In their eyes, the entire order represented by the southern king-laws, taxes, lords, and all the rest-was the most absolute restraint on "freedom."
To bow to such an order, sign those parchments covered in convoluted wording, wear the clothes they provided, and obey the rules they laid down meant ceasing to be one of the Free Folk, or even a whole person.
It meant admitting that they were livestock that needed a master to feed and whip them to survive, penned behind invisible fences.
That fierce attachment to their identity as Free Folk sustained them, making them prefer to fight for their lives against the endless wind and snow beyond the Wall and contend with the black crows.
Even if they might one day have to face the cold dead said to have risen again, they would not lay down the axes that symbolized strength and survival to take up hoes that symbolized submission and weakness.
Still less would they bend the knee to a southern king they had never seen, never fought, and held no fear or reverence for in their hearts. Once their knees bent, the spirits of their ancestors might weep in the cold winds of the North.
Even now, with the dragon looming before them, her might having just destroyed a stretch of mountain peaks, a stubborn thought still struggled deep within Styr.
As he saw it, apart from the terrifying three-headed beast behind him, what did this Viserys possess that deserved their fear?
He looked... far too unlike a warrior.
His skin seemed excessively pale in the flickering firelight, as though he had spent years in a castle that never saw the sun. His frame was rather slender, too; to Styr's eyes, he could even be called scrawny.
To men like Styr and his people,