THE WALL – THE NORTH

The wind's howl had edges of steel and glass. Its cold was bitter. Tainted. Sick with smoke from the burned out pits that surrounded the Queensgate, all of which coated the North with an oily residue.

Ser Jorah had flown to the edge of the realm alone, coaxed from the stinking mud flats East of the Wolfswood. He and what was left of the Mormonts were nearly in sight of Winterfell's valley when a raven fell out of the sky and landed in the horse shit – dead. Its tiny limbs were bone and feather which shed around it like the cinders from a bonfire. His queen's words whispered in the knight's ear through uneasy smears of ink.

There was no honour in what he did next. Jorah's heart was an empty space – a cup awaiting wine. He decided to leave his people in the white abyss to find Winterfell on their own…

As the last man vanished between the frozen pines, Jorah thought he could hear his father singing in the distance but those songs belonged to a tower that was as dead and empty as its broken island. A moral man may have feared judgement for this disgrace yet as Jorah gazed out onto the frozen veneer, the only creature left alive was the Queen's dragon scratching the bark off a nearby tree. Either there were too many gods awakened in this world, or none at all.

A thick rain of powder shifted uneasily over The Wall's imperfections. Jorah had flown through the same storm during the night but it was now blown out into nothing save a few creases on the horizon. He landed in snow that came to his knees. Viserion moaned dreadful songs from the edge of the forest, as if he lay bloodied and dying. In the hour it took Jorah to cross the ground between the path and the castle, pieces of its badly damaged West tower crumbled and dropped with muffled cracks of thunder. The Wall too. It shed ice in drips and veils, some of them pouring relentlessly leaving trails of sparkling mist at their mouths. Dark stains adorned both structures, set there by a mixture of dragonfire and oil. There were no corpses. Only discarded swords and shields glistening in the morning light like silver tears dropped by the moon.

The snow at Jorah's feet thinned out into a charred field of rock as he approached the fort. It was the same brutality that lay under the entire Northern lands, spilled out of the ground from some previous, molten hell. It layered itself like folded silk, stealing the light into its blossoming caverns. He understand how men and horses could be lost without a trace, sucked through the powder into these gaping mouths of stone…

Upon this mess of violence lay Drogon – dead and spread open to the gods and ravens alike.

Viserion howled again but there were no tears from Jorah. He was a man who had stepped beyond grief. Reality was severed from him in a way that he could not explain. The dragon may as well have been his child for he remembered its tiny claws digging into his shoulder and the soft cries of infancy. It lay as a mountain. Blood formed rivers over its valleys of leather, refusing to melt. Even in death heat clung to the beast causing steam to hiss at the touch of aimless snowflakes. There were rivers of fire in Drogon's corpse, kept alive by magic.

'Dragons are animals, same as horses.' His father would say. 'Men who worship fire die by it.'

Yet animals found peace in death. Drogon, he was like the face of the gods – sleeping with malcontent dreams.

Drogon's scales littered the open rock toward the castle while a hundred crows descended from their hiding spots in the walls to pick at the decaying flesh. Their chattering underscored the horror of the field. Laughter. Or some mimic of it. If the ravens were the eyes of the North then its gods were set on malice. Jorah felt their evil in the furrows of the white trees. Death. How many times had the Southern folk looked upon the North with fear? They were right. Jorah knew now that he had been raised on no man's land – the killing fields of the inevitable war. He wondered if his father had known it when he stared across the white mountains and glass rivers on the other side of the bay. The Bears forced their children to row out toward Death and look upon it so that they'd recognise its face.

Emptiness caught in Jorah's throat. The Night King stole everything, even the ghosts.


The men sent to Deeplake ran through the night until their feet bled into their boots. In the hours before morning, they skidded down the half-broken wooden planks that covered cracks opening up all over the top of The Wall. One fell, screeching in surprise as his body veered sideways and over the edge. Gone. Not once had they stopped to check if anything was following them. Terror outweighed all other desire, including air which only now that their destination lay in sight did they gasp for it.

Deeplake hosted a small patrol of Crows living alongside hunters. The castle was in worse shape than the Queensgate and more difficult to repair with its walls missing or drooping in despair from the mindless wars of kings. There were a few men keeping watch by the unlit pyre, half-drunk with a thick Wildling whore, playing tavern games around a fire.

"Who the fuck?" One of the Crows startled to his feet, fumbling for his sword as the Queensgate Crows approached. It stuck in its sheath, held there by the cold. He relaxed at the sight of the man's cloak. "I seen them forest witches look better than you." He added, as a small pack of his brethren stopped. "Oy – what ya doin' o' there?" The Crow watched in alarm, as the newly arrived immediately set about lighting the warning pyre.

"Blow that fuckin' horn!" The leader gasped, coughing out blood over the snow. "They're here – they're all here. We have to keep running. If yer got ravens send 'em!"

"And say what, exactly? You're not makin' sense."

"Tell the Wolf at Winterfell, her father's bones will wake with the rest of us poor bastards. They'll be at Winterfell within the week if we can't stop them at the Nightfort. Send it! Then find your fucking feet."

"The dead are through The Wall?" Suddenly the colossal rise of ice appeared as a shattered spine, morbid against the castle. "You're mad – we'll take the horses."

The Crow shook his head, eyes alight with terror. He grabbed the man's armour and shook him good and proper. "You fool..." He whispered. "We won't make it on the ground. We're fucking Crows! This is our wall an' we're gonna perch on it 'til we die."


"Shiiiiiiit..." It was a breath, nothing more.

Edd watched a star birth itself against the early morning sky. It sat as a fiery pearl attached to the edge of The Wall, matching the faint glow coming from further East. A warning pyre. Then came the dreaded howl of the Night's Watch horn. Barely audible. Drowned by the ice. There was a swell of fog building around both sides of The Wall. Edd had already ordered the men to lock themselves inside the fort and gather their glass weapons. Battle was brewing but instead of the distant thunder of boots, it was the hiss of wind against the pines.

He hated that sound.

With the sun came a raven. 'The dead would come from both sides,' its message read. All that mattered was that the putrid king did not step through the Black Gate. Whatever magic held the bastard back, it required swords and men to strengthen its resolve. Like The Wall, the old protections were cracking under age and neglect.

Edd crushed the raven's message in his first and then tossed it over the Northern edge of the ice. There was no instruction from the Lord Commander. Whatever violence had transpired out of sight in the East, it was spreading, following the veins of The Wall and pooling in the tiny forts men had built in the foolish hope of halting the tide. For all he knew, the rest of the castles had fallen and this was the last port in the storm.

More of the Dragon Queen's foreign army poured in every hour. They traipsed from the West, telling stories about the Bay of Ice frozen solid and then set alight in a field of fire and ash. Clouds of soot cast it under a permanent shadow and Westwatch had fallen into the abyss. It was beyond belief that such permanent things could die. The men were shaken but glad of the swelling ranks of black cloaks and strange looking fighters. After the battles of the West, the slender, tall Yinnish had lost their magnificence and turned to scrap like common Wildlings. Their amber faces were going pale with the cold but their eyes, dark green and brown, were sharp as ever. Dothraki horselords were scattered through their number, no more than a dozen with the rest settled somewhere in the Southern lands with the Queen's army. Pol Qo was not with them. He remained behind with a small cluster of Crows to watch the burning of Bear Island and keep an eye on another immense flank of the dead army which was looking for a new way across after the Bridge of Skulls had collapsed into the gorge.

"Where are the dragons?" Asked Cub, when Edd entered the tunnel leading to the Black Gate looking as pale as the Weirwood door. "I thought – there are supposed to be dragons."

Edd shrugged, somewhere between defeat and madness. "This war was never about dragons." There were men pouring tar through the tunnel. If that dead cunt wanted to come through that gate, he'd have to learn to walk on a river of fire. "What does that ugly piece of wood whisper to you?"

"It's gone cold," Cub replied, both his hands against the Weirwood that made up the Black Gate. The face carved into its surface sneered at the Crows.

"We worshipped these things," Edd replied, shaking his head, "swearing them oaths. Here the gods were, laughing at us. They like death, I think, that's why the Children fed them blood. We should have done the same. Pile our corpses on their roots. Open Freefolk throats across their bowers. Yes, they'd have enjoyed that – the fucking evil shits." He spat right in the face of the Black Gate. "Fuck you."

Cub pulled Edd back by his arm. "You'll anger the gods."

Edd shrugged. "What do you care? They're already mad. Come on," he insisted, "away from here. You're not going to talk sense into it."

The Nightfort liked its doors locked and windows boarded. In the suffocating darkness its hostility came to life. Unlike its siblings, the fort had heavy walls re-enforced with glass-laden mortar that glistened whenever the Crow's torches came too close. The filth of magic wrapped around its innards as if the whole monstrosity were a tomb protected by dead gods. By now, even the Queen's foreign soldiers had heard the stories. It was a terrible thing – to mistrust the walls that were meant to keep you safe. After all, this was his castle. They were sitting in the cradle of Winter.

"Is the Lord Commander dead?" Cub asked, sharpening a dragonglass dagger. "He must be…" he continued, when Edd did not reply. "If the dead are still coming and he's not here. The Commander wouldn't leave us out here alone."

"We don't know shit." Edd corrected. "You're a Crow, boy, not some soft Dornish cunt. It doesn't matter if the Lord Commander is dead. If the Queen is dead. If the whole realm is dead. We'd still be doin' this. So don' think about it. Keep that head o' yours clear. Don' worry. This ugly bitch of a castle was made to withstand attack from the South as much as the North. That Stark king held off them hoards of hard bastards fer years. This is a fortress, not a common Keep." He softened slightly. It really was just a boy in front of him. Edd could still see a flicker of the gentle, warm forests in his eyes – not quite lost. "Are you afraid?"

Cub nodded.

"Good. Fear means you're alive. It might even keep yer tha' way. Did you see what them Eastern cunts did? Opened the throat o' a bear they caught in the forest an' painted the front fuckin' door with it. Blood everywhere. Tried ter do the same to one o' the Dothraki's best horses."

"They mean to protect us."

"I know – that's why I didn't stop 'em – but do they 'ave ter make such a mess about it?" The two Crows laughed. "Seriously boy, I want yer to know that there's more than one kind of magic in this world an' more than one god. Let's hope the savages brought the meanest fucking cosmic shits the skies have ter offer. Aye? Six tits all full o' wine an' two cocks like that Lannister dwarf used ter say. That's it. A smile will do us all a world o' good. Now. You an' I are going to the top of The Wall. I need your young, sharp eyes."


THE RUINS OF QUEENSGATE – THE WALL

There were a few licks of fire alive inside the castle. The enormous Ironwood doors lay in the foyer, pushed inwards onto a pile of broken arrows. Pieces of death rested everywhere – dropped by the army of ghouls. Jorah kicked shields branded with extinct Houses. They clattered with helmets, swords and bits of the roof that had fallen in. There was an ocean of black glass formed by the demise of several pillars that held up the castle, each sharp enough to cut straight through Jorah's boots.

Without the columns, the old stone walls took turns trembling. Even the staircase that swept majestically through the centre of the structure had lost its balustrade and was in the process of collapsing. Half way up the whole side of the castle was missing and hung open to the air. Flurries of ice swirled in, vanishing when they touched the streamers of flame.

Jorah paced in a circle, his head dipped back as his eyes searched every grim corner of the Queensgate.

"Daenerys!"

His voice came back to him in hollow echoes. He called her name again – and again – and again… The effort choked his lungs, which were still scared from Bear Island. For hours Jorah picked his way in and out of the various towers and pits, searching for his Queen. If she were dead, he was determined to find her, even if it was only to look upon a bundle of bone. Although he had no proof, he strongly suspected that the Night King had no power of resurrection over her. If he had, surely Drogon would be among his ranks…?

Sometimes the ravens set about following him like vultures. He raised Dawn, brandishing the milkglass steel. It sent them into shrieks of terror. They fled as a pack up to the top of the last tower. Jorah hesitated. The tower was badly burned around its base – melted by dragonfire to the point that its stone had transformed into a smooth surface and fused to the bedrock, keeping it from collapsing. Drogon must have taken many passes, incinerating the entire area into what would have been a vision of hell itself. An inferno with the tower at its heart.

There was no way in and no way out so he called out to Viserion.

The dragon dropped Jorah onto the tower roof. He landed heavily, rolling down the slope until he collided with the low wall. His foot went straight through an ailing battlement but the rest held firm. Wishing he were twenty years younger, Jorah dragged himself across the slanted roof toward an opening that dropped into what looked like a badly damaged ravenry. He could hear dozens of the creatures inside, brushing their wings against what was left of their cages. Their squawking sent a shiver down his neck.

There was no graceful way to fall into the hole so Jorah closed his eyes and embraced the drop. Landing jarred his ankles sharply, sending Jorah stumbling awkwardly into a pile of crates and cages amassed by the entrance which crushed beneath his weight and turned to splinter. The tilt in the castle caused a desk to collide witih one of the walls while the lanterns all hung from the ceiling on a permanent angle with trails of recently dried wax left in their wake. A Crow's cloak was tangled in the mess, covered in blood and soiled where ravens had tried to nest.

"Gods almighty..." Jorah's breath hissed through his lips, as he approached the far wall. The old stone was worn away by a thousand human nails clawing desperately at the surface until it had been roughed and shredded like pine bark. Jorah placed his hand cautiously atop the grisly markings. No living thing did that. It was made by bone, not nail. "Daenerys..." This must have been where she'd made her last stand and sent her raven. They'd come for her and yet there was a piece of his soul insisting that the Queen was still alive. Behind that wall. All he needed was a way in.

He searched everywhere until eventually Jorah found himself standing on the window sill – the only natural escape from the partially destroyed room. If the Queen had been trapped, this was her way out. Jorah shook his head as he leaned into the wind a little, tempting fate with the promise of the drop below. There was nothing down there except bedrock. He inspected the exterior tower walls either side and found only a series of rotted, wooden beams sticking out above his head. He reached up and tested his weight. Surprisingly the bars held strong as he swivelled around carefully and used the wall to climb up on top of them. Viserion kept an eye on him, taking the occasional curious pass around the tower.

Jorah faced the tower wall in a rather precarious perch with his hands gripping onto the rough surface. From the corner of his eye he saw a series of stones protruding to his left, staggered deliberately. They were discreet, invisible to any foreign force on the ground – even a magical dead one with a thousand eyes. With his sword hanging dangerously off his waist, Jorah climbed unwisely along them, ignoring the fear swelling in the pit of his stomach as every nip of wind threatened to toss him into oblivion.

Soon he came upon another window. It was narrow and Jorah had to squeeze his body through the gap to protests of steel and leather. Inside he found a room with no doors or features except a huge silver-plated dragon embossed onto the opposite wall. This imposing relic, perfectly preserved in the untouched environment, was lit by the harsh grey glare pouring in from the gap in the stone.

He heard the Queen's soft breaths on the air before his eyes adjusted to the change in light. There, laying unconscious beneath the shimmering beast's claws, was Daenerys Stormborn.


The fortress collapsed further and was too dangerous to seek shelter inside, so he carried the Queen back to the shadow of the woods where Viserion padded restlessly around, knocking his tail against the trees. Like all wounded beasts, Daenerys hissed and protested Jorah's efforts to keep her calm by the fire. At one point, she reached up and touched Jorah's face with her blackened fingertips. He caught her hand in his and stared at her wide-eyed bewilderment.

"The markings from Asshai are gone."

Jorah hadn't looked in a mirror for days. He loosened his hold on her, allowing the Queen's hand to trail in an exploratory fashion down his neck, over his collarbone and to the edge of his leather tunic. There was no sign of Quaithe's magic. It was only then that she noticed the fresh scars on him.

"You've been in a battle."

He averted his eyes to Viserion and told her of Bear Island and she described the fall of Queensgate. They were both in shock and took to long silences with nothing save the spitting fire and dancing embers to break the monotony of the snow. Half an afternoon slipped by before Jorah shook himself to sense. He tried to do the same to the Queen but Daenerys refused to leave the Queensgate until she'd looked upon Drogon's body for herself. She was very weak, unable to stand and often drifted into hours of delirium where she whispered words that made the air shudder around Jorah's small camp fire.

He attempted to dissuade her but none of his words made it beyond her despair, or was it rage? As the light faltered, so too did the look in her violet eyes. She was moving out of his reach – threatening to become something else. Eventually he gave in to her demands and carried her in his arms along the blackened paths to Drogon's body. Her pale hand clutched Jorah's shoulder like a set of talons.

"He saved me..." She whispered, her eyes locked onto the black scales. "He turned night into day for me. I thought I was standing on the sun."

"My Queen, Daenerys," he purred, "we cannot stay here. Your arm needs a maester's hand or you will die alongside your child and then we are all lost."

"Put me down in the snow next to him."

"No." Jorah refused, tightening his hold when she struggled weakly.

"I command it."

"I don't care."

A soft sob slipped through her lips at his defiance. He hadn't been hers to command for a long time. Daenerys' head fell back against his chest. "The Lord Commander is dead. Half my army is ash in the water. The Night King is on his way to Nightfort. His army will tear that castle down brick by brick to get to the Black Gate. Its magic is all that keeps him from the realms of man. I've seen it in my dreams. A white face smiling. Welcoming. There's no time for us to go anywhere, Jorah… Live or die, the men of the Watch need us at the Nightfort. What…?"

Jorah shifted her in his arms, holding her closer. "You've…" But the words would not be pried from his lips. They stuck there like sand, slipping deeper no matter how hard he tried to cough them up. Instead, Jorah walked around Drogon's corpse to bring the Western view of The Wall back in sight. Deeplake fort stuck out like a barnacle on a shipwreck only it was spewing streams of smoke into the air where the fire had spread to the forest.

This time the Queen wriggled out of his arms and landed on her knees. Jorah swore, bent down and tried to pick her up off the rock but she pushed him away with her good arm. "Understand that you will die," she taunted the wind, "Commander Thorne warned me before he died."

"I'm not afraid to die."

Daenerys looked up at him from the ground, her face half-soot, half-silver like the moon between phases. "I know what you fear," she accused. "I was born a child of the storm, Ser. It is not my destiny to die an old woman fused to a throne with the roots of usurpers and heirs twisted into my skin like chains." She crawled forward, bloodying her knees until the she was close enough to touch Drogon's lifeless tail. "When I walked into my husband's pyre, I knew that I would live. I owe the gods a debt."

As soon as they turned their backs on Drogon's corpse, thousands of ravens fluttered down to hack away at his scales. The were more arriving every minute, dragged out of the woods on both sides of The Wall to come and feast on the dragon.


WINTERFELL – THE NORTH

"Who the fuck are these dumb cunts?" The Hound looked up from his steaming bowl of root and rat soup to see a sorry pack of Northerners wade into the field of snow surrounding Winterfell. They were big bastards too – even the women. He didn't bother picking up his sword. No one had any spirit for fighting in these parts and if they came for food well shit they were welcome to try and make something out of the scraps they had lying around. The grain silos had frozen solid last week. Not even the vermin could make a dent in them.

Brienne raised her hand, cutting out the glare. There was ice flecked through her dirty blonde hair which had curled into an almost-attractive mane around her face. "From that direction? Maybe the Glovers. They sulked off back to their mud huts after the last war but the ice sheets are moving in over the bay, driving everyone out."

"Look more like Bears ter me."

They were both right. Mormonts and Glovers came limping in to Winterfell before dusk where they formed eerily quiet hovels around the fire pits which dotted the castle. The strongest pushed through the Stark guards and headed straight for the White Tree, intent on burning it only to find a blackened stump looking over a boiling lake.

None of Winterfell's newly arrived guests seemed keen to stay. There was horror in the shine of their eyes while they surveyed the decrepit castle which was exposed on the open ice field. Although it had put up many good fights against Southern armies and Northern scuffles, they knew it would be run over by the dead in hours. That was probably why small convoys started to head off into the blizzard after they'd filled their stomachs.

Sansa sat by her half-brother's bed. No, she corrected herself, not a brother at all. Jon Snow was one of them – a dragon like the silver queen that had come to usurp the realms of Westeros and fold them under one scaled wing. She wanted to mistrust him. Baelish would have demanded it of her but every time she reached over to change Jon's dressing, Sansa caught a glimpse of his dark eyes and found nothing but Stark staring back at her. Cousin.

"We never really talked, did we?" said Jon, as Sansa finished pinning a fresh line of bandages over his chest. The stab wounds had stopped bleeding but that might have been due to the cold freezing everything solid, including his blood.

"You were older – out hunting with Robb and father - I mean – Lord Stark."

"He was still my father."

Sansa's long, red hair tumbled over her shoulder and onto the bed. She'd averted her gaze to avoid Jon's face. When he'd first arrived in Winterfell she'd worried that the lords would rally to him instead of her but there must have been enough of Eddard in her to keep them honest. Her unrest refused to settle. Jon might not be Lord of Winterfell but he could still make a claim to the Iron Throne.

"Your father was Rhaegar Targaryen," she insisted, coolly. "You might as well get used to saying it, Jon, because the realm won't forget it so long as you're breathing. They'll conspire through the war and into death if they have to. I know you loved my father but he was your uncle. Kin, yes, but your blood is going to drag you South one way or the other."

Jon's eyes fixated on the window. "By my life, Sansa, I'm never going further South than The Twins for as long as I live. I've seen their cities burn. They can keep that throne. I don't want it. I don't want this either," he added carefully, when he felt Sansa tense beside him. Winterfell was his home, not his perch. "I was born a bastard and I'll die one."

"I never thought that..." Their childhood distance seemed so foolish now that Sansa had seen the world. "The truth is," she breathed softly, closing her eyes where she returned to the past. In her memory she watched Robb, Jon and her father returning from the woods clutching hares and pheasants. Two of them were ghosts and Jon – he was a shadow of those days, brought back from death. "I was jealous. Father loved you more than any of us. Now I know why. Your parents were dead so he loved you for both of them." She felt a hand stroke through her hair.

"I wouldn't worry about it." Jon did his best to shuffle up to a seated position in the bed, then pulled a thick jumper carefully over his torso. "One of your husband's men will probably kill me before I have a chance to become Lord of Winterfell."

The look of astonishment on Sansa's face was priceless as her eyes shot open and mouth hung ajar. Jon's humour was as dry as the Grey Waste. His sister was mad for plots and intrigue. There wasn't a scandal inside a hundred miles that hid from her birds. He dragged her panic out a little longer before bridging the topic that he'd tip-toed around for days.

"You are making plans to leave Winterfell." It wasn't phrased as a question, and so Sansa sat in silence. "Father-"

"-Lord Stark." Sansa corrected.

"-Lord Stark," he repeated. "His words were clear – there must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Blood magic. It must be. Tell me you've thought it."

She nodded. Of course she'd thought about it.

"Well," Jon I am a Stark, Lady Stark. If anyone should stay to guard this wretched place, it's me." He nodded at her stomach. "You're carrying the future of our House."

Sansa picked up the old Mormont sword that Jon had resting against the bedside table. There'd been enough blades pressed against her skin that she'd lost all fondness for them. Longclaw was lighter than she'd expected and when Sansa tilted the blade into the white light, it looked as though there were a billion stars pressed into its surface, all glittering with a peculiar milky beauty.

"Do not ask me again," Sansa breathed sadly. "The North needs me but the realm needs you. Father would never allow us to leave the fate of Westeros to a dragon."

After that, Sansa left – placing a kiss on Jon's forehead before vanishing into the groaning, mortally wounded castle.

Jon wasn't alone for long. Sansa's guard, the Tarthian heir, clunked into the room weighed down by steel and leather that she never took off. There was a sympathetic frown fixed across her wide forehead while her light blue eyes cut the air as sharply as the cold.

"You are a smaller than I thought."

Jon laughed and immediately regretted the shrieking pain that shot through the knife wounds in his chest. "T-the runt of the litter, Robb used to call me. Even Lady Sansa has inches on me." It wasn't clear why Brienne was there so Jon waited for her to speak again except she didn't. Instead, Brienne walked up to the bed and allowed a silver chain to fall onto his chest, followed by a pendent with three entwined dragons each with blood-red ruby eyes.

"It was buried inside Lyanna Stark's statue inside the Winterfell crypts. A gift from Prince Rhaegar, more than likely. I'd thought to give it to the Dragon Queen but by all rights, this belongs to you."

Jon was too afraid to touch it. The knight had given him a relic of his family. He could feel it burning in his chest – a tiny fragment of his soul rekindled.

Brienne left before Jon's tears fell. For the first time in years, there was warmth in his bones.