LAST HEARTH – THE GIFT
"Do it then, you bastard!" Petyr tried to push against the Whitewalker's sword. It only made the steel hiss frantically between them. Steam lifted off the edge – or was it smoke? A taste of salt hit his lips. Tears. They all but blinded the broken bird. "You're not – the first to – try and cut – me – down!"
The creature was certainly willing to be the last. Its ice-like eyes stared through Petyr, melting all the veils of his soul away. He could feel his heart starting to drag. The chamber walls stiffening. His blood choking in its veins...
The Whitewalker stepped forward and pressed its boot onto Petyr's hip, forcing the man against the hard dirt floor. Pain ripped through Petyr's body as his bones grated against one another and old wounds tore. He groaned, twisting. The air around them cracked. He watched as the creature's lips moved but no words formed. Then the Whitewalker doubled over and grabbed Petyr by the chin, angling his face from side to side. The touch of its cold flesh burned. He cried out – arching his back – finally releasing his hold on the sword.
Petyr grabbed the creature's arm in a desperate attempt to free himself before he started to choke. The air around the Whitewalker was too cold to breathe. Above, the ceiling of the barn rattled. The ground shook. His lungs screamed. Ice clanged through them. Dirt fell in rivers from the roof. He could hear it above the wretched sound of himself dying – the soft tinkle of dust in the half-light...
The Whitewalker exploded in a plume of snow.
It shattered outward in countless shards. They struck with such force that Petyr's exposed skin was left with a thousand cuts. The remains of the creature poured over him, filling his mouth and eyes. He coughed it back out, rolling to the side, hacking. Sweat and blood dripped from his face. Eventually he folded onto the ground in surrender. There was nothing left of his strength. If he died now, he did not care. At least he'd stay dead.
"Baelish..." An enormous man dragged his boot curiously through the crystal pieces of the Whitewalker. "I am quite certain that I have seen more of this bastard world than most and still – still – I cannot believe my eyes." Ser Jorah Mormont used the flat edge of Dawn to nudge Lord Baelish onto his back. He loomed large over the man who more closely resembled a pile of scattered feathers. "Was it a long way down from your perch? I hope it was a hard fall. I hope it broke every bone in your body."
Littlefinger sobbed.
Jorah's eyes widened in alarm. He had expected venom. Wit. Hell, he'd have settled for an indifferent curl of Baelish's lip. "This is not the place for it," Jorah warned him. "There are plenty of things running about in the woods that'd see us all dead. Think you can walk? Eh? Give us your hand, then."
The ground shook again and more dirt dislodged through the gaps in the thatch roof. What Petyr had mistaken for thunder now sounded like monstrous footsteps. There was something else on the air. Odd, ungodly chirping that no bird could muster. Dragons. Of course. He could hear their wings scratching the buildings. Petyr tried to wriggle out of Jorah's hold but the Bear had him in a vice.
"This is a rather beautiful sword," Jorah added, rescuing it from the ground, "take care with it." He slid it into Baelish's sheath because the bewildered man seemed to be entirely absorbed in a state of shock. It was a reaction Jorah had seen many times in the aftermath of battle. Men lost in the fog of their mind. Shrieking at ghosts. Most recovered their senses. A night of whoring of a sea's worth of wine. Not all. "Now, try not to be alarmed..."
It was the best warning Jorah could manage as they stepped out into the light together.
Snow fell in thick cascades over the Last Hearth. Bodies lay everywhere, already beginning to vanish in the white.
"The Whitewalker did not have time to raise them for his purpose. They'll need to be burned all the same. No need to leave an invitation to the next raiding party that makes it this far South."
Petyr was not listening. Beyond the smoking buildings and useless shags of settlement paced three restless dragons, easily rising above the boundary wall. Black, gold and green – they glistened as the snow melted on approach, raining on their scales. The green one pushed its snout against a pine tree, dragging up and down repeatedly while its tail flicked through the snow. He had always imagined that they would be stoic like their stone replicas but instead they brimmed with life – unable to fashion a moment of still. Then there were the eyes… Even at a distance they caught the light through the snow like gold buried in the dirt.
"D-dragons..." Petyr breathed.
"Aye. Dragons." Jorah nodded. He loosened his grip on Baelish only for him to collapse. Jorah fetched him again and marched Baelish through the village and out the gates.
Petyr eyed several of the bodies. He recognised a few. The men who'd thrown him into the barn were both impaled on parts of the fence. There were also bones in the snow held together with bits of old cloth. "Wights..."
"Quite a few of them," replied Jorah. "Eight – maybe nine. Rhaegal picked them off before I had a chance to count. They are drawn to the dragons. As soon as the Queen and I landed, they abandoned their slaughter and rushed us in the field. Every last one of the bastards." Jorah gave one of the bodies a second look.
"What is it?" Rasped Baelish, from behind cracked lips.
Jorah prodded the bones with his foot. "It's wearing the insignia of House Gardener." He shook his head. "Been a long time since anyone has seen one of those..."
"Is that important?"
The knight shrugged in reply. Who knew what was important when all they had were fragments to pick over...
There were black lines melted across the snow where the dragons had attacked the dead with streams of fire. Their bones smouldered. Baelish shuddered violently. The corpses looked exactly the same as the other Crow he'd watched tortured and burned to death in the cage. "They followed me."
Drogon turned, snapping his tail through the ice. He opened his jaws and roared at the sky, shaking snow loose from the trees. The sound drove Petyr back to his knees. He clasped his ears. It was louder than a strike of thunder and went on and on and on until he thought his soul might crack.
"Sh..." A silver woman emerged from its shadow. Daenerys trailed her hand along the creature's black scales. The sound died away at her touch until finally the dragon dipped its head and licked the snow at its feet with a chirp. She stroked its neck, hanging beside it like a pearl earring.
There was a terrible smile on the knight's lips when he looked at her.
Petyr crawled forward, feeling the pain of his wounds come to fruition. When the dragons shifted it was as if the mountains were on the move – or the gods… He could not decide which. All Baelish knew was that he'd never seen true power until this moment. In an instant, he understood the tales of Conquest. He believed that the Targaryens were able to hold power with only the whisper of a dragon scratching in the dirt of the dragon pit. What rage, he wondered, would be visited upon the realm now that one was back to claim the crown?
"My Queen..." He kowtowed at once, grovelling.
Daenerys approached but Jorah would not let her stray too close to the pale Crow. "Do you know this man – is he a friend of your father's?"
"Oh, I know him all right..." Jorah kept a close eye on him. "This is Lord Baelish, Khaleesi, of The Fingers. There are many who consider him to be the most dangerous man in Westeros."
"He does not look it."
"No. A stretch of bad luck, I imagine. I doubt he wears the cloak of a Nightswatchman out of choice. Take care..." He warned, keeping her at bay with the tone in his voice. "Rumour has it that this is the man who picked apart three great Houses with nothing more than whispers. Although his actions have been advantageous for you he is a creature without loyalty or principle. He'd slit his child's throat to climb a peg higher."
"Is it fortunate, then, that I have no children," Petyr replied, finding a flicker of his old self.
Daenerys did not seem keen to linger on the smoking corpse of the Last Hearth. At least this time its demise had not been caused by her dragons. The thought should not have made any difference to the tragedy but it did. "You are not as Lord Varys described," she noted, stopping a safe distance from Baelish.
"H-how did my old friend present me?"
"A giant among men." His trials had not killed the flicker of mischief in his eyes. Daenerys was instantly wary of it. He reminded her of the myriad of tricksters, charmers and wine salesmen she'd crossed paths with in the East. She found him to be a small man without a shred of power. Those were the creatures most likely to lash out. "And he is not your friend. Lord Baelish, I am not interested in your story of misfortune. All I want to know is how a Whitewalker and his personal guard made it this far South of The Wall..."
He replied from his seat in the snow. "It fell. Eastwatch went with it. Commander Thorne sent me and a small company to the castle to liaise with your army. Everyone was surprised by how many men you brought to the castle. They were not there long when the whole bastard mess gave way. There was no one thing that did it. The place has been in poor shape for the better part of three hundred years. Perhaps a few extra fires in the snow tipped it over the edge – literally and figuratively..." He added, remembering the shafts of ice hit the water.
"What happened to the Queen's army?" Demanded Jorah, standing beside Baelish.
"Some are dead. Most were fighting when I left. It was dark – I – chaos… I-"
"Ran away..." She finished for him.
"The man cannot hold a sword to save his life," Jorah pointed out.
"They put us in cages, Your Grace."
"The Whitewalkers?"
Petyr shook his head. "The Easterners. Your men. They burned us alive like torches for their amusement. Their pots they filled with meat from the dead. I am the only Crow left."
Jorah and Daenerys exchanged wary looks.
"Beggars cannot choose their armies," Daenerys finally replied. Whether or not she was remorseful, it was impossible to read. She had a shroud of smoke around her soul. "What do we do with him?"
Jorah cast a glance at the forest. "There's a dozen horsemen on their way." He'd seen them as they'd flown into the Last Hearth. "We can leave him here. They'll pick him up."
"No – I -"
"Or kill him..." Jorah added, if only to quiet Baelish. "There are some people better off dead, Your Grace. If ever there was an argument for the, 'Greater Good', I dare say Lord Baelish makes it rather well."
"Please. Please."
Jorah despised the sound of the man cawing at his feet. The Queen waved him over. Jorah trudged through the snow to Daenerys' side, where it was replaced with a black sludge of soot and mud. He dipped his head to listen to her whispers while her tiny hand grazed the side of his arm lightly.
"Wait! No. You can't leave me here! Mormont! You bastard. How many crimes have you committed that have gone unanswered? It could just as easily be you on your knees in the ash."
Jorah turned to Baelish with a cold look in his eyes. "I have been on my knees, Baelish. The wheel goes around. Some of us earned our way up the rungs. I doubt there's enough gold in the realm to atone your sins but maybe – just maybe – the gods disagree."
They ignored Baelish's increasing panic. Jorah climbed onto Drogon's back with the Queen, sitting behind her like a wall of steel. The dragons shifted – swiping their enormous wings into a storm of snow that knocked Baelish backwards. They left him in the snow outside the Last Hearth, tears freezing on his cheek and blood dribbling into the soot with the rattle of corpse trees and the distant sound of horsemen.
Jorah wrapped one of his arms around Daenerys' waist then rested his chin among the thick furs on her shoulder. She tilted her head backwards, closing her eyes at his warmth. It had been a long time since they'd flown together. Now, she needed him, especially if they were flying towards a battle.
"What will they do with him?" She asked, seeing the horsemen in the forest below riding full hilt toward the ruined fort. They were rough creatures. Men from Karhold.
"Save his life, if they are able. Whatever Lord Baelish was before, he is a watchman now."
"Is that the real reason you wouldn't lay a hand on him?"
"In the North, it is a sacred oath. He has not realised that his old life is over but if he lives he'll have another chance."
"The Wall could have only fallen a couple of days ago," Daenerys added. "Those creatures made it a long way in a short time."
"Over easy ground – with no resistance."
She shook her head gently against his cheek. "Your faith in the realm is foolishly steadfast," she cautioned. As was his faith in everything.
"A man has to believe that victory is possible, 'else how can he take up arms? There-" he moved his arm to point at the ground beneath Drogon's wing. "You can see where they came across The Gift." And had left a scattered field of blood from which flocks of crows now drank. "Baelish is right – they were pursuing him. This is not the sort of move an invading army wastes time on. They were hunting him down."
"To silence him?" Daenerys asked, the cold air. "I've seen the Dothraki do the same."
"The Night King may have been hoping to gain a foothold at Eastwatch before the realm noticed he'd breeched The Wall. He'll be at his weakest moving his army through the bottleneck. If the realm has a chance to stop him.."
"Then we have to get there now and push him back before his soldiers spread South and flood the ice."
As if hearing the urgency in their whispers, Drogon flapped his powerful wings and propelled himself faster through the air. Daenerys turned her head, hiding her face from a fresh wave of ice. The world below started to vanish beneath patches of fog. Plumes of it marauded, amassing on the few remaining unfrozen bodies of water.
"The air smells like a Dothraki wedding. You don't think there could be truth in Lord Baelish's account of my army…?" She shuddered at the thought of human flesh boiling in cauldrons and yet Daenerys knew very well that there were tribes from the plains that dabbled in cannibalism. The Cannibal Sands mingled with the Plains of the Jogos Nai. They married at the edge of the Bleeding Sea. Some of their horror slipped through the cracks…
"...and there she is," Jorah pointed, as the twilight flirted with death, "the corpse of Eastwatch by the Sea."
TOMB OF THE WHITE LION – STYGAI
252 AC
The filthy wind moaned against the cliff. It dipped into the thousands of holes burrowed into the black mountains, flirting with the darkness. Finding only bone and ash, it whispered back into the valley and chased itself in an invisible, swirling tide before dying on the valley floor where the ground was warm enough to smoke.
Quaithe, Marwyn and Wreab picked their way through by climbing the spines of stone buildings that had long since fallen into ruin. There were so many broken to bits that they resembled shells discarded at the tide line – some shattered beyond recognition while others stared at them without blemish, eerily static against Time. Progress in the darkness was slow, often accompanied by the shuffling earth. One of the mountain peaks leaked red fire down its side. The glowing rock dribbled and died in the ashen flanks. Another of the mountains coughed out dense clouds full of lightning. Quaithe kept a close watch on their silhouettes.
"What is it that you watch? The mountains?" Wreab grasped Quaithe's hand and helped her climb a particularly smooth piece of marble. "Aye, they make a good show of malice but nothing touches this place – not even fire. It is spurned by every god."
"Except him..." Marwyn nodded at the entrance to the formidable tomb. As they drew closer, the horrifying scale of the stone lion cut into the face of the mountain grew. It was lifelike – similar to the temple buildings in Asshai that took on the likeness of sea creatures and dragons. The original inhabitants of The Shadow Lands performed miracles with rock but this was different...
"The Lion of Night is not a god," Quaithe corrected. "He is a man, exaggerated by time – and he is dead."
"You don' believe that any more than us." Wreab countered. "No one builds a thing like that for a man."
"An emperor, then."
"We are standing at the gates of darkness. Whatever magic he practised, it cast a shadow over the mountains. Surely that is reason to leave well enough alone?"
Quaithe and Marwyn could not heed Wreab's sound advice. Ever the pirate, he found himself inclined to follow them straight into the jaws of hell.
The entrance to the tomb was a colossal thing. Above, the open, roaring mouth of the stone lion reached higher than The Hightower. Dew dripped from its canines. Cobwebs drooped in great bowers from the ceiling, as thick as forest vines. Piles of ash collected at the edges like sand on the ruins of Old Ghis. Quaithe knelt to run her hands through it, allowing the pieces to drift back towards the ground as she stood. It wafted like poisoned snow.
Marwyn held his torch up to one of the cracks that cut through the lion's right hand paw. "Gods..." He muttered. "This happened so long ago that the weather's been in and torn it apart. Just how old is this place meant to be?"
"Twenty-five thousand years, give or take an empire..." Quaithe whispered.
Wreab was the last to step into the darkness. His eyes were glued to the ceiling – even though most of it was a nest of shadow. He could feel the oppressive push of the mountain's weight above. His ears pricked to the groan of stone and the constant shudder of fire moving beneath their feet. It made his skin crawl. "This is a bastard of a thing."
"Be quiet." Quaithe turned on him, her black hood slipping down to release her white hair. "No need to wake the gods." Then she directed his attention to claw marks in the wall and old scales flaked off and left in the ash.
"There's been dragons in here." Wreab's eyes widened.
The throat of the main tunnel curved to the right, edging downwards in a spiral. Their flames barely lit the way, suffocated by the scale which continued to overwhelm them. It was as though every part of this temple was designed to make visiting worshippers feel small in the face of the dead emperor. Even the sound of the wind licking the sides of the cavern crackled against their ears in something akin to speech.
Parts of the tunnel had been damaged by earthquakes. Occasional loose bones poked out from the ash but never a complete skeleton. Whether they meant to or not, Wreab, Quaithe and Marwyn edged closer together, standing shoulder to shoulder by the time they found the burial chamber at the end of the passage.
They didn't have any words for what they saw.
Marwyn dropped his torch. It clattered to the stone floor and then rolled, its flame whooshing across the ground until it hit the dragonglass tiles. Almost at once, the light from the fire was sucked away to a burning ember. A thin mist crept from the uneven edges of the vaguely circular room, never more than a few inches off the ground. It was coming from the walls – seeping out of micro-fissures in the volcanic rock.
The Tomb of the White Lion was created from a natural chasm in the mountains. Its walls and ceiling were made from black-glass crystal, grown not placed. Thousands of formations protruded into the room, some the size of broadswords, others were as large as horses. Black Glass Candles – in their original form. They whispered as if the souls of the underworld were caught up in their hearts. Quaithe diverted her eyes to the wall on her left, seeing where several smaller ones had been hacked away. Every single candle, from the hands of maesters to Eastern warlords, had been pried from this tomb and smuggled into Asshai.
This was nothing compared to surge of rock in the centre of the room. It was neither a pyre nor an alter and yet it stole ideas from both. Brutal and yet there was a touch of reverence to its shaggy edges and dripping columns of petrified wax forms, so old their mutilated structures were the colour of parchment. Either that or they'd been made from the human fat of the sacrificed.
"I could be wrong," Quaithe found her voice, "but this looks as though it was built to hold a book."
"We shouldn't be here." Wreab shook his head, shivers running down his spine every second.
"The Death of Dragons."
Quaithe turned to Marwyn, drowning him in the light of her torch.
"The book." He clarified. "Although, more correctly, the translation would be, 'The Death of Wyverns'. Leyton believes it originated in Stygai. He always called this place, the dead heart of magic."
"Does Hightower know where it is?"
"Westeros."
"Could you be more specific?" Quaithe eyed him sharply, stepping closer. Her old, mismatched eyes saw right through the young man.
"No one knows..." Marwyn insisted. "The Amethyst Empress used it in a great war. There is nothing after that. Leyton believes that the Church of Starry Wisdom is built from its words but he has no proof. It is lost. How could a book survive this long? By now, it is dust. What is it, Wreab?"
Wreab, who had been tugging on the princess's sleeve, pointed to the darkness.
There was another tunnel on the other side of the room but this one opened like the entrance of a burrow where something old and terrible had dug beneath the earth to sleep. Where the dragonglass ended, milkglass began. Its smooth face glistened as if made from ice. Quaithe touched it.
"Cold..."
It led them deeper into the roots of the mountain, passing through empty, square cut chambers. Shadows on the floor suggested they had once been filled with relics – pilfered and lost. Their echoes lined the market places, copies of copies of copies sold to unsuspecting lords who could not grasp their ominous birth.
At the end of the tunnel – a door.
The surface bore a pair of wyverns, twisted three times around each other with their jaws agape, roaring at each other. One with a ruby eye, the other – sapphire. Tightly packed text filled the space around the warring creatures. Both Marwyn and Quaithe edged closer but neither could read the words. The language of the ancient emperors was lost. It used repeated patterns of dots, strokes, concentric circles and half-moons rather than letters.
"Why hasn't anyone opened it?" Wreab asked the obvious question. "Place 'as been raped for thousands of years. Biggest loot is obviously behind that door. Why not knock it through?"
"You do it, then..." Quaithe prompted.
"No way." Wreab replied. "Probably fucking cursed."
"Exactly..." She breathed, eyeing it hungrily.
"No – no we're not doin' that..." Wreab shook his head firmly. "I ain' dying in a place like this."
"Ah..." Quaithe exhaled, after spending several hours staring at the door in silence.
Marwyn shuffled to his feet, approaching. "You can read the inscription?"
"Of course not," she replied.
"Bloody hell..." Wreab muttered from the floor. He was playing with a stray piece of milkglass. "And here I was thinkin' we were making some progress."
"I know how to open the door. See..." She drew their attention to a series of claws holding the door in place. "This was never meant to keep people out."
"What else do you use doors for?" Wreab muttered, increasingly confused.
"Keeping things inside..." Marwyn replied, following Quaithe's logic. "Which means, if we put a bit of work into it, she should shift. Wreab."
"All right. All right. I'm coming. That doesn' mean this is wise. Nutters. The pair of you. Gonna get me killed."
Quaithe's guess was correct. As they leaned their weight upon the surface of the wretched door they felt it give a little. Still, it was a heavy, old thing that resisted their efforts. It took nearly half an hour before grunt and will overrode the seals and finally, the slab of stone slid across the floor far enough for a rush of air to whip past them, sinking into the darkness.
"Bit further." Marywn muttered, dripping sweat over the milkglass.
The more they opened the door, the easier it was and soon it was swinging on its hinge, opening to its full gape. Bone crunched, pushed aside by the stone. Quaithe was the first to step inside, brandishing her torch at the darkness. She lowered it to the ground, illuminating five skeletons scattered by the door.
"Guardians?" Marwyn asked.
"Loyal subjects." Quaithe replied, stepping around their bodies. "They must have closed the door and locked themselves inside. Remarkable – the condition of their bones."
"It is dry in here," Wreab added. "In the desert, bones last forever."
"You'd know, pirate, scouring the sand for relics." Marwyn muttered.
"Not only the air..." Quaithe picked up an amulet from one of the corpses. "The Church of Starry Wisdom. They haven't been here half as long as the stone..."
"Is there anything we can leave to wedge the door open? I do not fancy dying in a crypt."
"Leave your torch in the doorway." Quaithe helped him position it. That left them with only a single light to hold against the darkness.
The walls inside this final tomb were neither milkglass nor dragonglass. They were black and covered in a sheen of oil, much likes the buildings in Asshai. Their feet slid on the surface, as if they were walking on ice or entering the slightly angled floor of an ant lion waiting, jaws agape, at the bottom of the pit.
"Can you hear that?" Marwyn asked, after creeping forward ten feet.
"Really, trying not to..." Wreab replied, but yes, they could all hear the muffled scratching poisoning the air – like rats kept in a box tearing at the lining. "It's coming from over h-"
Wreab's voice was sucked out of his lungs as Quaithe's torch illuminated the side of the anteroom. Like the others, it was a small area, vaguely square, dug out of the mountain. A prison. Lining the walls were a series of cells with a veneer of glass, faintly grey, covering the milkglass bars behind. There were nearly a dozen and inside all but one, was an eight foot high creature made of ice. Whitewalkers. The Others.
...and they were alive.
The sound came not from claws dragging on the transparent walls but from their open lips, screeching.
"By all the gods in this fucking world..." Wreab breathed, wisps of mist coming from his mouth. The creatures' presence in the room dropped the temperature and set frost onto the oily rock. Their magic was strong enough to saturate the air and yet they could not break free of their chains. Except for the last cell. It had been opened long ago and its contents was missing. Wreab could not stop himself inching closer to one of the cells. "How can they be real? They are nightmares. They are stories." He turned to Shiera – his dragon princess. "Is this why you are willing to risk your life and the vengeance of the gods to raise a dragon from their stone grave?"
"There are more of these things, Wreab, and they're free to wander the North. One day they'll find a way through old Bran Stark's and then what? The realm will need more than well-named swords and black glass to stop an army."
"There's more..." Marwyn beckoned them out of the horrifying room. The tunnel went on, dipping again until they nearly lost their footing.
"How deep does this go?" Wreab asked, gripping onto Quaithe's arm.
Deep enough that the floor became a serious of large, flat steps cut into the milkglass. All sorts of graffiti had been scratched into the walls either side, set there in antiquity by hoards of worshippers that had once filed through the tombs. Most drew lions – roaring or sitting with a paw raised. Others filled the gaps with stars. A few left illegible messages written in a bastardised version of the language from the door. Once, Quaithe stopped a scrawl left in a primitive tribal language but it evaded translation.
Wreab stepped upon the fragile curve of a shell. It crunched beneath his boot, echoing like a roar through the cavern, repeating itself in chasing whispers. Millions more littered the floor of the Lion's Tomb. A carpet of husks, tossed aside by successive waves of pilgrims. The roof lifted and the final, resting chamber revealed itself to Quaithe's flame. It was easily as large as the centre room in Asshai's Temple of the Pale Lion with a similarly scaled statue of the beast except this one was forged entirely of black stone like the rest of the room. Even its fangs, glinting in the firelight, were as black as night's depths. Only its eyes shone – a pair of ocean pearls larger than Wreab's hands with streaks of faint purples, blues and greens rippling on their surface like the ribbons of light in the Northern skies.
Behind this colossus lay a rectangular container made of thick sea glass with a lid fashioned from solid silver. It had been filed with a ghostly liquid and, floating in the centre, the corpse of the first emperor.
Quaithe's breath stuttered in her lungs. Her hands trembled and muscles twitched. The Lion of Night, first of the God Emperors, lay as if sleeping.
Marwyn was too intrigued to be held back by reverence. He crept closer to the casket, knelt down, and eyed the liquid. "Ironwood sap..." Observed Marwyn. "Leyton uses it to preserve delicate relics. It appears he is in company. Our God Emperor doesn't look a day over ten thousand."
"Are we certain he is dead?" Wreab whispered, wary of the floating corpse.
"Or course he is dead." Marwyn replied, boldly tapping the glass. "Something has had a real go at him..." He pointed to a savage wound that exposed parts of his stomach. The flesh was folded back, soft and fibrous where it had been cut by a serrated blade. Other parts were black – burned by severe cold. He was buried in armour, with his arms folded across his chest as was still the custom in parts of the East. "I wager he was fighting in the snow when he died and caught the pointy end of a spear. Maybe the prong of an ice spider."
"Not much of a god..." Wreab risked moving closer. "Tall, though. Easily nearly eight feet. Look at his hands – there – the hint of webbing between the fingers."
"Where is his Queen?" Asked Quaithe. "They died together, according to the texts in Asshai. Why not bury them side by side? There's no reference to her. Very strange."
"Or the sword." Marwyn added. "His sword – it's not here. We came all the way to find it. Where the bloody hell would it be if not with the son of a bitch himself?"
Quaithe moved close enough so that she could see the image etched into the gold coffin lid. It was a mimic of the emperor floating beneath – a sort of stylised 'likeness' except in the mural, the emperor held a sword vertically down his body. Her gaze lingered on the lion-head pommel for a long time before she withdrew, her fingers against her lips. "I know exactly where the emperor's sword is… So do you, Marwyn. I dare say you've seen it before."
At her words, the mountain shuddered around them. The soft vibrations rattled the carpet of shells at their feet and made the Whitewalkers screech in their cages.
EASTWATCH BY THE SEA – THE WALL
Drogon circled the Eastern edge of The Wall while Jorah and Daenerys surveyed the damage caused by the collapse. It was extensive. The visible pieces of the castle were scattered among giant blocks of ice like the coals of a campfire dispersed by a night's snow. Enormous white slabs lay submerged at the edge of the Bay of Seals, sleeping under the water as if they were awkward pebbles at the bottom of a stream. The Queen's ships had moved themselves into deeper water but several shadows of old and new wrecks marred the choppy grey expanse. The few that broke above the surface were topped by fat seagulls and petrels.
The collapse of The Wall from a perfect vertical frontier to a haphazard nightmare of rubble, slurry and snow destroyed vast tracks of the ice field in the South and the Haunted Forest in the North. In particular, one of the largest boulders had rolled through tall pines and snapped them like twigs. The bulk of her army had withdrawn from the shadow of The Wall, either all the way to their ships or far enough back that they had time to abandon their position.
Among this mess, there was one glaring omission.
"Where is the Night King's army?"
Jorah narrowed his eyes against the freezing wind but there was nothing further to pick out from the ice. There was no trace of the dead – on either side of The Wall. Drogon took a second, lower pass of The Haunted Forest and still there was nothing to be seen beneath the canopy of frigid pines. "I cannot say, You Grace," Jorah replied.
"Is it strange to say I'd have preferred to find a hoard of them in the snow?"
"No." He assured her. "I feel the same. There – we should land and regroup what's left of your army. After what they must have seen, they will need your support."
She shook her head. "I do not believe I'll ever be comfortable with the idea that men draw strength from my ramblings." Daenerys did not even really say it to him. It was a general, gripping fear that had been growing inside her of late. So many people in her past had accused her of being a child playing at war and now that she was most certainly a woman – a queen without question – she felt more like a wayward child than ever.
Drogon landed directly on the ice. His claws scratched the surface – sending a plume of white snowflakes into a blizzard behind him. The other two dragons did the same, although Rhaegal landed more lightly than the other two, setting himself down like a raven to a maester's outstretched arm. Most of the Easterners camped nearby raised their spears, swords and knives with a rising cheer. The Winter did its best to muffle their relief but as they came together, the joyous sound lifted into the air. Unlike the Westerosi, her army did not fear her beautiful dragons. They revered their fearsome form and begged the violence from their throats.
Daenerys walked on the ice with Jorah a step and a half behind her. Not quite a shadow. Never a King. She scanned the faces who approached but they were all short of statue with cone-shaped heads. Her Yinnish ruler was nowhere to be seen. When she learned that he was crushed beneath Eastwatch along with the Whitewalker and man from Lorath, Daenerys asked for the most senior commander of the Jogos Nai. After their meeting, Daenerys retreated to Jorah's company in a dark mood.
"Why would the Night King retreat from his position?" She half demanded of her knight, after getting nowhere with the commander. Jorah was busy feeding pieces of a whale carcass to the dragons to keep their snouts on the ground and not turned in the enticing direction of the horses. "From what the commander tells me, the fight was won. There should be dead crawling over this place but only a handful came through The Wall, then they vanished – almost as if-"
"-as if they knew that three dragons were on the way..." Jorah finished her sentence. "Aye, right there is reason enough to seek shelter. On the open ground, in a bottleneck like this, it is you, Your Grace, who has the greatest advantage. If he is as we suspect a seasoned battle strategist, he'd not want to be caught in the open."
"He cannot hide forever if he wants to invade the South."
"True. Though you have one great disadvantage," Jorah added, carefully. "Your dragons. They are a powerful weapon but there are only three of them. The Wall is a thing of immense size. Three dragons are not enough to protect every crack forever."
"You think he's looking for another way in..."
"Or waiting for an opportune moment. If we know nothing else of his tactics, the Night King has proven himself to be a creature of patience. He need only wait for your dragons to die."
Daenerys set her eyes on the ruins of Eastwatch Castle. It almost looked as though part of it had sunk beneath the ground or perhaps it was simply a pitiful mess of resistance. "I saw the cages, Jorah, the ones that Baelish spoke of. He didn't lie."
"I did not think he did," Jorah agreed. "For a while there, he was an honest man – before he recovered his senses. There is no redeeming that one, Your Grace. Baelish will be a snake until he dies."
"And you kept him alive because you fear the Old Gods. I hope that is not a decision that comes back to haunt us both."
Jorah dipped his head. On this account, he could not speak to his logic. Leaving certain things up to Fate was a Northern sort of natural justice that he could not explain. "We need to strengthen our hold of this location. Even without the castle, we should be able to maintain this position for a while. The Wall has fallen in on itself in such a way that it has created a new wall. Not as high or graceful, I grant you, but this is a wall none the less and something that we can defend."
"Go..." She nodded, sensing his itch to organise the men. "I have the company of my dragons." It was only after Jorah had vanished into the crowd of Jogos Nai that Daenerys felt alone. It was a familiar, returning creep in her heart. She was forever finding herself in a world of strangers. Drogon nudged her hand back from his snout. He had a terrible stink of whale carcass on his smoky breath but she was used to him. "What do you think?" She asked the dragon. "Of course… You're wondering if I'll let you eat the horses." Daenerys smiled softly and dipped her head, pressing her cheek against the finer scales on Drogon's nose.
Jorah was led away to a shanty camp where dozens of tents had been lashed together with extra leathers laid over the top in an effort to keep out the driving wind and snow. One man lifted the flap open, allowing Jorah to duck beneath into the warmth. A fire crackled in the centre, surrounded by reclined figures in various stages of rest. Several were sound asleep, snoring loudly. Jorah barely noticed any of it for his attention had been caught by a solitary figure sitting on the opposing side, keeping to the edge of the room. Even then, cast in shadow, the Northern man stood out against the Jogos Nai.
"Well, I'll be damned..." Jorah said, as the other man's gaze caught his. "Benjen bloody Stark."
THE SHIVERING SEA – WEST OF BRAAVOS
"Very strange..."
"Only a fool looks for answers in the sea." Tycho had been drawn from his quarters reluctantly by a turbulent swell. He was not exactly a poor sailor but a certain amount of tumbling set most people over the side. At this moment he was questioning how he'd slipped from the sprawling marble floors of the bank to this rickety piece of shit boat that gnashed its teeth against his presence.
"You've travelled this route plenty of times," Daario replied, lounging against the railing. The few pirate sailors that he'd brought with him were busy tightening the rigging against the wind which had picked up considerably as they neared the end of The Narrow Sea. The Shivering Sea, whose waters had already started to mingle beneath their hull, was a wild creature full of chop and lone pieces of ice. Whales often breached, flapping themselves like common fish as they hunted plumes of krill. "And you have not noticed anything amiss?"
Tycho played along – subjecting the view to scrutiny. As far as he could tell the sky was a rather ordinary shade of blue, the waters – though unpleasant, were not unreasonable and the strip of land rising in front and on their right had all the familiar gleaming white faces of the chalk cliffs that he was familiar with. "Not particularly."
"And here I was told that you are a man of great detail. The strangeness to which I am referring," Daario clarified, "is in the absence."
Almost as soon as the words left Daario's lips, Tycho realised what had set the pirate on edge. Indeed, there was an absence in the water that he should have noticed straight away. The route to Braavos was a busy one, heavily policed by the Bank of Braavos. Although the details of the shipping avenues were not directly in Tycho's purview, it was certainly something that he was versed in. All of which begged the rather serious question, "Where are all the ships?"
"Exactly." Daario replied. "Where are all the ships…"
Tycho scratched the scabbing wound on his face. "I heard reports that trade in the East was drying up as some of the city states struggled but I had no idea that it was this bad." He slammed his fist down on the rail only to withdraw it immediately and pick at a splinter. "No prizes for guessing where the trade route has gone. Fucking Dornish!"
"Ah, and now you are worrying about your vaults." Daario accused, almost playfully. Tycho was the only real sport he had now that his dragon had left and most of his pirates were occupying Dragonstone and it did not feel right to tease Tommen after everything that had befallen him, no matter how much of a shit his mother had been. "I can always tell when you think about your marble treasury. You get that look in your eye. One might even call it 'joy' if a man such as yourself were capable of it. Of course, if it were not established long ago that bankers are a species of statue."
"I am perfectly capable of being joyous, Greyjoy," Tycho did Daario the disservice of reverting to his family name. "But you are right. I worry about the contents of the vaults but not for the reason you imagine. Believe it or not I wish to help this Targaryen queen."
"Because you think she'll make a good investment."
"As it happens, no. I suspect she'll wind up like most usurpers – with a rabble of peasants and rags instead of a crown but I cannot deny that games are afoot greater than vaults and thrones. I feel it here..." Tycho held his fist against his chest. "I knew it from the moment her dragons tore the bank to shreds."
"I think you're letting a dragon go to your head."
"Winter is setting in," Tycho added seriously, while Daario stood dumbfounded by the reply. "There shouldn't be bergs this far so early. That's a big one too..."
The both turned to the chunk of ice bobbing up and down, barely escaping the water line even though it was at least twice the size of their ship.
There were more and more of them, the deeper North they pressed into The Shivering Sea. The sailors didn't say anything directly to Daario, but he could tell that they were whispering about the unseasonal amount of ice and the filthy stink in the salt air. As they drew even closer to Braavosi waters, Daario realised what it was.
"Smoke – on the water." He said, pointing out a layer of grey, several feet high, hugging the waves.
"There must be fires on the mountains. Sometimes the farmers burn in the Winter to stop them raging during Summer. See," Tycho leaned over the rail with his arm pointing to the tip of land, "a glow behind those ranges."
He was not wrong. There were definitely fires scampering over the hills, tearing through tracts of forest and turning them into a soft, yellow hue that sat along the horizon as night fell. They grew more frequent until, as their ship approached the white cliffs – turned silver in the smoke and moonlight – Tycho and Daario saw the flames leap from the tall grass as dancing blades.
It was almost midnight when their ship approached the Titan of Braavos, with it stone legs spread over the harbour entrance. There were no lights in the island city behind, which only served to make the raging fires pressing along the mountain at its back all the more fearsome. For every wave their ship cut through, a dozen icebergs scraped along the hull, tearing bits of wood off like a carpenter carving his design.
"We can barely move through this shit." Daario watched the ship's lanterns swaying. Another terrible screech of wood and ice made his features tense and the glass knock against the flame.
"This is worse than the Winter we had when I was a child." Tycho shivered on deck beside him. There was so much smoke in the air that their eyes littered with fresh tears.
"Queen Daenerys said that Winter is coming."
"Fuck – the Starks have been saying it since before men had swords." Tycho was quick to reply.
"Aye. They do go on about it."
"Miserable. I hate the cold but I hate the look of that fire even worse. A good wind 'll take it right down into the city."
Tommen was the last to appear on deck, drawn out by the sound of the ice. Ash lay draped across his shoulders, her crimson tail wrapped twice around his arm. Coming from the warmth beneath, he immediately noticed what the other two had missed. "Why are there no lights in the city?" Tommen had spent most of his short life watching King's Landing from the safety of his window that he new the familiar twinkle of a breathing city. Braavos was nothing but a shadow beneath the raging wildfire which the cliffs wore as a crown.
Before anyone had the chance to reply, a towering iceberg clipped the side of the ship. They were immediately thrown from their feet – sliding across the deck until they crashed into the opposing rail in a tangled clump of limbs. Ash hissed sharply as a knee bruised her wing. Tycho swore when Daario's sword almost staked him through the chest. Then, between one breath and the next, the ship rocked the other way. The two sailors on the mast lost their footing. One fell onto the deck, snapping his spine as he landed within inches of Tycho. The other vanished into the darkness, landing somewhere in the water.
"Shit!" Daario ducked, as a hail of ice fell over them, sheered off another iceberg that none of them had seen towering above them in the darkness.
"Watch the bloody side – watch the bloody side!" Tycho tried desperately to crawl away as edge of the ship started to crumple in on itself, splitting apart with a sudden gush of water spraying up through the gaps. They were being wedged between floating monsters. Torn and wrecked in what should have been open water. The banker's nails dragged along the deck to no avail. The angle was too sharp. His body rolled and a moment later he hit the damaged side of the rail and cried out as pieces of wood slammed into his flesh. He heard the dragon shrieking and somewhere in the violence, the lanterns from the ship's riggings snapped free and shattered over the ground in a storm of oil and fire. Next came the heavy, iron pulleys from the ropes – then the ropes themselves, half of them aflame.
The icebergs destroyed the ship with the ease of a Mormont axe felling a pine. Its dying body twisted around competing ice flow. Freezing water filled the lower level, weighing the rig so that the waterline raised right to the rail. There were moments only remaining to Daario, Tommen and Tycho to find a way off before the whole mess was sucked greedily beneath the surface.
"There!" Tommen, the least injured of the three, climbed up onto the rail and pointed to a nearby sheet of ice. In the moonlight it was pale and smooth – a beautiful, peaceful expanse compared to what was happening beneath them. "Get Tycho!"
Daario shook the wood and snow from his hair, turned and did his best to drag Tycho from his hell. The list on the ship and the rapidly burning heart transformed the world around Daario into a bizarre dream of burning heat and unbearable cold. Soon, thick smoke sank over them, pushed down by the chill. Tommen waited, one leg on either size of the rail with his boot touching the surface of the water. The ice sheet was close, less than three feet from the ship but it was bobbing wildly up and down, groaning and shifting as if it had a heartbeat.
"Give him to me – come on." Tommen reached out his arms, grabbing Tycho by his shoulders before hauling him across the rail. The poor man screeched as an open wound on his leg dragged and tore, leaving a bloody smear.
"Throw him onto it." Shouted Daario, vaulting up to join Tommen.
It took both of them to toss Tycho the distance and even then, one of his legs crashed into the water. He was in too much pain to drag himself out so Daario had to do it after he'd jumped off the ship. Tommen was last, easily scampering off the ship as its bow dipped below the surface.
When it was done, all three of them sat on the ice, rising and falling with the motion of the waves as they watched, in utter shock. For a while they were all but drowned in the glow of the fire as it ripped up the mast and consumed the sails. The wind tore the burning fabric and carried it off into oblivion. Then the water came onto the deck. The ship rolled onto its side away from the iceberg. When the mast hit the water, the fire died and they were left out in the cold and dark.
Silence.
Daario blinked dumbly at the black water where the boat had been. The ice was already moving to fill the space. Now that the only light in the world came from the moon or the fires on the mountain, he was able to see the extent of the ice flow. "This may as well be the North. Skagos or the Frozen Shore… Have you ever seen a mess like this? What a nightmare. Utterly impassable. Not even the whalers with their Ironwood hulls would go out in that."
The scene was worse. Towards the Shivering Sea the ice was so thick it choked the horizon into a single, white shore.
"We have to get Tycho to the city. He needs to see a healer about that leg." Tommen lifted material off the wound and saw a hint of bone.
"Of course I bloody need a healer." Tycho clenched his teeth. "Half a damn ship tried to cut it off. I near enough ended up as firewood." He was in such agony that it was edging on delirium. His only grace was the cold which numbed all manner of terror although he could not bear to eye the wound.
"There looks like there is a way across the icebergs – more or less." Daario tilted his head, guessing the gaps between some of the rougher patches of water. Then he dipped his head backwards and eyed the titan. He could hear the wind whipping over the immense, bulbous faces of stone – whispering along the grooves where it took on a thousands tongues. "Come on, there's no time to lick our wounds."
Making their way toward the nearest, Eastern shore of the Braavosi harbour had its moments of terror. Thin segments of ice collapsed beneath them. Thick, uneven bergs started to roll lazily onto their sides as they shuffled around their faces leaving long stains of blood. Gaps of water emerged that were too far to jump leaving them adrift for an hour on rogue piece of ice, attempting to row it through the water. Finally, they made landfall on one of the smallest of the coral islands that sported little else but a decrepit stone fort, boat and jetty. They decided unanimously in silence to take a moment of refuge inside the fort before progressing to the larger islands.
Disrepair defined the building. All its hinges were stiff with rot while the few exposed pieces of iron were redder than Stannis' bleeding heart. Lichen patterned the wooden planks like Summer snowflakes while the salt chewed pieces of the stone away leaving it uneven. Even its roof had been eaten away leaving the interior open to the elements.
Daario pushed the heavy door open while Tommen helped Tycho limp inside. Ash, who had been following on her own, scampered in around their ankles like a faithful dog let in from the Winter. She curled up against one of the walls, folded her wing around and licked at several bloody grazes.
"Why are you laughing? Mad bloody bastard..." Daario laid against the pale wall beside the dragon while Tommen closed the door and set the heavy plank across to lock it in place.
Tycho could not help himself, finding his mind in a sort of mania. He eyed the sky above – dense with stars. "I was thinking, it does not matter about your ship. Soon, we'll be able to walk to Westeros."
EASTWATCH BY THE SEA – THE WALL
Jorah's eye was drawn immediately to Benjen's sullen, pale façade. He was a ghost of the towering beast of a man he'd enjoyed sharing beer and song with when the great Northern Houses held their festivals. A few times, they had even sparred together for the crowd. Though he was standing in front of Jorah, still a Stark through and through, Jorah felt as if he was grasping the arm of a dead man.
"What has a Mormont been doing travelling in the East?" Benjen surprised Jorah with his opening remark. "The..." Benjen gestured to the faint tattoos that crossed his skin. "Thought your lot were more of the nesting kind."
"The East, my friend, is a very long story." Jorah replied. "One might also ask what a Wolf is doing in the company of the dead?"
"A long story, old friend." Benjen replied in kind. Both of them nodded. They were men of few words by choice and even fewer when they came together.
"Tell me straight, where are the bastards?"
"The Night King and his army withdrew to the forest after The Wall fell. Instead of opening up a passage, it is as you see – a wall of a different kind – difficult to move an army though. I was ridin' the border before you arrived. Don't worry, I see you spoiling. You'll have your fight. He won't have gone far."
"Hardly a comfort." Jorah sank down to the ground next to the fire. When Benjen did not immediately move to join him, he added. "Won't you sit?"
"Have to be careful." Benjen declined. "I'm not so good near the fire now..." Very carefully, he pulled part of his shirt aside to show Jorah a hint of the black glass embedded in the flesh above his heart. It was black and purple – a horrible edge of something not quite dead.
"Benjen..."
He shook his head, wrapping himself up. "My own stupid fault." He insisted. "Don't know what I was thinking, ranging out that far with a small group of men. We ran into an army. Yer cannot believe it can you? We set out, desperate to find a whisper of the rumour and we found the whole bastard mess. I am only telling yer this because since that day, I ain't been able to get back through The Wall. Whatever curse was placed upon those wretched creatures, it passed to me."
"And yet – here you are..."
"Exactly. When Eastwatch collapsed and took part of The Wall with it, something else was destroyed. I can walk across the threshold as often as I like. So can the Night King and his army. Mormont – I hope yer ain't laying your eggs with magic 'cause those old words are goin' up in smoke."
Jorah rocked forward slightly on his haunches, leaning into the halo of light.
"And you?" Benjen prompted, as Jorah slipped into a typical Mormont silence. "Are you dead as well?"
"I am not sure what I am." Jorah admitted. "Never got the full story myself but you are right. I was in the East. Went as far as Asshai." He did not enjoy the memory of Asshai. "Monster of a place – that city. You and I, Benjen, we should have stuck with our petty wars and fat kings. We had no idea how good we had it. Fighting in the mud with a good rain to wash away the blood. Men knew who they were. We carried banners and sang the songs of our ancient Houses. Whispering prayers to gods we didn't give a fuck about. I've had nothing but sand and ash since then. Sand and ash."
"You won't find an argument from me there, brother." Benjen replied. There was a warm pause between them, filled by the soft muffle of sleep from the Easterners sharing the tent. They were a pair of men who'd seen too much of the world. "Your queen is better looking than Robert ever was."
Jorah roared a laugh into the flames while Benjen directed his to the cold air.
Daenerys made short work of organising the remaining warriors into smaller groups led by self appointed commanders. Like so many, they were starved for leadership and all too quickly fell in line behind her will. This is how kings were made, she thought. The first kings – not those born to power but the ones that won it from the realm. Her three screeching dragons clambering over the remains of The Wall did not hurt to solidify her power. The creatures thought that the remains of The Wall made an excellent nesting area and so they clawed at the gaps and curled up on precarious cliffs of ice. Daenerys wished they'd stay away from it.
There were some unfamiliar faces among the ranks of her army. Several dozen Skagosi from the nearby island had joined carrying their three-pronged tridents with serrated bone heads. They weren't sure what to make of the small, silver woman but once or twice she thought she heard them refer to her as the moon. It was dragons that held their interest. Of all the people on the field of ice, they were the ones whispering holy words their indifferent ears. Her dragons would just as soon scoop them up inside their jaws.
"Making friends?" She asked, seeing Jorah return with a man in tow. He was a pale, sullen thing dressed in the black robe of a Nightswatchman. "Another surviving Crow?"
"Not quite… This is Eddard Stark's brother, Benjen."
"I was warned that the North is full of wolves."
"I'm a Crow now," Benjen countered, politely but he fell short of showing Daenerys any courtesies of her position. Crows did not acknowledge the crowns of men. "It is good to see you."
"And my dragons..."
"Aye. And your dragons." Benjen agreed. "I hope they fight as well as they sing. This is your army?"
"Roughly a third..." Jorah drawled slowly in reply. "Some are on foot, marching up the King's Road. The rest are at Westwatch by last raven."
"A third..." Benjen set his eyes carefully on the army. "I am not sure it will be enough." He admitted. "Even with the dragons. I wish I could say that there would be a Northern army at your back but Robert's wars killed our commanders and, from what Jorah tells me, Jon Snow and the bloody Boltons picked off the rest. Many more have scattered with no intention of answering the call of their lords. We'd be relying on the Southern forces but-" even now he knew how fleeting that hope was. "These creatures that you face, they fight like a nest of ants. I have been tracking them through the far North and have seen them pick off the Freefolk camps."
"You didn't try to stop them?"
"I am one man," Benjen replied, to the queen. They did not understand what these creatures were like. "I learned instead. I thought, if I can make it back through The Wall, what I have learned will be of some use."
"What is your suggestion?" Daenerys held her ground in the snow, as a fresh jolt of wind kicked up her fur-lined cloak.
"Hold The Wall – or what's left of it. Our ancestors knew what they were doing. We can pour a veil of oil over the wights and set them alight. Far as I know, fire is still good enough. For the Walkers – those 'll have ter be picked off by those brave enough to hold a sword."
"I do not disagree," Daenerys replied, "but as Ser Jorah has already brought to my attention, very soon, the ice will circumnavigate The Wall and the army need not fight along your encampments. Then what do we do? I can have my army extend the line but from what you have said, it sounds as though they'd be overrun."
Jorah and Benjen exchanged a long look, as if the two commanders were sharing their ideas without needing to speak them aloud. "Trenches could work – if we fill them with wildfire."
"They'll only last as long as it burns. Hours..." Benjen countered, in a shuffle of muffled voices.
"Why not use the dragons?" Daenerys interjected, after several more ideas fell to the ice. The pair of seasoned fighters turned to her with questioning eyes. "The dead cannot walk on water. What is ice but water? I can have the dragons melt the ice and maintain the moats – at least for a while."
Viserion was chosen to run graceful circles over the Bay of Seals. His golden scales were dulled by frost and thick layers of ocean fog. Daenerys adjusted the saddle's straps which had been doubled in length to accommodate her knight. He was a very different creature to ride. Drogon, being the largest of the three, ambled through the air while Viserion whipped in tight turns, almost playfully. It took all her attention to keep him from dragging the tips of his wings in the waves.
Finally, she managed to bring him up and then lined a run of icebergs. They had not frozen together in a land bridge yet but there was certainly more ice than open water.
She felt the fire surge beneath Viserion's scales moments before he opened his jaws and unleashed on the ice. Steam lifted in screaming plumes where the fire touched the ice. It melted under the intense heat but it was not as easy as she had assumed. It took four passes of the same stretch of water to clear it of ice. For a while, the dark grey scar lingered on the surface – an impenetrable moat as she had imagined. A few hours later, the currents dragged more ice down from the North and the horizon looked as it had before – a world of white from an infinite sea.
BEAR ISLAND – THE BAY OF ICE
A freezing gale knocked Theon off the rocks and onto the ice, rolling him several times across the flat. Ice crystals tore pieces of flesh from his face. He closed his eyes until he turned his back on the wind. His sister managed to stand her ground but even she turned her cheek to the wind. The sound of it drowned every other detail from the world. Even the shouts of the workers tying the last of the rigs together barely made it to their ears.
Some of the larger ships trapped in the vice still had a bit of give. They swayed, groaning and doused in wildfire which had a sickly sweet scent. In place, it leaked through the hull and dribbled over the outside where Theon and Asha watched it bleed over the ice.
"Brother, are we ready?"
Theon picked himself up off the ground. It was so thin underfoot that he could still hear the water lapping up underneath. "No, but we have no choice." He nodded to a grey line moving down the last flank of white. It was a long way off but there was definitely a dead tide on the way. "They're here… Ring the bells. Bring the red witch."
