Missandei

The little nubs that poked up out of the tips of her fingers stuck Missandei as nothing short of bizarre. At least they're growing back, she thought, and my fingers are not so bony as they were. There was no time to marvel at such things, though. The Rhoynish family who had taken her onto their boat soon had her poling their way up the Greenblood alongside them.

"You want to get to Godsgrace before the dead men, well and good. An extra pair of arms will get us there all the faster." Yrissa had declared and Missandei had not objected. The Dornish countryside rolled by as they went, hot red dunes turned white by the snows that buried them, glittering under the light of the stars and moon. There was no trace of any living thing. No animals, no plants. Missandei shivered, the wind-thing's words never far from her thoughts. I will make Dorne the Empty Land for true.

"Do you know who she is?" Nymeria's voice called out to her as she stared out to shore. Missandei turned.

"Who do you mean?"

"The girl you brought along for the ride." Missandei shrugged.

"I don't know. She was foundering in the wake of the Planky Town's destruction and would have died had I not pulled her from the water."

"She's like to die anyway, she's still shivering and unconscious." Valar Morghulis, Missandei thought, but first they live. Nymeria's words were not cold or uncaring, only stating what she believed to be fact. I suppose she's lost a daughter at the least. "Give me the pole, you need to rest for a while." the Dornishwoman said. Do I? Missandei went into the covered section of the boat, seeing that despite Yrissa's ministrations the girl still had not woken.

"It's no good," the old woman said resignedly, "we can't warm her enough with just layers." A fire was out of the question, of course, as they were on a wooden boat poling down freezing water. And a pitiful thing such a fire as we'd light would be, too. To Missandei's surprise, she found herself being asked the same question twice in ten minutes. "Do you know who she is?"

"Nymeria just asked, I have no idea. Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't anymore, but before dead men overran Sunspear and a ship made of ice smashed the Planky Town to kindling, soft hands that have never known labor and a mouth full of good strong teeth meant their owner was important." Missandei blinked.

"Do you think she's highborn?"

"Highborn, or a wealthy family's get at the least."

"What was she doing out on the Greenblood, trying to pole a boat?" Yrissa sniffed.

"The same thing you were, Missandei of Naath. Trying to get away."

The girl did not wake for another two days, by which time Missandei could feel fuzz just starting to grow back in along her scalp. Better than nothing. At least there's something to keep the snow off my skin now. Thought Missandei seemed to be shaking off the wasting icy venom, the girl's own frail form only grew weaker. When her eyes finally opened, they seemed enormous staring out of their sunken sockets. At once Yrissa smeared honey on her lips.

"She may be too weak to eat. This is the best we can do to get her to keep something down." The girl's eyes rolled across them warily.

"Where am I?"

"On a poleboat on the Greenblood. You're safe for the moment." Yrissa replied, carefully wrapping a cloth around the girl's head to keep it warm.

"What is your name?" Missandei asked. The girl blinked.

"You look different."

"I seem to be getting better, yes, but just now it's you I want to hear about." Though she may not have realized it herself, the girl's mouth tightened.

"Tey." she muttered.

"Just Tey?"

"Just Tey." Outside the girl's upward field of vision, Yrissa shot Missandei a look. "How did you come to be on the Greenblood?"

"I was at the Planky Town when I heard people yelling about a ship. It's a port, we see ships all the time, I thought. If you see a sea serpent, shout about that." She sniffed. "Then the whole town shook, like someone had dropped a mountain on top of us. I ran to the first boat I saw and started off straightaway."

"You did well to get away, Tey." Missandei said, helping her into a sitting position. "Well, too, to survive falling in the Greenblood." Tey was withdrawn for a bit as Missandei expected, but in time her curiosity overcame her taciturn nature.

"You said we're on the Greenblood."

"So we are."

"Where are we going?"

"To Godsgrace. If the fleet of poleboats descending on them doesn't tell the Allyrions something is wrong, Missandei of Naath will." Yrissa told her. Tey turned back to Missandei.

"You're from Naath?" She nodded, giving a sad smile.

"Mother Rhoyne's waters reach even those shores, it would seem." Yrissa intoned. "What?" Tey asked.

"Well, the Rhoynish visited Naath in their wanderings. Apparently, that's evidence enough for Yrissa that I'm part Rhoynish. Or rather, part of part of part."

"Still a part, Missandei of Naath." Yrissa said, surprising her guest with a smile. "Mother Rhoyne's waters are hers, be they drop or deluge."

"I'm Rhoynish too. Or at least, my father was." Tey explained. "My mother met him while both were visiting the Planky Town." Ah, so that's why you look like these river people and not those at Sunspear.

"If your father was an orphan, who was your mother?" Tey's face tightened and she looked in her lap.

"I told her this would happen. I told maester Toman too, but he acted like I was claiming I could fly."

"Who's maester Toman?" Gyran said, joining them once Gyress had relieved him. Tey bit her lip. "

He never understood Dorne. He thought since it was a woman ruling at Ghost Hill, he could rule it in all but name."

"Those grey mice are nothing but vermin, serving all over Westeros and stashing every secret they find in the depths of the Citadel. Small wonder they hold women in contempt." Yrissa waved a hand dismissively.

"All have silky soft hands, they do. Good for handling books and papers, bad for most anything else." Gyran agreed, a sour look on his face. Missandei didn't bother to offer an opinion, learning firsthand that the Dornishmen held their neighbors in the Reach in utmost contempt. Still, the orphan family's taking exception to a maester surprised her.

"Don't maesters shed their former allegiances when they forge their links?"

"They don't forge anything; they answer a few questions posited ot them and receive a link made by someone who knows how to work metal." Gyran replied. "Never mind this Toman. What did you tell your mother?" Tey sniffled.

"That snow would cover Dorne, cold winds blowing away the sun."

"Well, that sounds familiar." Yrissa said, shaking her head. "Never mind, child. About your father…was he with you when the Planky Town was attacked?"

"He was, but I snuck off to explore. Mother doesn't like when I'm away from home for so long, she'll be terribly upset with me…" The old couple were occupied with calming the girl down, but Missandei noticed the absence of the sound of poles working through the water. Carefully she peeked out onto the deck, seeing Gyress and Nymeria lying flat against the side of the boat. On the northern shore, the dead shuffled along in a silent never-ending mob.

They paid the poleboat absolutely no mind, plodding east packed so tightly that here and there they'd fall against each other and be trod upon by their fellows. There is no end to them, Missandei thought. She was proven wrong in time, but it still took the better part of an hour before the last of the dead, the front rank of the morass faded from view entirely. But they will never stop, she knew. They will plod on until they find a living foe and bog them down. She strained her eyes trying to spot a break in the dead but there was not a single Other to be seen, nor a spider, nor a toothy brute. Her Grace once spoke of darkness, Missandei remembered. I suppose this is what she meant. Once they were alone in the world again, she spoke aloud.

"You can get up. I don't see any more."

"They were dead!" Nymeria hissed, pale despite her Dornish complexion.

"So they were. According both to the northerner's accounts and my own experience though, these Others may puppeteer a corpse and send it against their enemies. It appears there is no boundary for how many corpses a single Other may animate at once, but there you are."

"There had to be thousands!"

"No less, but the reason the northmen came to seek the queen's aid was not just because she has an army of her own. She has dragons too, and the way I hear it fire addresses these walking dead like nothing else." She peered down into the river. "I suppose we're fortunate it didn't occur to them to try freezing the Greenblood. Then again…the Weaver did not strike me as much a strategist. I rather think Myrcella is doing the planning for her, which may prove to be a great boon should we reach the mountains I've seen on the maps. She arrived by sea from King's Landing, she will not know the Red Mountains well. Tight passes, sheer drops and other such terrain will neutralize the wights' numbers and exploit their inability to think, making the mountains the best place for anyone still alive in Dorne to flee to."

"The Greenblood doesn't flow all the way to the Red Mountains, though." Gyress said, comforting his wife. "It splits at Godsgrace, into the Scourge and the Vaith. The Scourge rolls farther but it's a tricky stretch of water and the Vaith flows perhaps half so far as that, into a separate little nest of mountains shared somewhat by Vaith proper in the east and Hellholt in the west." Missandei closed her eyes to better let the map of Dorne she'd seen unfurl in her mind.

"The northern coast of Dorne, then. There's another castle northeast of Godsgrace."

"The Tor, held by the Jordaynes."

"Just so. Living on the water, they must have proper ships."

"It stands to reason, but we orphans pole boats and rafts." Gyress said, looking doubtful.

"No doubt you'll learn a ship's rigging quick enough. It's that or skulk along the Greenblood eating whiskerfish until you're seen- and sunk." Missandei replied. They saw nothing but an endless expanse of white for the next few days, fishing only when they dared.

"We've got some dried figs too, if you're sick of fish." Yrissa told her one night.

"At least the fish are plentiful. Indeed, I would not have thought as much on looking at the Greenblood." Gyran smiled.

"The river's done right by us and more. The Rhoynish might have come into the world on the currents of Mother Rhoyne, but it isn't a river in Essos that's fed our children and taken our dead home since the Ten Thousand made landfall in Dorne."

"Orphans we might be, but our little river loves us well." Yrissa added, taking her husband's gnarled hand. It stirred a queer feeling in Missandei's chest. Quite apart from her feelings for the Dornish nobility, she felt a growing sense of belonging when it came to these river people. Maybe I'm I the right place after all.

They came upon Godsgrace the next day, a fleet of poleboats rowed to shore. Some had escaped their sandy moorings and begun to drift aimlessly or else head off on their own further up the Greenblood. Missandei helped the others moor their own boat before they set off for the castle proper, Tey's hand in hers.

"I hope they believe you." she whispered to Missandei as they neared the small fishing town that sat between the water and Godsgrace proper.

"So do I." Missandei replied honestly. I could always open my shirt and show them the gifts the Weaver gave me. "I suppose whether they do or not doesn't matter, what with the dead approaching anyhow."

"The people who fled the Planky Town's destruction did not see what you have, Missandei of Naath." Yrissa said firmly. "Word must get out that all of Dorne is set to fall beneath this winter." The fishing village was a shambles with so many panicking visitors descending on it at once and Missandei saw more than a few stern-looking guardsmen with golden hand devices on their jerkins, bound in little red-and-black wheels. She approached the one who looked to be the ranking officer.

"Good day." Missandei said politely. "Would it be possible to obtain an audience with your lord or lady?" The officer only grunted.

"Problems enough keeping this fish bucket from upending, now you want to get mud and fish-stink in the castle's stones?" Missandei did not reply, gauging the man's reaction from his first breath. Instead, she stood on a barrel and held up her arms.

"The dead are coming." she said, clearly and loudly. "They are slow, but they are tireless. There is nothing to be gained by bargaining for entry into the castle or passage further downriver, they will get there in the end regardless unless they're stopped." Thankfully so striking a picture did she make that the chaos froze, all faces turned to her. "Fire will do what nothing else can, and if we prepare properly, we should be able to reduce the entire mob to ash."

"What about the Others?" one voice cried. Another orphan, Missandei saw. Most likely an orphan twice over now.

"They destroyed the Planky Town!"

"Look here, I don't know just what river nons-" the officer barked before Missandei interrupted him.

"Their ship was too large to pursue those poleboats that made it out of range. I suspect that's why they sent the wights, to finish us off. The Others are attacking where they think people will gather in greatest number, it's not worth marching all the way out here to support the dead men. On the coast they can set back out to sea and go where they are needed, but once inland they're stuck there until they find open sea again." Silence fell. Then the officer coughed.

"Uh, if you'll take my hand, my lady, I'll help you down from there and bring you to his lordship presently." he said, sounding a bit embarrassed.

"Sacked?" Lord Ryon was a man near forty, but he had not lost the looks that had gotten him a natural son in his youth.

"Sacked and broken, my lord. Sunspear lies in ruins, the seat now of a vengeful wind-thing and a she-Other terrible even by Other standards." Missandei showed him the holes in her chest.

"The Sands who held it are dead or fled, though I know not where." Ryon Allyrion's sons were near manhood yet their mother clutched them to her as if they were newborn babes. "In the shadow-city below, ravenous creatures come to sate their appetites pick the city over for any dead the Others have not sent against you." Who seem to fall blind at the oddest of times, Missandei thought, remembering the beach. "Just now though, it's an army of dead men that need contending with. Do you have any catapults, or perhaps trebuchets? If flaming debris were to be thrown into their ranks, it would cause untold damage." It took Lord Ryon a minute to compose himself.

"I suppose…we could raise a few if pressed…but there's a difference between building one and firing one with any pretense at skill."

"Normally, yes. But just now your soldiers' aim is unimportant- the mob is so vast it's impossible to miss, and at any rate once the flames have found their ranks the task will be half-done. Perhaps any wooden debris in town or the castle can be put to use as a blockade, pitch set in trails behind it so that even as the dead men wash over it…"

"…the pitch can be lit, the barricade in turn, and all the dead as well." Ryon finished, a bit of color coming back into his face.

"There's also the small matter of what to do afterward…"

"First we needs must stop the dead from following us all over Dorne. We'll settle the matter at hand first, then take the next step. If we get that far, but we ought if things go even passably well." Her words were so unhurried, they might have been fighting off a rabble of brigands. Lord Allyrion began to nod, if stiffly. "Do you by chance have a maester? I've been led to understand they know something about such tasks."

"Unfortunately, we lost our maester to the same chill as took my lady mother last year. About the best we have when it comes to siege weapons is my blacksmith."

"I suppose he'll do. I'll go talk to him while you set your men to their tasks- oh, and open the castle to your smallfolk. The dead will find no trouble getting at them in the village but behind the walls of Godsgrace, they will be safe." she said, heading for the castle's smithy.

All the smiths Missandei had seen in her life had been burly, brawny men. All the same built, all with one arm more muscled than the other. To her surprise the blacksmith of Godsgrace was a willowy woman six and a half feet tall, who looked as surprised to see a Naathi wander into her smithy as Missandei was to see her.

"Who're you?" the woman asked. After introducing herself and repeating what she'd told the lord, the smith's expression soured. "Do you know, I've been getting orders for all sorts of foolishness in this hard long life of mine, but catapults? Trebuchets? Do I look like a carpenter, eh? Someone who's grown up in a siege yard, measuring and cutting wood?"

"No, but Lord Allyrion's told me his maester has died-"

"His maester died because he waited on a sick old woman day and night and caught what she had."

"Maybe so. Just now, the castle needs your help in any way it can be given in the construction of apparatuses that can be purposed to throwing burning projectiles into the midst of the enemy."

"What's that mean?" the smith asked suspiciously. "Apparatuses. Are those the talking birds from the Summer Isles? Saw one, once. Gray as a sour sky and smarter than most any man I've come across. Pity he had feathers, or he might have made a good husband."

"Not parrots-"

"Hang it." The woman waved her arms in annoyance. "What about the objects to be flung? Can you make those?" Missandei asked, trying hard not to lose her patience.

"Surely, as can anyone with a lit torch and a pile of old wood." Then she stopped, eyes going wide. "Oooh." She turned on her heel and strode back into her workshop, throwing things around. "I didn't grow up learning apparatus-ery at my father's knee…" her strained voice called from out of sight as more objects clanged and clattered off the sandstone floor. "But I learned well how to make a sturdy pot." she said, striding back into view with a clay pot in her hands.

"So you did." Missandei said, unsure as to the woman's course.

"We don't need catapults. All we need do is fill these with boiling tar, boiling pitch, whatever we want, and seal them up well and good. Then we heave them off the ramparts!" That alternative did rather seem viable.

"The pots would have to be smaller, though. Too big and they'd be too heavy to lift when full." Missandei said, looking at the pot. The woman frowned, looking down into its depths.

"Ah, yes. Wouldn't want too much of what's in them spilling out on the wrong side of the walls, either." She grumbled to herself for a moment. "Maybe stronger arms than men have got are what's needed to throw these, after all. I'll get a few pots going in the kiln, then see what carpenters Godsgrace has to start raising the apparatuses."

Missandei thanked the woman and turned to go.

"By the way, I'm Lyonse." They were the first half-friendly words the smith had spoken. When Missandei left her the woman was cheerfully murmuring to herself, shouting for apprentices to bring her clay from the Greenblood. On returning to Lord Ryon's hall Missandei was surprised to see him graciously kissing Tey's hand while the family of orphans looked on.

"I knew she was someone's daughter." Yrissa said, poking Gyran in the side. Tey spotted Missandei out of the corner of her eye and blushed.

"Um." she said, looking at her feet. Lord Ryon relieved her of the burden of speaking.

"Apologies for any confusion, but my lady wanted to keep her real name to herself until she reached someplace safe. Teora Toland is her name, of Ghost Hill as she told you." A green dragon eating its own tail. The peculiar sigil had puzzled Missandei on seeing it occasionally on Dornish maps.

"Lady Toland now, if the Planky Town's destruction is anything to go by." Teora sniffled.

"Better one than none, child. No matter, we'll keep you near and safe." Lady Allyrion told her, kissing the top of her head.

"Yns always wanted a daughter, you see," Ryon explained to Missandei out of earshot, "and now it seems she's got one." Yes, and now Teora has two foster brothers, either of whom I'm sure you'd be pleased to marry her to. Missandei was not naïve, and sometimes the lords of Westeros could be so blunt it could not have been accidental. A man may act in his own interests as well as in the interests of others at the same time.

"Lyonse seemed receptive enough to the idea of making what we'll loose upon the dead, if not the means by which to loose it."

"Is that so? The woman's terrified me since boyhood, I'm surprised she took to you."

"More to the idea of launching things that will burst into flame." One of the Allyrion boys was listening and his eyes went wide.

"That still seems pretty fun!" Teora rolled her eyes.

"Boys."

"How go your own preparations, my lord?" Missandei asked Lord Ryon.

"Well, better than badly. It takes no skill at siege craft to dump a lot of wood and rubbish square in the way of a castle."

"As little skill as you suppose you and yours have, the dead men have still less. They will plod on heedless of the flames even as it utterly consumes them. One of your Westerosi knights would be more than a match for even a dozen, assuming he did not fall down or act foolishly." Ryon was unnerved.

"Should we be more afraid of them then, or less?" Missandei thought that over.

"The powers that drive them are perilous ones, undoubtedly. But unsupported thus, the dead men can only hope to prevail by having such a number that the flames gutter out before they burn to the last. There are no politics at work here, Ryon Allyrion. No rivals seeking to edge out an advantage over you. No honor nor glory either to be won. Against this enemy, you either live or die. At moment, that means destroying the horde of dead shuffling this way this very moment. Perhaps once final preparations have been made, you can get ravens out to the highborn families of western Dorne. The Red Mountains should be their destination, high in the treacherous passes where a million walking corpses will mean little when battles are being fought up and down instead of across flat battlefields." Immediately he turned to Yns, who nodded.

"Lady Toland, would you be good enough to assist my wife sending the ravens?" Teora nodded in turn, gulping down the last of her tears.

"The Jordaynes in particular." Missandei added. "It will be their ships we take to sea once the battle here is won. Then we'll head west, following the river into the mountains where wights nor ice-ships may follow."

"What's that?" Nymeria's voice called to Missandei as she sat at one of the tables in the hall, absently turning Torgo Nudho's piece of purple glass over in her hands. Carefully though, so carefully.

"Just a piece of dragonglass. I saw a man kill an ice spider with it."

"A what?"

"An ice spider. Horse-sized white spiders with bulging blue eyes. Some, anyway. Others were the size of dogs." Nymeria gaped so long her eyes watered. "Who?" "The commander of Queen Daenerys' Unsullied. His name was Torgo Nudho. Grey Worm, in the Common Tongue."

"Ah. They killed him, did they?"

"I don't know. The last time I saw him he was escorting the court of Sunspear to the harbor beneath the castle."

"There's a harbor beneath Sunspear?"

"When I escaped the cocoon the Weaver must have stuck me in, I went down the same passage. There were traces of people having passed through recently, but when I reached the hidden little cave that let out into the Summer Sea, no boat was waiting. All I found was this, wedged into the rocks at the mouth of the cave." Nymeria sat beside her, looking at the glass.

"What are those things?"

"The Valyrian glyph for 'grey'."

"Ah. And 'worm' is on the other side, yes?"

"No. Which I cannot help but find as odd. I taught him how to write his name first, of all things. He knew well the rune for 'worm'."

"Why wouldn't he finish his name?"

"I suppose because something stopped him. Maybe they were in a hurry and he hid the glass without finishing." Missandei refused to give voice to the worry that he may well have been killed. The other Allyrion boy meandered over, taking the pair in with interest.

"D'you know, 'grey' might mean something else." he said, hurrying off and returning with a rolled-up parchment. It turned out to be a map of the northern coast and the Sea of Dorne above it. He stared down at the paper before pointing. "There." Missandei and Nymeria both looked to where he indicated, a tiny island that seemed to have been spit into the ocean by the little jut of land to the south. "There might be a rune in Valyrian for 'worm', but surely there isn't one for 'Ghaston'. 'Grey' was the second half of the riddle, not the first, Missandei of Naath." The excitement she felt in the cave's waters at seeing the purple glint bubbled up again.

"What is this place? Ghaston Grey, I've never come across it before."

"It's not on all the maps of Dorne. It's a place the Martells used to send their enemies to rot 'neath the sun when they deemed even the Wall too good for them."

"Why would Sunspear's court go there of all places?" Nymeria asked, bewildered.

"Because it's the very last place in all the world the Martells' enemies would look for them." Missandei answered breathlessly. She put her finger on the dot, the speck, barely there and surrounded by miles of open sea. Ghaston Grey, she thought. How many Dornishmen feared being sent there? How peculiar it is, then, that of all places, I want to be there most.

The commotion had drawn Lord Ryon from his preparations. "Ugh. Ghaston Grey. A shithole's shithole."

"Lord Ryon, we were just discussing the possibility that this is where the court fled to after Sunspear fell." Missandei said, trying to control herself. He blinked wide and looked down at the map.

"Eh? Well, that's one long row away form Sunspear. Up through the Stepstones and everything. Wouldn't the ice-ship have seen them leave?"

"It was too busy destroying the Planky Town, and too near land to have a view of Sunspear's northeastern side." Ryon looked dubious.

"To be sure, I've no love for the Red Viper's paramour. Or her flatterers and hangers-on. Prince Oberyn's blood runs in those daughters of his though, and it could be House Martell isn't so dead as your airy wretch would like." He rubbed the back of his neck. "If we launched from the Tor, we could make for the island before turning west. It might even prove the smarter course, keeping clear of the coast where cold eyes might be watching." Lyonse strode into the room, grinning ear to ear.

"Well, it's done." Everyone looked up but Missandei, her mind still on Ghaston Grey. Further away than next to me, she thought. Closer than the life after this one. "Well, what your Missandei asked of me. I cooked up a few pots and filled them with hot pitch. I wasn't keen on waiting for the dead men to show up on our doorstep though, so I sent a few poleboats back the way they came with some archers on each. They should be back soon, sooner than the dead will reach us at any rate, with stories of how the whole job went." She clapped her hands together in conclusion.

"Are you mad?" Ryon hissed.

"You asked me for a way to hurl fire at dead men. Careful who you call 'mad,' my lord." He didn't bother reprimanding her, making for the riverside to wait for the poleboats to return.

"It shouldn't be too long now." Missandei said, tearing her eyes away from the map at last. "They'll be on us soon."

"I think, dear Missandei, you mean that we'll be upon them." Lyonse said, smirking. And the sooner we are, the sooner we can leave for the Tor. The sooner we might cross the sea and land at Ghaston Grey. The sooner I might next see Torgo Nudho.

The poleboats returned at nightfall the next day, looking unharmed.

"Well, your mule piss worked, blacksmith." the sergeant among the archers said, looking as though he'd seen a dragon fall upon the wights instead of a few pots of pitch and some flaming arrows."

"Did it? Tell me everything!" Lyonse squealed, sounding like a besotted girl.

"We flung the pots first, as you asked. The dead men didn't so much and turn to look at us. We lit our arrows then and loosed…whoosh." he said, holding up his hands.

"You didn't destroy them all, I suppose?" Missandei asked, eager to get underway.

"No such luck, my lady, but even with a thimbleful of such we should have them dust in the wind after a single day, maybe two." His budding confidence pleased Missandei mightily but it was not in her nature to be content in such matters.

"Sand is not so hard to dig in. Perhaps we ought dig a moat around the castle, far enough from the river to keep it from rushing in but deep enough to swallow dead men by the dozen. I cannot say if they'll all smash in from one direction or if they'll defer to moving about each other in the event they're unable to move freely." How mindless is mindless, Missandei wondered? To her surprise, all the men from Lord Ryon down to the fishermen of the village seemed eager to take her up on her suggestion.

"No Foe Shall Pass." he told her. "The Allyrion words, and may they ring true when the enemy befalls us." Missandei would have rather had more soldiers and means by which to throw their pitch-pots, but she only smiled in reply. After the poleboats had returned scouts had ridden out, each astride one of the Dornish horses men called sand steeds. "They will leave the dead in the dust when it comes to riding back, my lady," Ryon had promised Missandei, and so they had.

"No more than a day away." the lead scout told the lord as he dismounted. "We're well set up, but they are many."

"Many become few and few become none when met with fire." Missandei said, unperturbed. "They have numbers, but we have high stone walls. True, if unmolested they may press flat against Godsgrace's gate and simply pile over it, but we'll be at them all the while. Those few who reach the castle walls by blind chance will have soldiers waiting for them."

"We're really going to ruin their day, aren't we?" the man asked, grinning.

"In a sentence. We have no way of knowing if the Others themselves are aware of what's going on with the army they've sent, but I'd rather not tarry once battle ends. Dead men we can contend with. Their lanky sellswords are a direr threat, and the Others proper are out of the question. We have no dragonglass for one, and high stone walls will keep neither Myrcella nor the Weaver out. Spiders climb, ser."

"But do they fly?" he answered, still smirking. No, Missandei thought. All the more reason to put the open sea between us and them.

The call to arms rang out as day began to wane. Do they know darkness is their ally? Missandei wondered. No, she answered herself. Just ill luck that they come as the sun sets instead of rises. It didn't matter, soon there would be light enough to see and never mind the night. People had tied all the cloth they owned around themselves, looking like odd bundle people as they scurried about the castle either to their posts or to the keep in the case of women and children. Is that where I belong? Missandei thought. Naathi are peaceful and kill nothing. But was she still Naathi? The island had been a lifetime ago, and since then she had lived as a slave in Astapor and a freedwoman in Meereen. If not Naathi, what am I? The thought so distressed her she felt tears welling in her eyes, full and heavy. These dead men are not alive, she reasoned, and so cannot be killed, only destroyed. And then the dead were on them, shuffling straight into the wooden barricade as she suspected they would. Even so prepared, so ready, the archers on the wall could only stare as the numberless dead poured over and around the stockade, some falling into the river only to crawl back to shore on the other side of the barricade.

"Seven save us…" Missandei heard.

"Mother have mercy…"

"Archers, light and nock." she found herself saying, singing, voice high and sweet and clear above the yelling, shouting, screaming. Arrows lit all along Godsgrace's ramparts. "Draw." she called. Dozens of bowstrings were pulled taut. One of the walking dead in the front rank had no head but was too far away for Missandei to tell if indeed it was Obara Sand. I'm sure I'll find forgiveness for this, in time. "Loose." Fire arrows rose, peaked, fell. The pitch that had pooled beneath and around the barricade caught at once and in a heartbeat the dead were walking through a lake of hungry leaping flames. A lake of mine one making, when the Naathi make no war, Missandei thought, despairing, even as the Dornish gave a wild raucous cheer. The dead fell in droves, cut down in their swathes. "Pitch." Missandei called, and the small clay pots were flying next, breaking open against the shuffling bodies or the ground. One thing was the other, and the dark mixture soon had the flames lancing out after the liquid further into the mob, into the midst of dead men yet untouched. Even with flames sawing into them from all sides the dead still came head on, until the last of the fires were extinguished by the sheer volume of bodies. "Again," Missandei called, and the song was the same, note for note. Whenever the dead massed in number they were met with pitch and fire arrows, so much fodder for the flames.

"First time I've been warm in a fucking year! More!" she heard Lord Ryon call from somewhere off to the left, sounding joyous. His words got a round of cheers from his people. "Tell the lads at the gate they'd best save their spears for arse-scratching!" Missandei was not so optimistic but there was no denying the flames were taking their toll. The dead did not thin nor scatter, continuing to pour into view. Dead and only dead, Missandei observed, seeing no trace of anything else. No sellswords. No Others. Pots and arrows flew until dawn, when they got a look at the mob as it remained. In a word, untouched, Missandei thought. The Dornish faces around her turned wan and aghast.

"Again." Missandei called, and again the fires split and spiraled around at the feet of the dead. "Again. Again. Again."

The moat Lord Ryon's men had dug began to fill with burning dead, the barricade long since reduced to cinders. Still they came. When the sun set on the second day, Lyonse came back up to the ramparts with another helping of fired pots.

"Well, I hope they stop coming soon." She said, wiping sweat from her brow despite the cold.

"Are you running out of clay?" Missandei asked. "I'm running out of pitch. The lads brought me enough clay to build a second Godsgrace, it's pitch that's getting dear." It seems we'll need your spears after all, my lord.

"LOOK!" someone yelled, and all eyes turned toward the east. Missandei expected to see the voracious sellswords stomping toward them, perhaps the Weaver watching the carnage unfold. Instead, she saw nothing. Nothing behind the dead, and a behind of them to see! The end of the mob! What pitch remained to them was loosed and then they made do with fire arrows alone. It isn't even the shooting that's the trouble, Missandei saw as each archer made their mark time after time. We haven't got near enough arrows for the rest of them, even if some catch others in the burning and all.

"I think it's a good time to start tossing rubbish in front of the gate. It won't stop them but it will slow them, and your men will be able to deal with them more ably." Missandei told the lord. Ryon Allyrion set his jaw and gave a grim nod, going below. At least the ravens got off, she thought. If nothing else, the Others will not find the rest of Dorne so easily won. There was a scramble at the gate below and when Missandei looked down, she saw the soldiers were setting up still more barricades, more obstacles. They funneled inward, the opening wide enough to allow for two or three wights to pass through, no more. Waiting for them was a wall of spears and still more fire arrows. After a long while the dead managed to mass behind the moat by sheer chance, those that fell into the river and managed to blindly crawl past the pit. The thick wooden gate was yet another barrier that gave them trouble, battering against it ineffectually until at long last the wood gave, the corpses piling through in a shuffling storm. The fire arrows flew immediately, as did spears with tips set alight. "You'll not put them down by spitting them!" Missandei said. "Just a tap each, enough to set them aflame." Though it was counter to what the spearmen had been taught all their lives, they switched strategies- finding almost immediately that only the slightest graze was needed for the flames to leap off their spears and ravage the dead. Lord Ryon dealt with the last of them himself, a flaming spear taking it in the chest. The fire reduced it to ash and dust even as it fell.

While the soldiers slept, the rest of the castle got about readying for the trip to the Tor. Every horse was barded, every mule appropriated to haul those people who could not make the trip unassisted.

"Mounted, we might make it there in two or three days." Lord Ryon was saying, as Lady Yns wrapped her arms around her sons, beside herself that they had gotten through the battle safety.

"Perhaps, but only if we start off and see for ourselves." Missandei replied. They were underway not an hour later, the column tight and framed by yet more Allyrion soldiers, each mounted on a sand steed and holding a spear. Two or three days turned out to be a fool's dream with the snow still falling, but despite their slow progress they were not disturbed. All the food that could be taken had been, and even at a slower pace they were well on pace to reach the Tor before they ran out of provender. Despite the cold and the darkness, the children among them found it in themselves to be children still- tossing snowballs at passing soldiers and dashing away giggling, though never far from the safety of the column. They came on the Tor in due time, finding the castle ready for their approach. Old Trebor Jordayne had no idea what was going on until Ryon produced a snapping head from a bag, its eyes blazing blue. His daughter Myria screamed aloud, Lord Ryon shrugging as he stuck it on one of his soldiers' spears. Even pinned shut its jaws still tried to snap, the blue of its eyes going out only when the head was given to a nearby brazier. Lord Trebor straightened up.

"The ships are ready and waiting, Ryon. Shall we be off?" he asked.

"As soon as we may. There's no telling what they'll try next, but on the open water we ought be free of the worst of their mischief. The court at Sunspear may have escaped to Ghaston Grey as well. I'm all for letting them rot there, but the Viper's daughters…" "

They can't be left to freeze and starve." Lord Trebor replied firmly, nodding his head. "It's no great thing to stop there and strip the bloody place for what little it has before we make for the mountains, anyhow." With that the provisions came off the mules and went onto the ships, the animals themselves slaughtered and the meat salted.

"They'll have mules waiting in the Red Mountains, and fresh horses besides. We haven't got food enough to keep them out at sea anyway." Missandei was saddened by it all, but she knew keeping people alive was more important. Even so, she thought, I will not eat of them. The Others took away my right to call myself Naathi in all ways but one. I would sooner starve than give them that last piece.

The voyage from Dragonstone had been placid, leisurely even. The air had gotten warmer the further south they'd gone, and they'd been in no great hurry. The ships that left the docks of the Tor were run, in contrast, with the strictest discipline. No pleasure cruise, Missandei thought. This is the way of war upon the waves.

"Straight north." Lord Jordayne had told his captains. "Turn west only after you've lost sight of the coast." Hopefully if anyone saw us leave, they'll mass in the Rainwood waiting for an invasion that will never come. No one pursued, no one gave chase as day and night danced overhead. They might have landed somewhere else, Missandei mused. Sunspear was not so populous compared to places they might have attacked instead. Not for the first time, she wondered if the Others had erred in their approach to Dorne. Not theirs, she corrected herself. Myrcella's. She came by way of the Narrow Sea and that was what she knew. Not the mountains. I have little doubt she's perused most every map I have, but maps will do her little good in those high red passes and low hidden valleys. Had she attacked from the east, the Dornish would have been pushed into the sea. Then the island was before her and Myrcella's war plans were forgotten immediately. A ruin's ruin, Missandei thought as the crumbling buildings that dotted the island became visible. It could not have been more than a tenth the size of Dragonstone, and where the queen's temporary seat had borne a proper mountain and a little port town besides, Ghaston Grey looked exactly as though someone had simply dumped a heap of sandstone into the sea somewhere that the water would not bother to swallow.

"How do people live in such a place?"

"There are stores for the guards, but even their ilk are here because they fell out of favor with their lords and ladies. Nobody's ever come here by choice, not in all Dorne's long centuries. I have, Missandei thought. Despite Lord Ryon's good-natured objections, Missandei found a spot for herself in one of the rowboats headed for the island's barren shores. Then the rocks were grinding against the boat's wooden bottom. Stuck, Missandei thought. I can wait no longer. She simply hopped over the side, sinking up to her waist in the cold water. She half-walked, half-waded ashore, calling out in Valyrian once the shivers left her body. The Weaver's venom is thawing fast. I am starting to feel cold again. The sand beneath her feet was sharp and rocky but Missandei did not care. Before long she was past the beach, in the midst of the ruins that clung still to the desolate island the way the Ghiscari had clung to their dead empire. Out from one of the buildings came the man she'd seen vying for Obara's attentions, the one with the opal in his ear. At the sight of her and the ships behind her he burst into tears and dashed into the arms of the nearest Jordayne soldier, nearly knocking him down. The rest of the court slowly emerged from behind or within ruins of their own, each looking hard used by the journey. And by their time waiting to die in this place, for what else is there to do here? They took her in, some in disbelief and some in shock at the effect the Weaver's bite had had on her.

"It's not so bad as it looks," she told them, "and was much worse when it started." The soldiers walked right past them. They are here for the Sand Snakes, for the only Martell blood left. Both had survived, as fate would have it, and Tyene and Nymeria both found themselves wrapped in thick blankets and warmed with mulled wine. Missandei had not come for House Martell. She had eyes only for the single person who appeared just as she remembered. Unsullied will not wither before some cold winds and cold waters. Even then, there are other Unsullied. There are no other Torgo Nudhos. "Pardon my absence." she said, stiff as she'd been in the Great Pyramid of Meereen. He stepped up to her, put his hand to her face, cradled her head. She leaned it on his chest and felt his lips touch her temple.

"You are forgiven." he replied just as stiffly, voice flushed as an Unsullied's ought never ever be.