Bran worked his way along the scaffolding that held the last lift system at Castle Black against The Wall. Parts of it had torn away leaving nuts and bolts hanging free, dripping in long shards of clear ice. He had always been a climber but now he did it with wings, hopping from one rail to the next before landing on the snow which draped itself over the landscape as a suffocating blanket.
It was almost beautiful. Endless. Perfect. A featureless, silent world. Bran understood why white was the colour of death.
Another load of soldiers rose up the treacherous contraption. When the gates opened, they rushed onto The Wall where urns full of oil were being dragged to the Southern edge in a panic. They were no iron stands on this side so the men chipped roughly at the ice with axes, creating a space through which to pour the oil. Flames burned weakly from the torches kept nearby. A thousand years of preparation and nothing was ready for the arrival of death.
Below, a dragon wrestled with a weak pine that had broken in half and caught in its wing – at this height the monster was no more than a figurine snapped from the castle. Then there was The Wall itself. A blade, the Three-Eyed Raven had called it, one with chips out of its edge. Today it had an uncanny resemblance to an ancient relic of war dug from a grave.
A human smear formed as hundreds of Crows amassed in the courtyard. The Oldtown maester peered from his window in the tower, half mad. Beneath, the foundations of Castle Black shook.
Bran noticed another set of wings. There were many ravens circling the castle in black ribbons but this one had a slight tint of silver to its charcoal feathers, scratches along its beak and a hint of the horizon in its eye. Moreover, it was watching him.
Discovered, it tilted its head in Bran's direction and in an instant the vision disintegrated.
He reappeared in complete darkness. Instead of wings Bran reached forwards with brittle hands, dragging his nails across the underside of a coffin. Buried alive.
WINTERFELL – THE NORTH
Bran awoke beneath the heart tree in the Winterfell wood. It shivered and shed another veil of red leaves over the snow. Some fell into Bran's lap, catching in the layers of fur draped around him. He withdrew his bare hand from the wood noticing fresh sap tears dripping down from its creases.
The Weirwoods allowed him to warg the unprotected minds of creatures farther away. He'd tried to fly South but so far he could not reach The Twins or breach the mountains to the East. Perhaps it was because the Winterfell tree was not as old as the one festering in the Three-Eyed Raven's cave. Bran had long suspected that the power of greensight damaged the Weirwood, eventually killing them like the grand old corpse outside Raventree Hall. He had tried to see the moment of its death but it was hidden from the fabric of time. Whenever he tried to reach these distant places the birds would fight back or die in the air, tumbling helplessly above the desolate world. Bran had been a crab feasting on a corpse on the shore beside Eastwatch Castle and skimmed through the frigid waters of the Bay of Ice as ash formed morbid mats across the surface. Theon had died there – his sister too with one of the fire witches from Essos. There they all lay in burned bits while the trees dipped their roots into the water.
The white tree beyond The Wall was not like the other Weirwood. It consumed its greenseers and in doing so, drank from their magic. They were the trees that feasted in times of war when blood ran over the ground as though it were a great Summer flood. Death only made them stronger and if the ice of The Wall were to melt away, the North would see the bone forest rising a thousand feet with all its veins, roots and eyes. Sometimes Bran saw it, naked and free of ice. In those dreams it was a corpse left behind on fields of black rock and endless misery. Time was such that he did not know if he was glimpsing the end of Winter or the last days of Westeros itself as it fell into ruin like its cousin on the other side of the world. Or was that the same day?
Did he long for this or fear it... Bran could not tell what his desires were any more. They'd mingled with too many voices. He was a million faces and none at all. No longer a Stark – not quite a raven.
Lyanna had been watching the cripple boy for some time. The more Starks at Winterfell the better for its protection, or so she had thought before his eyes rolled back, white as the moon. Bran's lips moved to a wordless song and the wind dipped the tree's white limbs achingly toward the wheelchair. Then he'd startled into the living realm, shifted his view upon her and leached all the warmth from the world. Lyanna was certain that there was more than one set of eyes watching her now.
"The Lady of Bear Island." He observed, absently.
She picked her way around the edge of the pond. Bran had shown up at the gates alone on horseback. He must have head help but it wasn't with him when he was lifted from the horse and placed on an old butcher's bench to wait for Sansa. He was a spare… You could never be too careful when people were dying from mild fevers and untreated cuts. Even Sansa was at risk from the child she carried – not only for the birth but the people it might offend. A dangerous business but that is the price she had paid for a loyal army. Lyanna was glad of the men of the Vale with their ornate breastplates picking up the sun. They were like jewels wrapped around the top of Winterfell.
"You have done a terrible thing..." Bran added, eyes locked across the snow on the approaching bear.
She kept to the edges of the smouldering lake. It bubbled ruthlessly at its deep heart leaving a permanent fog across its surface. The Godswood had been utterly wrecked by Silverwing's departure and no one had bothered to shift the broken pieces of the castle. Instead they were left where they fell, scattered at random through the beautiful wood. Sad, grey bones.
Lyanna placed her hand upon a wolf statue laying on its side that once overlooked the North from Winterfell's roof. It was missing an ear but had two good eyes. Bran's words unsettled her. Did he know what they had done in the crypts?
"Lady Stark warned me that you were greatly changed sine your return from The Wall. She considered you strange and poor company." To this, Bran said nothing so Lyanna continued. "I gather that you spend your days watching over the world but I was watching you before. You have the gift of greensight."
There was a very slight nod of acknowledgement, as if he had head this conversation before.
"But you are not the first Northern boy to hear the dreams of the gods. These talents are more common than our maesters admit. It is a part of the world beyond their control and so they push it to the shadows. Magic is happy there, I believe." She paused, tilting her head slightly as the crow on The Wall had done. "As are you."
Bran was unmoved. His brown eyes were more unreadable that the whites of his visions. "The gods are owed a debt, Lady Mormont. They will come for payment before the wars are over." Then Bran flinched, as though he were not sure the proper process of time. It was difficult to keep one's place when the pages of the world tumbled around his mind.
So he did know. "I paid my debt." She assured him.
"You are right..." He corrected himself. "Death has come for his gold already. Bear Island burns." Bran lifted his hand and pointed to the layer of ash that had been lazing its way across the sky.
Lyanna kept her eyes on Bran, ignoring both the smoke and his words. She left the edge of the lake, retracing the tracks left by his wheelchair in the snow. She moved to stand behind Bran, hiding in the dark embrace of the great Weirwood. Her hands wrapped around the handles jutting out from the back of the chair. They were nearly the same age – a pair of Summer children. Above the canopy of the Godswood they could both clearly see the smoke rising from Bear Island's forests. She could not breathe at all.
"I do not trust you, your words or even that you are still a Stark." Lyanna replied, coldly. "Since I came here, I've been listening to stories around Freefolk fires. There are many greenseers within their number. They call the white trees, 'soul thieves' - luring the powerful into lairs made of roots. I am sure you believe that it is the eyes of the trees through which you see but their sight is that of the dead. Nothing good ever came from prophecy. Nothing good ever came from envoys of death. That is what the crows are. Scavengers of bone and carrion."
Bran heard her hands tighten on his wheelchair. How easy, he thought, for her to push him into the lake. He had power enough to graze the farthest edges of the realm but none at all to protect himself from the scorn of a young woman.
She leaned down, bringing her breath against the Stark's ear. "I saw things in the darkness as well. In the crypts where you were watching me. The debt is not mine… Stark..."
Bran turned his head to look at her but all he could see were tendrils of her dark hair caught in the wind. Finally, someone knew something that he didn't. "What…?" Stark. Stark. Stark… His House name echoed in his mind like light bounced between mirrors.
She would not answer his question. "You are a wound in your House. We all know what happens if such a thing is left untended."
Bran felt the wheelchair shift in the direction of the water.
Lyanna's eyes rolled as Bran rashly warged into her mind. He had to fight to take control of the strong willed woman. Her screams filled his head as loud as any Dothraki battle where the slaves were run down by horsemen. Though the war between them was calamitous, in the flesh, Lyanna calmly stepped away from Bran's wheelchair and wandered slowly toward the lake where she stepped into the smouldering water.
Bran had panicked and in his fear moved to murder the head of the oldest Northern House. The Mormonts were his bannerman and yet there were other thoughts rising up, demanding that he do it. Kill her. Walk her under the surface and let the water do the rest. Why not? Why shouldn't he? If he released her now she'd certainly take out her sword and swing it at his neck. The fate of the war balanced on his shoulders. He had to live – she didn't. He had not seen her past this point.
Her mind thrashed wildly as if she were drowning. The water was sinking into her lungs, filling them with lead. Lyanna remembered the rest of what the Freefolk had told her about wargs. She calmed herself, submitting to Bran's mind until she sank beneath her thoughts and into his. It was only then that Lyanna saw it – the burning Weirwood of Bear Island and the dragon rambling down the cliffs with her cousin standing, blackened and desperate, facing the dead. She breathed again and fell further, following the twisted roots back to the other side of The Wall into the cave beneath the White Tree. The world grew colder. Her heart slowed. There it sat – a dead and frozen thing on a throne made from bone, spying on the realm.
THE WHITE DAWN ICE SHEET – THE BAY OF ICE
Only the strongest Mormonts made it within sight of the grey cliffs.
The forest surrounding Deepwood Motte came right up to the edge and then rambled over the belligerent slate. Ocean storms had felled its pines. Their bodies jutted over the waves wearing coats of frost, fastened in place by roots that had dug deep in the long summer. The Wolfswood itself was wild, thick and full of shadows. Very few hunted the Western edge of its sprawl fearing packs of wolves which had moved in with the chill. They were savage creatures. Stories of Glover children being snatched and dragged into the forest surrounding their Keep drove families to leave their cabins and live behind the walls.
Glimpsed from the ice sheet beneath, the Wolfswood looked like paradise.
The Mormonts were a tough people but they had been hunted from their home at the height of tragedy and spent hours on foot. All two-hundred and five kept their weapons knowing that the ice would run out eventually and then they'd be forced to turn and face the hopeless battle once more. This time exhausted.
Nevertheless the weight of steel slowed them down. It was surreal. No one spoke. No one cried. The only sound that accompanied them was the slap of their boots and growing smash of waves upon the cliffs. The waters churning. Slave and master switching place with each oceanic roar.
The front of the pack saw the line of dark water emerge at the end of the ice. The white sheet grown over the Bay of Ice by the Others was not attached to the Westerosi shore. More powerful than magic, the sea had found a way to separate the two and that gap was growing every minute leaving about thirty metres of freezing water between the Mormonts and Westeros.
The warriors stopped short of the treacherous gap. The rest dropped their steel, unclipped heavy furs and plunged into the depths without hesitation. The fishermen were the strongest swimmers. They grabbed hold of their friends and dragged them through the water, ignoring the unbridled pain of the cold as it broke through the leather and stabbed at their flesh. It was paralysing – constantly fighting against their thrashing. The chop of salt smacked them with every curl as if the Drowned God himself lusted for their souls. The sea was rough both near the edge of the ice and even worse toward the jagged shore at the base of the cliffs.
The seven Mormonts left waiting on the ice steadied themselves. The crunch of bone managed to lift above a fresh howl of the wind. As the dead drew closer, the warriors noticed the mutilated faces of their kin among their ranks. Even children. Those corpses that could not walk crawled behind, dragging themselves by bony fingertips. They looked to each other, wondering if they should abandon their axes and follow the others into the water.
If only they had known that the dead could not swim.
In the sky behind, a dragon twisted across the wind. The creature emerged as a shadow on the smoky canvas, spreading its wings as it banked sharply behind the army of the dead – who all stopped.
Viserion refused to fly straight. His wing left him constantly drifting to one side like a drunkard. Jorah leaned over the other way, looking down onto the ice where he saw the dead soldiers coming to a stop and, as one horrifying mass, turned their attention skyward. Lingering at the back was the Whitewalker rider who had fled from his sword. Jorah could see its blue eyes cutting through the distance.
Heat built beneath Jorah inside the dragon's body. He laid himself down through the awkward forest of spines on Viserion's back and wedged his boots between overlapping scales. Riding bareback was dangerous at the best of times and even more so with his blood slicking the dragon. In battle only the most foolish Targaryens set to war with their bare hands.
Today he was a fool.
He could see the Mormonts in the water. There was an outgoing tide and it was dragging them Southward toward the shore. If they could make it to the boulders on the other side they'd be trapped on a temporary beach. Better than high tide when there was nothing but the cliffs rising from the sea.
The Whitewalker on horseback clutched another ice spear. Viserion had already spotted it and tried to pull away from the path Jorah had set him on.
"Have a little faith..." He whispered to the dragon, even though only the wind could hear him.
The dragon had to drop much lower in order for its flame to reach the ice which would put him within the range of the spear. Viserion did it anyway, diving with his mouth agape. Fire ripped from his throat. The flames sliced through the ranks of the dead, turning the creatures into screaming corpses until they fell to the ground with their magic spent. The ice sheet beneath was weakened with a grey scar etched on its surface. The Whitewalker general did nothing except watch the dragon, learning its behaviour.
"Jump! Jump!" Jorah screeched at the remaining Mormonts, who were transfixed by the momentary wall of flame. They saw a man they did not recognise on the back of a dragon with his armour glinting silver in the light as if Jorah were a chip of Valyrian steel.
Jorah brought the dragon around again, this time swooping in from the North-East. The result was much the same – a brief flash of fire, a scratch in the ice and a momentary shriek of death. Gradually, the dead were spreading themselves out making it harder for him to incinerate them on a single pass. Jorah was a seasoned warrior, he knew what this behaviour was – it had been going on for as long as men could sharpen sticks. He was being lured into a trap. The Night King's generals were playing war games.
With his eyes firmly on the Whitewalker, Jorah decided to take Viserion around to the channel of water at the edge of the berg, bringing the beast all the way out of the sky so that he could land upon the berg. The Mormonts were astonished by the dragon and for a moment forgot the army at the heels. As a culture, they had a deep affinity with the magnificent violence of wild creatures. What was more wild, violent or breathtaking than a creature forged in the fires of the realm?
"Get on!" Jorah barked at them. Fearlessly, they moved to do so but Viserion arced his head around and snapped fiercely then he pulled back his leathery lips and hissed. It did not matter what Jorah said to the creature, he would not allow the warriors to climb onto his wing. The dead, now with only one direction to march, were advancing at speed on Jorah's position. "Into the water!" He ordered instead. They obeyed with a look of relief. Their watch was over and Jorah's had begun.
Viserion's claws slid on the ice. Digging in. Slipping free. It was enough – Jorah had what he needed.
The restless dragon waited for the dead to close in. They approached faster than before with all their empty bones. Now it was Jorah who considered their movements. At first he'd imagined that there was something of humanity left especially in the ones whose faces were near perfect but life did not live in the flesh of the face, as the assassins of Braavos had told the world.
And what of Jon Snow – and what of yourself? He thought unkindly. Maybe they were both dead men with no will of their own. Only the illusion of it. That was what the old songs warned. That the gods had their eyes and their swords in the realm of man.
Viserion breathed fire, dousing everything from one side of the ice to the other. It created a barrier of flame as the bodies caught alight. They did not stop at once. Many of them lurched wildly as if they were in agony until the magic died and they expired as bone never to be resurrected. The dragon did this again and again, relentlessly besieging them until hairline fractures raced across the ice sheet in alarming fans.
Then, stalking through the dragon-fire as if it were a layer of mist, the Whitewalker appeared with his spear raised. Without hesitation – blue eyes set, he threw it straight at the dragon's heart.
Viserion drew his wing around, catching the spear with taught, thin flesh – tearing another hole straight through. The dragon roared furiously at the injury and began raining down fire upon everything it could. All to no avail. The Whitewalker was perfectly content to watch his army burn. They were nothing to him. Instead he stretched his arm out with a withered hand facing the ice. From nowhere, the mists gathered underfoot, chasing itself in maddening swirls that began to take the shape of another spear conjured into form.
Jorah slid down Viserion's back and onto the ice where he leaped into the air, catching hold of the ice spear. The dragon screeched at him as he pulled the wretched thing out of its flesh. The weapon was nearly eight feet long and so cold that its frost shaft burned through his leather gloves. Jorah dropped it into what was left of his beloved Bay of Ice at his heels. It sank with a hiss and storm of raging bubbles, entering the depths of the Drowned God.
Viserion whined, clearly in pain with his shredded skin hanging loose.
"GO!" Jorah commanded the dragon, who dipped his enormous head and, with a trail of smoke from his nostrils, slipped away into the water leaving Jorah alone to face the Whitewalker.
Jorah drew Dawn on the general for a second time. There was no army left to stand at the demon's back – only smoke and blackened bone. The Whitewalker turned the fresh ice spear over in his hands, spinning it as the water dances of Braavos. Droplets of water snaked around the shaft. The creature was nimble and considered – a thinking nightmare clearly in possession of its own wits. Jorah wondered what these things wanted with the Southern lands. It could not simply be to slaughter. They could have done that at any time. Did they fight for iron crowns or spill blood in the name of their faceless gods? Perhaps they were all playthings to the things that lay sleeping beneath their feet.
Like the others, the Whitewalker was tall with skin that looked more like the roots of a tree than flesh. They were made of something old and eternal dwelling at the corners of the world for longer than any civilisation. Who knows… Maybe this creature had marched on the black forts in the East and laid waste to the city of Asshai. Perhaps even it was old enough to have whispered to the gods or seen the first empires of humanity rise and fall. It was a predator and Jorah felt oddly akin to woodland prey.
"I do not care what you've seen – or what you believe the gods owe you." Jorah murmured. "Today you meet the darkness… The same darkness that's waiting for us all." He added, in Old Valyrian. Neither language understood. When the Whitewalker replied, it was with a cracking of ice and a growl that could have been the wind.
Jorah stepped away from the water, keenly aware that he was wearing enough armour to drown him. Dawn was a truly enormous sword which he took in both hands. Its blade was white from the heat of the fire and steamed slightly when exposed to the cold air.
They came to blows with the sword hitting the centre shaft of the spear. The two weapons met with dull clunks as though they were sparring with wooden swords. Again and again, right then left, neither getting within a hair of each other. Its blue eyes watched the strikes of the sword, not Jorah. He decided to test that observation by swiping far out to one side and noted the Whitewalker stumble in a moment of rare awkwardness to pursue. The tip of the blade and the spear struck the ice together. Jorah found himself shoulder to shoulder with the creature. Always a brute on the battlefield, he shunted the bastard with his side and forced it to take a step backwards. Relinquish its position. That is how they fought, Jorah gaining ground on the general one step at a time as they drifted toward the blackened field of bones.
He heard a crack beneath his feet and saw how woefully thin the flames had left the surface. Fractures branched out in every direction, growing in an instant like lightning racing across a storm. A moment later the bones were underfoot. His distraction purchased a slash across the chest from the spear. The instant its edge touched his breastplate, the steel shattered and fell from the leather fastenings. Jorah was stunned – stripped of his armour. Another blow hit his arm and the same thing happened. When the Whitewalker tried for a third time, Jorah was fast enough to raise his sword and catch the spear on the shaft of his blade. He was dangerously exposed but without steel armour he could move freely.
He guessed himself to be inches from the grave. As the spear came around again Jorah ducked, squatting on the ice. His left hand held his balance while his leg struck out, squaring off against the Whitewalker's ankle. The shock was enough for the creature to lower the ice spear which it held at both ends. Jorah dropped his sword, grabbed the middle of the shaft with both hands and dragged the Whitewalker down toward him until they were face to face – nose to nose. Its horror increased ten-fold with features made of white sinew somewhere between marble and bone.
It was not used to brazen close-quarter fighting and misread the move. Before it realised what was happening, Jorah smashed its face with his forehead eliciting what he assumed was a screech of pain. Laying on his back, Jorah raised both legs and kicked the creature firmly in the chest, letting go of the spear at the perfect second so that the Whitewalker went flying backwards across the ice.
Jorah was on his feet, sword in hand, scrambling despite his own injuries toward the startled general whose flesh had gone a strange shade of pale blue in frustration. Jorah truly believed that he had him conquered – sword raised behind his shoulder lining up the strike but the creature smacked him right across the body with the shaft of the spear sending the knight tumbling helplessly through the ash and bone.
He'd forgotten how much everything hurt without armour. His early wounds bled afresh leaving their mark upon hell. New grazes tore skin from his lower arms none of which helped to make him feel any bloody younger. If this was the work of the gods as the Red Priestesses liked to preach, he'd hate to see the other side of the coin.
Through the pain, Jorah heard his people climbing out of the water on the other side of the bay. His eyes were on the sky where the burning circle of the sun rippled at the edges, obscured by threads of smoke. It was a great big fiery eye staring down upon them. Jorah cursed at it – the water and then his own bones as he rolled onto his knees.
Dawn was lifted as the spear came down again but this time Jorah held the milkglass blade absolutely steady – its edge perpendicular to the spear's shaft cutting straight through leaving the general with a piece of his spear in each hand. Scowling, the Whitewalker grew a second spearhead so that pieces could be used as a weapon.
"You definitely have to die..." Jorah stuck his sword into the ice and used it to haul his pained hide back to his feet.
When he lunged at the creature his blade was moving twice as fast, meeting each blow of the general's spears as if he were back in the fighting pits of Meereen. Jorah kept pushing the creature, forcing the surrender of ground with the weight of his strokes. Any other man would have broken an arm trying to hold the Mormont knight off but magic didn't play but the rules of war and so, Jorah decided, neither would he.
Jorah reached out with his left hand, catching the spear. As expected, the cold set about burning through his damaged glove. He could feel it – all of Winter searing into his flesh but he blinked away the pain, ducked from the Whitewalker's strike and brought Dawn down upon the creature's wrist, severing its hand. It was left dangling from the spear's shaft which Jorah boredly tossed aside.
The general stared at his injury and Jorah saw that inside its limb there was only densely packed ice as black as the evening sky. It glistened, not with blood but magic – like ash churning inside a glass prism in the depths of night.
"Does it hurt?" Jorah hissed, knowing full well it could not understand his taunts. Regardless, he gave a curt nod to his smouldering home and added, "I hope it hurts..."
Dawn sliced through the Whitewalker's face. As it did, the body dissolved into beads of ice which were sent bouncing over the ground at Jorah's feet before evaporating into the mist. The spear as well. Within breaths Jorah was alone on the ice with the smouldering remains of the dead.
He stabbed his sword into the ice, leaned heavily on the handle and stole a second to catch his breath before he returned to the water's edge. There were survivors scattered all over the narrow beach, shouting at each other and more fighting against the waves. He looked for Viserion and spotted a hint of his boned ridge breaking the waves nearby.
Jorah was trapped by the weight of his sword. To swim with it was to drown himself with all the rest but he could not abandon the valuable relic so he shouted for the dragon like an impatient father calling his child to heel. Viserion eventually surfaced, reluctantly sliding through the water in front of the berg. His scales were agleam like freshly polished river stones from Dorne – almost gold.
WINTERFELL – THE NORTH
Jaqen's clothes were stained with Jon Snow's blood. It had dried long ago but he had not found the will to draw himself away from the small window in the Winterfell tower. The wretched thing was made by a few missing blocks of stone. He watched the landscape vanish hour by hour under the weight of Winter. The ice-capped mountains dribbled down into the ravines while thick forests lost height as the ground lifted around their trunks. The sins of battle were long gone. Even the pyres built to farewell the dead were in danger of losing form in the next storm. This was Arya's home. The wolf than had come to Braavos to learn the dance of death. He had taught her well.
For the first time in many hours, Jaqen averted his eyes from the snow. And what had she taught him in return? His eyes were open. No one was nothing. You could not swear or pray away your past. Neither the guardians at The Wall nor the merchants of Death. Jaqen felt his former self unfolding. Faster by the hour. People, places, the smell of the shore before the ash. Even the city came glittering through into his mind as if rising from the smoke that consumed it – all those impossible towers and burning streets. The caw of dragons hunting with the tides and a sea of violet eyes.
Shadows and ghosts. Dragons and death. The silver-haired woman standing on a narrow slip of rock jutting out from the edge of the mountain opposite the Fourteen Flames as they cracked apart. Jaqen had glimpsed her through the veil of time.
"What do you see…?" Jon Snow's voice cracked through the frigid air.
"Only snow." Jaqen replied. He turned, resting against the wall. "You look worse than most of the corpses in a man's temple."
"I feel it." A long groan filled the gap between words. "When the Red Witch brought me back, I felt nothing." He confessed. "Same as when you killed me and put me in the ground. Only the cold. Now – now I feel it all. What happened?"
"A man could guess."
Jon's dark eyes stared at the old planks of wood crossing the ceiling, giving the stonework its form. They'd been painted once, long ago but the stain of ash and tear of age had cleaned them of their old dreams. "I'm no good with magic." He admitted. "My father – Ned Stark..." He amended. "He taught us about lords and kings, honour and duty."
"Did he leave out the fire witches and army of the dead?"
If Jon had not been in so much pain he may have managed a laugh. "Regrettably. Ser Davos says yer know magic."
"Not this kind of magic." Jaqen admitted. "The servants of death borrow faces and use them to kill. In the House of Black and White, the dead walk again but not as themselves. They are masks. We hang them on our walls when we are done. There they stay – silent. All you can hear is the sound of eternal flame burning from gaps in the tiled floor."
"Is this what the maesters call necromancy?"
Jaqen shook his head. "No. At first a man thought that is what happened to you but necromancy is a poisoned art good only for the flesh. It is practised in the cursed Shadow where corpses are seen wandering the shores by merchant ships too afraid to dock. This Night King that the Northern men speak of drags bones from the snow – warriors with no life of their own who feel nothing and want nothing. This is necromancy but powerful. A man has never heard of a sorcerer who could raise so many or gift them with ferocity. The gods alone can do this."
Jon tried to sit up but the wounds on his chest burned. His bandages were black with blood and yet he was glad of it. To feel alive even through the pain, it was as though the missing part of his soul had been returned. "Do you believe the Night King is a god?"
"Gods do not walk the realms of men. They sleep. They dream. They wait..."
"For what?"
"Nobody knows. Perhaps this Night King found a way to steal power from one of these gods. Dug too deep into the frozen ground. If this is so, you will not be able to kill him for he is already dead. What's dead may-"
"-never die..." Jon whispered the rest. "A man I call my brother – those are his words. What about me – will I die?"
"Only if you keep moving around like that. The better you rest, the faster you heal." Jaqen hesitated. It was very strange. He was not used to honesty or investing himself in the lives of others but this was Arya's brother. "If a man was to guess, he would say that the witch that brought you back has died and with her death her magic perished. I would not bet on a third reprieve from the darkness."
"One more question..." Jon added, when Jaqen moved to leave. "Why did yer save me?"
Jaqen laid his hand on the door frame. Flakes of snow wandered into the room and settled onto the windowsill. Tiny fallen stars. "A man does not know."
Gendry walked close beside Ser Davos. The older man's feet were unsteady in the snow. He was a creature used to the polished decks of floating wrecks not this icy shit that besieged them day and night. Davos had an offering for the Weirwood. It was only the little burned stag head belonging to Shireen but if they were all going to die in the next few days, Davos wasn't going to have the last remnant of that poor princess strung around his neck while he went to rot. He was going to hang it from the tree with the rest of the lost dreams of dead men.
"Don' think much o' the snow do yer?" Davos pried, a mischievous glint dancing across his eyes as they passed into the shadow of Winterfell's Godswood. Going for walks was all they could do to get away from the smell of burning flesh.
"Prefer the sun, if I'm honest." Gendry replied. "Least I have the forges."
"An' the Wildling-folk."
"They're better at making weapons than you give them credit for." Gendry insisted. "I learned some things from them that no one in the Summer Isles has seen."
The sheaths of their swords scraped against the snow when they stepped into deeper drifts. No one was more than half a pace from their weapons now that the dead had taken down part of The Wall. "But yer miss it, the Southern islands adrift in the sea with nothin' but empty horizons?"
Gendry lofted his eyebrow at the old sea dog. "I believe you miss it more than I do. I – I don't miss anything. Nothing to miss. Well, there was a lady once but she has her own paths to walk."
"An' certainly not yer father." Davos observed. "He was a good king, Gendry. Perhaps not the best man but he tried. It's not an easy business an' Robert always preferred the fighting ter the ruling. Stannis used ter say that's why he was so good at it. He did not obsess about the games of the court."
"Was he, though – a good king?" Gendry shook his head, unconvinced. "He did not protect us from his death. My father tore down banners and through his own neglect created a monster out of his wife."
"Fair go, boy." Davos added gently. "Cersei was a piece of work before your father got to her."
"What do you care what I think of my father?"
Davos averted his eyes to the thickening wood. There was nothing left of the winter flowers and rockeries except a small, icy track trampled into the snow by people on their way to pray at the heart tree. There were times he thought he saw a wolf stalk between the trees. A great beast of a thing with white fur and red eyes but there was never anything there when he looked again. "Yer are right," he admitted. "S'none of my business."
Gendry wished he hadn't said it but before he could apologise he saw the red bowers of the Winterfell Weirwood raining leaves over the Stark boy who was sat beneath in his wheelchair. At first Gendry thought Bran was lost in one of his visions until he drew close enough to hear a commotion in the lake where he saw a concentrated rush of bubbles on the dark surface.
"Something is wrong..." Gendry hissed, darting awkwardly around Davos before taking the treacherous path at a run. Several times his boots slid beneath him and he fell to the side, landing in three feet of powder. He crawled free and reached out for the pines, grabbing onto their trunks and using them to haul himself forwards. He reached the edge of the water and the bare rock. Now he could see Brandon Stark's white eyes. Gendry had never seen a warg before but he was more interested in what was below the water. He circled the lake until he saw long auburn hair floating on the surface near the bubbles – which had almost died away to nothing. "There's someone under there!" He shouted, before stripping off his heavy furs and wading in.
Davos climbed the hill towards the Stark, unnerved by the white tree rustling above without the help of the wind. He called out to Bran but the boy was elsewhere, consumed by his warging. Water dribbled from the corner of his lips while snow caught on his eyelashes.
Gendry was up to his knees before the heat of the water reached his skin. For a moment he ached for its eternal warmth but then, like the flames of a camp fire reaching too close, his flesh began to scold. He gasped but plunged his arms under the surface anyway – searching the dark waters.
A body. Fur. Armour. Leather. Gendry went deeper until the ground underfoot became an unsteady nightmare of rubble. He wrapped his arms around the body and walked backwards, heaving it out of the water. It was a struggle against the dead weight but within a few steps the head emerged and lolled back against his shoulder.
"It's a woman!" Gendry shouted. "Davos!" He retreated faster, falling out onto the bank with his final steps. The body laid on the stones. Gendry knelt beside it, clawing the long wet hair away from the face. Lady Lyanna Mormont.
His hands faltered at her porcelain skin inflamed by the heat. Her eyes were wide open, rolled back into her skull leaving only the whites on show like a set of pearls.
"DAVOS! She's not breathing!" Gendry shrieked, violently shaking Lyanna's limp body by the shoulders.
Ser Davos half-ran, half-fell down the path to the water's edge. His heart turned cold at the sight of the young woman. Without thinking, he shoved Gendry out of the way but startled when he saw her eyes.
"F-fuck the gods..." Davos cursed, realising what was happening. He looked over his shoulder to the Stark boy sitting in his wheelchair beneath the tree. "Yer have ter give tha' son of a bitch a knock o'er the head – put him out – right now!"
Gendry did as he was told, unsheathing his sword as he clambered up to Bran. He turned it around in his hands then smacked the noble-born lord over the back of the head with the base of his sword. The blunt impact rendered Bran unconscious immediately. His head fell forward with a trickle of blood down his neck.
Lyanna's eyes returned by they were staring lifelessly at the sky.
"Help her!" Gendry shouted, not daring to leave the Stark in case he awoke.
Davos had seen more than his fair share of drowned men in his years on the sea. He breathed into the Mormont and forced the air into her lungs, displacing the water that had taken up residence. Again and again. When it seemed as though the gods would not let her go, Lyanna choked up half of Winterfell's lake onto the rocks and cursed like a drunkard from the filthiest pirate taverns in the East.
"Yer didn' kill him..." Davos assured Gendry, after checking on Bran Stark.
"You should have hit him again," Lyanna hissed darkly, remaining close by Gendry's side. The bear would not allow anyone to dent what was left of her pride by helping her stand but Gendry hovered anyway after seeing her sway several times.
"We can' go killin' a Stark," Davos insisted, more than a little worried by the icy look in her eyes, "it'll be the last thing any o' us do."
Gendry was less convinced, eyeing the boy like a wolf watched the rabbit. "Stark or not, he almost killed her."
"And yer were tryin' ter kill him. Am I right?"
Lyanna did not deny it and told them both why. They were deeply unsettled by her words.
"I ain' sayin' I don't agree with yer, my Lady but you canno' just kill a Stark. Lady Sansa will have all o' our heads on the castle wall by sunset an' Jon Snow 'll have our bones on the fire. Might be alright fer me an' all but yer two have a lot o' living ter get done."
"He warged into someone's mind – what's to stop him doing that again?" Gendry demanded.
"Nothing."
"Then we should kill him."
"S'not tha' simple..."
"It is if I use this sword." Gendry fumbled the handle menacingly.
"You know as well as I tha' it is up ter the Lady of Winterfell to decide what ter do with her brother and his – his – gift." Davos settled on.
"Sansa Stark would never kill her brother." Gendry became increasingly frustrated. To him these decisions were simple, like taking a stroke of his hammer.
"Now there you'd be surprised..." Davos replied, more softly. "She's a savage sort of a thing."
While they squabbled, Lyanna Mormont was more interested in the Weirwood. She reached out to touch its bark. It was like suede beneath her bare fingertips and slightly soft as if rotting under the surface. There, in the middle of its girth, the wretched face sliced into its skin. Lyanna had seen the other set of eyes staring back through the wood. The dead thing that spied on the living. It had been hidden in the depths of Bran's mind and now she saw what he could not...
"Forget the crippled Stark," Lyanna growled. "The Night King watches us from the heart tree – everything we do, all our plans… We'll never outlast a siege if one of those creatures is watching from the garden. This is why the First Men burned them. They must have known."
"Burn the Weirwood…?" Davos repeated her words at a glacial pace, unable to digest them. "I've changed my mind – I'd rather murder the Stark boy. The wrath of the living I'll endure but ter piss on the gods is ter undo all the hard work I put inter not endin' up in the shit."
"I'll do it myself," she insisted.
"Everybody just slow down."
"He's waking up." Gendry pointed out, as Bran's head lolled off to one side.
"Shit." Davos was forced to hit him again. It was clear he couldn't spend all evening doing that. "If we so much as lop a branch off that tree, we'll have ter leave Winterfell immediately."
"What if I do it?" Gendry offered. "You two can go back to your positions and I'll head North to find the Queen."
"And when this one comes around? He'll tell his brother and sister what we did. No."
Lyanna could not take her eyes from the tree. It was a conspirator with the dead. "You may be right, Ser Davos, Lady Sansa might slay her brother to save Winterfell but she'll not tear down a sacred tree. It's bred into us from the moment we're born – these trees protect the North. She'd fear the gods."
Davos took half a step toward her. "And yer don't?"
"Course I do..." Lyanna whispered, her eyes dangerous. "They're a bunch o' cunts that kill us for sport. Stay here." She commanded.
Davos and Gendry watched her leave, pulling herself from tree to tree.
"She's going to burn this bloody tree down, isn't she?" Gendry whispered.
"Aye."
Gendry lofted his eyebrow. "Well, that's us fucked."
"Aye..."
