5) The Last Stand

"The white walkers are here!" the watcher's desperate cry still rang in the air. He blew his horn and prayed that the people who had left would return. Most men heading north were still scattered all over the field and were easy prey for the army of the dead marching upon them. Some of the men managed to make it back into Winterfell and the army of the Vale also turned around and returned to the castle. But the mutiny that had just taken place prevented them from gearing up properly and being ready for the battle that was coming.

The few people that had remained in the yard were in a state of complete disarray and the castle was a chaos. The wedge that had just been created between the Stark family and their subjects was amplified by the untimely arrival of this dangerous threat. The Starks and their friends had barely had time to recover from the blow they had received from their people and were not ready to step into action. But whether they were ready or not, they had no choice. By tacit agreement, the rulers of Winterfell and the men and women in the yard reached an unspoken understanding of truce: they would put their disagreements and suspicions behind to fight the common enemy together. After the war for the living was won, they would be able to sort out the revolution that had began to stir inside the walls of Winterfell.

Jon commanded the men to run to the armory and grab as many weapons as they could. Begrudgingly they complied, but not without a tinge of resentment at being ordered by a man they no longer considered their leader. All the fighting men and women readied themselves for the fight of their lives. By the time the horde of white walkers was at their doorstep, the army of the living was ready, or at least as ready as it would ever be. As Jon had said, this was their last stand.

"We don't have enough men" Tyrion murmured next to Jaime.

"Stupid Northmen and their pride. Count on a Northman to die before the fight even begins" he replied pointing at the dead bodies on the field north of Winterfell.

"We could have used Cersei's men and Euron's army" Tyrion continued.

"It was your boy and your Queen that lost them"

"Stupid Northmen and their pride?" came Tyrion's dry comment, eliciting a mirthless chuckle from his brother.

Arms at the ready, arrows nocked, catapults loaded, the army of the living waited. They waited and prayed, some to the Old Gods, some to the Seven, some to whichever god would listen. Standing at the top of the tower, Jon waited for the invaders to be close enough before giving the order. The catapults were the first weapon to be deployed, followed by the arrows. By having pieces of dragongalss and valyrian steel studs imbedded in both the rocks and the arrows and by having them set on fire, they were hoping to deal a major blow to the incoming enemy. And a blow they dealt, but not as devastating as they had hoped. The Night King, who was sitting atop his newly acquired dragon, had anticipated this move. Viserion had little problem batting the flying rocks and arrows away and putting out the flames with its icy blue spit.

The advancing horde looked like a tidal wave making its quick way towards the walls of Winterfell and there appeared to be no stopping them. To make matters worse, arrows started to fall on the yard inside, freezing the unsuspecting soldiers with their frozen heads, turning them into human-shaped icicles. Sam ordered for a pyre to be built and for the dead bodies to be burned, lest they turned into whitewalkers themselves. It was Sansa who undertook the grim task of leading the group in charge of burning the bodies of their fallen comrades. With great sadness and as much respect for the dead as they could given their current urgency, they began to pull the bodies away from the field and onto the pyre. A Septa, finding herself of no other use, decided to bless the deceased before they burned. It was not a question of which God would receive them, but of actually reaching a God and not becoming a demon.

Daenerys waited no time and jumped on her dragon. Someone had to stop the Night King and, much to her sorrow, Viserion. If anyone was going to put her child to rest, it had to be her. She petted Rhaegal tenderly and motioned for him to accompany her as she mounted Drogon. Whispering sweet words to her children, they flew into the air to kill Viserion – her beloved baby, their beloved brother.

She flew as close as she could and tried to yell at Viserion, but to no avail. Either he could not hear her with the constant roar of the battle below them, or he was forever out of her maternal reach. Much to her horror, Viserion only answered to the Night King now. Seeing no other way out, she steeled her emotions and readied her heart to do a task no mother should ever be forced to perform: kill their own children. Watching him die had been hard enough and her mind went back to that fateful day on the ice beyond the Wall: the landscape had been as bleak as her heart. But this was even worse.

She had ordered Rhaegal to fly over the white walkers and set as many as he could on fire, and he was doing an admirable job bringing down the numbers of the army of the dead considerably. She turned her mind to Drogon and flew to stand face to face with Viserion. Both dragons opened their mouths at the same time. Cold against hot, blue against red, ice against fire. Daenarys lost concentration momentarily as she heard a familiar voice cry down below. She looked to the ground and saw Jon in the midst of a bloody combat with the creatures. Fearing for his safety she lost focus for a second. But that second was enough for Viserion to take advantage of. His icy flame changed direction and it caught Drogon on the side. Dazed and confused Drogon hovered with no direction, a fact that was used by the night King to charge his dragon against him. The impact caused Daenerys to lose her grip on the scales and she almost fell off. She was dangling, barely grabbing on to Drogon's neck. Drogon was torn between staying still to give his mother time to climb up again or charging against his brother. In the end, that hesitation proved fatal as Viserion managed a large intake of air and breathed the largest ice flame he could muster towards Drogon and Daenerys enveloping them in a cloud of blue.

Unable to sense his mother and his other brother, Rhaegal only managed to stand still. In a state of utter confusion he flew directly to where Daenerys had fallen. Viserion took the chance to finish off his other brother. A large icy blue flame enveloped the last living dragon as it fell to the ground below.

Back on the battlefield, Jon watched in horror as his beloved Dany and her dragons fell to the ground just outside Winterfell in the heart of the army of the dead. The creatures wasted no time putting an end to the lives of his Queen and her dragons. He found fortitude in this devastating loss. With a passion he didn't even know he had he started dealing blows right and left taking as many wights and whitewalkers with him as he could. He looked to his side and saw his men doing the same. His strength fueled the men fighting with him and together they had become quite a formidable force. But there was only so much they could do against an army that would barely sustain losses. He saw his men fall one after the other, their blades dropped on the ground with an ominous clank. He heard a cry and saw as Jaime Lannister was mauled to the ground. In her efforts to save a dying Jaime, Brienne was attacked and killed as well. And Jon knew he was next. He had been extremely lucky so far and he knew he should be dead. He still didn't know why Davos had brought him back to life back at Castle Black. He knew he should have died in this very same field when he fought Ramsay, but Sansa had saved him. He should have died when he fought these very same creatures far away in the North, but Dany had saved him and then his Uncle Benjen. But nobody was coming for him this time. As he looked around, he saw most his friends had fallen and he found himself surrounded by his enemies; he knew this time there would be no last minute rescue.

With no other dragon to contend with, the Night King flew over Winterfell taking as many people as he could. He had won in the air, but his army still had to win the fight on the ground, a fight which would prove much easier if he had more soldiers. He flew his dragon straight to where the pyre was and put it out. Without a fire to burn the bodies of the fallen men, he would have a huge supply of new recruits to add to his roster once the fighting was over.

Arya found herself fending off the creatures closer to the Gate. She looked just in time to see the blue dragon fly over Winterfell and on to where the pyre was burning. She closed her eyes for a minute when she realized what the intentions were. She was unable to do anything as the flames came down on the pyre and the people working on it. She was able to make out a flash of red hair before everything became a white blue puff of smoke. "Sansa!" she cried to herself as the tears started to roll down her cheeks.

Up in the battlements Sam, Tyrion and Bran were overseeing the fighting below. They watched as their loved ones were falling one by one. This was not a war they could win. The Army of the dead was quickly gaining on them and tearing them apart. There were bodies strewn everywhere; bodies which, because they had not burned, would turn into more of these creatures. "Send the ravens" Tyrion said gravely. "We need to warn them." A young boy ran all the way to the rookery and a few minutes later a flock of ravens flew into the sky.

Bran stood still as he saw the last raven take flight and the tower collapse in a heap of blue smoke. The night King hovered over the castle on his dragon setting Winterfell on fire and destroying it wall by wall. The last surviving Stark looked at the yard and all he saw was a carnage: body parts and long forgotten blades dotted the ground. And the only bodies that moved, were no longer human. He felt a strange sensation in his heart and something falling down his cheek. It took him a minute to realize it was a tear.

TBC

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Sorry! But as I said in my first notes: when you have made too many silly costly mistakes and there is no way out ... you do have to pay ...

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Most of what ALL the main characters (Jon, Dany, Sansa, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, etc) have done in the past couple of seasons is monumentally stupid and downright dishonorable. Yes, in previous seasons, many characters made mistakes. But their msitakes were mostly due to lack of information or only became mistakes in hindsight after other factors came into play. Most of what the characters did in previous seasons made sense and most decisions were logical (even if they ended up being incorrect in the end). But now these characters just make mistakes out of arrogance and sheer stupidity and they are not held accountable for them! In all the previous seasons and in the books, if a character messed up so badly, they had to pay. In fact, most of the characters who have made mistakes are dead, even if their mistakes were not so serious or did not have such serious consequences or if their mistakes were justified. If all these characters we see now had behaved so stupidly and arrogantly and had made such costly blunders in a previous season or in the books, somebody would have stopped them and they would most likely be dead by now. In the previous seasons there is no way Jon would have been resurrected for no reason watsoever, or would have survived the Battle agaisnt Ramsay or that stupid adventure North of the Wall! Nobody had such ridiculous plot armor! But too much plot armor ends up killing the character. And that's just very bad writing! It goes completely against the original spirit of Asoiaf!

The producers had the material (and the budget) to make the best show on telvision that would be talked about for decades; what the X files was to the sci-fi genre or Friends to comedy. But they blew it! For a show that will last 8 seasons, it was only good for half of it. Incidentally, the only four seasons that made sense were the ones based on GRRM's material. It was when the producers started coming up with their own ideas that it started to go downhill, season 7 being the lowest of the low - in terms of plot and character development. The plotlines are corny and cliched, the lines are cheesy and the characters have as much depth as Peppa Pig. Dora the Explorer is more complex and has more depth than Jon or Davos or Tyrion or Jaime! And that really makes me angry ...