TYRION

Standing in the mouth of the cave with a torch in one hand and a flimsy wooden shield in the other, Tyrion Lannister was starting to think the dragon hunt had not been so great an idea after all.

They had spent two days in the hills, searching for Viserion. And now they were here, at this narrow and unlikely-looking cleft in the rock where the dragon was rumoured to lurk. After a long time hoping they would find the damned thing before Shagga decided it was easier to kill him and Penny both, Tyrion's absolution had come. But it was not quite as easy as he had hoped. Because Shagga, contrary as he was, had decided he would sooner not risk his own men.

So here he was, with his torch and his shield, and a rusty piece of ringmail that fit awkwardly across his chest (for the Stone Crows, it was a mail shirt; for Tyrion it was more like a dress).

The cave extended a long way upwards in vertical height, but it was narrow, only a few feet wide. That span of width was mostly taken up by Shagga son of Dolf himself, who would, naturally, never cower from a fight, and by Dagmar son of Hagmar, as his sworn second man. But it was he, Tyrion, who was leading the way, out of the dusk, and into the darkness. He brandished his torch before him, but it served to illuminate nothing save the rocks he was walking on. There was no great shape lurking in the dark as he might have hoped. Only the gloom.

"How far does this go?" Tyrion asked.

"Hard to say," Shagga replied. "But it is here."

"You are certain?" He thought they would have known by now, that the telltale signs would have revealed themselves. And then, on cue, a sudden rain of dust started from the ceiling, and fell down among the stalactites. Tyrion felt rumbling beneath his feet. He raised his shield to cover his face, lest everything should turn at once. The shield was a Lannister shield, from his father's armouries, with a chipped lion in gold on the crimson.

"Aye," Tyrion replied to himself. "Certain."

They came to a fork in the path. Two equally dark tunnels bent off in opposite directions. All Tyrion could do was stand in the partition and gaze down each in turn, peering over the rim of the heavy shield. He was not sure what he was hoping for. Not altogether quietly, Shagga and Dagmar came up behind him.

"Which way, Halfman?" asked Dagmar.

"These are your caves, not mine." But that would not do for an answer. Instead he knelt, his mail shirt jangling, and picked up a small rock from the cave floor. Raising himself very slowly and deliberately, he tossed into the abyss on his left. It was a long time before he heard the impact, a small soft crack reverberating back to him.

Then the right path; this time the echo was much louder. Shagga frowned at him. "What does that mean, Halfman?"

"It means the left path is deeper," said Tyrion. "Dragons like the dark." So he had read. Only many of his books on dragons had been written after the last one died out in Aegon the Third's reign: so what did they know? And how much practical knowledge of dragonlore could a maester realistically amass?

Nonetheless, he had no other ideas. Warily, he crept round the rock, and proceeded steadily down the left tunnel. Still nothing. Still only sullen shadows, and silence, and yet the drifting dust persisted, and he knew, in his throbbing heart, that they were not alone. He felt, deep within his veins, the first of his foreboding fear. He ought to be more afraid, he knew. He had ridden Viserion exactly once, when they had been both escaping. For all he knew, the dragon might have forgotten him and gone entirely feral.

As they advanced deeper down the slope, bits of rock tumbled free and bounded towards the abyss, where they struck ground hard, and echoed; if Viserion had not heard them coming before, he certainly had now.

And then the confirmation arrived, and it came in form of the smell. The smell of hot, raw iron, and brimstone, and burnt meat. Tyrion unstuck his throat. "Viserion," he said, softly, "it's me, Tyrion." He waved the torch through the darkness. "I'm – we're – not here to hurt you."

The only answer was a rumbling noise from someplace anonymous ahead of him. It might have been a roar, it might not have been. But Tyrion was not willing to take his chances. He took a step back, yielding the ground. "Viserion," he whispered again. Then he realised there was no point in half measures. "Viserion!" he called, louder. "I am here!"

Then he felt something, as though the dragon were talking to him out of the darkness, and he felt its suspicion, and he knew why. The swords. He turned back, towards Shagga and Dagmar. "Put down your swords."

"Halfman," Shagga said.

"Do as I say," Tyrion insisted. "We do not want to threaten—" Then he stopped, for both Shagga and Dagmar were looking somewhere beyond him, and their eyes were going comically wide, and he thought, of course. He's behind me.

Very slowly, he turned his head, a quarter-circle, a third-circle, a half-circle – and then, he saw the eyes. Huge and inquisitive. Gold with pinpricks of black in the very centre. And they had been watching him the entire time.

And then the dragon came alive. It lurched towards him, and its great jaws peeled back, and Tyrion threw his shield up just in time as red-hot wind buffetted his face, scalding his brow, making his hair fly back. Despite its shield, it knocked him clean to the ground, and sent his shield flying, clattering, from his grasp.

On the ground, Viserion's shadow rose above him; as he stumbled to his feet, the massive white wings beat the air and rock dust rained from above with impunity. The sound was like a furnace, and the cave was now blisteringly hot; he was sweating, and his breath seared in his throat. Somehow he staggered back to his feet. When he turned, he saw Viserion approaching on Shagga and Dagmar, his massive scaled head extending, the great muscled neck coiling upwards. And Tyrion thought for a moment, maybe it would be for the best if he did burn Shagga. But then, before he knew it, he was stumbling forwards, slapping the dragon's flank like a man possessed, screaming "VISERION!" though his throat burned and it was hard to breathe. And now, miraculously, the dragon turned away from his cowering pray, and back to him. Its expression was inscrutinable, but he could see its huge nostrils dilating.

He is trying to smell my fear, Tyrion decided, as the huge neck loomed over him again. "Down, Viserion!" he shouted. "Down, now, down!" He must sound like a squalling child.

And then, impossibly, the massive neck bent, uncoiling itself towards the ground, like a turtle's, or a great old man's. Almost unconsciously, Tyrion found himself reaching out, with one stubby hand, fingers closer and closer, now against the dragon's flank, feeling the rough, cracked scales beneath his fingers. He is still wounded, he realised, not expecting the imperfection of the surfaces. Like me. And those wounds, he knew, were not necessarily visible.

But for now, what mattered more was getting away from here. He laid his torch down on the ground, and let it roll away. Then, very slowly, and hoping Shagga would not see until it was too late, Tyrion climbed up onto the dragon's wing, clutching the sturdy bones of the joint, and then, in one fluid movement, he scrambled up onto the spine, and locked his sweaty fingers around the ridged back. He pushed his way forward, and then he saw Shagga and Dagmar, cowering at the edge of the cavern.

"Shagga!" Tyrion shouted over the roar created by Viserion's wings, "Shagga, son of Dolf!"

Shagga looked over the crest of the dragon's head, and saw him. "Halfman! What are you doing up there?"

"Right now I am leaving!"

"You said—"

"I made a promise, yes! And if you journey to the encampment of the Burned Men on the morrow, I will keep that promise to you! But for now, I must bid you fond farewell!" Viserion started forwards. As he did, Tyrion called out over the wing, "and one other thing! If you hurt a single hair on Penny's head, you will not live long to regret it!" That done, he knelt down close to Viserion's neck, and whispered the Valyrian: "sōvēs!"

The dragon did not need to be told twice. He pushed his way through the cave, crashing through great pillars of rock as though they were made of butter; Tyrion kept his head low to shelter it, as the dust fell heavy all around him. And then, ahead of them, advancing at incredible speed, the burnt orange of the sky reaveled itself to them. And as the cave widened out, Viserion unleashed his full wingspan, and Tyrion locked his fingers tight around the scales, and prayed they would hold. And then the ground was tilting beneath him, only it was not actually the ground that was tilting, but them, and the great wings stirred up a thunder, and the crowd of Stone Crows gathered around the mouth of the cave disappeared into obscurity. Very soon the clouds thickened, and darkened, and they were entirely alone. Viserion unfolded his wings, and they glided, slowly, and only the stars remained above them.

For a while they simply flew, onwards and without direction, revelling in their peace. They had until morning; he was fairly sure the Burned Men could be subjugated in a matter of minutes. Couldn't they? He was betting quite a lot on that.

Best to arrive with the dawn, he thought.

Viserion gave a soft call of warning, and they turned sharply sideways, avoiding a spiny spear of rock that rose up from the fog. Then they dived again, and turned around another mountain peak, and then the dragon unfolded his wings and they ascended, up through the mist, up and up. It seemed for a while that this mountain had no end, but then, suddenly, it too fell away beneath them, and Viserion brought his feet down, solidly, on a parapet of flat white stone. He wobbled precariously a moment, and Tyrion had the hideous vision of them falling backwards into the abyss, but then the dragon stepped down neatly from the rampart, and they descended a few feet before coming to rest in a small courtyard.

He knew where they were at once. He did not have to see the marble walls entombing them, nor the godswood with its strange and angry branches reaching up, nor the stone falcon statues, arranged along the ramparts. Very softly he slid down Viserion's wing, and dropped into about a foot of snow, enough to cake his boots. He realised then that they were about five feet too high, the arched windows of the cloister seemed too short, the marbled roofs too low. There must be snow beneath the snow, too, he mused, frozen hard with a sheen of ice.

Oddly he was not that cold. Great waves of heat radiated from Viserion's scales, and his breath was so hot that the air seemed to tickle from the heat. Tyrion walked forwards, and the dragon followed him. Up the stairs he went. Icicles hung long and lank from the stone overhangs, sharp enough to pierce a man's eye and kill him instantly. The bushes that lined the cloister walk were frozen like glass. He walked up the steps, his small feet echoing endlessly in the otherwise-silent night. Viserion left him there, and the air grew cold, so he hastened his pace as he marched along the cloister walk, to the great window at the end.

The wind picked up. And now, at last, he understood why men called this place the Eyrie. The word meant an eagle's nest – or a falcon's in this case – far away and inaccessible to men. And surely the route up the Giant's Lance was blocked entirely now, and its waycastles as deserted as the Eyrie itself. But he, like Visenya Targaryen before him, had come soaring over the walls, and what men had thought impossible had been defiantly proven otherwise.

Not just Eyrie: but eerie too. The last time he had been here, the courtyards had been full of squabbling courtiers, and the high impassioned shrieks of Lysa Arryn and her brat. And the great waterfall they called Alyssa's Tears had been a-trickling always, day and night. But now, were it not for the brief sight of its glinting frozen majesty through the wide window, he might have forgotten that it existed at all. And it was just that; merely that: existing. Not living or breathing. The same for the flowers and the trees and the vines, all choked by ice. And for me, thought. Someday I will open my mouth, and breathe only ice.

He heard then, behind him, a rustling. But when he looked there was no one. Even Viserion in the courtyard was no longer visible. And then, like a vine winding itself down into his ear, the word Tyrion, just that, his name, floated to him. It was close, but it sounded like it was coming from far off, like in that game you play as a child where you whisper words into a hollow reed and listen at the other end. Like the echoing of waves on a foreign shore, or of rats in the walls behind his bed in King's Landing. Lord Tyrion, he thought it said again.

His mind did that thing where it fixed on something without reason, with no connection at all, only impulse. And the thing was him standing in the great hall of Winterfell, like a man on trial, saying, I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things.

And then the trance was over. It was insane to think that he was not alone, when he so obviously was. The castle was deserted.

He made his way back to the stairs. Down to his right was the courtyard; to his left was the door to the main hall. But, with its oaken-beam frontage already marred by frost, it was no doubt frozen shut. And, besides, he did not really want to try.

He made his way back down the steps to where Viserion was waiting. The dragon hissed softly at him as he climbed up over his wing joint, and sat among the spines. Then, softer than they had in the cave, the wings flapped, and they rose, magnificently, into the sky. The seven lance towers of the Eyrie disappeared beneath them, their pale spires fading into mist. Presently the sky grew silent, and all was still. Already he felt like drifting away.

The dawn sky was bleeding blue over the Vale of Arryn when they finally broke through the clouds again. And the dragon came with it, his scales a renewed bright white in the morning light. And on his back was Tyrion Lannister, dwarf of Casterly Rock, dragonrider, about to conquer the Vale of Arryn.

It had not been hard to find the camp of the Burned Men. Viserion had somehow known where it was, but even then, it sprawled across the grey hillside, ringed by hundreds of fires. They passed over it twice before descending, high in the clouds so they would – hopefully – not be seen. But now they dropped lower over the woods, and Viserion revealed himself to all the world with a roar loud enough to shake the crude civilizations of the Vale to their foundations. The village suddenly loomed large beneath them, and Tyrion felt rather than heard that the world had become quiet. He and Viserion landed heavily in the central square, before the longhall, a hulking construction of vulnerable wood and straw. The great white dragon unhinged his jaws, and let out a great, thunderous roar that set the canvas of the tents to flapping uncontrollably and drowned out all the fires.

The warriors were coming out from between the tents, armed with pikes and swords. Yet they did not advance beyond the prescribed circle, and as the dragon turned and snarled at them, Tyrion saw a few step back, these brave men of the mountains now ready to flee. A hundred wary eyes watched him from every quarter, but no mouths spoke, no swords moved. He had them captive; he would speak, and he would be heard.

"Some of you may recognise me!" he shouted. "I am Tyrion, the halfman, son of Tywin, of Clan Lannister! A few years ago, I came to you asking for your swords and your shields! And when I came, I made a promise to you in exchange for your life! I promised you the Vale of Arryn! I have come to deliver upon that promise! Not to fight you!" He glanced about the crowd. "I recall that a Timett son of Timett once led this esteemable clan!"

There was a pause, and then a man stepped from the ranks. "I am he, Halfman!" called that same Timett through the silence. "And I remember you!"

Thank the gods. Tyrion turned Viserion towards the chieftain. "Have no fear!" he called to the cowering wives and children who stood outside the ring, protected by their menfolk. "Viserion and I are no foes of yours! We will not harm you!"

"This fearsome beast is yours, Halfman?" called Timett incredulously over the wind.

"He is. Or at least, he is mine so far as a dragon can be tamed by man." Tyrion had no illusions that complete obedience from the dragon was possible. "But he will not harm my friends, unless they should prove to be my false enemies."

"What do you want, Halfman?" asked Timett.

"I want to talk." He realised, then, that he also needed their trust. "Give me one moment. I am coming down." He hooked his leg over Viserion's wing joint, slid down the scaly wing, landed lightly, and looked up at Timett. "We will talk inside your hall."

Timett nodded. He had no choice but to accept, of course.

They spent the better part of an hour within the longhall, talking. There was not much to be said, but Tyrion was aware that he had a good amount of time to fill. It was no trouble to him. One of the very first things he had learned was the ability to speak in long, needlessly eloquent sentences, about not very much at all. Even so, his voice was wearing thin when a clansman hurried into the hall, went up to Timett on the dais, and whispered something urgent in his ear.

Timett turned to Tyrion. "I must leave you, Halfman. It would seem we have other troubles to deal with."

"Oh, I'm sure." Tyrion rose in turn. "Problems like the Stone Crows, perhaps?"

The leader of the Burned Men frowned. "How did you—?"

"And perhaps, more surprisingly," he continued, "they have come bearing tokens of peace?"

And so they had. There, on the moor below the encampment of the Burned Men, the clansmen of the Stone Crows had gathered. Tyrion stood with Timett at the crest of the hill and watched them. "Shagga son of Dolf," he said aloud, a smile creasing his lips. "Now there's a wonder."

"You know about this, Halfman?" asked Timett.

"Of course I did," Tyrion said. "I led them here." And at Timett's angry stare: "I promised you all the Vale of Arryn, Timett. Not just the Burned Men. And unless you want me to call down Viserion again, and decide you want to live up to your name, you had best let them in."

Timett did not have much choice in that either. Viserion was faintly visible up above, circling over the bluffs that shaded the hillside. Tyrion, reassured in his own power, went back to the longhall with Timett and there they waited. They came. He breathed a sigh of relief. Now there's a wonder.

Very soon the longhall doors opened again, and Shagga son of Dolf came in. Timett made to offer some sort of greeting, but Shagga cut over him with an angry roar of "Halfman!"

"Greetings, noble Shagga," said Tyrion. "I did not think you would come."

Shagga looked suspiciously from Tyrion to Timett. "What is this? Some treachery? I have four hundred warriors outside, waiting—"

"As does Timett. And I have a dragon that will burn both your villages to ashes."

"Dragons can be brought down—"

Not with your weapons, mind. Tyrion ignored him. "Did you bring Penny, Shagga?" he said. "Like I asked?"

"The girl?" Shagga grunted. "Aye."

"Bring her. We will need to put our minds together for this plan. She has more sense than the pair of you combined."

"What plan is that, Halfman?" asked Timett.

"I had thought," Tyrion said. "That rather than spend our time killing one another, we might create an alliance. An alliance that will bring together not just the Stone Crows and the Burned Men, but the Moon Brothers too, and the Black Ears, and all the other clans of the Vale. Against our common enemy."

"What enemy?"

Could they really be so stupid? If so, this would be even easier than he thought. Tyrion smiled. "A Lannister always pays his debts," he said. "My lords, it is high time you were restored to your rightful seats. It is time to conquer the Vale of Arryn."


Author's Note:

Soooooo...

Tyrion has his pet back. By "pet", I mean murderous hellbeast that probably wouldn't agree with that definition. And yes, Penny has survived - I just didn't have time to show her here. But I know how she's a fan favourite and all. ;)

Anyway, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everyone once again for reading. The story is picking up speed now (both in terms of the pacing and the number of uploads I'm able to make). I've been a little patchy recently, but now that this is underway again I think it's only right to thank you all for making KNIGHTS OF THE NIGHTINGALE as enjoyable to write as it is for you to read (I hope).