KING'S LANDING – WESTEROS

Ser Jorah Mormont and Daario lingered outside the Black Cells, listening to the constant pound of dead flesh against the Ironwood slab. The Mountain, undead, threw himself into the door, shaking the hinges in violent bursts. Occasional sobs from the accompanying cells drew a concerned glance from Jorah but any thought of freeing their captives was quickly dashed by tales told on Bear Island of half-monsters with the cry of a child and flesh from mutated abominations, cast into darkness from their first breath. The Black Cells were a cursed monstrosity and neither of them wanted to spend a moment more in their depths in case it latched on and dragged them into shackles.

"How long do you think he'll keep that up?" Asked Daario, tightening his grip on Brightroar with every unnerving thud. It sounded exactly like the Jade Gates holding back the hoard. Those had failed...

Jorah was not a man to guess. "What's dead may never die," he murmured Daario's House words, with an air of contempt. "I dare say these doors have held worse."

"Worse? I wonder what else they keep locked up down here..." Daario took a fresh torch from the wall. Its flames reached hungrily for his arm but Daario lifted it to the darkness where the cool wind tamed the heat. He inched deeper into the hallway, looking curiously from cell to cell but none of them had windows and so they remained nameless wooden faces. "Who knows, we might find a few friends. Twyin bought silence with Littlefinger's loose purse. After he died the coffers emptied but the silence remained. I am sure both Cersei and Robert tossed plenty of undeserving souls into the shadows to pay for it."

Jorah hesitated at the mention of Robert's name. He had fought a rebellion for that king and his rule had fashioned a form of peace among the survivors. If Robert had been as careful with his wife as he was in war, this whole sorry saga may have played to a different tune.

"Whatever they were when they were set in chains, they are not those things any more," Jorah warned. "If our queen wishes us to find out their names I will come back here myself and open the doors, one by one." Jorah swiped a torch of his own but instead of following Daario, he turned toward the exit. "Daenerys will be waiting for us. She is not a patient creature."

Daario shrugged. "Perhaps Varys could spare you the bother. I hear he has an inventory on hell. An unkind voice might accuse him of putting some of those names in here himself."

"An accusation I've never heard him deny." Jorah replied flatly.

Daario sighed, observing his companion. More than anyone he seemed to walk from one world to the next, untouched. "You don't change, you know that – Mormont? You've got about as much variety as a Frey. I suppose that is an honourable quality in a knight. Loyalty and stability. Not so much for Ironborn. The ocean is a tempestuous bitch and so too those that live at her lips. Your kind march dutifully toward war in all your ranks and files – we plunge into the battle, cock first, eh?"

"To be fair," Jorah's tone did not change but there was a definite twinkle in his eye, "I rode into this war on the back of a dragon."

All Daario could do was laugh. The incongruous sound echoed through the labyrinth.

"The queen will wish to visit Dragonstone." Jorah ignored Daario and headed up the stairs which were decorated with puddles of his own blood. It was nearly indiscernible from the oily, black stone except when the torchlight danced across its surface. He could have sworn that the surface drank from the horror.

Daario sheathed his sword, deciding his ill-tempered friend was protection enough. As he scaled the steps ahead, Daario noticed Jorah's other sword catch the firelight. Dawn. He'd seen it before. Once. In a crude sketch in a maester's scroll. His father did not believe in soft education. Words were for the weak creatures of the world but even as a child he'd understood that knowledge was as sharp as any sword. The relic around Mormont's waist was more than a weapon. It was a message to the lords of Westeros, one that their honour would understand better than violence or creatures made of fire.

"Strangely I missed your company," Daario added, after walking for a while alone in the dark passages with Jorah. "Out on the flats behind Old Ghis, best I could do for companionship was an ill-tempered donkey that said less than you and a pack of toothless children who tried to unwrap my bandages during the freezing, desert nights. I honestly thought that was how I would die. Laying in the sand with a star-filled sky. Nothing to my name, not even a sword."

"You certainly landed on your feet." It was as close as Jorah could do for a compliment. "Aside from the-" Jorah hinted at Daario's assortment of beads and shells woven into his long, braided hair. He looked as though he'd washed up after a storm but to be fair, the dark tattoos on Jorah's skin made him look more like a demon from the Shadowlands than a disgraced Lord.

"Odd, how the gods work." Daario mused. "I've chased the tide all my life but to find the break I had to turn away from the shore. There are nights when I worry that those same gods want me alive for a reason." And that they slipped poison into his veins via the Bloodstone, sending him visions of their sickening dreams.

"If the gods have reasons, they are unlikely to be to our advantage."

"That is precisely why I worry."

"Fear keeps the Queen awake," Jorah admitted. "She does not say," he amended carefully, "but Westeros leaves her restless. All she ever wanted was to set foot upon its shores – stand with the ghosts of her kin but now that she is here it is as though she cannot wait to mount her dragon and leave all of this behind. She walks into the night and stares, for hours, at the fading edge of the red star. I think she can sense the bleached dragon bones crushed into sand along the edge of Blackwater Bay."

"Who can blame her?" Daario admitted. "The truth about her family is that half of them were mad and the others were-"

Jorah turned so that the flame of his torch wavered a fraction too close to Daario's face, quieting him. "The Queen is under no illusions in regard to her family. I doubt she would even hold true to her earlier threats concerning Jaime Lannister."

"His head would be improved by a spike. Those golden locks – tussled by a stiff sea breeze..."

"You may be right," Jorah turned back to the tunnel and continued up the stairs until they reached the ground level. They abandoned the torches and stroke through the rubble, side by side. "But killing everyone in the realm is not a solution to our looming problem."

"The war in the North?"

"Peace, after the war."

"Ever the optimist… If I were the Queen's advisor I'd advise her to leave the peace negotiations until after the war is won. There's no point wasting time promising things to corpses. This is Varys' doing. Scheming little shit. He climbs and climbs and climbs thinking the ladder is without end. It's about time someone took him down a few rungs. You disapprove… Your silence has a certain tone to it."

"Varys is not a complex man. Plotting keeps him out of trouble. Let him waste all the time he likes orchestrating a future neither you nor I is likely to see."

"Speak for yourself, old man. I intend to survive all this shit. I 'ave a brother to kill and a Salt Throne to sit."

Jorah wondered if Daario's conversation had a point or if he'd simply tired of his fellow pirates. From what he understood many were slave creatures from the whispering edges of the Jade Sea who couldn't speak a word of the Common Tongue. The only language they spoke was that of wine and blood. "Feel that?" He paused and placed his hand upon the stone. There were tremors running through the rock like a series of panicked heart beats. "The city is collapsing."

"Not the victory Dany was hoping for," Daario agreed, when they finally reached the entrance hall where a window allowed them to peek at the destruction. "Haven't managed a proper look at it yet. Not sure I want to."

King's Landing did not burn for long. The stone buildings were gutted with flames crawling along the narrow passageways lined with cloth and oil. The ashes of their contents were left plastered against the walls while the wooden beams that held their roofs up smouldered with heat that would last for days. Fleabottom was a sodden ruin. Bodies lay in the mud. The gulls waited, stalking in wandering flocks waiting for the heat to pass. There was even a storm murdering the edge of the horizon leaving fragments of light sparking at random.

"Cersei was mad to keep Wildfire stockpiles beneath the city," Jorah sighed. "Even the purest mix is prone to random explosion. I swear to the old gods we heard the explosion in Old Town when I was a boy. It shook the foundations of Westeros."

"Cersei is an evil cunt, to be sure." Daario breathed – his nose to the barred window. There was a distinct smell of burning flesh in the wind. He knew it well from his days with cannibals. "But you and I both know that it was one of the dragons that set the whole mess alight. They were meant as shadows in the sky. A bit of theatre. Varys was so sure that they would make the Lannister forces more likely to surrender the city yet here we are… I wonder, if Varys is such a smart bastard, why didn't he see this coming?"

Worse, Jorah had warned Daenerys about using dragons as a front for war. They were wild creatures, made for open fields of battle. "She blames herself," Jorah turned away from the window. "Rhaegal was afraid but it was Cersei that lit the Sept of Balor first."

"We must hope the people remember Cersei's part," Daario reply, "and not the dragon circling overhead."

"Daenerys is not her father..." Jorah added quietly.

"Never said she was," Daario assured him, yet they had both seen the danger in her eyes. They could lie all they liked but the queen scared them. "You better do something about that shoulder. Can't have you bleeding out on me. You'd be a bastard to carry."

Jorah unhooked the remaining leather ties that held the plated armour over his shoulder. Part of it had been folded nearly in half by a blow. At the centre, The Mountain's blade had penetrated the metal and snapped at his flesh. A clean strip of raw meat had bled so much it had cleaned itself, still dribbling over the silver. Unable to reach it easily, Daario helped. He wound several strips of material around the wound and pinned it in place with one of his ornately formed bronze pins. Jorah watched closely. The pain did not bother him half so much as the writing on his arm. It bothered Daario too who paused more than once to observe it but the words meant nothing to him. If he had questions, he kept them to himself.

"Dragonstone is a pirate lair," Jorah continued, averting his gaze as Daario peeled a piece of cloth from his flesh. "Is it true what they say about the mountain – that there are lakes of fire beneath its feet?"

"There are tunnels, some built by the Targaryens, others by fire long before. At the centre there is a lake of burning metal that growls through the night. Killed one of the pirates. It is not so dangerous as the fumes. Those collect in the narrow passages and choke the life from your throat. We found dozens of skeletons in the dark. They'd been building up for years."

"And the Queen's treasure from Valyria?"

Daario did not dispute that the pilfered weapons and jewels from Valyria belonged to the Queen. "Buried in the tunnels under guard except for some shipments that we sent North to the Wall under her request. Black glass and shit. One thing I did not tell Varys, there were ravens waiting for us in the castle dating back since Stannis abandoned the place. A perfect record of the realm. What? You do not trust my men?"

"They are pirates," said Jorah simply. "They've probably eaten the ravens."

"Aye, they are pirates," Daario did not dispute it, "but a thousand of them fought for the Queen today. Gold makes them honest. The shit they saw in Yin – that makes them loyal."

"And if they saw what waited for them in the North, they'd run."

Daario finished with Jorah's arm and leaned back, resting against the stone wall with the soft hum of explosions tapering away as the ruination of the city neared completion. "Look..." He began, understanding that there was a gulf of mistrust between them. "You're not bothered by pirates any more than I am by Dothraki. What really troubles your conscience, Mormont, is that I am Ironborn." He watched Jorah flinched and knew that he was right. "I'll always be Ironborn. Always fear the Drowned God waiting for my soul beneath the waves. Always remember the Salt Crown and my father's ghostly words but – if the Wildings and the Night's Watch can stand with one king then you and I can wait in the wings of a dragon."

"You lied about who you were."

"And you plotted against Dany to square your debt to the Crown. The world changed us both and I'm not sure either of us could return to our home and slip back into our family ways. We are as different from each other as we are to our past selves. That is probably for the best."

Jorah knew it. Standing on Bear Island in the snow he understood that he could never return to those peaceful forest hunts. They were gone – lost to the ice. Maybe Daario's world was gone as well, swept away by the sea.

"If we are going to trust each other," Jorah replied, "then tell me what you are hiding. It is not the Queen's treasure and it is not your intent. What then? I can see the shadows in your eyes. What were you doing in the Red Keep when your orders were to lead the pirate fleet into battle? You should have been on the waves not scurrying through the shadows of the Red Keep."

"Only if you agree to keep it between us alone. Swear it on your honour. On your mother." For Daario knew she lay as ash upon the frozen shore.

Normally Jorah would not have agreed but there was something about the smell of burning flesh wafting through the open window in the castle, fusing to the salt and sticking to the walls in a terrible, oily soot that swayed him otherwise. Once sworn, Daario told him of Tommen, smuggled out via the depths of the Red Keep and into the hands of the Braavosi banker.

"I suppose you would have killed him," Daario mused, wiping the blood from his sword before re-sheathing it.

"That would have been the smart thing to do," Jorah agreed. "Keeping a pet Lannister is not wise."

"You've got one..."

"Tyrion was an accident but no, I would not have killed him. Tyrion make a case for Tommen's life before the Queen sailed to war. She was prepared to spare the young king but – with him presumed dead, perhaps there is an opportunity." Although a small, dark part of Jorah knew that things would be much simpler if the boy were indeed dead. He was a child now but in time he'd grow into another usurper. For all his temper, Robert Baratheon had been right about Daenerys. He'd be far from surprised to look upon the smoking remains of King's Landing with a dragon sitting on three sides of the city walls. "Where is he now?"

"On a boat with Tycho, headed to Dragonstone."

"He cannot be there when the Queen arrives."

"Where else can I possibly send him? No – no..." Daario shook his head, catching Jorah's eye. "Highgarden is a pit of vipers. The Queen of Thorns would sell him for a crate of crab meat."

"Olenna does whatever is in her best interest and at the moment her best interest is to keep as many pokers in the fire as possible. There's nothing the Tyrells do better than hide secrets, they keep them in their hedgegroves. Tommen will be safe in Highgarden."

"You mean he'll be a hostage."

"He'll be out of sight from birds and spiders alike."

Well there at least, Daario could not argue. Even if the Queen was serious about her offer to Tyrion, Varys would not lose any sleep trading the boy for something lucrative. "If that is your wish, I must speak with Olenna before her ship makes landfall – and that banker shit, before he has an original idea."

"I'll make your excuses to the Queen. We will call on you in Dragonstone before the week is out. Make sure the boy is gone by then."

"This I will do," Daario agreed. "And Mormont..." He waited for the knight to hesitate. "One day, when all of this is done, we shall talk about this peace of yours."


Drogon landed in two inches of ash. It puffed around his enormous, clawed feet in plumes so heavy they immediately sank into a layer of filth. Daenerys slid down his scales, dangling from the last protrusion of bone behind his wing before setting foot on the roof of the Red Keep.

The entire turret trembled under Drogon's weight – shuddering as he flapped his wings, lifted his snout and roared at the vista. His brothers called back but kept to their perches. After, a soft, mournful song filled the air. Did dragons lament their fate? There was something in Drogon's unblinking eye that spoke of regret but then he turned that eye toward the North and left Daenerys to her thoughts.

Daenerys wandered to the short stone wall that rimmed the tower and placed her hands on the stone. It was grey up close. Miserable and brittle. It was the smoke and rising sun that painted false colour in its dead flesh. She picked at it then brushed the sediment from under her nails.

In the harbour below, the Lannister fleet had been dismantled. Unsullied manned the boats along with Dornish who'd been ferried in from the mainland to help with the enormous task of joining the fleet. She had lost nearly as many ships as she'd gained but the Lannister fleet was better suited to the shallow, rough waters circling Westeros. As soon as they were seaworthy they'd sail into the Narrow Sea and ferry the majority of her army North.

A large stone building crumbled below, collapsing in on itself. She remembered Braavos and the cowering banker dipping his head while the walls of his world tumbled to dust. The path to the throne is paved with suffering. The debt was paid. The throne awaited.

The steps within the Keep spiralled in a tight coil, each too high for her small statue. Her left hand pressed against the wall for support while the occasional window cut the darkness with angry columns of light that quickly died on the stone. Darkness. Light. Darkness. Light. She stepped between the cyclic hell. Several levels down she heard the first shuffles of life. It belonged to castle staff. Cooks and maids, lowly squires and all the rest of the silent army that kept the Crown afloat. They cowered at her presence, shying away from her silver hair and unnatural eyes. Daenerys knew that she had the look of her father and all the pale ghosts of her family empire. These people knew only the years of terror and nothing of the golden age that had come before when the realm flourished in vast stretches of peace.

"Khaleesi..."

Daenerys trembled at the utterance. It came from ahead. There, on the other side of the room stood her knight. He cut a lonely figure against the stone wall. He could have been a statue pulled from a crypt.

"Ser, you are injured," she said, as she approached. He waved her off and fell into line beside her, guiding her through the maze of hallways that filled the innards of the Red Keep.

He made no comment on her bloodied robes. "Tyrion and Varys await you in the throne room."

"Then it is done?"

"You may see for yourself, Your Grace."

The doors to the great throne room were vast. Carved from Ironwood it usually took four men to push them open. On this occasion there was no need. One of them had shaken from its hinges and fallen inwards. It lay at the bottom of the steps, split down the middle. The other hung at a slant, threatening to do the same. Daenerys picked her way through and entered the long, vaulted room.

It was larger than she had envisioned. There was a bank of windows running the entire length of the right hand wall, designed for the light to pour through its coloured glass designs. Today, the sky was obscured by roving clouds of smoke, some of which crawled in through the broken windows. This left the hall in an unnatural twilight with nothing but the calderas of flame affixed to each column to give light to the room. Daenerys paid no attention to any of it. Her attention was drawn to the ugly tangle of iron on the far side. A tribute to servitude upon which men sat. The Iron Throne, in all its wretched glory. A lion lay draped over it with a golden, tangled mane – eyes open, even in death and a crown at her feet.

Tyrion and Varys scrambled to their feet. They shared a wary exchange then braced themselves. Cersei's corpse remained exactly where she'd been slain except the purple marks on her neck from the chain which had darkened considerably.

Daenerys stopped at the base of the stairs directly in front of the throne and spent long minutes observing the previous occupant of its power. Certainly Tommen had been the king but everybody in the realm knew that it was Cersei who sat upon the throne. Now look at her… High cheekbones and a fair complexion had become sunken cheeks and paper-thin renderings. Her flesh cracked open. Fragile and dead. Daenerys felt absolutely nothing for the woman she'd never met.

"What happened here?" She asked instead. "Surrender is not normally such a quiet affair."

Tyrion and Varys shifted their gaze to Jorah but his steely blue eyes gave them no hope of assistance. It was Tyrion who eventually took a hesitant step toward Daenerys, his head bowed in fear. "This is not exactly what it looks like," he attempted to explain. Varys flinched and Tyrion realised that he was going to have to produce a better explanation. "Okay… It's mostly what it looks like."

"Did you kill your sister?"

Tyrion tilted his head from side to side. "Mostly."

"Ignoring my order that she be kept alive."

"Ignoring is a-"

"Then yes, it is exactly as it looks, Lord Tyrion." Daenerys' cool tone settled in a layer of frost at their feet. The building gave another alarming shake as Drogon paced around on the castle turret. There was a drawn out silence where nobody quite knew what the dragon queen would do about Tyrion's defiance. "You earned your vengeance," Daenerys eventually replied, "but this is the last time you kill someone without asking me first. Clear?"

"Absolutely crystal..." Tyrion assured her, bowing even lower this time. He slipped his sister's chain into his robes and stepped away from the throne, allowing the queen to climb to the vile sculpture of melted swords.

"Where is the boy?"

This time it was Varys who answered. "We're not entirely certain. Dead, we think. I've sent feelers out but the city is in chaos. I could not confirm the whereabouts of my left arm at present. Wherever he is, dead or alive, king Tommen is not plotting a rebellion any time soon. The city is yours, my queen. The kingdom..."

"The Seven Kingdoms are not a pile of blackened swords..." Daenerys could smell death on the throne. The longer she looked, the less inclined she was to seat herself – even without Cersei's corpse. "Lord Varys, you will join your birds and confirm Tommen's fate. If he is alive you will bring him here, to me, exactly as you found him and if he is dead you bring back whatever part of him you find. Go…"

Varys went immediately. Tyrion closed his eyes, trying not to imagine his young nephew face down in the bay, picked at by sharks or hanging from the palace walls. All he could do was pray that the queen honoured her promise earlier and spared his life if he were found breathing.

"What happens next?"

"Your Grace?"

Daenerys rephrased her question. "With the heart of the empire in ruins, what happens next?"

Tyrion swallowed. "Many more are going to die in the next few days," he admitted. "Sending the survivors to Highgarden and surrounding towns will help feed them but you cannot displace a mass of people and hope for the peace to keep. Even if they don't starve, there'll be strife. King's Landing needs to be patched up as quickly as possible if you want to stay on the throne. Then there are the other lords..."

"Which lords?"

"The lords who stand to lose a great deal from your conquest. They will march on the capital as soon as they hear of the massacre."

"It is better we do not fight those battles within the city walls," Jorah interrupted the dwarf. "This city does not compliment our army. Open fields, that is where we will win our battles."

Tyrion nodded. "Ser Jorah is correct. You have dragons and Dothraki – they need space to to be effective."

"I am not looking for another massacre..."

"You will have one all the same," Tyrion warned. "And you will need to fly to Highgarden with a dragon immediately. Lord Tarly will be the first to raise arms and he won't go for the Red Keep. He's too smart. He'll march on Highgarden and take your allies from under your wing. You cannot allow him to seize the realm's largest food store."

"I cannot leave King's Landing the hour I conquered it."

"Yet you must."

"And see another Lannister in possession of the Iron Throne?"

"I am far from alone, Your Grace," Tyrion assured her.


"I don't like it," Daenerys stormed along the wall that circled the Red Keep. The pale stone was an extension of the natural cliff. Parts of it were formed from jagged rises of bedrock while the rest was neatly stacked blocks of granite which sparkled in the fragmented sunlight. The wind rolled over the top and beat against the queen and her knight who followed closely behind. It helped clear the smoke which was now streaming to the South. Daenerys followed the wall all the way to the centre where an old watch platform sat abandoned with a short wall all that kept her from stumbling into the waves below.

"There is merit in Tyrion's logic..." Jorah was forced to admit. He was still dripping blood. It followed him like a trail of breadcrumbs.

"So you agree with him?" She replied, her attention on the waves and the ships sinking into the depths of Blackwater Bay. "There was a time when you refused to agree with him on principle."

"Everything from this point is about survival." He reminded the queen. "How many times have we looked death in the face, you and I?" Jorah was careful not to approach. Like her dragons, she could snap. There were weeks there in the Red Waste where he was certain that they'd join the sands, wandering forever across the desert as ghosts. "I will do it, if you command. Alone. I can take Viserion."

Her silver hair rustled as she shook her head. "I am not going to ask you to burn an ancient house to the ground, Ser. That is not what you pledged when you offered me your sword. There is no honour in slaughter." And he had worked so hard to regain his. "Dragons have no need of honour, so I will do it. They already call me mad."

"I am coming with you."

"No, you are not."

"Khaleesi, please-"

Daenerys stopped him by turning and placing a hand on his chest. The armour plate was deformed with axe and blade marks. "Stay here. Keep an eye on Tyrion and Varys. I will not be alone. The bulk of the Tyrell army is at Highgarden. This Lord-"

"-Tarly..."

"Tarly. He will die and that will be that."

Jorah reached up and placed his hand over hers, both of them on his chest. There was no heartbeat discernible through the steel, only the warmth from his flesh radiating into it, proving that he was alive. "Take Sam Tarly with you," he offered instead. "He is the legal heir to the Horn Hill. If he is lord then you will gain an army as well as a removing a threat without breaking the laws of the realm."

"A little less blood shed..."

"A touch more honour..."

Their peace was broken by a startled raven taking to the air.


"I – I can't be a lord..." Sam stammered. The queen had landed her dragon on the bank of the river. Alone, she cut a path to him. Now he'd been picked out of the group like a snack. It was a common tactic among the cruellest men at The Wall.

"You will be what I command," Daenerys reminded the frightened man. "When you came to me I let you live as a favour to my Northern knight, not because I had any special interest in you. Now I am offering you a chance to take your place as lord of your family home, a right which you were denied and you'll not entertain the idea?"

"Ignoring the murder of my father and brother," which for Sam was a very difficult thing to ignore. True, he didn't like either of them but they were his family. "I am Night's Watch and a maester. I'm not allowed to own land."

"Or take a woman and have a child..."

Well… She had him there. "I can't do it."

"You will do it." She softened slightly. "There is nothing I can do about your father's life but your brother will be given the opportunity to take the Black. They need men at The Wall more than ever and I am confident that you will see him again. The rest of your family can remain in their home and most of your men will survive with their lives. Tarly… This is a gift. My advisors would have me burn it all. Is that what you prefer? Because I will do that, Tarly. I will take my dragon and I will reduce Horn Hill to a pile of cinders to light the evening sky if it means stopping a rebellion before it starts."

"Of-of course not," he replied softly, flashes of the horror filling his mind. There wasn't a child in the realm that hadn't heard the tales of Harrenhall. "But – Gilly… Little Sam… I cannot leave them here on their own. I made them a promise."

Daenerys knew all about promises. "I will make sure that you keep your promise. Besides, is it not better to have them safe inside Horn Hill's walls instead of the front lines of war? This is no place to raise a child. You cannot think to march them into the snow."

"That's not entirely it," Sam finally admitted, with a forlorn look to his Northern king. "I left the citadel to find Jon. You see, I made a promise to him as well, that I'd help him and how can I do that if I'm all the way down at Horn Hill? It's miles from anything - 'cept Highgarden."

"Ravens..." Daenerys hissed at him. "You are not a man of the sword. Continue your work for your Northern lord and hold the peace for me. And where's that dragon of yours?"

"Oh that. Ash. She – ah, she flew off. Well swam off, actually."

"An entire army surrounds you and you lost a dragon?"

All Sam could do was shrug. It wasn't exactly his dragon.

"You will ride with me on Drogon," Daenerys snapped, ignoring the utter panic spreading across his features, "and your woman and child will follow under guard."


"It is the right thing ter do," Jon assured Sam, laying his hand heavily on his friend's shoulder. "I'd do the same, if I were her."

"Bit ridiculous though, innit'?" Sam mused, barely able to conjure the image. "Me lord of Horn Hill. I can barely lift the bloody family sword let alone defend the place from common thieves. What am I supposed to do in the middle of a war?" Sam whined helplessly. "Fight – that'd be a laugh. The only thing I've ever managed to kill was a Whitewalker."

"You won't have ter fight anyone. The Queen's word is protection enough and if that fails, Highgarden is only a shout away."

That's if they can see anything beyond their thorny walls, Sam thought, rather unkindly. "And what are you going to do?" Sam eyed Jon sadly. "Die again and again?" He lowered his voice and leaned closer. "Speak to Quaithe while you are here."

"I am done with priestesses."

"Not for her magic," Sam insisted. "For her knowledge."

Jon simply eyed the smouldering city, considering. In the end he gave no assurances. "This conquest is happening," he lowered his voice, "all we can do is limit how many die. We're going to need every breathing soul to hold a sword. They are no good to us in the ground once the snow starts falling. Then none of this will matter."

"It'll never snow this far South." Sam had expected a rebuff but Jon was worryingly silent. "So, are you doing a deal with the Targaryen queen – is that why you came?"

"My father used to say that you cannot reason with a sword. The only coin it takes is blood. The Targaryen is here to conquer the Seven Kingdoms but the North will never bend the knee to a dragon. I have to find a way through the impasse because part of her army is already at The Wall. She has brought more men than the North has ever seen from the lands across The Narrow Sea. This..." He waved his hand at the army around them, "is a fraction of what arrived at Eastwatch, hemming us in. There are more to the West, sailing the edge of the world like shadows."

"That's a good thing though, isn' it? Men manning the abandoned castles?"

"Easterners," Jon shook his head, "who will soon starve and turn to reeving. I have to know, Tarly, is this woman a ruler or a conqueror?" The question was not for Sam to answer. "The snows are getting heavier. We are running out of time. Can her word be trusted? You've spent time with her."

"A small amount of time."

"Sam – please."

"All right. All right… Yes. Far as I know the Queen honours her word and if she doesn't the Mormont holds her to it." Sam dipped his head. "I'll do what I can in the South. Keep an eye on things."

"Try not to get killed."

"There's always that. Don't worry, Gilly will protect me. She's fiercer than anything we'll find in the snow. This – this better not be the last time I see you..."

"I'll make sure that it's not," Jon promised.


"Ah – easy..." Sam sized up the quivering beast. Drogon was an immense wall of hostility, flexing his claws in the mud as he approached with a small swag of things. Gilly and Little Sam watched on, which meant that he had to be brave so as not to look the fool. There was a harness strapped around its belly but it was on its last buckle hole. Soon Drogon would be too large to harness. Restraint or not, the dragon did not take kindly to the intrusion or the careful touch of Sam's hand on his scales. "Oh – it's warm..." He added, quite surprised. "I mean, I know they breathe fire an' all but I didn't expect to feel it."

Daenerys remained in her blood soaked clothes. She was on the river bank with the Mormont knight on his knee in front of her, head dipped low and sad.

"You be a good dragon now," Sam attempted to appeal to the creature's honour. The Unsullied held firm on its straps while Sam scaled the enormous mount. It was easier than he'd expected with large protrusions of bone acting as stairs and hand holds. Drogon flinched but did not attempt to flick him off. The other two dragons circled over head. They'd returned to hunting Blackwater Bay, picking corpses out of the water. Gilly blew him a kiss from below. The strange Dayne lingered nearby while Davos and Jon took another walk by the sea. Quaithe lingered at the tree line. Then, when the queen was ready, she vaulted onto Drogon's back and slid her feet into the holds of the saddle, shuffling against the leather. Next she lay forward, pressing her chest flat to the saddle and hissed Valyrian words to the beast.


Jorah watched the dragon climb through the smoke, circle several times like an eagle climbing the thermals, then turn South and vanish over the forest. She'd be in Highgarden before morning. As soon as she was gone, Jorah strode toward the sea in search of the Stark. He found him seated on a volcanic rock, face to the sea – eyes closed. Yes, definitely a Stark but a dragon too.

"You can hear Mormonts coming," Jon said, without opening his eyes. "A steady pair of feet, my father used to say. An axe over one shoulder and wolf pelt on the other."

"Uncle," Jorah clarified, leaving Jon in no doubt that he knew everything the queen knew. "Starks don't belong in the South," he warned.

"I do not intend to stay in the South," Jon opened his eyes and looked up to the Mormont knight. He was taller than most men and broad. A nightmare in battle. "I am here to talk."

"Ravens talk."

"And who trusts the wings of a raven?" It was clear that Mormont would not sit so Jon stood, taking a few steps back so that he did not have to crane his neck to look him in the eye. "The last King in the North ordered your head to the gods. That oath belongs to me and I forgive it."

Jorah understood what the young Stark was trying to do but only the Crown could forgive his debt and the queen had done that years ago. That said, it cost him nothing to dip his head in thanks. "That makes you more forgiving than my House. I will die an outsider."

"Mormonts are sworn to the Starks. Your House helped us take Winterfell back from the terror of the Boltons. If it wasn't for Mormonts the North would not be united. What are you doing, Mormont, all the way down here on the arm of a dragon? There are many stories about you – many of them cruel but you are none of the things those whispers accuse."

Except the ones that claimed he'd laid with fire. "I am some of those things," Jorah warned the wolf king. It was difficult to look a Stark in the eye and lie. The blood that bound them ran thousands of years thick, like fucking Weirwood sap. Whatever his heart, his soul belonged to the North and its kings. "I serve the queen and the North. The two are not apart."

"Is that why you were sighted at the Battle for Bear Island and the queen's army landed at Eastwatch? Did you convince her to send men?"

Jorah shifted his weight immediately. "Prince Bu Gai landed at Eastwatch?" He looked to the Red Keep. He had to tell Varys at once. "I was not certain they would find their way across the Shivering Sea. It has been months since we spoke."

"I am not a fool, Mormont. Your queen knows what walks beyond The Wall. She is headed North, as surely as the winter creeps South. I am here to make sure that the rivers stay white, not red."

"A man hears many things," Jorah crouched, taking a seat on the black rock. His blood dried over his skin in terrible stains. He wondered how he must look. A monster. A demon. They were all things he heard the children whisper as they cowered in the streets of King's Landing. There was nothing quite so soul destroying as the eyes of frightened children. "You died at The Wall and a red witch brought you back. What does that make you? I have a witch who can't decide and a grandmaester who thinks you might be a walking god but I have seen gods and you are not one of them." At this, the Stark laughed. "This amuses you?"

Jon shook his head and looked toward the bay where ships trailed left and right, one mass moving toward Dragonstone and the other sailing South. "How did two Northerners end up keeping company with priestesses from Asshai? What would our gods think – what would our fathers say..."

"I know what yours would say," Jorah admitted, acknowledging a moment of kinship. He was careful not to let it linger. There were plenty of eyes watching. "My father, I am not so sure. It seems I did not know the man at all."

Jon fixed Jorah with his half-dead eyes, reached forward and held his arm. "I was with 'im when he died." He felt the knight shift but Jon tightened his grip. "He wanted me ter find you and tell you-"

Jorah shook his head, dangerous. "Snow, you still your words."

"-that he forgives you." Jon watched the knight's head shake, rejecting the information. His hands shifted to Jorah's shoulders, pulling him down a fraction. "With his dying words. His thoughts were of you, his boy. He knew exactly where you were and forgave."

Finally, Jorah managed to meet the Northern King's eye with his vision, albeit, blurred. When Tyrion delivered the news of his father's death he'd been able to walk away and leave him on the beach. For the next week he'd had the expanse of cursed coastline and ruined Smoking Sea to keep his company. There was no running any more. Indeed, the boy Snow was the breathing embodiment of mistakes that could not be outrun. "There was more."

Jon nodded. "Aye. There was."

"Why haven't you said?"

"I'm not sure I agree with the Commander's final wish." Even as he said it, Jon realised he had no choice but to finish if he wanted to leave this conversation with all his limbs in their original sockets. "Commander Mormont wanted you to return to The Wall-"

"-he'll get his wish then-"

"-and take The Black. Lead, I believe, as Commander of the Night's Watch. That'd make you the thousandth man to stand on the cusp of Winter."

It was not the worst thing that Jorah had imagined his father wishing for his future – certainly it wasn't the worst thing that he'd said to his face before he left. The Stark boy released his hold and Jorah leaned back to a safe distance. The air around them dropped a few degrees. "That salty bastard Thorne is Commander of The Night's Watch. I heard he killed the last man to take his place."

A smile cracked across Jon's lips. "It were my own fault, that business. Politics don't come naturally to Starks, or so people keep tellin' me. A few more words before the act might 'ave helped."

"I doubt that," Jorah admitted. "Wildlings were never going to mix well with The Watch. My father was murdered for less. You're not the only royal blood to step safely out of death. The Queen," Jorah's voice naturally dropped to a softer hue when he spoke of her, "she set herself in the heart of a fire that burned all through the night. After the screams from the witch died and there was nothing but bone and ash, Daenerys – barely a scrap of a woman, stood alone with her infant dragons. The gods watch both of you..."

"And what does that mean?" Jon asked, honestly seeking an answer.

"It means that the Queen left me instructions to negotiate the battle lines for the coming war..."

Drogon had become a dot upon the horizon, hovering beneath the clouds. Jon realised too late what Daenerys had done. She'd stolen away Sam, folded him under her wing figuratively and literally. There was no need to utter a threat – it was implicit in her actions and the glint of steel lingering in her knight's eye. In many ways she was an Eastern conqueror and everything the realm feared. The ways of Westeros would never be hers and the North would fear her out of spite. The old bear took out a leather-bound map and unfurled it across the smooth basalt rock at their feet. It was unlike any he had seen with unnamed coastlines and land long since reclaimed by the sea. Sheets of ice covered the top half and worst of all, there was no great wall of ice to speak of. Cities, now left as ruins or lost forever, were marked and named.

"What here?" Jon knelt, with a groan from his armour.

"We're in rather a rush – what is it you Starks always say? Winter is coming."

Jon believed it, with ash tumbling out of the air like snow.


"Well shit. That's a bit o' a fucking sight." Ser Davos tilted his head off to the side like a hungry seagull as he spied the Iron Throne at the back of the hall – Cersei's body still seated in the grim chair.

Tyrion, surrounded by a cluster of Unsullied, turned to the intrusion. He looked the Onion Knight up and down then shook his head in shock. "Now I know for certain that the gods have a sense of humour." Several of the guards felt for their spears, awaiting Tyrion's command but the dwarf was happy enough to let the other man approach. "I take it we're on the same side of the war this time?"

"More or less," Davos replied. "The details are a little vague but your Queen and my King aren't at each other's throats yet." He stopped and looked past Tyrion to Cersei's lifeless figure. Her skin had taken on a shade of blue – lips purple and eyes a deathly grey.

"Ah… You're not sure what to say," Tyrion picked up on the hesitation. "I know my brother is stationed in Winterfell and that you, no doubt, will see him again soon when your King returns to the North. You have a reliable reputation. I wonder if you could pass something onto him..."

"Depends on the price."

"Gold?"

"I've no need of gold and I 'ave no intention on causing strife. This why I'm 'ere?"

"This – this has nothing to do with politics." Tyrion withdrew the gold chain from his pocket and held it out. The final metal was stained with blood that matched the marks on Cersei's neck. "It belonged to my brother first. Admittedly a worthless trinket our mother took a fancy to. I want him to have it. I daren't ask Daenerys."

"I lost my boy because of your family – right here in the bay."

Tyrion nodded. "I know. I was standing on the beach waiting for your ships."

"And I heard the Wildfire was your doing. Monstrous stuff. It peeled the skin right off his bone before he hit the water. He didn't deserve that. My boy."

Tyrion flinched. He lowered his hand, beginning to withdraw the chain. What was he thinking, asking favours from a man in a right mind to murder him where he stood.

"Give me the bloody chain," Davos reached for it.

"I thought-"

"War is a bastard of a thing," Davos admitted. "Jon Snow came here to unite the kingdoms of Westeros. I'd be poor council indeed if I offended the dragon queen's advisor."

Tyrion handed over the golden chain with a soft nod of thanks. "Is it true what the ravens said of the Baratheon princess?" A wash of pain, so deep and brutal cut across Ser Davos' face that Tyrion didn't require an answer. "Look," added Tyrion, "I'm not sure if anyone has told your King but Arya Stark was travelling with us – from Braavos. Wild creature, barely civilised. We intended to return her to Winterfell eventually but she vanished during the battle. The queen is not sure how to explain the situation to Snow without it sounding-"

"Suspicious."

"I swear she up and vanished – not for the first time."

"I'll have a word," Davos nodded. "What will happen here?"

Tyrion lifted his gaze to the throne room. "It's not going to play host to a coronation any time soon…"

"You and I should toss that ugly pile of swords into the sea. Best place for it."

"Setting aside how ridiculous I'd look shifting a pile of steel someone has to sit on the throne. No-" Tyrion waved off a goblet of wine offered by one of the Unsullied. "For what it's worth, I am sorry about the Stark girl. Starks are rarer than Valyrian steel at the present."


Arya stayed hidden among the long grass. Seven foot high, it swayed with the onshore wind, rippling its golden seed heads in a maddening dance. They struck in the face over and over – catching in her hair where they left behind golden snow. The ground was sodden. Layers of filth and death decomposed into a stinking mass. Every now and then she sank into a soft spot, wretched and pulled herself free. There was a taste of blood that never left her lips and days that she forgot to eat after nights of imagined raw flesh and shrieking death.

The North beckoned. It was always there – a constant tug upon her soul. Its lure was in the wind and the smell of pine that travelled with it. She belonged in the snow but there were names on her list.


Tycho hesitated. He faced the field of wild wheat that grew like a weed along the shore. It shivered like a whore's golden hair and smelled of their hovels stacked along the lowest Braavosi islands where the tide encroached. "Someone is watching us."

Ash perched on Tommen's right shoulder, hissing smoke like a demon from the underworld. His crimson skin shone as the sun made a final gasp of life, preparing to vanish into the distant mountains of the Westerlands. "Most probably," Tommen agreed.

The only thing Tycho could do about it was grip a little harder onto his oar. "How long until we reach Rosby?"

"We're not going to Rosby."

A shadow of stubble drove Tycho mad with irritation. He attacked his face so often it had turned into a rash not helped by the terrible scar left by the dragon's claws. The only thing halting infection was the salt air. "Your Grace-"

"Don't call me that."

"Duskendale is too far."

"Duskendale is a death trap for every type of king," Tommen barely broke his stride across the sand. The water was high but the beach had widened. "I had a cat, in the palace." He continued, appearing to change topics entirely. "Ser Pounce. Mad old thing. I can happily say that he was my greatest friend." The dragon on his shoulder snapped angrily in protest. "Now he is alone in a castle full of soldiers in a city that will starve before the week is out. Tonight I will pray that he is dead because if he's not, he'll be skinned and eaten by the few hundred souls left alive after the fire. He is only a cat, Tycho but if I thought there was any true hope of saving him from that fate I'd crawl right back to where we started and take him from that place myself." He could not even find tears. He'd misplaced them. "You have to find friends where you can – certainly I would not find a companion in my brother. There were palace guards whom I shared more words with. My sister, I barely knew. She wrote to me sometimes from her cage in Dorne. She liked it well enough until the seed turned to poison." None of which explained where they were going to find a bed once the sun set. "I was never intended to rule," Tommen clarified. "I was quiet – kept out of the way. I played in the muck at low tide in the shadow of the Red Keep. I wanted to be a soldier like-" his true father, "-but I was awfully small."

Tycho and the dragon shared a moment. The tiny crimson thing eyed him hungrily. Tycho fell back a step or two to be safe. "I dare say you have some growing left in your bones."

"Do you have children?"

"Yes. Not the promising investment I had once hoped. My fault, I imagine. I raised them around gold and was surprised to discover it had cast a spell over them. Witchcraft stronger than anything those Red creatures peddle in the market. Your Grace, where does this road lead us?" He returned their attention to the failing light and endless curve of swamp against the beach.

Tommen felt the dragon's tail flick from side to side against his chest. "I met several crabbers who came to the base of the Red Keep. They live beyond that cluster of rock there." Tommen pointed to a remnant of cliff, long collapsed into the bay. It was black like the rest of the rock beneath the water only these pieces had striking white stripes like veins. "These people will give us shelter for the night. They may even have a boat."


Evening set upon the water. The waves died into a silken lull, undulating against the boat. It sat on the water like glass with a shadow drawn by the rising moon. Longer and longer, it stretched toward the cliffs. A black mist lay across the water to the North, suffocating Black Water Bay. Shrill cries from gulls and crows alike filled the night as they feasted on the corpses. Ships continued to appear from within its depths. First a mast, held like bannerman's spear, then slackened sails gasping for a breath of wind.

Olenna laid against the ship's rail, her wrinkled hands worrying an arrowhead caught in the wood. King's Landing was a glow in the heart of the filthy smoke. It continued to burn, lording over the sky like a sun refusing to be put to bed.

"I have seen my share of horrors," Olenna spoke with a voice cracked from age, "but it has been a long time indeed since any one has watched a civilisation crumble into the sea. It is as if the gods themselves came for it."

Black Scale approached the old woman with the same detachment that he did with all free born. He stopped a few feet from the rail and looked impassively at the layer of smoke on the water. "This one has seen the thing of which you speak. When this boat left Meereen the walls were alight with boat oil. Cursed people climbed their height with their bare hands. They breached the ancient city and slaughtered everything inside. Some say that their screams followed us across the Narrow Sea."

Olenna leaned backwards on the rail and eyed the foreign warrior. Oh yes, he was a fine example of his kind. Tall, strong with frightening eyes and scars down both his arms, golden in the light from the ship's lanterns. "Not many ravens cross those seas," Olenna admitted, "leaving it to pirates and tradesmen to carry stories from the East."

"They are most likely true," Black Scale answered her unasked question. "One cannot improve on the mutterings from Hell."

Olenna tilted her head slightly. "You're a difficult creature to read," she admitted. "Generally I'm rather good when it comes to such things."

"I am Unsullied," Black Scale repeated, with all the warmth of an ice sheet crashing into the sea. "We are swords, spears, shields and boots."

"Of course you are." Except Olenna saw what others could not. "I knew a boy like you once. A farmer's issue. He was strong and brave – scaling the thorned walls of Highgarden nightly to steal lemons from the terraces. I was a young queen, pregnant with little to do but stare out from my castle window and watch his nightly run. They were sickly things anyway – the lemons. There's too much fog rolling in from the Sunset Sea – brings the rot. One night he was caught inside the terraced garden with a bag full of lemons by Ser Norridge who hung around the castle like a curse. He was in a foul mood and set about making an example of the poor farmer's boy. He took the same thing that was taken from you," Olenna nodded at the smooth fold of leather across Black Scale's crotch, "and the boy never came to the gardens again. It was years before I heard what became of him. He and two others attacked Princess Aelora Targaryen – drove the poor girl to her death – and incited a rebellion. They didn't win the rebellion, the farm boy but he did drive a sword through the knight's neck, severing it just enough so that Norridge could watch the man he loved torn to pieces in the mud." Olenna paused, gripping the rail with more strength than one might guess was left in her old bones. There was life enough left in them to wrap around a throat or two. "I do not, for one minute, buy into the mantra of slavers." And she would never be so foolish as to trust a tortured soul. "What was it that you wanted?"

Black Scale's face remained vacant. He presented a perfect façade to the world – a slab of marble that might belong to a king's hall. "There is someone here to see you."

Her visitor waited in one of the rooms below deck. A single lantern hung from the wall of the small cabin which was haphazardly filled with uncoiled rope and broken weapons from the battle, tossed out of sight. Olenna closed the door behind her and eyed the figure lingering by the solitary porthole. He was staring at darkness.

"At last, a little privacy." Olenna began.

Daario walked away from the porthole. His wounds were untreated – their blood dried in dark smears against his skin. He smelled of sweat and rotten fish while mud stained his pants all the way to his knees. "I have come to tell you that Cersei Lannister is dead."

"Thank the gods for small mercies," she replied, with genuine satisfaction. "The boy?"

"The boy is what I have come to discuss."

"Oh dear, have you done something unwise? How terribly predictable."

"Neither the mistake nor the solution are entirely my design. You and I can both agree that Tommen's hours in this world are numbered without help."

"Tommen was not part of our arrangement. If my daughter is to marry the Dornish prince, she cannot have a Lannister husband strolling about the wilderness."

"It has been suggested that he could be your guest. Highgarden's walls are high, so high I've heard it said that its people are invisible."

"I am not a larder for orphan kings. What possible use could the Targaryen girl have for keeping her rival alive? Oh… I see." Olenna read the truth in Daario's face. It was not hard, the man was perfectly transparent. "This is your little secret – who else?"

"Mormont, Varys and I guess Tyrion will find out sooner or later, he always does."

She was silent for a very long time, watching the light inside the lantern wither. There was so much soot stuck on the inside of the glass that it barely left enough light to see the edges of the room whose contents creaked with the rocking of the hull. They were entering rougher waters, whipped up near the cliffs which could only mean that they were passing Sharp Point. "I take it you did not come here with an empty purse."

"Tommen is insurance. Tides change fast in times like these and royal blood has value."

"You know very well that this boat is headed directly to Dorne. Even if I was to say yes, which I have not, how do you propose to transport Tommen to Highgarden without the queen noticing?"

"Is it a yes? I cannot sail with you beyond this hour and we cannot entrust the answer to a raven."

Her reply was the slightest nod. "The boy treated my daughter well, earning his survival," Olenna added. "There are very few people who have and even fewer kings. I warn you, if this little accord of ours threatens our line to the throne, I'll cut the boy loose like the frost to the rose."


Margaery lay in a pile of sheets, facing the wall of her cabin. Tears dripped along her cheek and faded into the cotton in an endless stream. She'd never been in love with Tommen. How could she? A boy king she'd seduced for position at her grandmother's request… Still she found herself gripped by a profound sadness. She did not hear Olenna come in, only noticing her presence when the bed dipped and a gentle hand stroked down her arm.

"There is news – I saw the pirate..."

Olenna gripped her granddaughter's arm lightly. "Yes dear. There is news."

Margaery fixed her gaze on a single nail set into the wood. It was all she could do to steel her nerves. "You have to say it."

"My dear, you are a Tyrell once more."

Margaery buried her head in the sheets and wept.

"Sh..." Olenna whispered. "There is a prince waiting for you. Two weeks from now you'll feel the familiar weight of a crown upon your head and the sturdy walls of an ancient palace to protect you. Dorne is the safest place during the Winter. It has never snowed on the sands. Finally, my dear, perhaps you will be happy."

CASTLE BLACK – THE WALL

299 AC


Jeor waited in the cavernous tunnels beneath The Wall. The ice around him sweated in the heat, lit by his torch and a strange glow that seemed to come from within the ice. Summer. Days and days with nothing but endless blue and drizzling rain creating pools of mud around the castle. Bone caught the light beneath his feet. He tried not to look. There were plenty of bodies buried underfoot from centuries of a violence. Part of him thought it was to scare off Wildlings foolish enough to test the fortifications. Another, louder part realised that he was getting on in the world and everything seemed just that little bit more grey.

A crow scattered from its perch at the edge of the Haunted Forest. It cawed blackly at the sky. A few minutes later, Jeor heard footsteps enter the tunnel and he knew it was time.

"It has always bothered me," Jeor said to the man as he approached, "these passages. They run all through The Wall, from the Bay of Ice to the foul waters of Skagos. The bloody thing is riddled with them. A broken fucking net. You know what use a broken net is to a fisherman? Fuck all. What good is a wall of ice if it's full of damn tunnels?"

Mance Rayder was getting slower. Injuries stacked upon each other but it was nothing compared to the hell of trying to coerce tribal forces to march behind one purpose. A smart man would have given up the futile cause a decade ago but he'd felt the chill of Winter in the hills behind Thenn. "That all depends on what it's trying ter keep out."

"Not you, old friend," Jeor replied. He was a bear unable to smile but he lifted his torch in a form of greeting. "It takes more than a mile of ice to stop the King Beyond The Wall. You are late. I worried. Thought maybe one of them white bears finally got the better of you."

"One of your damn raiding parties, more like," Mance replied.

"They were meant to return a week ago but they crossed a herd of snow-deer. Not even the gods could pull a pack of hungry men back from a meal."

"We share that problem in our men," Mance assured him, before adding, "I rode from Craster's Keep, there was some trouble up there last month. The old cunt didn't say much but a few of his women were weeping in the outskirts of the forest, looking for their children. Five in a year, left out in the snow and gone in the morning. All boys. Sacrifices, the women say, to the ice demons. They are closer than you think, Jeor."

The Lord Commander did not doubt the king for a moment. Mance was many things, a liar was not one of them. "Why not attack? Neither you nor I could stop the army of the dead if they marched in earnest. What the hell keeps them?"

"Speak for yourselves..." Mance riled. "But you are right, old bear. They are waiting for something. Perhaps they too have gods who must be obeyed."

"Or it could be the heat," Mormont offered, with a moment of levity as he wiped his brow. They were both sweating so hard there'd be puddles at their boots soon. "You didn't come all this way to do a raven's work."

"Don't make me ask."

Jeor sighed. The Northern realm feared Mance as a witch-god, a monster that lived at the edge of the world and yet here he was, reduced to cowering in the darkness, whispering requests. "It is as I said," Jeor replied softly, "the boy is safe in the South. He'll grow up literate with a full belly away from these troubles. No one will ever know who he is, especially not him."

Mance dropped his head in a nod. He wished there was more. "And his mother?"

"Fighting battles that don't belong to her in the South. My niece enjoys the distraction of the blade. She always had Black blood."

"Runs thick in these parts," Mance agreed. "The warg kings of old are in her eyes. Not yours. Yours are grey like the sea in heavy fog." The King Beyond The Wall placed his hand against the ice wall. There were hundreds of slender roots beneath, knit like cloth. "You 'ave to let us through, old man."

"Can't do, Mance – you know that."

"We're fish in a fuckin' barrel. We can't fight this war alone. You'll face us one way or another, better we be breathing."

"I told you, you 'ave to wait," Jeor implored him. "I've sent them ravens you asked, to the citadel an' all, requesting a stay for all Freefolk but I ain' got nothing back. It's like the dead live here already. Their silence is everywhere. The realm is full of old men and dusty scrolls they've never bothered to read. If they did they'd know what's comin'. Give me time, Mance, I'll talk The Watch around, on me own if I 'ave to. If yer push this too fast we'll both lose good men an' neither of us can suffer that. We are fuckin' twigs on a dead pine at the moment."

"You better be right," Mance began his withdrawal. "For all our fates are in your grasp, take care you do not hold on so long that you crush us."

Later, Jeor climbed to the top of The Wall and stared into the Lands of Always Winter. He picked out the fires which dotted the Haunted Forest and more that sat along the flanks of the Frost Fangs. Tiny clusters of humanity survived knowing full well that they were being hunted by Death. Jeor could see that too, brewing at the edge of the view. Clouds of snow, whipped into a frenzy that marched along the earth in perfect silence.

From the forest emerged his lost raiding party. They rode into the open, crossing the ice field that sat in front of The Wall. From this height, they were little better than wandering stars upon the night. How pathetically small they all were when viewed from such height. Did the gods look down with passive amusement or were they beneath the earth, clawing their way up toward the light?


"You mad, blind o'l bastard – where 'ave you been then?" Commander Jeor Mormont asked, when he found the ancient dragon curled up by the fire in his office, staring sightlessly into the flames. He was well used to the company of odd creatures. His crow was the same – not two words of sense strung together and wholly uninvited. Of course, he fed the crow first, tossing the feathered creature a few scraps of bread which it hopped around, pecking at the table. "I don't know what it is that you come here to say, Maester Aemon. There isn't a lecture, warning, praise or chastise left to give after all these years."

"My family are dreamers..." His withered voice drawled, barely above a whisper. "Their souls burning so hot as to piece the fabric of time that binds our world together with the next. Such horrors they saw, in the flames."

Jeor decided that he needed something to drink if was going to be this kind of a conversation. He fished out a pitcher of near-rancid wine and poured it into a mug. The shit wasn't even good for cooking with but the war in the South played havoc on their already strained supply routes. "Agreed there," the bear replied, lowering himself into the chair behind his desk. It groaned under the weight of Jeor's black cloak which he'd left on. "My wife used to say that nothing good came from dreamers. It didn't matter to her whether these things were seen in the flames, ocean or roots of the white trees – she distrusted it all. Said it was a curse sent from the gods to lead us into night." He risked a sip of the wine. Not too bad. Better than the bread. "I am starting to think she might 'ave been right about the whole bloody thing."

"The trees are different, Brynden used to say." Aemon continued.

Jeor could have sworn the fire whispered something foul – sparks curling in showers of cinder – black smoke coating the inside of the chimney with oil. Pine up this far North was rich in it. All the boatmen of Bear Island knew not to carry open flame too close to the hull. "That moon-bred who went North?" Jeor clarified. Targaryens bred like dragons with clutches of young. They'd never be truly gone from the world because they were woven into its fabric.

"There's a tree, grown over an outcrop with a view of the ice fields… White limbs bowed like silver hair and red leaves shed -"

"-shed like Southern vows." Benjen Stark finished, strolling into the Commander's office unannounced. "I've seen it in the flesh. Did your scrolls tell you about the sink, I wonder? Around its roots are half-rotten corpses and black feathers, frozen in fresh snow. It is a place of death."

"If it weren't for your father's honour, boy, I'd send you to that freezing Eastwatch perch."

Benjen helped himself to the Mormont's wine and pulled a chair to the fire, sitting beside the blind maester. "Horse shit. I am the best ranger you 'ave and you know it."

"Perhaps not the most modest." There was little Jeor could do as the young Stark settled in. "You are days late," he added, in caution.

"And I've brought a feast. If you opened your door a little more often you'd 'ear them singing and drinking – a proper Northern do."

"Wolves are ghosts, Benjen," Jeor warned. "If they start to make a meal out of everything they come across something larger will come along."

"As I am sure you know, it wasn't the deer that kept me. The Haunted Forest is thick with Wildlings. They're crawling in every stand of pines and further out, where the ice flattens and the mountains start, they are building forces. We saw their fires at night, up and down the flanks of the mountains. Hundreds of them. I reckon the whole god-damn lot of 'em are descending on The Wall. You seem awfully calm about it – like it doesn't surprise you at all."

Jeor was silent. He'd been a fool to think that a ranger as smart as Benjen wouldn't uncover the truth. "Did you find what I sent you for?"

A deep sigh followed by a rasping cough. The cold had settled in his lungs. "Fuck knows where it is," Benjen replied. "We're all searching for the same thing. I'm tellin' you. If the Horne of Winter was out there, one of of us would 'ave found it. If it was ever real, it's gone."

Jeor shook his head. "Then you 'ave to go further North," he insisted. "If we don't find it, they'll find it and then that's the end of us all. An' next time you stay on task. There'll be plenty of time ter hunt Wildlings."

"I ain' hunting Wildlings..." Benjen defended. "I told yer before. We need ter go deeper, beyond the Milkwater – see what's behind them mountains. The only advantage we're going ter get against those dead fucks is the one we find ourselves. We learn nothing, squabbling with Wildfolk and hunting game in the fringes of the forest. Let me have a dozen men – half that if you won't spare the number."

"Every Crow who's ever ranged beyond the valley died there. Only the Thenn know those mountains and they'll hang your entrails over the frost and read their godless fortune in their steaming patterns."

Benjen wasn't having that. "Commander, the answers you seek are in the wastelands of ice – not the maester's scrolls. No one has lived to write them down – or even whisper them to the wind. I am going to go, with or without the men."

Jeor doubted that he had a choice. There was darkness in Benjen's eyes – the mirror of his father's. As they said in the North, 'the will of a Stark was stronger than the storm'.

"Let them rest a week at least," Jeor implored him. "They'll need full bellies and heavy swords. I pray to the Old Gods that you find nothing but ice and snow." For if he stumbled upon the frozen city, that hour would be his last.