Daenerys

Coming down from the mountains, Daenerys could see that the Neck stretched off far into the distance without the least hint of end. The edge of the world, she thought. In a way, it very much is. The end of the south, with its chivalry and knights and bustling cities, and the beginning of something very, very different. Her misgivings were shared by the others, even Jon, though he worked to keep any reluctance from his face. The egg before the nest, Daenerys, she told herself. First, we must needs get out of these mountains, full of monsters earthbound and otherwise.

"At least we kept clear of those flying beasts." Tormund Giantsbane grunted as the ground at last began to level.

"You would not have had Shagga son of Dolf and his Stone Crows not come. You would have walked right into a cold web or a hungry smiling thing." the hill tribesman said in immediate reply. Nobody argued with him. Indeed, without one born to these mountains, of them as Jon is of the North, we'd have been stuck in that cave forever. Tyrion for his part took every step like he was walking directly off a cliffside.

"It can't be so terrible. People live their whole lives in the Neck, no?"

"They do. Quite literally. Crannogmen never leave their bogs, never set a toe outside those swamps. Everything I've ever read or heard of them details a people that have joined themselves to their country in ways that mystify even maesters, and they aren't fond of being intruded upon. If you care to look into House Frey's past, you'll find at least three instances of full armies setting off from the Twins intent on razing Greywater Watch. There's no mention of what may have occurred in there afterward, but not one man returned in victory or defeat. How deadly might one side be that the other dies to the last, Your Grace?" Daenerys gulped instinctively. Not even dragonfire kills everyone. There were survivors of the Field of Fire.

"There will be room to stretch yet before we call on the crannogmen. Work the feeling back into your legs, you'll need them to carry you through the Neck." Little Ned Umber piped up, clearly discomfited by the daunting obstacle before them. Strange that even of all the places I've been, I've never been anywhere like where I'll be in a few days' time.

"It may not even be so bad. With all the bull lizard-lions in a rush to snap up the riverlands' bounty of waterways and bodies both, we've little cause to suspect floating logs to be anything but logs." Jon said evenly, kissing Dany on the cheek as he doubled back to check on Alys Karstark.

"A cow can kill easily as a bull." The new-made mother replied, even punching him on the shoulder. Dany remembered the hrakkar of the Great Grass Sea. The males had splendid manes and size, but it was their wives what did the hunting. Bull lizard-lions showed no such laziness, no such indolence as far as Dany had observed.

"Maybe they weren't so much pushed out as simply following the food." She voiced a thought the night they reached the mountains' base, the flooded fields of the northern riverlands half-frozen off to the west.

"Which would a man sooner choose, Your Grace? A full table or a full bedchamber?" Jeyne Poole asked in reply. "I remember passing though the Neck on the kingsroad on the way to King's Landing when Lord Eddard became Hand. The way I heard it, lizard-lions will go off eating when they breed. The bulls in the riverlands were probably all ready to have at their harems when they were kicked out of the Neck. With no cows to woo, they spent their time eating and making show at each other."

"They sound very like men, Lady Poole."

"I doubt a bull has ever had so much to drink he couldn't tend his girls, though." Alys called from the back, making all three women burst into giggles.

A thunderous outcry broke her waking drowse and she was loath to let her head leave Jon's shoulder. Despite the noise she was unafraid, intimately familiar with it. You'd think one day they'll tire of racing madly at what they want and ride up with some decorum, she thought, yet she was smiling despite her exasperation when several Dothraki galloped down the frosty beach toward them. The Bite, what but for some song-storm, we'd have long since crossed and made landfall in White Harbor. Instead we're forced to enter the North through the swamp before us, after an exhausting walk through the Mountains of the Moon. Malakko reached her first, breathing hard as his horse and looking overjoyed at having found Daenerys alive. To her surprise a fair brunette girl behind him succeeded in not being flung off by the horse's furious pace. Wynafryd Manderly, she remembered.

"Khaleesi!" he cried, dismounting with a whoop. "We feared the hooves of the Great Stallion sank your…" he trailed off.

"Go on. Not 'water-cart'." Wyn prompted him, sliding off the horse herself. Malakko bit his lip.

"Ship, blood-of-my-blood. I'm happy he saw fit to let you come this far as well." Dany told him in Dothraki. Lady Manderly smiled. So she knows at least a bit of the tongue. Dany was further surprised when even after she had switched to the language of his birth, Malakko continued in the Common Tongue. "His hooves near sunk our ship as well, Khaleesi. We came on rocks and had to walk all the way from your land's end." He pointed back the way he'd come. Dany looked to Wynafryd.

"We ran aground north of the Fingers. Lands belonging to Coldwater Burn, they sometimes sail north joining Gulltown merchants already on the way to sell their wares in White Harbor." All the while more of Dany's bloodriders rode up, as ecstatic to see her unharmed and alive as Malakko had been. Counting the party who'd come through the mountains, Dany estimated roughly fifty people. Among them were the Dosh Khaleen, who apart from looking as though a dozen Necks were preferably to another moment spent aship, seemed unscathed. Ornela in particular embraced Dany without a second thought, the elder women sharply reprimanding her.

"Khaleesi, what kind of place have we come to? I heard a voice so loud it made thunder crash down on us and dash us to pieces on the sharp rocks." she whispered, equal parts awed and terrified. In short, how a Dothraki might react to such a circumstance, Daenerys thought.

"The storm is past. We must think on where we are and what we must do now." Ornela nodded meekly. The Dosh Khaleen in Westeros, add it to the list of things nobody ever thought would happen.

They meandered back over to the others, Jon waiting patiently for her to find places for each crone with a strong man to escort her.

"You'll have to walk." he told her kos, pointing to the sodden ground. "It's slippery even here. Further on it won't be frozen at all, and the mires will slide out from under you -and then over you- before we have time to notice you're missing." Despite their curious approval of Jon Snow, his words they would not heed.

"A horse is needed to escape the logs with teeth." .

"The one you're riding from, but what about the one you're riding toward you've yet to see? Again, assuming you don't just ride into a marsh or into a hill of arrowhead ants." Jon held his finger and thumb two inches apart. Only when one of her bloodriders sank hip deep in the mud approaching the wall of creeping green did it become apparent to the Dothraki that even with the flooded ruin of the kingsroad at hand, it would be unwise to go into the Neck mounted.

"If a man should die, how would we burn his body?" Dany heard one of the crones ask another. "Unless he is burned, he will never find the Night Lands." This line of thinking brought on a sudden fearful muttering even among Dany's seasoned screamers and they began eyeing the heavily vegetated marshy expanse before them with great apprehension.

"Doomed to wander this green hell hidden from the sun, looking for the Great Stallion and his herd." Dhokko whispered, already jumping at every ripple in every pond.

"Better then to keep your horse well in one hand and your arakh in the other." Malakko said, no less leery of the heavy canopy and close-growing ferns, bushes, and other less readily recognizable plants.

"Well, come on, then. Standing on the crannogs' doorstep isn't going to get us any closer to where we need to be." Jon's courage was undercut somewhat by his feet squishing noisily as he approached the fronds near the flooded road. Dany heard him swear under his breath after narrowly avoiding falling into the muck. He stopped just before he could disappear into the green. Another step and he's in the north, Dany thought, a new wave of apprehension washing over her. Where he could not belong any better. Whether I do remains to be seen. She squelched noisily up to him, her leather boots keeping her feet dry if for the moment.

"Did the skilled master ranger hear me approach? Oh dear, at least he'll be useful getting us through this swamp." Dany said in an airy voice, trying to make light of it.

"The best ranger ever to live has the same odds you might at finding the way through the Neck, sweetling." Jon replied, stealing a quick kiss on her cheek even despite his dreary mood. Her face flushed and there was knowing murmuring from everyone behind them.

"You might have waited until they couldn't see us…" Dany grumbled, incensed at being embarrassed in front of her people once more by the White Wolf. "What's the fun in that?" he replied, taking her hand and leading her past a long leafy fern, his breath hitching when his foot found the ground beyond it. The North.

Even with the kingsroad to follow, more or less, Dany could plainly see that without constant keeping in check, the greenery on either side would quickly swallow up the path. She never thought she'd miss being cold, but the gusts and winds that blew from the east off the Bite grew weaker and fewer in number it seemed with every step. The foliage is growing thicker. She remembered the great table on Dragonstone, how the Bite it seemed was not so far from the road proper, but here, now, on the ground, it was not remotely the case.

"I hope we'll at least find a dry place to kip…" Tormund Giantsbane was muttering to the tall scarred Sigorn.

"Not here, we won't. We'd have to go further inland, where the jinglers' horses will be even more hampered." Jon stopped at random or so it seemed to Dany, sometimes going twenty paces between going to ground and sometimes not even making it a full foot forward. Either he's actually managing, she thought, or he's just going daft trying to find hidden dangers nearby. She'd heard plenty about the dangers of the Neck, every awful sounding creeping thing and lurking hungry beast, and distantly she felt glad Ser Bonifer had not been on the ship with them. He might have been lost in the storm or the mountains, she thought. Better he should be safe in White Harbor waiting for us, for me.

"I thought you said there were people in here?" Malakko asked Lady Manderly, off to Dany's right.

"There are. Crannogmen, we call them, but they have a number of less civil names." From a glance at Ornela, Dany could tell Malakko was reminded of the Lhazareen, the harmless shepherds the Dothraki called the Lamb Men. Everyone in Essos doesn't fear Lhazar, though. Doesn't talk of the shepherds as if to lay eyes on them is to court a haunting end.

"These crannogmen must not like the road." Malakko said doubtfully, it seemed voicing the others' confusion. I see no trace of anybody save us, Dany thought. No hint of any living creature save the plants. When the day's light began to fade though, that changed. Little bits of light shone through the trees and floated above the surface of every black bottomless pool and soon a hundred different cries and more were filling the close air, getting closer as the road continued to lose ground to the green on either side. To Dany's surprise they came upon a clearing in the endless lushness, a wide circular copse where the foliage had been cut away. It was the first evidence that they were not alone in the Neck. Jon spent fifteen minutes circling its perimeter, it seemed to make sure there were no hidden catches or hunter's snares. Eventually he stood and Dany could see he was at a loss.

"The ferns are new-cut, the space too perfect to be natural." He looked about. "They were just here." Just here, and we heard not a thing. Even feet away, perhaps. His words did not remotely comfort the Dothraki, she saw. These people are not helpless Lhazareen, fit only to be raided for slaves and booty. The lizard-lion feeds on horse and lamb alike.

Jon got to seeing that Lady Alys was comfortable as she was like to get, Sigorn and Jeyne Poole dutifully helping her as best they could with the babes. Jeyne's prickliness with Dany vanished whenever she got a chance to wait on the Karstark girl, dabbing her forehead or brushing her hair out of her eyes or any of the hundred other things a devoted lady-in-waiting might do for her charge. Even after years in the capital, she is still northern. Dany busied herself with helping the Dosh Khaleen get situated, the crones staring at the dancing lights in their midst, entranced by the marsh's countless voices. Her fearless bloodriders were not so enchanted, peering fearfully into the darkness beyond the clearing every few moments. After awhile she tired of their timid mutterings.

"Are you blood-of-my-blood or children who cry and hide when Drogon passes overhead?"

"Drogon is of the Great Grass Sea, Khaleesi. He is the Great Stallion's own get, surely, made of fire and wind. There is no fire here, no wind. This is a place where earth is water and water earth, where horses cannot run. It is a fearful place." The oldest of the crones said gently in Dothraki.

"Yet you are not afraid." Dany answered.

"I told you before, I am not afraid to see my children again, my khal. Your bloodriders have much life ahead of them, it is good they fear to lose it." Dany's irritation slowly ebbed at the old woman's words. She looked around, at the people as varied as their names. Not a one looked at all at home in the Neck. The Dothraki picture the hereafter as an endless Great Grass Sea, where they ride with the sun and the stars. Small wonder they mislike the wet dark closeness of the Neck so, I suppose this must be very nearly how they picture hell. She made her way back to Jon Snow, passing Tyrion and his little entourage.

"Are they alright?"

"They're just anxious to be well quit of this place. To be honest, so am I."

"I no less. This is the North, aye, but it's also a world else. I suppose you can see now how the Andals never managed to cross it, never managed to bring the Faith of the Seven into the North proper."

"Bugger that. I can't make head or tail of how it ever came to owe allegiance to the Starks of Winterfell in the first place. Perhaps your notion that it was a way other than conquest is true after all." Jon only shrugged.

"It was a long time ago. All I know is that my lord father never once took issue with them, never once had to go settle a dispute with Greywater Watch." He tossed a blanket down on the driest patch of ground he could find, one free of green. Promptly she lay down, muttering about being hungry while Jon Snow filled the space behind her, an arm snaking under her own. "When aren't you hungry?" he whispered in her ear.

"Hmph…" she replied, eyes already closed.

It was hot, hotter than the Red Waste with the sun high overhead. The air itself was heavy, heavy enough to make opening her eyes a true trial. A wet heat was her first thought, so unlike the arid east. Her jaw ached, her arms ached and as soon as she tried to move something else her eyes fell shut again. Up, up, she told herself, the primal hidden other snorting in defiance. She heard a weak whine then, the humid air a heavy net pinning her to the sand. Dimly she registered confusion, uncertain quite how she'd got to where she was. Jon was with me… Immediately there was a louder snort, sullen and irritable. It took getting her legs under her to achieve getting off the sand, her arms feeling like wet rags. Blinking the bleariness out of her eyes, she beheld a world so green it took her several moments to wrap her mind around what she was seeing. The trees dwarfed her, huge ferns and vines thick as a man's arm hanging from every branch, deep purple flowers popping vibrantly from the verdant wall. She closed her eyes and waited a moment before opening them again. The paradise world did not vanish, and in a moment its sounds and smells found her also. Flowers, rain, dead vegetation sinking into the forest floor to feed that growing anew…joined by a constant low buzzing, what might have been a far-off waterfall (or two), birds calling to each other further down the beach… she turned to shoo them away when the sight of them made her whole body tense, her breath hitch. Several animals were wandering the beach, picking at the morning's flotsam, cawing at each other over fish or some shelled morsel. Not a one of them had feathers, in fact they were the strangest creatures she'd ever seen. Greenish yellow with pale bellies and long beaked heads, they moved…honestly, something like the dragons did, with the claws on their wing tips serving to carry them forward while their legs did the moving. Another reflexive snort. The nearest one turned toward her, regarding her with little beady eyes. The primal part of her grew uncomfortable, huffing shortly and lunging after the creature. Its beady eyes bulged and off it went, flapping over the surf and crying out to send its fellows sailing off north after it. She realized she was hungry, starving, ravenous…so much so that she got to snapping up every fish that lay stinking in the sun, crunching up every creeping crab she could spot. Leaves tossed into a forest fire, she thought, despairing. A sudden high piping sound made her turn back toward the jungle, the gloriously untouched jungle, to see a lizard standing near a fern, stopped midstride and gaping up at her. Just as she charged after it, its narrow-toothed mouth opened and she felt something like rain shower across her face. For a moment she was unaffected, then her right eye felt as though someone had shoved a finger into it, down to the knuckle! She went to cry out, went to put her hand to her eye, but instead she just stomped around in agony, shaking the leaves on the trees with a roar. What?

It took a moment for Dany to realize her body was moving quite of its own accord, utterly heedless of her attempts to regain control. She couldn't even look down to see where her feet were taking her as she charged into the thick undergrowth of the jungle, the floor quite hidden from the sun by layer upon layer of canopy. Another roar sent a few heavy round fruit falling from some large-leafed branchless trees nearby, the irritant boiling away in only a few moments. She felt her primal side bellow out its outrage, pride quite tarnished by the tiny piping creature's escape and the pain it caused her both. There was a surly snort, a quick whipping sound and suddenly she was on her back, eyes rolling in her head and brow aching. What is going on?! Then she stilled at the sight of the thing that had hit her. It was another lizard, huge and stocky instead of quick and fleet of foot. On four pillar legs too, instead of two runner's legs. A cow instead of a jackal. Its round head was covered by short horny spikes, more running down its sides. The tail that came off the back ended in a thick bony bludgeon, one it swept along the jungle floor in an unmistakable threat. While Dany tried to reconcile what she was seeing with what she understood, the body she wore let out an irate scream and got aright, hissing and snapping- at least, until the armored lizard-cow whipped its bludgeon through the air again, Dany pulling back without a breath of time to spare. The sapling that caught the ball of bone instead of her head snapped cleanly, collapsing with the force of the blow. Slowly her wounded pride gave way to a sort of passive curiosity, and when the lizard-cow shuffled off further still into the green expanse, the body Dany was trapped in followed. The jungle only grew hotter, the air heavier with humidity as the day wore on, but her own uncertainty was quickly being shoved aside by that voiceless part of her. A fascination, a wonder, one that even the sight of horse-sized spotted spiders dashing away as she advanced could not quell. Realization slowly dawned on her even as the body continued on its way, quite uncaring as to Dany's feelings on the situation. I may be the dragon queen, but I'm not near the size of one. On either side, great black wings stabilized her front while two powerful legs pushed her forward. I may be the dragon queen, but I haven't got wings like one. The mouth, packed with sharp teeth, parted. I may be the dragon queen, but I could never roar like one. The call then was not irritated, not surly, not something she'd ever heard her children sound in the waking world. A sort of giddy trumpeting, a roar that started in the base of the belly and magnified tenfold by the time it left the throat. Then the ground shook. Silence fell so absolutely Dany could hear the great heart pounding in her chest. Not to be intimidated, Dany reared up and sounded a trumpeting boast as loud as she could manage into the air. The roar that came in answer rattled the teeth in her head and made her eyes water. Before her ears could stop ringing the boulder-cracking roar came again and shook the ground, shook the jungle, shook the world.

"Dany!" The sweltering heat had gone, as had the torturous humidity. She let out a gurgle, blinking spots out of her eyes before finding herself in Jon Snow's arms.

"Guh?" she grunted stupidly. She tried to keep the last glimpse she'd caught of the jungle from falling through her fingers. The trees moving, shifting, branches snapping and dead trunks falling. Even as people flocked around her, Dany could not quell the thoughts running through her mind. "I found him." she said, her words lost in the tumult. After what I just heard, these are no more than sparrows singing in the bushes. She put a hand on Jon's chest to soothe him, blinked the sight of his grey eyes and the boggy Neck back into view. The sun had not yet risen. Yet when I was Drogon it was the height of day, with not the least hint of winter to be found. The roar that had caused Drogon to go crosseyed and his tongue to vibrate in his mouth echoed in her ears. What kind of creature can roar like that? After a moment she answered herself. One big enough to rock the earth as it moves. Her hand on Jon's chest squeezed and she managed to get out of his lap and to her feet, thoughts still jumbled. Drogon had been scared. More than that, he had been terrified…and wholly spellbound. He'd not have budged if Jon were plucking me from 'twixt his feet. So worried was she for her child's safety that it took her another few minutes to fully return to the here and now. Though she made to move away from him he held her close, near, dear. She couldn't help but smirk. Now who's possessive? "I'm alright, Jon Snow." She kissed his cheek and it was his turn to go red. He let her go but slowly, and she was content to keep her hand in his. "I dreamed is all," she told the Dothraki present, "I dreamed of Drogon in some hot green land." News of the black dragon even in a dream made them smile, something they had not done since entering the Neck.

"Did you dream of him, Dany?" Jon asked, face one of brooding northern concern.

"I did." she answered simply.

"Or did you dream you were him?" It was Tormund and Sigorn's turn to look interested. She frowned.

"It was only a dream. Like on Dragonmont, when I dreamed of flying. Falling into the sea, too." She felt a bit foolish. Hardly a rousing picture. But then, I'd been flying for days over trackless endless ocean. Jon Snow, mischievous thieving ghost that he was, was smiling. "What?" she demanded crossly of him, irked by all the gazes.

"I didn't know people of Valyrian descent could warg." Dany's eyes went wide, but she could not find the words to refute him.

"What makes you think it's me and not these damnable bogs finally getting to me?"

"Well, I can hardly say it's your Hasty side bringing you dreams of Drogon."

"Hmph! You'll not speak as to my father's family, Jon Snow. He's an anointed knight and you're nothing but a wild thief." Both Tormund and Sigorn gave loud hoots of laughter, clapping Jon Snow on his shoulders. She left him to his incorrigible friends and found herself crossing the clearing, heading toward the Dosh Khaleen. Ornela immediately took her in hand, seating her next to the oldest and most venerable of the crones.

"Your bloodriders are glad, Khaleesi." She put a worn leathery hand to the ground and it came up sopping, the crone tipping the mud out. "What have they to be glad of in this place?" For her part the crone did not seem at all out of sorts. Dany answered in Dothraki.

"They're glad for news of Drogon."

"News?" she coughed. "Blind I may be, but I am not hearing his wings, feeling his heat, smelling his kills. Were he near I would know and so too, would you."

"He's nowhere near. Not in this awful place, somewhere where the sun is high and cold has never touched." The old one clasped her hands in front of her and stuck her nose between her palms.

"Day, you say. Yet the world smells of night."

"The maesters at the Citadel and the learned among the lords of Westeros commonly acknowledge the world to be round. It stands to reason that just as our side suffers night, the side opposite enjoys day." Tyrion's voice made Dany turn, yet the crone seemed unmoved by his words. She seemed preoccupied with staring into her hands. As the crones spoke no other tongue, Dany duly translated his words.

"The Great Grass Sea runs one end to the other. Were there a place within it where a rider need only to keep straight on and ride into the stars rather than stay bound to the grass, the Dothraki would have found it long ago." Another crone opined, looking at Tyrion distastefully. Once Dany translated, Tyrion only shrugged.

"So it may. But that only suggests the Great Grass Sea itself is flat, not the world beyond it. If anything, it gives credence to the theory that the world the gods made is much bigger than anybody rightly knows. The sun is round. The moon is round. The seven wanderers, not mere comets passing by but the fixed objects that come and go with the seasons, are round. Why should the world not be?" It was harder to put Tyrion's words into Dothraki, lacking the finesse of the Common Tongue. 'Wanderer' might imply waywardness or solitude, concepts disagreeable to the Dothraki, so Daenerys found herself using the word 'world' to describe the skyward objects as well as the one the lot of them shared. Whether it was, strictly speaking, correct to do so, Daenerys found herself not caring one bit. I'm not a bleeding starwatcher.

Lady Karstark's stifled scream made Dany turn her head in alarm, the poor girl wriggling like she was caught in a snare. Finally, Little Ned Umber stuck his hand into her coat, giving a scream of his own as he pulled out what looked from afar like a slaver's whip covered in wriggling hairs. The boy's earsplitting wail got worse by the breath. Though Dany started off at once it was Jon Snow who reached him first, grabbing the wriggling whip by the end that had embedded itself in the boy's hand, quite through his thick fur glove. He gave a short yank, firmly gripping the thing by both ends. Up close Dany could see its bright orange body, the barblike yellow legs wiggling off its foot-long segmented form…and the two black pincers near its head, clicking noisily and dripping clear liquid. Umber was on his knees, clutching his hand and breathing heavily while Jon looked for someone with a dagger to hand. Sigorn was up to the task, but Tyrion's shouting distracted him.

"No, you bald bastard! An archmaester would pay five gold dragons for one of those! Maybe ten!" Umber's eyes popped open and his nostrils flared.

"Give me that fucking thing!" He snatched it with his one good hand before the king could blink, stuffing it in an empty wineskin and pulling the drawstrings tightly closed. Dany could hear angry scuttling from within the leather pouch, but it seemed proofed against the insect's sizeable mandibles.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Lady Alys screamed at him while Jon stood there, hands out and open, stunned into silence. The little lord took another few deep breaths, pulling off his glove. Twin holes round across as arrow shafts dribbled blood from the back of his hand.

"I'll tell you exactly what I'm going to do with this fucking little fuck. I'm going to pay a Myrish glassmaster to build me a nice big box. I'm going to stick it in Last Hearth's greenhouse, fill it with dirt and Neck-muck, and slide this fucking fuck inside along with all the crickets, spiders and caterpillars I can find. This fucker can dance for me for the rest of its days, gorging in a glass gaol."

"Last Hearth hasn't even got a greenhouse!" Alys cried in disbelief.

"Then I'll have one built for the box I'm having built for this fucking fucker!" The boy hopped off still wringing one hand while the other clutched tightly the wineskin and the angry scuttling prize within. Jon looked into his hands.

"Welcome to the Neck." he told Dany. He looked to Little Ned Umber, a shyer milder boy Dany had yet to meet. Unless strong drink or slaver's-whips are concerned. Alys Karstark glowered after him, muttering colorfully under her breath as she began to feed one of her daughters while Sigorn timidly held the second, Jeyne Poole stolidly shushing the third. "Welcome to the North." Jon added.

"What was that?" Dany gasped, trying not to cry from sheer exhaustion.

"The maesters call them centipedes. Well, ones that would comfortably fit on a fingertip, anyway." Tyrion breathed, hands on his knees as he slowly exhaled.

"If these may-sters were so eager to see the world as it is, they would be with us now, eh?" Tormund Giantsbane said dismissively.

"I thought it was a whip at first." Dany piped up, turning red as they all looked at her. "Only hairy. Well…leggy." She shuddered. "I thought I stamped out slavery and all the whips of the world both in Essos. Little did I know I'd find slaver's-whips waiting in Westeros, with just as bad a bite."

"Begging your pardon, dragon queen, but I'd feed a pit of those vicious little coils afore I ever called a man my master. A little honest venom never hurt nobody. Besides, Alys isn't hurt none and the lad's learned well not to stick his hand where he oughtn't afore he asks! Har!" Tormund laughed. The prospect of a nasty bite would keep men's hands to themselves. A pity we can't give women the world over one each.

Once heads cooled, Jon Snow called them all to ready for travel.

"I don't think anyone here's so stupid, but I have to stress that you must stay with the column, such as it is. If you wander off, we'll never find you." Tyrion's hill-tribesmen and the Dothraki, fierce prideful people both who resented taking orders, were not so prickly when they came from Jon Snow. In due time they left the clearing, heading north as best they could despite the quickly worsening state of the kingsroad. In less than an hour it vanished completely, leaving them to wade through unmappable winding rivers, snake through tall grass and pray the rustling they heard was each other and not an irate rattletail, and simply struggle through the mud, oft sinking as high has their waists. This is hell alright, Dany thought as Jon pulled her free from the muck for the dozenth time. No place in the world could be worse than this. Then she felt a drop on her cheek.

"Oh, fuck you." she said savagely as the rains began to pour down. She kept a tight hold on Jon Snow's hand, letting him take her close and lead while she tried to keep as dry as possible. Soaking fucking wet then, she surmised after only a few moments. Something brushed against her leg and for a moment Dany was ready to wet herself quite aside from the rains when a shiny moss-green shell broke the water and she found herself staring down a cruelly beaked turtle the size of a serving tray with a trout in its mouth. It glowered up at her for a moment, as if irate she had the nerve to exist in that spot at that moment in particular, before wading past the lot of them paying not a one the least bit mind. "That fat bastard would have made good soup." Ser Lothor said from somewhere behind Dany. "No doubt, surely worth a few lost fingers and a hand or two. We could toss them in for flavor." Tyrion replied dryly. It isn't turtles making the Dothraki eye the water so fearfully, Dany thought. Turtles can't burst from the mud and pull down horse and rider both at a leap. Every so often they'd come upon a log rotting in the river but after a few tense moments (and a thrown stick or two) the reasonable conclusion that each wasn't a lizard-lion was reached and on they went. She knew well the question on everyone's mind. Where are they? The answer too, that most everyone had likely gleaned. Why, with their husband, with their lord. The true Lord of the Neck, the crannogmen be arsed. The two bulls that had squared up below the walls of Riverrun were sizeable enough, each at least twelve feet in length. How big must the one who proved their better be? They stopped that night on as solid a crannog as they could find, keeping Dany in the middle with the northern girls and the Dosh Khaleen. He could pass us by right now with all his wives in tow and we'd never so much has glimpse him, she thought as she stared out into the night, the rains loud enough to drown out the croaks of hidden monstrous bullfrogs. Let him, she thought grimly. He, king of these bogs as no man ever could be.

Once the rains let up it was moments before the lot of them were praying for the deluge once more. Fuzzy black flies, swarms of biting gnats and droning whining bloodthieves that burst in red splatters when slapped all plagued them as they moved. I never thought I'd miss the bloodflies of the Red Waste. Soon they were joined by truly frightening hornets, thumb-sized droning creatures white as bone that gorged themselves on the other insects. Every so often Dany would feel something like a finger poking her, standing still until the hornet in question left her body for another helping.

"I don't care what the Others do to us, Jon Snow." Tormund said heavily, his red beard a sodden muddy rag. He shook his head. "I don't care if they kill the lot of us. At least we'll be shot of this place for good and all."

"Do you know, my brother sought to conquer the Seven Kingdoms with the Dothraki as his butchers?" Dany told him blithely. "Someone should have told him horses don't do well in swamps. And that lizard-lions are never ones to turn down horseflesh. Or manflesh, for that matter."

"He sounds a mammoth-sized ass, heedless of the simplest truths. Mance was neither and he was perilous near to getting us past that there Wall. Had we done, we'd have rolled over the North but good, hit this Neck of Snow's, and that the fuck would have been that. They ought to have had a c- er, a man with a sign. Just stroll on out to us, bold as you like. 'Congratulations. You lose.'" Dany gave a humorless snort. She turned to see how the members present of her khalasar were doing. Each had a swarm caught in his hair, bare chests and shoulders red from bites, welts and worse. Finally, Wyn Manderly could stand it no more and with tears in her eyes she took Malakko's arakh to her own waist-length braid, heaving it off into a pool. The sight made him stop cold, looking at her with grim realization. He took his weapon from her, looked at it for a long time, and cut his own long braid. He tossed it after hers, bells and all, and watched it sink into the muck. The other kos stared at him, horror in their eyes.

"I feel no shame." he told them. Looking around, he beheld the constant droning swarms, the stinking pools, the trackless rivers, to say nothing of whatever else lurked in the confines of the Neck. "This is not a place for men. It was made by gods hateful of the outside, and so it is they seek to shame us. I feel no shame." he said, louder. "I am Malakko, son of Qogo. That you have defeated me is no true defeat for me, nor true victory for you- I am only a lone rider, and you are gods. I will reach your lands beyond this hell. I will ride through your fields, your moors, your forests, your mountains. I will see your hairy elephants and men as tall as trees, your wolves that think like men and men that howl like wolves. I will kill your walking dead and send your cold children to you with an arakh made of black mountain-blood. I will wed your merling daughter and my sons will do all these things as well, and their sons, and theirs, and theirs still after. They will be born onto your earth, live under your sky, and ride among your stars with me when their long lives are spent. Gods you are, but you will feel shame at Malakko, son of Qogo's hands." He took a breath, heedless of the vermin that even then feasted on his bare flesh.

"The lad's gone goofy. From the buzzing or the bites or both." Brune grunted from some distance away. No, Dany thought. This is the way of the wild peoples. Those who fight for every meal and ride outside the safe high walls men build. The way of wolves, the way of dragons. A ripple in the water made Dany gaze east. The way of lizard-lions, too.

When sleep proved a quarry too swift to catch, Jon got to teaching her all the lords of the Neck he could remember.

"Fenn, Peat, Boggs, Cray. Quagg, Greengood, Blackmyre." she recited.

"There are others, too. Crannogmen of lordly birth take their names from more than just the swamps themselves. Coyl, Sworrm, Webb and Styng. Hysh, Sourwilt and Bitterbloom. Redbind, whose sigil you've termed the slaver's whip, you clever." he nuzzled her nose while her skin broke out in prickles. What sort of highborn takes a foot-long venomous insect for a sigil? Or Redbind for a name? "And Reed, of course." he continued.

"A black lizard-lion on grey-green." The easiest house, the most important. "Are they a numerous house?" To her surprise, Jon shrugged.

"I only know what Maester Luwin taught me."

"It wasn't Lord Stark who taught you all the names?"

"It wasn't my place to ask my lord father the nature of his vassals. I was only a bastard, if anyone it ought have been Robb. But I never heard aught from him either. I suppose after joining my father on half a hundred trips all around the North but never once setting foot in the Neck, it became an unspoken rule." That only befuddled Dany further. It isn't like a powerful man to refrain from making his presence felt. Or showering largess on those he knows to be true to him. Perhaps Lord Stark had found Lord Reed ill company in his youth, or he just couldn't be bothered with the Neck. Or he wanted Westeros to forget about the crannogmen, she pondered, the northmen included. If not primarily. Another shiver crept up her spine and just then Dany could not be readier to put the swamps behind her. If it means bitter cold, hell-winds and biting frost, so be it. Tormund had the right of it, nobody born outside these bogs belongs in them a single minute. Her thoughts wandered to another verdant hell, one so hot it could squeeze the life out of a man given time. Not much, either. In such a place her child wandered, heedless of danger. Her eyelids drooped for a moment. She could see them, all three of them, as they had been when no bigger than dogs. Viserion, always keen to perch on my shoulder even when he got too big. Curious in regard to men and their doings, splashing in the lily pool whenever I dipped my feet in. Content to scavenge when he could, the least prone of his brothers to be off hunting for too long. Rhaegal, gentle as a wild dog and harmless as a coiled adder. Ever was he wary of men, then disdainful of them, then hateful of them. Their noise, their stink, if he had his way all the cities of Slaver's Bay and the world beyond would bathe in jade flame. Only happy when he was high awing or far from people, stealing from Drogon at every opportunity. Cunning, deft, fast. She had seen neither in over a year. When once I had them in my arms. Content Viserion and capricious Rhaegal. I thought chained, they might behave, but it only served to make them wilder and singularly unhappy with me. Though, neither beast had been to blame when the herdsman brought in the blackened bones. Neither named for Drogo, who was once my sun-and-stars. Dothraki to the bone, who valued only strength, only power. Gods only know what he saw in me.

The world had gone punishingly hot again. There was no need for her to blink the sun out of her eyes though, as it could find no path through the thick green canopy overhead. Drogon, she thought excitedly. Where have you gone to? He had survived his encounter with the unknown, the great something that had set the dragon's heart hammering beneath his black bones. Just then it was clear Drogon had no eyes nor ears nor nostrils for anything else but a trace of that same something, the memory of which replayed constantly in his mind. "As intelligent as men", she remembered Tyrion saying. How Drogon knew to dismiss each crashing footfall and blaring bellow Dany had no idea but she knew the dragon would not be lead off-course. The bloody thing was huge, she thought somewhat crossly. However did you manage to lose it? Only when he caught the unmistakable stink of carrion did he stop his mad clambering through the undergrowth, making a beeline straight for a reek that would send any other animal running. When he burst from the trees onto the carcass of yet another breed of lizard-cow, one possessed of armor nor bludgeon, his building glee dulled into a sullen sulk. He sniffed it. Despite the ripeness of the reek, the exposed bone and obvious rot, there was good meat and he was hungry. The fire built in his chest, boiled in his throat- and then there was a roar like to split the ground he stood on in twain. Immediately his head snapped to the sound, giving a roar of his own in giddy reply. A pebble tossed against a mountainside, Dany thought, worried for the foolish-proud dragon. As Drogo was when his wound needed tending to. The world shook, steps taken on feet bigger than Drogon's head. An eyewatering reek worse than any corpse filled the air, and Dany could hear through Drogon's ears a nearby cloud of buzzing gnats. The smell, the sound blew food from his mind completely. The worse one grew the louder the other got and the more animated Drogon became. Only when she beheld an odd bent tree trunk did she realize it was a leg, one that ended in three huge clawed toes. Dull mud-red it was, and before she could look higher a low guttural throating sound filled the jungle, its inhabitants falling silent. Including Drogon, she realized. She looked up. A lizard, she thought, if made a god. The ox-sized head stood twenty feet above the ground, more, with teeth longer than daggers poking from its mammoth jaws. Vestigial, almost useless arms poked awkwardly from its huge muscled chest but the tapering tail that trailed behind it was anything but awkward, gracefully keeping the animal balanced. Its nostrils flicked and it stepped further into view, Drogon watching openmouthed, in shameless awe. Jon told it true, a tiny part of her piped up. Without wings an animal was free to weight however much has its skeleton could carry- and in the god-lizard's case, that was more than a half dozen Drogons. It looked down at him, nostrils sniffing, huge head turning this way and that. Drogon suddenly let out his loudest shriek, a sound that from Dany's own experience caused grown slavers to wet themselves and flee, tokars left to fall. The god-lizard did not so much as flinch. It drew in a long breath. A roar from another time, another world, one the scars that laced and latticed over its face chest and sides advertised held no room for men. Drogon gripped the ground, yelping to himself under the sheer volume of the creature's resonant sonorous roar, but even as it rattled the very teeth in his skull it was obvious the god-lizard was showing off. Look at me, the roar said. Look how powerful I am. You are small and I am great.

The lizard gave a sudden snort, turning and slowly thundering away, when Drogon gave another shriek and pounced on its back, burying his black teeth in the thin skin at the tip of its nose! He flushed himself with the god-lizard, who gave a earsplitting agonized scream, and promptly went to ground, trying to roll on top of him! Though the lizard had unquestionable advantages in size, weight and strength, this seemed to be what Drogon wanted. He merely scampered onto its belly and took off, repeating this dance until the god-lizard was streaming blood from its muzzle, neck and shoulders. Though Drogon was determined even he could not stop the animal from charging off, scarcely able to keep up given the occluding nature of the jungle's branches and hanging vines. Such barriers were no deterrent to his quarry though, who simply crashed through them without losing a step. It was all he could do to keep up, nipping at the monster's ankles. He bit its nose whenever it tried to drink, bit its neck or the bony ridge above its eye whenever it stopped to gorge. The dogged chase only ended when the god-lizard ran headfirst into a crumbling stone wall, sending the ruin falling to the jungle floor at last. Breathing heavily, it turned to face its pursuer, its roar shaking Drogon's bones in his scales. He tried to reply in kind, but even his deepest roar could only sound a kitten's mewl to the animal before him. It charged suddenly, covering ground at incredible speed before Drogon could react- and in a moment more it knocked him flat on the jungle floor, stuck fast in its jaws, teeth crashing together- to find his scales quite unscathed. The yellow eyes bulged and Drogon again sank his teeth into its muzzle, making it scream anew. It flung him off, sending him cashing into a tree, but Drogon was no worse for wear and he got right back to it. Every time the god-lizard tried to bull through him, he tore at its face until it retreated. As the sun set the creature finally collapsed, through hunger, through thirst, or perhaps through sheer exhaustion. Drogon clambered over its enormous body and bit down hard on its shoulder making it low in agony once more, but he at no point used his fire. Feebly (for a god-lizard) it tried to buck him off, but Drogon's persistence and cunning had the creature dead to rights, if for the moment. His efforts seemed less and less an attack to Dany though, who could only watch in stupefied disbelief, and more a provocation, a firing of the creature's blood. Bold to the point of rank madness, given its size next to his! Just now though, it's not next to, but under. He kept the god-lizard's bleeding flank gripped in his teeth, flushed himself with it again, and did not let go until he'd had his desire of it- of her, black flame searing through the canopy as he made her his. He roared a final time until spots bloomed in his eyes and his lungs screamed for air and slipped off his prize, exhausted, insensate, and in a breath, asleep.

Dany shot out of Jon's arms so fast even his ranger's reflexes could not catch her. She was so overawed all she could do was gasp for breath. For an electrifying moment Drogon's brutal ecstatic triumph was hers and she could not keep a thought for more than a half-second at a time. You had her, she finally managed. She was well beyond you, and still you brought her down and made her yours. The Dothraki follow only strength, only power. You are named for my sun-and-stars, it makes sense you would seek strength and power out in turn. Gentle arms looped around her and she gave the accompanying chest a panicked shove, sending Jon Snow flat on his back into the mud with a grunt. Finally the feeling faded and suddenly she was too tired to stand, falling gracelessly atop the King in the North.

"Dany?" she heard him whisper, among the cries and curses in both the Common Tongue and Dothraki. "Are you alright?" What power had surged through her petite form had quite gone by then and she felt like nothing less than a jellyfish removed from water, unable to do anything but ooze out and lay there uselessly.

"Yes." she muttered into his ear, before finding dreamless sleep. When she awoke the sun had risen, quite following the notion that while Drogon's world was dark hers was light and vice versa. I feel better, she thought meekly, though when she stirred a gaggle of the Dosh Khaleen were on her at once, poking and prodding as they had when she was a girl in their tent. "No more of that." she murmured sternly, before violently retching up the rations of the day before. Well, at least no one will much mind me making a mess in the Neck, she thought. A waterskin was handed to her and she gratefully gulped its contents down, wiping her forehead with her wrist. I feel as though I'm still with Drogon in that vibrant jungle hell. Jon's scarred face, his lovely grey eyes hovered over her and gave her the strength to sit up. He pulled her into his lap. "Are we there yet?" she murmured weakly, laying her head on his chest.

"Not quite. But look, it seems our camp is doing the wading for us." Dany squinted and saw indeed that the opposite riverbank was sailing lazily by.

"North, I hope? I'd hate to have us going the wrong way."

"North, aye. Then White Harbor, then Winterfell, and I can get you out of those soaking clothes and into nothing at all, save perhaps a bath in the hot springs 'neath the castle."

"Don't tease." she replied, slapping his chest. His smile did not disappear until his name was called.

"Snow." Short and curt. Both of them turned to see Tormund staring at something on the other side of the river. At first Dany could see only cat-tails, lilies and hundreds of reeds, but the break in the swamp foliage got more pronounced as they began to drift toward it. Slate grey he was, wider at the middle than a barrel on its side. He lay sunk into the muck with five smaller lizard-lions gathered around him. He's a lot bigger than twelve feet… When the sun's light found them, the cows opened their mouths at once but made no other move. Slowly the male surfaced, floating off balance until his feet found purchase at the edge of their crannog. He pulled himself from the water, strutting idly onto their silty patch of island.

"Fuck me…" Dany heard someone moan. The bull lizard-lion came straight on, his gait unrushed, to stop right in their midst. He laid back down, shut his eyes, and let out a long low rasp-grunt. Promptly his wives joined him and he opened his own huge mouth in turn, going still as a statue. He pays no mind to us, for we aren't worth his time.

Gingerly people started backing away from the bull, congregating on the far end of the crannog. The Dothraki were gaping, the hill tribesmen half ready to charge and half ready to leap into the water. Jon had his brooding look on and Dany knew he was trying to gauge the animal's length.

"Not more than five-and-twenty feet. Not less than twenty, either." He slipped an arm around Dany's waist, sliding her behind him. As if I were a helpless maiden.

"Does he look like to move to you?" she snapped.

"I don't care. I'd sooner it were me between the two of you than you between the two of us." he replied, as only a stern northman could.

"Besides, I've heard from your own mouth that animals will forgo food when breeding. Jeyne Poole told me much the same." Something about the whole affair was subtly off though, like a tapestry hung just askew. She found herself walking past Jon, getting as close to the lizard-lions as she dared. We saw dozens of displaced bulls in the riverlands, she thought. There are only five cows here. Surely there must be more? Quite contrary to her confidence that the bull was like to turn to slate before he moved again, his nostrils flared and his eye opened. The bumps on the end of the great head twitched and the bull let out all his air in a long hot exhale. When Dany did not move, he slowly rose, taking his ponderous bulk back to the waterline and disappearing into the gray-green swill, his wives in tow. She turned to Jon. "Fond of Freys they may be, but they like not the smell of Targaryens. Or perhaps Hastys." His brooding panicked look broke into a smile and soon he was laughing, hard as on Dragonmont.

"Look!" Ned Umber pointed to something to the northwest. Several fallen trees had become dams, catching river debris and trapping plants to form a makeshift cove. Atop that foundation more sticks and mud had been applied, creating a sort of lodge. Finally, we'll meet the crannogmen. There were no cries of alarm, no sounds of children playing, no voices at all in fact. When they got closer they could see why- there were holes in the roof and the place itself looked half-flooded. Still closer, Dany could see that the entire place was teeming with lizard-lions, each lithe and graceful.

"No bulls." Tyrion voiced Dany's thoughts. "Not a one of them is male." A slow wondrous hopeful seed began to grow in her chest. Somewhere without men, where no man would ever go. A nest of bone hornets in a nearby tree buzzed loud enough to wake the dead and Dany pulled a fatted leech from the side of her hand. There is food here, but even so it makes no matter. Lizard-lions do not eat when it comes time to breed. There is freedom here, there are no walls to hem them now. She took an automatic step toward the lodge. In an instant Jon Snow had her right hand and Tyrion Lannister her left.

"The bulls all left at once, and in no little hurry. There are no people here, elsewise the crannogmen would have met us as soon as we came into the Neck." She spoke more to herself than they, the closest cows catching Dany's scent and turning toward her at once. Eventually their crannog came to a stop a scant few feet from the dome's entrance, though only the top had yet to sink below the water's surface. "Food and freedom, my lord. You know more of dragons than any man alive." she told Tyrion. "More food than can be eaten, more wives than can be counted, in a place men could not belong less." His darling noseless face turned slowly, so slowly, in the direction of the dome, though he did not let her go.

"What if all that's in there is a harem of famished cows and their hungry husband?"

"Then they'll eat me while you're helping her escape." Jon said grimly, drawing his bastard sword.

"Oi, you're not getting eaten afore me, Jon Snow!" Tormund cried incredulously, jogging over.

"I need you to look after Ned Umber. We may be back in only a few minutes." Jon told him, the wildling's face falling.

"Aye. He's a good lad but he's got room in his head to grow some sense and that's no lie." Jon slid in first, the water reaching just below his chest. His face broke into a deadpan frown.

"Well, small help Longclaw will be in this. Toss me a knife, Tormund."

"Har!" came the ready reply, taking the Valyrian steel sword and providing a common dagger. Dany went in next, heedless of the cold water as it seeped into her clothes. They were ruined anyway.

"Aren't you coming?" she asked Tyrion, before realizing the water likely came over his head. The yearning on his face as he looked at the flooded dome was palpable.

"Getting wet here. I think I feel something on my leg." Jon said sharply, simply taking Tyrion on his shoulders and making for the dome, Dany close behind.

Pitch dark but for what sunlight could find its way through the cracks in the ceiling, they had to make do with squinting and Jon using his dagger to feel the walls out to make their way forward. Dany was glad for it. Who knows what creeps and nests in these walls. Better a hidden serpent should taste steel instead of Snow. Underneath the dome proper the cracks were greater but fewer in number. Dany could just glimpse yet more water, a great deep pool that ringed a single stationary crannog. Lizard-lions need no doorways, she thought. Likely there are ways to come and go aplenty in the depths. There were cows aplenty as well, motionless at water's edge with mouths half-open. The air was hot, the mud hotter, and Dany found herself squinting in the humid darkness for a hit of cream, a glint of gold. I know you're down here, my love. Once, I fed you fish from out of my palm. A long hiss sounded from the far crannog, indolent and dismissive. Dany wanted to dash for it, to run as fast as her feet could carry her, but Jon Snow held her close even as they reached the water.

"We'll have to swim." he said grimly.

"We can make it. They're not moving, if we're careful and quiet they'll never know we were here." Dany hated the pleading note in her voice. Miraculously they made it across, the silt beneath Dany's hands as precious as her first touch of Dragonstone's shores. It was hot, hot, enough to make Tyrion mutter in discomfort as they moved up toward solid ground. The great body before her was hidden from the cracks of sunlight but Dany could feel its heat. She was so ready, so ready to see his golden eyes. When indeed they opened and shone a hungry merciless moss-green, Dany had time only to think well, this was rash before the black head that held the eyes snaked toward her. Coming beneath a crack of sunlight Daenerys beheld a monster, a lizard-lion black as night resting on a jut of pale stone. Thirty feet if he's a foot, with just as many wives. They did not lounge about him though, did not wait upon his pleasure as the others had outside. Perhaps he is a cannibal. On further inspection though, Dany could see the animal before her had none of a bull's thick dense mass, its head was not so wide and its limbs not so stocky. The massive cow regarded the three of them impassively, her legs tightly gripping her pale perch. She hissed again, no doubt trying to ward them off. Why does she not just charge? The silt beneath her rasped in answer, a deep bass that echoed off the muddy walls for a full half minute. Then the pale slab rose, the cow atop it hissing in displeasure, a winding ivory body emerging from the morass. Distantly she heard Jon and Tyrion hastily back away. Memories of Viserys popped up of their own accord. Gaunt, sickly, haunted. The softly grunting body in front of her brimmed with muscle, the picture of health, of wild vigor and virility, and moved with the thoughtless confidence of the invulnerable. Another pair of eyes blazed forth from high in the darkness, pools of swirling molten gold split each by a single ivory line. Viserion took another breath, his great chest rising and falling while Dany stared up in wonder. Viserys thought himself a king but he had neither realm nor throne nor queen. Here you are with all three, a king for true. Beneath the light she glimpsed his head, his golden horns. A golden crown, she thought. A splendid golden crown, that men shall tremble to behold.