March to the East

Jon was cursed, he knew. Night after night, alone in his tent, save for Ghost, he dreamed of what he had done. "You are my Queen, now and always; I love you" he lied, before driving a knife into the heart of Daenerys, his closest relative. He woke screaming each time. The freefolk thought he was mad. Apart from Tormund and a few others, they mostly shunned him, even as they allowed him to live with them, hunt with them, fight with them. Some of them were still grateful for his help against the White Walkers, but they knew him for a fugitive and criminal, even if they were unsure what exactly, he had done.

"Did I do right? It doesn't feel right," he had asked the monster who had talked him into committing murder. "Ask me in ten years" the creature had replied. Ten years? It had taken him ten weeks. Refugees had joined them from the South, over the past year. Men and women, bearing horrid tales of oppression, murder, enslavement. It had taken him little time to work out that his relatives had used him and Daenerys, then betrayed them, before flinging him into the wilderness. It was no more than he deserved, he knew now. But, that was no consolation. She had not deserved it.

The Freefolk had tolerated him, these past months, but only just. Then the pox came, claiming the lives of children. One of the men, Hama, had lost an infant daughter. He blamed Jon. Why, the gods alone knew, but he was an outsider, and a wrongdoer. The cold had begun to lessen, and the snow was now thawing and melting. Plants were starting to emerge, and the game had become more abundant. They hunted along the Milkwater. But, the air was damp, and the children suffered accordingly.

News had reached them that the seior, Val, who had once been Jon's prisoner at Castle Black, had returned to her cottage, a few miles away. After the death of the Night King, she had journeyed into the far North. The elders of the tribe sought her counsel, and she came to them, gathered before her, in an open field. They spoke of the sickness that claimed the lives of children.

Val frowned at Tormund. She was still beautiful, Jon noted, tall and slender, with hair the colour of honey and grey-eyed. Once, Jon knew, she had desired him, but there was little sign of affection now.

"Tormund Giantsbane, why have you brought Jon Snow to dwell among your people?" she asked, stern.

"He fought for them, against the Dead. He's earned his place among us."

"He is a kinslayer. He murdered the sister of his father. Is that not so?" she enquired of Jon.

"It is", he murmured, refusing to look her in the eye.

"The gods hate kinslayers. They are cursed. They curse the people they live among. Is it any wonder that the children sicken, when you allow such a man to dwell with you?" she asked the throng. There was an angry muttering, a couple of men even reaching for their weapons.

"We didn't know", snarled Hama, drawing his sword, "but, I'll settle this now."

"Sheathe your weapon" commanded Val. The man complied with bad grace. "The kinslayer is marked by the gods. No man may slay him. For his punishment is not death, which he craves as a boon, but rather, life. Life, despised by all. Life, despising himself. Life, shunned by his fellows. You must leave the tribe" she commanded Jon. "But, first we must talk. You may stay at my home, for the evening. Then, you must depart for good."

She waited as Jon furled his tent and gathered his belongings, saying goodbye to Tormund, before they departed, Ghost trotting beside them. After a couple of hours, they reached her home, a low wooden building, on the banks of the Milkwater. A pair of young women, twins it seemed, greeted Val on her return. Servants, or acolytes, Jon guessed. She led him into the main room, which was clean and smelled pleasantly of wood smoke. One of the girls fetched them horns of ale, the other tended a cooking pot, which was suspended on an open fire from a tripod.

"Be seated" she said. "I know many things about you, Jon Snow. The waters, the trees, the birds, they tell me much, but I would hear your tale in your own words. How did the heir to the Seven Kingdoms come to be living in the wilderness as a fugitive?"

He spent the next two hours, giving his side of the story. Val questioned him from time to time, but said little to interrupt him. When he had finished she sighed. Then she said, "You spent your life running from evil, Jon. You ran so hard and so far from it, that you ended up embracing it. Your brother, Bran, he died in that cave. The thing that rules in the South has claimed his body, but that is not him. As for your sister, Sansa, whatever goodness she possessed was destroyed by her abusers. The North and the South are ruled by evil people, Jon, and you brought this about. Why?"

"I was afraid. The woman I loved. I thought she was a threat to my family, to all the people. I saw her burn innocents at Kings Landing."

"And were your own hands clean? The hands of your soldiers, who you say ran amok? You say that her advisors favoured starving the people of the city. Was that a kind proposal? The Freefolk know what it is to go hungry. Believe me, it's not a fate we would wish on our worst enemies, to die by inches in that way. To watch your own children dying by inches. And who brought your Queen to this position. By your own account, your siblings, the Imp, the Spider, they were all working against her. Who did she have left, that she could trust?"

"I know that now. I think a kind of madness possessed me."

"Supper is ready" said the young woman who had prepared the stew. The four of them ate together. They said little as they ate. Eventually, the other two left them, and they resumed talking.

"I must tell you something Val. A week ago, I lay in my tent with Ghost. I was drifting off to sleep, and then I heard a presence, speaking through Ghost. He said that the Red God, had brought Daenerys back from death. That she threatened the world. That it was my destiny to slay her for good. Is this true?"

"I cannot say. A Red Priestess restored you to life, so perhaps they have restored Daenerys Targaryen. I think you heard the creature who rules in Kings Landing. If, indeed she has returned to life, he has every reason to fear her wroth. On no account obey him. He does not mean you well." She thought for a while, then "I can perform a charm that will seal your mind, and that of your direwolf from him".

"Do it Val. Please."

For the next hour, she chanted her spell, strangely calming, at the same time chopping ingredients, and stirring them into a pot, which she suspended from the cooking tripod. When she had finished, she poured the contents into a flask. "Drink this" she commanded. "It will give you a deep and dreamless sleep. He will never trouble you again." She was as good as her word. For the first time in a year, Jon slept soundly. That at least, was something to be grateful for, he thought, as he trudged away from her house, to begin life on his own.

The wind held Yara's fleet, with eighty longships, at the Bay of Aquos Dhaen for three days on the south end of the lake, blowing hard down from the north to the south. When it was replaced with a west wind, the sails flew up again, and they hauled up their anchors, and trimmed their yards, and made time to the northeast, running as fast as their angle to the wind could permit.

The sea was dark, black water, and when the sun shown on it, it seemed to glimmer with a lush, ominous purple-red. The men refused to drink the water until Yara took up a tankard and guzzled it down herself. An absolutely giant freshwater lake like this would see the bad humours settle to the bottom, she knew, and be the safest water in the whole land, regardless of how it looked. It was the same with the God's Eye in Westeros, a hundred and twenty miles long by a hundred miles wide, and so deep that no anchor would bite and hold bottom. Here it was the same, once they stood out for Mantarys, no anchor would hold.

The men muttered. It was an ill thing, some thought, to die away from the salt, where the Drowned God might not hold power. But Yara held her axe to those who muttered. "I reckon that where you can drown, Our Lord has power," she said. "Shall we see if you can drown in it?"

They quieted after that, and Tristifer grinned at the turn of phrase. Yara laughed easily, and turned back toward the poop.

"Once they see the plunder they can have in Mantarys, they'll settle down. It's just queer," Qarl opined when the three stood together again.

"It's so, but they also know their homes have been occupied by the Monster in King's Landing," Tristifer murmured. "The sooner we return to fight it, the better that morale will be."

"They'll have to settle for plunder for a while," Yara shrugged. "We are decidedly the junior allies in this partnership. Qarl is right. Plunder is what will make them get up and fight, right now. Fortunately, our mission in this little expedition gives us the first crack at it."

Days passed by after the incident, with the men settling down, as they found sailing on the lake, the sea, to be like enough to sailing on the ocean. The ship creaked below them, and more often than not, they could not see the shore on either side. On the hot freshwater sea, the ships smelled of pitch and tar, and they passed through schools of fish in the waters that below that erupted, jumping from the surface to fly across their decks and back below the surface, some kind of foreign carp. The warm wind carried them onwards, day after day, racing the marching army, until at last they arrived before Mantarys.

It was a distant, storybook image of picturesque ruin. The towers seemed to droop at angles, and there were many of them, lining the rotted, collapsed ruins of wharves, while the black-rock quays stood undamaged. The towers in their black stone were clearly the towers of the cranes along the quays; they were outside of the walls of the city. The walls themselves were no great construct, not compared to the black walls of Volantis, but there were two courses, the outer course was 80 feet high, and the inner course 120 feet high, and both as wide as they were high; except at the harbour there was only an inner course, and there were 120-foot high flanking walls extending out into the sea to high sea towers which marked its limits on either side. The roofs slumped in, and there were holes in places, but others, with stone vaults, still stood proud, marking the huge warehouses which had been the transshipment point for all the lands to their north to send goods to Mantarys, where they could be loaded by ship for the journey down the freshwater sea to Valyria. The black rock walls and buildings seemed to glimmer faintly in the sun.

Men muttered at how much of it there was, when they had seen it before only in the walls of Volantis, and the roads; here, it was used for everything. They were in awe of this city, which gleamed with a strange black light. High towers, also partially in ruin, were easily visible above the walls. They were like massive ziggurats, hundreds of feet high, with flat platforms, standing in a cluster at the centre of the city. Collapsed bridges, the broken stubs hinting at how they might have once been airy, graceful and complete, gave the appearance of a second city in the air, spanning tower to tower, which had fallen to ruin in the streets below. A quick visual estimate of the circumference of the walls suggested to Yara that the city at its height must have had a half a million residents, though who knew how many it was now. Mantarys, once the capital of the directly-ruled Governorate of North Valyria within the Freehold.

The City of Monsters.

On closer inspection, she could see that the height of the Sea of Sighs had clearly risen since the cataclysm, the river blocked by the volcanic eruptions. The quays were barely above water, the ruins of the docks half-flooded and submerged, some of the lower streets and buildings in the water, lapping directly against them. More than four hundred years of storms had yet been inadequate to bring down structures of black rock, though, and so they endured.

"God," Tristifer muttered softly to himself. "What a cursed ruin."

Yara shook her head. "What a splendid prize," she countered. "But we will not take it by storm without help, that much is for sure."

"A Dragon, Your Grace!"

Yara turned to the north. "The Dragon," she corrected. "Drogon. The Sword will be flying her." She watched, her hands cupped against the sun, as an experienced sailor would do, letting her eyes adjust. "It means the Army is near. The wind did not hurt us, their march was slow, though, since I see no sign of lines of circumvallation or contravallation."

"What is she up to? She doesn't seem to be moving," Qarl remarked.

"Look, she's circling, I think," Tristifer answered.

"Over a cove. I'd wager it's clear enough—they want us to draw the fleet up there. And it's right. A direct assault would be bloody, but if we can survey the approaches to the old docks, they might give us an opening. They're clearing completely abandoned. Come on!" Yara herself went back to the tiller, and had the longship brought around.

When the fleet was drawn up on the soft sand shore, Yara dropped down onto the beach, splashing water across her boots. The immense form of Drogon and the young figure of the Volantene girl who flew him for the Dragon Queen made for a moment a perfect contrast, but there was, in truth, no contrast between a Dragonlord and a Dragon. They were cut from the same essential fabric.

Case in point was the fact that this close to the walls, there was no escort or guard for a girl who was now still only of fourteen years.

Yara approached, and Elaena politely bowed. "Your Grace."

"Elaena," Yara smiled informally. "Shall we pitch our camp here?"

"Unfortunately, yes; the Gates of the City of Monsters are closed," Elaena sighed. "We won a victory, at Calabaros along the Demon Road, but it was extremely bloody."

Yara turned back for a moment. "Establish our camp along the shore here, so we can defend our ships! I will go to hold a Council of War with the Dragon Queen." With her orders acknowledged, she turned back to Elaena, and the two walked along the shore. "How bad was it, then? Grey Worm?" She asked, gingerly, having respect for the man.

"He is well. The Unsullied won the day, with their great discipline. They launched an oblique assault en echelon against the enemy left, and split it from the centre. But it should have never been; when I burned the enemy strength on their right, I set all of the pine forests on the battlefield alight, and the smoke and cinders and flames made it impossible for me to tell the enemy from our own troops, so I couldn't continue the attack with Drogon." She shivered, still clearly cursing herself inside. "In fact, the Queen and her camp were nearly overcome by the enemy, because their centre was strong enough to rout all the units in the centre when Grey Worm had concentrated all the Unsullied to counterattack, and the Dothraki to exploit. The High Priestess Kinvara had to rally the men who routed in the centre herself, and all the while, I was flying, helplessly; I wasn't able to rejoin the battle until the enemy's left tried to retreat along the sea shore, and I was able to put paid to them then."

"You only destroyed a wing of an Army and you only finished a second when they were retreating." Yara paused, and reached out, and grabbed Elaena by the shoulders, looking down at her. "You're fourteen. Most men, sons of Lords and Kings, would kill to have done that. And many of them would have made the mistake. You're smart enough, lass, that I expect you'll learn from it. It was a messy battle, but it was won. And let me ask you this, lass. You could have burned and risked severe casualties to our own forces, right?"

"Yes, Your Grace, I could have," Elaena admitted with wide, violet eyes.

"Would Daenerys have wanted that?"

"I…"

"The answer is no. The Queen isn't the kind of woman who burns her own Army alive to win a victory. In the end, Grey Worm was still, I am sure, able to keep casualties less than if you had burned indiscriminately. In fact, I think you made the right call, for the information you had. It's not like you can ask some veteran Dragonlord for his opinion on the use of dragons to attack armies in wooded positions. It's a hell of a thing to place that kind of trust on a fourteen year old, and you held it well, lass. You'll be fighting close to my men to help us take Mantarys, and what that told me was, in fact, you've got the head on your shoulders to do it right. So keep learning. Come on."

She gave Elaena a pat on the back. "We women who fight have to stick together… I can tell you've got an aim to really use that sword. Daenerys – is the greatest woman alive, but she leads as the Mother of Her People."

"I'm the Sword," Elaena smiled thinly, and together they walked back toward Drogon, and beyond him, the lines of pickets marking the position of the Volantene Army.

"Yeah…" Inside, Yara wondered about that, and she took the opportunity to follow up on it, when she was alone with Daenerys in the rather cavernous pavilion tent which the Queen had for campaign, that evening.

"Daenerys, you have to tell me. What are you doing with that girl, Elaena? You've given her so much trust, but it's also an awful lot of responsibility you've put on her. I mean, awful. She's fourteen, and you've had Daario and Grey Worm and I all tutoring her, you've had her leading in the field, launching attacks with Drogon. Beyond it simply being necessary, you seem to be preparing her, and to be honest, I think you've been very hard on her."

For a moment, Daenerys closed her eyes, and her eyelids, heavy and pale white, were all that Yara could see of her expression. "I have to be hard on her, Yara. I learned the wrong lessons from my own life. She must learn the right ones. To understand that mercy in the moment is false, because it leads you away from doing the right thing from the whole of the people who look up to you. To understand that counsel must be judged against interests, and loyalty is an unreliable thing. Also, to realise that we're riding a tiger. The Faith will not stop until slavery ends, in all of western Essos. The people call out for freedom, and I aim to bring it to them."

"You talk like you're training a general and not a fourteen year old girl."

"She will be a general, Yara. She will be a General, a Dragonrider, and just perhaps, more."

Yara stiffened and took a shuddering breath when it came to her. There was one reason for Daenerys to be treating her that way, at that age. There was one kind of child who had to be raised that way. One kind of child who needed to be stiffened and challenged from a young age in the ways of leadership, and the hard decisions it created, and required. "You're going to make her your heir, aren't you, Dany?"

"Of course I am. If she's worthy. The Saerganyon are descendants of the Targaryen, through Jaehaerys the Conciliator, that's how she could ride to begin with. And behind the Black Walls, the blood stayed true. Perhaps truer than my own! But that's part of the problem, Yara. Oh God, that's part of the problem. She was raised a haughty pureblood in every respect. She was raised to be a slaver, not a slave. I had to teach her humility. I had to teach her to love the people, even as she learned to not repeat my own mistakes." Daenerys shuddered with intensity. "I don't want Drogon to be alone when I'm gone. That's why I chose to have her ride him. He is my only living son, now, and forever will be. Is it selfish of me? I don't know, but I do know, that though he has lost his brothers, I have given him someone who will grow up a brood of the Dragon-blooded around him. Someone to rule my lands when I am gone, to carry on my family name. But not yet. I must be sure she is ready. I MUST BE SURE!"

Daenerys was convulsively trembling, as Yara got up, and flung herself to the woman's side, and enfolded her tightly in an embrace. "Dany, Dany… You, you know, you might be able to have children with Daario, we…"

"Not now. There is only half of my life left. Even if that witch was a liar, she's been trued in her prophecy now. You don't understand what this is like and I pray that you never do." Still, for all how dreadful her words were, Daenerys calmed within Yara's embrace. "This is the way. I wanted my family from the beginning. I lost them all. My own nephew struck me with a dagger. This is what I can do, I can create a family. She is my blood, that is true enough, for we are both descendants of Jaehaerys and Alysanne. But it's more than blood. I want her to be me. To be the hope of the people. To be compassionate to those I ruled before her. To free the slaves and to stand for justice and hope and renewed prosperity in these lands. To avoid my mistakes, and to be a Queen of Peace, because the righteous wars are won. Because, Yara, these wars will go on for as long as I live. The banners of House Targaryen are marching, stained with blood; a million people strain for liberty in our name, and wait the tramp of our boots. It's unstoppable, I can't stop it, I don't want to stop it, it will go on until it gutters out of its own volition. And I cannot possibly leave it rudderless when I die. She had to be taught to be my political successor, as well as my kinswoman. And that meant being hard on her! It did, Yara, I'm not cruel to little girls, I'm not, I'm not, but I had… I had to get her ready. I will not live long like this, I can't, I don't want to. It's too damned hard, I'm only half alive! You don't understand."

Her eyes looked frantic, hot with tears, revealing a soul trapped in a body, clawing for every moment of remembrance, and every hope of a future in which she had set her wrongs right. "Damn it, Yara, you don't even begin to understand what I am missing, what I lack now. And I don't want to tell you. Pray you never know!"

Yara held Daenerys in her arms until the tears finished. Then she reached up and gently undid the clips on the mask, and pulled it away. Daenerys looked up sharply to her. "Damn it, Yara, why did you do that?"

"Because I'm not going to be afraid of a woman I'm in love with because of what a man did to her. I'm going to face it. You're alive now. You're here now. I am not letting what he did to you stand between us ever. I don't care what I know. You're still Dany to me, the shining Queen I met in Meereen. And I won't pass this chance up."

"You and Daario just won't give up on me," Dany started laughing through her tears, breathing hard and shaking her head. "You should. I do not think I am even human anymore. God." There was a terrible certainty in her voice, a creepy air that told Yara there was, indeed, something more to it.

"Maybe you never were, dragon," Yara grinned with her own eyes wet with tears. She chose to ignore what was ominous in Dany's voice. She would brave the fire. "But I loved you then, I loved you now. But you just had to bring him up!"

"You both promised to share," Dany answered, possessive, a bit accusing, but also with a trace of a grin.

"Yes, well, expect some banter from both of us along the way."

"Good. These are the last moments I feel normal in, now…"

"Well, then," Yara laughed, and pulled Daenerys down on the couch. "I'll go ahead and make you feel very normal, indeed."

Arya was eating a bowl of fish stew in the tavern on the waterfront at Pentos, when she heard the news.

"The Dragon Queen is reborn, in Volantis" said a man on the next table to his fellows. "The Red priests declared it in their temple". They argued back and forth whether such a thing was possible, most of them treating it as a fable, put about by the freed slaves who had seized power in that city. She felt sick, with fear and horror. She had seen the Dead return to life, all too often. Her brother had been brought back to life by a Red Priestess. Daenerys Targaryen had walked into a fire with three stones, and emerged with three dragons. If anyone could return from the land of the dead, it would be her. No, she knew that what she heard was the truth. The very idea chilled her to the marrow. She had fled through the streets of Kings Landing, the day that dragon fire had been unleashed on it. From time to time, she still dreamed of the firestorm that had raged through the city, the sheets of orange and green flame that burned hundreds of feet into the sky. Her brother and sister, the entirety of the Seven Kingdoms, none would be safe from the Queen's fury and vengeance.

Not that her family had been blameless, nor she herself, for that matter. She, Bran, and Sansa had all favoured making use of Daenerys, before disposing of her. Her two siblings had persuaded her that Jon had been seduced by a whore, a woman who was a threat to all of them. She had been disturbed, at first, to learn how steeped in treason the pair were, but that day at Kings Landing had surely proved them right, hadn't it? She left a silver coin with the innkeep, and made her way back towards the docks. A year ago, she had left the Seven Kingdoms, sailing West. She had even reached the three islands discovered by Lady Elissa Farman, Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys. However, rough seas, and terrific storms had convinced her that she and her crew would only perish if they persisted voyaging further West. Supposedly, Lady Farman had sailed around the world on Sun Chaser. The ship had been constructed in Braavos, and she wondered if the plans were still deposited there, in the maritime archives. So, she had changed her plans, and sailed back to the Narrow Sea, returning to that city. She had even found the plans, although when she enquired of local shipbuilders, she had discovered that the cost of building a replica was far beyond her means. She had used most of her remaining funds to purchase trade goods, intending to exchange them in Tall Trees Town for timber, always much in demand at Braavos. A profitable voyage might give her the funds she needed.

She had heard something very nasty in Braavos, however. One night in a tavern, she had listened as a group of sailors had angrily denounced her own sister, Queen Sansa. Cautiously, she had engaged them in conversation, and could scarcely believe her ears. It turned out they had intercepted a Tyroshi slave ship on the high seas, and liberated two hundred captives. There was nothing strange about that. The city was founded by escaped slaves, and she well knew that their descendants treated slavers as pirates, quite rightly. What had shocked her was their claim that they had been sold by her sister. Would Sansa really sink that low? Never. She had schemed and fought for her people's freedom. It had to be untrue, a lie put about by her enemies, but it was unsettling that people would think such things about the Northern Queen. She had heard ugly stories too, about her brother's regime in Kings Landing. Well, all kings made enemies, she supposed.

She thought more on these matters as she walked back to her ship, and then she had her answer. Plainly, the agents of the Dragon Queen were spreading lies about her brother and sister. Of course she would be eager to discredit them, before she launched her war of revenge. The monster had to be put down for good. A million deaths weren't enough for her. She would sail for Volantis, take the face of a guard or servant, then, when the chance arose, rid the world of the woman for ever. She climbed on board her own ship, Spitfire and summoned her first mate, Dagmar.

"We sail for Volantis, not the Summer Isles," she informed him. He frowned.

"You won't get much for your cargo, there. You'll be lucky to break even, at the best of times. And, the times could hardly be worse. There's talk of a slave revolt, and wilder stories than that."

"Doesn't matter. I need to get there. I'll pay you and the crew to sail back home, once I've sold the cargo. I think I'll be staying there for quite a while." The man shrugged, as it if was all one to him. Well, he'd still draw his pay, after all. After he left, she drew Needle, and whetted the blade. With any luck, she'd get the chance to drive it through the Dragon Queen's throat.

Notes:

1. Val does not appear in the show. In the books, she is a seior, among the Free Folk, and a distinguished prisoner at Castle Black. She is beautiful and she and Jon are both attracted to each other.

2. Lady Elissa Farman was an explorer from Fair Isle, a part of the Westerlands long influenced and ruled by the Ironborn, and the lover of Queen Rhaena Targaryen. They broke up very angrily, when she wished to resume exploring. She stole three dragon eggs, and sold them in Braavos to raise funds to build Sun Chaser, and explore the world. There is every likelihood that those are the three eggs that Daenerys hatched. Lord Colys Velaryon travelled to Asshai, years later, and saw Sun Chaser docked there, implying that she circumnavigated the world, although her own fate is unknown.

3. Braavos not only outlaws slavery, but treats slave trading as a crime worldwide, like piracy, both pirates and slavers being hostes humanum generis. Therefore, Braavosi vessels will attack slavers on the high seas, and free their captives.