Jaime

Even his dreams were cold. Nightmares of Cersei or Aerys' other Kingsguard had given way to endless expanses of snowy forests and rolling snow-shrouded moors, of clearing walking corpses still clad in Dustin livery out of Barrow Hall's lifeless corridors. For the thousandth time, Jaime Lannister rubbed fatigue out of his eyes and found the beard he thought he'd left behind for good creeping in to reclaim his chin. The cold had seeped into his joints and needed a good hour to dispel. Even then, it was always near, ready to return. Movement was the only thing that kept it away, and so, wincing, he stepped up to the castle's ramparts, uncomfortably aware of the holes they'd found smashed into the castle's wooden walls- and outright breaches besides. Beyond Barrow Hall, Barrowton was a muddy sore in the endless white that had become the north. So many people, so many horses, that it was clear even to the dead men such a town was not near big enough to hold for long. We'll need to be off soon, Jaime thought. To whatever fate awaits us.

"Your brother tried to tempt me with the north, back when your sister had him in a cell for poisoning the cunt-king." Bronn said when he spotted Jaime approaching. The sellsword knight turned to look east, Goldgrass faintly visible through the falling snow. "Back when he was married to the Stark girl, mind. He told me he might rule through her and give me a big fat slice. Had I known what I'd find, I'd have told him to stuff it up his imp's arse."

"I doubt Tyrion had a north teeming with dead men, cold monsters, and Others besides in mind when he was trying to talk you into fighting the Mountain." Jaime replied, in no mood to haggle with Bronn over what he thought he was owed. "He'd been this far before, he might have mentioned the snow at least." "He came this far in the midst of summer. And he was trying to give you a reason to kill Clegane, not ward you off."

"Even the Mountain wouldn't be overmuch use up here. Not with hungry cold fuckers about and dead men aplenty to mass around him."

"They don't seem much about now."

"Maybe not, but once we're afield and struggling through the snow, they'll come for dinner most every night, I'll wager."

"Surely, with a dragon eager to host them." Greyjoy's ghost ship had been too quick to keep up with, and the narrow bends of the river too sharp for Jaime's captain to brave. The queen's mount had elected to follow Grey Wind to Torrhen's Square, leaving the watery road to Barrowton and Barrow Hall itself for Jaime to negotiate. Will he know to come back to nanny the rest of us? Or will one of the others show up and figure us for a meal in his stead? No doubt Tyrion was having a grand time safe behind Winterfell's formidable walls, tasting every Arbor vintage with mammoth steak to accompany it. Meanwhile I could probably run through one of Barrow Hall's walls, and never mind a cold giant.

Jaime busied himself with separating those who'd go on to Winterfell from those whose part was played. His aunt Genna was as formidable as she was large, as sharp as she was round, but she was not the sort to well take to miles of hard marching. He tasked her with minding Barrow Hall and the town beyond it once he left with the army, unsurprised when she did not rebuke him.

"You'll keep Walder clear of Starks, then? I can't think they'd feel very welcoming to a Frey. Perhaps the last."

"First I have to have Starks on hand to keep him clear of, my lady." Her other sons had all gone, to his reckoning. Only the youngest remained of his aunt's four. And he has Lord Emmon's face, which is to say he has Lord Walder's face. Jaime wondered if it indeed mattered at all, or if he was spending time thinking on the ways of blood, the way of things of a world that had gone as surely as his cousins. "I'll be leaving Lady Greyjoy, her Harlaw kin and Lady Glover as well. Lord Varys as well, if you can find it in yourself to put up with him." Gawen had been old enough to go with Theon Greyjoy, Jaime reasoned, so it stood to reason he could be stuck on a horse and trusted with a spear. And good luck keeping Mormont out of a fight.

"What about the brother, the cut kraken?"

"He seems touchy about the idea of seeing Winterfell again, but he's no stranger to the saddle. We'll meet him at Torrhen's Square and march on Winterfell once our lines have been ordered." Jaime would rather more among his army be used to fighting ahorse than less as well, so he decided he'd take what chivalry was available from the Reach. Omer, too, we'll need a maester. Lady Genna was not impressed.

"Oh, touchy. Mhm. Touchier than being chased clear across the country but the gods only know what?" "It's no business of mine. All I need know about the man is that he can stay ahorse while holding a spear." His aunt glanced down to his missing hand. Who are you to talk, nephew? Jaime imagined her thinking. Before she could give him some cutting jibe, he embraced her. "To think I'd die at bloody Barrow Hall." She honestly sounded more revolted than afraid.

There was time to address one more matter before the march, and Jaime found himself searching for where the Greyjoys had quartered. He had not so much as put a hand on the sack at his hip when Asha Greyjoy was pulling him through the threshold and slamming the door behind him. No doubt some guard's having a good chuckle right now, Jaime thought wryly. A crippled lion, a crippled kraken. He'd just got the strap over his head when she snorted aloud.

"You can put that right the fuck back on, thank you." He blinked at her.

"I'm hardly going to carry it with me, I have no idea what we'll find, I have no means of keeping it warm." He remembered where he'd found it, in a hearth. Of course fire would play a part.

"Soon or late one of the dragons will spot the lot of you. When it comes down for a look, pass it on then."

"I'd do as well to lob it into the river and let the currents take it out to sea, if it doesn't freeze solid first." Jaime said. "Your chambers have a hearth, set it there."

"We do, and we'll not last an hour if we're attacked in earnest. It won't be warm with you, I daresay, unless you intend to brood on it like some mad golden cockerel, but it will be safer. And you're more like to take a dragon's interest, a nice long column of men and horses."

"It might freeze out on the moor, and never mind the water!" Jaime exclaimed.

"See that it doesn't, then. Get to Torrhen's Square and give it a warm if you get there before you meet one of Daenerys' pets."

"What's going on?" a soft, sleepy voice called from two doors down.

"Go back to sleep, Erena." Lady Greyjoy replied, gentle but firm. Unfortunately the Glover girl was not the only one woken by their steadily raising voices, and Rodrik Harlaw was no doe-eyed slip of a girl to be commanded back to bed by his one-legged niece. He felt his way toward them, leaning on the wall. Jaime shuddered at the sight of his empty eye sockets, made all the grimmer and more haunting and even appearing larger in the flickering candlelight.

"What's this it then, Asha?" he asked, voice low. Jaime simply pulled the egg from the sack and slipped it into Lord Harlaw's hands. Wordlessly his fingers felt around its sunrise-orange surface, the silver flecks seeming deeper, purer, more lustrous this close to the candle's flame. Sunrise now, sunset before. I suppose it's all perspective. "Oh." he said, as if Jaime had handed him a pothelm. "This is what I think it is, yes?"

"It is, Uncle." Lady Greyjoy replied.

"Well. I think I'll be going back to bed." he said, holding the egg out for someone to take. Once Jaime relieved him of it, Rodrik Harlaw turned on his heel and walked back to his bed.

"Not the most adventurous, our Reader." Lady Greyjoy said.

"He's got more sense than the both of us together." Jaime replied, duly slipping the egg back into its sack.

Jaime's motley officers did not seem enticed by the prospect of a long, hard, cold ride north.

"The barrowlands are as easy a ride as can be asked for." he told them.

"But for the added wrinkle of a mass of Others and their snows seeking to bury us day and night." Ser Nychelis said grimly.

"More than one horse will break an ankle in those deep drifts, especially if the snows have fallen heaver some places, lighter in others." Ser Dewys added. "Floundering in the snow, we'll be easy pickings for the Others proper."

"We would, but they've got a good bit on their hands just now. Three dragons mucking about and all those in Winterfell besides. They may well think they've got all their enemies in one place, or at least count on the snows to make a relief approach untenable."

"It is untenable." Lord Rykker opined.

"All the more reason we should do it, then." Ser Addam Marbrand said, the ghost of a grin on his face.

"We can draw proper battle lines when we reach Torrhen's Square and the ironmen rejoin our company, but I'm fairly certain you will have the left, Ser Addam. Lord Renfred, you will have the right." The wolfswood would sprawl all along their left flank all the way from Torrhen's Square to Winterfell. Jaime wanted someone he trusted and whose capabilities he knew ready to intercept any efforts of the Others' to stop their march rushing out at them from the treeline. Who'd have thought the best place to hide from a dragon is a bloody forest? "We'll set north at first light. Even in deep snow we should make Torrhen's Square at some point, gods permitting." They left him, still talking about the logistics of the march, Addam rather eager to see if he could overcome one of the cold hungerers. He took another look out over the moor. Nothing moved, alive or otherwise. Better a forest than out in the open. His ancestor Loren learned that much on the Field of Fire. I only hope I'm not walking into a Field of Ice. "Some supper, ser?" Freglyn asked, holding a plate with a few fish fillets on it. Ah, why not? What's the use in dying hungry? He took the plate after Freglyn and Joss Stillwood had bites of their own. Squires ran the gamut from lazy to industrious, from dim to bright, and the two lads in his company were no indolent lords' sons. Jaime made sure to set Freglyn in particular up with some of the black glass arrowheads they'd found in the westerlands. "Go for the eyes." he told the boy. Freglyn gulped and nodded.

Nothing dashed over the hills at them as they started out Barrowton's gates, nor the complement approaching from Goldgrass to the east. The only northerner to welcome them onto the moor was the cold, the light snowfall almost mocking when one recalled what was to come. They were bundled up as well as they could manage and yet Jaime knew it was nothing that would keep them alive if they became snowbound.

"We must reach Torrhen's Square," Jaime had told his officers, "do not stop until you reach the castle." If something came up then, well and good- Torrhen's Square was built in stone, and Jaime was rather more at ease to cower behind its walls than Barrow Hall's wooden ones. Particularly with dragons about, and in no jolly mood. They followed the river Barrowton sat on north until it dwindled to a frozen creek, Jaime poring over the maps while he had the light. "Straight north to the lake and around to Torrhen's Square. It may be a bit longer than going directly overland but were I expecting a fleet of guests, I'd be watching the waterways. We're more likely to catch a dragon's eye sticking to the water than hoofing it over the moor directly."

"And that's something we want, is it?" Bronn asked through the thick leather strip he'd tied around his mouth to keep the wind out.

"Better a dragon than an Other. A dragon might kill you, an Other will kill you."

"How are we supposed to spot them?" Ser Dewys squinted as he peered into the sky. "It seems to me there's clouds enough to hide in and more, ser."

"There's no mistaking nothing for a dragon. I saw the black one, the queen's monster, buzz over the kingswood while we were at King's Landing. He'll stick out of all that white and grey like a sore thumb, and there's two more besides." Freglyn said. "We may well hear them before we see them. With a mob of dead men to rain holy hell on, they'll be shrieking and roaring and messing about. All that racket will carry clear across the empty moor." Jaime heard his horse snort as the animal started to climb, the ground growing hillier and more rugged. Absently he ran a hand down the destrier's neck, knowing full well he wasn't at his best shuffling through the snow.

"Slow going is still going." Jaime murmured. "Sure-footedness. This isn't the sort of race one can charge heedlessly forth and win." A sudden sharp snort and his horse stopped dead, Jaime nearly losing his seat. The destrier nickered, nostrils flared. It could be anything, Jaime thought. A cold monster, a whiff of dragon or even direwolf, a corpse buried in the snow. He remembered the measures he'd taken on the goldroad on the way to Deep Den. We weren't riding to battle then, he mused, and we may well need every set of hooves before the end. "Shorten the column." he told Bronn. "The weakest animals in the center, the ponies and mules and the very old." The sellsword knight dismounted rather than turn his horse and take it back down the hill, muttering to the knights behind them and they on and so on. Jaime spurred his mount on, the animal advancing ponderously up the snowy hillside until they reached the top, with a view of the barrowlands rolling out as in a map before them all the way to the icy waters of a great far lake. Nearly there, Jaime thought, trying to make out the outline of Torrhen's Square on the far shore, although he was sure it was far out of sight. On horseback, anyway, but that's none of your fault, boy.

Even with a prod from Jaime's heels, the destrier did not move. He groaned.

"Snow-shy, most like. Afraid to break an ankle." Ser Addam opined. The horse's head slowly tracking after the low hills between them and the lake, by contrast, demonstrated the animal's greater concern with the coming leagues over the steps it had next to take.

"There." A grunt advertised Jorah Mormont's approach from the rear of the column. The intent had been to make sure nothing would take them in the rear without having to go through Mormont, but as with Jaime's horse, his mind was on the leagues before them. "There." His arm came up quicker by a hair than seemed proper to Jaime. Pointing into the distance at a knoll due east, his mouth became a hard line. "Don't bother looking," he said, surly as ever. "We're too far away for you to spot it. The best thing to do would be to press on past."

"Monsters?" Freglyn whispered, voice high and scared, but Jaime heard a note of excitement too.

"No." Mormont replied bluntly, dismounting to lead his horse down the hill on foot.

"Well, nothing to be done but press on." Jaime said, shrugging, likewise dismounting to follow the northman, leading his destrier by the reins. He heard the others muttering objections (or curses), but he wasn't going to waste time wiping their noses all while they lost the light. And whatever's out there will only be the bolder come dark. Jaime busied himself with keeping snow off the horse's mane, showing the world an unconcerned, even bored air. Just another march, he thought. Just another day on campaign. He noticed Mormont's hairy head turn toward the knoll, staring stolidly into the rolling white.

"A little further, Kingslayer." Jaime eased the sack on his hip to his left, just in case. If something rushes out and brains me, at least now the egg won't get smashed. On the far side of the knoll he expected at the least perhaps an Other thumbing his nose at them. What actually waited for them had Jaime stopping dead, even through his destrier's nervous huffing. The lion watched them raptly from the base of the knoll, pacing back and forth as more of the column came into view. At the sight of the column he stopped, whatever designs the lion had on one of their horses (or one of them) evidently dashed by their sheer number and their awareness of his presence.

"I thought lions had manes?" Ser Addam said shakily. The animal before them did not have the mane House Lannister's sigil was famed for, and its fur was the color of old straw rather than spun gold. But he's alive, for what it's worth, while all the lions of the west have been reduced to a scant few hugging the far hills out of sight of men.

"Push on." Mormont said curtly.

"But-" Jaime heard Ser Addam object.

"He's no bone-thin wretch. He isn't hungry enough to run snarling toward his death."

"What do you suppose he's been eating?" Freglyn asked.

"Well, were things how they ought be, I suppose he'd be picking off deer and such. As it is, a few dead men might be an easier chase for him. No lion is wily enough to avoid the Others, so it must be that they're indifferent to losing a few walking corpses here and there." Jaime said. Certainly the lion was not on guard, settling to watch them pass. He knows men are no great chore to bring down. At least, dead ones.

"There's nothing to eat out here. No herds to stalk. What the fuck's he doing loitering about?" Lord Rykker asked.

"What are we if not a herd, my lord? Stumbling through the snow, our bloody horses know better than we do." Jaime told him. "Why follow prey fleet and wary when you have dinner bumbling right on past?" And a horse will make for better eating than whatever deer are out here. Besides, with the Wall fallen, who knows how many reindeer have flooded the north? Who knows how many hunters have followed them in turn? Direwolves, cave lions, shadowcats, their cold counterparts…even ice spiders. Even if the Others were dealt with, the northmen would have a real job getting used to their new neighbors. A new world to find a place for themselves in. Wild, white, and cold. The lion, to the best of Jaime's knowledge, wasn't about to lead them to Torrhen's Square, much less Winterfell, and so he bid the rest continue. And if we happen to lose some wretched palfrey or lagging mule, well, that's this new north for you. They reached the near shores of the lake as day faded, making Jaime somewhat nervous. The horses, if led slowly and deliberately, might miraculously dodge a broken ankle with what counted for day to see by, but night was another matter. Even on the relatively even shoreline. The lake had frozen near them but Jaime could hear water lapping against the ice somewhere in the distance. Gentle enough to fall asleep to, he thought ruefully, as if any of us will catch a wink.

Screams shook Jaime from an uneasy sleep, blinking the last bits of whatever dream had come to him out of his eyes. Purely out of instinct he looked up to find the morning clouds alive with movement as the surface of the sea playing host to a school of fish. Several long winged forms wove in and out of the warmthless clouds, hooting and keening animatedly to each other. One dived toward them, dragonlike in form if not in size, build or might- and then that weak note of hope was quashed when the storm-gray drake spit forth a line of icicles. A dozen men were feathered, a horse's agonized death wails were on the air and Jaime was lurching to his feet and finding an officer as fast as he could.

"On," he bellowed into the man's face as he gawped at the drake. "or they'll box us in." Another diving drake, another volley of icy shafts, another bloody swathe cut through their center. The hooting grew still louder. If we're not out of here in a minute they'll come at us as one and nobody will be reaching Winterfell. "Leave the fallen where they lay," he said to anyone who would listen, "the beasts may leave off us to feed." They had only just got underway, surging east around the edge of the lake, when something simply exploded from the thick ice that had extended into the freezing water. A new chorus of shrieks joined the drakes as a huge bluish-white body bulled onto shore toward the fallen, the fresh-spilled blood filling the nostrils on its head(s!) so much it paid no heed to the survivors fleeing wherever they could. Jaime counted eight heads proper as well as a stunted, drooling ninth, seemingly unpossessed of even the bestial wits the monster had. Only when his destrier had put the breadth of the lake behind him did Jaime turn to look back, the form of the monster gorging on the dead (and a drake or two too slow to vacate the beach or too stupid to leave the fresh meat to a bigger fish) enough to keep even the slowest horses moving at a full gallop. Ser Addam had gone white as the monster's rubbery hide, swearing and sobbing in turn between deep breaths.

"What in the gods' name is that?"

"Ask Omer. Hopefully it hasn't made a mess of Torrhen's Square." Jaime replied tersely. Fucking Others. If the Tallhart seat was lost to them, that was bad. A long way still to go without a respite if the monster has laid waste to the place, but precious little every goes right when it comes to dealing with Others!

The creature's shrieks still echoing in his ears, Jaime and his officers huddled on the shore once Torrhen's Square's walls came into view.

"Still there." Bronn said, rather redundantly.

"Bully. What if it's held by the cold ones now?" Ser Dewys replied, squinting into the distance at the castle. There was no movement that Jaime could see, no hint of any occupants or their nature.

"There'd be dead men about, right? If there were Others on hand?" Ser Addam was asking when Jaime suddenly gagged, spitting vigorously into the snow. Now what? He straightened, hand over his mouth, chancing to see a grayish flake land on his stump. Jaime stared at it, flummoxed, until he puzzled it out.

"Ash." he said, looking up. Sure enough, among the constant flakes of falling snow, tendrils of ash littered down.

"Looks like snow to me." Bronn shrugged.

"Were you trudging through ash like we're trudging though snow, you'd know it, ser." Jaime said, uncomfortably reminded of Aerys' last days. Cersei's too, he told himself.

"You jackass." Ser Dewys snorted. "Don't you know the difference between snow and ash?" He bent and scooped up a handful of the white. "Only a man thick as a castle wall is slow-witted enough to call this ash."

"Fine, it's fucking ash. Where, pray tell, is it coming from?" Bronn replied, rather deliberately running his teeth over the top of his tongue and spitting. They were too far away to make out anything billowing from behind the castle's walls, but where else could the source be? Others don't deal in ash, Jaime thought, wondering if Torrhen's Square had fallen to the dead men only to fall to dragonfire in turn.

"Shall I go have a look, ser?" Freglyn asked.

"No. You're fooling no Other but a blind one, and close as we are they know we're here if indeed they're waiting for us. Let's put walls between us and the moor before we play with our cocks any longer." Jaime said, again remaining while the rest pushed on, tagging along with the last of the stragglers as they neared the castle gate. I hear no screaming, he thought. Surely that can only be a good sign? Then again, Jaime had learned the hard lesson that no screaming didn't necessarily denote an absence of massacre. It may well just be over.

Torrhen's Square was exactly that, an outer square of thirty-foot stone walls with stout square towers at each corner with a smaller square at the center of the space within serving as the Tallharts' keep. Buildings here and there filled the remaining space, inns and stables nearer the castle and hovels and huts closer to the walls. Something of it reminded Jaime of Winterfell. In the way a dead lizard will remind one of a dragon, I suppose. Ash billowed up from several ruined buildings and three great clearings in the close winding streets, they found, the source of their discovery earlier.

"The buildings are still here." Joss Stilwood said, prodding one nervously with his foot.

"Aye. And the burning was done in corpse pits, not where the dead men stood. This was no dragon's work." Jaime's officers stood before the keep's gates, conspicuously closed. "Anyone home?" he asked as he approached.

"We've not managed to rouse anyone, ser. Suppose they starved to death? Or froze?" Lord Rykker asked.

"They'd have frozen before they starved, it's fucking cold up here, milord." Ser Dewys replied, almost offhandedly.

"Well, unless one among you thought to bring climbing hooks-" Jaime began.

"Who goes there?" came the shout from somewhere above them. He looked up, eyes straining, but there was no sign of anybody. Then he spotted a small head peering down from between two merlons.

"Lord Glover, who else might it be?" Jaime shouted up to him. The boy's eyes widened, and he vanished behind the ramparts. Without a word from whomever was within the keep, the gate began to open. In the yard lay one of the drakes, sky-blue with a pool of clear ice beneath it. Several of Jaime's officers swore, pulling swords or daggers but Mormont only grunted.

"It's dead." he said flatly, walking over to pull one of its legs.

"Ser!" Lord Glover shouted, coming down a wooden staircase. Mormont looked up.

"What's the meaning of all this?" Glover was grinning like he was seeing a woman naked for the first time.

"We're hunting!" Jaime was so confused it came as quite a shock when men began to emerge from beneath carts or piles of rubble. He saw Ser Patrek Mallister working his way out of a stack of barrels, crossbow in hand. He saw too, the glittering black point that capped the at-ready quarrel.

"Hunting Others?" Jaime asked, for want of something more intelligent to say.

"No, they'd never fall for something like this. It's the drakes we're after, and to be honest it hasn't worked but the once-" Ser Patrek began, Glover interrupting.

"The once was enough!" he pointed to the dead drake in the square. "We baited it in with a pile of dead and while the beast was feeding-"

"-you loosed on it." Jaime finished.

"If only, ser. I was small enough to take cover in the corpses with Blackfyre to hand. Just as the drake filled its jaws, I punched the sword into its belly." Glover said.

"Rank madness." Ser Patrek called it, shaking his head.

"You've seen the walking corpses I'll wager, ser. The constant snows, the monsters running free about Westeros, north and south. A little rank madness won't go amiss." Jaime replied, taking a long draught from a skin someone handed him.

Greyjoy was grinning like a drunk when Jaime found him, leaning over a heavy wooden table in the castle's hall.

"About time you showed up."

"Someone made off with a fucking Valyrian steel sword without so much as making mention of it." Jaime replied.

"You ought to see Gawen and Ser Patrek at it. They're always stealing it out from one another, it's fucking hilarious."

"Any knight who has Blackfyre stolen from him by some stripling deserves to lose it."

"All the deeper a bruise to Patrek's pride whenever Gawen manages it."

"I saw you managed to down one of the drakes-"

"-not to split hairs but it was already down when we killed it-"

"-did you not think to move the corpse out of sight to make your trap more enticing? Or plant more corpses?"

"It was too cold to move, and the corpses we used to lure it we burned out from under it once we got Gawen clear of the pile." Greyjoy shrugged. "There was no harm in trying again while we waited for you."

"I'm surprised you're here waiting for us at all. Something's in the lake-" Greyjoy's grin waned.

"Aye, I'll say. The black dragon beat the tar out of it and then some. The only reason it got away is because it had the lake to hide beneath." Jaime's irritation with Greyjoy receded.

"Oh?"

"The clash was utterly one-sided. To call it a clash might be doing the monster more credit than it's due, in fact."

"The dragon didn't simply remain airborne?"

"The monster could yawn freezing fog. Believe me, I'm not ungrateful the queen's pet thought better of keeping clear of its snapping heads in favor of just thrashing it tooth to tooth and claw to claw." All this while we were gawking at a fucking steppe lion just trying to get a meal in. I'll toss him a hide of beef myself if ever I see him again, the poor bastard.

"Where's the dragon now?"

"Pressed on, didn't he? The monster certainly wasn't about to resurface anywhere near us with another beating hanging over its every head, it sounds like it crossed clear to the other side before feeling bold enough to surface again."

"It stole a dozen kills from a pack of drakes we seemed to draw. They scattered like gulls when it came calling."

"Well, if the Others were planning on bringing it to bear at Winterfell, it sounds as though we've rather pissed in that particular pudding. That or they just planted it here to halt any attempt by us to get near to Winterfell over water." Jaime waved away the monster and the Others' aims for it.

"Speaking of Winterfell, we'd best settle what we intend to do and how to do it. Once the lads have had a sleep, we'll be off again. When we meet the Others, I want Blackfyre in a knight proper's hands. Ser Patrek if you insist, or perhaps Ser Addam Marbrand. I don't doubt young Lord Glover's courage, but he doesn't belong in the fore among experienced knights." Another shrug.

"You know cavalry better than I."

"Be that as it may, you've spent no little time ahorse in your boyhood among the Starks, riding alongside the Young Wolf. Even if you've never held a lance, you can still swing a sword at a dead man you're riding down."

"You want me in your host of pretty, honorable knights?"

"I want you in the van. Ser Addam will command the right, with the breadth of the Reachmen beneath him. You will be among them, as will one of mine own 'pretty, honorable' knights, who for your own enlightenment until his elevation bore the name of Shitmouth." Greyjoy snorted.

"And I thought westermen were all beautiful as girls with hair of spun gold. Or else lunatic dwarves."

"I'd say you're soundly madder than Tyrion, he only lost his nose."

"We'll see for ourselves when we reach Winterfell, I suppose. Until then I think I'll cuddle up snug with a cask of purple."

"Half a cask." Jaime corrected. "A cavalry charge is chaos enough without a second stampede thundering through your skull."

The sight of light beyond the wolfswood's treeline had Jaime stopping in his tracks. He could not stop himself from hoping the sun had at last reared its head, even for half a moment, but he brushed off the wishful thinking as the smell of burning wood hit him.

"More smoke." Bronn said, looking not at one or two columns but a great grey wall rising form the trees, gold and bronze flames flickering form in between the trees' trunks. "I wonder who's responsible."

"Well, at least we know there are no dead men in there, nor Others either." And it will be something to get proper warm. The sack hanging off his side seemed to double in weight. Should I be lucky enough to cross paths with the dragon queen again, I'll gladly bequeath you to her. Then you'll be her problem and what debt I may owe her for not having me executed in the first place will be settled. Bronn was no man's fool, and noticed with damnable interest Jaime's jostling the sack.

"What d'you have in there, a head?"

"You're better off not knowing." Bronn grimaced.

"I suppose I am."

"Do you think getting so close is a good idea, ser?" Freglyn's question seemed almost self-answering.

"We'll rather have to, lad, if we want to reach Winterfell." Jaime replied.

"The smoke may well sink back into the trees. We'll not be able to breathe."

"It may indeed, but there winds come on strong enough to near slice a man in half. They'll see to any smoke amidst the trees." Jaime said with an assurance he had no way of knowing was deserved or not. Living the life I have, you'd think I'd have bothered to actually learn a thing or two. He let the column trek on, meeting Freglyn's eyes while the rest of the men were muttering about the cold or half-full bellies or the madness of the day. The lad did not miss his meaning, and soon came up offhandedly alongside Jaime.

"Ser?"

"Don't look at it. D'you see the bag?"

"Aye, ser."

"If something should happen to me, you're to take charge of it. Don't open it if you can help it."

"What am I to do with it?"

"Get it to the dragon queen however you can. If something happens where it gets away from you…well, don't let it get away from you." He didn't want to think about losing the egg in the wolfswood. Then again, the flames will surely find it before the Others do.

"Do you know, this isn't the worst." Renfred Rykker almost had to shout to be heard over the fires, the heat before them clashing madly with the cold behind.

"I'd sooner smell the smoke of a burning forest than the rivers of shit oozing out of a city any day."

"Just keep a weather eye. No telling what might still lie between us and Winterfell." Jaime replied. "And for the love of the gods old and new, keep out of the path of the fires." If the horses were skittish in the face of deep snow, they were near to bucking their riders off at being so near the walls of flame. Jaime's destrier was so beside himself that he wondered if he wasn't better off leading him on foot all over again. I'd say it's only fire, he thought, but I know well what happens when you let fire run amok. A nickering from somewhere behind one of the bronze blazes had Jaime wondering if he were hearing things. Maybe I've just gone moon-and-stars mad. I've certainly got cause enough. A black shadow moved among the flames, utterly untroubled by the heat. Jaime found himself thinking, of all things, of the bloody Hand's tourney. It was another moment before he realized why. Out from the fires, out of the fires, trotted a black warhorse that made Jaime's destrier seem a mule. Fire had replaced the spotless black mane and the tail both and when the horse stopped with a snort, embers spluttered out from his nostrils. Glancing down, Jaime saw that the animal's hooves were afire as well, leaving burning hoofprints in his wake. You're the Hound's, Jaime remembered as he looked into the horse's eyes, likewise gone from flesh to flame. You beat me that day more than Clegane ever could have. "Stranger." Jaime called, loudly, ignoring the shouts, curses and less intelligible sounds of alarm around him. Stranger snorted most unreceptively, turning back to look the way he'd come.

"Is he a ghost? D'you suppose the flames did for him?" Ser Addam whispered over Jaime's shoulder as Stranger looked at them again. It could have been all the fucking fire, but it seemed to Jaime that the horse's outline, his form was by turns hazier and more substantial.

"Stranger, what are you doing out here?" Jaime called, trying to keep what breakfast he'd had that morning in his gut and not his trousers. "Out for a bloody stroll?" He understood, that much Jaime knew. Stranger turned and sauntered directly back into the fires, heedless of the heat.

"Are we meant to follow!? The only place a fiend like that is leading us is hell!" Lord Rykker cried.

"Well, at least then we needn't worry about the Others any longer." Jaime replied. "Wait for the nearest of the fires to die. Then we press on."

"But what about an ambush?" Greyjoy asked, squeezing past the crowd and just missing the show.

"Look around us, my lord. The Others are even less fit to be here than we are. I scarce think they'll steal a march on us through a growing forest fire."

Though Jaime had made a point not to be seen doing it, he heard Bronn snicker when he quite sharply poked himself in the side with a stick.

"What's so funny?" Jaime asked dryly.

"I know what you're bloody doing. You're making sure we aren't dead after all, and already in hell."

"Have I ever struck you as an especially superstitious man?"

"No, but you're not the kind to let something like that lie, either." Bronn's retort was lost when Jaime gave a sudden yelp, starting upright and clutching his thigh.

"Ser!" he heard Freglyn cry.

"Pissed in my own eye. Stay put, lad." Jaime called, wincing as he carefully extricated his arm out from the sack's strap. A hole had burned clear through it, a glorious orange glint unmistakable against faded brown.

"What the fuck?" Bronn asked. "Helped yourself to a few bits in your own bloody gallery, eh?" Then the weight of the object within and the heat it had imbibed had it burning clear through the bottom of the sack, the dragon egg plopping into the ashes at Jaime's feet with all the ceremony of a horse having a shit. Jaime closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and thought up something smart to say. When he opened his eyes, Bronn's expression had gone wide-eyed and pale.

"It's not about to douse you in flame." Jaime said. The sound of ash crumbling beneath the egg as it shifted met Jaime's ears even as Bronn's teeth grit tight. Jaime's head snapped to the egg so fast he felt a muscle in his neck whine in protest. The egg had indeed shifted. "Please, no." he asked. He watched, he fucking watched it leach the hidden embers out of the ash around it. "Please, no." he said again, trying hard to keep his tone even instead of bellow at the egg as loud as he could. It twitched, top pointing north. Toward where the fires burn their hottest. A shake. Another a moment later, more insistent. If after all this, I see a fucking dragon's birth and Tyrion doesn't, I'll know the gods are deaf. The sounds of feet mucking through ash signified Freglyn's approach. No doubt to ask if I meant to piss in my own eye. Before he could cry out at the sight of the egg, Bronn had a hand over his mouth. They sat there, the fires around them forgotten. A minute passed, then two. Only when the muscles in Jaime's back spasmed did he dare move, prodding the egg with the remains of the sack. The egg did not respond, Jaime feeling color slowly creep back up his neck. "Thank you." he gasped. To the egg, to the gods, to anyone who'd hear.

Hooves from the north belied Stranger's return. Keeping the egg in the corner of his eye, Jaime beheld their visitor as best he was able. Though the snarling hound helm was absent, he would know Sandor Clegane anywhere.

"I thought you were afraid of fire." Bronn remarked.

"I thought you lusted after dwarves." Clegane shot back, getting off his horse. "You'd best get the rest of yourselves off your arses. You missed this bit, but while we were out in the woods they brought the hammer down on Winterfell." Jaime's heart sank. "Nor will the fires burn forever, now they're running out of wood. Then the cold and the winds will roll back in and right fucked you'll be." Jaime got up and actually had a hand on his destrier's bridle before he turned back to the egg, a coat of ash turning it dull grey as a stone. It has to be hot as a bed of forge coals by now.

"Clegane." A grunt told Jaime the man had heard. "You might have to carry that awhile."

"The fuck I will, Kingslayer. I'm done being your family's dog."

"You don't even know what it is."

"Eh, fuck it. Doggy doesn't want to listen, then no juicy bone in the feast hall for him later." Bronn intoned, shrugging it off. Jaime questioned the wisdom of antagonizing an especially terse-looking Sandor Clegane in the best of times, to say nothing of doing so while flanked by walls of flame with hordes of walking corpses waiting to beset them. Cursing, Clegane stalked over (with a bit of a limp, Jaime noticed) and stooped down.

"A fucking rock?" He picked it up without a peep of protest, frowning at its grey surface. "About the right size if you want to brain a dead man, but I've got something better." Jaime spotted Widow's Wail on the Hound's belt. Arya Stark's doing, perhaps.

"Do you?" Jaime asked as Stranger sauntered over, sniffing the egg with interest. He licked a patch of grey away, as fond of the taste of ash as normal horses were of sugar cubes, it seemed. The patch of orange flecked with silver didn't prompt a reaction from Clegane, though he very tenderly brushed away the rest of the ash coating the egg.

"Where'd this come from?"

"One of the Greyjoy uncles seemed to think his niece's blood would hatch it. Theon bashed his head in for his troubles, and I pulled this out of a hearth. Speaking of mad shite though, care to tell us what's happened to your horse?" Clegane shrugged.

"I don't know."

"What?" Jaime asked, gobsmacked.

"I don't know. It's none of my business." He either wore no cloak to wrap it in or it had burned away, so he made do with Widow's Wail in one hand and the egg in another. "Come on." Clegane said, taking no great care to keep the Valyrian steel's edge away from Stranger's hide. Indeed, it seemed to simply pass through the horse's haunch, Stranger only snuffling contentedly. Small wonder the Blackwater didn't unnerve him, Jaime reflected. He was probably hankering to get a mouthful of green fire if anything.

They pushed on northeast, the forest fires saving them the trouble of having to skirt the wolfswood.

"How many have you got?" Clegane asked after the column had gotten moving again.

"Eight thousand thereabouts." Jaime replied.

"Eight thousand fighters, or eight thousand potboys?"

"Most are Casterly Rock's own garrison. You'll find no potboys among the men my lord father chose to keep his home safe." For once, Clegane seemed to grunt in something like approval. "A lot of horses."

"Yes, they managed well enough despite the deep snows."

"The Valemen brought a lot of horses too. A lot of knights. The horselords ride unarmored, but each is a better rider drunk and half-asleep than any Westerosi knight. And they've got bows." So? Jaime thought. A dead man won't care if he's feathered. Evidently archery was playing some part in whatever was going on behind that burned face, though.

"So you're thinking we'll ride in the fore, a nice steel wall for the Dothraki to ride behind, flinging flaming arrows? I don't know about you, but I couldn't scratch my arse at full gallop, let alone go about lighting arrows without managing to set my horse's back on fire."

"Not fire arrows. Dragonfire will do for dead men. When we reach the others, they'll give you plenty of that dragonglass." Clegane grinned, a ghastly sight illuminated by the flames. "Others proper will be too busy keeping the black rain off them to fuck about with our charge- and a good thing, too. It's going to be bad enough with the cold giants loosing lightning bolts at us." Every word made Winterfell feel a thousand miles further away. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it?" Jaime asked, unsure if he'd heard right.

"You act like you'll be in the front rank when the charge starts."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"How long are you going to last without a sword hand? I'd bet this sword you're dead before battle's end, but then you've done your job by then, haven't you? Sorted out your bitch sister and brought the west up, haven't you? This cavalry charge is all you have left to do. The fucking dwarf's the one who has to burn the bodies and shovel the ash come dawn…if it comes. Pick through the rubble and dust off what's of use." Clegane seemed content as a hog in shit to charge toward certain death, indeed happier than Jaime believed the man able to be. I suppose there are worse ways to go, Jaime reflected. Surely a lightning bolt is a cleaner end than a crossbow quarrel. He looked down. Or one's twin's own hands.

They came upon the force from Winterfell amidst a veritable lake of ash. Many had rags tied over their noses and mouths and stained as they were by ash and mud it was impossible to tell one man from the other, though Jaime heard mutterings in everything from the Common Tongue to the Old Tongue to Dothraki. Eyes widened at the sight of the oncoming column, no doubt the dragon egg catching more than its share of stares. Jaime dismounted and immediately began coughing like mad when his landing engulfed him in a cloud of ash.

"Try not to move too quickly, ser. You'll stir it up and it lingers in the air. Chars the throat and poisons the lungs." The voice was half-familiar. Noble-born and sound of speech. No sellsword nor savage. The speaker tossed Jaime a rag, which he clumsily caught in the crook of his right elbow before tying it around his face.

"Gotta keep that shite out of your mouth, I say." Another man approached, bald and scarred. "We'd best continue on, ser. Ash won't trouble dead men none. If we're set upon in this state we'll be hard pressed to keep standing, let alone fight."

"Where are the dragons? Surely even an army's worth of men wielding torches couldn't do this." Jaime asked.

"They flew back to the castle…some scary sounds coming from that way. Lights in the sky. Once we knew you lot were coming we figured we'd greet you, stop the Others from taking you in the arse. Now you're here we'll need to get ourselves moving and fast, I didn't like what I heard what drew the dragons away." Jaime didn't bother introducing himself, his stump was herald enough, but he asked the names of the men presently in command. The first speaker turned out to be Dickon Tarly, his companion a Lord Franklyn Fossoway.

"Before they left, they caught one of the Others in a trap of my brother's devising. Destroyed a dead king too, for their trouble." Dickon's tone was one Jaime had heard a hundred times in a lifetime of battle and blood. "My lord father holds nominal command, at least until we get back to Winterfell."

"I heard someone mention something about a Sam the Slayer. I suppose it was well-earned after all."

"Would have been good to have kept him around, that's for certain. Has a wife of sorts and a little boy, and another on the way."

"What about the rest of the Reachmen?"

"Well, ser, we're not so bad as we might have been. Lord Tarly's thumbing his nose at the Other in charge 'round these parts had them overcommitting to try and see the lot of us destroyed. It was nothing for the dragons to fall upon them and sent the dead back where they came from. Any cold ones who didn't get out of here fast-like were also quickly overcome." Jaime wondered if the King in the North knew his friend had died. Looking at things coldly, though, dispassionately, Jaime figured them to have come out ahead. We can replace dead lords with living lords, if need be. Tarly was not old, yet for all his youth had managed to wreak untold havoc in the Others' ranks by destroying with almost silly prejudice one of their commanders, it seemed. To say nothing of all the rest who died trapped in the burning trees. Dead kings were nothing Jaime had yet seen, but dead men were dead men. The Others were who mattered.

"Those of you who were at Winterfell saw the Others' plans go apace." Jaime said once he'd gathered all the leaders of the ashen army. "Tell me what you saw, what they did. How they did it." Instead of all of them going off at once, it seemed they were reluctant to talk of what they'd seen. Small wonder, Jaime thought. I wonder how eager the survivors of the Field of Fire were to discuss the dragons coming down on them. "The dead men came first. Pooled around the rings the giants put around us-"

"What?" Jaime asked, interrupting a wildling chieftain.

"The giants pulled great blocks of frozen earth up and set them around the castle in three great rings. Before each, the hole they came out of to make them twice as tall for the dead to pile over, if even they managed it. So moats and rings, come to think of it." The fact that the northmen managed to further fortify Winterfell could only have been good news, and yet how to get into the castle when battle was being joined? Unless something manages to smash through somewhere. After everything so far, who's to say it's impossible? "Every so often they'd send the hungry ones through on sorties. Hordes of spiderlings too, and the cold giants once they arrived. Thankfully the dragons are more than a match for them, or else we'd have been in bad trouble."

"Trouble enough with the winds pinning the dragons to earth before they can do real damage." Despite his looking like any other of the men in the lake of ash, Jaime knew the Blackfish's voice at once.

"And who's loosing these winds?" Jaime asked.

"A longbeard among the cold giants. He's the one who calls the lightning, too." Behind him, Bronn groaned.

"A charge directly into freezing wind isn't exactly what I'd call a good idea." Jaime said finally, getting to a knee in the ash. "Where did you see this particular giant last?" He drew a circle on the ground. Not one to miss the point, the Blackfish drew a lightning bolt just north of the castle.

"Near enough the wolfswood that there's no telling where he goes after that."

"He's got to stay nearby, surely, if he's keeping such a close eye on the sky above Winterfell." A thought popped into Jaime's mind. He turned to the wildling. "The last time I saw you, you had red hair. The sight of the Others was enough to make Tormund Giantsbane go grey, it seems."

"Har." the wildling replied, snorting.

"You're no horseman. Nor, I'll wager, are most of your men." "Don't think we're sitting out the charge you're planning!"

"You're not sitting out of anything. While we're making a grand spectacle of ourselves, you lot will have been creeping north under the cover of the wolfswood. Bring fire, keep the blazes going alongside you. The Others may think it's no more than the dragons' exuberance. The flames will hide you perfectly. Once you find the giant, jump him. Maybe even wait until he leaves the treeline for another go at the dragons. All eyes will be on Winterfell and you can rush him when he's least expecting to be hit back." It was beyond mad; Jaime well knew that. His concern wasn't the innate danger of the plan, though, but the raucous grin of the man before him.

"Even if we're killed to the last, getting the storm-speaker off the dragons' backs will mean a lot. Might even be the difference." Tormund said.

"Indeed, you may. Be off sooner rather than later, you'll need more time to get in position being on foot." With more than a bit of trepidation, he turned to look for Freglyn. The boy frowned, but didn't argue. "Don't think you're sitting safe either, lad. Poachers know moving through woods like few else, and you'll be doing it with men well used to some of the most forbidding terrain in the world. A little snow in the wolfswood will be nothing to them." He turned back to Tormund. "What did the giant look like?"

"Beard to the tops of his feet. He didn't carry a weapon either, didn't need one." Jaime turned back to Freglyn.

"And now you know who you're looking for. Don't bother springing on someone or something else. If that giant is the one fucking about with the dragons, we need his attention split at the very least."

"Aye, ser. We'll find him." Freglyn said firmly. I only fear you do.

They made a show of being especially loud, those in the rear kicking up great clouds of grey dust to put a point to their plodding on. Tormund and Freglyn had taken their pick of the raiders and gone on northwest to follow the treeline.

"What if they don't make it, Kingslayer?" Theon Greyjoy asked as they kept due northeast.

"If things go wrong, they'll be no more dead than we are." Jaime replied. "The Others will be fixed on Winterfell and the dragons within it- the black's sudden appearance will have rather thrown things even further out of line for them, and they don't handle shifting course on a grand scale well. The hammer has a wide head and comes down hard, but its sides are brittle. Fragile. Ice, if you like. With even a bit of luck Giantsbane will pull the storm-speaker's fury off the dragons. From there I suppose it's up to them, but flying and breathing fire lend themselves nicely to a whole world of options."

"If all goes well, aye. We'll make a proper mess of things. But since when has all gone well? More like the Others will deftly dance right out of our grasp." The Blackfish said.

"And right into our hands. Maybe they can fuck about with dragons overhead. Or the lot of us coming on at full tilt. Or a castle full of soldiers ready to make an end to this unending darkness. But dragons overhead, and the lot of us coming on at full tilt, and a castle full of soldiers done with all this death, well, something's got to give, hasn't it?" He has an old man's wariness. I suppose the Red Wedding did its part, too, in making him see the fly in every mug of ale. "I never thought I'd be telling someone to talk to Sandor Clegane for a bit of cheering up. Even if of a morbid kind."

"Why, what did he say?"

"That with only a single hand I'm certain to die if I take part in the charge."

"That passes for cheering up?"

"Well, the cheering part I gather is that all I need do is get the charge off in the first place. The way Clegane put it, Tyrion's the brother will be piecing Westeros back together once all this has settled. Assuming it settles in our favor and all." To Jaime's wry amusement, something that might have been a rueful smirk flashed across Ser Brynden's face.

"Maybe it's not so bad an idea at that. I expect I'd not last long either, at my age." He sat back. "Do you know, I can't recall if I've passed sixty yet. Time's not the thing it used to be, and all the faces around me are ones I don't recognize. Except yours, I suppose." He ran a hand over his grizzled face. "Fuck me, these times don't agree with me."

"Nor most anyone, I should think." Jaime replied. "But I prefer them to none at all."

Amidst nodding off thinking of roast pheasant of all things, a sudden movement from Mormont had Jaime shaking drowsiness off. Before he could even call for weapons he caught a glimpse of eyes reflecting in their fires.

"Easy, ser." The Blackfish was running a whetstone down his blade, looking untroubled.

"What are you doing?" Jaime asked.

"Hammering on dead men will blunt a blade in time." "Those don't look like dead men to me." Mormont grunted, Greyjoy squinting into the darkness.

"Those are direwolves."

"Aye, and? We're in the north, and the Wall has long fallen. The wilds have come down to visit." Tully said. To stay, Jaime amended, remembering the lion and watching pair after pair of eyes appear just beyond the light of their fires. Were I him, I'd stay out on the moor too. One of the beasts emerged from the darkness. Jaime remembered, too, the direwolf that Robb Stark had running at his side. At the time it had seemed enormous. The monster in their midst then could have swallowed Stark's grey pup whole. He's bigger than a horse. Jaime was startled by the deep wild green of the animal's eyes, roving over the lot of them restlessly. Its nose twitched.

"Hold on. Snow's not with us any longer, what's to stop his brother simply tearing all our heads off?" Clegane asked from the camp corner he was brooding in.

"I thought that might be Shaggydog." Greyjoy intoned, the direwolf's ears pricking up at the mention of his name. More wolves followed the first, and soon it was a real trial for the column to keep their horses calm with so many large predators so close. Bizarrely, Mormont had eyes only for the darkness to the north, acting as though the pack didn't exist. As if it knew it could not hide, one more monster stalked out of the trees. Seven save us, Jaime thought. The man-wolf was hunched, ready to launch itself at the first opportunity, but at full height had to stand no shorter than Clegane, or perhaps even Greatjon Umber. Its teeth and claws dripped with something sluggish and clear. Cold blood. In a blink it stood before Mormont, the fire no deterrent. Mormont rose slowly, trying to shake something off. Before things could go further south the man-wolf began to melt away, revealing a twin to the Young Wolf save the heavier dose of northman in his face. And Robb Stark had been a boy in a man's boots. A river king, perhaps, but a King in the North?

"Rickon." Greyjoy said, the young man turning, brow furrowing. "We're marching to Winterfell, we should be in position in the next few days, no more."

"With respect, Ser Jaime, we don't have a few days." The voice was matter of fact, levelheaded and perhaps most notably, female, making Jaime think he might have started hearing things. A younger, taller Catelyn Stark joined them then, accompanied by a direwolf of her own. Rather than creep into their midst, though, they simply blossomed up from the ashes without disturbing them a bit.

"Aww, now what's this fucking horseshit?" Jaime heard Ser Dewys moan.

Once you were Sansa Stark, Jaime thought. Betrothed to Joffrey. Idolizing Cersei. There was no trace of the south in the young woman who stood(?) before them. A curtain of red hair ran unbroken past her waist and she held a walnut branch, capped by a skull with a few feathers dangling from it. Nor in the wolf beside her, whom Jaime dimly recalled as a well-mannered, even timid pup on the way back to King's Landing from Winterfell an eternity ago. Why not? he asked, telling himself the rules of yesteryear had long since gone into the latrine anyway and what was to worry about?

"The Others' king has succeeded in purposing dragon bones found in the Frostfangs. Warded with a silver barrier of moonlight and breathing frigid lightning, it's making quite a mess of our defenses. Us as well, at that." This was news even to Clegane and the Blackfish, it seemed.

"What about our dragons?" Tully asked.

"They are far smaller than the king's mount and are living beings besides. They will tire. It will not."

"Are you going to suggest a way by which we might compensate for this?" Jaime asked, holding his hands out.

"Bran and the Singers of the Song of Earth are, it seems, putting something together in the grotto beneath Winterfell. In order for them to put whatever they're planning into action, though, they need to be alive in the first place. Bones it may be but the lightning it breathes goes through stone and frozen earth in a way fire can only envy. Don't worry, once you arrive you'll have difficulty enough drawing the giants away from the castle."

"Are there Others proper about?" Jaime could not think of anything better to say.

"Here and there, lingering at the edges of the battle to pick off any who flee. The bone dragon is doing quite a lot of damage, I doubt the king wants his soldiers exposed to its breath." Jaime opened his eyes.

"So aside from the giants and the dead, and this bone dragon, the enemy has relatively little presence near Winterfell?" Sansa Stark seemed to think him being witty. That's never been a fault anyone's laid at my door. "You mistake me. If your brother and his singers can bring the king to earth, that may be our best and only chance to fatally disrupt their chain of command. The Others outside the walls will be too busy chewing on us to intervene." Catelyn Stark had given her daughter the Tully coloring, but Jaime saw some northern blood in Sansa Stark as well. "I've sent a detachment to disrupt the giant singing up all these fucking storms, too. Maybe with the situation turned on its head we can rain blows on them unimpeded for a bit. Enough to make them pull back, even. Until the lot of us are behind Winterfell's walls, at least." Stark's face fell.

"I doubt Wodyn is the only source of the winds plaguing the dragons." She sighed. "But that will be for me to deal with." Jaime only nodded, at a loss for what else to say.

"You'd better take this, eh?" Clegane stepped up to her, the egg in hand. Sansa gasped, sounding at last like the girl she once was.

"Where did this come from?"

"My uncle, Euron the Crowbrained, seemed to think spilling my sister's blood would make it hatch. Instead I brained him with a candlestick and the Lame Lion here pulled it out of a fucking soup pot." Greyjoy said, likewise taken aback by Sansa's appearance as Clegane tipped the egg into her free arm. While she cradled it tenderly, as if it were a newborn, Greyjoy took in the sight of the skull capping her walking stick. "Who's head is that?"

"Take a guess." she replied, the skull's jaw flapping ghoulishly of its own accord. "Care to greet him?" She held out the walnut branch, the skull poking in Greyjoy's face. He grimaced.

"I'll pass."

"I'll put this in Shireen's care, I think. In the meantime, do hurry. Else you'll only find a pile of rubble awaiting you." Then just as cleanly as they had appeared, Sansa Stark and her wolf were gone.

They were hours out from Winterfell when they began to hear the sounds of battle. Flashes of lightning were lighting up the sky, giants were bellowing and booming to each other as they fought, and the unearthly shrieking of something high above was loud enough to drown out the rest of the battle altogether. Even braced for the worst, Jaime was still bowled over when the trees thinned and he got a proper look. Dead men seethed around the outermost of three huge earthen rings- and through as well, where something had turned the frozen earth to dust. Giants with skin the color of a winter sky were rushing through the breaches wherever they could find them. The lanky brutes that accompanied the giants were no more than stunted striplings by comparison and more than once one was flattened by an overzealous giant only to spring back up moments later, looking wary. Mammoths that likewise dwarfed the largest of their mundane kin were crashing through walls of earth and mortared stone with equal ease. As if to drive home the point, in the tempest above Jaime could see something immense illuminated by the bolts of lightning lancing down from the gray clouds, the dragon queen's pets doing as much to dissuade it raining ruin on the ground as Jaime could himself.

"The northern bit's had it." Bronn said, the sellsword knight's voice cracking for the first time in Jaime's memory.

"We haven't." Jaime replied, wondering why he wasn't filling his own smallclothes. "Ser Addam, the left, along the treeline. Lord Renfred, the right, stick to the trees as well as you can."

"Begging your pardon, ser, but hang that." Renfred said. "The Blackfish can have the right, I'm not near the cavalry commander he is."

"I don't suppose it will much matter." Tully said, raising his voice when the thing in the tempest gave an especially loud screech.

"Good form always matters, ser." Jaime replied. "Ready your men, we're late enough as is."

"How can they not see us?" Greyjoy muttered as he followed Addam off.

"The figuring is, they can see heat well. Meaning a body full of hot blood they're hunting. This whole fucking forest has been on fire for days, it's probably no more than a big red blur to them just now." Clegane replied, patting Stranger's side almost contentedly. "How will that ginger cunt know what's going on with all this mess?"

"I'm hoping even with all the noise he'll know when we've joined in. A mass cavalry charge isn't normally a thing to go unnoticed." The Stark boy had remained with them, his pets as well. It seemed he knew something was afoot, just the sort of something he was made for. Whereas I've yet to do my bit, it seems. I'll have some choice words for whatever cunt god thinks killing Aerys and Cersei wasn't enough.

"Is that one wearing a dress?" Stilwood asked, almost in disbelief. Jaime looked where he was pointing to observe an Other at the base of what remained of the earthen ring. With little more than a flick of his (or her) hand, he (or she) had the whole lot collapsing to free up the dead men to advance.

"It's a cloak, lad. Seems to be, anyway. What say we get up nice and close for a proper look?" Jaime replied, signaling trumpets to sound.

As soon as his destrier left the comparative cover of the trees Jaime was doused in frigid wind, only then realizing he wasn't carrying so much as a fork. Hang it, he thought, as his horse and those around him began to gain momentum. Like Clegane says, it will be miracle enough if I live past the next five minutes. Should I manage that much, I'm sure I'll figure the rest out. He spotted his right emerging from the trees to the west, saw his right rushing in off the moor to the east. Either the Others were too intent on Winterfell's destruction to notice them or it seemed the haze of heat coming off the wolfswood was enough to hide them even as far as they'd come. He began to hear the twang of countless powerful bows loosing dragonglass-tipped arrows. By Jaime's rough estimation, the flight would come down just before they reached the first of the dead men. It seemed at last they had gone noticed, Jaime grinning as he imagined the chaos broiling in the Others' lines. Then one of the mammoths turned its head toward them, trunk outstretched. Jaime braced, and his horse nearly lost his footing when the first of the volleys smashed into the body of the charge just behind him. Lightning bolts from atop the ring began to join the mammoths' fury, scattering ranks of heavy horse like dead leaves. No discipline, Jaime thought detachedly as he pushed on, intent at least on reaching the Other-mage alive. The giants were spurring their mammoths toward his column, the huge beasts trumpeting irately, but it was too late, far too late to try to match them. The salvos came with greater intensity, freely loosing into their midst whenever able and it wasn't enough. Jaime had enough time to run the hand that remained to him down his horse's neck. As he did it, everything seemed to slow. The sea of dead men had begun to congeal in front of them, a cushion meant to bear the brunt of the charge. A cushion made of air, Jaime mused. The first dead man the destrier met burst into flakes of skin and bits of bone, skull flying past Jaime's head as they ploughed into the midst of the enemy. In only a breath it seemed they were clear of the walking corpses. Jaime chanced to look up and beheld the Other standing not thirty feet away, not ten, not five. He could see the silver ring binding the Other's hair out of his ice-blue eyes, count the nicks and scars that dotted his otherwise flawless face. Well, my friend, Jaime thought ruefully, one of us is about to die.