Burning Cold

Chapter 5

Definition of Power I


Val heard the commotion before she saw it. The loud shout of distress from the entrance, and the scrambling of flesh against rock just as everything fell still.

Ghost, the ever loyal direwolf was standing over a small man wearing shaggy furs, his long blond hair slick with sweat. He seemed to have realised that struggling was pointless at this stage, which was smarter than she'd expected from him at first glance.

Jon Snow was already there, kneeling by the side of his wolf, observing him for a moment. "Did Mance send you?"

Val decided to stay her tongue, as she tried to wrack her brain for who he was. He seemed familiar but…

Ygritte looked at the commotion with a curious tilt of her head, whilst Thistle scowled slightly at what was going on.

The man nodded quickly, glancing nervously between Ghost and Jon as if he couldn't be certain of who to be more terrified of. "Y-yes. Mance sent me to… Ah…"

He fell silent - not out of a lack of something to say, but simpleminded terror.

Jon Snow merely gave his direwolf a sideways glance and it immediately began to walk off, letting the annoyingly unfamiliar messenger let out an utterly relieved breath.

"Th-thanks, crow…" He sat up, a thankful expression rising towards the black leather clad man, who only looked back at him expectantly. "The snowstorm got so bad that Mance had to retreat back towards the Frostfangs… But he told me to tell you that you're invited to come to the camp as a guest."

How clever and yet, kind of you, good brother. Val thought, glancing at Jon specifically, who seemed considering. Please take the offer. Please.

"What of the dragon and my direwolf?" He asked. "Are they counted as guests too?"

"I-I…" The poor man seemed slightly flummoxed. "If you're a warg or a greenseer or… Ah… Then… I think they'd be included with you."

Jon didn't look surprised in the slightest, despite the downright pathetic answer he'd received. "I accept those terms. You're welcome to come and sit by the fire to warm up, and prepare for the journey ahead."

The blond seemed somewhat gobsmacked, his mouth hanging open for a moment as he started nodding furiously. "Thank you! You're so very kind, er…"

"Jon Snow." The crow replied a bit gruffly, seemingly put a tiny bit off-kilter by the sheer sincerity of the bootlicking he was receiving.

Val felt a name rise up to the surface of her mind, as she narrowed her eyes at the man. "Wait… Loutmouse? Is that you?"

"Oh er… Yes? Is that you asking, Val?" Loutmouse asked with a wide-eyed expression, turning towards her.

"Who he is doesn't matter," Thistle interrupted forcefully. "What matters is how Lord Crow gets us to the Frostfangs… Since we are supposedly doing this now."

"Can't we cross back down the mountain where Loutmouse did to come up here?" Ygritte questioned, for some reason sharing a… strange look with the man in question, who merely frowned slightly in response.

She'd have to chase that particular lead later, she knew… Who knew what Jon Snow would say to someone he needn't necessarily be so wary of, like her?

Loutmouse chewed on his bottom lip, glancing between the floor and the ceiling with peculiar accuracy. "I have some bad news on that matter…"

"The blizzard snowed in the passage you were using after you, didn't it?" Jon asked quietly, as if he was merely confirming something he already knew.

"Yes… How did you know-" The blond began to question, only for him to simply spy the direwolf slinking to the side of his master. "Ah."

"It weren't him that he was seeing out of." Ygritte said with a small grin. "Right?"

Jon didn't even bother answering her, merely beginning to absentmindedly scratch Ghost's ears. He tended to do that when he was in deep thought, she noted.

"...The dragon." He eventually chose to say. "Riding it will be the quickest way out of the cave."

Val almost couldn't believe what she was hearing. 'Riding that… Creature? How would…'

"Are you serious, crow?" Thistle asked incredulously, looking at him as if he'd truly lost his mind.

Even Ygritte for all that she thought that she knew about the man, looked more than a little flabbergasted.

"If there is a better solution, I am willing to hear of it." Jon replied challengingly, looking at them each in turn, his dark grey, near black eyes showing naught but steel-strong determination.

'He decided on doing this before we even discussed it.' She realised faintly, as the dots slowly connected in her mind. 'Ygritte was more right then even she imagined.'

"Have you ever ridden it before?" Val found herself asking, the question leaving her mouth before she even had time to think.

The crow offered no answer for a moment, his lips curling. She wondered, if nary for a moment, what he was like before the Night's Watch. Did he smile more, or had his face always been cast in ice like this?

"Prepare your things." He ordered coldly, his tone brokering no argument. "I'll be gone a short while, but as soon as I am back, we're gone."

"...As he says." Val repeated, watching as he turned on his heel and walked off into the darkness of the caves beyond, where the ice dragon spread its wings.

She barely registered the angry spit that Thistle threw in his general direction, nor the slightly terrified way that Loutmouse scuttled towards the fire to warm himself.

Val thought of herself as being as close to fearless as one could get without being reckless, and yet, she found herself staring at the dark caves, the ice crystals reflecting back the light that might have otherwise illuminated it.

'I'm putting mine and their lives in the hands of Snow.' She thought, finally realising why she felt so stiff and ready for danger. 'A man that I don't truly know… Whose true intentions I can only guess at. And he's a crow on top of that.'

"Val?" Ygritte asked, punching through her distracted musings. "You doing alright? You've been standing there for a good five minutes, just staring at where Lord Crow left…"

"I was just lost in thought." Val replied with a carefully plastered smile. "No need to worry about me."

"You got doubts about him, don't you?" The fire-kissed spearwife quickly said, raising her eyebrow at her.

Her smile fell from her face, replaced in quick order by a deepening frown. "...I do. Especially with how… guarded he is, and how he refuses to answer our more pointed questions."

Ygritte quickly looked behind her at Ghost, who seemed more preoccupied with keeping an eye on the entrance than with them. Yet she still leaned in to whisper to her. "Not going to defend him, but we're not exactly being forthright ourselves, are we?"

Her mind flashed to the fruitless search for graves along the Milkwater had borne no fruit… And yet it was the tomb of an ancient giant, hidden in a glacier in the Frostfangs that held it. A black horn with gold bands, and more importantly, the runes of the First Men.

The horn of winter or so it was thought… The instrument that could bring about the Wall's destruction.

"No… We haven't." Val admitted, glancing out of the corner of her eye to where he'd left. Just in case. "Does that mean that I should place my trust in Jon Snow?"

"Don't trust him… He's a man and a crow, so twice as untrustworthy by half." Ygritte retorted with a small, impish grin. "You can trust however, that he wants to talk with Mance… And that he needs us to be alive to ensure that."

Val considered the red-haired woman for a moment. "You're right - I suppose I can trust that much."

"Good to hear. It isn't good at all for the leader of our small band to have doubts, you know?" Ygritte replied, her impish grin softening for a brief moment.

"I get it… Just one short question, though." She wondered aloud, hoping for a relatively straight answer. "Why does it feel like you trust him way more than any of us do?"

Her smile faded at that, settling instead for a contemplative look. "Maybe because despite the fact that he's a crow who killed dozens of us with that dragon of his… I actually believe that he's being honest."

"Even with what we talked about?" Val asked, somewhat disbelievingly.

Ygritte could only offer a shrug to that. "I'm just saying what's on my mind. Aren't you the one that's meant to be charming him for the meeting with Mance anyway?"

"I've done my part." She retorted, feeling particularly irritated at the implication. "I'm not about to try to convince him that I'm a friend or try to bed him-"

"He's not that stupid, you're right." Ygritte said nonchalantly, utterly ignoring the glare she was receiving. "Anyway, I have a few things to pick up… So see you when Lord Crow does whatever he's going to do."

"Be on your way, then." Val replied, lightly biting down on the side of her lip, her mind once more caught by her own thoughts. She tried to still gather her things, but she felt inevitably distracted… Mainly by her admission.

Ygritte actually believed what Jon Snow had to say. That he really wanted to help the free folk, that he didn't have any negative intentions for them.

Val knew that he wasn't a monster. Far from it, even. No monster would have tolerated Thistle and her petty words for as long as he had, nor put in as much effort as he had to ensure they were all warm and well-fed as his guests.

All of the evidence pointed to him not being a bad man. But she couldn't find it in herself to believe that he was good either.

What he'd done, compared to what he said… It felt like a chasm that she was feeling more and more forced to jump - hoping that he was as good as he seemed to say and present himself as. It made her feel, if only for a brief moment, like it was all an illusion. That he was presenting a façade for them all to fall for.

She could only hope that Mance, with his past being what it was, could decipher the truth of it. That he could figure out if Jon Snow was honest with his intentions, or… If her paranoia was right.

Val had gathered her things by the time she had stopped herself from being utterly lost in her thoughts, wrapped tightly in a small bundle of furs that she'd then tied around her back. She'd elected to keep her weapons strapped to her person, but everything else was in there. It seemed that everyone else had the same idea, even if Loutmouse hadn't even really needed to do much personally.

She saw Ghost out of the corner of her eye, quietly standing at the entrance, almost invisible if you weren't looking for him directly. He tended to disappear by this time, she had noticed in the few days she'd been here. But, this time, he was staying right where he was.

'Waiting for his master...' Val thought quietly.

She then felt something. A slight, almost imperceptible tremor below her, that pulsed. It was getting stronger and stronger each time, like the great tremblings of an old, terrible god waking beneath the earth.

Their first reaction was to panic, even herself, no small amount of shame creeping up her neck. Incoherent noises of surprise leaped from all of their throats, and Ygritte of all of them even let out a curse.

Val then saw Ghost. The huge, white direwolf merely continued to sit, not budging even an inch at the disturbance - completely and utterly placid to what was happening.

"We have to calm down." She found herself ordering, even as the three other wildlings stared at her bewildered. "Look at the direwolf… It's just Jon flying down towards us on his dragon, I'm sure of it."

"Gods be good, how big is it?" Loutmouse asked, with wide eyes.

"Big enough to be afraid of, little man… But it's not about to eat us if that's worth anything." Thistle replied, her voice sounding almost soothing. It was hard to remember with how agitated she'd been since she'd gotten here, that she was a well-practiced healer not just a mere spearwife.

Loutmouse merely nodded, not trusting his voice to say anything… Not that they'd have heard it either way.

Two ear wrenchingly loud snaps rang out, echoing throughout the cave. It clattered against the walls and shook the walls to a degree where Val felt briefly terrified that it would knock the long icicles that stood at the top of the cave, and cause them to crash down on them.

The snaps rang out more and more, yet seemed to fade into the beatings of wings… And that's when she saw it, stepping out of the mouth of the cave almost in a trance.

The brilliant transparent glow that shone in the faint daylight glimpsed past a torrent of snow. The massive shadow that seemed to grow ever larger as it came towards them, batting a wingspan that looked as large as a mountain.

She then glimpsed the neck, crystalline scales of ice shimmering lightly in the snowfall, her wide-eyed stare drifting to the near mammoth sized head and the bright animalistic yet clever blues eyes that seemed to be focused on the ground beneath it. A small pair of horns that were still larger than her arms, and slightly twisted at the ends, was where she saw a pair black gloved hands.

Jon Snow… Sitting firmly on the dragon's neck, both hands on one of the dragon's horns. It then lowered its neck for him to clamber down, the crow lightly (but stiffly, she couldn't help but notice) patting it on its flank.

Val tried as best as she could to recover herself, but the only thing she was sure of was that her tongue simply refused to work.

"Dr-a… dragon?" Loutmouse stuttered, sounding like he was about to piss himself. Or actually, on further reflection, Val thought as she sniffed the air distastefully-

"Are you three ready to go?" Jon Snow asked, unable to contain the jittery excitement that leaked into his voice. He kneeled down next to Ghost, whispering something to the massive wolf. The direwolf looked up at his master before trotting off into the snow without nary a word.

"I… I think we are." Val said slowly, finally managing to find her voice, too flabbergasted by the sight of the dragon to comment on what she'd also just seen. "How is this going to work? There isn't exactly… a saddle."

'Would a saddle even be… Right as far as this beastie is concerned?' She couldn't help but wonder, her gaze briefly stopping looking at Snow to look at the beast he controlled.

"We'll have to hold onto each other, I fear. There isn't anything to hold onto on the upper neck besides the horns, and the rest of the dragon isn't much better." The crow explained, as he clambered back onto the dragon.

Val glanced briefly at the others, who merely looked back at her expectantly.

Gods be good, now she realised why Mance seemed to age five years every year he was leading, she thought as she tentatively walked up to the dragon that seemed to rumble as it breathed.

Grabbing Jon's outstretched hand, she tentatively sat on the crystalline scales that seemed almost impossibly frigid even to her fur-covered body. She tentatively wrapped one of her arms around his torso, noting idly how cold he felt to the touch, before offering her hand out to the next person.

Within a few minutes, they were all seated on the dragon without much difficulty… Besides Thistle threatening to geld Loutmouse if he got handsy, but that wasn't much to worry about in her view.

The crow looked at the horizon for a brief moment, before turning around. "Are you all ready?"

"Aye," they all said in unison, without any hesitation… Not that they could allow themselves that luxury.

Val wasn't even sure she was willing to even think about who and what she was placing her trust into - a crow and his dragon? She was mad. She had to be. She instinctively tightened her arms around the man in front of her, despite her misgivings. She needed to be sure of something.

'...Deep breaths, Val.' She told herself, taking a deep breath and allowing it to exhale, as she closed her eyes.

The beast shifted beneath her, tensing up ever so slightly. She heard the great, mighty, beating of its wings against the snowdrift, kicking up snow, and then… They were in the air.

The dragon beat its wings into the air, the sound of it almost breaking her eardrums. The wind, the cold brutal wind of a blizzard, beat against her face, making it numb with cold, and she even felt the ice crackle on her cheeks.

Val opened her eyes, a strange madness taking hold of her. A fog of white greeted her, the overwhelming harshness of the blizzard being the only thing she saw… And yet the dragon continued to fly against it, so immensely powerful that she could barely comprehend how it even existed.

She shuddered as a glimpse of sunlight glinted past the fog, and she realised that they were continuing to climb, higher and higher. The air in her lungs, that used to hurt with every breath, was now becoming easier to breath, but… There was less of it.

It was then… That the fog faded entirely. Sunlight beamed on over them, suddenly and brutally that it blinded her, as she blinked into the new sights that she was seeing, utterly amazed by it.

The sun was beaming overhead, almost too bright for her to handle. The clouds stretched on forever in front of her eyes, some of them black with storms, others grey, and a few simply white.

Between a few cracks of the clouds, she could glimpse various shapes of land - trees, ice-covered mountains and utterly snow-consumed tundras. None of it was familiar to her, not from so high up, but she doubted that they were places she'd ever visited.

The true North was almost impossibly large and whilst she'd always known it, it was awe-inspiring to have it be confirmed: that she truly didn't know everything, nor that she had seen everything this world had yet to offer.

Jon Snow subtly shifted in her tight grasp, briefly looking over the edge. "Are we ready to dive? We're nearly there."

It had only been close to an hour since they'd started flying, and yet when the clouds parted ever so slightly, she could see the vague smatterings of tents that made up their encampment.

Val glanced at the others who all gave her various degrees of affirmation. "Yes we are, Lord Crow."

She felt a strange, vindictive pleasure at seeing his face contort in response to the moniker he'd obtained, before he quickly cooled his features. She saw him grasp the left horn firmly, with his other hand settling on the crook of the dragon's neck, unable to reach the other horn.

There was a moment where she heard nothing but faint whispers tumbling out of his mouth, despite being firmly planted to his back, barely hearing any other words besides "have to".

Val might have pondered what those words meant… If the world hadn't suddenly tipped on its axis.

She felt like she was falling through the air, for the briefest, most terrifying moment. She saw the clouds fly past her eyes, the frozen rain making her eyes water. The sun that had been hiding behind the greyness had disappeared, leaving behind the darkness of the blizzard.

The mountains of the Frostfangs rose beneath them, becoming bigger and bigger with each second, and right past them she saw the camp. It felt and looked like they were a small distance away, and despite her instincts telling her it wasn't… But on top of the dragon, it was.

Within what must have been minutes, they were already past the mountains that surrounded the valley, as the dragon gradually slowed down. Her ears felt almost like they were about to burst from everything, and yet she still heard Snow's shout about where to land.

Her eyes drifted towards the camp as she began to answer his question, she suddenly found herself short of words. Her mouth hung agape if only for a split second, as she saw… What could only be described as mobilisation.

Thousands of freefolk were readying themselves for a fight…. For a fight with Jon Snow and his dragon if it came down to it, pushed by his sudden appearance.

"Val!" Jon repeated firmly, a touch of impatience and dare she say, worry in his usually immaculate voice. "Where should I land?!"

"There!" Val shouted, her mind racing as she pointed at a clearing right on the exterior of the camp. "Good enough, right?"

"It'll have to be." He replied with a grimace as the dragon descended slowly and with complete calm, as if it didn't care at all about what was happening on the ground below… And honestly, why should it, she couldn't help but wonder.

It was so much more powerful than anything she'd ever seen… She was certain of that now.

All of that power… All in the hands of Jon Snow.

The thought made her blood run cold.


AN: Can confirm that this is a two parter - I didn't want to delay this chapter more then necessary, and I had reached a point where I thought it'd be fine to cut it up.

With any luck this means that this next chapter won't take as long, but considering that uni is kicking into high gear... Well, that might be tempting fate to be honest, so just watch this space, okay?