Summary: Colin didn't know who he pissed off, but he woke up cold and hungry in the middle of a snowy wasteland. Being the Dragonborn really sucked sometimes. [A Dragonborn appears Beyond the Wall story.]

Author's Note: A huge thank-you to Igornerd and To Mockingbird for going through and helping me edit this chapter.

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Dragonborn in Westeros

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Chapter 2

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Ygritte

The Others were back.

No-one wanted to believe it at first, but old stories were hard to ignore when entire villages disappeared and the dead rose again with bright blue eyes and a hatred for the living.

It started with just a few at first, some of the Hornfoots in the outer fringes of the Frostfangs—a people whose feet were so blackened and hardened by the cold that they didn't even need boots. One day a few went out hunting in their mountains and didn't come back. More were sent out to look for them, and they didn't come back either. Then small villages disappeared, and no one knew about it until the usual traders never showed.

The men of the Frozen Shore were next, where the snows were so deep that they rode chariots of walrus bones pulled by packs of dogs. Hunting groups were sent out to find a walrus or two, any animal large enough to feed them, really. And then they'd just vanish. No one knew where they went or what happened to them.

Not long after that, the Hornfoots nearly lost their entire tribe, set upon by a sea walking corpses with bright blue eyes, hunted relentlessly by armies of the dead... and the ones that led them, forever cloaked in blizzards and a deathly chill. The Others, monsters straight out legend with terrible magic and swords of the coldest ice. The other tribes were attacked shortly after, and in their greatest time of need rose Mance Raider, a former Crow turned King-Beyond-The-Wall.

Mance was the only one who could lead the Free Folk, the only one who could force the clans to put aside their differences in the face of their ancient enemy, making a name for himself with new alliances and long-lost relics like the legendary Horn of Winter he'd found in ancient barrows. He alone forged them into the greatest army the True North had ever seen. Old rivalries were cast aside for the sake of survival, and former enemies grudgingly accepted each other as allies, even if only temporarily. All except for the Thenns who greedily clung to their lands by order of their Magnar, a man who ruled them like a god.

Ygritte would be the first to admit that not everyone was happy about pursuing an alliance with the Thenns, but Mance couldn't afford to ignore them. Even if the Thenns were dumb as rocks and sadistic fucks who most Free Folk wouldn't mind seeing dead (Ygritte included), none could deny that they were good at killing. And Mance needed men like that if he wanted to prevail, especially because of the Thenns' close connection with the last remaining giant clans. So while he handled organizing the army he sent Ygritte, Tormund, and a few others from every clan as representatives to the Thenn to try to convince them to join the army, and if that failed, to issue Mance's challenge of single combat to the Magnar in a manner that could not be ignored.

Hopefully they wouldn't die after delivering the message. The Magnar wasn't known for his patience or his control over his anger, and Ygritte didn't think she could fight off an entire tribe of angry madmen.

And so as Mance's main force gathered in a valley near the Fist of the First Men, Ygritte's group traveled north under Tormund's command, forever keeping an eye out for shadowcats, wights, or worse. Then halfway there at the edge of the mountains of the Frostfangs after they'd hunkered down for the night, a dark-haired stranger stumbled out of the night and into the yellow light of their fire. He had a woolen cloak wrapped tightly around him, though Ygritte doubted it did much to keep the cold out. Whoever he was, he was no Crow. Even they were smart enough to get furs to keep warm, though almost always black as their name.

He was shivering as he approached them, tripping over himself as he walked, but everyone was pointing their weapons at him nonetheless. No matter how harmless he seemed, it could all be some vile trick. Maybe a distraction while his hidden friends snuck around to stab them in the back. Ygritte scowled and scanned the surrounding area. Nothing but snow and rocks, and shadows dancing in the light of their fire.

The man stopped a mere thirty feet away, staring at them. From this distance Ygritte could put an arrow in his eye and then another one in his other eye before his body even realized it was dead. She'd done it before, enough to be confident that she could do it again at the first sign of trouble. It was too dark to see his eyes clearly, but at least they weren't glowing blue. Still, she put more tension into her bowstring just in case. She didn't see him carrying any weapons, but he could have hidden something under that cloak of his.

As she got a closer look, Ygritte saw that he was pale, but it was the kind of pale that could only be seen among the Cave People who lived all their lives in the dark: a frail, sickly white. The rest of his body told a different story, though. He had long black hair that framed sharp, angular features that seemed more at home on the face of a southron Crow. It was nigh impossible among Cave People who all had faces like they'd been smashed in with a stone and a wit to match, which was what tended to happen when men fucked their sisters and mothers for generation after generation.

Where Cave People were squat and deformed and were more stupid than they looked, the stranger was tall and well-proportioned, though not as tall as Tormund. Then again, no-one was as tall as Tormund. And Ygritte could have just imagined it, but she swore the stranger's eyes glimmered with fierce intelligence. More than the Cave People, anyway.

Then he spoke, asking if he could share their fire, and it was immediately clear that he looked tired and hungry because he was. That raggedness in his voice wasn't something that could be easily faked, not among a people who experienced it regularly in their way of life. He was clearly freezing or starving to death—maybe both, probably both—but Ygritte still didn't trust him, and thankfully no-one else did, either. Their mission was too important to be ruined by some stranger, especially one with such a strange accent. He didn't quite talk like a kneeler, but Ygritte didn't recognize the accent from any of the tribes of the Free Folk, either. It was a strange mix of the unrefined dialect of her people tempered with an odd southron cadence she'd only heard from Crows. She didn't know what to make of it. Maybe he was a so-called Northman?

She voiced her suspicions, scowling when Tormund ordered her to stand down with a clear reminder that they had enough wights to fight already. Everyone stared when the stranger asked what a wight was. Ygritte very deliberately raised an eyebrow. Was he playing at being stupid or was he genuinely dim-witted? Maybe he really was one of the Cave People, or at least had a mother unlucky enough to have been fucked by one. Just as she was about to shoot him through the eye despite what Tormund said, she heard a wet thump and a startled cry. She quickly turned and saw Fregga, one of the spearwives of the Ice River Clan, fall to her knees with a spear sprouting from her chest.

Ygritte could dimly hear the stranger screaming something, but she wasn't paying attention to him. Fregga reached up and pulled the spear out, but she was losing her strength. She was done for. Ygritte could see it in the way the light was leaving her eyes. Everyone stared as their comrade fell on her side, her face frozen in a mask of pain and fear. Then another spear came from the darkness, this time hitting the ground right in front of Ygritte's feet. She snapped her head up with a snarl, half-thinking that the bastard of a stranger had tricked them into letting their guard down.

A chill crept up her spine.

In the darkness she saw glowing blue eyes. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Far too many to hope to survive.

This time, a real chill was beginning to set in. The air was steadily robbing her of her warmth, and the wind began to howl as snow was lifted from the ground and swirled all around them.

By the Old Gods, they had to get the hell out of here.

"Wights!" she screamed before taking off in the opposite direction as fast as her legs would carry her, feeling absolutely no shame in leaving the stranger to die. She didn't have to look to know that the rest of her group was following her.

They ran blindly into the darkness, desperately scrambling back to their feet when they stumbled. Whoever slowed down would be the first to die, and none of them wanted to rise again with those awful blue eyes.

They ran in the wrong direction.

They nearly smashed into a group of twenty wights that had been shambling towards their abandoned campsite. The wights took one look at them before they lunged with blood-curdling screeches. Ygritte cursed and threw her bow to the side, drawing a sword she'd taken from a dead Crow. She was the best archer among them, but arrows were worse than useless against wights. They had to be hacked apart or burned. Anything less was barely a distraction.

One of the wights ran at her with an axe raised above its rotting head, eyes aglow with the magic of the Others. Ygritte threw herself out of the way of the first attack, and before the wight could recover, she sliced through its wrist, and the weapon fell along with the hand that was holding it. The wight didn't even notice, and it launched at her with a rasp that she was sure she'd hear in her nightmares. Ygritte cursed again and desperately backpedaled, trying to keep distance, but the wight wasn't having any of it. It advanced relentlessly, reaching for her with rotting fingers and snapping jaws.

Just when she was sure it would catch her, Tormund appeared out of nowhere and split it right down the middle from its head to its groin with a monstrous swing of his axe. The corpse stood there for a few seconds before the light vanished from its eyes, and its new halves fell in different directions.

Her heart pounding after her brush with death, Ygritte looked up and saw Tormund stretching out his hand. Behind him were the hacked-apart remains of three more wights, the limbs still twitching with whatever sorcery that made them move.

Around them, the fights weren't going well, all because wights didn't fight like people fought. They felt no fear, no pain, had no sense of self-preservation. They came after the living like killing was the only thing in the world that mattered. And in this fight, there were more of the dead than the living.

After he hauled her to her feet, Tormund immediately rushed back into the fray to help, but it was plain to Ygritte that they were losing the battle. Three of their number were already on the ground with holes in their chest and their throats ripped out, and the others were soon to follow. Ygritte snarled to herself before moving to follow Tormund. If she didn't fight, she would die—that much was certain. Trying to outrun wights in the open at night was the stupidest thing they could do.

She snuck up behind a half-rotted wight that was engaged with a man from the Hornfoots, one of the few that had escaped the massacre of his clan. With a yell she swung her sword and lopped its head off before kicking the body in the back and quickly hacking at its legs before it could get up.

That was the annoying thing about wights—they couldn't even behead them and be done with it. They'd still come at the living and try to rip their faces off, even severed limbs clawing after them as they tried to get away.

Then they heard it: the explosions. When they could they snuck glances back to their abandoned campsite, and through the swirling snow and the shroud of night's darkness, they saw interspaced flashes of blue and yellow light. Was the light from the Others?

Panic threatened to stop her heart even as it raced out of control. Ygritte didn't remember hearing any stories about anything like this, but so much had been forgotten already. Who was to say this wasn't one of their signs?

Without warning, night turned to day as massive torrent of flames lit up the darkness, easily visible through the blizzard-like winds. In its light Ygritte saw dozens of wights roast, burning to ash in mere seconds, white-hot weapons of stone and metal falling from charred, crumbling fingers onto rapidly melting snow. And briefly, she thought she saw one of them. It was in the middle of the sudden inferno, and the near-blinding light obscured its features, but an ancient instinct slumbering in her blood screamed a warning all the same.

Then as quickly as they'd appeared, the flames vanished, and darkness returned. Despite the situation, everyone couldn't help but stare for a few seconds, jaws dropped in awe and fear. The wights had no such awe, slashing the throat of a man who had been too distracted. He stood there, clawing at his throat as he choked on his own blood before the wights dragged the poor bastard to the ground, stabbing him over and over.

This spurred everyone into action, and the survivors once again devoted their full attention to their undead enemies. But the wights were relentless, and the Free Folk were tired. The battle was slowly and surely turning towards the worst.

The inferno appeared again, spewing its flames in a different direction this time before quickly dying away. Out of the darkness shambled another twenty wights like they'd been signaled by the fire, moving in to attack from behind, and Ygritte felt a wave of frustrated anger momentarily freeze her in place. Had her group ever stood a chance? Were they simply meant to die here no matter how hard they fought?

Before she could scream her rage, she saw something. From where they'd seen the flames, the yellow-blue lights appeared again, expanding to the limit until they burst. Ygritte and her companions cried out as a wave of ghostly fire washed over them but somehow didn't touch them, lighting only the wights which quickly burst into flames and were consumed.

For a few wonderful seconds it felt like the warmth of spring had returned.

Almost instantly, the warm sensation was gone along with the ghostly fire, and they were alone amidst smoking piles of ash. None of the dead had escaped. Even the severed limbs had been burned to a crisp.

Silence reigned.

"Magmar's moldy balls, what was that?!" one of the men exclaimed, louder than was wise. Ygritte recognized him, a squat man with a pug nose and crooked teeth, but she hadn't liked him enough to make an effort in learning his name. He was too much of a cunt for her liking.

"Keep your mouth shut!" Ygritte automatically snapped back.

"What? It's not like they can hear us!" Sigfreid, as Ygritte remembered he was called, protested. "They ain't following us no more. They's all burned by now."

Something about his lack of caution was plain offensive to Ygritte.

"And how do you know that, snotnose?" she snarled.

The man turned red and clenched his jaw, but he didn't say anything else.

How is this brainless idiot not dead by now?

Ygritte shook her head with a huff and looked back to where the ghostly fire had come from. All of a sudden, the winds died down, the air cleared, and she saw him. The stranger stood alone, a sword in his hand that looked like it was forged with light. At least, it had to be the stranger because she'd never heard of a wight with a glowing sword, and the Others had swords of ice, not fire. For a moment Ygritte swore that there was a tiny sun shining in the sword's guard. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see the others in her group staring as well, jaws slackened at the sight of that beautiful blade.

Without warning, the stranger unceremoniously collapsed, disappearing from sight as the sword of light also vanished from view.

Everyone stared at each other, unsure of what to do.

Eventually Tormund huffed, shaking them from their silence. "Let's go," he ordered. "We need to find out who he is."

Ygritte agreed. She wanted a closer look at that sword.

They made their way back to their abandoned campsite, suspiciously eyeing the hundreds of piles of ash that now surrounded them as far as the eye could see. Ygritte half-wondered if the wights were somehow hiding in the ash. She steeled her nerves and tested her theory, using her sword to poke through one of the piles. Just ash, and a rusty old axe. Tormund saw what she was doing and followed suit, kicking at the pile nearest to his feet. His yielded a chipped dagger and some rotting furs.

They all paused when Sigfreid reached into a pile to grab something. He stood up, holding a shiny gold armband with a stupid grin on his face.

"What?" he said defensively when he noticed their looks of disgust and contempt. "Not like he's gonna need it much now."

Ygritte just shook her head, not even bothering to answer.

Fucking idiot. Only an inbred half-wit would give a damn about jewelry at a time like this.

Sigfreid's stupidity aside, they cautiously made their way back to camp where they found the stranger flat on his face, surrounded by piles of ash with the glowing sword still in his hand. Two pale swords lay on the ground close to him. Swords of ice.

A chill that had nothing to do with the cold crept up Ygritte's spine, and the terrifying image of the monster she'd seen in the inferno rose again in her mind.

Fucking Crows, he actually killed Others.

Everyone simply stood there, dumbstruck by evidence they could barely process.

"Is that—"

Ygritte turned and nearly had a heart attack at what she saw.

"Don't touch that, you shite-brained halfwit! Do you want your hand to fall off?!"

Gunther, a lanky yellow-haired man from the Ice River Tribes, withdrew his hand with a scowl, glaring daggers at her for the insult, and Ygritte almost immediately regretted saving his life.

What an ungrateful cunt.

After the initial shock had worn off, they dragged the stranger to the snuffed-out fire which they rekindled and began nursing him back to health while they burned their fallen comrades. When they had everything ready, they quickly removed the dagger from his shoulder, removed his leather armor as much as they needed to, and pressed on his wound until the bleeding stopped, after which they wrapped him in the cleanest furs they could find. It would have been better if they'd had something to boil water in, or even just cloth, but they worked with what they had.

But then there was the matter of the stranger's sword. It was forged from a strange, gold-colored metal. Straight and arm-length, it was a far cry from the so-called 'knightly' swords that the kneeling southrons seemed to prefer. Nonetheless, it was flawless to their eyes—a thing of deadly beauty with a tiny sun shining from its guard. That was the detail that shocked everyone the most. A sun, a sun, stuck in the guard of a sword, emitting real light and heat that melted the snow where it had fallen. Even the legends of the Children had never spoken of such a thing!

Such powerful magic, Ygritte thought, gazing at the weapon with reverence. Where did it come from? Why now?

Some of the men got into a fight over who'd get to keep it, but the moment one of them tried to touch the blade it burned them, flaring with sun-laced fire, every bit as fiercely hot as the real thing. They had to wrap the stranger's hand around it to move it at all.

Ygritte couldn't help but notice how no-one took their eyes off the ice swords, warily keeping their distance. Not everyone was so smart, however. At one point, Sigfreid had paused above the swords with his foot reared back, and Ygritte realized with exasperated disbelief that he was actually about to kick them. She briefly considered yelling at him to leave the evil things alone, but then it occurred to her that if he died she wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

She was disappointed, though. Right when he was about to go through with it, Tormund saw and roared at him to quit being a brainless idiot. Sigfreid jumped in fright and then scurried away from the sword, leaving Ygritte glowering and unsatisfied.

That wasn't the last act of stupidity, though.

"We should kill him."

Ygritte looked up, her face already twisting with confusion. "What?"

It wasn't Sigfreid like she expected, but someone else. A strong woman named Ullte who, while a reasonably good spearwife, was insufferable on all accounts. Probably because she'd had the pox as a child and it had scarred her face, turning her bitter as man after man rejected her for better-looking women.

Ullte stood, using her axe to gesture towards where the stranger had been set up by the fire. "We should kill 'im," she repeated, as though it were a completely sound proposal. "He's too dangerous. And he has magic." Here she allowed her face to twist with distaste, making her look even uglier than usual.

Ygritte stared. "The only man in eight-thousand years since the last Long Night to kill an Other, the only man ever to somehow defeat that many wights on his own, and you want to kill 'im?"

Ullte hesitated at her sudden venom but still had the audacity to nod. "He's too dangerous. He might turn on us with his powers. We should just take his shiny sword an' use it for ourselves. Then we could kill the wights and the Others, too."

"You can't even use the sword! It won't let any of us hold it!" said Siggy, the last surviving woman of their group. Ygritte was mildly surprised to find that she wasn't the only voice of reason.

"It's not natural! He's not natural! What if he's a warlock like the Night King used to be?"

Ygritte scowled. Ullte was playing on common fears of sorcery and betrayal, using old legends to bolster her claim. It was a dirty tactic, all the more effective now that wights and worse roamed the land. "Warg's ain't 'natural', but we still use 'em for the good of the Free Folk."

Ullte raised her axe just enough not to be outright hostile but enough for people to be wary of her all the same. "I still say we kill him," she snarled.

Ygritte was mere moments away from just putting an arrow through her brain when Tormund growled deep and low like a bear, instantly capturing everyone's attention. He was laying down, stretched out on the ground but no less intimidating for it. "No. We are no' killin' this man. We take 'im to Mance. If you have a problem with that I'll kill you right here, right now."

Ullte stood there for a moment, her pox-scarred face paling before she quickly sat down and started muttering to herself. Tormund just snorted and rolled over, silent for the rest of the night.

With the tension more or less gone, the others went back to resting by their rekindled fire. Ygritte found herself staring at the stranger, her eyes tracing over his sharp features, slackened in exhaustion.

Who are you?

Her eyes drifted to the sword still in his hand, and she swore the blade shone a bit brighter, like it was talking to her. She gazed at it with open wonder, basking in the magical light, feeling its warmth soak into her skin and banish the cold from her flesh.

In her mind's eye she saw the inferno that had roasted the wights mere hours ago, rendering them naught but ash in the wind.

What are you?