Samwell
Absently he bounced Little Sam on a knee as a serving girl filled the bowl in front of both of them with stew. Carrots, part of him thought. Onions and horsemeat. At least it wasn't rat, nor was the specter of such lingering in the near future. Somewhere above, the green dragon roared. Although the dishes shook on the tables in Winterfell's hall, no dust was left to trickle down from the ceiling. Thoughts of food fled Sam's mind. Rhaegal, Sam thought. The green's name is Rhaegal. He helped Little Sam get his pudgy hand around a spoon and work some broth into his mouth. The one Jon rides. Because he's a Targaryen. His eyes went to the high table where the Starks were seated, Prince Brandon's direwolf licking Prince Howland's hand. They were too far away to hear properly but the babe's face was alive with laughter, tiny hand outstretched for the wolf's muzzle. All Stark, Sam thought. There's no trace of his father's Tully coloring. He could be Jon's own son. Sam looked higher, into the face of the woman seated next to Prince Brandon. Or his nephew. Princess Meera paid the rest of the hall no mind, occasionally working a bit of soup past her son's lips. Dress her in black and she could be Jon. Only someone who knew him would sense something was amiss. Like the absence of a huge white direwolf. These days, Ghost was bigger than a horse, perhaps even fit for riding himself. Ghost isn't the one hammering the cold giants whenever they show up the way Donal Noye used to hammer steel at the Wall. Rhaegal had proved to be an implacable sentinel, endlessly circling above the castle and its outbuildings and chewing the cold giants alive with bronze fire whenever they tried to launch another raid. Even when they tried to trick him, he led their feint right to a rampart topped with Tarly toys which promptly blasted them to bits. The raiders themselves had traded their beards for burns, ugly deep blue blotches in their sky-colored skin. Yet they never fail to scream defiance at him, even cornered or caught out. Such circumstances naturally required Jon's full attention and so Sam had busied himself with teaching the soldiers the nuances of working the bronze tubes that had begun to line the walls, along with the sellswords of the Golden Company. Whereas farmers, fishermen and merchants were well leery of the roaring toys, those born in Essos and raised in armed camps could not get enough of them. With a bit of mischief from Shireen they'd even worked out how to run a chain between the balls the toys could throw, the resulting twister of stone and steel cutting into the wights a hundred bodies deep. Tarly tricks, the officers call them. As for Jon, he'll call on me when he gets a free moment.
That moment came a few scant hours later, with the latest blast from a Tarly toy ringing in Sam's ears. The Dreadfort's once-maester, Wolkan, was evidently ill at ease around the tubes, the Golden Company soldiers peering over them at him curiously.
"My lord. His Grace would like a word, if you can spare the time." Wolkan was a big man, with a big man's timbre, yet Sam could hear the squeak beneath it. A mouse in a bear's body. This is who I would have been in another life.
"Of course. Come, let's find out where he's gone." He's not awing, I can hear Rhaegal screaming at the treeline. When Wolkan needed another prod to get moving, Sam realized he was still looking at the Tarly toys. No doubt they could be the subject of the treatise of a lifetime. "If you happen to be missing an iron link, I could not think of an easier way to earn one, maester."
"I mean no affrontery, my lord, but one could likely forge a link of burnt bone at Winterfell just now."
"Signifying what? Dragonlore?" Sam asked. "The archmaesters had little patience for such flights of fancy."
"They're welcome to, assuming the Citadel still stands. Meantime, the next time I go south I'll go with a bone link…and perhaps one of razor ice." Sam pursed his lips.
"For your sake, I'd not chance it. The thing would take your head off." Wolkan's face, red from cold, paled. "First we have to live that long. Should you manage to see the Citadel again, you wouldn't need to worry about poison in your soup. Others running rampant here, there and everywhere strike me as the sort of thing that forces even the archmaesters to see sense." Or so I hope. "Failing that, the north could start its bloody own Citadel somewhere up here, I suppose. The Others might have smashed Oldtown entire." Anywhere in reach of an ice-ship hasn't got much protecting it. A city that large might as well have just lit beacon fires. Winterfell's corridors, full as they were and with fires in every hearth, felt warm enough to keep even a southerner happy. I wonder if I count as one of those anymore. Wolkan didn't lead him to the royal chambers as Sam thought he might, but a makeshift council chamber near the noise of the Great Hall. Jon and Daenerys were poring over three hastily drawn circles laid out on the table, the parchment marked up in a dozen different places. Winterfell, viewed from above. With them were Prince Brandon along with lords Arryn, Baratheon, Lannister, the Blackfish and Aegon, the sellsword king.
"Lord Tarly." Wolkan announced, before leaving them to the games of the mighty. Jon looked up, clearly pulled clean from his thoughts.
"Your Grace." Sam said, feeling calm. "What have I missed?"
Prince Brandon brought them up to speed.
"Ser Jaime Lannister rallied the westermen he could to Casterly Rock. It seems a generous helping of ironmen escaped the Others' devouring of the Iron Islands, along with a few ships come up from the Reach. The lot of them landed all along the underbelly of the north no more than a few days ago. They'll be coming to us from Barrowton, Moat Cailin and Torrhen's Square-" Sam seized the nearest quill and flurried through the parchments for a map of the north proper.
"Barrowton." Sam said, marking the map. "Moat Cailin. Torrhen's Square."
"To say nothing of the pissups who run aground or make landfall nowhere in particular." Aegon said from the other side of the table, his own quill circling the entirety of Saltspear and the Fever besides. "When we sailed from Essos it was much the same way, we landed all over the fucking place." From the ends of Aegon's stretched circle Sam drew lines to Winterfell, forming a triangle between it, Moat Cailin and where Saltspear opened out into Blazewater Bay.
"A lot of ground for horses to cover, even without the snows." Lord Arryn said. Sam's little triangle represented hundreds of miles of open moor, to say nothing of whatever was running wild in those hills.
"Forget that, making it to Torrhen's Square is likely the best we can do." Prince Brandon replied.
"Were we a normal army, perhaps. Giants on mammoths will crunch through deep snow without a second thought. The Free Folk know something about moving over heavy snow at speed, as well. Chariots and sledges made of walrus bone, or at the least bear-paws." Jon did not sound remotely as apprehensive as the lords did. His lords, Sam remembered. That's right, he's Aemon the First.
"The fuck is a bear-paw?" Aegon muttered, sounding somewhat intrigued.
"These basket things you put on your feet to stop yourself falling through the top of the snow. True, we'll be plodding along like a herd of cattle, but better upright than up to your shoulders in the snow." Jon replied.
"Will horses take them?" Lord Arryn asked.
"The mountain clans' horses don't mind them but I can't speak to what a warhorse will think."
"Aye, they're skittish beasts for their size." Arryn mulled it over. "What about a unicorn?" It seemed he had been waiting ages to inquire about the animals, snatching the chance at once now it had come.
"Smarter than a horse, for certain, and stubborn enough to shame a mule." Jon said. "I'll need to ask the Skagosi."
"We'll need to ask the Skagosi, Your Grace." Arryn replied. "The Mountains of the Moon could do with a few unicorns in their high passes."
"What of us as aren't used to scaling mountains?" Lord Baratheon asked, eyes still on the map.
"Perhaps the Free Folk fit for going over snow will go first. Then the mammoths. Their passing will clear the ground for men to come after them, afoot or ahorse. The smell of them puts most horses off though, so they'll need to be kept clear." Jon said. "If something tries to attack the outrunners, the mammoths will charge. If something tries to attack the mammoths, the outrunners can circle around and take them in the rear. Even an Other might find being pinned down amongst angry mammoths a perplexing development." The Blackfish snorted.
"Dead men won't cover ground any better than living. They may not tire, but they're no less likely to founder in the snow than we are. Might be their plodding has cleared the road a bit, even. But they stand hundreds of bodies thick even to the southwest." His words were a simple observation, but Sam knew well what Ser Brynden really meant. All this is well and good, but what will the dragons be doing?
"The last we heard, Drogon was somewhere near Torrhen's Square. The quicker we bring him on side, the better, so while the army trudges forth we'll nanny you from the air." Jon sounded as if they were planning to dig out a nest of outlaws.
"Shouldn't one remain behind, to keep the giants off us? What if they come while you're gone?" Prince Brandon asked, looking wary. He worries for his princess.
"Winterfell is full of helpless people, yes. It's also full of fighters. Everyone can't go out to greet the new arrivals, those more comfortable where they are than roughing it out on the moors will remain behind the rings. There are Children of the Forest here as well, who would play havoc with most anything if they had to."
"Who goes, then, and who stays?" Daenerys spoke for the first time, evidently more embroiled in thoughts of her dragon than the task before her. Then again, I'd be of no more help were it Gilly we were trying to reach, or Little Sam. And neither can erase a horizon's worth of wights on a whim. "If you think I'm going to sit here while you romp around on Rhaegal's back-"
"I know you better than that. Rhaegal's moon-mad in the air, though. I don't need him spinning around and free diving with a pregnant woman clinging to me while I cling to him."
"Speak for yourself. If I'm behind you, I know nobody's going to vomit in my hair." Daenerys replied, making lords Baratheon snort and Arryn snigger.
"What a lovely picture." Jon rolled his eyes, turning to the lord of the Vale.
"If your knights' horses won't take bear-paws, they won't be much use out on the moor. Maybe you'll be better off remaining behind, where you can move relatively unhindered between the rings." Arryn winced.
"I'll have the lads mount unicorns if it means we can meet the Others in battle proper."
"Unicorns wouldn't do much good against ice spiders, my lord." Even seeing what he had, Sam got a bad shock when Princess Sansa stepped out of a dark corner of the room, emerging from nowhere is if she were coming through a door. Still, he held better than most of the others, whose reactions ranged from jumps to "Fuck me fried!" in Aegon's case. Must be a Golden Company saying.
"What does that even mean?" Tyrion Lannister had been forgotten in the planning, though he sounded annoyed.
"How the fuck-" If Aegon was put out of sorts by Sansa's sudden appearance, the massive direwolf that followed had him (and most of the rest at the table) ready to wet themselves.
"Lady will go as well. As will Rickon and Shaggydog. If you're taking Skagosi, no reason not to take the Stark that's lived among them as well."
"For a time, anyway. Until the full moon found him." Jon replied. "We need him where we know he is. If I take him far afield, if I take him into battle-"
"He's of far more use beyond Winterfell than within it." Sansa said bluntly. Sam heard the rest as well, though it went unsaid. As am I.
"If I can have my pick of the horselords, I should be able to put together a half-decent corps of outriders." The Blackfish said, sounding ever his surly self. "I'll need garrons, too. No heavy horses, as Snow says. They never seem to find their way into song, but a garron's not going to break a leg going over unforgiving ground. And they're no strangers to cold, nor snow."
"Dothraki aren't known for their circumspection." Daenerys said, looking unsure. "I hope not, else not a one of them would agree to go chasing Others astride ice spiders atop deep snow." Ser Brynden snorted.
"If they can handle their wild horses, they can handle garrons."
"Mammoths and sledges in place of heavy horse, outriders, a dragon or two. That just leaves the men on foot to sort out." Jon rattled off.
"Reachmen will make up the bulk of the infantry." Sam said at once, finger on his cheek thoughtfully. "Behind the Free Folk, they're the most numerous and they're the only kingdom not to bleed much during the War of Five Kings, besides the Vale." He turned to Lord Arryn. "And Valemen are best when mounted, or when the enemy is coming to them. Perhaps familiarize yourself with the officers of the Golden Company and the bronze toys coming out of Winterfell's forges."
"It's a proper foundry now, my lord. Wait 'till you see what else we've got coming out of it." Lord Baratheon said, grinning.
"Will the lords of the Reach assent to putting themselves and their men into such danger?" Lannister asked, nose poking up over the table.
"I think the new lord of Highgarden will see reason." Sam said, trying not to shudder or twitch.
"Not if it's your bloody father. It'd be easier to talk the Others down than change his mind." the Blackfish said.
"The Others probably don't know we're planning on taking the war to them. We ought get about this before they split the sky above our heads." Princess Sansa intoned.
"Then let's do just that. I'll see if I can pull the Reach's new overlord away from his vassals." Sam said, turning to Jon. "If you'll come with me, Your Grace, I'll introduce you."
Jon found his wildling chieftain and told him the plan. "Stir up the Frozen Shore men and the giants. We'll have a number on foot as well." His Stark cousins would in the meantime try to coax their brother into coming along, while the southern lords went about their own duties. No one seemed too bothered about having to stop by the foundry for a peek at the newest mischief. Hopefully the Golden Company would know best how to purpose such toys, their nous for battle spreading to the rest of the castle and the town outside it besides. Eventually it was just the two of them with Sam musing on how things had been when first he'd met Jon Snow.
"In here, Your Grace." Sam said, leading Jon into the first empty room he found.
"You don't have to-" Never one to miss anything, Jon abruptly stopped speaking when he saw there was no one waiting for them. "Sam, what's going on?"
"I told you I was going to introduce you to the Lord of the Reach."
"Is he hiding behind a column?"
"He's me, Jon." Sam could think of no better way to say it. "The lords of the Reach settled on someone, no doubt with more than a bit of sass from Olenna Redwyne. My luck that that someone happened to be me." Jon looked at him for a long time.
"Did they, my lord?"
"Did they what, Your Grace?"
"Did they settle for you? Or did they realize they had just the man they needed, and bid him accede?" I know a thing or two about accessions, Sam, Jon's demeanor said.
"They might have found my settling of Brightwater Keep and the Fossoway woes cause enough. Knowing what goes on in my lord father's head was never a talent of mine, though." Sam remembered when they had been new arrivals at Castle Black, back when the sight of blood was enough to send him off his feet. Ghost was no bigger than a dog then, and Jon no more than a lord's moody by-blow. Now I'm Lord of Highgarden, and he's no Snow at all, not truly. "Do you think Maester Aemon knew? Or…I don't know, suspected at least? That something was wrong?" Sam's question made Jon frown.
"He told me about the day he heard King's Landing was sacked by Tywin Lannister's army. How he felt when he heard Rhaegar's children were killed…" Jon trailed off. "Even a hundred years old, blind as a bloody bat, the fire was in there. Buried under his black cloak and heavy chain, but before his eyes had gone white they had been purple once. A dragon, and no mistake."
"I wonder how much grief he'd have saved the world if he put his bloody honor aside and sat the throne instead of Aegon the Unlikely." Sam mused. "Then again, he said it was the Wall that had kept him alive all that while. 'Ice preserves,' he said."
"Skipping mad Aerys might have done the lot of them a pretty bit of good, but here we are." Jon replied.
"Or even better, one of us ought just nap in the godswood until they wake in the Winterfell of old. Just trot on up to whoever's the Stark in Winterfell and tell them the Others are readying to give the realm a talking to."
"All the better we're readying to one-up them. We'll leave tomorrow at first light, as much as such a fucking thing means in times like these."
"You say that and the sun comes up halfway through the hour of the owl." Sam replied, trying not to chuckle."
"Fuck off." Jon answered, already moving for the door.
"Just a moment, Your Grace." Sam said, before he lost his courage. "After you pulled Rast and the others off me in Castle Black's yard, I thanked you, do you remember?"
"Do I remember? Sam, it was the first time we ever spoke." "Well, down the road a bit and I find it bears repeating." He breathed.
"Without you, I'd not have lasted six months at Castle Black. Rast would have done for me, or Chett, or Ser Allister's scorn. I'd never have been part of the Great Ranging or met Gilly or killed an Other or any of it. All I have, all I am, I owe to you." Jon stood at a loss for words. "Jon Snow, the sullen bastard, I might add. So far as I'm concerned, Aemon the First's done pissall except yank a dragon's tail and squeeze a queen's behind. At least he knows where to put it." Jon punched him on the shoulder and for a moment they were in Castle Black's hall again, with no more hanging over their heads than Ser Alliser's displeasure. And now Jon's gone and hanged Ser Alliser, so fuck that old crow. Might be I'll be sending him some cold company soon.
News that something was in the wings burned through Winterfell faster than dragonfire through a wall of wights. There were less than a dozen of us at that table, Sam marveled, and yet only hours later, the castle is alive with talk! He sat down next to Gilly, kissing her hand and making her blush prettily while the Reachmen nearby chuckled or toasted them. Little Sam sat contentedly between them, a wee hand reaching determinedly for Sam's bowl of stew. A giggling from the high table made Sam look up. Jon had his daughter in his lap, making faces at her. Rose Snow (or Lyanna Targaryen, depending on who one asked) was little more than a big pair of clear grey eyes staring out from a wild frizz of flaming-red hair. He whispered something to her, prompting another giggle as he brushed her hair out of her face. Immediately she shook her head like a leafy bough in a windstorm, what order Jon had managed collapsing straight back into chaos at once. Other men might wonder why Daenerys is absent, Sam thought. Likely she's trying to find her dragon and get some sleep at the same time. Gods know it's precious enough without an energetic young child. At least Gilly doesn't have a dragon to find as well as Little Sam to mind. Speaking of, Sam noticed the boy was being unusually quiet. Looking down he saw his son gaping at the high table, stew dripping from his lip.
"Oh, hells, Sam. That's all you need." Sam said wearily. "Snows are more trouble than they're worth and that's the truth." His words went in one ear and out the other, Little Sam even going so far as to point animatedly at the wild princess. "Don't point, she's not a lemon."
"Lemons are yellow!" Little Sam reported proudly. "I want some!" Sighing, Sam saw him to making do with stew. "Lemons in the stew?"
"Don't be silly, Sam."
"Put some in, make it better!" He pulled a shriveled slice from his pocket and squeezed it over the bowl before Sam could stop him, a half dozen drops falling into the stew. "Lemon stew!" He began to eat with gusto, Sam doing his share of gaping at the lad before he looked to Gilly, who'd watched it all unfold with a hand over her mouth and trying not to laugh aloud!
"I suppose it would give the broth a bit of kick." In the coming days, I may be dreaming of hot lemon stew as I jaw down cold strips of salted beef. Sam caught glimpses of Lady Karstark and her Thenn, Princess Arya and Lord Gendry and others besides sharing moments akin to the one he was with Gilly. Perhaps the last they'll have until they meet again in the hereafter. All the more reason to make the one at hand count.
They pooled in the yard, some clad in proper garb and some in little more than furs. The Skagosi among them were a solitary sort, as Sam had guessed. They were either tending to their unicorns or else hefting clubs with stone heads. They needed no urging to forgo spears. An impaling thrust is not going to stop a wight, but bashing it asunder will. Lord Baratheon and his fellow smiths were weaving through the varied sorts that made up the company, handing out queer dark weapons to anyone that would take them.
"What have you there, my lord?" Sam asked him when the great bull of a man chanced to walk past. He grinned.
"Well, I don't rightly know myself, Lord Tarly. We managed to get hot steel to take the glass, if you'd believe it, and once we pulled the trick it wasn't too long before we had piles of glass turning into piles of arms. Swords, maces, arrowheads, hundreds of arrowheads…" He trailed off the way a man most always does when the best has yet to come.
"And?" Sam prompted.
"Well, knowing what sorts of cold mischief the Others have waiting in the wings, we thought maybe it might be nice to go bringing more than hand weapons."
"What do you propose?"
"Your toys are quite the trick, the cold giants aren't near so mad for charging our walls with a dozen bronze tubes waiting to pepper their hides."
"They're also only useful when fixed in position. Little good they'll do us out on the moor, with wights and monsters all about us. And they're bronze besides, no more than sausage for the Others' cold swords."
"Better than not having them. Besides…" he led Sam over to a covered cart. "Razor ice isn't going to scratch these." He pulled away the thick canvas. Someone whistled over Sam's shoulder at the two Tarly toys in the cart, neither made of bronze. Or iron, Sam observed, running a gloved hand down one. Though the morning was frigid as always, Sam noticed the unknown metal did not seem notably cold to the touch. "I doubt you'd lose any skin if you put a bare hand to it, my lord. It won't take the cold, the way oil won't take water."
"They're longer as well." Gendry nodded.
"They are, and straighter on the shot for it. The ball is smaller to accommodate, though."
"Have you fired one?"
"The cold giants haven't yet given us the opportunity. But these aren't for singeing giants' beards." No, Sam thought as the balls the new toys loosed were brought forward. They were smaller, as Gendry said, each pair with a length of chain running between them. These are for killing Others.
Morale improved demonstrably as two more carts were brought forward. Pulled by garrons, Sam saw.
"Flavored with the glass, they're a sight lighter than bronze. No need for heavy draft horses to pull them along. You might not get much use out of them until you've taken up a position, but once you have, you'll be able to rain every kind of splendid hell down on anything making for you." Gendry told him.
"I trust you'll return to your forges as soon as you're able, my lord. Your hammer wreaks by far more havoc shaping spell-steel than breaking bone." When the Doom took Valyria, the means by which to make its ensorcelled steel had been lost, but a bastard blacksmith it seemed had worked out how to make the next best thing. A shadow overhead made every face turn skyward. Rhaegal landed rather close to a trio of giants, green snout sniffing after them. Sam had no idea what a dragon intrigued might look like, but he was most attentive to the forthcoming mutterings of the Old Tongue. He's entirely too quiet for a dragon as well, Sam thought. He remembered Drogon louting around the kingswood as if he owned it in the days before they made for the capital, snorting and huffing. Rhaegal by comparison paid the growing crowd of men no mind, save for when one among those who likewise spoke the Old Tongue came forward to enlighten the giants on the particulars of their plan. Compared to the deep timbre of their voices, even hardened Skagosi war chieftains sounded like squeaking field mice. No pretense, no façade. Sam dearly wished those born in warmer lands would stop their constant glancing over at the giants, a wish the gods happened to grant in a fashion with the arrival of Prince Rickon and Shaggydog. The Skagosi did not so much flock to him as flock around him, giving him a ten-foot ring of empty space. Staying out of grabbing range and keeping others out as well. Either Shaggydog understood what they were about or he was simply itching to be free of the walls all around him, because he kept turning his head to Winterfell's gate.
"Gods, would you look at that?" Lord Franklyn muttered on his approach, the Reachmen filing into the yard after a bit of last-minute outfitting. "Even worse in daylight. Well, what counts as these days."
"Indeed." Sam replied. It was one thing to imagine Shaggydog at night, when his black coat made him seem a part proper of the forest primeval, but with no shadows to blend with he stuck out against the white of the yard's snow-covered ground like an angry red pimple on the end of a nose.
"Nothing like in Essos?"
"Nothing. I daresay it's not the fur, it's the bloody eyes. What wolf has fucking green eyes, my lord?" Distracted as they were by Shaggydog's snarls and growls, Sam was hardly surprised when Ghost padded past quiet as a mouse, making Franklyn jump high enough to land himself on a giant's shoulders. The fidgeting and casual conversation stopped at once, sure as if the white direwolf were their superior officer. His spectral sister shadowed him, little more than a pair of glinting yellow eyes gazing out from a grey haze in the light of day.
Even the rowdiest among their number grew tractable rather than gather Lady's gaze. No steel would dissuade her if she leapt at someone. Then the King in the North and the Mother of Dragons appeared. Lady, Rhaegal, the giants, all were forgotten in the tumult the wild men raised at the arrival of the pair, whooping and bellowing and all manner of less describable noises. Their antics set the wild direwolves on hand to howling as well, an awful racket that seemed to displease neither Jon nor Daenerys one bit. Beloved of the wilds, Sam thought. Good luck getting them in the Red Keep now, my lords. Then again, if the Conqueror had been such a visionary, he'd have seen the pitfalls of keeping dragons in a city. Where might Balerion have gone, had he been free to fly? Or Vhagar, or Meraxes? Then Jon was talking, and the dragons of the past gave way to the ones of the present.
"The Others have squatted on our doorstep long enough. At last, we have the means to render their seas of dead men useless." Daenerys repeated his words in Dothraki (or so Sam supposed), kicking off another round of cries, shouts, howls. Sam noticed that when it came the Old Tongue's turn, Rhaegal's eyes flickered between Jon and the giants, listening intently. How much does he understand? Where Drogon had been a swaggering blowhard, and Viserion was a lazy lout and incorrigible rake, Rhaegal watched and waited. Jon helped the queen up first, climbing up himself to take his seat on Rhaegal's back. For just a moment, the king's eyes found Sam. Once, you could not speak of women without going red in the face and still in the tongue. If the silver-haired queen's head on his shoulder was any hint, that time was long done. Jon needed no words to get Rhaegal awing, either as gifted with dragonkind as he was with wolf or else Rhaegal had simply decided his feet were done with hard earth for the moment. One blink and he was the size of one of Winterfell's long tables, another and he was no more than a plate upon one.
"What of the other?" muttered Lord Franklyn. There was no forthcoming ribbon of cream slinking up from the godswood, no line of golden flame to signify Viserion was at all interested in besting his brother.
"He will come, or he will not." Sam replied. "Bronze fire does for wights as well as gold."
"As you say, my lord." Then the giants were muttering to the mammoths and they were moving out the gate, big lads waiting without to haul pieces of the innermost earthen ring out of place temporarily. Sam heard the snow crunching beneath their feet and then the way was clear, a growing sliver of frozen earth cutting through the thick white drifts. Those able to move atop the snows were next, the sledges of the Frozen Shore and those outfitted with bear-paws as well as the wintry wolves. When it came their turn, Franklyn Fossoway bellowed the order, and the Reachmen and Free Folk of the Haunted Forest alike moved to follow the path mammoths' feet and garrons' hooves had trod.
By the time they reached the outermost ring, all that remained of the wights in the vicinity were gone, replaced with curtains of bronze fire that crackled on what ground they found after the snow beneath had melted.
"At long fucking last, we may be glad of the wind." A Hightower footman said. He's right, Sam saw. With the northern gusts, the ashes of the wights will not blow into our faces. The little things, he mused.
"Eh? Tell me that a week from now when we're still a week out from this Kneeler's Square and there's no stone walls to bear the brunt of it." a wildling man replied.
"The mammoths seem to do the trick, no? We won't be so bogged down as we feared."
"The Others aren't going to stand for this, not for all the ice in the Land of Always Winter. Forget the wind and remember the black steel that blue-eyed bull gave you, now that's a good lad." It's a pity most of the Thenns don't speak the Common Tongue, they make a fine center. I hope they don't mind holding the line while the toys roar around them. Above, Rhaegal began to circle irregularly. I suppose if they can stand dragons, they can stand a few noisy toys.
"Just keep forward. If we're attacked, it won't come by surprise." Sam said, prodding the southern troops on bracingly. "Not with outriders watching the tree line, wolves of every kind and cast on the prowl, and a dragon in the air." The most perilous part of the march would be the start, he knew. Halfway between Winterfell and Torrhen's Square the wolfswood fell away from their right flank and the Others' opportunity to charge out of the trees would be lost. An attack on their foundering rear could absolutely occur, but that would mean coming out into the open where Rhaegal could rain death on them at will. Though that won't stop them sending at least wights. Maybe they're waiting to see what Viserion does before they do something in turn. At first no one nearby much talked for want of catching their breath. It had been a good while since anyone was on the war trail, but the knack quickly returned to those used to the hard road. The mountain clansmen and hill tribesmen scarce acted like they were on a war march at all, instead talking animatedly about most everything else. Though they were no more familiar with bear-paws than anyone else south of the Neck, they were hardly skittish. Several Stone Crows struggled up to the top of a berm after one of the cold wolves seemingly just to do it, amazed that even the biggest of their clan champions didn't fall through the snows. If only the Reachmen were getting along as well, Sam thought. They could hardly be faulted, though. War to them is marching across a clear rolling field or perhaps a light wood, to cross blades with an army of men of much the same sort. Wildlings and hill tribesmen and Dothraki are the monsters in the stories they heard growing up no less than the Others themselves.
After Rhaegal had made half a dozen passes over the edge of the wolfswood, he landed. The king's hair had frost in it and his cheeks were deep red from the cold that must surely reign in the sky above and his silver queen scarcely peeked out from behind his shoulder until it was time to dismount, but Rhaegal looked not a bit the worse off for having flown all day. His brother did fly clear across the Sunset Sea and back, and he not the one with a storied love of flight.
"Call a halt, not all of us can see in the dark." Jon's eyes were on the hazy image of the setting sun, a weak light hidden behind a wall of grey clouds.
"Is that wise? I don't care to know what will end up lurking just beyond the light of our torches." The Blackfish asked.
"Their spiders are made for trees, aye." Jon replied. "We're not going to camp in the woods, though, not at all." A few words to the giants and they started knocking down trees with the help of the mammoths, snapping them where needed to fashion logs- the sort that made for more than adequate building material. Crude fortifications were erected as the forest was cleared, mostly crude barricades of logs stacked longways and held up with packed snow. The tree line ended up a good hundred feet away from their makeshift hold, a deep trench dug between and filled with every pine needle and leaf stripped from the downed trees. "Don't bother with any fires but the ones you need to keep warm. There are more than enough wolves to keep watch all night, and the light of torches will only blind the cold ones." Jon told his officers and chieftains. Ghost regarded the lot of them impassively, Lady lingering nearby as always. "Nothing will come upon us unseen. Even if we're attacked, the Others and their allies will have a pack of direwolves and an angry dragon to contend with, as well as a wall of fire, while the rest of us get on our feet." There might be more to hash out with those present who were still in well enough condition to press on, but Sam knew the men on foot were sorely in need of a night's rest.
"I'll tell the men to get some rest, then." he said, leaving Jon with the others, Daenerys already asleep at his side, her head again on his shoulder. He found his portion of the army already well about it, gathered around fires and many cooking whatever they'd brought from Winterfell.
"Who's the sorry whoreson on first watch, my lord?" Franklyn asked. "Nobody. This camp is crawling with wolves, there's at least one dragon about, we're to worry about filling our stomachs and sleeping as much as we can." Sam replied, prompting a myriad chorus of relieved sighs and utterances.
"I never thought I'd miss the War of Five Kings." A sergeant out of Highgarden muttered, wincing as he sat down and started working feeling back into his fingers. Sam was hardly surprised. War is seldom the way the stories say. Much less the kind we're fighting now.
The last of the sun's light left them then. Inside an hour, night fell hard as a giant's maul. Encamped, huddled around sputtering pit fires, they winced whenever a direwolf sauntered past and jumped like frightened rabbits whenever Rhaegal swooped low overhead. Wildling or southerner, the main body of the army scarcely cut a striking image. Just how the Others like us, frightened and dispirited. He walked around the camp, seeing it was much the same no matter where he looked. Frowning, he made his way to the center of the loose circle of fires and sounded a rouse on his "borrowed" trumpet, making the men nearest him cry out like startled babes. He kept at it until every face he could see by the light of the fires was turned toward him, until spots twinkled in his eyes. When he finally gave it up, he figured the whole lot were at least awake.
"You lot don't look ready to muck a stable, much less mix it up with the Others and their ilk." Sam declared. He shook his head. "It's a pity. You've come through more than enough to deserve peace for the rest of your lives. You should feel ready to get into it with the Others. I know I am." He took a breath to recover from his romp on the trumpet. "More than a few of you look afraid. Well, lords and otherwise, I know a thing or two about being afraid, More I daresay than I know about anything. And even I, fat and floundering as a landed whale, managed to put a dragonglass dagger under an Other's chin. I thought on my Gilly and our boy, and I stopped being afraid. I stopped worry about what the Other might do to me. All I could think on was what I was going to do to him." He clapped his hands together, as if to push them to collect themselves. "Don't be afraid of the Other. Let him be afraid of you." He smiled humorlessly. "He has everything to lose. You have everything to gain. Reachmen have a reputation among the other kingdoms as being a realm of farmers and flower tenders, who wouldn't know a real fight from a bowl of fruit. All you lousy bastards have done since the dragon queen requested you choose your own overlord is fight- Reachmen have a lust for battle equal to any northman, any wildling." Guffaws, drunken shouts and scattered boisterous laughter. "I don't want to hold position when the Others do prance out of the trees. Holding is for wights. I want us to push on to Torrhen's Square as we've been tasked to do, and if the Others have something to say about it, they can say it to our swords, our spears, our arrows. Gods know we have enough of them, enough to make plenty of conversation on our goal." Those selfsame weapons, gleaming and glittering like a constellation of black stars against the white snow, shot into the air with raucous calls. Sam had to shout himself to be heard. "By the old gods and the new, I can't wait until the Others come upon us. Once Rhaegal and the pack have buggered them right, center and backward, they'll have us to contend with. By then, they'll wish that flame and fang had done for them. I can't wait for them to come," Sam repeated, "and I hope they come. I hope at least a few make it this far. Your children and grandchildren won't ask about the War of Five Kings, the battles on the Wall…they'll ask about this. When they do, you can tell them we did more than milk goats, burn shit to keep warm, and lick lordly arse." The call of a direwolf punctuated him, joined almost immediately by countless more. One of the Blackfish's outriders bounded up, garron snorting in the snow.
"The king says there's movement in the trees!" he cried before racing off again, to an outburst of cheering from the men around the fires. Fired and on their feet, Sam thought. Let the Others come.
The sound of countless wights shambling out of the wolfswood made Sam strain his ears. Not to train on the plodding of the dead, but on whatever else might be afoot while the wights shuffled out to meet their ends. Rhaegal's wingbeats were likewise unmistakable, setting Sam at ease. It was as Jon said, the Others weren't about to surprise him. Even better, Jon would have eyes on the ground through Ghost, so he would know much and more about the state of the battle even awing.
"He ought light the brush soon. Elsewise we'll only have pit fires to see by." Lord Randyll muttered, pulling Heartsbane from its sheath.
"I don't think the brush is Rhaegal's only option for a fire the Others will have trouble pissing out, Lord Tarly." Sam replied, blinded a second later by a bronze lance that cut through the tree line of the wolfswood like a lance through a straw dummy. "Well, now we can see." Sam said, trying to blink the world back into view. "More importantly, the Others can't." He drew his own sword, a blade of Gendry's making tinged green by the glass in the blade. Perfect for smacking Others about. It won't blunt or shatter if I find a wight needs seeing to, either. Though the fire in the wolfswood was much preferable to being blind, Sam found it was hardly ideal for telling just what the fuck was going on. He wove through the throng, squinting as he neared the flames. A hundred feet off and hot as if I were standing next to them. Rhaegal made another pass, another waterfall of bronze fire cascading down to wall off the infantry's right flank. Still another came a moment later to serve the same purpose on the left. There will be no catching us out. Anything coming out of the trees will need to come down that corridor. An eerie hooting from somewhere above the wolfswood's boughs made Rhaegal scream, though he did not veer north to give chase. Sam thanked the gods one or the other of dragon and rider was smart enough to know bait when they saw it. Most likely both. Rhaegal's next lance blossomed out into the night, prompting wails of alarm from the Others' unseen mounts. He knows they are not his equal. Sam suddenly felt a pang of uncertainty. They're trying to do something. Wights didn't work at Winterfell and they're not going to work here, and they'd know that. "What are you trying to do?" Sam said, though he could not hear his own words in the building chaos of shouts, cries, and the dragon's endless roars. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Sam turned to answer the inquiry, whatever it was- and he simply ceased to feel the cold gnawing on his right ear. Behind Lord Franklyn a Golden Company officer simply collapsed, a thin shaft of crystal buried to the feathers in his chest, heedless of the plate he wore. An arrow of razor ice. Sam clapped a hand to the side of his head and it came away a dull red. Still dumbfounded, he looked back toward the trees, toward where the arrow had come from, and beheld a pair of eyes like blue stars shrinking into the darkness behind the wall of fire.
A half-dozen of the cold drakes shot into view, mobbing Rhaegal. The sky rumbled and a gravelly voice rolled over the treetops, knocking the snow from every branch as it advanced.
"Not more giants!" Sam heard Dickon cry. Those aren't giants, nowhere near, he thought.
"They're not going to come to us," he shouted as loud as he could, "not when they can keep the dragon off them and simply wait for the wights to make it around the fires. We have to go to them."
"Eh? Sounds about right to me, I'm ready to be quit of biting cold and open fires both!" Franklyn replied, bellowing just as loudly.
"If the walls of fire can keep the wights unaided on their way out, they can keep us unmolested on our way in!" Sam heard a crunch high above, saw a drake tumble gracelessly from the sky. "Come on, before the dragon frees himself and the king takes all the glory!" Sam shrugged off the cloak. He wouldn't need it so near the fires, and it might go up while still on his back! He saw the men around him copy him, from Lord Franklyn to the martially minded lords of the Reach that had come. Time to get warm, he thought grimly, walking steadily toward the black wall of trunks, trying his best to ignore the fires raging on either side. Another crunch from on high and a drake crashed to earth less than twenty feet ahead, a white shadow vaulting off without missing a beat. The queer sound of icy crackling sounded from the trees, guiding the fire-blinded rider on as it raced impossibly quickly for the sanctuary of its fellows. A haphazard hail of new-made arrows hounded him as he left- and one struck him in the shoulder as it fell, sending him to ground with an agonized screech. Sam had just enough time to hear a whoop of joy beside him, evidently the archer who'd loosed the arrow, when the spearwife simply collapsed. Sam saw her head had caved in as if struck by a warhammer, another crystal arrow running through what was left of her nose and out the back of her skull. Sam dashed forward immediately, shouting as he did. No need to wait for a third arrow! Just as he reached the flailing Other, sword raised, he dived sideways- and felt yet another arrow take a numbing bite out of his side, going through fur and boiled leather as it did. Instinctively he covered his head, still clutching his green sword, rolling away from the Other to put space between them. Even a headless chicken with talons of razor ice is a danger, after all, he thought wryly. Meanwhile, I'm a big fat target. More importantly, I'm happy to be. He knew the men behind him had continued to advance during his rush toward certain death, even as the eagle-eyed archer had been focused on Sam. It was Sigorn, Magnar of Thenn, who reached the downed Other, his black sword shattering the sword of razor ice flurried against him with a single stroke- and cleaving the Other's head in twain at that very same stroke, melting into a pool of cold water seeping into the snow.
A new curtain of fire cut through the wolfswood proper, prompting a goodly bit of chaos from the Others' allies hidden within. The building gale that had blunted Rhaegal fell away quick as it had come, the sounds of the dragon giving the drakes a hiding all Sam could hear from on high. At last he reached the trees himself, sword alive with bronze flame it had caught as spilled honey caught flies. Now, who am I going to have words with first?
"IDIR A GRUHIR!" Something lunged out of the darkness at Sam. Had it not been half-blinded by his sword, it might have caught his head in its hooked fingers. Instead he went flat against the ground, jabbing out for the tip of his burning blade to bite into the lanky monster's ankle. At its touch the cold bluish flesh boiled down to the bone, a low of agony from the monster cut short as Franklyn Fossoway knocked it off its one good foot. He drove a spear through the thing's face with a chortle and a curse, the thrashing limbs going slack at once. More of the monsters surged toward the oncoming men, toothy maws wide and watering, icy blue eyes madly wide.
"Fuck meeeEEE-" one man cried as he was picked up and hurled against a tree, splattering into half-frozen gore. The scent of blood had the ravening monsters gleefully tearing into them even as they lost fingers and hands to the weapons they bore. Sigorn collapsed next to Sam, breathing hard.
"An end to hunger." he said grimly.
"What?" Sam asked. Then he understood. Even as a sudden sheet of ice above sent a flight of black arrows falling out of the air haphazardly around them, he sat up. In victory, feast. In death, hunger no more. A figure clanked slowly from the darkness. It was no hungry monster, standing equal to Sigorn in height. The flames that seethed around it whorled constantly into its rune-covered armor, causing them to glow even as they swallowed the heat. Before the fires nearby went out, Sam caught a glimpse of a grinning skull crowned in bone. The dead king raised a longsword of ancient bronze, hefted a shield even Sigorn would have trouble bearing as if it were a pot lid, and duly advanced. No common walking corpse, Sam thought as he fought to regain his feet, but Sigorn was already charging the king. Whereas the dragonfire had the runes alive with the effort it took to ward their bearer, Sigorn's sword glanced off the bronze breastplate without a flicker. Sam could only watch as the king's own sword swung ponderously, Sigorn able to pull back at the last moment as the blade bit halfway through a nearby tree trunk, the tree itself swaying ominously where before it had been ready to stand forever. As this dead king will, unless we do for him.
At last Sam managed to get his feet under him, just as Sigorn's latest blow glanced off the king's great bronze shield. Though only bones remained, they could swing sword and shield both with equal and devastating ease, proved as a fleeing man caught a backhand swing form the shield and promptly snapped in half. Blades will not do, even such as we bear. Rhaegal stood was their best chance, but how to call him? Then Sam remembered his trumpet. Its note filled the forest, a call to fight to the men around him. Here, he thought. Hopefully it would bring Ghost at least, Jon's second pair of eyes. The note squeaked as an arrow split the trumpet in twain, died as Sam spluttered uselessly on its end. Sigorn shouted a curse as his sword failed even to break the crown the dead king wore, all while the bones continued to pursue the Thenn slowly around the clearing. All while the archer waits for his next opportunity! At last the rest of the men overcame (or at least got around) the monsters bearing down on them, Sam recognizing Dickon even with his face coated in dirt, ash and sweat. His younger brother's eyes went wide at the sight of the dead king. The bronze sword in his bony grip cared only for Sigorn though, and Sam knew the big man could not run forever. Sam ran for the lot of them, panting even as the fires raged, swallowing wights and trees with equal ease.
"I need the king." he told Dickon, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Find him, or his wolf. The big white one. Say we need the dragon to ring this place in bronze, that an Other especially worth killing is worth the peril it puts us in." Dickon swallowed, eyes still following the dead king's ponderous path. "Go now, ser." He looked to the men behind Dickon. They had managed, barely, to beat off the monsters' rabid claws, but… A folly, he knew at once. Mine own. But I will have this day, if it must be my last. "There's an Other about, an archer that even blindfolded would shame Harlon the Hunter." Mention of House Tarly's famed founder made Lord Randyll's bald head snap to after he'd ordered a contingent to help keep the Red King off Sigorn. "We have to trap him in the flames, ensure he can't escape. That means giving him reason to linger until at last we catch him out."
"My lord, the entire forest is afire. If we don't leave now, the Others won't need to slay us themselves." Lord Hightower protested through his panting.
"Correct. We don't need to lose the entire corps of infantry in our first engagement with the Others proper. He's already shot at me a time or two and missed, no hunter's ego will let that stand. The rest of you must go before the fire makes the decision for you." They stared at him. Oh, now the lot of you finally shut up. "Go now. Get word to the king. Ensure the hunter does not escape." The younger among them, the sons of spring and knights of summer, looked singularly ready to obey Sam to the letter. It was not the case with the older men, the seasoned and the veteran. From their midst, Lord Randyll stepped forward.
"Let me stay with you." He knew the voice, yet the words were nothing he ever thought he'd hear. And I've heard the bloody true Tongue. "My house will endure after me, my lord. As will yours. And my running days are done." A few men of like mind began to shuffle forward, some limping heavily. The sellswords and tribesmen, the hedge knights and landless lordlings, those too tired turn back. Men who shared their beds with swords instead of wives, who carried scars instead of children. Franklyn Fossoway grinned and guffawed.
"Taste of Glory, the red-apple Fossoway words. How about a Taste of My Bastard Arse for the gold?" Ready to reach the end of the long, hard road, and ready to do it following me.
Those going took their leave then, Dickon embracing their lord father before he left.
"Might be we'll get lucky and the fires will link on their own." Franklyn said.
"Not tightly enough. Others can extinguish fires anyhow. We have to be sure the Others lose an officer tonight. First, though, let's put an end to that." He pointed to the dead king, carving through everything within reach be it flesh, wood or stone. "Let's get the helm off, see how it likes a few dozen blows to its wardless skull." Then they rushed the dead king, spearmen trying to prod the jawbone crown off, others working to trip up its plodding feet. Finally Sigorn simply leaped on his back, bellowing in the Old Tongue as he pried the king's crown off. He caught a bronze gauntlet for his trouble, toppling off dazed and coughing blood. Though they battered the exposed skull half a hundred times the dead king gave no sign it felt the blows, throwing men around like sacks of grain. Having blinked the stars from his eyes Sigorn took up his sword again, the massive Thenn the one to split the king's bony brow. At once it focused on Sigorn, blows half as fast but thrice as hard. At last fatigue managed to slow his arm, a hair too slow to stop the king running him through with his bronze blade, now streaked with red. Sigorn did not scream, did not topple. Even as blood bubbled from his lips he smashed his sword down on the king's skull again, again, again, shock turning the Thenn into a tornado. Though the king managed to work its blade free and even run him through again, Sigorn only howled red spittle into the splintering skull before him before he put his sword through the hollow where once a nose had been. The flames that ran along Sigorn's blade raced along the bones beneath the warded armor to gnaw at them like a thousand starving rats. The king collapsed, legs no longer able to carry it in its bronze shell. Sigorn, Magnar of Thenn raised his flaming sword. Heedless of the red gushing from his belly, he gave another scream and took the Red King's crumbling skull from its shoulders with a single blow.
Sam made to go to him when Sigorn followed the king to earth not a breath later, an arrow nestled in his left eye socket. The flames well through with the king had spread to him as well. A small comfort, Sam thought, trying not to break. Not in front of the men who elected to stay with me. A roar from above drove his grief away and more importantly, he realized, took the unseen hunter's eyes off him for a precious moment. The armor is warded against the flames, Sam thought. Numbly he pulled the breastplate from the ashes, the wards upon it soaking up heat that would have burned Sam's hand to the bone. He put it on over his jerkin. The gauntlets will be too big, the greaves as well. But at least now I'll have some small protection even as I hunt the hunter through the fires. Where are you, my lord? It wasn't the slight form of an Other he caught off to the right, but something large and winged, beneath the burning treeline. "I'll wager you've heard of me. I'm Sam the Slayer, the famed Lord of Highgarden." he called as loud as he could manage into the flames that raged here, there, and everywhere. Somewhere, his lord father shouted something in answer. Or was that Franklyn Fossoway, or the Great Walrus? Something cold delved the depths of his stomach and for a moment Sam thought he'd gone queasy. Then he saw the arrow sprouting from his front, the breastplate not warded against razor ice it seemed. No matter, Sam thought, that just means he's still here. He took a breath, took a step. I remember this. Like at the Fist of the First Men. Take a step, Samwell. Good, now another. Now anoth- The numbing in his gut turned into a queer sort of fluttery feeling and he heard something splatter at and around his feet. The Other was gone one moment and there the next, eyes like blue stars staring into Sam's. Blinded, he saw. Most likely deafened as well. It became a trial to keep his eyes open, much less stay upright. Rhaegal shot past overhead. Distantly, Sam wondered if Dickon succeeded in finding Jon after all. The shape beyond the fires followed, golden fire filling the gaps in the bronze. Sam smiled as the dragons circled above, his tongue stilling in his mouth when he tried to speak. The world was fast filling with fire, but Sam had life enough in him to draw back his arm and drive it into the hunter's face as hard as he could. The Other's blood on his face froze an eyeball solid and cracked his teeth, but by then Sam didn't care. The cold of the night and the heat of the dragonfire both were falling away. The face before him had become Gilly's, and it was fine by Samwell Tarly that it was the last he would see.