III
The Wall stretches for a hundred leagues, from the Bay of Seals to the Bay of Ice, and stands seven hundred feet high at its tallest point. It has stood for eight thousand years, each generation of black brothers striving to raise it higher, to thicken its walls, fortify its nineteen castles, and upgrade its defences.
Though built to defend against the return of the White Walkers, its purpose was all but forgotten for thousands of years, as history became myth.
The men of the Night's Watch, with only wildlings to fight, have all but forgotten the original purpose of their order, and have not prepared for the return of the true enemy from the Land of Almost Winter.
They have forgotten that the Wall was not just built of ice and stone; ancient magic was woven into its structure, magic that wards against the dead crossing it.
The order of the builders has dutifully maintained the Wall and its castles to the best of its ability. They cut back the forest when it creeps so close to the abandoned castles that an enemy might be able to use it as cover for an attack. They monitor the top of Wall for signs of structural damage, particularly during the summers, when the sun grows hot enough to melt ice, even this far North. They patch the crumbling walls of the nineteen castles stretched along the Wall's length, even those that are no longer manned, for fear that they might one day be needed, or perhaps in the hope that a day will come when the Night's Watch will have enough men to once more be able to guard the full length of the Wall. When time and resources allow, they transport ice from the frozen lakes to further fortify the existing structure.
Centuries and millennia ago, each Lord Commander took pride in seeing to it that he left the Wall taller and stronger than he found it. More recent Lord Commanders consider themselves to do well to leave the Wall in no worse state on the day their watch ends than it was on the day of their election.
They have forgotten that it is not just the ice and stone that must continually be repaired and replenished, lest the immense structure collapse. The magic too must be renewed, lest it weaken and fail.
Over the past centuries, there have been few Maesters who, through studying the magical arts, have earned the right to forge a link of Valyrian steel for their chain, and none of these have served on the Wall.
The Wall is perhaps the greatest fortress in the Seven Kingdoms, but all that is needed for a fortress to fall is a crack
The Night King has waited eons, watching for the moment when the magic of the Wall would falter, just a little, just enough to allow the tiniest of cracks to form, the tiniest of chinks in the armour that shields the Seven Kingdoms, knowing that the crossing of his enemy through the Wall, his mark upon its host's skin, has left its magic the weakest it has been in eight thousand years.
Blue eyes glow as he takes an immense spear of ice and magic in his hand, and hurls it at the crack with unerring precision.
The point of the spear finds the crack in the magic that imbues the Wall, and the Night King watches as the crack lengthens and widens, snow, ice and stone tumbling, magic fracturing, leaving an opening in the wall large enough for half a dozen men to walk abreast.
Their progress through the Wall will be slow, but they have already waited eight thousand years, and time holds no sway over the dead.
Olenna Tyrell has fled.
Cersei scarcely spared a thought for the woman when she first left King's Landing, save to regret that she did not stay long enough to perish in the Sept of Baelor with her son and grandchildren, but once she consolidated her hold on the Iron Throne, she thought of her more and more.
She is not one to easily stomach an insult, and she longs to repay Lady Olenna for her harsh words, for refusing to accept her overture of peace when she asked for her help against a foe who could bring both of their families low, for daring to take pleasure in her misfortune and humiliation, and for having the audacity to claim that she had lost, as though the scorn of the common scum of the city would be enough to break her, when she has survived the worst they had to throw at her, and repaid them a hundredfold for the pain they inflicted on her.
More than anything else, she wants to exact revenge against her for trying to control the Seven Kingdoms, to control Cersei's sons, through her harlot of a granddaughter. Bad enough that Joffrey should fall prey to Margaery's easy charms, that she should be able to effortlessly manipulate him when he openly scorned his mother's counsel, belittling her to impress his bride-to-be. Perhaps it was to be expected that a boy of his years would be infatuated with a beautiful older woman, one who had a talent for making him believe that she was deeply in love with him. It is beyond enduring that she should do the same to Tommen, convincing her sweet baby boy that she loves him, and taking advantage of his innocence to make him love her in return, to make him love her so much that he would choose to take his own life when she perished, abandoning his mother.
For that, she is determined that Lady Olenna will pay dearly.
Only Jaime can temper her rage against the tart-tongued dowager enough to get her to grudgingly consent to allowing him to offer her a merciful death by poison, rather than the kind of death she fantasises about giving her. If she had her way, Olenna Tyrell would be flayed alive, or worse, her body hung over the gates of the city as a warning to all those foolish enough to underestimate Cersei Lannister. As angry as she is, however, she has to concede his point that it will do her sullied reputation no good if she is seen to exact cruel vengeance against an old lady, particularly when the commoners are irritatingly sentimental about Margaery, and in the end, all that really matters is that Lady Olenna should die knowing that she has lost and that Cersei has won.
In the end, Jaime's persuasions are for naught.
When the Lannister troops reach Highgarden, they find it deserted.
Lady Olenna and the few other surviving Tyrells are gone, along with the household of servants who should be there. The expansive, airy rooms are stripped of any valuables small enough to carry, though whether by the Tyrells or by the servants after their masters fled, nobody is there to say. The farms and farmhouses in the immediate vicinity of Highgarden are deserted, most of the crops burned in the fields. The livestock is gone, carried or driven away, and the Lannister army cannot spare men to hunt down cows and sheep.
Worst of all, the treasury of Highgarden has been emptied of every coin.
"We needed that money to repay the Iron Bank!" she rages at her brother when he gives her his report on the sack of Highgarden.
Her fool of a husband drove the realm into a debt of millions to pay for his tourneys, wine and whores, and then the Crown was forced to borrow even more money to pay for the soldiers needed to defend Joffrey's throne against Robert's brothers, and the damned Stark boy who dared to crown himself King, and to provision the city for the coming winter. If Littlefinger was here, instead of off in the North, sniffing under Sansa Stark's skirts, Cersei knows that she would strangle him with her bare hands for being such a fool as to resort to borrowing from the Iron Bank to appease Robert's unending demands.
The Iron Bank always gets its due, one way or another.
She counted on the Tyrell gold to pay them off, and without it, she fears that they will deem her a bad investment. If they think that she cannot or will not pay her debt, they will be all too willing to finance her enemies.
They may be sending envoys to Jon Snow in the North, or to the Targaryen girl, wherever she is, offering them whatever funds they need to pay for sellswords and siege weapons to sack King's Landing and overthrow the rightful Queen, provided that they commit to repaying the Crown's debt.
For all she knows, Lady Olenna is meeting with them now, encouraging them to raise another to the throne in her place. She still has at least a couple of granddaughters, left behind at Highgarden when Margaery came to court as the future Queen, and might think to offer one of them to Jon Snow, whose crown will outweigh the taint of bastardy. Or perhaps she has a grandson or grand-nephew to propose as a husband for the Targaryen girl, if she thinks her the safer bet. The damned woman will stop at nothing to control the Seven Kingdoms.
"She must have known that you were coming," she snaps at Jaime, thinking that he must have been too overconfident as he marched on Highgarden, scorning subtlety and riding with the Lannister banners flying proudly ahead of his host, thereby giving the Tyrells the chance to flee. "She must have known that we would need Highgarden and its gold, and she made sure to take it from us before we could seize it."
"And the food too," Jaime reminds her, as though she needed to be reminded of the fact that, with winter fast approaching and the very real possibility of a siege in the near future, they were in desperate need of provisions.
"And the food," she echoes.
"She probably hasn't gone far, not at her age," Jaime suggests, more to comfort her than because he truly believes what he is saying. "She's a Redwyne; she still has kin at the Arbor who would take her in."
"She's too clever to go to the Arbor. She knows that it would be the first place we'd go looking for her, and they're in no position to defend themselves against our army. She's probably gone North, to tell the Starks everything she knows about me, all about our defences, our weaknesses." Lady Olenna had her fingers in every pie at court during her granddaughter's brief time as Joffrey's betrothed, then as Tommen's Queen. She knows far too much for Cersei's liking, far more than she is comfortable with her enemies being told.
Jaime manages a faint smile. "Then I hope that Lady Olenna is ready to fight the giants or the grumpkins or whatever it is that Jon Snow thinks is coming to kill us all."
For a moment, Cersei considers the possibility that Lady Olenna also received a message from Jon Snow, warning her of the approach of the White Walkers and the doom they would supposedly bring to Westeros, and that this is why she abandoned Highgarden, but she dismisses the thought almost as soon as it crosses her mind.
She may not like the woman, but she is sure that she is far too clever to be driven from her home by a nursery tale.
Olenna Tyrell is the shrewdest advisor that Daenerys could hope to have.
She never actually invited her to join her council, Lady Olenna simply appeared in their meeting chamber the morning after her arrival in Meereen, and chose a seat.
Not one of them challenged her right to do so. Not one of them dared.
Her knowledge of the inner workings of the noble families of the Seven Kingdoms is on par with Tyrion's, and she took it in her stride when Daenerys explained to her that she would not be setting sail for Westeros, and why. She spent too little time with Lady Olenna in her vision, and has no secret knowledge of her life that she can offer her as proof that the vision was a true one, but after hearing her story, the older woman calmly accepted it.
"You seem like a clever girl, my dear, and you're no sheep to be scared away from what is yours by a silly story. If there are monsters coming that a dragon fears to face, we are all better off on this side of the Narrow Sea. I will be sorry not to see the look on Cersei's face when they come for her, but I suppose that can't be helped."
She left unspoken her expectation that, if Daenerys was wrong about the approaching threat, she would expect her to commit any resources necessary to reclaim the Reach from whoever claimed it in the Tyrells' absence.
Her son may have been Lord of Highgarden before his death, but it soon becomes clear that the farmers look to his mother as the true authority in the Reach, so much so that they left their homes and their country at her instruction, and follow her lead in establishing their new farmlands and in adopting new methods of farming. In this strange new land, they continue to look to her for leadership, and she now serves as their voice on the council.
She has also been invaluable in coordinating the efforts to bring more of the people of the Reach to Essos, her word carrying more weight than Ellaria Sand's does in Dorne, where many of the people are reluctant to follow the woman who slew their Prince into exile.
Over twenty thousand of the common people of the Reach and the Arbor, and almost half as many of the Dornish, now call Essos their home.
"It's not enough." Daenerys doesn't know the exact date that the Night King and his Army broke through the Wall in her vision, and she knows that, without Viserion, it may take him longer, but the closer it gets to that time, the more anxious she grows for those who will become his victims. Her first duty is to Meereen, Yunkai and Astapor, and to the Unsullied and Dothraki who follow her, but she cannot forget the people of Westeros, or fail to take advantage of an opportunity to bring more of them to safety. "We need to bring more of the people here."
Yara and her fleet have made the journey to Westeros and back four times already, each time having to vary their route to avoid her uncle and the Iron Fleet, each time returning with the ships packed with refugees, but they have been able to save barely thirty thousand, out of a population of millions.
The rest, Daenerys is abandoning to death and eternal slavery.
"I can make another trip, Your Grace," Yara volunteers.
"You barely made it back the last time!" Theon objects, earning a light cuff about the ear from his sister.
"The winter storms have begun, and they grow worse by the day," Jorah points out gravely. "You may be able to cross the Narrow Sea, but it is very unlikely that you or your ships will survive the return trip."
"I'm willing to give it a go."
"I'm not willing to risk losing you," Daenerys says quietly, recognizing the truth of Jorah's words, and knowing that she cannot be swayed by Yara's confidence into risking the loss of the Ironborn sailors, or the fleet that they use to defend the Bay of Dragons and the island of Naath.
As Queen, the decision is hers, as are the consequences.
Lady Olenna reaches out, patting her hand lightly. "You have done all you can, my dear, and it's more than most would do. Mourn the dead, and move on. It is time for you to look to the road before you, not the path behind."
But she hasn't done all she can, and she knows it.
She has done all she can without risking the lives of those who follow her.
She had a choice to make, she made it, and now she must live with her choice, for the rest of her life.
Because of the choice she made, millions will live free, and millions will not live at all.
Is it better or worse that she does not doubt that she made the right choice?
That night, as on most nights since Jorah returned to her, she lies in her bed between two men who are devoted to her, two men who will never harm her, two men who have put their rivalry aside that they may both be there for her when she needs them, two men who never ask anything from her but that they be allowed to love her.
When she cries, they dry her tears and murmur words of comfort.
They hold her close as she drifts off, and if her sleep is uneasy, it is at least untroubled by nightmares.
Jon Snow's face is ashen as he listens to the sole surviving scout, who reports that the Night King's army is on the move, and tells them how many White Walkers and wights march with him.
From her place by his side, he hears Sansa's gasp of horror.
Eddard Stark may have sought to shield his girls from war and death, hoping to preserve their innocence even as he ensured that his sons would be prepared to fight any foe they might face in the future, demanding that they learn the grimmest duties of a Lord from childhood that they might be prepared to do their duty in manhood, but Sansa does not need to be schooled in strategy to know that, even with each of the Northern Lords bringing all of their men, together with the Knights of the Vale, even with many of the women and girls taking up arms in defence of the living, they are hopelessly outnumbered. They would have scant chance of defeating an army of mortal men half as large, let alone an army that doesn't tire, doesn't stop, and doesn't feel.
To her credit, Sansa composes herself quickly, her face settling into an expressionless mask.
"Maybe it's not too late to send to King's Landing for help," one of the lords in the hall suggests, though he must know that, even if Cersei was inclined to relent and send her forces North, the Army of the Dead will be at Winterfell long before they arrive. "The Lannister army is ten thousand strong. We might have a chance if they fought with us."
"We'd need another hundred thousand men to have a chance!" another lord exclaims.
"We might as well wish for a dragon," Jon cuts in coldly, before panic can set in. Even if Cersei sent her men, even if the Tyrells or the Martells or any other noble House to whom he appealed for aid sent their men, they have no way of arming them. Sam sent word from the Citadel that there were vast deposits of dragonglass on the island of Dragonstone, but the men he brought there could only mine a small amount of it before they received word that the Night King had breached the Wall, forcing them to return to Winterfell. They do not have enough dragonglass to provide each of the fighters they have with a weapon, let alone to put weapons in the hands of the Lannister army, or any other. "We will make our stand here at Winterfell, with the army we have."
It will be enough.
He has to believe that it will be enough.
Winterfell does not last the night.
Bran waits in the godswood, guarded by Lady Alys Karstark and a dozen of her men.
The Night King will come to him. He knows it. He has hunted the Three-Eyed Raven for thousands of years, and will continue to do so until he slays him, or is slain himself.
Through the eyes of many ravens, he watches the battle unfold, watches the warriors of the North die by the thousand, only to rise again to kill their former comrades in arms.
He watches as the dead in the crypts of Winterfell crawl from their tombs to attack the women and young children who sought shelter there, where they should have been safe, nobody thinking that the Night King would raise the Stark dead as easily as he did those newly slain. He watches Sansa huddle behind a great stone tomb, a dragonglass blade clutched in her hand as she listens to the frightened screams around her. He watches as she steels her courage to emerge from her hiding place, launching herself at one of the dead. Bony fingers rake her face and neck, clawing at her throat to choke the air from her lungs. She slashes at it with her blade, burying it to the hilt in rotten flesh, and when it lets her go, falling to the ground in a tumble of bone, flesh and rags, she runs.
He watches Jon lead his forces, entering the fray where the fighting is thickest, and hacking at the seemingly unending horde of wights with Longclaw. Wights fall to his sword by the score, but more still come.
He watches Arya fight her way through wights, slipping through the darkness of the library like a ghost, a dagger of Valyrian steel in her grasp, trying to reach the godswood, that she might protect him with the weapon once sent to kill him.
He sees other things too, memories that do not match the events unfolding.
He sees a hundred thousand flaming blades move as one through the black night, sees those blades extinguished.
He sees dragons flying overhead, through a raging blizzard conjured by the Night King, their fire cutting a swathe through the Army of the Dead, reducing the number that the fighters on the ground must do battle with.
He sees the Night King riding a dragon, sees another dragon fight with it, keeping it from Winterfell.
He sees a feast, sees a toast raised the Arya Stark, the Hero of Winterfell, and he knows her for the slayer of the Night King.
But Arya does not reach the godswood in time to slay the Night King.
He watches as she is overrun by wights, a dozen or more of them converging on her, as though they are aware of her purpose and determined to keep her from their master. He watches as she fights until her last breath before they kill her, watches as she rises, her eyes glowing blue, to fight alongside the dead.
He watches Alys Karstark and her men place themselves between him and the Night King, watches as they fall, one by one.
He sends his mind into one of his ravens and watches, from high above, as the Night King approaches his still form, takes a moment to look into his blank, glassy eyes, and then drives his ice spear into his heart.
Winterfell does not fall to the Night King that night.
It is overrun by wights and White Walkers, their numbers swelled by the dead of the North, too many for those yet living to hope to stand against them, when the King in the North gives the order he prayed he would never need to, even as, with the Army of the Dead approaching, he gave the order that oil be spread over the walls and corridors of Winterfell. At his command, men carry torches through the castle and its towers, setting it alight.
Winterfell does not fall to the Night King.
It falls to Jon Snow, who watches the castle that was his childhood home, the castle that he once dared to dream he might be lord of, burn. He cannot help but think of Lady Catelyn, and wonders if her shade is vindicated by the knowledge that her fear that he would bring about the ruin of Winterfell and the Starks has been proven justified.
What few survivors there are flee, and the Night King does not trouble to follow them.
He has slain the Three-Eyed Raven, achieving the goal he has pursued for thousands of years, and turns his sights South, where millions wait to die and be reborn as soldiers in his army, knowing that there will soon be none in Westeros but the dead.
Daenerys does not need Quaithe to tell her that this is the night.
She feels it in her heart, her mind and her soul, knows that by morning light, Winterfell will be no more, and that the Night King will continue to cut his icy path across Westeros, claiming all seven of the kingdoms for the dead. She wonders if there will be any survivors in the North, and if there are, whether they will have the sense to flee Westeros. If they flee, they have a chance to live, but if they try to regroup, try to fight the Night King and his army again, when his numbers are stronger than ever and they lack even the slight advantage of a solid base in Winterfell, they will all die.
The people of King's Landing, the people on whose heads she would have rained down fire and blood in another life, will die, and rise to live as eternal slaves.
"Don't think about it, Khaleesi." Jorah's voice is a low rumble in her ear, his calloused hand gentle as he runs it slowly up and down her back, seeking to comfort her however he can. The night is hot, too hot for even the fine linen sleep shirts he usually wears, and his chest is bare, the skin mottled with scars where the greyscale was peeled from his flesh. The man who defied the order of Maesters to save his life is most likely dead by now. "There is nothing that you can do for them now, but so much you can still do for your people."
"If I look back, I am lost."
"You will never be lost," he counters immediately. "I won't let it happen."
"We won't let it happen," Daario corrects from his place on her other side. He brushes a lock of hair from her face, brow creasing in a frown at the misery on her face. "I could kill every one of those bastards for what they did to you. They should consider themselves lucky that the Night King will get there first."
She closes her eyes, though she knows that it won't banish the images of the battle of Winterfell, the countless thousands dead, Jorah slain before her eyes, Viserion forced to fight and die in the Night King's service. She cannot feel anything other than sickened at the thought of what is happening across the Narrow Sea. She knows that whatever death Daario would deliver can only be kinder than the fate she has allowed to be inflicted on them.
"Sorry," Daario says, as soon as he sees that she is upset. "I shouldn't have said that."
"Daenerys," Jorah speaks her name softly, his hand moving from the small of her back to her chin, cupping it and turning her face towards his. "How many of your people would have died had you taken them to Westeros?"
"Too many."
"How many of your people will fall to the Army of the Dead this time?"
"None."
"What will you give your people instead of death?"
"Life. Prosperity. Freedom." She repeats the words again, like a chant, or perhaps a prayer, and then opens her eyes to meet his, managing a faint hint of a smile, a silent 'thank you' for his reminder that something good will come of the choice she has made, that the lives of millions will be better for it.
"I will remind you every day, every hour, if that is what you need."
"We are with you, now and always," Daario pledges with uncharacteristic solemnity. "Whatever you need from us, just say the word."
"I need you to love me."
He chuckles. "That is one thing that you will never need to ask of us."
"We will always love you."
She leans forward to brush her lips against Jorah's, then turns in his arms to kiss Daario, her body and her heart craving the closeness she has not had since Quaithe showed her the vision, filling her mind with memories of another man, a man that seemed to have been formed to be her perfect match, the first man that she could ever imagine ruling by her side as her equal, rather than a consort, the man she loved and trusted until the moment she felt his dagger pierce her heart.
These men she can trust with her heart, and with her life. These men she can love, without fear.
"No," she clarifies, her hands finding theirs and guiding them to her body, ensuring that they can be in no possible doubt about what she wants from them. "I need you to love me."
They have asked nothing from her, but that they be allowed to love her and support her however they can, however she needs them to. They have shared her bed for months, holding her in their arms and sleeping on either side of her, their presence a shield against the worst of her nightmares, but no more than that. They never demand intimacy from her, never ask it of her, but are content to wait until she is ready. They would live chastely with her for the rest of their lives if that was what she needed and wanted from them.
It isn't.
"Are you certain?" Jorah has loved her since she was little more than a child, a young girl wedded to a stranger that he might give her brother an army. He has wanted this for almost as long, but hesitates, needing to know that she is certain of what she wants before he takes something from her that she might not be truly ready to give.
"I am."
"In that case," Daario says, swooping forward to trail a line of kisses down her neck. "We live to serve our Queen."
She wakes with the early morning sun streaming through the windows of her apartments, caressing her bare skin, the richly embroidered bedcover long since abandoned on the floor, along with her nightgown, and two pairs of linen breeches.
She wakes with two men she loves and who love her lying on the bed next to her, Daario's arm flung over his face to shield his eyes from the dawn rays, and Jorah's soft snores rumbling.
She wakes to the sound of pounding on her door, and a voice, Missandei's, calling to her.
She is the first out of bed, her movement rousing the other two from their slumbers, and she pauses only as long as it takes her to pick up her discarded nightgown and tug it on before she opens her door.
"You must come quickly, Your Grace." Her dearest friend does not wait for her to reply, or offer any further explanation, before she guides her back into the apartment, towards the dressing chamber where her gowns are hanging. Missandei does not waste time choosing a gown, or ask Daenerys her preference, she just snatches the nearest one from its peg, and helps to lace her into it. She makes her sit down so she can comb out the tangles born of sleep and love-making, but does not weave it into its customary coronet of elaborate braids.
"What is going on?"
Missandei smiles, her eyes bright. "You'll see."
By now, Daario and Jorah are up, dressed and armed, as curious as she is about what has prompted this summons.
Missandei leads the way downstairs and out of the pyramid, where half a dozen of the warriors of the khalasar await them, mounted on horseback. Grey Worm is with them, a broad smile on his usually serious face.
Not even a command from their Queen will induce any of them to tell her what is happening.
When she realizes their destination, her first instinct is to panic, but the smiles on the faces of her friends and her blood-riders reassures her that, whatever is happening, whatever awaits her there, it is not to be dreaded.
Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion are all in the former fighting pit when she arrives, clustered together. They snarl at the group's approach, displeased by the invasion, but when Daenerys steps forward, their cries are welcoming. They do not move from their positions, their huge eyes gleaming as they watch her approach.
When she reaches Drogon's feet, he shifts his stance slightly, unfurling an enormous wing.
There, on the scorched sand, ringed protectively by her children, she sees them for the first time.
Three dragon's eggs, gleaming like jewels in the sunlight.
TBC.
Author's Note: To those who hoped to see a Jonerys pairing, I'm truly sorry to disappoint. It is a pairing that I hope to write for in the future, but I just didn't see it working for this story.
To everybody who has read, favourited, set alerts and reviewed: Thank you. I hope that you know how much I cherish your feedback.
To labrooke97: I'm honoured to hear that my story has inspired you to rewrite Season 8, and maybe 7 too. I look forward to reading it.