Beneath him, his latest quarry was on its last legs. One among them could outrun a man (if it didn't think better of merely snatching him and biting him in half) but he was awing and the endless trees were small shelter once his fire was dancing through them. Circling lower, he could smell fear pouring off his prey's cold flesh. It was a scent as telling to the cold monster, ordinarily heedless of the most grievous wounds, as it was to him. They were not used to running, to fleeing blindly- they were hungerers, not hungered for. But by now he well knew that fire stopped the resurgence of their cold flesh in its tracks. A bronze ring and a dive later and he had it in his teeth, jaws crunching shut to leave the half-eaten form dangling from his mouth. It was not hunger that drove him after them- they were poor eating by any measure and there was no lack of choice when it came to the beasts that called the cold world home. It was contempt that drove him to hammer them with his breath and tear them with his teeth, indignance that pushed him to chase them north. No biting winds rose to ward him off, no ice gnawed at his wings and pelted his body until he was forced to turn away. Snorting, tossing away an arm to writhe until it stilled, he heard a pair of huge, heavy feet plodding toward him. He turned toward the trees as-yet unburned to see something altogether different than one among the heedless hungerers. Istrollen. His head snapped the thought away, shrugging off the voice of the other. The tall man stepped heavily into view, clad in half-burned away furs and clutching a long wooden spear tipped in glinting ice. Giant, the voice in his head said. A cold one. Vetrarjond. This time he screamed aloud, the giant flinching so badly his spear cracked in his grip. Before his nerve could leave him he let it fly, and it snapped in twain against the green scales of his shoulder. He bared his teeth, snorted, bowled the giant over- and sank his teeth into the meat of the great hand fumbling at his snout. The giant's agonized scream filled the snow-covered wood. The smell of cold blood hit him from elsewhere, though, and when his head mashed into the giant's chest, he felt the ragged fur soak with it from beneath. The giant fell onto his back, screaming into the air, rolling around until he could catch his breath. Hissing weakly, he made to sit up, wincing even as the life within him gushed out into his lap. He could only open one eye fully, the other frozen in a torn, bloody squint. He muttered something under his breath, cold flecks of blood and spittle dribbling into what remained of his beard. A sweltering exhale had him crying out again, this time loud enough to hear.
"A good fight, Skogareldar." The Old Tongue, or at least a sort. For 'wildfire'. The other did not think in the tongue the giant spoke, and so again he batted it away. The bleating of sheep, not the howling of wolves. There was no fire but that which came from within him, and so he knew it was he to whom the dying giant called. "There is no dignity in meeting one's end a drop at a time. No stories are told about those who are squeezed out and left to drip, like milk-soaked rags. I would sooner die on my feet than my arse, but my legs have forsaken me." He sniffed, sniffled. It was another pain he was concerned with, not his ruined body. "Do not leave me to such a fate, Skogareldar." He clambered to his knees. "Send me to my fathers yourself, that I may look them in the eye." He understood the giant's words, but still more he understood their meaning. A low, rumbling rasp escaped him, the air before him shimmering with heat. But what if fire was too an unworthy end? Your teeth, then. The other's voice had melted into the stony music of the Old Tongue. He looked into the giant's eye, not blinking. Only when the pain caused him to wince again did his head shoot forward, teeth gnashing shut around the giant's throat and near to tearing his head off. At once he went limp and when he was released, he fell to the ground and did not rise again.
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. More Old Tongue, but the meaning behind the words was less clear. Still, he could sense something like approval from the other, from the leader of the numberless man-pack. He had been wounded but his body was being seen to, as both of them could feel. All three, indeed, though the leader of the wolf-pack was even harder to gauge. That did not displease him, quite the opposite. He was the largest of his kind, the longest teeth and greatest weight, but mere bulk was the least of why he led the wolf-pack. Who among his kind could even begin to mount a challenge, to rival him for primacy? The thought had him snorting, thought it was not contempt he felt then, something else, something lighter that had no place in the world he'd lived in up to then.
"Jon Snow." His head snapped north, eyes peeled for the speaker, but it had been no giant, no man either. "Jon. Snow. JON SNOW." Something flitted through the tops of the pines, out of reach of even the highest tongues of bronze. He knew a bird when he saw it, of course, and the other knew a raven in particular just as well. The raven seemed almost annoyed, though that might have just been its reluctance to get any closer to the scattered flames. When he drew near, the bird squorked meekly. "Corn?" it asked in a tiny voice, its black eyes seeming to go wide as it stared past his teeth to the light in his throat. That a few black feathers could do what he could not ignited a fire in his mind to match the one within him and when it made to fly off nothing else would do but to follow. Hells, not that one… Even the other's exasperation could not quench the fire, could not beat out the rising flames. For his part, he felt rather as though this were exactly the one. For what purpose, to what end, it buzzed about like the black clouds that had covered the corpses of man and beast in the world beyond the water and when he made to grasp it, the clouds parted, as graspable as cloud. Then it came to him in the simplest of terms, as fire was hot and ice was cold. What a raven could do, so he could do.
More voices filtered through the trees, strong as they were somber. More giants, more vetrarjond…plodding home with heavy wounds and heavy hearts. It was not just speech, either. He soon left the raven far behind, making for the voices, for the song they shared. The Last of the Giants, the other noted heavily. The idea of it rankled him raw. They were few, but not so few, and were far more fitted to living in the world that the sun now shone on than men of any breed. The storm had ended, but there would be others. Storms to smash stone pens to rubble, scatter the captive man-herds until they remembered what it was to wander. Would the giants, cold or otherwise, object then? Even as he sailed north toward the singing, it gnawed at him. The gond that had fought to protect the man-pack were shorter, slighter, diminished. Would those to come after them be so, growing tall not walled off out of sight but where they would, where they pleased? The snows would continue to fall, he knew. The sun had returned, but the snows had not receded, nor the ice, nor the beasts with winter in their veins. Wingbeats were not something to be mistaken for something else, and so his approach was greeted with bellowed curses, shrieks of dismay and shouts for weapons. He circled low over the lakeshore where they had stopped to rest, some looking as though they had come as far as they might. A cold mammoth stood impassively, towering over the giants, eyes fixed on him. Burns licked up and down its sides and striped its trunk, but it looked otherwise unharmed. A short utterance from the side of a longbeard had the rest stopping where they stood, muttering incessantly and too low for him to hear. The raven landed on the stooping giant's shoulder, cawing in its ear while it worked with a bone needle. He landed on a rocky outcropping jutting out from the rocks nearby, allowing him to look over them without remaining awing. When the giant stood, he hissed in recognition…and something else. The giantess' blonde hair had gone completely and a burn whorled down the left side of her face, her eye screwed up to a blue pinhead. He did not like the feeling, the hunger-hurt no food could fill nor flying escape. He had no argument with them, nothing of the sort. Their coming against the stone pen, the man-den… Hoarsely, painedly, she led her people in the last few notes of their song. The sound of it was enough to move something in him, awaken a hunger he did not know he felt…for something he did not know he missed. The other tried to put it in his terms, he caught a glimpse of it here and then from past victories and defeats both- and seized upon it. He saw it as if he were there, heard it as if he were there, the leader of the man-pack carrying his prized silver female away from the water into the trees. The thought came to him again. He held the other tight in sway, the sound of the giants' voices and his own as well. When the giantess fell silent, his teeth parted, the thought burning behind his eyes. What a raven could do, so he could do.
"Ooooooh, I am the last of the dragons,
Our fires are dwindled and cold.
The last of the great fire dragons,
Who mastered the world of old.
But now men have gone from the forests,
They've gone from the rivers and hills.
The wall that they built has been broken,
and fish swim again in the rills.
In the rubble they huddle like rabbits
In the ruins they cower like mice
While I fly content in the mountains
To see all the world locked in ice
They hide from my gaze in the daylight,
They hide from the Pack in the night.
For this race that is small and will never stand tall,
never rule in this cold world of white.
Oooooooh, I am the last of the dragons
But new voices will soon join my song
For soft green summer is now dead and gone
and winter shall last long and long."
Jon lurched up off the godswood floor, dragonsong ringing in his ears as he vomited into his own lap. Lovely, he thought woozily before rolling onto his front, the giantess' expression still burned into his memory. Even burned and bloodied she had gone wide-eyed, mouth open in shock. Well, gentle lady, that makes two of us. The ground in front of him was not two inches away and yet it spun and danced as if he were Rhaegal awing again, his head pounding fit to split. Someone was nearby, panting softly and nibbling at his hand while Jon struggled to keep his gaze straight. He rolled over yet again, spotting Ghost looming over him untroubledly.
"You're not about to sing, are you?" Jon asked, half-afraid Ghost might respond in kind. The direwolf licked the blood from his chin, nuzzled him while he tried to catch his breath. The king, he thought, trying to remember past his head ringing like a sept bell. Jon remembered the light in the king's hand, remembered it splintering even as it rained down upon him…he looked down and realized he'd been neatly bundled up, the old wounds on his chest closed by time…and by the cold. How long have I been out here? His right leg wagged as if it were made of wood, his knee heedless of his efforts to bend it. When he pulled away the cloth, he found he was looking at a tight brace of metal, leather straps and even bits of bone. For a moment he was busy with making sure nothing was bleeding (that he could find) or broken (that he could feel) and then Jon realized that the storm had quite gone, the sounds of battle with it. No dead milled in Winterfell's godswood, though what he could see of the walls around it were in truly sorry shape. Viserion was just visible in the pool that had formed, looking like nothing more than a great white bull lizard-lion nine-tenths submerged but for his eyes and the slits of his nostrils. Beyond the water Drogon sat looped in a pile of onyx coils, one red eye briefly flitting open to steal a peek at Jon. Neither seemed much out of sorts let alone seriously wounded, but Jon knew that was more luck's doing than any efforts on their part. The black dragon pushed thought of aught else from his mind. Dany, he thought, suddenly nearly panic. Even as he strained to get up, Drogon's indolence slowed him before he could go wriggling about. If something had happened to Dany, Drogon would not be so calm. The heart tree had taken a hammering and more, white branches lying in the moss and snow beneath what boughs still stood, so with a muttered apology Jon worked one of the branches into his grip and began to limp toward the water's edge.
Parts of the pool still smoked where the bone dragon's scattered pieces poked out of the surface, the skull no doubt half-buried in its murky bottom. When Jon reached out to prod one of the bones, his finger sunk through a half-inch of char and ash before it met any resistance. I'm no necromancer, he thought, but I'd bet Longclaw that whatever's left of that horror will never fly again. He saw more bits of bone, a splintered rib that ran longer than a cold giant stood tall, something that might have come off a leg…the lightning that had been bound within them had seared its shape across them all, white lines wide as his finger that had cooked dragonbone from within. Jon took another furtive look at what remained of the heart tree. I'll need to see the castle entire. A task for when Rhaegal returns. He limped over to Drogon, who rumbled uncooperatively.
"Don't even give me that. Today's not the day to act the petulant child." Jon snapped, pulling off a glove to run a hand down the dragon's snout. More than one gemstone twinkled out at him from between the black scales. "I'll bring Dany your love, shall I?" The sound of Viserion slinking from the water was almost inaudible, but the air grew humid and heavy with the weight of water boiling off the pool's surface. The white dragon was not so taciturn, rasping in perfect imitation of a bull lizard-lion. "And Meera, yours." Viserion yawned lazily, mouth full of gilded daggers. Slowly he dragged himself back toward the water, snorting softly as he waded out away from Jon. His great pale body sent more little waves dancing over the pool's surface, briefly showing even more blasted bits of the bone dragon. I suppose it's one of those things that doesn't matter how it's done, so long as it gets done. Ghost nuzzled his arm. "Sorry, boy. Just catching my breath." Jon said. The dragons are fine, the bone dragon unmade utterly. I can do no more good here, buffing the scuffs off their scales. There was Dany to look after, to say nothing of Rose and Dalla. If the gods are good I'll find them both unharmed, Val as well and Dalla will not share her father's misfortune of never knowing a mother's embrace. He was certain Dany would not blink at the prospect of welcoming Dalla as well as Rose, but her hands were full and more. Rose would be a daunting project on her tart-stealing own, the little hellion. Not to mention a babe on the way…and whatever might come of the dragon eggs they'd found on Skagos. Jon remembered what had happened when Dany held the iron-colored one. He imagined what might be in a few years, a brace of giggling babes and shrieking dragons chasing each other about. The Others could have just waited a few short years. Little Snows and little dragons would have done just as much damage to Winterfell, if not more.
When Jon limped after Ghost, he harbored no illusions that he might manage to steal off down a corridor to the royal bedchamber without anyone spotting him. Still, when he emerged from the godswood to find all of Winterfell staring at him, Jon was taken aback. None of that, he told himself. If Rhaegal can sing to bloody giants, you can say a few words to your own people. Jon found an overturned cart nearby and a knight helped heft him up onto it, wobbling a bit.
"My thanks, ser." Jon told him.
"Your Grace." the knight replied, dipping his head. Oh, that's right, Jon thought. King and all that. Once he was confident he was balanced on the branch and wouldn't go down in history as the King Who Fell Flat on His Arse, he addressed the crowd.
"I know you're anything but in the mood to have a crowned head prattle at you. Handily, all I've got on my brow is snow."
"And a bit of blood, someone get a grey dress looking at that once he comes down." someone called from the crowd.
"Aye, snowflakes instead of diamonds, blood instead of rubies. That's a real king's crown for you." another voice called.
"Piss on crowns. Crowns didn't blunt the Others' push or bring down their bone dragon. For that matter, thrones didn't stem the flood of dead the Others drove at us." He daubed some blood off the side of his face.
"You did." He gestured at the knight. "You did." He pointed at a Dothraki holding a bow. "You did." He pointed again, this time at a crossbowman from the Golden Company. "Not you. A fat lot of good you did us. You ponce." He gave a heavy-breathing giant, seated and panting, a dismissive waving-off, prompting an outbreak of exhausted chuckling.
"Forgot silks." he replied. "Sweet scents." More laughter. A maester waded through the crowd toward the giant to give him a looking-over.
"Now, you see what you can do. Instead of a graveyard, the dead sorted by kingdom, we've got one great world's worth of worthies to celebrate. Except the Golden Company, the drunks." If anything, the sellswords present were the hardest to laugh at that. "I'd like to tell you that the worst is over, the most trying of our trials past us. Well, I could never much lie to save my hide. Instead of hammering dead men who'd walk into a wall of fire if an Other bid, we'll need to work out how we're going to feed ourselves. Keep ourselves out of the cold. Care for the old among us, as well as those new-born and their mothers besides." He looked around, surveyed the devastation that had befallen Winterfell. "We cannot all of us linger here waiting for the balmy winds of summer to return. Once we're as fit as we're like to get, the next step of the dance is taking back what we've lost. Our ports, our cities, our Westeros." They would need ports, even a daft northman knew that much. The bounty of the sea, as well as whatever we might manage to bring in from the Free Cities. "Until such time as we're ready to shove off, though, drink whatever wine flows your way. Eat whenever food happens to grace your plate or fill your bowl. Rest, heal, work breath back into your lungs. Those among us who know well how to find food out on the tundra will be busy, in a word." The Frozen Shore men, to say nothing of the other hard-wearing peoples among the Free Folk. Hunting might be made a hair easier with a few direwolves among their number, but the dragons were like to simply devour whatever they killed themselves. "Now, I've got a queen to see to. If you could keep out of trouble awhile, that'd be grand." The knight helped Jon back off the cart without a word of protest.
"Careful, Your Grace. Some treacherous icy patches, especially on the cobblestones."
"Aye, so there are. Don't miss the chance to warm yourself and fill your stomach, ser." Jon replied. The crowd melted away as Jon limped through them, not daring to put all his weight on his right leg. Well, someone braced it, he reasoned. Hopefully that's a sign it will come around in time.
As soon as he got into the keep, Jon found the corridor packed with ladies. It seemed most had done a fair bit of crying waiting in the tunnels beneath the battle, if the streaks on their cheeks were a sign. Or their tears are for our dead.
"Your pardon, ladies, but where is the queen?" he asked, a half-dozen answering at once.
"Princess Arya had her brought to bed, Your Grace. The maester rigged up a brace for your leg and from then he's been with the queen. It seems we've not long to wait before a new prince or princess comes along." A redheaded girl with a silver bell pendant said.
"Oh, good. I was beginning to think she'd dozed off somewhere." Jon said, relieved. There you are. As warm and safe as she's like to get around here. He was wondering how he might wade through the lot of dresses and skirts when every girl's eyes widened to a one, fixed on something behind him.
"Why don't you all get something to eat? Or find a nice hearth to warm around." Jon said lamely as Ghost's nose budded into view. Absently he reached up and scratched the direwolf under his jaw while the hall emptied. For some reason, none of the ladies troubled themselves to squeeze past Ghost. Only when the last of them had gone did Jon proceed, Ghost padding after him. Or maybe I'm just trudging along before the real king, Jon thought, smirking despite himself. The stairs were tricky. Not only because of Jon's leg but because part of the wall had given, a fresh new view of the moor available on his ascent. Winterfell will need all the stonemasons of the realm, perhaps more. Bricks could be relaid, though. At last he reached the door to his chamber. Faintly he heard someone shushing a child.
"Hello? Anybody home?" he asked.
"No. Go away, wolf. We don't hold with your kind here." Dany's voice sounded beyond fatigued and there was the occasional gasp, but otherwise there was nothing in it to worry him.
"Oh, bother. Might a plate full of food afford me passage?"
"Perhaps, perhaps not."
"Well, the kitchens may well be completely destroyed, given my luck. What's a poor wolf to do?"
"Best do something, and soon. And bring a tart or two."
"Tarts!" Of course.
"Have you got Val in there with you?"
"That's none of your business, wolf." Dany replied, though Jon could hear Val giggling inside, Dalla burbling. Something else crossed his mind, his merry mood gone in a moment.
"What about Shireen? Has she paid you a visit?" He was loathe to open a window and let out all the warmth in the room, but it sounded as though he did just that thing.
"Sweetling, open the door." Dany said. It slid open the barest crack, a sliver of Stark grey eye peeking out at Jon. He put a finger to the sliver, Rose giggling and mirroring him as she let the door fall open. Dany gave a murmur of discontent at the cold that followed him in, Jon quickly closing the door again while Rose hugged him 'round a leg.
"I take it the grotto's off-tunnels were a cozy place to spend the battle."
"Cozy, cramped, dirty, crowded and loud." Val replied, stoking the fire going in the hearth. "Your winter rose was bouncing off the walls faster than my eyes could follow."
"I can't imagine that at all." Jon replied, as Rose proceeded to dash circles around him and the rest of the room.
"Hush now, you. Is that any way for a little brigand like you to behave?" He said, scooping Rose up while she squealed, little feet humming with how fast they were moving. Jon did not fail to notice that her shoes had miraculously remained on her feet, despite her earlier protests. Finally, he looked to the bed and the woman in it, Dany breathing slowly in between pants. "Do you need a maester?" Jon asked, easing himself over.
"All I need, I have now. I might ask for a more well-behaved wolf, but…"
"You do love to natter on." Jon said, gently taking her hand. When he found boiled rags wrapped around it, empty space between her thumb and little finger, he sniffled. "How-"
"Trying to catch a dagger. Typical of a lazy, dozy kitten." she replied. "At least it doesn't much hurt. Maybe that's the cold, though, or else the Valyrian steel. I daren't ask for milk of the poppy with the babe so near." Jon could only hold her maimed hand to his cheek, feel her thumb brush a tear off his cheek. "Jaime Lannister had a whole bloody hand made. He went around just clubbing people with it, as it seems he's most fond of telling people. I'll make do with something more elegant, I think." Her eyes widened. "Jon. The westermen…"
"They saw fit to join us at last, aye. I saw their charge."
"They found another egg, Jon. They may have been harried all the way here, but they made the wait well worth it. Who wouldn't buy three dragon eggs with three meagre fingers?"
"Me," Jon said promptly, "if they were your fingers." She gasped again. Jon started but Dany didn't seem out of sorts.
"He's fond and more of kicking, it seems." Val said over his shoulder. "Dalla never gave me half so much trouble."
"I'd feel better if you had a maester close to hand-"
"-will a grey dress ever birth a babe himself? Say Ghost would feel better to have you on hand to do his sniffing for him." Val said while Dany snorted. "Winterfell is full of midwives who'd smack a cave bear hard across the nose for a chance to bring the babe. Meera's got a babe of her own soon to come, that sun princess too if I heard right…" And Gilly as well.
"Meera's doing well?" Jon asked, feeling as though he'd forgotten for the hundredth time just who Bran's princess really was.
"Well enough. Her father fell, so she and hers are keeping out of sight while they right themselves." Val told him. That news Jon like a tourney lance. He carried his secret for years, only to die as soon as he'd given it up.
"Arya's been up here half a dozen times to whisper what she hears to us, keep us in the know." Dany said, fidgeting a bit before Rose dashed over to fix her pillows. "Somehow she found out about the eggs as well, but that only makes it easier to get word between Bytarys and us."
"Trust Arya to wheedle out a secret." Jon said. "I'd love to find out how she got past a line of Unsullied."
"It seems it won't be long before we've more to worry about than a new prince."
"Bugger that. We have three fine dragons on hand, they can mind the hatchlings while we care for the babe." Jon said flatly.
"Jon Snow, give three babes to three wild lads with aught on their minds but wild lasses and see how well it goes." Val said bluntly.
"Viserion has a brood proper to see to, as well. He came into his own in the Neck, I can't imagine a bull lizard-lion is fit to rear a young dragon." Dany added.
"It worked for Howland Reed and Naerys Targaryen. Rather well, I'll add." Jon wasn't pleased at the prospect of Dany being pulled in so many directions.
"And Drogon? I've been in his head, Jon. He's become as much god-lizard as dragon from his time in the Green Hell, if not more, and nobody in Westeros knows the first thing about them." That much Jon couldn't deny. Drogon's roars had rattled Jon to the bone even amidst the tempest. And when bothers to move, he almost goes out of his way to emphasize weight and size.
"I suppose we'll see if Rhaegal is any more help in that regard, then. When he isn't busy chasing the sun or singing to giants." Then he told her about Rhaegal's chasing the istrollen and the cold giants north with no wind to stop him. Finding Mormont's raven of all things in the company of the straw-haired storm witch. Rhaegal rankling at the idea a lowly bird might have surpassed him, if only with a few half-mad caws of "Corn!" "I suppose ravens learned how to speak, somehow. Small wonder, really, that what a raven could do, a dragon could do. And those Rhaegal's thoughts, not mine." Jon said while Dany stared at him.
"The green spoke?" Val asked weakly.
"He sang, and only to settle the cold giants' nerves. I daresay he's fonder of their way of life than man's."
"That stands to reason…a giant's way has more to offer a dragon. A direwolf's way has more to offer a dragon, particularly one so spirited as Rhaegal." Dany said, though her turn had come to tear up.
"Don't worry yourself, sweetling. Madder things have happened." Jon said, kissing her forehead. Briefly he reached for Rhaegal, flashing a brief glimpse of the two eggs, midnight blue and polished iron, another behind them. Then he was out, too quick even for Rhaegal to give him a contemptuous shrugging-off. That will bring him with all speed. "Shall I go check on them, then? Might be I can make off with a few tasty things for you, as well." Breathing deeply, color slowly working its way back into her darling face, Daenerys nodded.
"After all else, you'd best come back to me, Jon Snow." she said.
"I won't. I'll bugger off into the hills with a tower shield buckling under all the fruit and cheese in Winterfell and hide it under a snowbank and you'll not get a bite." Jon replied, his hand on her cheek now. Another kiss on her forehead before he stole one off her lips and then he was straightening up.
"Come on, you. Your mother could do with a few minutes' peace and quiet." he told Rose, who dashed over to the door at once.
He found Ghost waiting at the bottom of the stair, Rose giving a gleeful shriek at the sight of him. Ghost lapped at her hand, making her squeal while Jon carried her delicately, still not fully trusting his leg. Down we go. At least we need not pass by every lordling in Winterfell on the way. The corridor's Unsullied moved aside soundlessly on his approach, not looking twice at him. He saw some had taken wounds, the ranking officer seemed had barely the strength to stand.
"Not you." he said. "Go and find a maester before you collapse and your brothers have to scurry to find a torch. The queen will be most distressed to hear of the death of one of her most devoted."
"This one obeys." Came the reply, the eunuch moving off with an even more pronounced limp than Jon's. Toy soldiers, we called them. Had we seen the wights in the numbers we'd come to, we might have been more charitable. After all, regardless of their training and the foulness the men who made them forced them to choke down, an Unsullied was still a man, and a wight was not. He knocked quickly, the door opening just briefly enough for him to slip through without much heat escaping. Immediately Rose whined in discomfort and even Jon found that walking more than a step or two forward wasn't going happen. Rose buried her face in his shoulder and Jon squinted through his fingers at the far wall of the room, trying to spot the eggs out of the corner of his eye. The pit in which they sat seemed near as bright as the sun and the heat that poured off it would have had an Unsullied swaying in moments. Then it was gone, though the brightness remained.
"Apologies, Your Grace." he heard Shireen call while Bytarys muttered a curse in her wild bent of Valyrian. She isn't much wrong, either.
"You're becoming quite adept at manipulating heat, my lady." he told her.
"Well, when you've got dragon eggs on hand to drink up anything I might overdo, learning comes easy."
"How do they look?"
"Never mind how they look, take in how they sound." Baffled, Jon could only stand there listening- and add his sharp intake of breath to the sounds of round, heavy things rattling around in the pit.
"We're close, then."
"Close as we can get without doing the thing entirely, I daresay. Her Grace will be pleased."
"All three are healthy, then? As far as you can tell?" Shireen's province was fire, not life, Jon knew, but life in his experience could run from very hot to very cold.
"The eggs are hot, but they're snowballs compared to what's within them. Each as active as the next, moving around and beside themselves to be the first one out."
"The queen told me about a late arrival the westermen managed to dredge up somewhere, what color might it be?"
"A lovelier shade of orange I could not imagine, flecks like silver stars dotting all about its surface. They make a pretty trinity, if I may say so, Your Grace."
"Who's to stop you? Without your aid, who knows if ever they'd have come to hatch. If I might ask something else of you while you tend them, Lady Shireen?"
"I'd rather not leave them, not now, Your Grace…" she said uncertainly.
"Nothing of the sort. I seem to recall you being fond of reading in the past, histories and the like. If any names come to you, do mention them to the queen. I might know what to name a babe, but I'm arsed as what to call a dragon."
He was on his way to the kitchen the long way, using most every out of the way path he could think of. No one was much lingering on Winterfell's outer perimeter save the corpses that had fallen after the last of the Others it seemed had departed. Now, how the balls am I going to get to the kitchen without a hundred people seeing? Suddenly Rose pointed into the distance, hugging tight to Jon's chest. Something was moving among the dead, likely a scavenger come out of the trees to feast. Even a wolverine would have been more attentive to the scent of Ghost, though. Then it sat up, a man's moan audible across the way. By the time Jon reached him it was clear his wounds were mortal…yet there was a queer lack of blood on the snow.
"Ser? Can you hear me?"
"No sers around here, Jon, just me. What the Others have seen fit to leave, anyway." his uncle replied, his only movements coming from above the waist.
"Uncle Benjen! Why are you lingering out here? Has the First Ranger missed that it's over?" Jon teased, until he saw the breadth of the damage. Benjen Stark lay near torn in twain, and when he tried to push with his palms, his legs remained mired where they'd fallen. At the last second Jon sensed what was about to happen and so he averted Rose's gaze, but the sight of a body's worth of dead black innards running out onto the half-frozen mud was one he'd never forget. "Alright, this is getting to be a bit much for me now." Uncle Benjen said, a hand tapping the ground idly.
"Thank all the gods together I can't feel hammered shit."
"Sansa's going to have a real job putting you back together." Jon mused while his uncle scoffed.
"You're as stubborn as your father. I'm not about to linger about like a half-stuffed, half-made scarecrow, Jon."
"Where are you going to go?"
"To see my family, dolt." His meaning hit Jon then.
"You can't be thinking of leaving us." Delicately, Benjen nodded to the ten feet of entrails he'd left over the moor.
"That's fairly close to what I'm thinking, actually."
"But…" Jon splurted. "But you'll miss the new babe, Meera's as well. Not to mention, we've got three dragon eggs about ready to hat-" Benjen Stark held up a hand, a sad smile on his face.
"I'm sure you've got a whole world's worth of madness stewing in that castle." He let his hand fall."It's madness for living men to mind, though. Just now, I want more than anything to see my family again. I want to walk the halls of Winterfell as it was in the days of your grandfather." He looked down at his broken body. "I'm only here by the grace of a bit of the Childrens' mischief, a bit of dragonglass poking through my heart." Jon was reminded of the giant Rhaegal had given the gift of mercy…as well as a dragon could give, anyway. "Look at me, Jon." His uncle's hand lifted his chin. Benjen Stark's face was lined with black webs where his blood had turned to dross in his veins. Ice and frost had gnawed away one of his cheeks near down to the bone and it seemed half the hair had been torn from his head. Jon found himself sniffling, Rose making a distressed noise herself. Comport yourself, don't go upsetting her now. "They say dead men can't tire. That they can't feel. Well, I've got a thing or two to say about that." Though he wanted to do nothing less, he found himself working a hand around Longclaw's hilt. I wonder who saw fit to give it back to me while I was with Rhaegal. "I remember a hot-headed boy who idolized the Young Dragon and somehow managed to get drunk in the presence of the royal family." Benjen said, as Jon drew his sword. "A pity that boy had to find it in himself to become a man." His eyes did not leave Jon. "A pity, too, that man had to find it in himself to become a king."
Jon walked back toward the warm fires dotting Winterfell in a daze, Rose for once quiet in his arms, her head on his shoulder. Don't cry, he told himself. Then it was welling up, irrepressible. He tucked Rose onto Ghost's back, sent him bounding back to warmth and safety with the little girl on his back whooping like a horselord. Jon slid to earth, a hand over his eyes. The sounds of his sobs were lost in the countless voices, footsteps, shouts and more coming from further on. When he chanced to look up he found two men standing over him, though with their eyes affixed on the far-off crowd. "Edd?" he asked through a hiccup.
"As you need, Your Grace. If you're comfortable there, Satin and I can wait all night until you're ready for an escort back to the castle." Edd said, as if Jon were fixing up a boot.
"I left my uncle back there. The First Ranger. You'll…you'll know him when you see him. Best bring a fur to wrap him in." Satin was off at once, lighting his torch off Edd Tollett's. "Have you seen anyone else from Castle Black?" Edd shook his head slowly, mournfully. Then again, he was the sort to shake his head slowly and mournfully at most anything.
"I heard Iron Emmett might have managed to get a child on Black Maris, though. Suppose she'll have had the babe by now if she's still alive."
"I've a babe of my own on the way." Jon said. Edd shrugged.
"That tends to happen when kings are left unsupervised with queens. The beautiful kind, anyway. Somehow I can't see anything coming of that Stannis being left alone with his Florent wife but a quick exit. Having seen the woman myself, I can hardly blame him." Satin returned huffing and puffing, looking almost embarrassed when he put his burden down in front of Jon.
"Thank you, Satin."
"It's no trouble, L- uh, Your Grace." he said, blushing. "Oughtn't we burn him, though? Say the words and all? He was a brother of the Watch, after all…"
"There's corpses the castle over need burning. The living aren't yet done seeing to their wounds so they don't compound the problem." Edd said.
"A good thing we have fire to spare on hand." Jon added, standing.
"Well, no call to overdo it, either. One of the dragons sneezes at the wrong time and suddenly the lot of us are running out onto the moor."
"Edd, shut up." Jon said, easing himself forward.
"Are you hurt?" Edd asked.
"Nothing time won't heal, hopefully. Otherwise they'll call me the Limping Wolf. I'd take Lord Snow over that any day."
Without Ghost nearby and among the former brothers of the Night's Watch, nobody paid Jon much heed. He could see people ringing around firepits, the smell of horsemeat coming off more than one. Hopefully that's as hungry as people get. He found a fire with a number of cave dwellers around it, putting a hand on the green slash-inked shoulder of a big man with matching marks near his eye. Filed teeth were bared at him until the man realized who had approached him, going from flush to pale in a breath. Small chance this one speaks the Common Tongue. Rhaegal will like these people, at least.
"Tell anyone who's willing that we'll need to have a go at that herd of reindeer soon. Tomorrow morning, or the next day perhaps." The cave dweller grinned, answering in the same stony tongue Jon had used.
"You don't need spears to hunt, White Wolf. Near as many wolves as men about, run them out and there'd be no hiding from them."
"Ghost is not a hunting hound, nor are his brethren." Nor was it the Pack's responsibility to feed the men about them. Filed teeth parted and dropped open as a sudden wind had fires everywhere sputtering, people falling over themselves to part as Rhaegal descended. He even lands with grace. Drogon slams against the ground like a slab of beef thrown off a rampart and Viserion flubs on his belly like a landed fish. The green dragon sniffed about, though Jon knew his bronze eyes were not in the least hindered by the darkness. I wonder how long he was overhead. He saw children among the Free Folk hide behind their mothers' skirts, the especially brave peeking out with a single eye. Aye, lots going on around here. Rhaegal snorted, jerking his head as if to rid himself of a buzzing fly. Speaking of annoyances, did you happen to bring the raven back? Instead of a sharper, deeper snort, Rhaegal stilled. Jon watched the green slit in the bronze eye regard him with what might have been a dragon's sort of wry mirth. "I've no stomach for dragon games just now. Whatever you've done will have to wait to be negotiated." Jon said, again in the Old Tongue both to keep the men around him in the know and to placate Rhaegal.
"Does he understand our tongue?" another of the Free Folk asked, a spearwife among the Nightrunners.
"Only too well, I daresay." Jon replied, earning more than one nervous gulp. Rhaegal ran his snout over the burden Satin had brought, perhaps remembering Benjen Stark from Skane. He gave a low rumble before refocusing on Jon. "Fine. Nothing mad while we're up there, though. I've got a buggered leg and if you roll I'll have a real job holding on." Jon said, climbing onto the dragon's back as gracefully as he could while the men around him looked on. "Edd, Satin, take my uncle to the godswood. We'll wait…we'll wait to see to him until the rest of my siblings can be there." Solemnly, Edd nodded. Alr- Rhaegal was not in a waiting mood, though, and before Jon could finish a thought he was climbing, knee twinging in feeble protest.
As was his fashion, Rhaegal spent a good minute building his ascent. Higher than Drogon was oft content with, Viserion for a certainty. Jon reached for him, the dragon not protesting in the slightest. The world became visible again, Winterfell below a ring of red-orange heat while the rest of the world it seemed was a lifeless blue-black sea. Then Jon spotted the occasional body slipping through the trees, darting over the moor, the mundane beasts of the north carrying on with life as if the Others had never come. Several forms colder even than their surroundings, he realized, were slowly shuffling south. Rhaegal made for them at once, though even as Jon tensed for a dive and a lance of bronze flame he realized that Rhaegal had no such intentions. Instead he shadowed them for a bit before descending, approaching a ring of razor rock that had the dragon's mood buoying further. Razor rock means no men, after all. Wild and impassable, but for those who can fly. Jon supposed Rhaegal might land on the snowy plain within, but instead he came to rest on a nasty spike of slate neat as a dragonfly on a branch. Showy. His comment earned him a snort. As the cold giants approached, Jon saw they were in no mood to start fighting either. At least, in the flesh. He doubted the spirit of such beings capable of being quenched for a moment, much less for good. They numbered only three, a male with a mammoth tusk he wore from shoulder to hip that dangled with all manner of oddments, another with a deep blue inking of a bear's profile on the left side of his face, as well the biggest snow bear Jon had ever seen trundling after him. The third was the storm-singer, late of long straw-blonde braids. That her escorts were not overly keen on being in Rhaegal's presence was obvious, the bear sensing its giant's anxiety and baring its teeth. None of the giants paid Jon the least bit mind, which he supposed made sense. I'm not a dragonrider to them, I'm a bloody raven on his shoulder. Maybe I should ask for corn. Speaking of ravens and speaking of corn, the feathered nuisance joined their number to perch on a rock and promptly squawk for its favorite food.
"You're not getting any corn from cold giants." Jon told it.
"Giants, cold giants." it replied, sounding almost smug. "Corn." The Common Tongue was an irksome sound to Rhaegal, snorting at the bird and sending it flying off, cawing loudly before it landed on the she-giant's shoulder. "Corn!" it shrieked from its place of safety.
Jon flashed an image of the raven pecking at kernels on a dish to Rhaegal, supposing a dragon might not have the first idea what corn even was. Rhaegal was unmoved.
"D'you know, I'm just as glad he found another ear to caw into."
"Caw!"
"A wiser ear. Skogareldar are not goats to be driven. Your babe-race would do best to stay away." The giantess did not bellow or low as the menfolk among her people did during the battle, but neither was her voice a dainty piping. Jon thought hard before he replied.
"Why are you here?"
"Because we were asked to come." Jon knew better than to ask by who.
"Why, then, were you asked?"
"Rakaldoes not want to live among sheep and goats." Rakal, Jon thought. Rhaegal, stripped of Valyrian elegance until only the flintiness of the Old Tongue remains.
"We're not going to be here forever. Babes need birthing, dead need burning…soon or late we'll move on, into the wilds." The giantess smiled a small smile.
"You are in the wilds now. Lorm put an end to soft green lands when he sounded the horn." Beneath Jon came the quiet rumble.
"Egir vergir, egir vergrir." The sound was slate scraping down a mountainside, a boulder tumbling down a crevasse. Jon's spine tingled. No roads, no walls. That much, Jon could not deny. He could hear direwolves from afar, howling to each other and the moon. To say nothing of the istrollen and ice spiders and whatever else came south when the Others did. Then his thoughts were filled with cave lions, cave bears, mammoths, giants and more almost of their own accord. He ran a hand down Rhaegal's side, feeling the dragon's elation through his scales.
"I wonder who won in the end."
"Men are still many. Soon, they will be as they were and then still more. It will be a hard white world, though, not a soft green one with only men in it and aught else." At least as far south as the Neck, Jon mused. It would be a long winter, and hard, but in time the south might become what once it had been.
"If you're not going to be calling down any more lightning bolts or thunder-claps, I suppose no one's going to stop you from lingering here." The giantess frowned.
"These rolling lands and low forests are for our kin, with their mammoths." The bear warg muttered something to his companion, holding his thumb and forefinger a minute space apart. "We belong on the tundra, and so we must return." She seemed to grow distressed. "The new fires must not be lit among sheep and goats."
"Believe me, we'll do our best to keep them out of sight. Once they can fly in their own right, I even have an idea where they might stay." She nodded, as if this were something that concerned her more than the battle ever might. "Can I ask your name?"
"I am called Lorra. I shared my mother's womb with Lorm, though I escaped it earlier."
"Funny, I came into the world under the same circumstances." Jon remarked. "Though I doubt Meera's ever going to try learning the greataxe."
Rhaegal carried Jon back to Winterfell without ice forming in his hair, for once. Lovely, that will save me the quarter hour I'd otherwise spend plucking it all out lest it melt into my face. Had both his legs been good he might have dared sliding down a wing, but as things stood Rhaegal had to land proper for Jon to dismount. When he did not take off again immediately, either north or back to Lorra, Jon was perplexed. His reaching was answered with an image of the eggs, Lorra's words echoing in his head. "Excuse me, I think I of all people can be trusted not to bugger this up." Jon said, with some irritation. Waving off another snort, he worked his way back through Winterfell, much of the castle now asleep or else going about the key businesses of staying fed and warm. In the hall he found Gilly amongst a tangle of Reachmen, Sam conspicuously not among them.
"He never came back." A young woman with half-familiar eyes said gently at Jon's elbow. "She knew, almost right away. When it ended, I mean. Less than an hour had passed, I told her she was being foolish, a worrier… "He knew where we were", she told me. "If he were alive, he'd be here." Then of course his father had to find us later, tell us what we already knew. He knelt and pledged his fealty to their boy, at least. The others fell right in line without nary a quarrel either, for once."
"Who are you?"
"Never mind, it just confuses people. Confuses me, at that." She seemed beyond crestfallen. "I know he was your friend during your days at the Wall, but he had come into his own these last busy months. A loss and then some, and one that will be sorely felt when it comes to putting the Reach to rights." The little lord of Highgarden shifted in his lady mother's lap, mumbling about lemons. "From what I hear, the queen has more need of you now than Samwell Tarly. Best get on, Your Grace. I'll hold here." There was nothing for it but to let a fresh quiver of tears fall, even as he climbed the stairs to the bedchamber. The threat the Others posed had been dealt with, yes, but they were the furthest thing from gone entirely. And as Lorra had said, winter would rule the north for the gods only knew how long. Such losses had Jon musing that they had not won at all, only not lost and that just barely. He got a grip on himself outside the door, knocked, was pleased to find Rose returned and Dany as snug as ever.
"Did she come back on her own?" Jon asked. Val smirked and Dany snorted outright.
"As if, one of the smaller direwolves had to bring her up the steps himself with her hanging from his mouth by the back of her smock. I see no food in tow, however. This most displeases me." Jon couldn't help but chuckle, a hand over his mouth.
"After a good once-over of the castle, food was the last thing from my mind. I'm afraid I simply forgot, sweetling."
"And how did we fare, all in all?" Dany asked, sitting up with interest as Val piled pillows behind her.
"We'll not starve…that is, unless a certain kitten gobbles up all the food in Winterfell."
"Hmph!"
"On a more solemn note, there are still corpses aplenty that need seeing to. Short of simply tossing the lot into the moats building the earthen rings left and setting them all alight, I've not the first notion what to do about them." Dany swallowed, eased a hand over her swollen belly.
"I do."