Jon
He woke with the sound of wolves howling in his ear. A glimpse of a half-remembered mill, a glint of gold high atop a tower in the distance. Queenscrown. So that's where you've gone to, boy. The view was phantom only though, and when he blinked he was mired in the sucking mud of the Neck as he'd been the night before. And the night before that, and before, and on. Dawn shone weakly through the thick boughs of the countless drooping trees, the silhouettes of the rest of the party visible in as half-shadows. Daenerys slept as she always did, with her head on his chest. Face untroubled, Jon noted. No dragon dreams. Unfortunately, for all the cheering that sprung up when Viserion emerged from the waters under the lodge, the white dragon seemed as eager to leave the Neck as Jon and the rest were to stay. The huge black cow shadowed him always, the mundane of her kind following close behind. Whenever he stopped to laze she would promptly shuffle atop him while the others made do with his tail, neck and sides, hanging off his head and over his snout. Neither Robert nor Mance nor Stannis, nor indeed even the Night King, seemed better to fit the word 'king' than Viserion. Where Drogon had been wary, irritable and possessive, his brother moved almost painfully slowly, as though he could no more be rushed than the sun could in its course across the sky. His affect was one of utter serenity, the men shouting and rushing about no more significant than the bloodthieves that droned on always. Most telling to Jon, he barely gave Dany a second glance. His first act upon their reunion was to strut straight past her, the cream of his scales caked with mud and moss, his retinue ready and in tow. The black cow was last to leave, a low rumbling hiss building in the base of her throat as she passed. Her bulk was so great that Jon and Tyrion had to flush themselves into the sodden wall. Even so, her massive body raked across his front and Jon could only look into the moss-green eye that faced him, into the onyx line that cut it down the middle. She's no fonder of our kind than we are of hers. The cheering outside, Jon remembered, had stopped abruptly when she erupted from the water, dragging herself across the crannog hissing all the way. When at last they had reached the outside as well Viserion had already fallen asleep, wings held close to his body so that his arms stuck out as a lizard-lion's did. The heat Jon remembered coursing off of Drogon had been absent as well- at least until the cows took up their posts, and then the air grew hot as it had in the lodge. Curiously, though the other cows opened their mouths to a one as if about to break out into song, the black-of-scale creature's huge mouth remained firmly shut.
Dany fidgeted a bit, turning over to lay just below his chin. Her lovely silver hair was an abject ruin, clumped with mud in places and brittle as straw in others. He tried to lean away so as not to rest on her arm, only then spotting both her hands resting on his shoulders. A long hiss whispered in his ear and what he thought to be Daenerys' arm slid lithely out from under the pair of them, its long brown-yellow body striped with black next to impossible to see in the dim light of the Neck. Not a common rattletail, Jon saw as he glimpsed the end of the animal. A sunset snake. The sigil of House Hysh, so named as it went, because its bite could end a man's life inside a single day. The snake coiled by his ear, adopting a defensive posture to Jon's despair. Show me the ranger that can catch a striking serpent one-handed, and that hand half-numb from having been slept on all night. A tapping on his thigh, Dany had awoken. Then he again remembered that her hands were on his shoulders and besides, her purple eyes had yet to open. He dared not move, even as the tapping crept higher. From the bottom of his vision an emerald-green spider the size of a dinner plate climbed up his sleeping queen's back. House Webb's emerald widow. It stopped cold on catching sight of the sunset snake. For a moment it simply stood there, watching, before getting up on its hind legs in unquestionably a threatening posture, fangs wriggling under its glittering eyes. The snake answered with another snapping hiss, rising perhaps a half-foot off the ground. In Jon's experience, snakes and spiders were creatures that spent their lives underfoot. Just now, above him, the sunset snake looked a hundred feet long, the emerald widow's legs scraping the sky. Daring each other to be the first. He didn't trust himself to call out without startling either or both animals, and anyway all three dragons together would do them no good now. Only when pairs of tanned hands came into view, gently collecting snake and spider both, did he dare even to draw breath. Jon sat up, expecting to see the newcomers carefully loosing the creatures into the safety of the undergrowth. Instead he found his party entirely surrounded by little shadows, the tallest of whom scarcely reached shoulder height. Crannogmen were everywhere. Everywhere. In the branches above, slipping from the waters around the crannog, even from the silt itself. A young woman held the sunset serpent close, letting it coil about her arm, while a skinny boy let the widow creep down about his feet. Jon started at the sight of the woman in particular. Where the boy (and all the other crannogmen) looked eerily similar, with not a one among them unpossessed of olive skin and green eyes, the girl was fair-skinned, with blonde hair to her shoulders and guileless brown eyes. Fair, Jon saw on closer inspection, but for the grey scars that dotted her all over. Snakebites, opening wounds that do not heal.
"Are there more?" Jon mouthed, pointing to the snake. She shook her head. "Dany, wake up."
"Hmph…" she said sleepily.
"Dany, we've got to get going or we'll never get quit of the Neck." She got off him, stretching and yawning. Her eyes on opening went round at the sight of the people all around. Jon stood, conspicuously putting himself in front of her.
"Good morning." he said, voice trailing off as the crannogmen watched, several in brown and yellow coming into the girl's midst. A pair, man and woman, each took one of her hands.
"You look just as Howland Reed described Eddard Stark." The man said. Jon's nerves eased a bit.
"Aye, I'm supposed to resemble him more than a bit. I'm Jon Snow and this is Daenerys, the Mother of Dragons." He felt Dany's hand take his own.
"Ferden Hysh, Lord of Deep Pit." The man replied. "This is my lady wife, Lanse, and our daughter Asper." Jon looked to the girl again, tall and fair, who might have blushed if her scarred skin allowed. Hysh? Certainly the sunset snake now coiling around her shoulders could find no fault with her, but Jon could not imagine someone looking less like a crannogwoman. The vassals of House Hysh came next, with names like Sicor, Slythe and Crosus, whose sigil was the infamous rattletail. Killers all, Jon knew on sight.
By then the others of the column were waking up, more than one hill tribesman or Dothraki giving a cry of alarm and reaching for their weapons only to find them quite gone. Crannogmen small even for their kind but outnumbering the rest all put together congregated next, each so like the next it was not hard for Jon to guess their allegiance. Sworrm, the arrowhead ant. Then came the Coyls, the mancrusher snake, each man and woman tattooed in diamond patterns to give them the appearance of one monstrously long serpent. The Styngs with their frightening bone-white faces patterned with black woad, Webbs in dresses of green leaves bound in silk. Jon started when he saw that the Webbs in particular were women to the last. There was Redbind with their slaver's whip, of course, Sourwilt's hangman vine and Bitterbloom's bloodflower. Before he could greet the first group even more were coming forth, with names even Maester Luwin couldn't have taught him. Dipter, the deathsleep fly. Feest, a bloody open mouth, whose members alone among the crannogmen had sallow grey skin instead of olive, moved on all fours more often than not, and went clad in meager loincloths or else nothing at all. Lord Cors Feest in particular drew Jon's eye, for although he was a man of the Seven Kingdoms, and nobly born at that, there was not a woman in all seven together who would rather marry him than a wildling or Dothraki. Rather than a storied sword, he gripped a sharpened human femur, and his breath smelled so strongly of blood and rotten flesh that Jon had to back away. And Father thought the Umbers proud, the Karstarks prickly, the Boltons untrustworthy. Which of them was like to eat the men they killed? Which of them, by his own people, was named the Hungerer? Even Jon felt rather endeared toward the savages from across the sea, as the southern lords called them, more so than this man born of the same northern earth as he. Jon took it upon himself to introduce Ned Umber, Alys Karstark and Wyn Manderly in turn, as well as the rest of the group. But for Lady Sworrm (whose own brood numbered a staggering fourteen, not a one of which had not the womb with a sibling) and Lady Webb (who must have approved of House Karstark's exclusivity to women) congratulating Alys, Jon found the olive eyes of the crannogmen did not ever long leave him. More than one among the throng seemed as if to expect him. Well, I've only been stuck in your bogs a week. You might have made yourselves apparent before we wandered blindly up to the bloody dragon.
"We're on our way back to Winterfell, to prepare for the coming of the Others." Jon said, voice louder and he was pleased to hear, a bit more steely.
"Howland Reed went on ahead with half our people, Your Grace, to aid in fortifying the castle." Lady Sworrm replied.
"He left no castellan to hold Greywater Watch in his absence?"
"He took it with him." That answer so stymied Jon that he could only stand there in confusion while he listened to the crannogmen of the Neck make themselves known to those from the outside. Wildlings, Dothraki, hill tribesmen…there are crannogmen, and there are not. That line of thinking brought him back 'round to Asper Hysh. While the little people smeared incredibly sour yellow paste on their visitor's bodies to keep the insects away (and did it immediately), Jon found courage enough to ask Lord Ferden just what was going on regarding his blonde daughter, taller than the tallest of the Hysh-kin by a foot.
"I was younger than you are now, and had wandered from the safety of Deep Pit. I had come to the edge of the swamps, the riverlands opening like a hide tent yet to set up before me. Frey lands, I knew. Among the cattails and ferns that marked the end of one kingdom and the beginning of another, I found a sack, tied tightly shut." Jon's stomach sank and he felt Dany's hand squeeze his tightly. "Imagine my disbelief to open it and find a baby girl, perfect but for her still body and blue lips. A sunset snake had gotten in with her and bitten her half a dozen times. Her good fortune that a Hysh should be the one to find her, then, for only we know how to stop the venom of our sigil. I left Deep Pit a callow youth and went back a father. When I presented her to my lady mother, I gave the baby girl the name Asper, my mother's name and her mother's before her. My mother gave her the name Hysh, my father's name, and his father's, all the way back to the beginning." He reached out and tucked his hand beneath the girl's chin, who looked at him with unashamed adoration. "So was it decreed, so was it done." Jon was astounded. He had been Ned Stark's own blood, and yet he'd grown up a Snow. Would any lord, anywhere, have done what Ferden Hysh had done? He could not begin to find the words to make a reply. How many times had he heard, had he thought that he wasn't a Stark? Yet here came a nameless foundling raised a cherished daughter of a highborn family. No, Jon told himself. She is a daughter of a highborn family. Asper was the only name she was ever given, Hysh the only family she has ever known. All of this was not lost on the girl herself, who never left her parents' side and was only overjoyed at the sight of their younger children, three girls and a tiny little boy, who'd made the journey from Deep Pit. The boy in particular screamed in delight at the sight of Asper, pointing and burbling.
"Aspa!" he cried, the girl scooping him up and making him scream with mirth.
"Hysh colors on all our children, Your Grace." Lady Lanse said, watching the little ones gather around their elder sibling. "Hysh to the end, and after." Meanwhile, a foundling outside Winterfell's walls would be lucky to grow up a spit-turner in the kitchens. How cut up he felt must have been visible on his face, because Dany found it in her to pipe up.
"Come help me look for Tyrion, Jon." she said. Jon stiffly took his leave of the Hyshes, the pair of them going off to wrangle their wandering children. Jon tried to think on Tyrion Lannister, when last he'd seen him.
"Last night, sleeping as close to Viserion as he dared." Viserion and his crannog-queen both. When the pair of them approached, the selfsame crannog-queen hissed in irritation at the sight of them. Her lord had sunk up to his eyes in the much, only a single golden horn and row of gleaming golden teeth showing to mark him for what he was and not a lizard-lion. Or indeed, some river monster. They found Tyrion nearer to the rear.
"Out of biting range," he put it when they came upon him. "Though, if she saw fit, I'm sure her tail could turn me to paste with one good wallop." he added brusquely. Under even the piddling light that peeked through canopy, the cow was a terrifying sight. What bits of her weren't mired in muck shone a spotless onyx, but her hide seemed less skin, more scale. Then Jon spotted it.
"That isn't hide at all." Tyrion grinned from ear to ear.
"No, Jon Snow, it's not. It's dragonscale, or I am not a dwarf."
"What?" Dany asked, sounding lost. Tyrion pointed to where the cow's head lay at rest, angled up over Viserion's shoulder.
"If you look closely - but not too close! - you will see her teeth are the same color as her eyes." A single glance was enough to prove Tyrion correct.
"What does that mean?" Dany asked.
"Your Grace, I'd have thought it was obvious to you of all people. Viserion's new friend obviously has dragon blood. Quite a lot, I'd say." His heedless gaiety began to get on Jon's nerves. "Yesterday you were as miserable as the rest of us. Just now you look ready to sing."
"I don't suppose you know much about the Dance of Dragons, Jon Snow."
"Only what part Cregan Stark had to play."
"I thought as much. The civil war that spelled an end to Targaryens on dragonback- at least, for a while. One of the few beasts to survive to war's end was a vicious nest-raider, black of scale and green of eye. The people of Dragonstone called him the Cannibal. Wild, never ridden, he disappeared at war's end. Where was anyone's notion, but it seems he must have paid the Neck a visit."
"So he did." A new voice said, Jon turning to see a young crannogman approaching. "Owyn of Greywater Watch, Your Grace." He bowed his head, ignoring Tyrion completely. "As it goes, this Cannibal took a liking to the bogs and swamps, particularly when House Frey decided the time was ripe for another march on Greywater Watch. I'm sure you know by now that corpses bring lizard-lions, and there were cows aplenty for the dragon to choose from. The bulls were not so receptive though, and before long the Cannibal overreached himself, eating what he would and taking every cow in sight. His excess proved his undoing. The cows wore him down, then as he slept, the bulls tore him down."
"Surely if he were so rapacious, he'd have left more than a single descendant behind?" Tyrion asked, annoyed to be left out of a discourse he deemed interesting.
"Lizard-lions are born very small, and seldom live to reach adulthood. Of those, still fewer grow to full size. What male offspring the Cannibal left behind were killed by resident bulls in their first breeding year. There were other females of course, but most were made meals of by the countless hungry mouths of the Neck." He jerked his head toward the cow. "She's the only one left, and until now any bull who's tried to court her has fed the flies, size or strength be damned. It doesn't help that she's now bigger than the biggest of them." King, queen and Hang asked the same question at the same time.
"Does she breathe fire?" Owyn smirked, shaking his head in derision.
"She's a lizard-lion."
"That's not a 'no', my good lad. Let me put it another way: Can she breathe fire?" The crannogman frowned.
"He's fond of such word games." Dany said, sounding almost apologetic.
"Before our grandsires' time, a Frey column came up the kingsroad as they had since the Coming of the Andals. We waited for them, as we always had, ready to defeat them yet again. With sting and fang, with web and coil, with poisoned arrows and the Neck's own hunger. We expected to be rid of them in a few days, then gather in our castles and wait out winter. Imagine our surprise when she turned up and with a hiss bathed the entire Frey force in moss-green flame. A bull lizard-lion's hide will catch a spear, a crossbow bolt, even a swung axe. Hers did not even give that inch, steel blunting against her scales or bouncing off her back. She's a lizard-lion, and thusly sees the world as a lizard-lion sees it. Lizard-lions don't breathe fire, even with dragon blood in their veins. That doesn't mean they can't breathe fire, given a dragon for a father and someone foolish enough to annoy them sorely." Like an army of Freys, Jon thought.
"The Dance ended more than a hundred and fifty years ago." Tyrion said, brow furrowed.
"Lizard-lions, if left to live, live a long time. Longer still, with fire in their veins." Owyn replied. Jon looked from Tyrion's elated face to Dany's. On it he saw an expression he never had before. Her mouth hung open and she was staring into the void, one eye twitching.
"What is it, sweetling?" Jon asked, unnerved by her behavior.
"Nothing." Dany replied, though her eye continued to twitch.
Despite her claims to the contrary, Jon spotted the most unqueenly expression several times more that day. A sort of frozen half-sneeze paired with purple eyes flecked with green staring into the waters of the Neck, the swamps obviously the furthest thing from Dany's mind. She will tell me when she's ready. All the while, Tyrion did not stop wheedling Owyn of Greywater Watch. Of what more he knew of dragons courting lizard-lions, if anyone had seen them at it, if Viserion's time in the company of the black cow had borne fruit.
"Lizard-lions lay with their mouths open to let heat out. As she obviously has no need to do this with fire in her blood, I daresay you've not seen her tease hers open an inch. Even with chatty dwarfs around to tempt her sorely." The crannogman said in curt reply.
"Does her mouth have something to do with it, then?" Tyrion asked in turn, without a second's hesitation.
"Maybe. Maybe not. Why don't you go peek between her teeth and see?" Tyrion looked ready to do just that.
"If you take another step, I'll punch you in the face." Daenerys said, a tight hand on the man's shoulder.
"You wouldn't think it, but Varys could throw a fist with astonishing acumen. He had to knock some sense in me once or twice once we crossed the Narrow Sea." Tyrion muttered, more to himself than to the queen. While they bickered good-naturedly, Jon found himself walking over to the cow almost accidentally. Only when he was at arm's length (and well within reach of her enormous mouth) did he realize what peril he might have bought himself. When the green eye opened, cut as Drogon's had been by a pitiless black line, it did not look overmuch happy to be in the presence of the King in the North. The nostrils at the black head's end let out a curt snort. Before she could give further answer, Jon reached for her. The green eye went wide around as a big man's fist. It was not enough to impose, certainly not enough to wrest control from her (not that I could, he thought,) but just enough to express his intentions in terms she could understand. The closest thing, he figured, would be when he reached for Ghost. Have you got any precious little beauties around, girl? Either from sheer surprise or her patience having run its course, the cow's countless green teeth parted.
"Awp!" came the prompt squeak. Jon was so taken aback that he started, falling promptly backward as an ivory head poked out from between the parted teeth. "Awp!" it squeaked insistently.
Though the infant was no longer than Jon's forearm, there was no questioning its sire. Spotless ivory from the tip of its nose down as far as Jon could see, it was. Its eyes, too, were of a like with Viserion's. Golden pools cut by a thin cream line. Bright enough for a man to see himself in. Bright enough to stop a man in his tracks and hold him tight in thrall. The baby's interest in Jon faded almost immediately, focusing its energies on escaping its formidable mother's mouth. Upon sliding into the mud, Jon spotted the reason for her vigilance immediately. Bone-white scales and gleaming golden eyes and teeth make for a poor ambusher. Particularly in this bog-muck. The only prey this poor bugger is hiding from is the sort that's blind. Jon saw too that even free, the baby did not leave its mother's shadow. It waded and wandered, aye, but always within reach of a pair of jaws that could crunch fast around a horse and hold it aloft without effort. Speaking of jaws…A second gleaming golden-toothed baby followed its sibling, then a third. By the time Dany worked up the nerve (or the pigheadedness) to make it to Jon's side, five of the little creatures were poking their snouts into the mud to look for tasty things or else peering up at the two of them, no more worthy of note to the newcomers than they'd been to the first bold baby. Of course, Dany gave a delighted squeal, hands going to her mouth in a fashion Jon found most adorable, but the cow's blunt snort of retort was enough to keep her from trying to pick one of the babies up.
"Were I to tell a maester the least bit of what I've seen today, he'd call me a raving drunken fool." Tyrion said conversationally, perching himself on a moss-slick rock.
"Says the mongrel of the cur. It's the raving drunken fool who thinks a gray dress and a chain about his neck give him leave to deny all the wonders of the world but what can be put to paper." Jon answered. Wonders and terrors both. The dwarf snorted in amusement.
"Where's that bloody wineskin?" he asked, nearly falling off his rock when the skin Ned Umber tossed hit him in the face. After a long draught, he lowered it and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Well, that puts a period to the age of mundanity and muddling through. Others prowling, dragons breeding, this is a second Dawn and truly put. Miracles be the order of the day, a time for heroes and horrors both. I wonder what Lord Tywin would have made of it." Jon took the skin from Tyrion before he could get any drunker. I don't fancy having to carry him on my shoulders to keep him from falling in a pond. It appeared Jon's efforts were in vain though, for Tyrion trundled over to where Viserion snored and blurted out at him. "Congratulations, I suppose, you magnificent sodden bastard. I'd offer you Arbor gold, but Jon Snow stole it." His rambling got him an exhale of stifling air, the white dragon rolling further onto his side and sinking to his eyes in the mire of the Neck. At once the cow slid atop him, her children clambering about their sire's massive head until they managed to wriggle onto his snout. Viserion looked more like to turn to stone than ever move again. We're not getting him out of here, Jon realized. This is where he belongs.
A sudden shiver from Dany got Jon off brooding quickly.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
"Just one of your wretched northern gusts, Jon Snow. It seems the north is as eager to meet me as welcome you." Jon frowned.
"I'm hardly snug and warm, Dany, but there's no cold wind here. Not with all the trees of the Neck to fend it off." Her cheeks turned pink.
"Perhaps it's just a desire to be properly dry again. If I'm cold, I'm cold and there's not the least bit of a thing your wild thievery can do about it." she pouted, trying to be playful even in the bogs.
"Isn't there?" he asked, wrapping her in his cloak before she could huff. He put a period to the moment by stealing a kiss, her lips still full and plush even dry and chapped as they were.
"Hmph!" she muttered grumpily, crossing her arms and turning away. Though he wanted nothing more than to tease her further, the rest of the north awaited them and the Others certainly weren't wasting time playing such games.
"Tyrion, how can we get him to come with us?"
"Perhaps if he knew how Drogon behaved on Dragonstone, he'd come just to show him up. That sounds more like Rhaegal though, Viserion never much struck me as the type to much care either way." By the crannogmen's estimate they were nearly upon Moat Cailin.
"From there, you need only march northeast to reach White Harbor." they'd said. Meanwhile we sit here trying to divine the mystery of life staring at a few lizards. He found Owyn as quick as he could manage.
"We'll press on. The dragon will come, or he will not."
"He will. Lord Howland was iron certain on that point." That took Jon aback.
"What made him so certain?" Owyn of Greywater Watch frowned. "Howland Reed is Lord of the Neck. It is not an orphan's place to question him. Nor a king's, if he is wise." His meaning could not have been less blunt. Well, everyone always says northmen are dullards and dunces who need to have their heads shoved in a dragon's mouth to realize it's hot in there. Jon took it upon himself to pass word down to the others that they would soon be quit of the marshes.
"But what about Viserion?" Daenerys asked reproachfully, her big purple eyes as harmless and empty of guile as a child's.
"What about him, Dany? This wet marshy realm is his realm now. It belongs to him more than it ever has to any Marsh King or King in the North, to say nothing of the Iron Throne." Dany's pouty lips shrank into a quizzical line.
"Say rather, he belongs to it."
"One is the other. But you knew that, you clever." He saw her cheeks turn red and she looked away, a steep contrast to her giggling and feigned pouting. That's how I know I've gotten the best of her, he realized. I'll just keep that in my back pocket for later. He made himself further useful by taking Harra off her mother's hands, the crannogmen providing aid as they could. Not in a wet nurse, whose own milk might have contained the gods only knew what, but in snug leather bundles that could be worn across the shoulders, the babe flush to the bearer's chest.
"Even arms like yours need a rest now and aye, lad." Tormund told Sigorn, slinging Aynikka's bundle over a shoulder gentle as if he were a maidservant. The hairiest ever to rock a babe, I'll wager. Dany took charge of Torrha, whispering to the babe in what sounded to Jon like Valyrian. With the aid of the Neck's inhabitants they continued north, making time such that their struggles to get as far as they did look as if they had been standing still. We're well set up just now, Jon thought, but in no shape to be set upon by wights. Much less Others. Hopefully we reach Moat Cailin and find the ruin silent and empty.
The ancient stronghold's three towers became visible after another few days, the moss-caked ruins looming ever closer even through the foliage of the Neck. The closer they got the finer the edge Jon's nerves stood on, half-ready to dive into a pond or lake at a moment's notice. Despite his disinterest in them outside the lodge, they caught the odd glimpse of his great pale body slinking through the muck, thoughtless as though he were sliding through empty air.
"Not so lazy after all." Jon said as they laid out for the night. Their last in the Neck if Owyn told it true and the gods were good.
"He's lazier than Drogon and Rhaegal put together. The last to hunt, the one most willing to take food from the hands of men. At least, before I chained him beneath the Great Pyramid. But men tickle his curiosity as well, and I'll bet it's the strange-smelling hill tribes and northmen who keep him interested.
"We don't smell like anything but the Neck by now, Dany. Reeds and moss and mud and still water." At that, Dany frowned. "Don't trouble yourself anyhow, sweetling. At least he's shadowing us." The white dragon had yet to be joined by the cow and her little ones though. Perhaps she's content to go back into the lodge and be quit of the lot of us. Jon could not say whether he was more relieved by her absence or Viserion's presence. She knows nothing of the Others or the war yet to be fought. Men are horses both are merely food in her eyes. Jon remembered the bulls beneath the walls of Riverrun, hides feathered harmlessly with steel bits, even here and there the head of a pike. It was not so with the black cow, whose sides and back were spotless. It stands to reason. No steel is scratching dragonscale. The trees began to clear though the ground was no less marshy and the Dothraki in particular were a bit premature in their decision to remount, horse and rider both sinking up to their necks in a hidden deep pool. Though the man was lucky enough to find a log to pull himself up onto, the horse could only thrash about for a moment before vanishing beneath the pool's surface. Viserion's great golden crown of horns broke it a second later, the limp carcass of the horse locked in his golden teeth. Food both in his eyes as well. Maybe he wants nothing to do with us, it's our horses he fancies. A low contented rasp filled the air even as the horse's chest crunched together, Viserion happy to let half of the animal hang out of his mouth. He certainly strikes a grand impression, but will he count when he meets the Others and their chattel? It was hard to picture the cream-and-gold stirred to wroth the way Drogon most often was. Eating, sleeping, giving his cow the odd tumble. Hardly evocative of Balerion the Black Dread. While Jon brooded Viserion simply crunched on the carcass, swallowing it down without delay.
"Dragons cook meat before they eat it." Daenerys said at once, looking up at him with a worried frown.
"Well, Owyn did say lizard-lions don't breathe fire. He's been living in the Neck a year or more, attended by who knows how many cows. Might be he thinks of himself as a lizard-lion now." It was exactly the wrong thing to say, Dany's eyes going big and filling with tears. Real ones this time. She blames herself still for trying to keep the Meerenese safe. Rather than trip over his own tongue a second time, Jon settled for Dany cozying up next to him, warm despite the sodden chill of the Neck.
Owyn woke him with the sun yet to eke its way over the horizon, quiet as could be.
"What's wrong?" Jon mouthed at once.
"The moat. They've been reinforcing it for an hour." The crannogman mouthed back.
"Them?"
"Dead men. Thronging from the north and east." That can't be right, Jon thought. The Wall, they still have the Wall to contend with. Had the Others somehow frozen the Bay of Ice? It would take so much. A river ran alongside the Shadow Tower, one wildlings forded oft enough to make patrolling it a necessary headache for old Denys Mallister. Freezing that would serve just as well and take much less time. He couldn't recall getting to his feet.
"How close can we get?" Owyn answered by taking him right up to where the last of the tree line stood, Moat Cailin looming large out of the darkness. Not a thousand feet away, Jon thought. His eyes were not Ghost's, but even in the darkness he could hear the shuffling and plodding of countless listless bodies. "Could we go past them?"
"You could. You would not long outpace them, though. White Harbor is close as the raven flies, but not that close. Even without the young and the old and fresh horses for all, you might just reach the white walls before the dead men caught up with you." Jon put his hand over his eyes.
"We can't linger any longer. Wights do not work bows, they will not be able to take advantage of their position as if they were living men. Should they mass out at us, they will founder and fall in the marshy ground. They may have great numbers, but they will not be able to bring them to bear effectively." It was not a good plan, merely the best of several bad options, and this fact was not lost on Owyn of Greywater Watch.
"Your Grace, I must disagree. Even if they fail to kill you all, they will fill the dry ground and simply wait. You will not be able to take a step out of the Neck without finding yourself in the midst of the dead standing hundreds deep." And no amount of tricksy finagling will get us to where we need to be. As the moments passed it became more and more apparent just what was needed. Owyn led him back to where the column was encamped, the pace yet unbroken. Jon brushed his lips against the tips of his fingers and tapped the kiss onto Dany's cheek, who murmured and rolled over. Ever dozy. Lazier even than Viserion, he thought with a wistful smile. Time to do something stupid.
To Jon's great apprehension the cow had reappeared, installed resolutely upon the great pale body as was her wont. Such behavior struck Jon as singularly un-lizard-lion like. Cows do not perch on their husbands' backs and dare others to knock them off. A bit of dragon there, I think. As Jon figured, she turned her great head toward him on his approach and began to hiss.
"Good morning to you, too." Jon said evenly. Either she understood his words, or she did not care for his tone, because her hissing got louder until it rumbled from the depths of her belly. Less a hiss and more a long low grunt. "I haven't time for this. Ever since I've come south it seems some black-scaled backside or other is always getting in the way, and just now I'm as close to my homeland as I've been in more than a year. If I'm going to get my people out of this swamp, I need your husband's help." She slid off Viserion's back, trotting directly toward Jon. Her grunting deepened further, mouth opening wide. Deep green light flickered at the back of her throat. She's no suckling babe, Jon thought. She would douse me in moss-colored flame without a second thought. She didn't, though. She sat there, rumbling away with death roiling in her lungs, but did not put period to her threat. Eventually the standoff caught Viserion's interest, enough even to dredge him from the tepid waters and bring him strutting over. The cow's ire vanished at once, what might have been a purr issuing from her gullet as she raked his chest with her head. Temper and tenderness all in one. Viserion took her attention in stride, eyes slowly sliding shut until a sudden breeze blew from behind Jon. His snort of alarm made Jon jump high enough to look him in his gone-wide golden eyes. Still as a statue, he rolled his ivory-cut eyes in a long deliberate arc. Finally they settled on Jon, looking infinitely more interested than he had at the lodge. He smells Drogon, he thought shakily. Perhaps he doesn't fancy a rival for the wild girl's affections. Perhaps it would have been worse had the little ones been present (or at least within sight) but Jon found it wiser not to push his luck, backing away while Viserion wasn't paying attention. Unfortunately, he noticed, nostrils shrinking. His head snaked forward after Jon, eyes narrowing into suspicious slits. Oh, hells. Whatever had gotten the dragon's attention seemed to have taken its leave, though, because after another few moments of Viserion bearing down on Jon, sniffing all the while, jets of scalding air escaped his snout and he made to return to his waiting girl. Panicking slightly, Jon reached for him. He had only enough time to envision the endless tide of walking corpses packed to bursting in Moat Cailin before a blow came with enough force to knock him back into the waking world, setting him flat on his back. Not near so gentle as Ghost would do, he thought dizzily. Even dazed, even lolling, Jon knew full well what had happened. He kicked me out, sure as sunrise. Even Drogon had not reacted so in the riverlands, though… He's been reached for before. By a warg.
He took a moment to get air back in his lungs, the wights and the realm beyond them for the moment forced from his mind. None of the crannogmen were wargs- or at least, nobody had mentioned it. They are not talkative by nature, but even so I would think they would say something should wargs live in these bogs. Their sigils were not the sort of creatures that stuck Jon as the kind open to wargs, though. Creeping plants and crawling insects, not birds and beasts. Finally he got his feet under him and he stood, half-expecting Viserion to catch him in his golden teeth from behind. When he turned the dragon was flush against the ground, watching him warily. Despite his reserved nature, Jon felt a smile creep across his face. Gently, so gently, he reached for Viserion again, this time with thoughts of giants and mammoths and Ghost. You've taken the Neck in hand, that's clear, boy. You want to make some real noise, though, you come north with us. Your girl and your little ones will be here when you get back, that I promise. Viserion's curiosity was beyond stoked, no doubt the idea of men as tall as trees as fascinating to him as they had been to the Dothraki. When he went back to the encampment Viserion followed, cantering upright as Drogon had on Dragonstone rather than wallowing forth as a lizard-lion might have done. Jon eased Dany awake, her reluctance not altogether unexpected.
"Dany, we're nearly out. No need to sit there and sleep until you turn into a mushroom."
"You're a mushroom. A Snowshroom. A thiefshroom!" she proclaimed sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
"None of that now. We're needed at White Harbor, and Winterfell as well." No telling whatever where Drogon gets it from, Jon thought, rolling his eyes. Her drowsiness vanished on feeling the new-lit heat emanating off Viserion, replaced with wonder at his wired alertness. "His curiosity outstripped his laziness." Jon explained. Of, course the dragon's heat, a far cry from the chilliness that had blanketed the clearing, soon saw the rest of them waking. Some, more elegantly than others. The babes began to wail for milk, the Dothraki and the hill tribesmen grumbling and grouchy. "We're moving on." Jon announced, loud enough to be heard by all. Such tidings were enough to earn a chorus of whoops and shouts of joy, so elated that he was sorry to cut them short. "We're marching on Moat Cailin. Somehow, a host of wights have got around the Wall and stand squarely between us and White Harbor. We've no way of telling the Manderlys of our predicament and anyway, they'd get here too late to be of help, so we're going to see to this ourselves." Unsurprisingly, talk of marching on Moat Cailin earned aghast looks from Little Ned Umber and Lady Karstark both. Even Lothor Brune, the famously unfazed, looked rather uncertain.
"Moat Cailin has never been taken from the south, Your Grace." Tyrion said, emerging from behind Shagga, son of Dolf.
"Not by men, no. If Balerion could lay Harrenhal low, though, as large and well-garrisoned a castle as ever there has been, then certainly a crumbling ruin infested with wights is well within Viserion's capabilities." Their uncertainty melted into realization.
"Jon…you want him to…" Daenerys trailed off.
"Set Moat Cailin alight? Aye. And all the wights as well. The stone will keep, the great blocks of basalt. The wights, cold flesh and dry bone, will not. If it means we'll make White Harbor unmolested, I'd happily watch Viserion burn Moat Cailin to the ground."
It made for a splendid picture, surely, but at the Neck's border Viserion looked confused if anything. Up boy, up. Spread those gold-flecked wings and cover the castle with your shadow. Daenerys seemed to sense what Jon was thinking.
"It is not in his nature, Jon. He is not Rhaegal, not Drogon." she said quietly.
"Not one to send men to the hereafter without a second thought, you mean. Wights are not men, Dany. Viserion will realize just what needs to be done when he sees for himself." Oh, gods, I hope so anyway. Or this will go spectacularly poorly. All those who could not fight, the young and old, were put in Alys Karstark's charge. Jon would have preferred Tyrion, but he knew the Dosh Khaleen would never consent to follow a dwarf. What surprised Jon was that the crannogmen showed no signs of remaining in the Neck, massing at swamp's edge and in considerable number. A drop in the bucket compared to the wights, though. "All right, let's go." Jon said, Tormund and Sigorn close behind him as he advanced on the ruin. Just as dawn peeked over the marsh Jon heard the unmistakable sound of feet uncounted squishing toward him. Implacably, but slowly. Wights are clumsy creatures when given dry even ground to stagger around on, let alone oozing muck. The sound grew louder, until it became impossible to tell one gait from another.
"Snow." Tormund said suddenly.
"What is it?"
"There's no call to throw your life away." he said quietly, hands gripping an axe. Despite his misgivings, he did not leave Jon's side.
"What?" Jon asked, utterly baffled.
"You have plenty here, now, to live for. Ygritte can wait, in all her kissed-by-fire glory." Mention of Ygritte stopped Jon cold.
"Tormund, just what the fuck are you on about?" he asked, the wights blown from thought even as they shuffled closer, a black line against the weak light of dawn. Tormund looked as Jon had never seen him, ashen and aggrieved. He did not look so even when he told me of Torwynd. Jon waited for Tormund Giantsbane to speak, but for once the storied blowhard was quite lost for words. Only when Viserion finally took wing, rising slowly with the sun, did Jon look away from the old raider. The dragon drifted lazily toward them, content to merely bob along. At least, until he caught sight of what lay out in front of him like a roving swarm of arrowhead ants. He turned on a pinhead, looking back as if disbelieving of his own great golden eyes. Dead men don't walk in Essos, after all. "Go on, boy! Go at them! Give them your golden flame!" Jon shouted, waving Longclaw north. Viserion gave a scream from on high, circling tightly overhead. He does not know what to do. He's afraid to tangle with them, he's thinking he'll be chained up again, he- The black cow exploded from the muck, thrashing through the mud toward the oncoming throng with the speed of a running horse. Jon heard her great scaled body crash through the wights, bones crunching and bodies knocked every which way. At once the masses converged on her, prompting a furious scream from Viserion. For a moment Jon despaired, then a moss-green furnace ignited in the pile and the cow had wights falling like leaves in autumn, ash and dust before they could hit the ground. Even as the wights on her back continued to claw and bite, Jon realized they were no more likely to hurt her than the countless Frey knights she had devoured in years past. Another scream from Viserion, this one deeper, fuller. Come on, boy! She's doing her bit, now you do yours! In moments it seemed the sunrise was coming from the north rather than the east. Far closer, far hotter. Mighty as she was though, the Cannibal had not given his get wings was well as flame. By the time the wights had next reached her, Viserion's patience had reached its end. With a roar, the proper roar of a proper dragon, the white dragon sent a curtain of whirling golden flame cutting cleanly through the mob. The cow was none the worse for wear, even when her king's fire cascaded brilliantly off her back, but the dead men died by the hundred, by the thousand. Immediately it was apparent to Jon Viserion's vantage point allowed for unrestricted targeting of the wights but even incandescently enraged, his fury was not blind. He cut long staggered gashes in the ranks of wights such so that the fires on the ground were soon outpacing him in the wholesale destruction of the dead. All the while, even over the raging blazes, Jon heard more and more pour out of Moat Cailin. This was not lost on Viserion, who with a blood-curdling bellow shot straight for the castle. Jon had time for a single breath before the dragon's golden flame caught the Drunkard's Tower head-on, the blaze racing down the moss-slick rock. It seemed in half a moment the entire ruin was glowing bright enough to blind with hungry golden light. Viserion landed on the Gatehouse Tower, bellowing his anger out for all to hear. Staking his claim. The sight, all told, nearly made Jon weep. Dragons, he thought, wonderingly, ecstatically.
"Jon." a voice said. "Jon." Tormund's hand on his shoulder shook him out of his reverie. Dazedly he turned to look on the wild hairy face. "Let's go." Tormund jerked his head northeast. "We ought be able to catch the others if we hurry, even in this muck."
"Tormund…" Jon whispered, turning back to the burning ruin.
"I see it, lad. Clear as I see you. Just now, I'd sooner see that merlord's feast table again, though. Pale-scale's going to be at it for a good while, long enough maybe to spell an end to this particular mob. When he's done though, I want him to have time to cool his head before you go poking him in the eye or some other damned Snow nonsense." He all but marched Jon onward, keeping him moving even as Sigorn made a point not to turn around. Tormund's odd behavior, Sigorn's silence, neither could get Jon's mind off the destruction Viserion rained down upon the dead. We could win, Jon thought. It was the first time such an idea had ever reared its head. No need for R'hllor, Melisandre or her banal nightfires. What did Melisandre of Asshai know of fire that Viserion of the Neck did not? Even when they had been walking an hour, the western horizon remained a curtain of dull golden light that seemed unlikely to go out in the near future.
"Wipe your face, Jon Snow. Your tears have cut queer paths through the muck on your cheeks." Sigorn said sternly. Jon's wrist came up, pulling what mud he could from his face. They walked until the sun began sliding back to earth, finally catching up to the rest of the column. There were more crannogmen than could be believed, an army in their own right. Jon half-expected another mass of wights to come lumbering down toward them out of the moors but they remained unmolested for the moment, their only hindrance the frequent biting gales that raced tirelessly from one end of the North to the other. Dany was of course much relieved to see him, though her reproachful pout told him of what she thought of his actions.
"You had no way of knowing whether Viserion would work it out." she said, after she'd dashed into his arms to the whooping and cheering of those nearby.
"He's more than smart enough. It's just a manner of getting him to understand." Jon replied, kissing her neck, her cheek, even the tip of her nose until she screamed with ticklishness.
"Just wait 'till the merlord opens his larder, lads." Tormund was saying loudly to the hill tribesmen. "Roast chicken, whole sides of beef, pork ribs, a dozen kinds of fish…" Each of them was bonier than the next and most could only stare at Tormund, scarcely able to imagine the largesse he described. And that only the smallest portion, Jon thought. The moors began to flatten somewhat, sheep paddocks and empty snow-swept fields marking the end of the wilderness proper and the beginning of House Woolfield's holdings. Three white woolsacks on a purple field. Pillows in all but name. And everyone things all the northern sigils fierce. They stopped in a small village that stood empty, its smallfolk no doubt taking shelter behind White Harbors high stone walls. Though Jon had watches set for any hint of approaching dead men, the only disturbance came midway through the night when Viserion sailed out of the west to curl up right in the thick of things and fall asleep, bold as he pleased. At a glance Jon could tell he was none the worse for wear, scales left without a scratch. I suppose the cow slunk back into the Neck, back with her children.
"Maybe he thinks there are other Necks up here somewhere worth peeking at." Tyrion said dryly, sitting up against a bale of hay.
"With other dragon-blooded lizard-lions in them, no doubt." Jon replied, making Tyrion snort with laughter. Out of the corner of his eye, Jon saw Dany's eye twitch again. Her lovely face was always so serious, even regal, but whenever the cow or her ancestry came up it was as if Dany's face was stuck mid-sneeze. "I'm sure it must be something. You make this face like you're smelling sour rather than tasting it." Jon teased as she took her customary place next to him. On cold ground, but blessedly dry. Divinely dry.
"It's nothing. Nothing, at least, I pray we ever have to deal with." He knew better than to press her.
"We should make White Harbor tomorrow."
"White Harbor and a bath. I don't care if the water's freezing, I don't care if I have to set myself alight to get all this off." Dany said, shuddering in her layers on layers of fur and leathers.
"No need for flame. If it's to do with getting you wearing moonlight and aught else, I'll find whatever's needed and do whatever needs doing." Jon smirked, giving her a kiss on the cheek. She gave the rosy blush again, looking away, and Jon knew he had won. For today, anyway. Every day is some new game with her, one I'm more than glad to play.
