The North. Acres of wheat and rock were covered in a thin sheet of snow that filled in all the gaps and made all appear flat and flawless and white. But all that whiteness turned to mud underfoot as the army of Robb Stark made its way home. The cold in the air had stilled any open rejoicing on the part of the men, but Dacey could tell that this march had been good for morale. There were not half so many shuffling feet, nor half so many dead eyes, as she had become accustomed to seeing in the Riverlands.
Much of the host had been left in the Riverlands, the most useless and the most disloyal of his forces. Mouths with feet, Bracken had called them, and Dacey had not disagreed. They had left the glassy-eyed shamblers behind and taken what remained of the horse of the North, combined with some of the horse of the Vale. More had met them at Moat Cailin, Manderly bannermen with fresh-mailed soldiers and unstained banners. A good force, well-equipped and in high spirits, but… it could not be enough.
The reports that came from the North had been conflicting. Lord Snow had fifty thousands, or thirty thousands. He had Crowfood and Whoresbane Umber, forty thousand wildlings, and Karstark and Dustin and Cerwyn and Baratheon all fighting for him, some said. He had failed to even drive off the remnants of the Ironborn, others said. Regardless, it seemed impossible that the King's army could match them, especially with Winter upon them. The Lords of the Host spoke of this in hushed tones, but few voiced such complaints in the war council. Surely, the King had a plan. Surely, he intended to make peace with the Dragon Queen and end the war as soon as his position was secure. Surely he had some plan for dealing with the hosts of the bastard.
Fools, all of them.
Moving back to the North meant only one thing, that the horror would be expanded to their own countrymen, to the people they had been fighting all this time to protect. She could hear the men talking eagerly of bringing justice to Jon the Bastard, that most wretched of traitors, and she felt her heart shrink. She had been close to the King, before, had overheard him warmly defending his brother, speaking of their bonds of affection. She had heard him weep over his lost sisters, mourn the death of his brothers. All that was gone now, replaced by nothing, nothing at all. To the greater part of the host, little had changed, for the King had always attempted to wear a mask of invincibility in front of them, but Dacey and Jon could tell the difference. There would be no justice in what came next, only more war.
Perhaps she only said that because she was a traitor herself. Treachery was the blackest of sins a soul could commit, and yet she had confessed it to the heart tree without so much as a moment of hesitation. What did that say of her? Either way, it mattered little. Loyal or traitor, there was no path to the pure land left open to her.
She could not say what she hoped to achieve. The King was a killer who sought war without end, and Dacey meant to oppose him, but she was no seer. She had written to Dragonstone and Winterfell with details of their host, numbers and armaments and locations of storehouses… But what use was this? She was not privy to the King's council. No one was. After his assault on the Twins, half the host regarded him as a god made flesh, or perhaps a devil. He would play at court, sometimes. He would pretend to listen to all the points raised by his peers, but he always did what he wanted in the end. He always followed that strange intuition of his, as though a spirit was whispering all the plans of his enemies to him ahead of time.
Had any other ruler treated the Lords of the Host so dismissively, Dacey imagined they would have turned on him, gone back each to his own keep, but the King had an impervious air about him. He listened only to his instincts, but his instincts had never been wrong, so how could anyone disagree? What point was there in contesting such an infallible being? Dacey felt that too. She felt that somehow he must know of her treachery, that he must have accounted for it already and found some way to turn it to his advantage.
But still. She had to try. The King was wrong and she must contend against him. In the end, it was as simple as that. She might fail, but if no one attempted to stop him, he would not be stopped, and the war would drag on.
Jon rode up beside her and leaned in to speak quietly. "Dacey," he said, "The scouts have come back from the Cerwyn lands. There's no sign of King Stannis or our Lord Snow, but Prince Rickon has a force rallying by Wintertown. Three, perhaps four thousand, no more, and it seems as though Lady Sansa is acting as commander of the host."
Dacey almost laughed. No Lord Snow? Where was he? Where was his army? She had warned him his brother was coming! How could they only have a girl with three thousands to answer the King?
"One more thing," Jon said. "More than one of the scouts claims to have seen a dragon. The reports differ, some say yellow, some say black, but…"
"Queen Daenerys has more than one dragon."
"Aye."
That was good, in theory. It meant that perhaps Lady Sansa had a chance of defeating the King's host outright, even if she and Jon failed in their purpose. But she could not feel a measure of horror at the idea that she was wishing dragonfire upon her own brothers in arms of two years or more. Could she bear that on her conscience? She supposed she could. What was one thing more?
"We will be next to the King in the battle," he said. "I've specifically requested this."
She nodded. "I would not have it any other way."
Jon opened his mouth to say more but closed it again instantly, and Dacey saw why. Dacey's own mother was approaching now, riding on the back of her shaggy horse she had brought down from the island. She looked much the same as she had a year ago, hale and gray-haired, with skin like leather and eyes of stone. Her patchy ringmail had been replaced by a dull gray breastplate, and she wore a gold chain that Dacey had never seen before.
"Dragons!" She said, a vicious gleam in her eye. "Our Lord Snow seems to have sold the North out to every enemy of House Stark he could find! Wildlings, Baratheons, Ironborn, and now dragons!"
"A wild tale," Dacey said. "We should not lose heart."
"Lose heart? Over what? If there are dragons they're nothing like the creatures of legends. Balerion was a century old when the Conqueror came. These beasts can't be more than a few years old. There are like to be lizard lions in the Neck that would put her 'dragons' to flight. Someone's going to kill one of the wee beasties and go down as a legend for it. Phaagh." She spit into the dirt. "Though for my part, I'm just sad that Lord Snow isn't here. The bastard promised me he would bend the knee, he did, and yet here we are. Betrays his own brother and leaves his sisters to do the fighting."
"I think we were all hoping to have this over with at once," Jon said, his voice deep and serious. "I cannot imagine where he could be right now."
Mother grew serious a moment. "I can't think why either. I can easily believe he's a vicious bastard with more anger than sense, but not everyone who fights for him is a fool. Where is Stannis? Not even the Wildlings would be so foolish as to leave their rear undefended like this. Heh."
"Perhaps he's gone to push out the ironborn," Dacey ventured. "Though he should have left more behind than this, regardless." Indeed, it seemed unlikely that he could have taken all the men away even if he had wanted to, with winter already bearing down on them like this.
"Or perhaps our scouts are wrong," Jon said. "Much of our success until now has been thanks to our scouting. The Blackfish won us many easy victories before they even started, and Anguy and the Brotherhood knew the Riverlands better than anyone. With the Trident behind us and Brynden dead… we can't be sure there's not a whole army out there in the snow that they did not see."
Mother sniffed. "Grumpkins and Snarks. One would think you're an old woman, listening to you. There's no invisible army out there waiting to bear down upon us. The winter has been mild so far, we've got a warm wind at our back and this part of the North is as flat as a table. Our scouts would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to miss the signs of an army that size. If Lord Snow hasn't gotten himself killed by his own men, he's a hundred leagues from here."
"Perhaps. But there is something we've missed. You've said yourself that it makes no sense."
"It's a gift from the gods, and a man like you should know better than to question the gods. The King has been favored thus far, why should he not be favored now?"
You were not there, Dacey wanted to scream. You did not see the favor he was given. All his glorious victories had been bought with the lives of his own men, men who had served him for a season of war without question. True, he had won, but who would live to see any benefit from it?
But there was no reasoning with mother. There never had been. With Maege, you either argued endlessly with her or else learned to hold your tongue. She had given birth to five girls and never revealed a father, whether it was one or many. Not to the girls themselves, and not to her own lord brother. Dacey had fought her about that a hundred times, before finally accepting that arguing with her was like trying to fight the tide. Mother was a stubborn old cuss and Dacey didn't know that she had ever heard her concede anything, ever. Dacey loved and hated her for that. At one time she had felt a measure of pride in how similar she could be at times, but here and now all Dacey could think was that her mother was going to die in service to a monster.
"Either way," Dacey said, "iIt matters little. We need to take Winterfell as fast as possible, and hope they've some reserves of grain yet to get us through winter."
Maege grunted. "Aye, hunger is the enemy of all Northmen, whichever king they fight for. The enemy of the Wildlings too. Whoever endures the longest will be the victor."
Days passed, and nights, the army trudging ever Northward. They were close now, and Dacey remembered how strangely empty this part of the North had seemed even in summer. Much of the land here was marginal, with poor soil and little grass, fit only for herdsmen and wanderers. The Cerwyn lands just a few days north were some of the richest in the Kingdom, with irrigation dug out from the White Knife to bring water and silt from the river, but you would never know it looking at the low dry hills and the bleak gray sky.
The enemy simply appeared one day, as a blot of color against the waste. By the end of the day, she could make out the banners and the men themselves. Northmen from Cerwyn and Barrowtown and Winterfell, Northmen who in another season she would have smiled to see. There were weirwoods among the banners, and wolves and sunbursts and horses, all banners she had been used to thinking of as friendly banners, banners that spelled security and victory, as long as they lay in sight.
But now there could only be blood. Now they would fight as enemies, and Dacey feared that her allies were much the stronger.
A parlay was called, and Robb called for her and Jon and Bracken and mother and a few others as normal. She half wondered why he even bothered with this game, now. But she put on her armor without question and gathered her horse to join the King's guard.
There was a stranger in deep talks with the King when Dacey approached him, a man she had never seen before. She was sure she had never seen him before because he was not the sort of man that could easily be forgotten. He was black-haired, tall, and handsome, with a patch over one eye and lips stained dark blue. He cut quite the contrast to the red king, smirking where the king was expressionless, delicate where the King was forceful. She could not decide which of them was more horrible.
"Ah," The King said as she approached. "Lady Dacey. This is Euron Greyjoy. It seems my ravens have born fruit, and we find ourselves at common cause with the Ironborn."
Dacey wanted to scream. The ironborn? The slaving brutes that burned Winterfell, raped half the North, and put the rest to the torch? She had grown up on stories of the ironborn and their evil, and now her king wanted to make an alliance? Against the North? Flecks of red danced in her vision and her only solace was that she was already a traitor.
Euron Greyjoy bowed shallowly. "I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Dacey. I hope that the nasty business between our peoples in the past will be no obstacle to our alliance now."
"I heard that my sister Alysanne threw back your longships from her shores. Have no fear, I will bear no grudge against you for this."
Euron laughed. "That is good. A grudge is a nasty thing. It can eat away at you and make you lose perspective. Why let your life be consumed by the past, when there is so much more in the future?"
Dacey did not trust herself to answer that and fortunately did not have to, as the King pulled Euron back into discussions about the war. It seemed that Euron had intimate knowledge of how the war in the North had been progressing until now. He knew how many men there were, to whom they were loyal, and how well-supplied they were. Dacey did not wonder how he knew; the Ironborn had been active in the region for months now.
She wondered more that he was telling the King all this now, as they are readying themselves for the parlay. Had he just arrived? Did he bring an army with him? And where was Lord Snow?
There was no time for her to voice such concerns. Already they were mounting up and riding to the parlay.
Lady Sansa looked much the same as Dacey remembered her. Beautiful and elegant and young. Altogether too young to be leading a host, but then, there had been a time when Dacey had felt the same way about the King. Lady Arya was younger still but seemed less out of place somehow. Perhaps it was that hardness in her eyes.
Queen Daenerys was not present, but the reason for that was no mystery. Two dragons wheeled overhead, a tiny mote of darkness against the gray sky. Had they thought that the King would betray them at parlay? Attempt to take the dragons off the field before the battle began? Dacey could not say that they would be wrong to think that. There was little she would put past the king. She belatedly noted that Prince Rickon had not come to battle either.
Grey Wind, however, had come, as well as two of his siblings, and they clustered around Sansa bristling with raw aggression. That was strangest of all, to Dacey. They had ridden together in so many battles. To now be opposed to the great wolf… but no. The Wolf and she were on the same side here, and nothing had changed.
"You have compounded treachery with treachery, sister," said the King, after the customary stating of titles had been finished. "You slew the regent of the Vale, fled from the match that would have married the might of Winter to the chivalry of the Vale, and why? So that you might support your bastard brother's usurpation? Give the kingdom over to failed lineages and wildlings?"
"There would be no kingdom to give to anyone without the efforts of our brother Jon," Sansa stated. "He avenged you, he saved our brother Rickon, and he has not claimed aught for himself except duty. Even now he contends against an enemy beyond your wildest imaginings. What have you done for the North? What achievements can you list, against these?"
"What I have is the right," Robb said. "If it was a question of glories, I have enough of those to match Jon Snow a hundred times over, but that matters not. He has taken what is mine, and I will have it back. Either way, he is not here, and you are outnumbered two to one. Do you think you will be spared, if you persist in this defiance?"
"You are no brother of mine, and no king either," Sansa said. "Our wolves, the gift of the gods, all stand against you. We have seen what is in your heart, and we have found nothing of Robb our brother. You are nothing more than an empty husk seeking a place to die."
The King opened his mouth to speak, but the wolves snapped and snarled, pulling at their chains, and Robb recoiled from them as if struck. He hissed and clutched at his eye. His horse bucked and pulled. All was chaos. The guard was trying to get to the King, to help him with his horse. Euron was screaming. A moment later the King's mount was under control and the King looked up toward his sister with nothing but hate in his eyes.
"I will take your head," he snarled, "I will string your guts from the Winterfell heart tree! I will make you regret that you ever betrayed me!" And with no more said, the King turned and rode away.
The guard followed him, uncertain. What had that been? Had that been the work of the gods?
"Sorcery." Maege snarled, and tones of agreement rose up from the party as a whole.
Sorcery? Or the work of the gods? But what was the difference in the end? The two had always gone hand in hand, in the legends. Dacey gripped her axe more firmly. What a time to be alive. So many legends and stories felt real now where they had felt distant and fantastic before. How had a simple girl like her gotten caught up in the midst of all this?
These thoughts and more plagued her as they drew up battle lines. Dacey and then Jon would be fighting alongside the King, as they had for many months now, but Dacey thought with joy that it would be the last. The King might have five men for every one his sister fielded, but two of those were traitors, and he had trusted them most of all.
And they were not alone. Between her and Jon, they had a score of men who would be in and around the battleguard. The men knew no specifics of the plan - too great a chance of one man spilling the plan while in his cups - but they could be relied upon to do what was needed at the moment. These were all true friends that they had shared campfires with throughout the whole campaign, and Dacey knew their hearts. Even so, they were only a tithe of the men tasked with guarding the King. To be sure of victory, she and Jon would have to strike fast and hard when none expected it.
Dacey had scarcely paid any attention when the plan of battle had been discussed. There was something in there about hauling a number of scorpions to the center of the formation, to threaten the dragons and keep them away from the core. Dacey felt sure she must have missed some additional element because to her the plan seemed mad. Scorpions could hit a wall or a formation of soldiers only most of the time, and only from distances of a few hundred feet, and only if the crew were skilled and had time to measure the distance to the target. Dragons were large, but they were not as large as towers, and even from this distance she could tell they were far faster than any horseman.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
The horn called for them to advance, and advance they did. Sansa's army had placed itself between two low hills, no doubt to make it hard for the enemy cavalry to surround them. Dacey wondered if the girl had come up with that idea herself, or if she had not, who was advising her. They could have sent men to surround her position entirely, given enough time, but the King was eager to have his victory as quickly as possible. He paced his horse back and forth, his blue eyes bright and full of anger.
In spite of that, he had not elected to join the front lines as he had so many times in the past. He and his battleguard stood at the heart of the army near the scorpions, along with the best of his men. Euron was here too, with a handful of silent warriors and a great cloth-covered cart arranged just behind the King. Maege was talking to him as Dacey and Jon and their men marched. Dacey scowled. Did her mother have no shame?
"March straight down the center!" the King snarled. "Surround them and grind them to paste."
They approached, and horns called again, a section of the calvary breaking off to cut around the southern hill. Bracken was leading them this time with what remained of his heavy horse, as well as reinforcements from the Vale and White Harbor. The heavy horse was the King's greatest advantage in this battle. Sansa's force had no cavalry of their own, and so the heavy horse of the King's army could flank and destroy them from any direction the King desired. Dacey had followed that yellow horse a hundred times to battle, but this time she and the king hung back, a small contingent of heavy horse in the main body of cavalry.
Dacey fixed her helm, narrowing her vision and the whole world to just a narrow slit. Arrows were firing, somewhere in the distance, and here and there she could hear a man cursing or cheering, but she paid none of that any mind. Archery scarcely mattered here; the men were well-armored and the King had committed the bulk of his forces to melee from the start.
Cries went up, screams of terror and awe. "The Dragons! The Dragons!" Dacey turned her head to see, and the sight was enough to turn her guts to stone. The great black dragon had descended on Bracken's cavalry, swooping low and covering the whole column of horses in dark black fire. A dozen knights died instantly; a dozen more died a second later as their mounts panicked and threw them to the ground. Noise was a constant in battle, something you learned to tune out and accept, but the sounds of men and horses burning, screaming in torment as they ended their last moments was something horrible. She saw Bracken's banner burning in the wind as a maddened horse carried it off the field of battle.
Gods.
She looked to the King, who looked at the carnage with hardly any reaction.
Some of the heavy cavalry were rallying under the Manderly banner, and perhaps they would ride again, or perhaps the dragon would descend again and send them scurrying like mice. Heavy cavalry was the King of the battlefield, but dragons were faster and even more heavily armored.
Regardless, she could not spare any thought for them. It does not matter, she told herself again. As long as the King dies here, all will be well. The front line of the infantry had come to clash with the front lines of Sansa's army, pikes and spears pushing outward. The King's army crept up the hills to flank his enemies, but the terrain was rough and the going was slow…
And then the dragons crashed down again. Dacey heard the screams of the heavy cavalry first, but before she could turn to look, screams were erupting from the left flank as well, as the great green dragon burned its way through their lines. The terrain had slowed the men, made it hard for them to draw their bows or take cover, and the men fled from the fire, falling back into their brethren. The dragons were not so great as the Conqueror's dragons, Maege had been right to say that, but they were enough. There would be no easy surround of Sansa's army today.
"They've got dragons standing in for their left and right flanks," Jon said, his voice quiet and subdued. "I suppose that's another reason the scorpions won't work."
Dacey looked to the King again, searching for some sign of panic or surprise. Was this her moment? But no, no, the battleguard all remained thick around the King, and she could not shoulder them away without risking suspicion. When she took her axe to the young King's head, she had to be sure she did not miss.
The cavalry was in full retreat now. Horses that could bear the blood and death of the battlefield broke like they were wild when the dragon approached. Attempts were made to rally them, but it was all for naught. The black dragon and its rider had more than enough to distract them elsewhere, as Sansa's army felt more and more pressure on the southern flank.
The whole battle was madness, both sides pressed so hard, that Dacey could not imagine how they both were still fighting. Sansa's men were hard-pressed, hedged in on every side and losing ground step by step, body by body, but the King's army's position was if anything even more desperate, pushing into a line of pikes up a hill while dragonfire rained down on them from above. These were not the green boys from the start of the war. These were veterans of a long war that had stretched the whole of the realm from top to bottom, and they knew what it was to stand and die.
Stand and die. The maddest thing for any man to do, but that was always what won the battles in the end. Not who killed the most, not who lived the longest, but whose army was the left standing in the field, however many people had died. Stand and die, that was the real test of an army, and both sides were altogether too good at it.
"Recall the left flank," the King said quietly, and horn blasts erupted all across the battlefield. The men fighting alongside the Northern flank fell back from their hard-won positions and retreated, first in an orderly fashion, and then in a rush as the green dragon fell upon them again from the rear. Dacey saw one hero stand in the path of the fire, raising his bow to loose at the creature's eyes, but the dragon was too quick, too quick by half, and the man's arrow burned to ash mid-flight. The army was routing completely now, men tripping over each other and falling in the mud to be trampled by their friends, or else burnt to death from above.
Predictable. Any man knew that a collapsing flank could easily turn into a route. The King had to know it too, so why had he ordered the retreat? Did he think to taunt Sansa's armies into leaving their position? There was little hope of that, with so many thousands still pressing into them on every side. Of all Sansa's forces, only the dragons would be free to pursue, and… perhaps that was it. But what sense was there in baiting a dragon? All they had were a few scorpions, a few archers, and… and a covered cart. She almost laughed at how out of place it was amongst everything else.
Disregard it. None of this matters. All that matters is that soon they will break, and that will be my chance.
The dragon flew low over the fleeing men, no longer fearful of arrows, just hungry for death, eating up dozens of men with its fire as it circled and dived again and again. The nearness of the flame made it burn twice as hot, and Dacey saw people fall dead from the heat alone, without the flame ever touching them.
They were closer now. She could hear the dying all the more clearly, smell the burning on the winter wind. Death, death was coming, and Dacey felt herself tense with excitement.
The scorpions loosed their bolts, and the shots went wide. The dragon circled closer, closer still. Men loosed arrows at it to no avail, and cries of dismay went up from all those gathered, except the King. The King and Euron seemed unperturbed, and Euron even had the temerity to smile at the oncoming monster.
Dacey and Jon said nothing to each other, but they moved as one. They silently urged their horses to the side of the King, pushing aside the other guards. It was entirely possible that the King and all those here were soon to die to dragonfire, but Dacey knew better than to take chances. Whatever happened next, she would die with the King.
"Now,." The King said.
Euron's men unfurled the cover of the cart, revealing a great horn, nearly six feet long, made of a single piece of ivory with strange glyphs carved into the metal banding. Dacey and Jon drew their weapons and charged. One of Euron's men stepped up to the mouthpiece. The dragon was nearly upon them.
The horn let out a deep, terrible roar. Not a note, not a sound, as such, just a long, abiding, terrible noise that seemed to shake the very earth. The dragon fell from the sky, crashing ungracefully on the ground and thrashing as if at war with itself. All the horses reared and screamed in terror, and Dacey had to fight to keep her own horse under her. The blower of the horn kept blowing, kept blowing.
Dacey disregarded all, and as soon as she gained control of her horse, she brought her axe down on the back of the King's neck.
It was the easiest thing in the world. Nobody was looking to plain Dacey of Bear Island, with a dragon bearing down on them, and a horn breaking the world in two. The king gave a small gasp as she struck him, and her axe came up bloody. He cried aloud when she struck him a second time, and she could see the broken bone of his spine protruding from his neck as he fell limply from his horse. She watched him lied there in the mud for a second, and for a moment it seemed like the world was going to stop.
The King was dead. The King was dead. Something in her broke, and she felt a sudden, vicious rush of joy at the thought. The King was dead, and she had killed him!
And then the clash of metal woke her back to life. "Dacey!" Jon yelled. They were fighting all the rest of the battleguard now, Jon himself was contesting against Euron, both cutting at each other with hate. Dacey grit her teeth. This was no time for sentiment. There was still work to be done. The Horn. "The Horn!" she yelled and spurred her horse to the blower of the horn, who still stood, blowing, always blowing. The Horn seemed almost like a living thing, like a leech that was sucking all the man's blood and breath out through his mouth, turning him deep crimson. The glyphs on the bands of the horns burned as the Horn shook the air. Dacey did not know what it was, or what its full purpose was, but she felt in her heart that she had to end it.
The man blowing was just a man, he was not even armored. She just had to get there. It was just a few steps, once she had her horse turned around. Just a few steps, and then…
Dacey's own mother barred her passage atop her shaggy horse, mace in one hand and reigns in the other. Her old face was wound tight with hate. She was saying something, screaming something, but Dacey could not hear her over the sound of the Horn.
Dacey brought her axe down before she could say more. There was no point in speaking to her now if there had ever been. This was the end. The old bitch parried the blow, so Dacey hit her again. Mother was a stubborn old cuss, but Dacey had been fighting harder and longer and had not so many years behind her. Dacey knew she could win, but could she win before her time ran out? Her companions would be making a last stand behind her somewhere, she knew. Jon might be dying even now, but she could not look back, could not hear his death throws over the sound of the Horn. It does not matter, she told herself. Focus on the fight. You need to end this. Dacey left herself open and her mother seized the opportunity, driving the spike of her mace into Dacey's ribs... Just as Dacey brought the back of her axe down on her mother's head. She hit her mother once, twice, three times, and then the old woman fell out of her saddle, and Dacey's path was clear. Only the blower himself remained, and Dacey brought him down with a final, savage blow.
And then there was quiet.
All around the battle raged, but Dacey could not hear it. Spots danced in her vision, and she could feel her strength leaving her. Had her mother's death blow struck true? It seemed it must be so. Dacey laughed. It was all too perfect. She turned her horse around, just in time for a hairy Northman to catch her in the guts with a lance and knock her off her horse. She hit the ground hard, the wind utterly out of her, and yet she still could not help smiling. All was turning black, and all was well.
But with the last light of her life, she saw him. She saw the King. She saw him standing… alive?
