Tyrion
Even behind Winterfell's walls, he heard the dragons roaring, the wolves howling, the eerie hoots of the Others' mounts. Somewhere, a cold giant was bellowing in the Old Tongue. To come this far and be of no more use than a wooden sword, that was the cruelest of the gods' japes. Were I a whole man I'd have a sword of mine own, out there where the dragons dance with nameless creatures from the depths of winter. He drummed his hands on the table, feeling not the least bit tired despite not having slept since the army left. Army, he thought. A horde is what it was. But for the Others, their piling snows and driving winds, the whole lot of them might well have headed north instead of south and that would have been the end of that. Wild men racing off into wild lands, hot on the wolves' heels and the dragons' tails. It would fall to men like him to set to order the ruin that remained of Westeros, to sift what remained of value from the great rubble heap the Seven Kingdoms had become. Men learned of letters, who wield quills instead of swords. Yet, how could it be done? The north lies under feet of snow and for all we know, the rest of the realm is in the same sorry state. How could crops be planted in the dead of a winter not due to end for years, and that at the earliest? How could they even begin to rebuild, to get up off the ground, when the ground itself had hardened against them? He looked down at the parchment in front of him. Westeros fucked, written in his hand, lay at the top of the page. Perhaps we have reason to want those who live the wild life near yet. No Dothraki ever farmed a croft any more than a Nightrunner or an ice-river clansman. They could hunt, though, and that seemed to Tyrion the only way any eating would be done until well after the last of the snows had melted. And I'm not much help there, either. Perhaps he was worrying about nothing. Perhaps the Others would find a way to get into Winterfell. If that came to pass, what came after didn't matter. He rubbed his eyes and stretched. Enough of this. If I'm going to die, I'm certainly not going to do it with my stomach empty and my eyes hurting. The walk from his room to the Great Hall saw him passing fewer Dothraki and Free Folk and more of the Starks' civilized guests. Some from across the Narrow Sea, at that. None paid him any mind save a boy lingering in a corner on the way to the hall. Volantene, Tyrion guessed, though it was nothing he'd put a bag of gold on. Not in this light, anyway. He waddled past the young man without another glance.
"Lion." Tyrion's Valyrian was better read than spoken, but he knew the word when he heard it. A knight behind Tyrion swore aloud as Tyrion stopped short, nearly stumbling over him. The boy came nearer, looking a singularly unpleasant mixture of apprehensive and determined.
"Volantene?" Tyrion asked, in his best Valyrian. The boy pulled a face. Not so good, then.
"I am. Do you truly speak Valyrian, or are you just another sunsetter choking on our tongue?"
"I understand well enough. Why, do you know the Common Tongue?"
"Not well enough."
"Valyrian it is. Who are you?" The boy groaned.
"You're the dragon queen's pet dwarf, which I think you knew already. You mean, I think, to ask who I am, and I am Toqorro Maegyr." The name Maegyr tickled something in Tyrion's mind. I suppose it ought, I spent enough bloody time in Volantis.
"The Old Blood, hm? Within the walls of Winterfell. Queer."
"Queerer still are tales that a certain Volantene girl found herself wed to a wolf." Tyrion's stomach twisted into a knot. I have a bad feeling about this.
"Why, what are such stories to you?"
"The girl, Talisa, was my sister. And if half of what I've heard in my time in Westeros is true, Lord Dwarf, her Young Wolf is not half the story."
Resignedly, Tyrion told Toqorro Maegyr what he knew. There's nothing to be gained by keeping it from him anyhow.
"I spent some of my time in irons passing through Volantis myself. I recall the name 'Maegyr' belonging to one of the city's triarchs." Toqorro sniffed. "A cousin of my father's, who had no more care for us than the traders and merchants he opposed." Tigers and elephants, Tyrion thought. "When the pale mare came to Volantis, it broke the Old Blood. My parents were two who ended up in the burning corpse piles, along with Malaquo. Rather than stay and die with Volantis, I took ship with the Golden Company. Another young lad on one ship in thousands, with home a roil…no one cared who I was. I doubt anyone will here, either."
"You have that right enough. The world's gone proper mad, with Others rushing south just as it seems all of Essos sees fit to pay us a visit." Tyrion said in a wry jest. "I'm surprised the flux reached that far, though."
"Ships from Slaver's Bay brought it, along with news of the dragon queen's long-overdue departure. No one could decide what to do next- and then the mare was on us."
"Well, if nothing else, the Others will have a long walk from the northern coasts to Volantis, if the city is their aim."
"I hear talk of ice-ships myself. Even if they chose to go overland, it's not like the Rhoyne would prove an obstacle, not when frozen over. The ruined cities on the river may have new rulers even now." Tyrion rubbed his forehead.
"A chamber pot to fill once we've gotten off the one we're on, I think." Toqorro pursed his lips.
"Just so." He kept up with Tyrion, evidently chewing on some thought.
"What is it, boy?"
"You're supposed to be a smart man, Lord Dwarf. Close to the dragons, close to the wolves."
"Ah, that might be a matter of some contention-"
"Is my sister truly here?" Fuck. Tyrion led Toqorro out of the busy halls to where they needn't bark to make themselves heard.
"The short answer is 'sort of'. I think they don't know themselves if they are who they appear to be after…after they return, in their way, but certainly Catelyn Stark was no bosom friend of mine when I was reunited with her at Riverrun. Neither she nor the Young Wolf's widow were overfond of Freys either, if the rains were any clue." Toqorro gasped.
"Where is she now?"
"The both of them spend their time near the only water that hasn't frozen solid, the pool of the godswood. More a lake now, in truth, and with a dragon basking in it to boot." Hopefully just now he's on his way back.
"Can you take me there?" Tyrion was not the least bit surprised.
"I can. Don't be alarmed if she doesn't remember you straightaway, it's all a muddle."
While Toqorro gaped at the baby giant, quickly shepherded away by her mother, Tyrion gently poked the surface of the pool with a stick. Like knocking on a door, he thought. Isn't it? Aye, or you might be clapping your hand on her arse and giving a firm squeeze. Water is water, how would you know what is and isn't her? a voice like Bronn's chortled in his mind. I hope I won't have to stick my head in there, Tyrion thought bleakly before Catelyn Stark emerged.
"What is it?" she asked. And good day to you, too. Toqorro approached, gaping anew at the trees on the far side of the pool, visible through Catelyn Stark's fluid form.
"I am Toqorro Maegyr," the boy said, in a tone rather steadier than Tyrion might have managed at the same age, "and I think my sister is here somewhere." The lady stared at him. A second upwell of water joined the first, looking about.
"Has the dragon come back?" Talisa stopped dead at the sight of Toqorro. Far from appearing distraught, the boy could not have looked more at ease, even blinking tears from his eyes.
"Perhaps we'd best get scarce, my lady." Tyrion advised Catelyn, waddling away briskly. See too many tearful reunions and you lose your taste for them. Such tenderness isn't for others to gawk at.
"What's all that about?" she asked as Tyrion followed the edge of the shore around the pool.
"It seems your companion left family behind in Volantis. Her younger brother made it across the Narrow Sea on one of the Golden Company's ships."
"He can't be more than fourteen or fifteen, where are his parents?"
"Dead of the flux, or so he told me. It seems Volantis was ill-prepared to deal with the pale mare galloping past its Black Walls and trampling the Old Blood into dust."
"Is there not a bit of good fortune to be found on either side of the Narrow Sea?" Tyrion shrugged.
"I saw the first of Valyria's daughters with mine own eyes. Small wonder Volantis rose against Daenerys- it may call itself the First of the Free Cities, but it was about as free as a crow is white. The pale mare used the slave trade to reach Volantis, I'll bet. The Old Blood sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind." At least they had the logic to burn the bodies, Tyrion thought. Saves us an army of wights waiting to be ferried over from Essos' shores. Catelyn was unmoved by the plight of noble slaving families half a world away.
"Have you seen Shireen?"
"No, but then, why would I? She's probably just as fond of the forge as you are of the pool, and I have no business with anvils and hammers."
"It would seem not so fond. I heard Arya complaining to Gendry that the work was too dangerous to do without Shireen present, mixing glass and steel." Shireen, absent from the forges? That was hardly good news.
"As in she's missing?"
"No, she's just not at the forges as often as perhaps would be liked." Tyrion was off without another word. "Where are you going?" he heard Catelyn ask his back.
"Where do you think? Things are bad enough without our foundry burning down." Tyrion replied.
Only when he found himself lost in the throng again did Tyrion realize he had not the first notion of where the girl might have gone. It will cause no end of whispering if I just bandy about that she needs finding, and anyway how hard can she be to find, really? He checked the forges just to be sure, confirmed that Shireen was indeed absent and mused on where in Winterfell someone in her state could go unnoticed. Someplace void of trees and other kindling, I daresay. That meant heading down, into the cellars of the castle where only cold stone could be found. Why would she be rooting around in the dark, though? When there's plenty to do at the forge, or else just stand atop the earthen rings and hurl flame at the wights. Unfamiliar as he was with the deep places of the castle, Tyrion soon found himself lost. I doubt there's a map to be found of these wretched cellars, as well. At least I know she's not with the Children, I doubt they'd want a fireling so near their trees and vines. His search proved fruitless and saw him waddling back toward the keep cold, tired, and hungry. While those who matter battle dead men and wrest the westermen out of the Others' hands. Shuffling past two of the Stark guardsmen he beheld the hall as full as ever, even with a number and more among its usual occupants in the field. Tellingly, the high table was void of Starks if not of direwolves. The ones that matter are as absent as their masters and mistresses, though. Princess Arya's giggle made Tyrion shift his gaze to where the stormlanders sat, making him give a wry chuckle. Of course. Nymeria sat behind where the princess had entangled herself in Gendry Baratheon's arms, occasionally prodding Arya with her nose. Hmm. If anyone will know where Shireen has gone, it's her lordly cousin. He cleared his throat to announce himself, noticing that Gendry seemed almost sullen. Wishing he were out there, Tyrion knew at once. He's not the only one. "Forgive me, princess, my lord." Tyrion said.
"I managed to come across a member of Volantis' Maegyr family and when I led them to the Lady Talisa, Lady Catelyn mentioned that she had not seen Shireen in some time." He omitted the part about overhearing the pair.
"Well, she hasn't been with Gendry, though she ought be." Arya said, sounding irritated.
"Aye. Hammering bones though, not an anvil." Gendry replied. "Why she didn't go out with the army, I can't begin to guess."
"The same reason you didn't, my lord. She can do more in the forge than in the field, anyone armed with one of your funny blades is a threat the Others must countenance." I don't have time to nurse a Baratheon ego. "Where else in the castle might she be needed more?"
There was not the least bit of realization on Gendry's face, who was busy fishing a carrot off his plate to tease the princess with. Torn between amusement at his antics and something else, her face was equal parts pale and red. She might have hid her suspicions had not her lord been pulling her tail. Grudgingly she snapped up the carrot off Gendry's fork, murmuring darkly even as she chewed.
"See? Better than turnips."
"They are not-" she stopped short, eyes going wide. "Wait! That's not what you said! You said turnips were better!"
"Did not." Gendry replied, serene as salt in the sea, working on filling a spoon with peas.
"Did so!" Arya replied, the pale in her face giving way to crimson.
"Are you still talking? There's a lord about, who wants to have words with this lord. Ladies ought hold their tongues when lords are about, talking about lordly things."
"A lunkheaded bull is what you are! You forget I'm a bloody princess now, and I'll say whatever I like! What have you to say to that?" Arya declared, poking him in the chest.
"Moo." Gendry muttered through a mouthful of peas. The other storm lords were howling with laughter, evidently this lovers' spatting was not new to them and a great source of amusement. Bully for them, but I have a fireling to find. Tyrion did not press, not surrounded by raucous stormlanders likewise irked they had to stay behind, but neither did Arya miss his knowing gaze. Resolutely she looked away from him, pretending he wasn't there. As if I've never gotten that reception before.
"Might I trouble you with helping me find your sister?" Tyrion asked. Arya's stern northern mask broke and she extricated herself from Gendry's lap.
"Why do you need to talk to Sansa?" Arya asked suspiciously.
"Well, we can't have Shireen missing in action for so long at a time, not when there's still dragonglass and steel to wed. If anyone in Winterfell can find her, it's Sansa." Tyrion said, following her into an off hall.
"Or Lady." Arya replied.
"Who has gone afield, if you'll recall, and I doubt she'd much be in the mood for a dwarf's suspicions. Then again, you could tell me where Shireen is and save me the trouble of bothering Sansa." Arya stopped walking and Tyrion had to sidestep to avoid bumping into her.
"It was never Sansa you sought." she said flatly, as if angry with herself she'd fallen for the ploy.
"Yes and no. The trick with telling lies from truth is that knowing one from the other lets you muddle them together. Get too used to seeing them as two sides of a single coin and you become useless when the coin stands on its edge. I'm looking for Shireen, someone ought get her back in the forge, but in the likely event you decline to disclose her location I'll have to resort to Sansa to find her."
"Why do you think I know where she's gone?"
"I think you know something, which is as good as any a place to start."
"It's not something I can talk about. By decree of the queen." That, Tyrion did not expect to hear. What is Daenerys up to?
Tyrion supposed a bit of his ego was bruised, that as nominal Hand of the Queen she'd have told him about something about whatever was going on, but these days more than enough happened that Tyrion Lannister had no business and less mixing up with.
"I only found out about it by accident, and even then, I really didn't find out much at all." Arya said. "I'm not supposed to know about it."
"Then you don't." Tyrion replied, shrugging.
"The edge of the coin." Arya said wryly.
"Just so. Let's get you back to your bullheaded lord-"
"You're the dragon queen's pet lion." Though Arya seemed to know someone else had approached, Tyrion got to jump out of his skin at the sound of the voice. Then again, I don't have a direwolf doing my hearing and smelling for me. He felt almost mollified to be a pet lion than a pet dwarf, as well. Val stood before them, Dalla straining in her arms. "Stop your worming, Dalla. Look, it's the Lannyman Tormund spoke of." Val gently jostled her daughter. Dalla looked down and gaped when she saw Tyrion.
"Lann!" she echoed pointing.
"That I am, of evident fame among the Free Folk."
"The way Tormund tells it, you tie dragons' tongues in knots with your incessant riddling and busy wolves with chasing each other's tails." Val said.
"Only when I've run out of wine and must find other ways to amuse myself." Like kinslaying and exile.
"I hear tell you speak the magic tongue, that Valyrian."
"Oh, it's hardly magic. Once you hear a Volantene sailor drunk on grog try to order his third pint in between bouts of vomiting, it rather loses its luster. Essos was diverting." Val and Arya both made faces while Dalla resumed her trying to escape her mother's grasp.
"Hells, Dalla-"
"What's gotten into her?" Tyrion asked.
"I was planning on giving her a bit of dinner, as she's gone onto soup, but as soon as we got near the hall she started trying to make off down some side stair." Tyrion shrugged.
"I've learned all the mysteries of dragons and wolves, but the magic of stairs has thus far eluded me." While Arya giggled at his jest, Val huffed humorlessly.
"I scarcely let her crawl down half-frozen stone steps. I let her point and lead as I carried her, only to find our way blocked by some of those toy soldiers."
"What are Unsullied doing beneath the hall?" Tyrion asked, mystified. Abruptly, Arya took her leave, and would pay no heed to his calls at her back.
"I've not the slightest inkling, but they wouldn't let us pass. Nor did they speak the Common Tongue, it seems."
"Most don't, it's Valyrian for them."
"Maybe you could get us past."
"What does it matter? What were they guarding, anyway?"
"So far as I could tell, an empty corridor. Well, not empty, there was a room between the ranks with a fearsome heat coming from it."
"Perhaps another kitchen opened to keep food flowing, no wonder there are Unsullied stationed nearby." Tyrion said, shrugging. "You said she was fond of soup, maybe she thinks there's some to be found in there."
"There's some to be found in the bloody hall, without any toy soldiers blocking our way." Val replied crossly. Well, it isn't fighting wights, Tyrion thought as Val led him down toward the mystery the Unsullied were guarding, but it beats being drunk on the floor of the hall.
Unsurprisingly, the eunuchs were not forthcoming when Tyrion hailed them in Valyrian. What was surprising was the heat pouring off Winterfell's stones. It reminded him of standing before Drogon that night on Dragonstone. Between the legs of the Unsullied, Tyrion saw the flames of a great fire flicker on the wall opposite the room they were guarding. That's not soup they're making in there. He debated whether simply asking if they'd seen the fireling would get him any answers. Val was struggling to keep Dalla quiet, the girl squirming to peek past her mother's shoulder or straining to escape her grasp, no doubt to scamper toward whatever waited behind the Unsullied. Not that Tyrion thought they would do her harm, but all the same it would be best if she didn't manage to reach them and try to bull through in all her year-old fury.
"Dalla!" Val cried as the babe wormed free, giggling as she approached. Gently (and a deal more deftly than he would have believed himself capable) Tyrion scooped her up and slipped her about his shoulders, prompting a bit of confused burbling. He muttered an apology to the Unsullied for all the good it might have done, starting when someone answered in something that might have passed for Valyrian. If I were half deaf and all drunk. A head poked out from the room. The woman had not a hair on her head and her expression was equal parts anxious and annoyed.
"Fuck off!" she snapped, Dalla hiccupping and giving a high-pitched whine from Tyrion's shoulders. Her expression changed on seeing Tyrion, lips pursing in reflection. Val's own barked obscenity bounced off her as if she was part of the wall. The woman came out from the room, the Unsullied parting on her approach without a word. "Lion man." Her Valyrian was peculiar, much rougher, much wilder, without any of the music or poetry attributed it in the Free Cities.
"I am he." Tyrion replied.
"The full moon's lion." What that meant, Tyrion had no clue and less.
"Full Moon?" She ran her hand through the hair she didn't have.
"Like the full moon." Ah. 'Full Moon' must mean our silver-haired queen.
"Well, that's what most people suppose."
"She spoke of you, more than once. She said you know of days long past, from marks put down by those as lived then." You don't strike me as much of a reader, at that. Val plucked Dalla from his shoulders.
"So I do. Why, am I needed? Who are you, anyway?"
"I am Bytarys, of Skagos." Ah yes, very Skagosi-sounding. "And you met Daenerys when she went there with Jon Snow, did you?" Her name is perfectly Valyrian, what is all this about 'Full Moon?'
"I did, and came here with my people when she asked." The doorway she'd emerged from glowed blindingly bright for a moment. With a whimper from mother and daughter both the light dimmed with a splutter of apology from Shireen Baratheon.
"Oh my!" she said, noticing Tyrion for the first time.
"My lady, you're needed at the forge." he said, glad to have gotten around the headache growing in the base of his skull. It matters not what's going on here, he told himself, gaze lowering to the fireling's hands. It was too dark, she was too bright to tell what color the egg was, but the sight of it was enough to make Tyrion's jaw fall open with a merry pop. Oh my.
While the floor all but roasted his behind, Tyrion listened to Bytarys' story in the Common Tongue through Shireen. Torches in the room revealed the egg in Shireen's care to be a deep midnight blue flecked with flecks of white little larger than grains of sand. The night sky, he thought numbly as he looked to the second egg, snug in the fire that beat like a great hot heart in the center of the room. Its polished-iron surface almost hurt to look at, thin black quill-strokes running in long curved arcs along the shell deepening the shadows in which it sat.
"Careful, my lord." Shireen said, both gentle and stern. "They are hot. And when I say they're hot-"
"Will they hatch?" he asked, trying not to sound too desperate. Thoughts of everything but the two head-sized eggs were swept into some unmapped corner of his mind. Shireen and Bytarys looked at each other.
"The iron, almost certainly." Shireen finally replied. "Bytarys says it…reacted when the queen touched it."
"Daenerys already has a dragon." Somewhere out in this wide world. "So she does." Then he smacked a hand to his forehead. But the child within her doesn't, you fucking dolt of a dwarf. Or didn't, as it seems.
"And the blue?"
"The little wild girl, that winter rose, she gave it a once-over but nothing happened." Tyrion's breath caught in his chest. Not soup, he thought, mind soon whirling too fast to hold onto. He turned back to look at Val, who was cradling Dalla in the room's doorway.
"The queen's quickling and Rose Snow are not the only children of the king's here in Winterfell." Tyrion muttered so that Val would not hear.
"No," Shireen replied, "but it is not our business to take that step for them, especially when they're not here. We were tasked with keeping the eggs warm, not handing them out to every seed of the White Wolf's, as I've heard him called. I doubt he'd want it done himself, at that." Tyrion rubbed his hand against his mouth, feeling his chapped lips. His palm came away bloody. I need to get out of this heat, he thought.
"What's to be gained by waiting? The Others certainly aren't wasting any time, if Sansa is to be believed." he said finally, trying to remain objective.
"My lord, I believe I can guess to some small degree how you might feel right now…" Shireen's voice trailed off. You can't, Tyrion thought. You can't begin to guess. Dalla was fussing again, and Tyrion was certainly not going to disappoint her.
"It will be the blue, then," he said more to himself than the others. "If the iron is spoken for."
"It will burn her little hand to the bone." Shireen said, holding it close. "I'll not draw the heat from it, that might put the quickling to sleep if not kill it outright." Tyrion wiped a sheen of sweat from his face. "Dragons are not chickens, their eggs are not so easily hatched."
"Four would be better than three."
"What if, after we're certain the egg has cooled enough, it hatches for Dalla? What good is a wyrmling smaller than a cat just now?" Val called from the safety of the doorway, Dalla burbling energetically. Something landed on the keep's roof high above them, with rather more force than Rhaegal was wont to use. Dirt and grit sprinkled down on them, Tyrion blinking it out of his eyes. The roar that followed shook the room and the castle above it worse than the landing had, Dalla giving a frightened squeal and starting to bawl. Maybe they're right, Tyrion thought weakly. The Others aren't about to be put off by a babe in swaddling and an egg. Hopefully Drogon is another story.
As he scrambled toward the surface, more than once nearly slipping on a frozen stair or his own hastiness, Tyrion Lannister could think of nothing else than when he was younger, imagining riding a dragon of his own. Of looking on the Black Dread's skull, of staring past his teeth. When finally he wormed out of the hall, packed with panicked people, flights of fancy fled his thoughts completely. Drogon had grown so heavy the stones of the keep's roof seemed to crack and sag under his weight, his wings had grown larger than the sails of a ship, and when his teeth parted to loose his black fire into the night, he persisted for an unbroken half-minute. The heat was beyond description but worse was when he broke off to roar. Tyrion felt his eyeballs rattle around in his skull like two peas at the bottom of a cup, felt the stones of Winterfell whisper in a tremor. His brothers had grown in their time in the wild of course, but Drogon it seemed had doubled in weight, more, since he'd burned the Iron Throne. And he doesn't seem one to laze in ambush or soar high aloft, either. Rather gratefully, Tyrion observed that his back was bare, the queen nowhere in sight. All for the better. He would not be my first choice to carry a woman expecting a child. At last Drogon quieted (or rather, forwent his earth-shattering roars for snorting and low rumbling) and began to peer around, nostrils wide and sniffing. Tyrion found his own voice lost in the tumult, the Dothraki too young or old to go afield whooping and shrieking at the black dragon's return. Finally Tyrion scooped some snow off the ramparts and whipped it upward as hard as he could, his snowball exploding against the sheer black scales of Drogon's snout. A surprised snort, the dimly alarming sound of the keep's roof cracking as the dragon shifted his considerable weight, and Drogon was looking down at him, eyes pools of boiling blood bisected by bright black lines. His indignant noises quieted some. He recognizes me. Then again, why shouldn't he? Dragons were not mindless beasts- stories that they were at least as keen as men seemed founded. Certainly, Tyrion had seen plenty and more men in his family's service no brighter than the horses they rode. Infinitely harder was guessing what was going on behind those red eyes, already losing interest in Tyrion. Well, there's much at Winterfell fitter to hold a dragon's attention than a single dwarf. In particular, when Drogon chanced to spot a giant, his nostrils gave a sweltering exhale. The falling snow around Tyrion vanished at once, going from flakes to vapor. It was too dark to see which giant in particular it was and Tyrion didn't know most of their names anyway, but Drogon's snorting self-important show receded into a quiet stillness that filled Tyrion with deep unease. Dragons are supposed to be loud and showy, particularly Drogon. Whatever had taken root in the dragon's thoughts Tyrion could not begin to guess. Unsettling, since before his moods ran the gamut from 'I'm hungry' to 'that's mine'. Then he recalled what he'd said that day in Drogon's lair on Dragonstone. Perhaps he found the world after all.
Drogon's clamber off the Red Keep to tromp across Winterfell's streets and courtyards was for a moment so bizarre to Tyrion that he couldn't what he was seeing with what he was thinking. Even when the rest of his body was lost (barely) among the walls and buildings, Drogon's head and neck were visible, twisting and peering about with all the interest his brothers lacked. He heard people scrambling to get out of the dragon's way, heard him crush an abandoned cart on his way to the curtain wall.
"What is he doing?" Tyrion turned to find Brandon Stark behind him. The prince sounded shaken, despite his attempts to hide it.
"I've not the first notion. Whatever it is, I doubt anyone is about to try to stop him from doing it. Or succeeding, anyway." The absence of the princess was telling. "Ah, I can't help but notice-"
"That Meera isn't here. She was sleeping just fine until the dragon showed up, now she's wide awake in bed." Tyrion felt a rush of relief. Bran noticed, as the apt young prince was wont. "Viserion doesn't need her on his back to have her near. The lot of them have met the dead men and succeeded in pushing them back for the moment, but your westermen have yet to appear."
"The sounds of battle were always the perfect way to pull Jaime toward something." That or Cersei naked and draped over it.
"Could she see anyone in particular?"
"Viserion wasn't really paying attention to people in particular, unless you count Jon and the queen and them only because they were with Rhaegal. He was more concerned with picking off the dead than being a nursemaid to the living. As for the Others proper, they may extinguish mundane fires but walls of dragonfire are another tale and the two of them were well able to keep the army clear of such as they pushed the Others' chattel off." Far-off shouts from the north made Tyrion look into the rising wind with alarm. "Drogon's appearance must have upset their plans." Bran said.
"I daresay it would upset most any plan." Tyrion replied, content with his witticism until the trees of the wolfswood began to shift, sway, fall outright. The mammoths that emerged were like small mountains, each sporting a cold giant or two and silver runes across their massive bodies. Icicles ran down their tusks and strands of what could only have been ice spider silk ran thick as fishing net between them to stop anything from getting past. The giant in the middle sported great silver armbands around his bulging arms, bellowing so loudly that Tyrion could hear him word for word, though he had none of the Old Tongue or its cold corruption. "We forced their hand." Tyrion said with dawning horror as more of the cold mammoths rumbled into view. A half dozen. A dozen. More. "We forced their hand, with nothing in our own."
Drogon did not miss the giants massing to the north. A few wingbeats that sent snowdrifts scattering into the winds that piled them and he was aloft, circling low over Winterfell's buildings. As was their custom, the winds from the north picked up and precipitously, as if in answer. This the dragon didn't care for in the least, roaring his displeasure out past the earthen rings and over the moors between the last of them and the forming line of mammoths. A rumble from the blackening sky over the wolfswood was his reply, the shape of something hidden in those charcoal clouds quieting Drogon's tempestuousness straightaway. Had Tyrion eaten any more recently than the previous day, he might have shit himself just then. That's no drake. A chorus of eerie, haunting hoots accompanied the vast thing, glimmers of silver and white and blue among the tempest and the bolts batting within its confines like fireflies in a child's glass jug. Someone stepped near, their presence barely registering to Tyrion. Slowly he managed to tear his face away from the storm gathering before his eyes, beholding a pale, black-veined hand.
"I may have been rash in belittling the duties of the Night's Watch those years ago." Tyrion said, feeling a calm that certainly had no cause. Benjen Stark might have snorted, had he been the kind to breathe.
"Just now I rather feel you had been right to do so, my lord." A crack of lightning lit up the sky, the thing the drakes were escorting thrown into sharp relief. The screaming began. For all the languages of the great world gathered behind Winterfell's walls, when terrified they sounded mightily the same to Tyrion Lannister. In the midst of that mountain of black bones, a terrible light bright as any star gleamed like a jewel in a crown. Winter's crown, Tyrion mused, and that light, the head that wears it. It struck him then how little really separated the kings he'd met from their subjects. Robert had been a witless sot, as affable as he was unfit for rule. Joffrey had been a vicious son of a whore. Even mild-mannered Tommen was little more than his grandfather's puppet, his mother's possession. Jon Snow was another animal, of course, but at the end of the day he was a man like any other and Daenerys a woman like any other, for that matter. Bow to the office, not the man, that was Father's maxim. Well, how about it, Father? It seems just now that the office is the man. The skeletal dragon gave an unearthly scream of its own, drowning all the voices of Winterfell with one ungodly sound. It dove, intent no doubt on raining ruin down upon them. With a booming rumble of thunder, the god-sung storm followed, rolling off the trees and snapping them like twigs for its trouble. The mammoths followed in turn, their inexorable approach little less than an oncoming earthquake. The dead were the anvil, not the hammer. Meant only to bog us down when they saw we were intent on making our stand here. Certainly they were of no value to the Others, what care they if the dragons managed to turn the lot to ashes? Now with their hammer well in hand, they're intent on bringing it down. Hard enough, too, that they need never raise it again.
Though countless deaths raced toward him, Tyrion didn't move. Where was there to go? On the castle ramparts he could see that the streets below had filled with people, those bearing arms wading through the crowd to try and take up positions while those unfit to fight headed for whatever shelter came to mind. Buildings began to shake and the force of the mammoths' charge soon had the cobblestones of the street popping out of the ground like kernels off a cob. The Other-king's mount, when it neared the outermost earthen ring, loosed not fire but a cascade of white-blue lightning, a hazy column that annihilated utterly anything it touched. Nor did the abomination feel the need to fill lungs it didn't have, either, as the stream of death continued up until Winterfell's North Gate was crumpling beneath it. A sandcastle beneath a wave. Drogon dove in, black fire fanning out before him to envelop the bones, but they fizzled into embers and then nonbeing entirely against the silver barrier that met his fire wherever it reached, one that enveloped the abomination completely. The king's attention was on where his mount's maw was pointed, but Tyrion got a glimpse of the glittering she-Other that sat behind him, her open palm the font from which the barrier flowed. She chanced to look down, and her gaze fell on Tyrion. Her eyes were blue stars, as fit the bill for Otherdom in his experience, but he saw also a frown curve her perfect lip. Her free hand came up, crackling with some arcane power.
"Well, fuck you too, Your Grace." Tyrion said. A blinding silver beam smashed down in answer, throwing him up into the tender graces of the winds whipping above Winterfell. He came down gracelessly into a snowdrift blown rampart-high, tumbling to ground so rapidly he didn't even get nauseous. The sounds of Drogon trying to keep his foe's attention melded with the trumpeting of the mammoths as they smashed through the earthen rings, the war-song of the cold giants, the god-song they'd conjured up, as well as a jolly good lot of screaming. Tyrion Lannister got to his feet, gingerly rubbing his thigh as he took the measure of the pandemonium unfolding around him. Well, I'll get nothing done standing here with my finger up my nose, he thought, pulling a bronze handaxe from the corpse of a Thenn before he began to run back toward the keep.
