THE NIGHTFORT – THE NORTH

A direwolf snarled. It dipped its head low, whiskers twitching against flecks of ice. Grey lips tightened to show off curved incisors. Some were missing, torn out in youth amid the tumble of pack supremacy. Agile, the wolf darted over the hostile world with ease. While everything shrank away from the frigid prison, the cold added several feet to the wolf's statue until she was large enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with a small horse. There were others like her – somewhere – hidden in the farthest reaches of the woods beyond the wall but in the forest hugging the feet of the mountains, she was the unchallenged queen.

Nothing approached Nymeria's fierce figure as she picked her way between the groaning banks of pine. Morose things, they stood as stripped sentries against the sky with rows of limbs like fish bones, rattling in the wind. Others were hacked down at the base, dismantled and removed by hunters dividing the wood into pools of milky light. Bits of coloured thread was strung between the lowest branches, threaded with shell. Prayers. Left by foreigners whose gods could not hear them this far from home.

The last of the brown bears were burrowed in snow dens, enjoying the opening dreams of their long sleep. When she walked over their hiding places, Nymeria stopped to dig her paws in after them. If the bears were buried shallow enough, she devoured them while they were still alive and emerged with a bloody snout and fresh shine to her eyes. Birds and squirrels died where they perched. They dropped out of the branches and lay on the forest floor in perfect preservation, protected from decay by the ever-sinking temperature. She sniffed a few bodies on her way along the frozen creek. Her black claws slid on the veneer of ice. There was colour in the leaves trapped beneath the surface. Autumn had barely breathed before the snap of Winter. Now it waited like a painted wall inside a forgotten temple.

In the sky, a red smear fanned out, refusing to fall and at night it was accompanied by a hundred tiny specks of dust careening across the black. Every night this week, dusk brought with it an impenetrable cloud of smoke and fog that swarmed together into a toxic embrace. It drifted in from the Western side of The Wall and found itself trapped where the mountains crashed into the ugly fortress of ice. Beads of moisture condensed onto the snow, fouled by the souls of Mormonts and their kin.

Nymeria skirted around the edge of the Nightfort, whose ominous walls were painted with a mixture of blood and animal fat. Armies of men and savages had spent the last hours of daylight drowning every surface in the gruesome mixture leaving the high walls un-scalable, even to the dead.

The granite glistened with the rancid concoction as though it were a god's heart freshly plucked and tossed onto the snow. Nymeria could smell it from the forest. It was the only thing keeping her at a distance. She threw her head back in a howl. All across the woods, wolves called back. More of them every day. Some of them were coming from the Lands of Always Winter, picking their way through the huge cracks opening up along The Wall's length. These wolves were pure white with black rims around their eyes and tiny tufts of charcoal fur elongating the tops of their ears. They were smaller, with longer legs and thicker fur adept at living in the mountain caves. Nymeria was calling them into her pack.

Without taking her eyes off the fortress, she lowered her head and lapped at a puddle of water left around the edge of a Crow's fire. The ground shuddered under her paws as an army moved through the forest. Her ears flicked sideways, listening to their approach. A moment later she was gone, vanished into the snow.


Inside the Nightfort, the mismatched army arranged themselves into lines with glass-tipped arrows and fire buckets boiling away beside narrow windows protected by additional layers of metal gauze. At every door, dozens more men waited with swords fashioned from dragonglass. Others refused to relinquish their old weapons, keeping them strung at their hips despite the awkward weight.

The fort was sealed like a tomb.

A prison of death.

The Crows had two jobs – keep the dead army from breaking into the fortress from the South and stop the Night King walking through the Black Gate inside the Northern tunnel. The first task was possible, with the fort famous for its ability to hold out against superior numbers, but no one knew how to stop the king. His magic remained a mystery despite maesters at the Citadel sending thousands of ravens with scraps of information dug up from their library. Their words were mostly conjecture and fable. Empty.

"We should be down there," whispered Cub, crouched beside Edd at the top of The Wall. The pair of them were alone and the cold had taken a turn toward bitter, clawing into their skin. Last time Cub looked, his forearms were a blotchy mess of purple and white – numb in all the wrong places. With nightfall and an uneasy fog beneath them, everyone was fixed in their positions around the Nightfort, for better or worse. "There's nothing to see up here," he complained, "so what's the point of us? We can't help them if we can't see. I'm going back." He moved in the direction of the lift system, which looked like it was set on a lake with thick curls of fog laying all over its base. It hung over nothing. Swaying. "I can help. I know that Weirwood doorway better than anyone."

The moment Cub tried to stand, Edd reached up, took hold of his cloak and yanked him roughly down. Cub slipped on the ice and landed on his arse, swearing.

"You will sit an' do as you are commanded."

"Says who?"

"Says me." Edd snapped. "The Lord Commander is dead, that leaves me in charge of this cluster fuck. Now, if I tell yer ter sit, yer sit. If I tell yer to run – you run, yer hear? God damn cubs. Give me a sully grown murdering bastard son-of-a-thieve's whore any fuckin' day."

Edd leaned over The Wall, trying to pick out detail through the fog. They were sure to see the pits glow through the fog which meant that they hadn't been lit yet. The Northern side of The Wall only slightly better. If the Night King was out there with the rest of his army, it'd be difficult to pick them from the landscape.

"An' fer the record, yer don' know a damn thing about that bloody Black Gate. No one does." Edd looked beyond to the shadow of the forest and faint outlines of distant mountains. Strange, he thought, how peaceful the absolute North looked compared to the hell they faced. He'd spent his life in the Watch, terrified of what lay beyond their patrols but now all those demons were at their feet leaving the land on the horizon strangely peaceful. If he had the choice, he'd walk straight into that pristine abyss.

"Are you smiling…?"

Edd shook off the feeling. "Course I'm bloody not."

"Down there." Cub leaned over the edge and pointed at a sudden surge of fire. Another leaped into the air shortly after – then another as a volley of arrows set the pits alight in front of the Nightfort. "It's started. The dead must be coming out of the forest in the South!" Then, as quickly as the flames had begun – they were extinguished. Cub's eyes widened in terror. He'd never seen an oil pit smothered, let alone a field of them. "That's not possible."

Without explanation, Edd skidded over to the lift system that had brought them up to the watchman's perch. It was secured with ancient ropes, all of which Edd severed with a few strikes of his sword. The lift teetered over the edge for a moment, suspended by an insufficient length of rusted chain. The metal twisted – screeched – and then the whole structure peeled off the ice and smashed through the platforms beneath, destroying all of them on the way down in a hail of destruction heard right across the clearing.

Cub was horrified as their escape route collapsed into oblivion. "You've gone and stranded us!" He exclaimed, staring dumbly at the damage. There was absolutely nothing to be done. There was no way for either of them to reach the Nightfort without trekking for days to the nearest castle. "We can't get down!"

"An' those dead fucks can't get up." Edd countered, breathing a little easier. This must be how the gods felt.

Cub reeled around on his Commander and slammed his fists into Edd's chest. "Coward!" He screeched. "Selfish coward!" There was a shadow moving swiftly beneath the fog. In moments, it would collide with the fortress walls. "Those are your men down there an' what – and you're going to leave them to be slaughtered? No dragons. No magic. Now you expect them to win a war on their own with no Commander!"

"One day, if you are fortunate enough ter grow old, you will learn that the hardest thing in this life is ter do nothing." It didn't take much effort for Edd to free himself of the angry young man. In a few more seasons he'd be more difficult to control. There was a hefty frame about Cub, uncommon in the lands he was born, which he was slowly filling in. "The chances of us winning this fight have never been very good. You pointed it out yourself."

"So what?" Cub bordered on petulant. If anything was going to get that boy killed, it was rashness.

"So, boy," Edd tried to keep his tone level, even as more fire pits lit up and immediately died beneath them. "This is unlikely ter be the last battle the realm has to fight against the dead. If we all die here tonight, tell me, what did we learn – eh? The greatest military Commanders of our Age spent their youth studyin' the battle plans of better men. We know almost nothin' about this threat or how it fights. If we want ter win the war, we have ter know how to fight against them."

"You're prepared to sacrifice all those people down there just so that you can learn a lesson? Some of those are our best fighters."

"It wouldn't be much of a lesson if we put fodder down there now would it?"

Cub was disgusted. Betrayed. He backed away but found himself hemmed in by the Northern edge of The Wall. "Monster..." he whispered.

"This is war," Edd clarified, "get used ter it. If you want honour, go be a farmer or a fisherman. The Watch isn't about redeeming yer soul from all the shit yer did, it's about making sure all those honourable useless fucks stay alive an' ter do that we 'ave ter be the bastards." He dug through the satchel around his waist and pulled out parchment and ink. "Now bring 'em soft Southern hands over here an' do somethin' useful. Yer going to write down everything that happens here tonight an' when this shit is done, we send it to that cunt Varys. He'll know what ter do."

With great reluctance, Cub snatched the quill off Ebb and perched himself, ready to watch.

"Why Varys?"

"That's the first sensible question you've asked since yer got here." Although it went unanswered. Edd's gaze flicked down to the ice at his feet. He scuffed it cautiously with his boot, a frown deepening across his already stern expression. Movement. There it was again. Edd felt the dense layers of ice shift beneath the surface. He knelt and used his gloves to scrape the loose layers of snow off to reveal the old blue ice beneath. Even when lit by the light of their torches, it held a beautiful quality to its hue with huge bubbles of air suspended in its depths.

Cub wasn't sure what to do. As he watched, he caught sight of a shadow below Edd's hands. "What was that?" He pointed, seeing it again.

Edd almost fell over himself, retreating with a veneer of sweat. He kicked the loose snow back over in a futile attempt to bury what he'd found. He'd gone pale. Shaking. Glancing from side to side with bile rising in his stomach. There was no help coming. He was the Commander. A moment later, he threw up all over the edge of The Wall.

"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." He rambled, wiping his face with his heart boring a hole through his chest. "I was hopin' that story wasn' true. Gods be damned to the sea!" Sweat rolled off his forehead. His hands shook so hard he struggled to hold onto the side. Cub had switched from anger to bewilderment. He'd have to explain… "They used to tell us all kinds o' stories at Castle Black ter keep the new ones honest. Old Maester Aegon loved it after a few drinks in Winter when there was nothin' ter do but sit by the fire. He was a mad old dragon bastard. Flip a coin my arse. It was in' 'em all, that fire. His stories though? Thought it was bullshit."

Cub didn't know what to be more afraid of – the violence threatening around the fort of the ground beneath their feet. The whites of Cub's eyes were picked out by the torches but they were nothing to the colour Edd's face had gone. "I don't understand what's going on."

"When the weather turned to shit at Castle Black, there were always a few soft cunts who packed their bags an' thought about leavin'. They'd all be dragged into the hall where the blind old man would sit, surrounded by books he couldn' read no more. There, with them young Crows clutchin' their cloaks, Aemon would tell one of his stories. Heard it me-self. Seventy-nine deserters left their post one year an' fled South, tryin' to cheat the law of the realm. Broke their oaths to the gods. They tried ter bargain with a lord but he brought them all back – can't remember which one – and they were sent here, to the Nightfort, as punishment. It was a shit of a place then, too. The Lord Commander marched the runaways up ter the top of The Wall above the fort, 'bout where we are now, then made them dig holes in the ice eight feet deep with picks. Took 'em ages, poor bastards. It were meant to be for a new watch shelter, that's what the Commander told 'em but when they were done they were all pushed into their holes. They couldn't get out, yer see – the ice was sheer and there wasn't enough room ter move. He tossed a spear an' a horn in ter each hole. With every one of those poor bastards facin' North, the Lord Commander had the other men o' the Watch fill the holes with water. Then they waited. It froze solid. Now the drowned Crows keep their watch. Enough to give a hard man nightmares fer months."

Cub was horrified, panting with terror. In his mind he saw the line of dead men staring sightless form their icy graves. "But – they're – dead..." He stammered.

"Yeah. An' that fucker down there is gonna wake them all up. Misplaced honour really pisses me off. The Wildlings had the right idea about death. Ash can't hold a sword."

Cub, who'd been desperate to fight with his brothers of the Watch minutes ago, suddenly looked as though he wanted to scurry away to safety. He couldn't take his eyes off the ice beneath his feet and all the dead inside their tombs clawing to get out.

Edd caught him staring. "Pick up yer quill an' sit back down."

"But-"

"But nothing. The ice 'll hold them down there."

I hope, Edd added silently to himself.


The Night King reached up and trailed his fingertips through the layer of mist lapping restlessly above. Magic stirred up storms around him – more now than ever before. He could feel them churning inside his flesh, moving across the landscape, drawn there by intangible forces. They were not so much bent to his will but rather the malevolent gods who watched on keenly, offering him a cloak to hide beneath as he approached the Black Gate. Their motives remained a mystery. The gods are unknowable – she had warned him, long ago. Never trust, never listen, never pray...

In his mind the old Stark could see the land as it was, thousands of years ago when his men first laid the foundations of The Wall, cutting its roots along a natural chasm in the rock. Instead of snow, there had been an ancient river slicing its way deep into the black fields of rock – fed from melt-water and great submerged lakes trapped beneath the ice caps. In those days it was spanned by scattered bridges made from pine crossing the abyss which routinely snapped under the weight of Winter snows. Hunters and Children scrambled down into their throats to wade into the strangely warm waters and survive the cold. Instead of pebbles, the river bed was eight foot deep in bone from a war no one could remember.

It was in this pit of bubbling water and darkness that his Northern men had found the colossal Weirwood with its roots tangled down into the landscape like great bridal veils so immense they could have covered the Hightower a hundred times. No one had ever seen anything like it. There were fig trees in the jungles of Essos with a similar spread but this wooden creature appeared to be alive with malice and fed by the aeons. Was it the bloody river below that sustained it? What things had it seen... Thousands of smaller Weirwoods grew up along the ravine, either seeded or sprung straight out of a trailing root. Woven through this spiderweb-like configuration were flourishes of blue roses. The way they dripped into the steaming water made the men refer to them as blue blood or the royal scars. To him, Brandon suspected that they were nothing more than a weed left in the wound of a prehistoric war.

Brandon Stark… Like the Weirwood, the North had forgotten his face but not his name. Part of his presence lingered – a withered, tortured piece of his memory that refused to die inside the swell of magic that sustained him. Mostly, Brandon lived through the monstrous structures that he'd built across the realm. Here lay one of them, the grandest of all. The Wall. An ugly thing it was too. He'd grown to hate the sight of it. Like everything else forged from his mind, this was a piece of war.

The blue eyes of the Others rarely left him. They were foreign demons he did not understand. Always watching – following him as if bound against their will. Maybe they were – chained by the whispers of his white queen. Brandon was certain they would kill him the moment they were set free. If they were capable of joy, he imagined that they'd take pleasure in the slaughter.

The Others stayed at the edge of the forest. Brandon stopped in front of a rusted iron grate that the Night's Watch had placed over the Black Gate. It was a door that was never meant to be opened and so fortifications had been built up around it after the castle's abandonment. Brandon looked over his shoulder as a pair of dead giants emerged from the forest. They stumbled up to the grate on legs eaten away and exposed to the bone. He remembered when he'd found them, laying together half-eaten by direwolves at the bottom of a cliff. The necromancy that pursued him spread like a virus, reaching into their open grave and dragging the giants out of the ground. Together, they took hold of the grate and pulled until the iron lattice buckled to breaking point. Crack! Its demise echoed. Torn in half, the giants pried the two pieces apart, bending them backwards as one might split the ribs on a corpse to get at the lungs. Then they faced away and stared dead-eyed into nowhere.

There it was, exposed, the Black Gate made of pure white wood. There was a face carved into both sides of the Weirwood. A balance of opposites, like a Braavosi coin. The malcontent face of the Children's god looked inwards, keeping watch over the Crows while Brandon and the First Men had sliced their own morbid reflection into the wood and left it to squint into the glare. It was a crude creation. Trapped behind bars for most of it its life, leaving its form oddly pristine amongst the weathered ruins. Youthful, even. The magic that set its thin-lipped smile in place did not belong to any creature of the North.

It was hers.

The whispered words of a dead queen.

...and it had been crying fresh tears.

'Gate' was an odd description as there were no hinges or mechanism to open the Weirwood face. It was neither a door nor a bridge. If he wished to destroy it, Brandon could command his men to hack away at the wood with their bare hands – shred it into a pile of splinters but he knew better than to savage magic. It was not the physical wood that kept his body from passing the threshold, it was the changeable face of the gods.

He took another step closer and saw the Black Gate glow like the Northernmost source of the Ghost River. There was an uncanny match to mists lit by the moon. A gentle, subtle touch of stardust. Then, a set of white eyes opened in the bark. Folds separated, forming an ugly mouth that scratched its way through the usual greeting.

"Who are you?" asked the Black Gate.

The world stilled. Unlike naive men who thought a tree held sentience, Brandon remembered the curse placed upon it. He'd been there when the words were first said and the bark bent to its will.

Brandon closed his eyes, feeling them wrinkle with age. What he should have said was, 'I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers. I am the shield that guards the realms of men.' Except Brandon had never said any vows. He had been their king, not their Commander. It was his blade that carved the gods-awful face so, with a crack of ice, Brandon replied…

"I am your god returned home. The one who set you there. I am your guard, your jailer, the ice and the snow."

The Black Gate shuddered, holding fast but Brandon's words dripped through its network like poison.

"I am the evening light in the dead of Winter and you are the moon – her lips, her eyes and her blood. All of them mine."

Now the ground beneath all three hundred miles of The Wall started to shake as the roots of the white tree tensed inside its prison of ice. Brandon the Builder continued. He stretched out his arms, allowing the light to brush over the faint tattoos etched in blood. His pale skin was a mess of runes. Old words. Prayers from the stars. Ancient script he'd never been able to read. They were her words – the Queen from beyond the oceans. He would always be her creature. A slave of love and duty in equal measure. Passion and necromancy should never have mixed in the flesh of the living. The gods did not know what to make of it.

"I am the dawn of night. I've lain in your roots and seen your secrets..." He hissed at the Black Gate. The presence in the Weirwoods stirred – a collection of minds accumulated through the ages. Seers, Children, necromancers and gods. Brandon could hear them screeching beyond the darkness. All the foul things of hell desperate to break free. Perched at windows. Forever trapped. His power over them was fading. Perhaps Brandon had waited too long to return and yet, like a bud woken from the cold, he'd felt the call with the first crack of a dragon's egg. He had awakened with the fire and heard voices speaking through the glass candles.

Sap drizzled from deep gouges in the Black Gate. They formed shadow tears that stuck in place, congealing over each other into hideous, bulbous formations.

"I have been asleep..." Brandon whispered, switching to the old tongue of the First Men. "I slept with the gods and spied upon their dreams. I saw flame reach into the darkness and emerge with a handful of snow. Amethysts laying in a pool of blood. The Sea of Souls alight with ten thousand ships. Beneath the waves where their graves are made. A dragon tumble from the sky – head like a mountain where it rests in the ice… I saw the dawn drip with fire in the grip of one man. Terrified. Alone. I have rested on the barren perches of crumbling forts and warmed my wings in their company. I am dead, never allowed to die." The last fragment was spoken in the language of the Dawn. As soon as the words rattled from Brandon's lips, the Black Gate howled in pain and opened against its will for the Night King and his hoard of bones.

From the edges of the forest, blue eyes glowed afresh with lust.

The tunnel burrowed right through The Wall dissolving into a speck of light where part of the South peeked out. A river of fire caught and gushed along its throat, emerging with a ball of heat that left a veil of dripping tears over the wooden face. Some poor Crow screamed in agony, dying in bitter valour – the torch falling from his hand.

False rain fell over the lifeless giants. As the fire burned, the edges of the door were revealed, slowly picked out of the ice as if they were sagging gums. The only thing the Crow's futile efforts succeeded in achieving was to make the chasm between the realms wider.

Brandon had waited thousands of years, he could spare a few hours more to watch the dying of the light. While he waited, a crow hopped across the ground, digging its beak into the snow in search of scraps of flesh. It would have plenty to feast on shortly. A seat at the table of the gods.

When the flames in the tunnel had burned themselves out to a few harmless licks of orange, Brandon brought the remainder of his army out from the forest lead by the Others. They were are numerous as the pines – all the fallen souls from the North's history of violence. Their bones gleamed with unnatural life. Fixated with a unified magic, they neither moved nor had a thought of their own volition. Slavery in death was absolute. Murderers and children stood together with the same fate.

He was the first to step into the lips of the Black Gate. Brandon passed the threshold unhindered except for an unusual wash of emotion through his tortured flesh. Wherever his feet touched the tunnel floor, it froze. Patterns of ice spiralled across the residue of oil. Behind him, the tunnel was kissed by frost. Charred bones left by the Crow who'd lit the fire lay in a sad pile. Brandon ignored them. There were some things not even the gods could use.

To the Crows trembling inside the tunnel, the lost language of the Dawn sounded like ice breaking away from the cliffs. One by one, they all dropped their swords with a sear of pain as the metal sucked in the supernatural cold and burned through their gloves. They fumbled for their dragonglass, shaking at the unimpressive weapons that seemed more like sticks than swords. At least the narrow tunnel nullified the vast numbers of the Night King, forcing them into formations of four.

The Crows and Eastern fighters prepared themselves for the hoard of bone to rush at them as they had done with the other castles, but what they ended up facing filled them with fear sharper than the edge of a king's sword.

The Night King stopped and stood perfectly still in the shallow sea of oil. It lapped around him in a black tide, impenetrable and lit by the fleeting strike of fire. Behind, two giants folded themselves into the passageway along with a pack of common brown wolves brandishing piercing blue eyes. They snapped at the line of warriors in front, swishing broken tails with a disturbing crunch of bone. The meanest was missing its front right paw and had an arrow protruding from a patch of bloody fur on its hind quarter. All of them dead.

These were the first to attack.

The savagery of the pack tore apart the first line of men in the tunnel. Their flesh fell onto the floor in chunks as they hacked back in defence. The dead creatures were ravenous, continuing to bite and scratch when their backbones were severed, stopping only when their heads rolled free. A few of the foreign fighters had a bit of luck wielding clubs set alight with whale oil, which caught their fur eliciting sharp whines, but the frenzy of the wolves eventually forced the Night's Watchmen to retreat behind the next set of iron gates. They closed with a crash and the battle paused.

Brandon stopped in front of the gate and stared into the dark eyes of the living. Men were not what they used to be. They were taller but made from straw instead of pine. Weak and afraid of the shadows. Soft men. There wasn't a scrap of magic between them. The only thing they were good for was dying. Still, he admired the futility.

He spread his arms and faced his palms upwards. White mist swirled around the tunnel. The temperature dropped fast. Drops of sweat froze in place, making the men look as though they were draped in thin pearl veils. The remaining wolves paced backwards and forwards, snarling at the bars. The Crows may as well have held a sheet of parchment to a candle in the hope of stopping the flame.

Crack!

The iron shattered into a bed of stars, dashed with blood.


Horrific screams echoed in the depths of the Nightfort. They came in waves. The endless tide that dragged its way around the planet from shore to shore. Torture that never stopped while the living made friends with death. In all, it lasted twenty minutes and then after that – nothing.

The men who had trapped themselves inside the main fort shivered together, dropping their gaze to the foul mist that forced its way beneath the doors and through the cracks in the boarded up windows. They knew that their friends were dead. It wasn't enough to hear violence, you could feel it in the walls of the Nightfort.

"W-what now?"

The Crows turned to each other, hands trembling uncontrollably as they tried to keep hold of their weapons.

As if in answer, the fireplaces scattered around the edges of the room were snuffed out in unison accompanied by a howl of icy wind. The Nightfort moaned above. The press of stone and blood lingered in the room. Threatening.

Pitch fell leaving only the dying coals, red and glowing like dragon eggs in the pit of a funeral pyre.

It started with a crash. The doors and windows shook under assault from the dead. They were coming from all sides, inundating the castle. Drawn to the heartbeats of the living. Unstoppable. Waves upon waves slamming against the rock. The noise rivalled the great storms of Westeros.

The men formed a tight cluster in the centre of the room. Back to back. Weapons raised to the pitch. Out of the darkness, a terrified chant began. The Crows repeated their vows as if in prayer to the Old Gods – begging for salvation but they could not be heard above the rancour.

'I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold...' but the gods turned over in their graves with a smile of pearl and sea of blue eyes.


From above, nothing was amiss.

Jorah remained cautious, forcing Viserion to take many low passes around the Nightfort and surrounding forests. He leaned over the dragon's neck, searching the ground for signs of war. The other castles taken by the dead were left in ruin but the Nightfort was already a thing of hell. There were no trails of smoke or fresh piles of rubble around her skirts. No soot-scars from uncontrolled blazes. In fact, if anything the snow drifts were even thicker than normal. The base of the castle had fresh frost growing up its sides as if it had been dipped in Winter. Oil and fat spoiled the outer walls in a grisly promise but it was unlit.

"There," whispered Jorah, pointing to the lift system at The Wall. It has fallen down into a pile of scrap and splinter.

"Where is everyone?" Daenerys replied softly. She looked pale, almost as white as the Northern people. Her injuries were no longer healing with Quaithe's magic. She could feel herself getting weaker but hid it from the knight, holding herself steady despite the world shuddering every time she breathed. Drogon… Her thoughts were never far from him but anguish left her numb. "Did they abandon the fort?"

Jorah shook his head. "No. These men wouldn't run. Where would they run to? This is the last defensible castle."

"Maybe Commander Thorne's guess was wrong and the Night King is not interested in the Nightfort. Have many times have you warned me not to place too much stock in old songs..."

That didn't sit well with Jorah either. "The Nightfort has always been the centre of his power. You've seen it yourself in your dreams. No. He was coming here – I know it. I know it here." Jorah pressed his fist to his chest.

Viserion cruised down for a close pass along the top of The Wall where the lift system had collapsed. There was nothing up there either except some breakage and uneven ground on the walkways. It was to be expected with regular earthquakes putting a strain on the ice structure. Bits and pieces were collapsing all over the place, in turn causing more cracks and unrest. Eventually, Jorah expected the whole damn thing to crumble in on itself.

"Can we land?"

Jorah was not keen on the idea. There was a presence in the air that didn't sit right with him. Viserion could sense it too – nipping at the brisk wind as he came down to land in the courtyard of the Nightfort. They waited a few minutes, surveying the empty buildings and blackened, lifeless corpses of the trees that had grown up through the stables and later died.

"There should be horses here..." Jorah said, after they'd dismounted Viserion and walked over to the first of the outer buildings. The muddy stable floors had frozen but there was evidence of recent use – a few broken doors and missing saddles. Piles of hay lay at the edges of the room. Feed was a rare, expensive commodity in the North, hardly something to be left untouched.

Daenerys covered her mouth as a soft gasp escaped. Jorah was at her side immediately. A foal rested against the corner of the building, frozen solid – eyes open. They were like glass.

"Have you seen anything like this in the Winter before?"

Jorah shook his head. The poor creature looked as though it were trapped somewhere between life and ice. "Never, your Grace. We are all children of Summer. No one living has seen a real Winter. All we have are stories."

"And in those stories, ser Jorah," Daenerys could not take her eyes off the foal, "what happened?"

His reply was to tug her gently away from the scene.

"Tracks," Daenerys pointed out, as they emerged from the stables. She'd lived with horselords long enough to know what to look for. "Recent. There have been many new beasts in through this yard. From the West." There were no other tracks but that was because the ground was now solid underfoot...

They both shifted their attention to the main castle. It rose out of the ice like a living vision of death.

"This place gives me the creeps," Daenerys added. "It would be better suited to Asshai."

"It is one of the oldest buildings in Westeros, your Grace." Jorah stopped beside her. "A structure that has seen great evil. Maybe all things that live this long turn to the darkness. Look at the gods. They are the oldest bastards out there and all they can do is dream of hell."

Daenerys swore in High Valyrian as she approached the enormous doors of the Nightfort. They were painted with blood, bolted shut from the inside. "What if the men are all still in there?" She asked. "And the battle hasn't begun?" With great trepidation, Daenerys reached forward with her uninjured arm and slammed the knocker at the side of the doors. Three times. Its piercing booms echoed in the darkness. There was no answer. Jorah did the same, only he beat it down on the metal dial so hard that the sound was loud enough to wake the dead.

Nothing stirred.

"Well, we're not getting in this way. Those doors are bolted to keep out an army. Come on, there should be another gate around to the side that leads to the Black Gate."

They found this gate wide open – torn from its bolts and bent into awkward folds of metal. It wasn't only the final gate into the courtyard that was destroyed, looking down into the depths of the corridor, Jorah and Daenerys could see all the way through to the Black Gate and into the Lands of Always Winter.

It was open.

"By all Old Gods and the New," Jorah leaned against the remains of metal, steadying himself with his hand. He felt his stomach drop in terror. "We're too late. No – not yet." He gripped the back of Daenerys' shirt when she began to walk down the corridor toward the Weirwood.

"But -" she protested, "I want to see it..." Especially after it had haunted her dreams for so long. "After all this time, Jorah. I have to."

"Those are the eyes of the gods," he reminded her. "Gods who may very well be working against us. If it has been calling to you – better that you keep your distance."

Despite his pleas, she lingered.

"Your Grace..." Jorah had to insist, after many minutes had dragged their feet. "Trust me."

She did. Always.

They headed around the corner to another door that led into the Nightfort's famous kitchens where the Ratcook served an Andal king his son inside a pie. These doors were forced open too. Jorah knelt down to one of the wooden panels, tracing his fingertips through the shredded surface. "This looks familiar."

Gigantic iron pots were knocked over and left to roll along the sloped floor toward the drainage grates. Jorah shuddered at the thought of the sewers below. Not even he was willing to step near them for fear of what waited beneath. The ground was famously hollow beneath the Nightfort. Some said it went down for miles into the darkness and that it was there, beneath the fort, where sacrifices were made to the Others. They were still there. Infants drowned in the steaming waters of a river that had not seen the light in thousands of years.

Jorah drew his sword and the Queen sank half a step behind him. He felt her hand on his back. Their breath was visible on the air. It was so cold. Even Jorah shivered.

"Stay close," he insisted, as they left the kitchen and moved through gloomy hallways with dozens of rooms either side of them. Their closed doors could hide all manner of thing but instead of stopping to check each one, they decided to continue swiftly toward the entrance hallway at the end which had been broken into so violently that part of the arched stone above the door lay in pieces. There were huge cleaves of stone missing from the walls and for the first time, bloody hand prints and long drag marks.

At the same time, their eye-line dropped to the floor where the frozen blood ran so thick that it was inches deep. A single blade of glass protruded from the surface like a morose iceberg. Jorah and Daenerys exchanged looks but said nothing as they picked their way around the debris and entered the main entrance foyer of the Nightfort.

Now they could see the reverse side of the main doors. Jorah had been right, as he had thought, the doors were locked by slabs of wood laying in iron claws. Each was three foot wide, created from the hearts of Ironwood trees. Unbreakable. They were probably the very same beams that had held off the Stark king, Brandon the Breaker, when he'd tried to take the castle from his brother.

And here they stood still – unyielding against the forces of the dead. The whole realm could fall to shreds and the doors of the Nightfort would remain vigilant.

"...Oh gods..." Daenerys gripped Jorah's back, if only to stop herself from falling. She had seen savagery in her time. The horselords and their wicked gods – cities that had died in the night – but there was a sickness trailing after the Night King that stained the world in his wake.

The Nightfort's front doors were monstrous things, so tall that their tops faded away into the darkness of the ceiling and wide enough that six carriages could ride in, shoulder to shoulder. Opening them required a complicate mechanical system operated by men on both sides. Adorning this creation were the severed heads of every person who had tried to defend the castle from the Night King. They were arranged into concentric circles, like ripples on a pond that would never die. The Dothraki horselords, accounting for the smallest number, had been clustered in the very centre with their long plaits pinned around their faces. Their ears were sliced off and nailed above in the mimic of horses. Next, the Crows. There were five circles of them with wings fashioned out of their hands which dripped either side of their faces. Finally, the Queen's Yinnish fighters formed the last two rings – much of which could not be seen in the shadow the ceiling. Draped over their heads were trails of intestine, looped over several times like the rays of their eternal land of sun.

The whole nightmare bore an uncanny likeness to the wall of faces at the House of Black and White.

Missing were the tell-tale blue eyes of the resurrected dead. The faces mounted on the great doors had eyes of glass or none at all.

"He plays with death. Mocks it." Jorah was wary of the terrible design. He remembered what he'd seen as a boy, up in the mountains. It was a type of art and the Others had been practising it forever.

"I don't understand," Daenerys replied, unable to look away, "why would he waste so many men when he could have them as part of his army? This isn't magic. I can't feel it."

"No," Jorah agreed with her. "It's plain old fear. The Bolton's used to do the same thing – flaying their enemies and leaving them flapping in the wind for all the world to see. The Skagosi keep men in iron cages and burned them alive slowly so that their screams would travel on the wind. I hear in the jungles of Essos, they eat their own kind. Half the battle is already won if the men are too afraid to fight. He seeks to frighten us. Buy himself some time."

"But who is it for?" She asked. "No one would come this way if he has already killed everyone."

"You, your Grace. It's all for you. This is a performance. The Night King leaves you gifts. Whether they are from him or the Old Gods, we cannot know."

"Gifts, or sacrifices…?"

These men's lives were added to her list of the dead. Daenerys had lost count years ago but their faces came back to haunt her whenever she closed her eyes. They'd be waiting for her in the darkness at the end of this life. That at least, she knew for certain. Their souls called to her, clawing up through the rivers of the underworld to grasp at her limbs and drag her beneath the surface. Her knight would not be able to follow her there.

"He killed my child," Daenerys found herself wiping away the beginning of a tear. "I will kill this king myself – and if the stories are true and he's already dead – well, then – I shall kill him again. His army is through The Wall, running loose in the South. We must follow before he annihilates them. There's nothing left here."

Again, Jorah hesitated at her command. "Your Grace," he began, in gentle defiance. "He wants us to fear this place in particular – to leave as fast as possible but you were right the first time, the Nightfort is where everything began. The Night King cannot hide that fact from the world. It survived, all this time. A measure of its frightful birth. Truth drenched in so much blood that not even those who set out to bury it could make themselves forget. The Nightfort and his origin are intertwined. We should take a closer look."

"And what about them..."

"Their troubles are over," Jorah replied, turning his back on the doors and the faces of their friends. Although he dared not imagine the terror of their deaths.

Daenerys understood. While Jorah strode toward the staircase, she knelt at the foot of the doors and touched the puddle of oil at their base. The Dragon Queen closed her eyes. Fire ran in her veins. It stirred in her ribcage as if Drogon's soul had settled there. Her child had returned and with his death, his magic.

Weaker in the flesh, Daenerys was more powerful than ever.

Flames sprung from the surface of the oil beside her fingers. It rushed up the doors and consumed the dead. The glow cast the whole cavern in a surge of light. Jorah stopped at the base of he stairs. Drip. Drip. Drip. It was around him. The sound of rain except…

Jorah looked up at the ceiling, now cast in bright fire. Hanging from its rafters were hundreds of severed limbs. They dangled like stalactites except these were formed from flesh. Heat from the door melted the blood which began to fall all around them like the forests of Sothoryos. Jorah used the back of his hand to wipe the gore from this face. Daenerys approached but she simply let it rain down on her until she was drenched with death.

Fire and Blood.

He could not take his eyes off the Queen. She was the gods made flesh.


THE EYRIE – THE VALE

The Citadel listed these lands as the top of the world. Of course, that wasn't quite true. There were higher peaks scattered over the realm and absolute monstrosities over the oceans in the East, but the inaccuracy of their legend did nothing to dampen the savage beauty. The Vale was a realm comprised of seemingly infinite repetitions of mountain ranges that gradually faded into a haze. They undulated like waves, as though these giants were little more than imperfections on the great seas. If that were true, then this was the Crow's nest and the white sheets of ice trembled like sails pulled tight against their ropes. Wind screeched over the highest peaks, tearing ice off the rock and moving it from one craggy outcrop to the next. You could watch it curl in over itself, spiralling. Occasionally some of it smashed into their faces, eliciting a growl from Tormund and a hiss from Dacey.

Fighting against the constant howl made every step twice as hard. They were both boiling to death from exhaustion and freezing cold with the thinning air pressing down on their lungs to the point of suffocation. The pair collapsed into a pile of boulders at the side of the perilous track. Layers of ice and gravel slid around underfoot while the rock refused to give them a moment of comfort. Old fossils dislodged, laying amid the barren ground unnoticed by travellers. The cliffs in front were sheer, decorated by diagonal lines of black glass and ochre sludge that had hardened under some Dawn-Age calamity and then been thrust up onto its side where it now sat like a discarded shield. Every now and then the sunlight caught the scar and it twinkled back like a billion blinking eyes. It was joined by rivers of jade – a fortune's fortune kept safe by unreachable terrain.

"Fuck's sake!" Tormund wiped his paw across his forehead. The sweat was already turning to ice. Long trails of it struck in his beard and then snapped off against his leathers. The eternal dryness stuck in their throats. Their lips cracked and skin peeled especially where it had been burned raw by the glare. "This is buggery, this is. I'm gonna end up becoming a fuckin' rock."

Dacey kept her sights set on The Eyrie. The fortress's shadow fell over the track in front as the sun sank into the West. From this height, it took forever to set. The days were always longer in The Vale just like the morose faces of those who called it home. They kept to themselves, folding into the landscape as the eagles did.

The mountains wore fresh coats of snow, deposited by weeks of ungodly falls that had closed the route several times and left rockfalls in their wake. In the neighbouring valleys, the snow formed unstable bridges that could collapse at the touch of a raven's feet and drown all the rivers and towns below. Very soon, the few trails up to the palace would be closed forever, made impassible by Winter's creep. At least, that is what Dacey hoped – that the Night King would find himself defeated by his own blade. In the dead of Winter, this would be another world entirely.

"Never seen that before." Dacey tapped Tormund on the shoulder to draw his attention to the scene in front of them. The ocean lay as an unending, grey thing with a gentle but definite curve along its back. "No wonder they say that the world 'as an arched back. You know what the Ironborn call the seas? An old beggar woman."

"Looks fuckin' miserable enough today." He grunted. "I thought the water would be blue, like a jewel. That's what we were told when we was children. The South, they used ter say, was a land full of colour and beauty. I seen more colour in the wind."

"Neither of us have been far enough South ter say," Dacey replied. "This time, when we were in that boat headed for the Capital, I had hoped..." She trailed off. "All ash and mud there now, from what I 'ear. We weren't meant for the South. You and I."

"A right ol' fuck up down there," Tormund agreed. "Still tremblin' from the fall. Those poor bastards from the city are scattered all o'er the place. Been a while since their soft hands had ter dig themselves a fire. Most will up an' die come the frost. Fuck. Even in good weather they'd die. Not an ounce o' survival among them. Them city walls, yer know? They make a man weak."

They bickered for a while, neither willing to admit that the delay was to catch their breath. Even simple tasks had them grasping their chests. No bloody wonder armies never got through the gates. They probably couldn't lift their swords.

At the castle they were met with an expected hostility. The guards leered from cracks in the rock and either side their archers teased as if they might just let go for the sport of it. They were a suspicious people – a trait that kept them alive and unconquered through the centuries but even The Eyrie had heard of The Wall crumbling. With ravens in short supply, they allowed Dacey and Tormund to enter, if only to listen to whispers from the North.

Listening was something they did well from behind opulence. No amount of rich silk or beaded necklaces could dampen the mortal terror in their eyes. It put them right off their feast which sat untouched. After half an hour, Tormund couldn't contain himself any longer and stepped forward to pick at it while Dacey finished their story. They allowed this offence, even brining wine to make sure that they drained every detail from the pair.

Yohn Royce lifted his hand to silence the filthy pair of Northerners. He had heard enough. "We have men in Winterfell. My son, Lord Andar Royce, is married to the Stark girl who calls herself, 'Queen of the North'. Never put much stock in the self-appointed titles of Northern nobles, myself." He admitted. "If what you two say has any truth, crowns will not be of any use to use. The time is coming around again when kings are made, not born."

"Always that time beyond the fuckin' Wall..." Tormund muttered, earning a real thunder of laughter from Royce. He seemed to enjoy the brutish honesty.

When Royce stood, he was nearly the same size as Tormund. In his youth, he'd probably been larger. A man like that in full battle armour must have been a terrifying sight with a broadsword large enough to cut a knight in two. He was not naturally given to fear but the tales of the dead army toppling the forts along The Wall as if they were shanty towns was enough to capture his attention. Particularly, the life of his son and heir.

"You are a man of war, Tormund – King of the Freefolk." Flattery. A useful grace that had served him well. "Will Winterfell weather this army?"

"That piece of shit rock mound?" Tormund cleared his throat. There was something in Royce's stature and presence that commanded respect. The man was like a grand statue standing in the middle of a mausoleum. "The battle would be over inside the hour. Everyone will die. Including your son an' all his men. We've come ter ask you to bring them here."

"Why not ask them yourselves?"

This time it was Dacey who replied. "We came from Eastwatch. The two of us, we saw The Wall come down and take the castle with it. It is an impossible thing – for a great Lord to imagine himself powerless. We've watched good men – strong men – kings even, stand their ground and die for nothing. Winter is not a normal army. It cannot be fought with swords and bravery. Send word to your son, Lord Royce. Every life matters. Your house, more than any other, know the Stark words to be true."

"I do not command all the men in Winterfell, as I am sure you are aware. Half the armies of the North are there along with Lannisters and the Stark men. They take orders from their Lords and ultimately, the caretaker Tyrell warming the Iron Throne."

"Not the Targaryen Queen?" Asked Dacey, carefully.

"If anyone can find her. Last I heard, she was dead but no one's game to send a raven."

"Try then..." Dacey implored him. "Send the message to Winterfell. Open the roads. If they leave now, they might yet survive and we can buy the realm some time."

Royce averted his eyes to the bank of windows that ran around the edge of the circular room. They looked over the snowy peaks but in this light, they were golden. Usually it was a beautiful sight but today he was reminded of fire. He had a grandson on the way – a future and a dynasty to protect. He was starting to understand the pragmatism that rulers resorted to in their twilight years. Perhaps what this was, his twilight. He'd grown old and never noticed. Now there was a war coming – one that he wasn't sure that they could win.

Without explanation, Royce dismissed the other nobles at the table. They protested in irritated whispers but none were brave enough to openly challenge their lord. When they were gone and the room was shared by only three, Royce continued.

"I'll do as you suggest," he began, moving away from the banquet table so that he could pace around the stone room. His footsteps echoed, accompanied by the heavy clink of steel at his waist. There were dozens of keys dangling from his belts that opened rooms he did not trust anyone to see inside. "But you will remain here, as my guests. If I am to be invaded by all the savages of the North and every raiding bastard loose in this palace, I'd have their Wildling King as my friend, do you understand…?"

Dacey had to prod Tormund into a reply. He wasn't one for the deep politics of the realm. If he was going to betray someone, he usually started by killing them before they got talking.


"One of these days," Dacey began, after they grew tired of wandering around the empty palace full of tapestries and silver that Royce would probably pack away before the hoards arrived. Together, they emerged on a pretty little balcony with comical gargoyles laughing at the view. "You're going to offend one of these Lords with your manners."

Tormund didn't seem particularly concerned. They stood peacefully, shoulders touching, with nothing but the sunset for company. Only dragons could fly higher than this monstrosity of stone and those were nowhere to be seen.

"It's all a bit fuckin' surreal, isn't it?" Tormund lamented. His words were breathless with the thinness of the air. "We should be in some tavern, drinkin' that shit from the Summer Isles an' leave all this ter the Southerns an' their dragons. Plenty o' nice islands off the coast. Small ones. No dead cunts there."

Dacey turned her head and laughed into Tormund's fur cloak. "The world is ending, quite soon," she pointed out, a smile on her lips, "and you're worried about the drinks?"

"Aye. If I leave it up ter you we'll never get anything."

"You're the Freefolk son of a whore, not me," she countered. "Shouldn't you prefer whatever that piss grass wine is?"

"Oh bullshit!" He protested, jokingly. "Why the fuck do yer think we kept scalin' that cunt of a wall, eh? Ter take all yer fucking wine – that's why. Don' drink that shit – yer here? It'll send yer blind."

She brought her hand up around his back, holding him a little closer. Whatever this was, it felt better than standing alone in the cold as they had done all their lives. "Do you think they'll go for it – turn themselves into a sanctuary for the living?"

Tormund shrugged. "Hard people to read, specially that huge fucker. Depends how selfish they are. They're survivors. I can tell. Been around a lot of tight cunts an' these ones are as tough as it gets but loneliness is a powerful thing. If I were ter wager, I'd say that this lot are terrified. They keep hearin' all these stories. Imagine the thought of being the last people left alive in the realm. Bet they dream o' that tonight."

"And what will you dream of?" As soon as the question left her lips, Dacey realised that she'd probably made a mistake. It had been an innocent enough thought but released onto the air, it sank heavily into the Wildling's thoughts. "Probably best if you don't answer that."

"Why?" Tormund asked, curiously. "Afraid of the answer?"

"You are a savage," she tried to joke, but they were still half tangled on the balcony. "I dread to imagine your dreams."

Tormund's eyes were warm.