Asha

"Once we make the Rock, I'm going off fish forever." one of the Seagard knights was saying. Asha had heard the same man say the same thing twice before, only to eat his share of the day's catch rather uncomplainingly. Better they're complaining about the food than the lack thereof, I suppose. Every so often they even dared to kindle a little fire, when Mormont could spot no enemies in the darkness. The more pressing debate concerned going ashore when at last Ironman's Bay lay behind them. Asha let the rivermen know what she thought of that inkling by wiggling the peg strapped to her stump.

"We're not going to rally anybody shouting from Black Wind's deck, my lady." Ser Patrek pointed out.

"No more than we will torn apart by monsters lurking inland." Asha replied. She made no mention of Mormont. If he can kill three giants, he can flatten a dozen of the Others' toothy brutes. But only as the bear, and I'm not keen on staying to watch if it happens again. She heard muttering between Roggon, Qarl and one of the Seagard men, a singularly disreputable-looking type. Asha wobbled over, cursing her pronounced gracelessness. "What are you lot muttering about?" she asked the Maid after taking him aside.

"Wagering. Not much else to do but fish and fuck on this little jaunt and I figured you'd rather not given our many visitors and the vicious beating you're still bloody from." he told her, shrugging.

"What is there to wager on? How dark the next day will be?"

"What's become of our new western friends. Bemired in dead men, monsters, or just smashed and dead."

"You ass. Enough rumors are flying on my ship without fear we're simply fleeing from squall to storm." Qarl's mouth tightened.

"You might well turn that to our gain, Your Grace." Queen, he calls me. Of Black Wind's planks and what else, pray tell?

"What do you mean?"

"If the castles on the coast are razed and frozen over, well, naught to do but press on…unless we want to do a bit of peeking."

"Do I have to pull my peg off and hit you with it?" Qarl shrugged.

"Anyplace we find in such a ruin won't be of the Others' concern any longer. Might be a few dead men to shake loose, what of them? Nothing we can't handle."

"How about a raving moon-mad brute? How about a pack of those cold-eyed wolves, Maid? Or a giant or two?"

"We'd hear the giants from long off. They're not the sort to move unseen or go across country leaving anything but rubble. Now we've got Mallister's knights, a few wolves should be more manageable-" Asha's reply was iron.

"I'm not losing any more men to deaths so easily avoided."

"But-"

"No. And if you've hinted at any such thing to our new companions, you can hint away just as well. Or must I put you over my knee in front of everyone?" Qarl grinned from ear to ear.

"Only if I can do the same to you, Your Grace." Asha felt fire flood her face. Damn him!

Once she set the Maid to lookout duty (a task as boring as it was pointless in the dark) Asha found herself vexed by another man, this one the Lord of Seagard.

"My lady…" Jason Mallister began in a low voice, "how do you know there are any westermen left to rescue? Might the better notion be to simply proceed north to Winterfell?" She did not bother to belittle the man for his lack of courage. A few giants knocking your bloody castle down around you will shake you up some.

"No 'might' to be debated, my lord. Even with your ships and men to crew them, we'd be nothing for the Others proper. But thus far we've not come upon them and they don't have the numbers to go chasing down a few survivors. Most like, their plan is to hammer us hard wherever they can, settle in with whatever they've got with them and wait for winter to do away with whoever's left over. It's not them I'm worried about." Jason Mallister was not much relieved by her words. "When the ice-ship loosed on Ten Towers, I spotted a she-Other at its helm. In her company were monsters wearing shirts of silver scale. Strongmen, sellswords, call them what you will. The one that crippled me was clad in stinking rags and barely those, utterly lost to anything but hunger. It's that sort waiting for us ashore. No true hirelings of the Others, just the wild among their kind set loose in southern lands." Or so I hope.

"Is that supposed to set me at ease?"

"Not really. They're terrifying enough nearly naked with only teeth and claws to bring to bear. Let alone hammers and axes and whatever other toys the Others gave them. But they're no shipbuilders. Should we come upon them on our jaunt down the coast it will be nothing to simply fuck off back out to sea while they shake their fists at us." A grunt from Mormont told her that they were quit of Ironman's Bay at last and quick coming up on the Banefort. Seat of House Banefort, said to be descended from necromancers. Should a living heir await me on those shores, I'll show him all of necromancy he could ever wish to see.

The castle itself had all but collapsed, ice caking what still stood. Asha could hear alarmed gasps and loud muttering from Black Wind and the Mallister ships out of sight both.

"Small wonder." she said glumly. "It's the nearest shore to the Iron Islands, two days' sail from Pyke. The Others probably hit it first and came calling only when there was nowhere to escape to." Qarl, she did not fail to notice, made no mention of going ashore for a look about.

"Mormont?"

"Nothing to see." Fuck.

"Not even monsters?" He scratched his chin, looking for once rather introspective. I'd sooner he look ready for a fight.

"When I was at a tourney in Lannisport, I saw the wealth of House Lannister for myself. Gold here, there, and everywhere, but all that gold had to come from somewhere. No doubt westermen mining since the coming of the First Men has those mountains full of holes, tunnels, even proper caves. That brute was too tall to much take to living in a castle built for men, but mountains full of hot-blooded food and plenty of space to hide from the sun, now that's more fitting."

"Bully for them. If nothing else, it keeps them out of our hair." Asha said impatiently. "We'll press on to the Crag." And pray we find it in better shape. Rather than skirt the shore due east, Black Wind headed south to save time. It's not open sea, not truly, Asha reasoned. The ice-ship has no more business here than on the Banefort's beaches. Further from the islands and a few bricks better than a ruin in the first place, the Crag could not have been any Other's idea of a pressing target. When she mentioned her thinking to Mormont, he gave a joyless chuckle.

"What's no prize to an army might seem ripe for sellswords. No doubt the Crag's in dire straits with or without the Others locking it in ice."

"Aye." added Rook at her elbow. "And full of the softest sort of mainlanders." Pitifully few, in truth. The snows would have killed at least a few of them and if their stores weren't at least appreciable, the Crag's inhabitants might well have all starved to death by now. Asha was still working out how to move around without waddling like a drunken crab when Mormont pointed south.

"Up there." he said, sounding grim.

"See anyone atop the walls? Or anything below them?" Mormont squinted.

"No. Nothing." He turned to Asha. "Doesn't mean there's nothing to be seen, though. Anything fit to see in the dark would see our ships easily from up there. Might be they're hiding." Asha gave a weary groan.

"Let's find out which." she said, fingering the axe on her hip.

On Black Wind's deck, I didn't have to move all that much, Asha found. Creeping through these hills, I limp more than walk and that's being generous. Until she mastered walking anew, she realized she'd require a walking stick if she meant to get anywhere in decent time. Better and better. At least we have the western mountains between us and the Cape of Eagles. The Crag proper sat on a pimple of a hill on the coast, too small even to warrant its own port. Or else tonight might well have gone a deal easier. Only the wind stood in their way, though when it bit its teeth were sharp as any monster's.

"Are we just going to trot up and knock?" Ser Patrek asked, jumping at every shadow.

"Unless something stops us, aye." Asha replied.

"Bloody Westerlings. They were quick enough to bend the knee to the Young Wolf when he stormed the Crag, only to hurry back to lick Tywin Lannister's boots when Robb was murdered at the Twins."

"If they hadn't, the Crag would have been sacked and razed and everyone inside put to the sword."

"You mean if Tywin had lived long enough to get the castle in his sights. So happened he didn't and anyway, Father never dipped Seagard's banners until a sea of Freys turned up with me on Black Walder's rope."

"The War of Five Kings is past, Ser Patrek. Besides, brooding is a trick of northmen, it doesn't suit you." Despite himself, the knight snorted. Mormont took it upon himself to bang on the Crag's wooden gate. When no response came, he put his fist through the oak just as he had at Seagard, the rivermen and Asha's crew both going wide-eyed as before. He peeked through the hole.

"Nobody I can see in the yard. They must be holed up in the keep." One Mormont-sized hole in the gate later and they were filing through.

"What a shit-pile." Rook said, looking disappointed. "Seagard looked better even after the giants came."

"Are we sure this place hasn't been given a once-over?" Ser Patrek added, looking around.

"There'd be signs of a struggle, or else frost covering everything. There's snow on the ground, aye, but as you might have bloody noticed, winter's come for a good long stay. It snows in winter. That doesn't mean the Others have been here." Mormont told them. It was even slower going when she had snow to contend with, but eventually Asha made it to the stone arch where a portcullis might once have stood. Instead, a great pile of rubbish and rubble sat blocking their way.

"They shut themselves in? What's all this about?" she whispered over Mormont's hairy shoulder.

"Let's ask them." Mormont replied, quickly tossing aside any and everything in his path.

Even the corridors are a shambles. Each one had a single sconce, the torches within them burning a weak yellow-blue when indeed they had not gone out. All the same, the sight of fire raised their spirits considerably and their hushed disciplined movements became laxer.

"They cannot fail to hear us now." Asha muttered.

"Unless they're dead and cannot hear." Mormont replied, Blackfyre in hand. Gawen Glover had insisted he take it ashore, citing the sliver of moon peeking down on them. If this goes ill, there will be at least one survivor, Asha thought ruefully. The hall's double doors stood closed to them, and no doubt barred from within besides. Though Mormont got more than a few expectant glances, he merely punched Blackfyre through the gap between the doors and began working it down as if it were a common logger's saw. When Asha heard the crack of wood, she watched Mormont's foot come to the gap and kick, the doors flying inward. A chorus of curses and wails from the hall told her they'd struck ore.

"I thought that might work. Gave it a go." he said.

"Well, not for nothing…" a Seagard man-at-arms muttered.

"Might as well…" Rook added.

"No reason not to…" Ser Patrek finished. Men, Asha thought. She went in after Mormont, intent on silencing the racket. Most of the people were women, not altogether a surprise, and looked singularly wretched. More than one poor creature had the tell-tale black of frostbite creeping into her ears or nose. Without exception, each was huddled around a pit-fire burning in the floor. "Any Westerlings left, d'you think? Or just a few broken shells?" Ser Patrek asked Asha.

"See if we can't get a bit more wood burning." she replied. At his command, the Seagard men began breaking up the rubbish outside to bring in piecemeal.

"There's wood aplenty out there, why let your fires sputter and starve?" One haggard-looking man stepped over from the hearth, staring at Patrek Mallister as if sure he couldn't be real. Asha spotted a line of seashells on his overcoat.

"Wood serves to keep the monsters out, lad. Shit doesn't. Were the fires any bigger, you'd smell it as well as I do." Mormont told him, Patrek making a revolted face.

"Better than freezing to death, ser." the seashell man said.

"Are you certain?" Patrek replied. Mormont sighed and shoved him aside, bringing Asha to the forefront.

"Ignore my pet eagle. Like most pretty men, he's used to life being handed to him. These days, nobody is being handed anything."

"Who are you, my lady?"

"Asha Greyjoy, and you, my lord?" She wasted no time breathing titles at the man. To her ready relief, he picked up on it.

"Gawen Westerling, and I've never been gladder to behold a face."

"Aye, I should think so. Why is it you've lingered here, my lord? Surely you and yours would be received at Casterly Rock."

"I've no ships to my name for the voyage, my lady, and overland with so many of my people defenseless…"

"You have your name. Could you not have had some of your smallfolk living on the coast ferry you down?" Ser Patrek asked.

"Fishing boats made to carry two men, maybe three. Barges they are not, ser, and I'll not be parted from my family."

"Black Wind is no half-derelict fishing sloop, my lord. Come with us and we'll be eating the Lannisters out of house and home inside two weeks."

"Is Black Wind a match for the giants' longships?" Another voice called, an older woman who had not yet lost the greater portion of her beauty. Asha blinked.

"You can't be fucking serious."

"I thought not-"

"No, I'm not talking about squaring up with a giant's longship, I'm talking about a gods-damned giant's longship."

"Oh, forgive me. I thought you might have come across one. Three of them came south some time ago, making for Fair Isle." There goes stopping at Fair Isle, Asha thought queasily. Where the balls did they find wood in the Land of Always Winter?

"My daughter Jeyne spotted them first, a few days after our first snow. I sent ravens to everyone I could think of, but whatever came of it I never learned." Lord Gawen said. Asha rubbed her eyes.

"Well, Fair Isle's got enough to keep a few giants busy for a while, I think. I'd like to be safe within the Rock before the sea calls to them again." She made no mention of the greater plan. Mere mention of a northern landing and spring will come before the Westerlings next need firewood.

"I'll go." A softer voice called from the hearth, a pretty young woman in a tattered pale-yellow dress moving to the fore. One of the Westerling girls, Asha knew at once. "I don't want to spend my last days shivering and sitting at a chamber pot-fed fire." Her mother tried to admonish her, but the girl ignored her. "Life is feasts and wine and happiness. Those are all dead now, it's just our bodies the Others have to kill." She turned to Asha. "I've seen too many beloved friends freeze to death or starve to skin and bones to much think seeing tomorrow counts for anything. I might see more of the wide world before I leave it, though. Casterly Rock, for a start." Lady Westerling looked aghast, but her husband was more hard-wearing.

"Sybell's brother was one of the first to fall in the world the Others have forced upon us. All our children remain, Seven save them, but that's about all the fortune that's found us at the Crag." Lord Gawen said.

"And, Seven save them, how many will remain to us if we leave the safety of our walls, my lord?" Lady Westerling asked, sounding more shrewish with every word. Asha shouted them both down.

"I came here on the dragon queen's orders to rescue everyone I could." Before that boil could pop and vomit pus everywhere, Asha continued. "Or maybe it's the lords' authority that empowers me, or maybe I just think Jaime Lannister, your liege lord, would rather you wheedle at him from under the Rock instead of freeze in this ruin of yours."

"Hang all that. I'll stick a rag in her teeth and carry the bitch if I have to. We'd best get gone, captain, before something cold and wintry comes calling." Rook said, voice a rasp.

"Too late!" A Seagard man cried, running into the hall. "Something's coming over the hills, a glinting sliver through the trees!"

By the time Asha reached the Crag's crumbling ramparts, the Westerlings were long forgotten. The country that sprawled out to the eastern horizon was one unbroken black morass, with only the meanest bit of moon to see by. There was no more to hear than see at first, then Asha heard the ceaseless shuffling of countless bodies coming through the trees. Dead men were nothing to her by now, but what drove them made her gasp. A half-dozen of the brutes marched in two lines of three, bulwarking two Others on horses. They in turn flanked a third Other, fluid on a white spider's back. Where the horses' gait jostled their riders and caused them to bob, the spider-rider might have been gliding over the ground so sure-footed was his mount. Silver shirts and icy armor, quite apart from the blackness around them, gleamed and glittered in the moonlight. Asha nearly knocked the man who'd come up behind her off the ramparts, pulling him back as his arms reeled. Crippled as she was, she lost her balance, landing bodily on the man.

"How many men hold the Crag?" she gasped, on seeing his yellow surcoat.

"Twenty. My l-" he groaned as Asha pressed her palm into his chest, getting to her feet as fast as she could. Ignoring the pain in her leg, she didn't stop running until she beheld the dour face of Jorah Mormont.

"Dead men, enough to make the rest not matter. They won't easily reach the Crag though, and they'll have a castle full of rubble to stagger over as well. The brutes won't be so caught up, nor the Others. Certainly not the one on the spider." His mouth hardened.

"Might have been they had sentries further inland, or up the mountain proper. It makes no matter; they know we're here now and they're on their way." Aye, and I'd smash a thousand dragon eggs in front of Daenerys Targaryen for a full moon just now, Asha thought. The westermen in fighting shape took about ten seconds to drum up. Aside from Ser Raynald, heir to the Crag, a smooth-faced boy who could only have been his younger brother and some pepper-haired older man, none were knights. Not that that means anything. Titles and chivalry won't stop an icy maul. Still, it would have been better to have more men trained at arms. The rest held whatever could be used to bludgeon a dead man, wore whatever wouldn't slow their movements. "You needn't worry about armor, lads. The dead come in numbers too great for even plate to matter, and an Other's blade will go through it anyhow. Best stay nimble." Mormont told them, pulling a bucket off a boy's head.

"They're coming up!" Patrek Mallister called from without.

"Aye, and when they do, we'll give them a welcoming." Asha replied, gritting her teeth and pulling her dirk from her jerkin. Mormont knew better than to tell her to keep out of it.

"Don't fall down." he muttered as they went to the yard together.

What remained of the keep's barricade burned in four great piles nearly flush to the walls.

"The dead men will have trouble with that, I think." she saw Roggon telling some of the westermen. Until the Others piss it out. Asha was ready for a sudden tide of them, but when the dead came into view it was one at a time, the luckiest among them to have avoided the rubble down the way. Someone shot the first among them in the chest with a flaming arrow and it couldn't manage more than a few steps before collapsing.

"Ehh! At least we'll die warm!" the pepper knight called, looking rather pleased. Keep laughing, ser. There was an unearthly sort of hollow sound. A breeze through a garden dead of frost. Then the brutes came, bellowing and howling up a racket to shame any scrap between men. Peppered with arrows and quarrels they did no more than writhe and lunge blindly and that was bad enough, but when their cold flesh spat out the last of the shafts, surprise turned to anger. Asha saw one snatch up the pepper knight and rip his head and right arm off in one frenzied bite only to sag screeching to one knee, Blackfyre's tip black against the blue-white flesh even as it sizzled and boiled away. Mormont gave the brute the same send-off as he had the one who'd torn Asha's leg away, the others realizing too late one of their number had fallen. Then all of them rushed him, three swinging still-burning rubble while one brought a maul and the other a great hooked spear to bear. To Asha's despair, they were cunning enough to know that Blackfyre itself was the threat and not its wielder, biting, stomping, clubbing, lancing at the man caught in the middle. One of them managed to wrest the sword from his grasp, flinging it away. To their fury, they could not squash Jorah Mormont. When one locked its mouth around his head, crunching down, its teeth shattered. Even as they sprouted back up in its maw, the monster gaped, dumbfounded- until Mormont paid it back in kind, biting the tip of its nose off. The knight looked as if he'd been at the training yard, no more, the bruises fading and ugly serration across his face disappearing before Asha's eyes- and those of the brutes. She waited for Noseless's own wound to close, but it remained an icy stump, oozing cold clear blood. Chaos raged around the brutes despite their confusion, and soon Mormont was no more in Asha's thoughts than the Westerlings. Even crippled she proved nimbler than the dead, her axe and dirk long lost in their cold unfeeling corpses. She made do with two table legs, each fitted with an oiled rag to produce a pair of flaming bludgeons. They did quite the trick on great clusters of dead men, letting others deal with stragglers. She dared to let a smile curl her lip on finding yet another mob, this one massing before the Crag's hall. She raised her torches, bellowed at the lot of them, and then the torches went out.

The cold that filled her lungs made her cry out even as she fell, her gasp only making it worse. It was like breathing glass dust, a sharp strangling that filled her mouth with blood. Her whimpering got worse as she saw the dead shuffling toward her, arms outstretched. No, she cried, backing away from them on her elbows. This time they proved the faster, the air too cold to breathe nothing to their unbreathing forms. Asha tried hard not to panic but when she felt that tug, that moment that lasted an eternity, that sensation of being pulled backward, she gave a terrified scream and flailed as hard as she could. Her boot broke a jaw and her peg wrenched a few fingers from the hand that had grabbed it, then they were on her. A hand grabbed at her hair, yanked it so hard a clump came away. Then she was on fucking fire, free of the countless dead and rolling forward in a maddening whorl of elation and agony even as the flames that licked her flesh went out. She sucked in a breath, half air and half broken glass. Her tongue flicked and she tasted blood before it froze on her tongue. Rolling over, she beheld a pale yellow figure clutching a blackened torch. Another figure came into Asha's view, white and lithe. Jeyne Westerling made no move to flee, even as the Other drew nearer. Dead of fear. Then a flurry of movement, a purple smudge fumbling with a sliver of deep wine-red. The Other was too intent on Jeyne, either annoyed by the demise of its thralls or intending to do away with their slayer. Once an icicle forms, it does not easily change course. The purple smudge ran the Other through, the hellish bright of its form dimming even as it collapsed into itself. Asha blinked the spots out of her eyes and beheld Ser Patrek clutching Blackfyre, gone as wide-eyed as Erena Glover. It was all Asha could do to cough the last of the cold out of her lungs, the madness roiling around her taking no notice of her half-prone form. Mormont was looking less hale, almost burned, which baffled Asha until she remembered what they were wearing. Oh, fuck. His movements were becoming less disciplined, shouts to his men devolving into utterances and then animalistic grunts. Ohhh, FUCK. Asha began to edge away from the mess, the perimeter fires long extinguished by the Others' presence allowing the dead men to surge forth only to be smashed to bits by the melee unfolding in the yard. Well, at least it's a grand pissup for both sides, then. She leaned on a wall, limping away from the remaining dead and into the hall, still wheezing.

"Lady Asha!" Ser Raynald cried, pulling her inside and making her wince.

"Outside's bad and getting worse." she hacked out, sounding so much like a barking seal. "Pull the rest back, or they'll get caught in the middle."

"Middle of-" A primal bellow sounded from the yard, the sort of trick no ordinary man could pull. The brutes' angry cries and shouting were quickly replaced by cries of alarm. Ser Raynald gaped at whatever was going on behind Asha, but she was giving it her all to stay upright. She heard the twisting of muscle, the grunts becoming low angry growls. Jorah the Andal, my foot. The one I've still got, anyhow.

She limped into the hall, still hacking up little cold rubies. The westermen were in a healthy panic, Asha finding herself unable to really blame them. Dead men and Others, and now a hairy northman's erupted into a huge bear. Ser Raynald dogged her steps, helping her forward while some of the Westerling men-at-arms pushed a table in front of the doorway.

"Trapped." she heard Qarl mutter.

"Not so. There's a way down through the seaward cliffs, it takes us all the way to the beach." The younger Westerling son's face was covered in sweat and grime despite the cold, but it was determined.

"There is?" Lord Gawen asked, astonished.

"I found it when I was trying to catch a sea eagle once. I thought it'd be a merry hunting bird when I caught it, I was even ready to pillage a nest and raise one from the shell, but instead I near tumbled off the cliffside. It's there, though, Father, I swear it."

"There or not, we're not about to leave the way you came." Jeyne said, one of Mormont's roars causing dust to fall from the ceiling.

"What of Ser Jorah? We can't leave him-" Another roar, a crunch, and the dying gurgles of one of the cold monsters.

"I daresay Ser Jorah is well on top just now, Your Grace." Qarl said shakily. "Those nosy bastards won't do the trick even clad in silver scale, and the dead men are less than nothing to him."

"Fuck the monsters. Fuck the dead men. I'm not going to leave him behind-"

"Lady Asha, what's going on out there is beyond us. Ser Jorah well knows the plan, he will proceed to Casterly Rock when he is…able." More of the bone-chilling windy sounds, cut short by a sound like a brick through a window. Another Other vanquished, Asha hoped. Her reluctance did not subside until the air hurt to breathe again, the spilled wine freezing over in dark slicks on the floor and the torches flickering out in unison. Oh, no. Despite the sounds of dead men being crushed into sand-fine powder outside, Asha felt only dread. One of the doors to the hall fell off its hinges and the third Other stepped through, followed by his horrid mount. He wasted little time on the men fleeing to the castle's rear, but Asha could not find the strength to tear her gaze away. The carnage in the yard ceased, roars replaced by irate snuffling. The Other stared down the hall, toward the sounds of heavy feet drawing closer. He wears two swords, she realized. His shorter, lighter weapon he calmly set aside, the one of razor ice. The sword he drew was longer, like a bastard sword, but with a curved blade and glinting sterling white. The purest silver, Asha thought, the realization like a knee in the gut. The other's mouth was moving but she could not hear the words. She saw the thin lip quiver, the ice-blue eyes widen as the bear stomped into the hall, still snuffling. Even armed with silver, he is afraid. An arm looped about her waist.

"My lady," her rescuer's insistent whisper. She let him take her then, the image of the Other facing Mormont down one that would never leave her. He knew Mormont was beyond him, yet he did not run. Distantly, Asha wondered if there were any man among her own race brave enough to do the same.

The trip down the cliffside was a blur, Ser Patrek and Ser Raynald taking turns to mind her in between seeing to their own men. The roars began again and how, though Asha wondered how often the sound of sizzling bear-flesh rose to counter them outside her hearing.

"This is a mistake." she declared. "The Other didn't so much as glance our way. He knew we didn't matter, that time spent killing us was time wasted. Mormont mattered." Putting a man-bear between the Others and the living would count for more than a dozen Asha Greyjoys or Raynald Westerlings or Patrek Mallisters. Now we've gone and left him, and whatever we might run into on our way to the Rock will be for us to contend with, and us alone. Even bold as she was, even brave as she was, Asha did not look fondly on their chances against such an enemy as they'd found at the Crag. The ships were waiting for them, Gawen Glover standing on Black Wind's deck eager to greet them despite the cold. When he saw Blackfyre in a stranger's grasp, his dismay was palpable.

"It doesn't mean a thing, Ga." she told him bracingly. "I told you, our Ser Jorah's not one to much need swords when there's fighting to be done." Not anymore.

"Fair Isle's been pillaged by cold giants on longships of their own." Qarl announced, to a general dark muttering.

"We'll make for Kayce and Feastfires and hope our luck as such holds." Asha declared, letting Qarl half-drag her to her cabin. Despite her weariness she had the Crag's women take up with her, preferring to keep them out of the wind and the gaze of tired, hungry ironmen both. Best not take chances, after all. To keep her younger siblings calm, Jeyne Westerling got to testing them on their knowledge of the westerlands.

"Kayce is the seat of House Kenning, descended from reavers who found the west more to their liking than the isles of their birth." Eleyna said dutifully. Brave like her sister. The gods must smile on Lord Gawen if so little of his wife passed to their children.

"Very good. And Feastfires?" Jeyne asked, this time of young Ser Rollam.

"Seat of House Prester. Their sigil is a red ox." She gave the easier query to Rollam. While Prester was a proper house and Feastfires a proper castle, Kenning was a line of upjumped reavers and Kayce was little more than a fortified town that happened to have a stone keep at its center. Even so, I hope it remains for us to find. My long-lost countrymen, too.

Getting too near Fair Isle was no one's notion of a good idea, but Asha dared not risk the open ocean. Forget the ice-ship and the bald bitch at its helm, a sudden winter squall could smash us just as quickly and then no one goes north. The island itself seemed unremarkable enough, its shores within sight of the mainland on a good clear day. The ice that extended from the sand like a cold outreaching hand made Asha sweat, praying to anyone who'd listen that they would not find the ice reaching all the way to the coast. To turn and go around would take days, a week, time we don't have. Ser Patrek, damn him, even had some men coming 'round to the idea of landing on the island.

"You do remember the giants smashing Seagard into the frozen mud, don't you, Ser Patrek?" she asked him. Asha certainly did. The one with the skulls still clacking in his beard, and the words they bellowed. Whatever they might mean. The cold giants were only too real, it stood to reason rumors of giants at Winterfell were anything but. Should I live so long, perhaps one of them will enlighten me. One chilly morning, Asha found herself being prodded awake by the younger Westerling girl.

"We've come upon Kayce, my lady." she said, whispering and with big fearful eyes. Asha might have asked if a few orange-and-black sunbursts scared her so, or if it was the iron ancestry of the Kennings before she remembered what they had found themselves in the middle of. Barbed words have their place, and this is not it. She pulled on a thick fur coat before slipping outside, finding Black Wind quiet as a drifting hulk. She bit her tongue to kill the shout rising in her throat, the sight of the massive longship thrice as long as her own enough to leave her breathless. Loud, boisterous voices reached them from the water's edge, along with a growl that for a moment had Asha ready to rush Kayce's shores. No, she told herself. You left Mormont at the Crag, it's some cold monster that wanders here. Closer still, though hopefully out of boulder range, Asha espied a snow bear sniffing curiously at what had washed up on the beach that morning. The animal paid the ships no mind, intent on finding breakfast.

"Mjorna!" came the call from further inland, the bear turning its head toward the voice at once. Go, Asha willed. Go, and draw no unkind eyes out after you. The bear's eyes burned blue as the Others' had, though it was clearly no corpse. At last it padded after the voice, snuffling to itself. They passed the longship in silence, the unseen giants making well up for it with loud, untroubled conversation. Kayce was almost untouched when Black Wind reached it, to Asha's amazement. A bit of truly harrowing sneaking up and down the dock had Terrence Kenning, his smallfolk and what ships were worth taking added to the fleet all while Asha pondered Kayce's survival. The Kennings of Kayce had been westermen for centuries, since before the Conquest, yet Lord Terrence could shame a proper sailor with his talkativeness.

"A she-giant." he told them, shaking his head and looking gobsmacked. "Cold blue-white skin and colder eyes, yet she had a mane of hair so red it hurt to look at. She had a wolf's head inked on her face, too. Might have had something to do with the two she had in tow, and the snow bear."

"We're on our way to Casterly Rock, my lord. Will you accompany us?" Ser Raynald asked.

"No need to ask me twice. Or even once, I was ready to swim to you lot as soon as you broke over the horizon. Get my smallfolk the fuck away from those louts before they decide the time has come. But Feastfires sits 'tween us and the Rock, will we be calling on the Presters?"

"Aye, quick as can be done." Kenning tugged at his beard.

"Mhh. Might be the red herd moves quick enough when there's a lion nipping at their ankles, but when its squid arms prodding them all they're like to do is stand still- or charge." Asha cursed under her breath.

"Even with you in tow? The Westerlings? The Mallisters?" Kenning shrugged.

"You could bring a bloody Targaryen for all the good it'll do you. Presters might look like shopkeepers, but they've got bull in them somewhere. Once they start, they don't stop."

They made Feastfires the next day, finding the docks bustling under a fresh foot of snow to Asha's astonishment. When Black Wind got within view, there was a general outcry. Maybe they think the other ships were plundered and hold nothing but ironmen. If only. The smallfolk cleared off the docks, replaced by guardsmen and plenty of archers. Kenning spent the fleet's approach waving his hands over his head, shouting at the Prester men. His appearance made them uncertain, at least enough not to immediately loose a flight of arrows, and in time Asha found herself standing on Feastfires' dock sporting nary a shaft. Kenning did most of the talking, swearing proficiently at the captain on duty in between his shouts to summon Lord Prester.

"He's not here." A short man elbowed his way through the crowd, followed by a dozen knights. The red bull was splashed across his front and despite half of it hidden behind a wiry brown beard, Asha knew an able face when she saw one. "Garrison never returned from the Rock after doing his part in Lord Tywin's honor guard. Ravens flew but I've not heard a word from him." Kenning frowned, but Asha saw the cogs cranking behind his forehead. This means well for us. This Prester is a soldier, not a soft-palmed lord clad in silk. Asha had known men cast from the same mold. Men of high birth but with claim to nothing. Who learn quick and well they'd best be able to look out for themselves and their people. More's the pity they never come into any real power. If this Garrison was truly dead, Asha figured, the Prester before them was the rightful Lord of Feastfires.

"Nevermind your cousin now. We're running to the Rock, my lord. Fleeing cold monsters, dead men, giants and the gods only know what else." Prester's mouth curled in a frown, his eyebrows rising to crest his bald head.

"Have you been at the ale, Kenning?"

"Aye, nothing like something strong to settle a man and help him keep his bladder. I don't want to cross paths with the she-giant outside Kayce again, my lord. Nor her snow bear, nor her direwolves."

"Are dragons any better?" Prester asked stonily.

"Dragons? What do you know of dragons, my lord?" Asha asked, unable to wait for Kenning to get to the point. "We spotted a black monster flying west not a year past. He scared the wits out of the fishermen on the water but even from Feastfires' walls I could see it was the horizon he hungered for, and in a minute he was lost in the sunset." The black one was on Dragonstone, the only one Daenerys managed to keep track of. What's she doing flying out to nowhere?"

"Her Grace was one of the minds behind this plan. She might have been simply checking on the westerlands-"

"The dragon had no rider. Everyone close enough to see swore up and down the beast was alone. Pardon me, my lady, but I needed no such proximity to know he had no intention of turning back. Assuming he didn't go into the Sunset Sea somewhere, he's probably perched on some spire in fucking Yi Ti." The last time I saw him, he was always snatching Daenerys up like a kitten with a ball of string.

"Dragon or no dragon, we've got lions to pester. Ser Jaime's task was to rally the west for us to ferry north. Better late than never, I suppose, but every day that passes the snows fall deeper and the winds howl louder. Half the reason I want to make it to the Rock and Winterfell after it is because there at least someone more fit to lead will be telling me what to do." Asha told him. Those were the magic words.

"If Ser Jaime's leading, I will follow."

"Good. We leave as soon as your ships are ready, my lord. We must have all your smallfolk, too. Not one person should remain behind for the Others to fall upon."

Casterly Rock began as a nub on the horizon, but soon it sprouted out of the sea taller than anything around it. Getting closer still, Asha could see towers and ramparts dotting the great rock here and there.

"How are we going to get up there?" Erena Glover asked her the night before they reached it. "The castle is all the way atop the rock."

"What you see is just the beginning, Lady Glover. In truth, the castle is the rock, full of halls and barracks and everything else you could think of." Jeyne Westerling told her. I only hope that golden arse got here before us. I don't relish the prospect of talking my way out of yet another impasse. There was no movement, no shouts of alarm ashore that Asha could see, which mystified her. Nothing's frosted over so the Others haven't reached here yet, so why is no one working the docks as at Feastfires?

"Might be the castellan was leery of letting anyone out from under the Rock's protection. If I saw the dragon, so did he." Lord Prester said.

"There are caves at the base fit for ships to enter. We'll go on ahead and see what's going on. Meantime, the rest of you should keep each other out of trouble." Asha decided, the great ship-shuffling beginning. Despite his protests Asha had Gawen take his sister and lead her onto a Mallister ship.

"Here, my lord. Why don't you hold this a while?" Ser Patrek said, handing him Blackfyre. Gawen frowned.

"Only because Ser Jorah will need it when he rejoins us." They numbered only seven when it was done, all that remained of her original crew, but Asha hoped that would set the Lannisters at ease. We're here to talk, not fight. Unless some hulks show up, then there might be a bit of a scrap. As a longship, Black Wind was more fit to negotiate the caves anyhow. The mainlanders' ships are bigger, but they needs must turn around. Front and back are much the same on a longship. The empty sconces bolted to the cave walls did not much help Asha's mood. Had the Lannisters closed off part of the Rock, perhaps on spotting their coming? Queer that a lion should act a turtle. They made do with torches on board, Roggon's scraggly pup whimpering in the dark and echoing in the cave's throat.

"Maybe Lannister just wanted everyone in order for when we turned up." Qarl suggested. At last the caverns opened up to reveal a wharf proper, sheltered from the storms by the Rock's own form. For now. Uncle Aeron might say that in time, the sea will wear Casterly Rock away. Speaking of uncles, Asha's spotting of Sea Song floating off the furthest dock, along with one other sorry-looking derelict filled her with relief. I should bloody like to know how the Reader of all ironborn got away from Ten Towers. They docked, disembarked, moved to the great gate that partitioned the wharf from the Rock proper.

"A proper game of come-into-my-castle, eh?" Hagen asked.

"Not likely. The only castle Jaime Lannister's like to come in is his sister's." Asha replied, the laughter that rose then multiplied a thousandfold, bouncing off the caves and water both.

"To be sure, it's nothing like I've heard. This Rock is no more than bare empty tunnels, much the same as Cersei Lannister was." Asha's head snapped to the gate, breath hitching. "Aye, the golden wench had a lovely bosom, what of it? So does my Silence, and hers will never sag." A hundred lackeys pooled out of the towers framing the gates, Euron stepping into view only when Asha's crew was stripped of their weapons. He was clad in armor of a kind with Blackfyre, he held an orange dragon egg closer than a mother would her babe under one arm, yet Asha could only stare into his glittering blue eye. Blue like his mouth, stained from drinking shade-of-the-evening.

Euron turned and walked back inside the gate, a spear at Asha's back spurring her forward. Her crew, she noticed, did not seem worthy of the Crow's Eye's invitation, remaining behind with the bulk of his underlings.

"Where are the Lannisters?" she asked finally, if only to hear her own voice. It may be but a memory soon.

"The lions are upstairs, behind sturdily locked and bolted gates of their own. Cersei may have neglected to inform Casterly Rock of our new arrangement, as it were, but it matters not. Krakens rise from the sea as we're wont to say, eh, sweet Asha? What could I want of those cold lofty halls?" Her uncle seemed positively personable, which in Asha's experience meant something truly nasty was brewing.

"How should I know? Highborn captives? Hostages to spirit away? You'll need to find a better place to nest than Pyke, it's been-"

"Taken by the Others, as have the rest of those dreary rocks. As happens, I've got the means by which to deal with them right here." He held up the egg.

"Are you going to heave it at them?" Euron laughed.

"Balon and his wife had nary a clever thought between them for years. The gods only know what granted you such grace." They ended up in a long well-furnished hall that seemed to be Euron's home of late. Two women lay in a bed in the corner dragged in from elsewhere in the castle and a merry fire was crackling in a grand hearth.

"Homey." Asha muttered. She was rather firmly sat in a chair across from the hearth, arms bound to the wood. As his fodder had no tongues, it was left for Euron to discover that she'd been hobbled.

"Oh, now that's just a shame." he said, shaking his head.

"Even if you crack that thing open, what comes out will be better suited to lighting torches than fighting the Others."

"No doubt. But it's not been so many years between the first whispers of dragons on the Dothraki Sea and now, and years I have to spare. There's just the matter of hatching it that has, 'till now, rather stymied me." Asha liked the sound of that not at all.

"I saw Sea Song on my way in."

"Next to Silence no doubt, cleverly disguised. We're not about to set out soon anyway, what need have I of ships just now?"

"Where's the Reader?"

"In a cell beneath us, where else? Alannys too." Asha struggled in the chair.

"Leave my mother out of this."

"I happily would, but for the small matter that she's your mother. Theon's too, the cockless cur." For the first time, Asha saw irritation in Euron's face.

"He never made it off the islands." she said, hoping she sounded sincere.

"I heard the same song from those who came in on Sea Song. You would have done better to keep him with you."

"Why so? A stiff wind would blow him over." Euron shrugged.

"Balon was king in name only, but 'king' men called him and so a king he was. I should have liked to use whatever remained of Theon and keep you, but as you're the only child of Balon's here, I'll just have to make do." he said, setting the egg on the table and giving it a fond pat. He rose and circled behind her, clapping his hands on her shoulders. "King's blood is king's blood, after all."