Lynara to Dacey. Ragnar let out two strong gusts of air through his mouth and grabbed the spear

" One… two… three," Ragnar counted, and on number three, he pulled the spear out and began casting a healing spell on himself.

" It was poisoned… fucking assassins. How the fuck did they get here? My ward Stone was supposed to keep them all out, as well as spies." Ragnar said through gritted teeth.

" Are you well, Ragnar? Will you be well? Please don't leave me, my love," Dacey said with tearful eyes; poison wasn't something many men could survive, and she was certainly afraid of losing him.

" Aye… I'm good. I've had it worse… way worse… this is nothing; I could fight a few dragons right now. How's Lynara? I know they didn't hit her, but I shouted near her. Is her ear bleeding?" Ragnar asked, and Dacey looked at Lynara, who had stopped crying and was looking at her glowing father with interest.

" No, she is not hurt. What about the poison?" Dacey said hurriedly

" Dacey, look at me, love," Ragnar said, and Dacey did as she was told; Ragnar leaned in and kissed her; Lynara, in her mother's arms, hugged him. " I am not hurt. It will take more than this to hurt me. Call Snowstorm; she will protect you while I look at the Wardstone." Ragnar said, and a few minutes later, the massive ice dragon landed and Dacey went close to it and let it guard her and Lynara.

Ragnar all but flew to his Wardstone just to find it dispelled through sacrificial magic. Ragnar spelled it up again, but this time added defenses on the Wardstone, powerful defenses.

'How could I let such an idiotic mistake take place? I completely underestimated these land mages… to think they would be able to find a dispel a wardstone. I should've added defenses on it.' Ragnar thought, dispelling a wardstone wasn't difficult unless one added defenses on it; Ragnar, in his arrogance, forgot about adding defenses to his wardstone, and his daughter almost paid for it.

Ragnar heard an animal running at him and saw Benjen riding his heavenly spelled Direwolf. The Direwolf Ragnar found beyond the wall and gave to Benjen, quickly bonded with the young Stark, on his last nameday Benjen asked Ragnar if he could enhance the Direwolf, and Ragnar did so. The wolf had bones as strong as steel and could carry a person on his back, it didn't like to carry Benjen around, but it did so on infrequent occasions, mainly when an emergency happened.

" Ragnar! I heard you were attacked; what happened? Who are we hunting?" Benjen said coldly. Benjen had grown a lot in the year and a half; he was already 6'0 tall and had gained a lot of muscles; he also became one of the best swordsmen in Westeros; Ragnar knew he was almost, if not as good as Arthur Dayne.

" I don't know but I'm about to find out… there will be retribution. Whoever it was I'll discover. Someone put a contract for me with the Sorrowful Men. I will kill the Warlocks and the assassins. It's not wise to tickle a sleeping Dragon. The sorrowful men act in pairs; they send two assassins per Target until the contract is fulfilled or all of them are dead. I will make them talk… perhaps the assassins know who contracted them, but it is very unlikely." Ragnar said, and Benjen nodded.

" I still can't believe I committed such a dumb mistake… Once I'm done with those assassins, I will meditate on my past actions… if there is one mistake, there must be more," Ragnar said

" Benjen, send someone to fetch Davos at Skane… I need him here to plan my future actions; Davos is good at planning… or at least finding flaws in other people's plans. This is not a coincidence… someone is trying to keep me away from Harrenhall… someone knows about Rhaegar's plan." Ragnar said quietly.

It took less than a day for the news about the assassination attempt on Ragnar and Lynara to spread through Skagos. Men of all ages grabbed their swords and leather armor and went training for an eventual war against whoever attempted to kill little Lynara and Lord Dovahkiin, at that night, 10.000 Skagossi met to train together. The usual carefree mood on Winterhold was gone and a somber mood took its place. That was until Ragnar announced that he would call on them when the time came and that they would get revenge on their enemies; that helped to calm people, but the 10.000 men kept meeting to train every night. There would be no forgiveness even if Ragnar went crazy and decided to forgive; his people would bring war themselves on whoever paid for his blood.

Ragnar wrote a letter to Winterfell detailing the happenings with the assassins and how they failed.

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A/N: Hey guys! A nice chapter wasn't it? Who do you think is trying to make Ragnar not attend Harrenhal? Who wants to kill Ragnar?

Thank you for your support my friends!!