SOUTH OF THE GODS' EYE – THE CROWNLANDS

"This is proper insanity..." Tyrion muttered, as his horse lumbered dangerously from side to side. He was nearly un-seated every few steps as the Kingsroad disintegrated into a half-frozen swamp, winding its way through the worst of the Crownlands. Its saturated mud crusted over in a layer of ice wherever the shadows of the bowing Weirwoods reached.

The usually beautiful trees were grown too close together, tangled and strained by the sodden ground, growing more like rotten skin than revered symbols of the gods. Occasionally, Harrenhal's eerie towers peeked out when the wind gusted strong enough to bend the Weirwoods. Broken and grey, they stood as bony fingers and morbid gravestones that chipped at the edge of Tyrion's mind. Another martyr – another ancient house reduced to quite literal ruin. He was not immune to the knowledge that he'd helped bring a second dragon empire to life to the utter ravishment of his own family.

He felt it more as the weather worsened.

"And it's miserable." Tyrion complained, bitterly. "Rain and sleet for four days without taking a breath. Which god have we offended this time?" His words took on a slight slur. "The god of petty misery? I've half a mind to curse R'hllor if only to conjure up a bit of warmth." The rain dug in through his layers of fur and leather leaving him so cold that he wasn't certain that he had skin any more. Highgarden whiskey did nothing to dull the pain or brighten the world. "Fuck it." He tossed his last flask to the side. "Bring me those vats of wildfire. I'd rather be a bonfire than endure weeks of this." The Unsullied ignored his request. "That's right-" Tyrion tilted his head right back until his hood slid down, "-you heard me – fire vermin." Rain rolled off his cheeks in a cascade of tears. The red canopy shivered. "You've got tits the size of Varys' balls!"

"Is your blasphemy entirely necessary?" One of the Unsullied guards riding nearby, asked. He was shivering in his strips of leather but refused to break the discipline of his training and put on a cloak.

"Absolutely." Tyrion insisted. "If you don't keep-on at the gods, make sure they know what kind of shits they're being, they think they get away with their omnipresent malevolence." He licked the rain from his lips before pulling his hood back over his face. "What is it to you? Your gods are half a world away with nothing left to rule over."

The Unsullied offered no reply, kept his head down and kept marching. Tyrion gave the thick forest to his left a filthy look. This part of the realm was nine-tenths bird shit. He couldn't stand the fucking flocks of crows. There was something wrong with those birds.

Progress North was unbearably slow. Simply by being on the road the Queen's army were treading it into an impass. It did not help that the army was shouldered by constant ribbon of common folk. A good many of them were starving to their bones and hoped that the Northern Houses would exchange food for their labour. Tyrion tried to spread the warning that they were walking towards starvation but the word of a Lannister was less than that of an Eastern savage.

Failing an actual solution, Tyrion tried not to linger on their faces. They were flickering in and out of the world with no more permanence than a drop of water in the desert. To them this was simply another story of conquest.

"The war will be over before we get there..." Tyrion muttered, basically to himself. It surprised Tyrion to realise that he missed Varys' company. All his wit was wasted and there was no one to stop his hand from reaching for the wine. As it turned out, there was some merit to his father's fear. Without constant guard, Tyrion leered towards the worst of his demons.

Embraced them.

Shit, even now he could feel a paw around his neck with the claws digging in.


Jaime Lannister drew back into the shade. Ankle deep in mud, the water of the marshes lapped at his thighs. From the Kingsroad, the depths of the Gods' Eye presented itself as a fearsome mess of stink and decay but within the bog, Jaime could see the stark beauty in the twilight world. Infantile. A fragment of the forests that covered the realm thousands of years ago. There was protection from the freezing rain beneath the bleeding canopy. The white wooden trunks, drunk and swollen from centuries of growth, were soft beneath his hands – almost silken.

In the heart of the swamp the waters ran clear with layers upon layers of plants beneath the surface giving shelter to a delicate world of aquatic creatures. He could hear pythons shifting in the canopy above and the deafening choir of frogs that screeched through the night. A symphony of mating and murder. The water itself lay restless in its crypt – steel-like and elusive, neither blue nor green. Then, in the thickest nests of vine, root and reed, Jaime found traces of ash.

He had spent nearly a week in its grasp but the stray blade beneath his boot, buried in the mud or the hollow stare of a skeleton caught between the Weirwood roots, still brought a shiver to his bones. If this truly was a garden for the gods then they were gods of death. Old gods. Unfamiliar gods… The Faith of the Seven lingered as a mask concealing the real shadow masters and voracious demons that played out of sight.

Jaime had never understood the connection the Northern Houses had to their sacred trees but now that he was surrounded by them he could almost hear their conspiratorial whispers poisoning the air and hear the slip of Ned Stark's cloth running the length of Ice. There were no faces carved into the white trunks. Those were deeper – located on the island. He had not found a way across the deep water.

"Is it not as I said?" Qyburn asked, as Jaime pulled himself out of the water onto the remains of a decrepit jetty whose slant was so severe it nearly touched the lake. It rocked underfoot, shuddering from side to side as Jaime made his way along its spine. Spurs of sharp reeds brushed against his legs as he neared the bank.

"Unsullied, a few treacherous Tyrells and what I can only assume are the Dothraki Horselords. A rabble, certainly not what my father would call an army." Jaime wandered over to the shore, dripping and squelching in this boots. He and Qyburn had set up camp in the heart of a small mound of ruins. There was almost nothing left of the old building – a few tumbling walls overgrown by roots and vines but it formed a welcome break to the otherwise impenetrable forest not to mention solid ground underfoot. They were still suffocated by the Weirwoods whose leaves were so densely packed that very little of the rain made it through. Heavy, occasional drops plopped into the swamp and echoed into forever. Thick veils of web flapped about as if they were lengths of silk curtains on a palace.

"Tywin Lannister was happy enough to fight with the Hill Tribes of the Veil when it suited. Besides, that rabble represents a fraction of the Targaryen girl's number. I might remind you that it was more than enough to bring the Capital to its knees in one afternoon. My money says she could have managed it with one dragon. Only Robert understood what was coming for the realm and his lords thought he was a drunken fool. He wanted to kill that girl, and her dragons."

"Far as I recall, Lord Varys carried out that order."

"Varys made the mistake of thinking he purchased loyalty with a piece of paper when a living queen stood inches from a man. One might forgive him for such an error," Qyburn admitted. "He doesn't have a cock."

At least that raised a touch of amusement from the Lannister.

"Politics is a game that lords play at." He continued. "I am yet to see the young Targaryen Queen play any of their games. Her advisors are simple people and for that, they are gifted with clarity. She flies a banner of fire and blood and declares that she has come to reclaim her family throne. Are we to be surprised by these events, or should we learn from them?"

Qyburn's surrounds made no difference to him. Wilderness or the palace crypts... He adapted himself immediately and wasted no energy lamenting his fall as those with an excess of vanity might. No. This was exactly where he wished to be at the present. A forgotten place that had a lesson or two to teach. If only he could find some peace from the Lannister's self pity.

Jaime had made it all the way to the edge of King's Landing. He had stood there, on the open field, and watched the fire claw into the smoke and the whole world vanish into hell. "I'll never forget the sound they made – her dragons..." He added, his gaze drifting into nowhere. "I should have stayed and fought. What kind of a fucking kingsguard am I?"

"The kind without a king." Qyburn replied carefully. He beckoned him to come and sit by the smouldering coals where it was warm and dry. There was baked fish and a bit of sour wine. Mostly they had survived off whatever fruit they could find hanging from the swamp. The Lannister wasn't much good at hunting. Qyburn had the feeling there had always been other men around for that. He wasn't a patch on Tywin. That son of a bitch was as ruthless as he was smart. "It would have been a waste of your death. Nobel blood should choose carefully the patch of grass it spills on."

"Fuck you. I have shed plenty of blood in shit holes worse than this."

"I remember. You've still got an arm because of me."

Jaime slid down the old stone wall and collapsed in a sodden heap. He'd been living in the swamp with Qyburn for so long now that he had stopped noticing both the unpleasantness and the oddness of his companion. His heart and his sense had been left in the field outside King's Landing along with all hope he had of seeing his son again. Tommen was murdered, Qyburn had told him, along with Cersei. "My whole family is dead."

Qyburn dug around in the coals, rolling the smouldering embers over to reveal the burning red eyes. "Lord Tyrion is quite well. Thriving, one might say."

Jaime ran his only remaining hand through his filthy hair, gripping onto it and tugging so hard he felt some of the strands come away and catch in his fingers. "I saw him," Jaime admitted. "Riding with the Unsullied. The rumours are as you say. My brother is working with the Targaryen girl. It'll be on account of the dragons. He always loved them, you see. He used to sit up late into the night with a candle burning by his bed reading the Dance of Dragons. It was not the politics of the Conquest that interested him, though he learned one or two tricks that he later tried out on Cersei and I. No, it was the wild nature of the dragons that he lusted after. Damned fool used to run away whenever father brought us to King's Landing. I'd always find him in the Dragonpit, digging for bits of old bone. He found a skull and kept it on his bedside table for years until father let slip in a rage that it was nothing but a cat head."

Qyburn pulled his woollen shawl around his body to keep away the cold. He could hear the army trundling past. It would take them days at this rate. If the weather worsened, they may not make it as far as The Wall. Southerners always underestimated the silent power of a deep snow drift. "I am feeling quite at odds," Qyburn admitted. "Here I am, the sane side of this conversation."

"I thought you would be used it with my sister as company all these years." Jaime opened his eyes to see a flicker of panic on Qyburn's face. Interesting, he no longer considered himself a dangerous man but Qyburn definitely feared him. Perhaps it was the echo of his father – or even the whisper of Cersei on his lips. Now that she was dead Jaime was sure that something of her survived in him, tied around his soul. "Believe it or not, I am no fool. My sister was many things but rational was not one of them."

"I admired Cersei," Qyburn spoke with warmth. Somehow that was his most unsettling tone. "There are few in the realm who are brave enough to permit truth the freedom it requires to be discovered. I made more progress in my life's work under her reign than in the forty years prior. That is lost now, I suppose. Such a terrible shame."

"You sell your loyalty too cheaply," Jaime warned. "My sister turned a blind eye to your proclivities and so you were faithful. What good did it do either of you in the end?" He asked absently, neither at Qyburn or the rain. "She died, your creature is gone and you have been chased out of the city."

Qyburn was not chased. A small detail he left out to avoid the sharp edge of the Lannister's blade. "I have my work. This place," Qyburn lifted his hands to their dripping surrounds, "is remarkable. I'll quite happily stay hidden here for many years until I learn its secrets. You – I doubt that you will last another week. Do you wish to know what your problem is?"

"I can't wait..." Jaime shook the rain from his hair. At least when Brienne held him prisoner, the company had been better.

"You have no one to serve. Cersei hated the cage of other people's will but you crave it. If you do not pick a side of this war, you'll end up wandering like one of those corpses. None of your choices are good but for the sake of my sanity, I beg you, pick one. I think you already have..." He added. "But it requires a bit of humility and you're even worse at that than you are at honour."

Jaime tilted his head North. It was always there, tugging him. He wanted to return to Winterfell and keep his vow. Now, there was nothing stopping him from doing so. No conflicting loyalty to Cersei's violence. Only – only Tyrion.

"Exactly." Qyburn replied, catching Jaime's look.

"I – can't stand you."

"And you are interfering with my work."


Tyrion and their army were forced to take refuge in the main ruins of Harrenhal as the weather set in. Lightning cracked overhead, tearing the darkness into flares of violent, white light. The rain came at them in sheets, blown almost to a gale. Leaves, ripped from their bowers, slapped against the stone walls. Every now and then, rocks tumbled from their place and slammed into the mud, deteriorating the already dire surrounds.

Even in this state, Harrenhal was huge – easily large enough for all the men and Dothraki horses to find a hide away from the storm. The rain kept the stink down but there were parts of the castle where bodies hung from the ceiling, tortured to death and left for the crows by Tywin. Somehow, even long dead, his father was content to haunt him – to show him how horror was done.

Tyion found himself lingering beneath an overhang, open to the rain. A partially collapsed bridge vaulted between two castle turrets and from its underside hung iron cages with corpses dripping out. They were harassed by the wind that made it through the maze of ruins. Some had given way and fallen to the ground. Those cages had rolled into a nearby wall either tonight or in a previous storm.

Gradually, Tyrion was understanding the brutality seen by the commonfolk, inflicted on them by their lords and kings. It wasn't only Westeros that was guilty. Essos had its fair share of fighting pits and displays of savagery. Fear and torment were too often fallen back on as a means of control. Yes, it was effective but Tyrion wondered if for all his supposed intelligence, there wasn't a better solution to ruling. Once, maybe, he'd thought Daenerys was the answer but she was like every other dragon – a creature of violence. A necessary evil, he told himself. For now, at least. He suspected that Varys felt the same and that the Spider had not given up in his search for a future without blood and fire.

"Charming, isn't it? Father's work..."

Tyrion jumped out of his skin with fright. In doing so, he ended up launched from the protection of his alcove and stood instead in the driving rain. "D-d-on't do that."

"Do what?" Jaime shrugged, laying casually against the filthy stone. He was naturally camouflaged, blending with the general misery.

"Creep out of shadows."

"As I recall, brother, you were often to be found in the shadows. Around the wheel turns. Here I am. A shadow. I am not convinced it suits me."

Tyrion cleared the shock out of his throat and inched forwards. He had no idea what to say to Jaime – how to explain what had happened since their last meeting. So much. There were oceans between the people they'd been then. "Varys told me that you were in Winterfell."

"I was." Jaime replied. His words sounded as though they'd been dragged from the fires beneath the earth whilst Tyrion's echoed, hollow like wind in a barren valley. "When we lost Casterly Rock, Cersei and Tommen were surrounded. What was I supposed to do? Sit on my freezing arse and wait for another raven to say that – that – no. Don't look at me like that." He added. "What are you going to do? Stand there and pretend that you and your dragon queen were going to let Cersei live? That it was an accident she'd dead and you're standing here? I was never as clever as you, father and our sister but I am not entirely stupid."

Tyrion shook his head very slowly. He wasn't sure exactly what he was objecting to – Jaime's accusation or his own part in the downfall of their family. "I couldn't save our sister but I didn't kill her. I'll tell you everything, the truth, if you come inside with me. It is long past time that we talked."

"Talked… If I had both my hands I'd..."

"I am sure you could manage it well enough with one." Tyrion opened out his arms. His cloak slipped off and slapped into the mud. Jaime turned his head away from the invitation. "You think I'm not serious?" Tyrion's eyes glossed with unfettered rage. "I'd have done it myself long ago if I wasn't such a coward. I watched King's Landing burn to the ground."

"Killing you is hardly going to bring them back. Cersei – I prepared myself for but – Tommen wasn't like us, Tyrion. There was something good in him that none of us had. He reminded me of our mother. The last – last fragment of hope in our House."

Every word may as well have been a knife thrown at his chest. A tear cut a clean stain down his cheek while the alcohol let his offence lay just under the surface. "I wish I could remember her." At least on one point, Tyrion could shed a glimmer of hope. "Tommen is not dead. At least, he was not when I left King's Landing."

Jaime pulled himself off the wall at once and squared himself off to Tyrion. He stalked right out into the rain and searched his brother's eyes. "Are you telling me that Tommen is a prisoner of the queen's?"

"No. He escaped before the city fell."

The clench released from his heart but Jaime refused to allow himself to hope. "Then the queen will have every assassin in the realm hunting him. Only a fool would allow a king to live." Tyrion's silence gave him pause. "Tyrion..."

"Definitely – if I had not lied to a queen famous for her violence. If she finds out what I did to protect Tommen, her dragons will pick their teeth with my bones. I can't tell you exactly what's going on because I don't know the extent of it myself but I suspect Tommen has had help – that there are powerful people who see it in their interests to hide Tommen in the wings and wait out the war. People more powerful than you or I. Your son is alive. I feel it."

"And you haven't shared this with the queen..." Well, that was interesting. "Careful, little brother, you are playing close to the flames."

The Dothraki horses neighed against another crack of thunder. They didn't take to the cold or the storms. "I couldn't let him die," Tyrion admitted truthfully. "There's no cause great enough or sovereign noble enough to tempt me to kill your children. If I hang for something, well, it may as well be this. Yes, I hid the truth from the queen and her knight but I'd do it again for you. My actions may not show it," Tyrion was willing to admit, "but family is everything to me. It always was. It's all I have."

Jaime needed the wall beside him. He reached to it, resting the palm of his hand on its black surface. His son was alive… It was as though the dawn had broken afresh. "And what does your new queen intend with me? If you thought I was in Winterfell with part of the Lannister army, you must be riding with either a proposition or a request for my head…"

"Peace. That is the queen's proposition. You have an army and right now her only concern is filling the Northern border with fighting numbers. She is a religious creature – something which those close to her indulge and I admit that while in her company I have seen her do things that I cannot explain."

"A priestess?"

"No – something else. Jaime… Ride with us. Come North and take control of the Lannister armies. The queen will raise no opposition. The best chance Tommen has of surviving is if the queen takes a liking to you and I. If we win this war I'd rather there not be a battle for the spoils. I already have her word that Casterly Rock will return to our line and that Margaery's child – your grandchild – will be given all the titles and lands owed to his name."

"My grandchild..."

"When he is born. Yes. The Queen has mercy in her, I swear. Let me explain..."

"On one condition. You tell me everything about how Cersei died. I have to hear it. I have to know."

Tyrion reached into his pocket and pulled from it a filthy, golden chain. Dried blood caught in the lion head's eyes, turning them red like a pair of rubies.


BEAR ISLAND – THE BAY OF ICE

Short boats were dragged into the outrunning tide, filled with screaming children who clawed at their parents, protesting and fighting until the waves knocked them back into their seats and the oars went out. They were headed for the shore of Deepwood Motte where the mountains ended and the Kingsroad was closest to the shore. The groaning fishing boats were quickly lost from sight in the rolling abyss of chop and grey. In the distance, their destination rose up as a distant blur from the sea mist. Even then, the adults knew that it would not be far enough. Everything they did now bought time, nothing more.

"A dragon wouldn't go astray about now..." Dorin muttered, holding his axe firmly. He and Theon watched the evacuation from the Southern cliff near Dorin's cabin. In the thick forest behind, a bear was calling for its cubs as if it too, could sense the danger.

"Or three. I ain't seen one in the flesh." Theon took no pleasure watching the waters fill with children. "How far is it from the white shore to Bear Island?"

"On foot – at a dead run?" Dorin paused as he sharpened a sword. "I wouldn' be bettin' on more than a day. Those things 're fast an' they never stop. Not ter shit. Not ter drink. They'd run a fuckin' horse down."

"Here..." Theon handed Dorin a slender, dragonglass dagger. Its surface was uneven and mottled, more like a tooth than a blade. It was heavy too – not a thing a warrior would pick first. "Steel's no good against these creatures. My advice. If they make it through our line – run."

Dorin nearly choked. "If that fire witch does what she says she can do, there'll be nowhere left ter run to." Dorin squared off against Theon, nearly twice the size of the Greyjoy. "No one is walkin' away from this fray," he said, cold as ice. "We'll burn the whole fuckin' island ter ash if we 'ave to. Understand? The realm doesn' fall because a Mormont failed. That's not us. We'll send our 'ouse to the waves an' the storm god cunt can raise us ter fight again. We are here to die. Why are you 'ere, Greyjoy?"

Theon took a deep, shaky breath.


The line of deliberately wrecked ships stretched through the ice, unbroken for nearly a hundred metres. Nobody had ever seen anything like it. Its sheer audacity set a swell of pride through the unlikely ranks. The beautiful, bronze Yinnish were scattered with the broad Mormont warriors. Though fewer in number, they stood out from a distance, wielding enormous swords and war hammers. There were vats of burning oil near each set, ready to douse their weapons. A secondary army lingered behind the ships, closer to the island where the ice was thick and they could pull back into the cover of the boulders. Two fronts, both designed to slow and slaughter as many as possible – all weary of their barricade, unsure of how close to stand to the ominous wrecks.

It was almost morning and for the whole night they had camped in the cold and listened to the dead approach. The sound of bone thudding against the fresh ice sheet invaded everyone's minds. Soon, it was the only thought they had – the sole focus of their fear.

Theon and Asha roamed out ahead of the line and stood alone with their eyes set North. A thick carpet of stars rippled overhead, twitching. The storm clouds that had harassed them for weeks had all blown away into nothing leaving the air like crystal, so crisp they felt it might crack if they reached for it. The wind kept up, kicking swirls of ice along the ground. Further North, where the distant mountains shattered the line of the horizon, flares of green flashed in the darkness. By the glow of the stars, they could see the dead shifting. A fucking black tide in the milieu.

Asha swallowed. Her hand tightened on her sword. The vibration of their approach echoed in her blade.

"Do we have a chance?"

She shook her head slowly. "Die well, brother."

"There's enough of us to take them." Theon stepped in front of her. Her silence and her eyes told him that he was mistaken. "With honour, then."

For a long time, they stared at each other through the darkness until Asha crooked her lip. "You gonna stand there all night?"

"Aye." Theon stepped aside and drew his sword. "All fucking night. I 'ave a bet with a bear."


Melisandre stood on deck all by herself with an unlit candle cupped in her hands. Her frail, withered form ached from standing. She felt every single one of her years. This, she knew, was the place that she had been circling – the grave where her bones would sit. Magic pushed through her veins, draining her of life. It was a poison, not a grace – a borrowing from the gods which they gave most unwillingly. The chanted prayers of the priestesses and muttered songs from the old books held no meaning. They were shrouds. Pretence. Noise to fill the gaps when the magic sank bank into the dirt.

Now it was rising again. She could hear it smashing towards her on the ice. Death and his hoards. Her vantage point on the deck of the ship left her with a view of the approaching army. They spanned out in a thin line, half a dozen bodies deep, no more but their vast scope meant that they'd curve around Bear Island and consume it. They did not have to worry about their number being struck down. Most would pass through, unabated by harmless blades. The dragonglass sent by the Queen had been scattered through the army but there wasn't enough of it to make a difference. Fire was their only real weapon but Melisandre could feel it being quashed by the cold.

The stars formed a ceiling above her head. She looked up toward them, through the shadow of the torn sails and sagging ropes of rigging. Pulleys tapped against the ship's mast. Fangs of ice dripped from the cross bars. There was something forbidding about the sky tonight. A vengeful edge to the billion points of light. Melisandre wished that she could see them more clearly. That her years had not been wasted staring into fire instead of up, at the endless pieces of abyss between the points of ember. Perhaps she would have understood the Old World better.

She closed her eyes and remembered the black shore of her home. The dense jungles, baying at the crystal water and the volcanic beach crawling with diamond crabs and bits of shipwrecked vessels. Melisandre remembered running along the stinking banks of the swamp where the mangrove and figs strangled each other and the shrill scream of life stuck in her hair. The Isle of Tears and its twenty-four islands poking from the sea as bursts of black and green. Chimes made from shell and bone clattered together among the blue leaves while veils of white flowers cried along the corpses of fallen trees… The Southern lands had warmth beneath the soil – vast canals of flame that pushed up against the cracks in the world. Lakes that burned in the farthest reaches of the Southern jungles. Eyes, through which R'hollor watched the game play out.

She felt it still. The heat in the boards of the ship beneath her bare feet. Melisandre opened her eyes. Silver hair whispered across her face. The dead were closer. Their bones caught the starlight. Pale faces – black eyes. She could see the Others. Three of them rode horses some distance behind the army. Their long, pale swords shone as if they had coaxed starlight into the blade. She wondered what the creatures made of this barricade dragged into being. Were they amused at the futile wall a few scraps of humanity had pulled together or did they survey it cautiously, with all the terrible intelligence of a nightmare?

"A little closer, then..." Melisandre purred at the air. The chill turned her skin grey and her lips blue. Her one blind eye shone like the moon while her rags stuck to the viscous, slippery liquid that drenched the deck of the ship.

As the approaching army neared its final run, Melisandre noticed the ranks of Mormonts, Yinnish and Ironborn shift. They dipped their weapons into the waiting oil and held them to the flame. A thousand tiny, burning swords cast a pitiful glow, like a scar on the ice. The bank of ships remained in shadow. Silent. Above, in the distance on her right, she could see light in the windows of Westwatch and a few scattered along the top of The Wall which was so high above and far away that it was nearly indiscernible from the stars.

"Closer..."

The sheet of freshly frozen ice groaned with the weight of the dead. Hairline fractures appeared – arcing and dividing in spider web patterns. A few scant patches of black appeared where the bay broke through. Some of the larger bergs rubbed against their prison. Someone called the living army to attention. A battle cry. They beat their shields and brandished swords. Above the racket – an old Ironborn war song bellowed out from a small collection of voices.

The dead did not flinch.

They ambled closer.

Three hundred metres.

A hundred.

The roar from their charge shook the nails and boards of the boat around Melisandre. She looked down to the unlit candle in her hands. To the withered, black wick and the tortured wax.

Thirty metres.

Like a lover falling at the last, Melisandre let go of her resistance. The terror she used to feel as the heat built inside her veins rose to fill her chest but she let it come.

Bone hands scratched the hull of the ship and climbed…

The magic she feared finally formed – overwhelming her flesh only to manifest as a single flame at the tip of her rotten wick.

Melisandre's eyes snapped open in time to see the solitary flame bend in the wind. A dead creature stood in front of her with an eyeless face and pieces of flesh hanging from its scalp.

Then everything was gone.


EASTWATCH BY THE SEA – THE WALL

Jorah and Benjen rode their horses along the flank of The Wall together with a team of soldiers tailing them. Benjen's horse, starved for company for so long, kept knocking its head against Jorah's – who nipped back at it in annoyance. Looming on their right, The Wall was a mess of boulders and unstable slabs of ice that had not quite fallen. It created a continuous chorus of alarming sounds which made Jorah wary of lingering so close.

"How long were you out there on your own?" Jorah asked, tugging his horse back to stop it biting Benjen's.

"Best part o' four years, I reckon," he replied. "Though, it's been hard ter keep track 'o lately. Been following the dead by hiding in caves. There are places," he elaborated, under the sharp gaze of the Mormont. It frightened Benjen how very like Jeor, Jorah looked tonight. The ghost of his old Commander was certainly there, keeping an eye on him. "Protected alcoves that the dead cannot reach. I don' understand how it works," Benjens added quickly. "Something ter do with the Children. Nothing that is any help to us."

"Aye – there!" Jorah directed some of the men to a gap in The Wall. They swarmed to it, looking for a way to close the wound. "Bloody hell..." He pulled his horse back as a waterfall of snow slipped off an overhang and raced across the ground a scant few feet from their position. "This is fool's work."

"Have a better idea?"

"Not exactly..." Jorah admitted.

They both looked over to the flat on their left where all three dragons roamed as silhouettes. Shadow puppets. A faint glow was rising in the East – the beginning of the dawn but not enough to push away the vibrant river of stars. Jorah loved to stare at their patterns. It was the closest he had been to home for a while. There were stories that the old fisher women on Bear Island used to tell – even older than the Old Gods, of the creatures immortalised on the heavenly veil. Dreams of the First Men. They were fragments. Unintelligible symbols left on old rocks.

The dragons suddenly reared up onto their back legs, opened their wings and sang at the night. The sound carried, cutting through the air. The horses shuffled uneasily and the workers fixing the hole in the wall whispered prayers into the air.

Benjen felt a brush of warmth on his skin for the first time since the dragonglass pierced his heart.

"Stran-" Jorah started to say, before Benjen tapped him urgently on the shoulder and pointed across the ice.

Low in the Western sky, staining the horizon, was halo of orange light growing as though another sun was rising in violation of every natural law.

Stunned, the men hesitated.

"Have you ever seen anything like that?" Benjen asked, astonished.

It happened in perfect silence – the light surging as they watched until it outshone the actual dawn behind them.

"That's-" The words did not have the chance to form on Jorah's lips before the accompanying shockwave ripped through the ground. They heard it first, rattling the loose pieces of ice in the unsteady expanse beside them. The agitation reached a fever.

"Get back – get back!" Benjen reared his horse around and yelled at everyone working on The Wall. They dropped their tools and ran as pieces of ice dislodged and rained down. Bits of it struck the ground between Jorah and Benjen. The knight seemed frozen, his eyes fixed on the West. "Mormont – you too – get back. Mormont!"

Next the ground itself vibrated, rising in violence until the loose pieces of rock, bone and ice started to jump and dance on the surface. Then came the noise. The air cracked and boomed like a clap of thunder at the edge of the world. It was as though some unholy thing had broken out of the ground and spasmed into life in a fit of violence and fire. Tendrils reached into the sky, visible, even at this distance, as distinct arms of light. Directly above their heads, a large shelf of ice snapped. It screeched as it tore away. Benjen went paler than death. He slapped Jorah's horse hard, shocking it into a gallop before he followed, snapping his reins and bruising the ribs of his horse. They were chased by the shadow of the falling ice. Benjen felt it black out the stars. Flecks of ice poured into white clouds. He did not dare turn his head.

The blue boulder crashed onto the ice at their backs. Its force send a white veil into the air and a roar of noise so loud that the horses bucked wildly to the side, throwing both men mercilessly from their saddles and into the air. They landed – rolled – and clasped themselves into balls as clumps of ice savaged the ground around them, belting down. Hot blood covered Jorah's face. For a moment he thought it was his own until the saw the severed torso of his horse destroyed beside him with bits of bone and hair. He closed his eyes as more of The Wall crashed down and the explosion continued in the West feeding into cataclysm.

Under the current of noise, screams faded and were erased – one by one. Jorah imagined the owners of those voices vanishing beneath the remains of The Wall. Their bodies crushing into nothing – buried and destroyed in an instant or those that were cursed to suffer through their final moments, torn and broken like the souls of the dead wandering the world. He knew that he would not be one of them today. The length of his life and day of his death were fated in Asshai. That is why he did not immediately run. Jorah suspected that, for a while at least, the gods could not lay so much as a claw upon his flesh. Not while he had dreams that stretched into the ice…


"Jorah! Jorah!" Daenerys slid and fell, smacking into the ice sheet. Hands reached for her, grasping her upper arms and immediately pulling her back to her feet so that she could continue storming toward the freshly collapsed section of The Wall. Clouds of fog swelled around the body, concealing the worst of its scars. Hundreds of birds frightened from their perched called shrilly to each other across the water on her right. Her dragons had taken to the air and circled, casting shadows as dawn dragged itself free of night, dimming the explosion in the West.

Hundreds of her soldiers trailed as she raced carelessly towards the unstable clump of ice. Pieces of The Wall continued to fall and would for some time. Like a glacier, the complex tug of gravity and age fought endlessly. Whatever the destruction ravaged upon it, the stretch of ice remained an impassable, formidable sight.

And Jorah had been standing directly beneath it…

Daenerys had not seen everything but certainly enough to know that her knight was somewhere in the debris. Soldiers peeled away from her as she neared the edge of the debris field. Daenerys kept her gaze away from the obvious bodies of animals and people littered through the scene. Blood stained boulders of ice and broken spears... Their deaths and suffering bordered on the horrific. Better to die by the sword, Jeor had told her and Viserys as children. Gods… What had she done to her brother? What had he suffered… And why did he play so heavily on her waking mind? She had thought that as the war drew on and she inched closer to The Wall her visions would take her to Rhaegar but no – all she saw was Viserys and his crown of gold.

"There!" She saw a hand reach out from the ice, its fingers bending and beckoning.

Daenerys lifted her heavy furs and vaulted over blocks of ice and uneven snow that sat between them. She cried out in frustration as her feet slipped and sent her into the cracks between over and over – tossing her aside like a ship in a restless ocean. The ice dragged against her face. Bled her. Threatened to drown her in its endless wash of eerie blue that changed a thousand times as the sun rose beside the shadow of Skagos.

The hand reaching out of the snow grasped hers. Immediately she knew that it did not belong to Jorah but instead his strange Northern friend. "Benjen..." She breathed, grasping him firmly.

Benjen clawed his way out of the icy prison and found himself face to face with the tiny dragon queen.

"Jorah?!" She demanded, immediately.

Startled to find himself alive, Benjen shook himself back to sense. "Uh – over there – I think."

They searched the snow together, digging frantically while Benjen picked up the larger chunks of ice until they heard a groan.

Jorah blinked away the snow from his eyelashes as the Queen's soft gloves touched his cheek. The weight of the snow burying him made it difficult to breathe or even move. "Y-your Grace..." Jorah stammered, as a way of greeting.

Daenerys sank back, a sigh of amused relief on her lips.


"What caused it?" Daenerys asked, as all three of them stared East. The glow of the explosion was still visible but it faded as the true sun rose at their backs. Nothing could compete with its brightness. It was only darkness that revealed the true extent of the light.

Jorah shook his head. "Couldn't say, Your Grace but I believe I know where it is."

"Your home..."

"Or near enough to. There are not many things that can turn a horizon that colour."

"A falling star..." Daenerys replied, almost absently.

"Or a few hundred tonnes of wildfire. I heard the stories of Blackwater Bay and we have been sending a steady stream of it North from the Citadel." Jorah leered forwards, as if those few inches that brought him closer to his home made some kind of difference.

Daenerys reached across – her hand taking his wrist. "You want to go. Of course you do."

"Look at the state of The Wall – as soon as we leave, the Night King will march on the rubble. He's nearby – waiting in the forest. I feel it. So do you. He wants us to go."

"And what if he is doing the exact same thing at the other edge? What difference does it make which side he breaks first so long as he crosses into the South? Ser," Daenerys used his title, stepping out onto the ice in front of him while Benjen watched the pair carefully. "Take Viserion-"

"...Daenerys..."

"No. Listen. He is the fastest of the three. Fly West. Find out what is happening and help, if that is what's required. I will stay here with the Drogon and Rhaegal."

Jorah shook his head firmly as if she was crazy. "I'll not leave you on your own at the edge of the world with a battle looming."

"I'm hardly alone." There was an army fanned behind her, both on the ice and in the bay.

Jorah's gaze shifted to Benjen Stark. His half-dead presence served as a constant reminder of what awaited them on the other side of the ice. "No… All the same. I am staying here."

"Jorah…" Daenerys dropped her voice to a whisper and risked taking a step toward her knight. They were both stained with blood, like a pack of wolves after a feast. She was aware that hundreds of eyes were upon them at any given moment. In particular, the Eastern army were an easy without their natural leader while the savage Skagosi were likely to tear her apart if they sensed weakness. "It is the only sensible thing to do and I know that you wish to go. I'm not blind, you see. I'll order you, if I have to. You have to be my eyes, Ser."

She did not permit him to reach for her, or compel her into private conversation. In then end, it was only her strict command that forced him to leave. His honour overruled his heart and he turned on his Queen at once and headed out into the cold to call down Viserion.

Benjen and Daenerys were left standing together. "He is exactly as I remember him." Benjen admitted. "More honour than sense with a chip on his heart. Mormonts, eh? A constant force, my brother used to say. Never bloody change. Not in a thousand years. The mountains will lose their shape before them."

Daenerys crossed her arms over her chest. "You are Benjen Stark – son of Rickard Stark."

"Aye. That I am." Benjen replied, tensing.

"My Mormont knight gave you a second look because he wonders whether or not you plan to kill me after he leaves." Only now, did she turn. Benjen was much taller than her – a creature that might reach out and strike her into death with a single blow. It might frighten some but she had spent many years in the company of dragons and dangerous men.

"Interesting – that you would allow him to leave if that is what you believe possible of me."

"Tempting fate with my fragile neck is one of the few powers I have left."

Benjen did not know if it was a trick of the early morning light but there seemed to be a flicker of violet in her eyes. There was a reptilian nature to her features and in her slightest manners. While there were no scales patterning her flesh or ridges of bone protruding from her spine, Valyrians were different – corrupted by their magic. Even Prince Rhaegar in all his glory, parading at the tournaments could not escape his blood. Benjen could see the likeness between them but Daenerys was neither as arrogant as her brother nor as frail. Indeed, Benjen was quite certain that he could take his sword and swing it across her neck to no effect.

"I know who my father was and what he did," she continued, when the Northerner said nothing in reply to her accusation. He had your father and uncle murdered in grotesque theatre along with a great many other noble houses who'd see me hang. I can no sooner undo his crimes than apologise for them. The one thing I can assure you of is that there is a far worse fate awaiting me than the sharp edge of your blade so, if you have the courage and while my knight is too far away to stop you, I beg do as you wish." She paused for quite some time to give the towering Stark opportunity. He did not move.

"I'd rather ask a question, if it be permitted."

In the distance, Viserion and Jorah took to the sky. She refused to watch them go, listening to the flap of wings instead. "All right."

"What is it that you want? There are no crowns of any value in the North. You have three dragons, the same as your conquering kin. I cannot fer the life of me understand what you're doing… When a man like Ser Jorah stands at your side, it raises questions. His weakness for beautiful women is well versed in the taverns but no creature, however well formed, would tempt him ter march against his own House."

"There's a wheel turning in the earth," Daenerys whispered. "Sometimes I think I can feel it, dragging up the darkest filth of our past. The constant repetition of war and each time we survive with less than we had before. I've seen so much of the world – enough at least to say that it is we who are living in ruin and shadow. We should have inherited the shining empires of our kind and yet I feel that in another few turns we'll be exactly like the other civilisations who have died and been forgotten and some other thing will stop at our overrun ruins and wonder at our fall. I don't need to tell you what comes for us – you know their faces better than me but you asked me what I want. I want to win. Everything that I have done is in service of a single, final victory. I cannot see anything beyond this wall of ice."

"It is more than that. Breaking a wheel? You're not the first ruler to think you can change the realm."

He was the first person to see through her answer. Perhaps it was because he'd brushed the waters of death as she had. "I have this terrible feeling," Daenerys admitted, "that a mistake was made that only I can fix."

Benjen averted his eyes briefly to the dragon heading off into the sky. "And you don't want him to know."

"Drown and dream are the same word in Valyrian," Daenerys whispered. "I think it is because the things we see often consume us."

"And what have you seen?" Benjen stepped closer, alarmed by the way her voice was stolen by the wind. She was an ethereal creature, more like her ancient cousins than boorish kin.

The queen knelt down, pulled of her glove and placed her palm flush to the ice. "Fragments of time pressing together, folding in like the closing of a book… The dead scream at me while the living fall silent."


BEAR ISLAND – THE BAY OF ICE

The solitary flame at the end of the candle hovered for a moment, flickering weakly against the cold. Then its heat caught hold of the vapour in the air, igniting it in a ball of flame. It spread – blue following white as the air erupted without heat until the first fingers touched the deck of the ship where the whale oil lay in pools. Now it ripped across the surface – climbing and diving until one of its tendrils dipped down through the cracks and snuck into the hull.

Then it was hell.

Open vats of glowing wildfire caught – evaporated – and exploded with such immensity that the ship rose from its grave in the ice – lifting fifty feet clean into the air where it detonated in a showering catastrophe. Flaming pieces of wreckage rained down on the ice and for a few stunning moments both armies stopped to watch green plume of fire. The churning ball of flame sucked all the air from its immediate surrounds then pushed it back, sending a vicious invisible swave out that knocked every living thing from its feet. It alone tore sheets of ice apart and made the eardrums of the living bleed down their necks.

That was nothing. As the burning fragments fell back to earth they set the other ships in the barracade alight. Realising their error, Theon, Asha and their army attempted to crawl desperately away but the entire line of ships that they had rigged with wildfire vanished and their world transformed into fire and blood.

Dorin, who had been holding his ground at the top of the cliff beside the ancient Weirwood, felt the air pick him up from the ground and throw him backwards until he vanished inside the line of pine trees – which themselves snapped and fell under the force of the explosion. His back hit bits of brush and fine branches first – crashing through them before finally he smacked into the side of a hundred year old monster. Parts of his body broke before he was dumped, face first, in a thick drift of snow deep in Bear Island's forest. He had no time to process the unrelenting boom that made the air shudder all around him. It shook the bedrock under the island while trees fell down all around him, smashing into each other. Following the gale was a terrifying heat that, even from this distance, made Dorin claw at the snow and try to bury himself deeper in the cold to stop his flesh melting away.

What had they done? What the hell had they done…

The explosion dragged as though it lasted an aeon – that it cracked the ground and woke every hateful god and even when it died away, Dorin kept himself hidden for several minutes, fearing the surface of the realm had been stripped to expose the burning flesh that surely lay beneath.

Finally, he rolled over with a stab of pain and saw that there was a mess of forest knotted overhead as though he was laying inside a pyre, awaiting the flame. The limbs and branches were stripped of snow, desolate and creaking in their disarray. Dorin lifted his hand to his side and glanced down to a pattern of blood beside him in the ice. A branch, thick as his thumb, vanished into his armour piercing straight through the steel. He wrapped his hands around the wood – pulled as hard as he could but his gloves slid harmlessly along the branch leaving it in place, skewering him.

"Bastard!" He gasped. Blood dribbled from the edge of his lip and from a hundred other scratches. The edges of his mind folded in, spasming with shock. Details leached from the world. Sound dimmed. Despite the overwhelming forest of fire below the cliff, the light faded.

There was no one to see the face on the Weirwood twist into a smile before closing its eyes on the world.


They had set fire to the ice. Great, burning lakes roared in place of the waters of the bay. Strong winds from the North pushed the thick front of smoke over Bear Island, hiding it from view at the same time as it fanned the flames.

From above, they looked like golden threads. Astonishing in the magnificence but also terrifying Jorah to the very core of his soul. He could not see from the dragon's back if the fires had reached Bear Island itself, but what he knew for certain was that war had set in.

A huge, vast scar of open water sliced through the fresh sheet of ice grown over the Bay of Ice. The fires raged on both sides of it. Between the columns of smoke, Jorah saw piles of cinder and wood.

Viserion was drawn to the smell of blood in the water. Of his own volition, he dipped his head and dived down, descending so fast Jorah felt his stomach drop and ears strain with the pressure. "Easy!" Jorah begged the creature, but like all dragons, Viserion had a will of his own and it was possessed.

Veils of smoke suffocated Jorah, who turned his head, closed his eyes and hacked into his sleeve if only for a chance to breathe. He could feel the heat long before they neared the surface of the ice field but what he had not prepared himself for was the sheer weight of the destruction. What once had been a solid surface of freshly laid ice was now an endless table of fragments knocking up against each other with gaps of open water between.

Jorah could see what had transpired. The remnants of the explosion appeared to be a line of ships used to tear a gaping river in the ice with the hope of slowing the dead army. It had worked a little too well, shattering vast portions of the vista including pulling down parts of the valley beneath Westwatch fort. Bear Island was alight – its forests and settlements burning.

Covering it all were bodies, swarming up against each other…

Viserion snapped hungrily at the air but Jorah refused to give him permission. There was no telling dead apart from the living.

An enormous spear made from ice, eight foot long, skimmed through the air missing Viserion's neck by inches. The dragon startled, diving sharply. He rolled right onto his back – pale golden stomach facing the sun.

Jorah fell immediately. He reached out as his body sank, catching hold of the leather straps the left him dangling from the dragon's back.

"Viserion!" Jorah screamed, pleading with the dragon. He was high above the battle – the world below an out of focus storm. For a moment, Jorah noticed the startling patterns in Viserion's wings, all the more magnificent with the sun shining through them from above. The sight brought him little comfort as the dragon sank through he air, flipping back over so fast that Jorah lost his grip and bounced over the dragon's scales before sliding into the air…

He was facing the dragon as he fell – Viserion's silhouette shrinking. Jorah heard the battle. The ring of blades and crunch of restless icebergs. They weren't far now. Closer and closer as he sank faster.