Osha

Osha was born beyond the Wall and had lived there all her life, and at some point she had killed a man of the Night's Watch in a fight. She crossed the Wall fleeing south with another wildling, Hali, and two Watch deserters, Stiv and Wallen, all of them running from a danger none of them wanted to name. The group made its way through the Wolfswood until it found Bran Stark, and Osha saw in the crippled boy a hostage who might buy her passage back to Mance Rayder.

The plan fell apart when Robb Stark arrived with Theon Greyjoy and the family's direwolves. Robb knocked her down with a stroke of his sword, and Theon killed Stiv; alone among her band, Osha begged for mercy and was given it. She was taken to Winterfell for questioning, and there she was allowed to stay, shackled at the ankles, working in the kitchens.

In time she earned a measure of trust inside the castle. She tried to warn Robb about what she had seen beyond the Wall, but the young lord would not hear her, and Greatjon Umber pulled her away from the yard. She found a listener in Bran instead: she told him of giants, of gods, and of White Walkers, and the boy took her down to the crypt where the old Kings of Winter lay, the same night a raven brought word to Winterfell that Eddard Stark had died in King's Landing.

Osha kept working the kitchens for months, sometimes helping to carry Bran himself, and never trusting Summer and Shaggydog, the direwolves. When the boy asked her about a red comet crossing the sky, she told him plainly it meant blood and fire, nothing sweet. She preferred swimming naked in the cold pool by the godswood's heart tree to bathing in the castle's hot springs, always trying to find a bottom she never reached.

At the harvest feast she poured ale and thought nothing of breaking a jug over the head of a man who put his hand where it didn't belong. But the quiet life ended when Theon Greyjoy seized Winterfell with his ironborn and gathered the whole household to hear Bran yield to him. Osha reminded Theon, in front of everyone, that she too had once been his prisoner; when the ironborn Stygg pawed at her, she answered with a knee to the groin and dropped him with the butt of her own spear, to the laughter of the rest.

Not long after, she slipped out of Winterfell in secret with Bran and Rickon Stark, the Reed siblings, and Hodor, taking the direwolves with them. Before fleeing she killed Drennan, one of Theon's men, seducing him before cutting his throat with his own knife.

The group didn't get far: they hid in Winterfell's crypt while Theon searched the Wolfswood for them. When the turncloak Reek revealed himself as someone else and ordered the castle sacked, Bran saw through Summer's eyes that Winterfell stood empty and burning, and Osha decided they could come out. She took up a long oaken spear and also the sword that had belonged to Eddard Stark, freshly forged by Mikken, before leaving the crypt.

They found the castle in ruins and full of dead, and Osha realized, seeing ironborn among the corpses, that it hadn't been Theon who tore Winterfell apart. In the godswood they found Maester Luwin dying; Osha agreed with him that the brothers should part ways for safety, and before leaving she granted him the gift of mercy.

Once clear of the ruins, Bran headed north with Summer, the Reeds, and Hodor, while Osha led Rickon and Shaggydog out through the East Gate, onto the Kingsroad and toward a fate no one at Winterfell would ever be certain of again.

Years after the fall of Winterfell it was Wex Pyke, a survivor of those days, who revealed what had become of them: Osha had taken Rickon Stark and Shaggydog to Skagos, the rugged island off the northern coast, beyond anyone's reach.

The novels have said nothing of Osha beyond Skagos, and in them she remains alive. The television series, however, closes her story differently and has her dead by the year 303 AC, a divergence that permanently splits the two paths her story has taken.