Tyrion
Morning found him sore and stiff, feet aching and arse chafing. Even nose-blindness did nothing to hide the reek of dried mud, bog-muck and still water that permeated his clothes, yet Tyrion Lannister could only spread his arms and legs out and do a happy little wriggle. I'm not in the Neck, he thought. It was so fine a thing that soon the prospect of hard solid ground under him, of every step not imperiled by hidden fangs or stingers or biting mandibles or sudden bottomless sinkholes that in short order he was laughing, loud to his ears as wildfire explosions on the mouth of the Blackwater. A few muttered curses in Dothraki answered him, fierce jingling screamers who slept nearby, out under the sky but defiladed by the moors to hide from the winds the morn had brought. The ruckus roused several of the Feest retainers. They shuffled over impassively, staring at Tyrion with their beady black-green eyes, clutching their sharpened bones, their ears pierced not by jewels as he'd seen in Essos but by human teeth. And Cersei thought me a terror, a monster, worthy of seeing in every shadow. The crannogmen did not seem amused by his antics but just then Tyrion couldn't find it in himself to care. When the Dothraki began to stir and beheld the north proper for themselves, theirs was a very different sort of reaction. On their copper faces Tyrion saw disbelief, numbness, awe.
"A man on a fast horse could ride until day turns to night and night day again before he sees anything but rolling moor." Jon Snow said, looking at it as lesser men might look at a pile of gold. Not the Dothraki, though, Tyrion saw. There were no grumblings about stone tents because there were no stone tents. No complaining about the smell of animal dung because there was none. Just wide endless green a screamer could ride across all night and all day until the horse drops dead out from under him and still he'd be someplace identical to where he started. When the queen saw he was listening to them she came over, translating.
"It is a second Great Grass Sea." The Lhazareen youth among the Dosh Khaleen was saying to her elders, tears in her eyes. "It stretches out like a big man's hand and off into the distance until green becomes white and earth becomes sky. On and on and on forever." The crones did not seem able to believe their own eyes. One's mouth quivered, another gaped like a landed fish. The bent-backed eldest among the elderly stooped with the Lhazareen girl's aid and scooped up a handful of dirt. She held it to her nose and breathed deeply, closing her blind eyes for some purpose unknown to Tyrion.
"This is a hard land," she uttered, "hard and cold. And clean." The word caught him somewhat by surprise.
"Clean?" he asked while Daenerys relayed. .
"The Great Grass Sea grows in softer earth. There are no winds that race across it sharper than a swung arakh. People who dwell in stone tents and hide from the stars have little place here." The men among the Dothraki were already racing themselves from one end of the field to the other, eager to outride one another. Though the rest of her people looked to have fallen in love at first sight, the blind crone had an uncertain look on her face.
"What troubles her?" Tyrion asked. When the crone answered, Daenerys' own face grew worried.
"She says clean, but I think she means something else."
"That much I understand." Tyrion replied. Sometimes I forget she's as much girl as queen and has had more important things to do in her life than read and whore.
"Clean as in sharp, unspoiled. No animal pens or stys, because they'd never last here. Clean as in dangerous, where no life is taken for granted. The Great Grass Sea was not a hard world to live in, the Dothraki just made it so." Ah, now I see.
"Not so here. It doesn't take a man trying to kill you to die in the north." he concluded. She bit her lip and nodded grimly.
That sobering thought pushed the Neck from Tyrion's mind. All for the better. I might have been blind to the perils of the north at hand remembering those of the Neck. When next he looked to the hilltops and the cresting moors, he shivered. I wonder what might find us on the way to White Harbor.
"We'd best get on," Tyrion told the King in the North, "I don't fancy being out in these hills at night. Not with wolves and shadowcats about, not to mention your white specter."
"Ghost is far away." Jon Snow replied automatically. "Near Queenscrown if I saw right." That took Tyrion aback.
"Any idea why?"
"Maybe he was keen to be quit of men. Maybe he took up with a pack somewhere." His broodiness seemed to worsen by the moment.
"Well, Ghost or no Ghost, we should start moving." Tyrion said bracingly. "No doubt the next time you see him you'll find a few little white pups tumbling about in tow."
"Or a mob of wights." Cheery. For a moment I forgot I was talking to a northman. He rubbed his cheeks to keep them from going numb. I'm not made for this sort of country. A sudden trumpeting quite drove his cheeks from his mind and Tyrion saw Jon Snow go to ground at once, creeping up a hillside to peek over the top. More sounds joined the trumpeting. Rowdy bellowing voices roaring curses and shouting boasts drowned out even the Dothraki who abruptly stopped their fooling and looked toward the north in alarm. Before Tyrion could make up his mind on what to do himself, Jon came back down the hill and over to them, all without a sound. "Giants." The word made Tyrion's spine tingle uncomfortable.
"Isn't that a good thing?" Daenerys asked.
"No. They don't look like normal giants, the kind that are at Winterfell. And the mammoth they have is massive. The best thing to do would be to go around, to keep as close to the coast as possible. The giants I know have a poor attitude toward the sea, maybe these share their view."
Once word had filtered to the Dothraki that there were giants over the berm, their first reaction was to surge over the hill and meet them head on. A sharp rebuke from the queen chastened them somewhat, along with what Jon Snow said next.
"Horses are terrified of mammoths, and this one is the biggest by far I've ever seen. Small help your horses will be when they buck you off at the smell of mammoth and leave you ripe for pasting." Tyrion was sure he'd misheard.
"Pasting?"
"Aye. An angry giant can turn a man into so much red splatter without a second breath. It was a big problem when they first joined Mance's host. Only took a few lessons from the Free Folk to learn to let the giants and their mammoths be." Tormund Giantsbane said in an almost reverent tone. Some Giantsbane. The voices only got louder and rowdier until there was a sudden thud of fist meeting face and then it sounded as though the mother of battles were happening not a half-mile away.
"Come on," Jon Snow said, while the horselords' eyes widened around him. "They don't sound much in the mood for visitors anyway."
"What do you suppose they're doing over there?" Tyrion asked, not bothering to whisper.
"Fighting about something, another telling difference from the big lads I know." He made to go around the hill and head northeast when Viserion stirred behind them, finally roused by the noise. He gave a sweltering yawn that quite drove away the cold for a moment before turning toward the berm, as if to make certain what he was hearing wasn't just a dream. Then the cream wings spread. Uh oh. The dragon launched himself into the air, sliding gracefully toward the unseen giants even as he idly rose. After a heart-stopping moment the sounds of conflict abruptly died. A decidedly feminine (for a giant's) voice blurted out in a stone language that might have been something of the Old Tongue. The giants' shouting resumed, elated this time and the furious row not a minute past forgotten as if it never happened. Quick to anger, quick to calm. Wicked storms made flesh. Wonderful, Tyrion thought queasily. The noise of heavy pounding feet joined the giants' voices and they began to move off after Viserion. Should he wish to, he'll leave them cleanly in the dust. Tyrion waited until he could no longer hear them before turning to the King in the North to see what he ought do next. "We'll press on," Jon Snow said, tongue between his teeth, "as quietly as we can manage." Daenerys' quivering lip was not lost on Tyrion.
"Viserion will be fine, Your Grace. He just went over for a peek at them, that's all." he told her. They started northeast again while he thought. A bloody dragon swooped over them and they didn't flinch. That they were simply unfamiliar with dragons and what they could do was the possibility that loomed foremost in Tyrion's mind. Then again, he thought, nobody's ever been as far north as the Land of Always Winter, no more than they have the northern shores of the Shivering Sea or the White Waste. It could be that tales of ice dragons are no tales at all.
No one was particularly keen on meeting more giants on the way to White Harbor. The suggestion to make for the coast and follow it straight north to the port city won over the others, even with the winds whipping off the Bite worsening steadily as they got near the water. Voices found them once again but the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities as well as shouts and swears in the Common Tongue sounded sweet as music to Tyrion's numb ears. As before, those in front went flush against the hillside while those unfit for battle stayed behind. Jon Snow peeked over.
"Golden banners. No device." he said at once. The Golden Company. "I can see a small detachment of Unsullied. No more than two or three dozen. The whole lot are coming off half a dozen ships that look to have barely made it this far north."
"The storm must have scattered the whole fleet, not just tossed us on the Vale's shores." Tyrion whispered back. Varys' words lingered in his mind. "I dream of the voice." Well, my unfortunate friend, the voice I heard on the Narrow Sea will stick with me until I die. He saw too, the look on Jon Snow's face. "Sellswords they may be, but they're a disciplined lot. Exiles and the sons of exiles, no less Westerosi than you or I, Jon Snow."
"When your counsel is wanted, it will be asked for, my lord." the king replied, looking singularly irritated. The sound of wings overhead quite rendered the question of whether to greet the sellswords moot as Viserion descended, his golden gaze locked on the men coming ashore. Just as he had with the giants, the dragon provoked a stark change in attitude. Shouts and screams made it clear there was no hope of making it up the shoreline undiscovered so Jon Snow stood up, muttering something in the Old Tongue which made Sigorn snort in amusement. Tyrion let Jon Snow go on with the queen, the Dothraki in fighting shape and a horde of crannogmen before he asked the big Thenn what was said.
"A kneeler is a kneeler, no matter what side of the water he is from." Tyrion was almost touched in an offended sort of way. The Dothraki of course barely tolerated Tyrion's presence as a pet of their khaleesi. As a rule, the horselords did not suffer a dwarf to live among their people. The other Westerosi lords who had rallied to Daenerys' banner found him repellent in a different way, cunning and dangerous. But still the dwarf, he thought. At Winterfell I'll be reviled for my name before my height. For being a kneeler, not for being a dwarf. A first, to be sure. Even from far off Tyrion could see that Fortune was not one of the ships vomiting its passengers out onto the snow-dusted beach. Perhaps he reached White Harbor, then. All the better he's someplace civilized, perhaps the last place in the north that could rightly be called so. The crone had it right, the north has a nasty habit of imposing itself on all that live within it. The Dothraki can call it "clean" all they like, but it's just too bloody unforgiving for people with sense in their skulls. The same principle applied to the Neck and the Mountains of the Moon. He watched a passing Redbind man pause at the sight of Lord Umber's wriggling burlap bag only to pull out a slaver's whip of even greater length from his pocket, making Ned go white. Below them still more crannogmen pooled about the white dragon when he landed like a droning horde of bone hornets while the sellswords did their utmost to keep at a good distance. Is it the dragon they're leery of or the people of the Neck? Soft southerners are we, Jon Snow? Tyrion mused. Shit on that. A savage is a savage, no matter what side of the Narrow Sea he's from.
Before Jon Snow could provoke the sellswords Tyrion took it upon himself to get into the middle of it all las quickly as possible.
"There are giants and the gods only know what else loose on the northern moors. Just now we ought get to White Harbor as fast as we can manage. We can start getting prickly with each other when there's hot food and drink to get prickly over." What men among them didn't speak the Common Tongue translated for their brothers-in-arms. The prospect of a hot meal was carrot enough to get them moving while the men in charge as could be found relayed the situation.
"The storm smashed us. I've not seen hide nor hair of anyone else…"
"The others won't have sunk." Tyrion assured him. "Most likely the fleet's just been scattered along the shores of the Bite. We were bringing up the rear when we lost the rest of you and we ended up running aground at the base of the Mountains of the Moon."
"Then how the fuck did you get here?" the officer asked.
"We went through the mountains with the help of what hill tribesmen remain, through the Neck by the grace of the crannogmen and here we are."
"The dragon wasn't on Dragonstone, though."
"No, he wasn't. We found him basking in the Neck." Tyrion shrugged, as if the circumstances were so mundane. "At least now we know how he remained hidden for so long." He took a closer look at the man while the rest of the column that had come by land came down the hill. A knight, with a knight's aversion to our swamp-dwelling friends. Though the crannogmen were of astonishing number they didn't seem to make the noise such a crowd ought and they left precious little traces of their passing compared to the rest, even the northmen.
"I remember my father telling me stories of the Neck." he said.
"The real thing is worse than any story. Who was your father?" Tyrion asked.
"Ser Alek Thorne, and I'm Ser Alyn." Tyrion remembered the time he'd spent in the company of Ser Alliser Thorne when he visited the Wall. A singularly unpleasant man.
"The Thornes are from the crownlands, what drove your father to exile?" Ser Alyn chuckled dryly.
"Why, your own, my lord. He and my mother had been married not a fortnight when the Sack came. Rather than stay and face the lion's wroth, he fled to Essos. One of many."
"Lord Tywin did not execute all those who fought under Aerys' standard until the end." Tyrion said, surprised at such a reaction.
"A quick death at the end of a sword or rope or a slow one at the hands of countless cold nights on the Wall. Pardon me, my lord, but I rather feel my father made the right decision." Tyrion frowned. It was true enough that once the dragons fell, the crownlands' significance diminished considerably. And shrank still further with Stannis as their overlord, brooding on Dragonstone while the capital turned its eyes westward. Jon Arryn might have been Robert's Hand but it was Lord Tywin who held the scepter. That was most probably deliberate, as certainly he had been astute enough to realize whittling away at possible Targaryen loyalists must needs be done even as House Lannister was in the ascent. And now the Rock's golden pride of lions is gone, down to one doddering dwarf. What, I wonder, would you have made of that, my lord?
As they went they found others who had come ashore in similar shambles as Ser Alyn's group. Mostly sellswords and Dothraki, the former quick to gape at Viserion overhead and the latter flush with relief at the reappearance of the queen. The dragon, Tyrion observed, was not slow to notice that their aim seemed to be picking up as many people as possible. Occasionally he flew out ahead only to return a scant few minutes later, the growing column coming upon the men he had alerted in due course. He scarcely turned his eyes inland, making Tyrion breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing to see. There were Westerosi to meet as well, sworn to this lord or that who had heard tales from their lieges of what had happened in the throne room. If only Balerion had turned his breath upon the throne as soon as it was forged. With Drogon on the mind Tyrion sought out the queen, now astride a palfrey thanks to one of the parties being made up more of animals than men. Even a lone elephant trundled in their midst, a few archers peering down from the small tower on its back. The horses refusing outright to go anywhere near the animal even at the urging of the Dothraki. Jon Snow told it true. The King in the North spend the journey with a hand on the reins of the queen's horse, making her giggle every so often with some unheard Snow wisdom or jape. Their closeness could not have been missed by a blind fool, and the Golden Company was not comprised of those. Then again, what do they care? Their captains and commanders might be loyal to Aegon but the common sellswords will follow anyone who feeds them. The next people they found were alone but for each other, without a ship in sight. Oh gods, what now? Tyrion thought, despairing at the sight of long red robes. He turned to Jon, who looked as eager to greet the red priestess and her cohort as Tyrion himself.
"You go talk to them." they both said at the same time, making the queen laugh aloud. The sound drew their new friends' gaze while Tyrion felt his pockets, pulling a golden dragon out of one.
"I'll flip you for it." Tyrion said. Anything but more mages. "King or dragon?"
"Dragon." Jon Snow said immediately. Tyrion flipped the coin, the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen on one side and the unsightly visage of Aegon the Unworthy on the other. Come on Aegon, you sack of lard! He caught it and opened his palm, the dragon plain to see.
"Fuck me!" Tyrion snapped, throwing the coin into the swirl of snow and sand at his feet as the queen laughed from the back of her palfrey. As he moved toward the priestess the sellswords who were watching immediately started scrambling for the coin. "Welcome to Westeros." he called to the pair when he was close enough to be heard over the always-present wind. Still closer, Tyrion was surprised to recognize one of them. The so-called First Servant of the Lord of Light was just as Tyrion remembered her, hair the color of blood in dim light and guileless comforting eyes that well hid whatever was going on behind them. Kinvara's companion wore a dark cloak and a mask of lacquered wood, the eyes glinting out of it the only part of the person Tyrion could see. "You're a long way from Volantis." he continued, deciding that the masked person would speak if they had to.
"No journey is too long if taken in the service of the Lord." the priestess replied with an untroubled smile, her voice just high enough to give Tyrion the shivers.
"I'm afraid R'hllor or no R'hllor, you've come to a most perilous place."
"Where death walks and the winds are cold and hungry. Do I look afraid, my lord? Do I look cold?" More telling than Kinvara's confidence was her companion's silence. Is it me, or are you no fonder of her than I am? The eyes behind the mask seldom left the red priestess and were ever wary. Rather than play into Kinvara's game, Tyrion addressed the mask-wearer.
"Quaithe is my name, and I am of the Shadow." An Asshai'i, even better, Tyrion thought through gritted teeth.
"What misfortune brought you here, Quaithe?"
"The workings of one who called blindly into darkness, heedless of the evil that would answer." Just. Fucking. Lovely.
Tyrion was used to making a spectacle of himself but he couldn't help but feel self-conscious as everyone watched him talk to the two women.
"For all the pretty songs you sang back atop the Great Pyramid, you seem unrushed to meet Daenerys Targaryen for yourself."
"I wouldn't want to step on any toes. No doubt Lord Varys would disapprove of me speaking with Her Grace under any circumstances whatever, so I'll wait until he's present to hear what words I have for her. He is with you, yes?" What care is Varys of yours, witch?
"I'm afraid Varys perished in the liberation of King's Landing. Have no fear, there are no skeptics of the Red God in Westeros. Particularly in the north." For just a moment it was not Kinvara's innocent face he saw, but something wholly else. The red priestess' eyes became bottomless black hell-pits ringed in gold and her lovely countenance was shed in favor of something iron-hard. Then she blinked and all was as it had been before Tyrion told her of Varys' death. Her next words had lost their girlish pitch but steadily regained it as they were spoken.
"I did not know that. I am sorry, my lord. I know you spent many hours in his company and were as much a friend to him as he was like to have this side of the Narrow Sea." She looks most put out. However, such tidings had the opposite effect on Quaithe of the Shadow, who seemed to be relieved.
"All through time, men have tried to peer through the smoke and glimpse the future. This Varys sounds one wise beyond his years to so resist so perilous a thought."
"It depends, dear Quaithe, on which side of the smoke you are." Kinvara replied, Tyrion nearly forgotten.
"Yes, well, there is some small consolation in knowing Varys is now beyond whatever may have haunted him. If you would, my lady, we're on our way to safety-"
"You are on your way to war." Quaithe corrected him. "You would seek safety in the merman's strong arms. He is beset on all sides by countless foes, bemired in a fog that snuffs out all light it touches." Thoughts of Varys gave quick way to alarm, the plan once more dashed into countless pieces.
"But we're almost there, we'll never reach Winterfell with everything the Others are throwing at us-"
"This is true. I did not say rescuing the merman was the wrong course, just a costly one." Bleed this! Tyrion dashed back to the column as fast as his stunted legs would allow.
"What's wrong?" the queen asked. Jon Snow needed not mince words, no doubt knowing danger when it came running straight at him.
"I think the Others are trying White Harbor. We'd best get ourselves in something of an order of battle while those unfit hole up someplace far from the fighting." Jon Snow wasted no time, dashing off to coordinate what men were present and make them count for as much as possible.
By the time the rest of them realized they would soon be in the midst of battle, night had fallen and what shelter could be found from the wind and falling flakes was taken full advantage of. No armory to pick and choose from this time, Tyrion thought, wondering just where he'd find an axe. When he asked Ser Alyn if he had a weapon to spare, the knight stared at him.
"My lord, surely you don't mean to fight?"
"I killed a man with a shield once, even fought in battles here and there."
"You're not useless when you don't have to move, but I fear you won't be able to keep up when we take the others in the arse, Lannyman." Tormund said from behind him, Little Ned Umber shadowing the wildling. He won't be little much longer. I feel like he grows an inch a week.
"That and if you should be cut off from the main push you may find yourself trapped in a ring of dragonfire." Jon Snow added, looking at the bits they'd laid out for want of an actual map. "Come first light, we'll start creeping our way toward the city. We'll have to travel as lightly as possible to get there quickly." He pinched the bridge of his nose while the rest tried to sort themselves.
"If you're not going to take me along, at least let me assist here." Tyrion said, shuffling the bits into something resembling a proper order of battle. "The Dothraki should be mounted, of course, but I know less about the capabilities of the rest of the column when it comes to pitched battle." Lady Sworrm spoke for the crannogmen.
"Every child born in the Neck learns how to use the bow and the spear. We don't wear armor or ride horses, but we can bog the enemy down with numbers while the rest do the killing."
"Are any of you armed with dragonglass?" Tyrion asked, unsure about her plan.
"We are armed with each other. Ever More are our words, ever more our way of life." Tyrion shivered. Ants indeed.
"Then perhaps the best way to proceed would be what Unsullied we have in the front rank with crannogmen teeming behind them, waiting to surge over the spears and swamp the enemy. The Dothraki will have free reign to strike at anyone or thing so bemired. The Golden Company's contribution will be as rear guard with the hill tribesmen, making sure we aren't ourselves caught from behind." Tyrion made no mention of Viserion, though he was certain the white dragon was on most everyone's mind. Were I him, I'd be wondering why I ever left that bloody lodge. He was bigger than he'd been beneath the pyramid of course, what little harm captivity had done to his growth more than made up for by his time in the wilds of the Neck. Eating, swimming, breeding as he would. In the days after his disappearance on Dragonstone the queen nearly wore Tyrion's ears out with countless tales of Viserion as a hatchling, always curious and bobbing his head after things while Drogon would just loose his flame and Rhaegal would cling to the ceiling, hissing. While the rest found what rest they could, Tyrion waddled toward the self-made swamp of crannogmen that never failed to ring the dragon. They are not keeping him away from men, Tyrion knew. They are keeping men away from him. Thought they were a small lot Tyrion proved still the shorter, save for those among the Sworrm yet to reach manhood. There are so many. Although they proved astonishingly numerous as a people Tyrion saw it was the arrowhead ant and its vassal houses (if houses they could be called) that comprised the vast majority of the Neck's people present. And not a one among them is distinguishable from the other, save the women round about the belly. He found the prospect of wading through them singularly disturbing but wade he did, their big eyes following him placidly. No wonder there are so many, he saw. More of their women are pregnant than not. Ever More. His shiver then had nothing to do with the cold. Perhaps the lady had spoken true. They really mean to simply roll over everything in their path.
It took ten minutes for Tyrion to get clear of them, their whispers and low mutters to one another the only sound save for the dragon's breathing. Viserion gave another yawn, Tyrion's hair blowing back out of his eyes.
"Hello to you, too." The white lines between the pools of molten gold locked on him, though more out of want of things to look at just then than interest in Tyrion. His nerves were quickly deserting him, made worse by the low rasp that rumbled in Viserion's chest. Tyrion needed no translator learned in the tongue of dragons to grasp its meaning. Do something, or I will. "The last time we were alone, you were a stripling in chains and House Lannister held the Iron Throne. Now you've come into your own and House Lannister is fallen." The rumbling ceased, though Tyrion suspected it had little to do with what he was saying, only that he was saying something. "You may think that you hold all the world in your golden teeth. But you are young yet and have countless years ahead of you. Balerion counted two hundred years, if not more, and you've not yet seen ten." Tyrion stopped walking, the dragon's head just out of arm's reach. "There is someone in White Harbor who may share those years with you, enough to fill a man's lifetime at least. A man akin to your mother." The golden eyes blinked, their owner unmoved. Tyrion frowned. "I suppose it doesn't truly matter whether he is or isn't who he's purported to be. The throne he seeks is gone, the realm he means to rule a ravaged waste, broken along bloody lines." And he'd never flourish in the wilds as you have. Tyrion clapped his hands to his knees. "Don't take it badly if he approaches you, whatever he is. He's been told the same story over and over since birth, but once he sees you in the flesh…well, I suppose the truth will out." Meantime there's the small matter of the Others between you and him. He took his leave of Viserion before he tried the dragon's patience, emerging from the living ring to find a small group of men huddled around a cookfire, trying to keep it going. One of them spotted him.
"We can't sleep." Ser Alyn said, barely managing to keep his teeth from chattering.
"Still, better a rested head than a full belly." Tyrion replied.
"Not with this wind shrieking loudest just when it dies down and sausages on hand. Besides, even with the bogwalkers 'tween us and him, it's warmer near the dragon." So it is, Tyrion realized.
"Surely you've seen a hundred battles, Ser Alyn. You of anyone should know rest before one does a fighter good."
"A hundred meaningless scraps. Fighting for Lys against Myr or Tyrosh against Lys, fighting in the Disputed Lands which will never belong to anyone. It's different over here, where our fathers lived. We're not fighting to fatten a purse or expand some city's borders, either." Tyrion digested that awhile before speaking next.
"I suppose so. A different purpose than perhaps you thought you'd be put to when you left Essos."
"Aye, a beautifully simple one. The lions were vicious and corrupt and had fewer friends by the day. All there was to do was shove your sister off the throne and seat the lad there. The rest would be Arbor gold and fat-dowried noblewomen eager to marry the dragon's men."
"No doubt twenty-five years ago men in my father's army were having this exact conversation. Mad Aerys, brash brave Robert, the yoke of the dragonkings thrown off by the descendants of the men whose crowns Aegon took. Might be the night before the Trident two men in the prince's army were talking about what must needs be done when Robert was dealt with. There's no such thing as the last battle, only the next battle." Some of the sellswords around the pitiful fire laughed despite the cold.
"Unless you die." one of them said.
"I've heard no end of men who died fighting to the last, their names bywords for glory everlasting. Piss on glory everlasting. I'd sooner die utterly unsung of, on the wrong side of eighty than the wrong side of a blade, with a woman's mouth around my cock." Tyrion said flatly, the men around him roaring with laughter.
When dawn came, Tyrion found himself as nervous as on the morning he woke to see Oberyn Martell fight the Mountain. It's the waiting, he thought. The utter helplessness. At least when you have steel in your hand and your foe in front of you, you know what to do. The fighters among them moved off in the direction of the city with all speed while the rest, Tyrion included, followed at a more leisurely pace.
"It will be fine," Alys Karstark was saying, one of her daughters at her breast, "the king knows well how to fight the Others." Just what they were facing remained a mystery to most everyone, though only a fool could call the wind and snows and cold the normal caprices of the weather gods. Tyrion knew well the queen's feelings on that score. Well, it would be easier were Drogon and Rhaegal here. They weren't though, Drogon in some steaming green abyss on the far side of the world and Rhaegal the gods knew where. Those Sworrm women too far along to endure battle did not bother with words, doing their best to render the ground around their hillock a muddy bog with some kind of lime. Ingenious, Tyrion allowed, though it will not work half so well as they hope for with the ground frozen hard as granite. Viserion watched them at it, the turning wheels in the dragon's mind all but visible to Tyrion. Does he know what they're about? Once they finished and returned to the hillock to huddle with all the rest, Viserion took wing. He circled them again and again, as if torn between leaving the Sworrm women and flying off after the rest of the crannogmen. Then the golden fire curtained down upon the lime, the white dragon closing the lot of them in a blazing ring neat and round as the seal on a scroll. The flames reached high as a man stood tall in places, quite closing the people within it off from attack- save those who wished to brave the fire. Tyrion stood in numb astonishment alongside the rest while the crannogmen barely paid the golden fire a second glance. At Tyrion's incredulity, Lady Sworrm only shrugged.
"Any Sourwilt could tell you it is the way of the hangman vine. They dangle and creep in a ring around the plant proper, feeding it when they find a corpse." Or make one, Tyrion thought.
"Did you ever intend to muddy the ground or try and get Viserion to put a barrier between us and any foes?" Sworrm shrugged.
"We acted. So did he." It stood out as more than a little queer that the crannogmen understood the dragon better than his own mother did, queerer still that he seemed to prefer their company to hers. While Daenerys Targaryen warranted not a second look from the dragon that had once perched on her shoulder, he was slow to let the people of the Neck out from under his shadow. He has not forgotten who chained him up in darkness, Tyrion mused. That, or he has found where he wants to spend his long life and is partial to the people who share that world with him.
He stood at the queen's side as they watched Viserion fly after the army proper, soon leaving sight. Tyrion expected to hear sniffling but when he looked to Her Grace, her expression was firm. "He is his own creature." she said, answering his unasked question. And you are yours, Tyrion thought.
"I suppose I should be sad, but one of the things that ever gave me comfort in Essos was that no matter what else may happen, I helped dragons return to the world. At least the parts of it that men can reach." She looked into her hands. "Even if I died before I could set foot in Westeros…the dragons would live. Even if the Others are driven back and the Long Summer comes, I will still die long before the dragons do. One could even say I will not live to see them in their prime, truly." Then she did sniffle.
"All ends are only beginnings to things yet to come, Your Grace." Tyrion replied, trying to console her. The battle may be beyond me, but I can still help here. "The end of House Targaryen, for example. When you learned you were no child of Aerys' that spelled an end to House Targaryen sure as a pot of molten gold. But that begot you a father you never knew you had, a better sire by far than your brother could claim. And that didn't stop the lords from electing to follow you in the Red Keep, anyhow. Even burning the throne…I did not see it then, not truly, but I see now why you did it."
"Drogo always said a khal had no need of chairs."
"Well, not that I would know, but it seems he was right- and to mine eyes, our White Wolf counts as such in the estimation of the Dothraki."
"They don't know what to make of him." Daenerys replied. "Khals ride for war, but not the kind Jon Snow seeks. He cares not for plunder or slaves; he only wants the Others gone. The khalasar knows well this desire, to destroy an enemy, but the khals of the past who felt this way were riding against men no less mortal than they." While Jon Snow hunts a wintry race old when Man was young. A man of the Night's Watch still, in that regard. "I feel like I'm on the Great Grass Sea again, waiting for battle to cease so that I may rejoin the khal." The Lhazareen girl among the Dosh Khaleen shuffled over, shivering despite the golden flames. With company to keep her occupied, Tyrion left the queen to speak Dothraki as she would. He was just wondering about whether it would be a good idea to piss into the flames when the red priestess' voice issued form somewhere over his shoulder.
"Busy here," Tyrion replied, deciding if nothing else, he'd be remembered for this. And I don't want to piss where someone may step, we are stuck here after all.
"Forgive my absence, my lord." Kinvara's voice was as eerily high-pitched as ever. A girl's voice from a woman's mouth.
"You seem curiously at ease for someone who ought fear the Others most." When he hiked his breeches back up and turned, he found the red priestess standing rather closer than Tyrion would have liked, Quaithe of the Shadow lingering at her elbow. The flames at his back all but roasted his ass, but Tyrion Lannister could feel no warmth emanating from this First Servant of the Lord of Light.
"You will pardon the inquiry," Kinvara said in a voice that cared not a tin bob just what Tyrion might pardon, "but did you see him die?" Tyrion was startled both by her proximity and the look in her eyes. It's just the flames reflecting off them, dwarf. Nothing to piss yourself about. Your bladder's empty, anyhow.
"The castle all but flooded the day Cersei was cast down. It was the only way to flush all the wildfire out from its foundation. I myself just barely managed to escape, I can think of no way Lord Varys might have survived." Again the golden glint in her eyes, deeper and darker than the white dragon's flames. Again the hungry, hardened look. You may put little and less stock in gods, my friend, but thank them you are in their company now and not this creature's. "I don't suppose you'd be kind enough to tell us the outcome of the battle?" Tyrion asked, hoping to change the subject.
"Who are you talking to?" Tyrion turned to see the queen approaching. Wearily, Tyrion turned again to introduce Daenerys to the red priestess.
Quaithe of the Shadow stood alone in the light of the golden flames. Kinvara was gone.
On seeing the mask the woman wore, Daenerys stopped in her tracks.
"Hello, Quaithe." she said warily. Quaithe bowed elegantly.
"Radiance."
"It's 'Your Grace' this side of the Narrow Sea…not that it matters much anymore." Or that it will warm you to Westerosi one ember, Tyrion thought, the red lacquer mask as unsettling as it was ornate. "It is you, yes? Not just…light and air?"
"A glass candle is potent when put to proper use but such arts do not function in this strange land. No more than visions in the flames do, not now when the trees are awake."
"Awake is a word for it, these winds are sharp enough to flay a man where he stands." Tyrion said, trying not to scream. Quaithe's gaze had gone icy behind her mask. Lord Tywin had given him much the same gaze at council. I'll keep my mouth shut like a good dwarf. "We were just discussing how we might learn whether we'll soon be behind white stone walls or stuck here until the giants return and wait for the flames to die."
"Were the ground not so hard we might smother them in dirt and be on our way." Daenerys said doubtfully. Frozen as it was, something made it tremble then. Just within Tyrion's hearing, half-lost in the merry crackling of Viserion's flames, the sounds of battle echoed over the empty moor. Giants bellowing, men shouting, here and there the roar of a dragon. It sounds a proper mess. Despite his earlier indignation at being left behind, Tyrion's common sense for once shouted down his pride. They did well to keep me out of that, he thought, shaken. Something tells me it isn't a normal battle they're fighting out there. It was after midday when the sounds finally began to cease, nearly dusk when the golden fire had finally burned through whatever the crannogmen had spread on the ground.
"I suppose we'll just, ah…get on over there and see what's what." Tyrion said, tapping the cinders with his foot. I wonder how long this circle will last. While the rest took their time, Tyrion walked briskly over the moor, trying to spot the battle's aftermath. Only when he left the women behind did Tyrion realize that for the moment, he was the lone living thing to be seen in all directions. I ought to see Viserion awing before much longer. He kept walking, even as the sun vanished behind him. It rose again only a few paces later, confounding Tyrion until he realized it must be the white dragon's breath still burning on the ground. Despite the cramps in his legs and soreness in his back he began to run, dashing toward the light. He tripped on something in the darkness, catching himself only just in time to avoid breaking his nose on the ground. Now what? he thought, feeling around on all fours. Round, he realized. A perfect circle dented six inches into this frozen earth. He swallowed, remembering the elephant the Golden Company had brought along. Round like an elephant's foot, but much, much bigger. He kept going, this time wary of any other such footprints that waited for him, unseen. The groans and cries of wounded men echoed out of the night, seeming to Tyrion to come from the flames the nearer he got. Hell, he thought. Closer still he found himself thankful for the fires. It was warmer than the moor at least, and he could see, if barely. Those who were still alive and able to stand were tossing the dead into the flames at will, though it was impossible to tell one man from another. Save for their height, Tyrion amended. Many of the dead seemed to be crannogmen, Sworrm in particular. In certain places there weren't even bodies left, just crushed gore slicks. One such trail of carnage led to the body of a fallen mammoth and Tyrion saw that he would need another dwarf on his shoulders and still another atop his to get a hand on the high ridge of the mammoth's foot. Sworrm were swarming all around the corpse, cutting off its meat with stone knives. Tearing his eyes way from the sight, Tyrion could just make out more fires burning in the distance- and more still after them, tiny flickering things high in the air. The walls of White Harbor, he knew.
A feeble wriggling from under a pile of bodies caught Tyrion's attention. Rather than just make more noise he gave the command in his best Valyrian, knowing any Unsulllied present would understand and obey. Dutifully several figures came forward, starting to dismantle the pile. Tyrion took the hand when it appeared, waving frantically and found himself pulling Dhokko out of the corpses.
"Another near miss. The mammoth nearly landed on you." The lad answered in a mixture of gibbered Dothraki and tears.
"He says, the hairy elephant put him there."
"Beg pardon?" Tyrion asked, seeing Malakko limp out of the night. Gods, he thought at the sight of the ugly hole boring through his shoulder and out the other side.
"The hairy elephant, it had things between its great tusks. When it charged it caught everything before it in them, a rider could not go between the tusks." Then he collapsed in a daze.
"Steady on, let me see." Tyrion scolded, though Malakko did not look like to squirm. "Did you catch a shaft?" He shook his head.
"The dead men were before us and it was nothing for the dragon to smash them with his fire, the khalasar picking off the rest…then the wind."
"The wind?" Tyrion asked, befuddled. Malakko nodded.
"It came from the north. The wind, the hairy elephant…and on its back, just as your cold khal claimed. Men as tall as trees. One threw a big stone at us too heavy for a dozen strong men to carry and it rolled through us like a charging horse through grass. They had great axes too, and huge cold mauls." He shuddered, took a breath, sat up. "I have heard that the khaleesi's brick men are made of stone. It is not so. They squish and crunch and spray red blood the same as other men when they are smashed or trampled flat beneath a man as tall as trees' maul or fist or feet." He quieted for a time, then began to sob. "The khalasar was ready to ride on this cold clean land." Malakko cried. "Instead, it rode on us." Tyrion gawped at him. He's in shock, he realized.
"Come now, this is no way for Lady Manderly to find you." Mention of her made him take a deep breath and look up.
"She is alive?" "The whole lot of them. The dragon ringed us in golden fire to keep us safe…ish, then flew off after you. He found the battle, if these flames are anything to go by."
"Oh, he found it. Near to won it his damned ivory self, too." Tormund's voice grunted from somewhere. "I'm glad you made it, Giantsbane." "Glad I did too, Lannyman. Between the battle and keeping Umber alive, I'm dog tired, though."
"Where's Jon Snow?"
"Further on somewhere. Probably trying to get the city opened to us. Fitting, as we saved it and all."
"Saved it?"
"They were going to have the walls down in a day, if not less. The mammoth they brought had more than size to bring to bear, and the giants themselves only had to knock holes big enough for wights to pour through to keep the people in nice and occupied for a bit." Tyrion saw him look up. "They brought those things we saw in the mountains too, Lannyman." He exhaled.
"The flying creatures?"
"They don't breathe fire, just riddle the air in front of them with razored icicles. I saw that one horsey lad catch a bit of it and go tumbling off his horse." "He made it, if we're thinking about the same Dothraki." Tormund nodded. Tyrion pressed on, eyes peeled as best he could keep them for any hint of Jon Snow. He found the king sitting in front of a pile of burning Sworrm taller than he was, grey eyes reflecting the blaze's golden light.
"Your Grace." Tyrion announced himself. Jon Snow turned to regard the dwarf.
"It was poised to be a massacre. Another pass from the mammoth and we'd be trampled into the mud same as the dead. Not to mention their hooting lizard things, spitting icicles and mowing men down by the dozen."
"What happened?" Tyrion asked, though he felt he knew the answer.
"The dragon."
Jon Snow put his hands on his knees.
"I should have realized sooner. The Others and the creatures that follow them are from someplace dark, quiet, cold. You can imagine their reaction when Viserion showed up, all roars and golden flame." Tyrion was taken by surprise.
"They were diminished?"
"When at last we could try to reply to the mammoth in kind, we realized both it and the giants were all but blind."
"How did you manage to kill it?"
"The Sworrm. They filled it full of arrows and climbed their shafts up its legs, stabbing all the while. When a bunch would get slapped away by its trunk or a giant's hand, more replaced them. More and more and terrible more. By the end they seethed around it, hacking it apart while it lived, until down it fell. That drove the giants into a fury that made their earlier dispositions seem gentle. But even crazed beyond pain it was when, not if, they went down under the numberless Sworrm." Ever More. Tyrion put a hand on the king's shoulder.
"I am sorry for your countrymen, Jon Snow."
"An army of arrowhead ants will smother prey under a mountain of its own corpses. Between them and Viserion, this was a resounding victory compared to what it might have been." Jon replied, finally rising. "The rest of the dead will catch fire in time." he said. "The Others will not return this night, there's nothing for us but to get behind those walls."
"The queen and the rest are not long behind me. They have longer legs for one, and I judged Daenerys smart enough to know if I did not return that she ought stay put, if not take the women to safety."
"Smart enough, for a certainty. Would she do it, though, when her khalasar were fighting? Or would she come over that hill bold as a strutting stag and start throwing whatever she could find at the giants even as they crushed us?" Tyrion gave a weak smile.
"You know her well." Jon Snow gave his own smile and pointed. Tyrion turned to look and saw Her Grace riding up on the palfrey, purple eyes wide and full of tears. "I don't think it's me she's so relieved to see safe." Tyrion said, leaving the pair to busy himself with relaying the King in the North's orders for all those still alive to push on to White Harbor proper. He himself took charge of the Dosh Khaleen, helping the crones around the burning piles of corpses and the huge footprints of the mammoth alike.The city streets were in hardly better shape, blockaded by piles of rubbish and wreckage to impede the dead men wherever they found a hole to pour through. Not so wrecked, though, Tyrion saw. Not so broken. Given time, this city will recover. The first person he met was a guardsman wearing the Manderly merman on his jerkin. "How did you lot fare?" he asked.
"Not so well. Not so bad as those outside the walls, though." the guardsman replied. "The New Castle took a direct hit from one of the mammoth's projectiles. I heard the castle crack like an egg and half of it collapsed down on the Wolf's Den, but other than that and a few dozen flattened buildings and our docks hemmed in by the wreckage of dead ships…"
"Not so well indeed. Is there room for us in White Harbor?"
"Dwarf, without you there wouldn't be a White Harbor. You could march a thousand men in Bolton pink past me and I'd not breathe a word in protest." Tyrion thanked the man and saw the crones safely to the castle which, despite the guardsman's claim, did not seem to have been knocked half down. One of its towers was definitely missing and the gate was smashed clear in, but it would need refitting, not rebuilding. Tyrion meant only to get off his feet for a moment but as soon as he felt the hard wall against his back and his arse on solid ground, he was sound asleep.
He woke stiff as ever but there was no snow to brush off his shoulders and the smell of roasting meat was strong in the close space of the New Castle's hall. Seven be praised, he thought, before hastily adding an addendum. The old gods, too. The hall was packed with people all talking at once and Tyrion was so divinely warm he felt himself start to nod off again. No, he told himself before getting to his feet. He looked around for anyone familiar. The Reachmen were either ringing Samwell Tarly and his family or looking awkwardly at his father, the stormlanders seemed to be trying to drown Gendry in ale, but what banners of the riverlands he could see were to a man morose and brooding. Carefully Tyrion crawled under a few tables (earning a kick or two in the process), emerging none too gracefully from under a table packed with men wearing a dancing maiden device. Piper men. At the table's head sat a short round boy with a frizzy head of red hair and more of the same poking from his cheeks, looking beyond grief.
"My lords. Pardon my intrusion-"
"Put him on the table." the boy said, one of the men grabbing Tyrion by the scruff of his neck and placing him on the tabletop. Tyrion braced for a thrown utensil or at the least a punch but instead he felt a mug of hot mulled wine push itself into his hands. Automatically, he gulped it down. "Another." the boy said, and another found itself replacing the now-empty mug. Tyrion downed that one as well, and the one after that, and the one after.
"Many thanks." Tyrion said, meaning it. He could feel the hot wine tendril out form his belly to the rest of him, so that his insides were as warm as out.
"Its thanks we owe you, my lord. You and the dragon queen and the King in the North." The lad did not seem to be mocking him, though he hardly seemed grateful either.
"I can't help but notice that of all the revelry, the riverlands alone takes no part."
"It was the river lords' tower that came down, my lord. I was lucky enough to be at its base, with the other squires and pages. Marq wasn't so lucky."
"That must make you Lewys Piper, no? If you'll forgive my assumption, Lord of Pinkmaiden?"
"If I ever see it again, I suppose I am." The boy lord could not have looked less like his sigil. Even his teats are the wrong size. "It didn't come down right away, we got as many people out as we could. Still, when the tower went down it took a good many men with it."
"Good's a matter of opinion, lad, but they came when House Tully called, and that's earned a drink or three in their memory." the Blackfish said, working his way out of the crowd looking utterly wretched. "Jonos Bracken, Tytos Blackwood…died trying to save each other, if you'd well fucking believe it. The knight you lot brought up from Maidenpool, that Ien Waters…and my nephew." Tyrion's mouth became a hard line.
"I'm sorry, Ser Brynden." "He put his wife's hand in mine and his son in my arm, then commanded I take them to safety. I tried to object, old tree root that I am. 'I am your lord, ser,' he told me. 'Go, and do not come back." He took the tankard and upended it into his open mouth, slamming it down when it was empty. The Blackfish wiped his chin. "First time he ever reminded me of Hoster."
Tyrion left the rivermen to mourn, intent on finding out if any course was being determined. Winterfell, he knew, but how? And when? There was no sign of Daenerys nor Jon but Tyrion found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the sobbing Lady Leona, who embraced Wynafryd like one returned from the dead.
"Your father fell." he heard her say, Wyn giving a dismayed gasp.
"How?"
"He fell," Lady Leona repeated. One of those dreadful things was going to have the castle gates down. Your father took a trident from one of his men, calmly thanked him for his service…and stepped off the ramparts. He buried it in the giant's shoulder and the brute slipped off the causeway, the two of them tumbling into the streets below." Wynafryd dried her eyes, ever ladylike before she spoke next.
"Mother, I…well, I…this is Malakko." she said quickly, bringing him into view. "I met him on Dragonstone and…"
"My name is Wylla!" a girl's voice said, all but shouting up at the man. Lady Leona seemed quite lost for words as Malakko stood before her, quiet and reverent.
"Welcome to White Harbor." she finally got out.
"I have not killed one of these men-as-tall-as-trees. I saw the little people do it, washing over them in their dozens and hundreds, as many as the stars in the sky. But they are dim compared to the sun, who stands alone as your husband did. Any Dothraki would give his braid for such a death, for better a star fall than fade." Tyrion saw the younger Manderly girl give a sniff, teary-eyed. "I came to this land in a boat over the poison water horses cannot drink. Your cold khal came one day, speaking of things still colder that drove the dead like the Lamb Men drive their flocks. With him came Winn Afrid, who told me of a vast green country without end. When we were ready to cross the poison water again, the sky sang and we washed up on a rocky shore. Over mountains and through a close wet hell I came, all with Winn Afrid by my side. Finally we reached the vast green country, through which I vowed my sons would ride and theirs in turn and theirs still after. Before all this though, I wanted to see Winn Afrid's sire for myself. I wanted him to know it was not a weak man that wanted Winn Afrid to be moon-of-his-life, nor a stupid man, nor a foolish man." For the first time, his face faltered. "I wanted him to know his daughter's sons would ride from one end of this endless cold green sea to the other as the sun does in the sky. Now I find he has gone into the Night Lands on the back of the wind with a man-as-tall-as-trees dead at his feet, a height to which I will never climb." While Leona merely gaped at him, Tyrion mused. I wonder if he's ever talked that much in all his life.
"There are more giants out there." she said finally, as if unable to quite process what Malakko had told her. "It would be quite simple to climb higher than my husband, even obvious."
"Kill a jy-ant?" Malakko asked.
"Kill two." Lady Leona replied.
Giant of Lannister, they used to call me. I wonder what they'd say if they ever saw a real giant. As he mused, he heard a herald shout over the noise of those in the hall. "Daenerys Targaryen and the King in the North!" It became a madhouse, northmen flocking to the doors of the hall to greet Jon Snow. Tyrion contented himself with sitting on a windowsill above the crowd, his arse freezing but his view unobscured. So good was it, in fact, that he just managed to spot Littlefinger leaning on the threshold of the hall across the crowd from him. As soon as his eyes met Tyrion's he was off, heading back down the corridor. Oh, I don't think so. Tyrion went after him, fully intent on pissing up Petyr Baelish's scheming even if the world were ending. He found him in the cozy base of yet another of the castle's towers, which seemed to be given over for the use of the party that had set sail from Volantis. Quentyn Martell looked as pleased to see him as he had in the cave on Dragonstone, while Tyrion might as well have been invisible for all the heed Jon Connington paid him. They must have heard from the other lords by now that the throne is gone.
"Out, dwarf." An irate young woman's voice told him. Tyrion blinked the light of the hearth out of his eyes to behold three girls of decidedly Dornish cast sitting by the fire. It was the eldest of them that had spoken and she looked ready to get to her feet when the countermand came.
"Leave it, Elia." Arianne said from a chair that faced the fire. Elia? Tyrion thought. Then he understood.
"I've heard it told that there are eight Sand Snakes." he said casually. "I see only four now." Elia Sand's mouth tightened while her younger sisters looked uncertain.
"Why are you small?" the youngest asked, looking at him curiously. Bloody hell, they even have the Viper's eyes.
"Once I was larger than the giants outside, but I trod upon a pin and all my air rushed out." Tyrion replied, making her giggle. He looked around for Littlefinger, who made a point of standing by the stairs up to the tower proper. Aegon stepped down them into view, blinking at the sight of Tyrion.
"Oh, it's you." He looked first to Jon Connington, who shrugged minutely as if Tyrion wasn't worth wasting the breath. "How did you get here?"
"Well, our ship ran aground in the shadow of the Mountains of the Moon. A jaunt through them later and a bit of wading through the Neck saw us nearly at the Manderlys' doorstep but for a problem even tinier than I."
"The giants and the dead men, and the drakes too." Aegon replied.
"Where's that big ginger fellow?"
"Dead, along with Haldon, Harry Strickland and Salladhor Saan." Ah, so that's what got him so put out.
"You fought, then?"
"No, I stayed shut up in this tower waiting for a dragon to turn up and forge me a new throne. Yes, I fought. The Golden Company stiffened the city's defenses where they could, even stuck one of Lord Tarly's toys on the back of an elephant and did a pretty bit of damage with it."
"Sounds like you did rather well, then. I'm sure your companions minus one sellsail would have been happy to die for you, and so they did. What's more, your sellswords may well have saved the city."
"The dragon saved the city. He and Daenerys…and this King in the North, too."
"To be sure, but who's to say your reinforcing White Harbor's defenses kept the enemy at bay just long enough for us to matter?"
Aegon took the chair opposite Arianne, brooding in the firelight.
"I hear you're a smart man."
"Cunning, for a certainty. Smart, now that's something I find myself doubting now and ag-"
"I had a terrible thought, my lord, that but for tonight I might never have had before." This got Connington to look up in alarm.
"That blue is a better look for you than silver? Worry not, you just edge me out on terms of looks either way."
"I heard him roar first. The sound made me near to piss myself. When I got atop the walls, I saw something spitting fire down on the dead, strafing them clean through again and again. Even the giants were at a loss for what to do except kill crannogmen, who numbered so many it didn't matter. My heart didn't soar or skip a beat, I didn't want him to land on the walls so I could vault onto his back. It was all I could do not to fill my fucking pants, let alone think about riding him." Tyrion blinked.
"Is that what you're worried about? My lad, that means nothing. You were terrified of Viserion not because of who you may or may not be."
"No?"
"No. You were terrified of him because he's fucking terrifying."
"With the throne gone, there's only one way to prove I'm Rhaegar's son."
"Yes," said Tyrion forcedly, "and in the event you're wrong, you're also dead. That is not my road to walk. I can only tell you what I'd tell anyone in your position, particularly someone with a child on the way. Lord Connington, you'd do well to listen to me as well, just now. Rhaegar is dead. No matter what may occur should the man you raised from infancy approach Viserion, the Trident will never unhappen. Robert's Rebellion will not bleed out of the history books and run back up the quills of the maesters who chronicled it." Tyrion had gotten louder than he meant to, but he did not apologize. "Enough young men have died chasing the same dream. Aegon, you strike me as someone happy to remain in that chair beside your beautiful Dornish princess and never think of dragons again. You say this must be some deficiency in your courage, or your character. I say, what the fuck's so wrong with that?"
