Apologies for the delay on this one. I went to a conference in the South of France and on the last night I came down with a bout of severe gastroenteritis - so severe that I couldn't even drink water for a day and a half. Very nasty indeed. I am now back on solid food. I do NOT recommend this as a way of losing weight.

Ned

He looked out at the mass of people in the hall and smiled slightly. A lot of quiet business was being done at Castle Black. Getting so many Lords and even Ladies together meant that negotiations and arrangements and yes even disputes that would normally take a lot of time and effort and ravens were being sorted out relatively quickly. And he'd only had to arbitrate loudly once.

"Ned, I need a word," Jeor Mormont muttered to one side and he slipped away from his chair and walked into the other room with the big man. "Maege is on her way now. Needs to talk with us."

He nodded and then paused. The Lord Commander had an odd expression on his face. "Everything alright?"

Jeor pulled a slight face. "First time I've seen her since I volunteered to take the Black. After Jorah disgraced himself and sent me a string of ravens asking what kind of an upbringing I'd given the bloody fool."

Ah. Speaking of Jorah… "You know of his pardon?"

The Old Bear scowled a little. "I heard. He was working for Crown, or spying for it in Essos. Did enough of that to earn a pardon." He then sniffed in a manner that gave Ned little doubt that he did not approve of that.

"Aye," Ned nodded, before pulling a slight face himself. "The pardon came from Robert himself. He's free to return to Essos. And he was last seen with the Company of the Rose. There's word that they have sought passage back to the North."

The Old Bear's eyebrows went up like a pair of startled crows. "The Company of the Rose? The descendants of those who would not bend the knee to the Targaryens?"

"Aye. The Call was heard in Essos."

Jeor Mormont ran his hand over his beard thoughtfully. "Ned, our ancestors must have been powerfully scared of the Others."

"Aye." He walked to the window and peered up at the Wall. "Just a bit." He looked back at the Lord Commander. "Anyway, if Jorah does return I'll want a word with him. What if he comes to the Wall to fight?"

"I'll have a word with him myself," Jeor rumbled, before holding up his sheathed sword. "I'm glad that Maege is here for another reason. I'll give her this, for Dacey."

Now it was Neds' turn to send his eyebrows flying upwards. "You're giving Longclaw to Dacey?"

"Aye." The older man looked down at the sword with a combination of pride and loss. "Jorah had enough honour in him to send this to me when you stripped him of his titles for his crimes and he fled into exile."

"That was the hardest thing I've had to do for some time," Ned said softly. "I knew that you'd take it hard."

"You did the right thing. A crime like that… well, no matter how many pardons Robert Baratheon sends him, this sword will never be his again. He shamed the family. Shamed me. Longclaw belongs with Dacey. She'll be Lady of Bear Island one day. She'll need a good sword."

A fist thumped at the door. "Come!" Ned called.

The door opened to reveal Maege Mormont, a short, stout woman with grey hair and a look of intent wilfulness. She was dressed in chainmail, with a bearskin cloak, and a mace was slung from her belt. Behind her strode two of her daughters. Dacey was dark-haired, lanky, tall, and also had a mace, whilst Alysane was more like their mother, short and stocky, although she bore a sword. As they came to a halt they all went down to one knee before Ned.

"Lord Stark, the Stark in Winterfell, House Mormont stands ready against the Long Night. Command us," Maege barked, and Ned could hear her brother grunt to signal his approval of her words.

"Thank you Lady Mormont," he replied, before smiling. "Oh, get up you old she-bear, stop dusting your brother's floor."

Maege cackled with laughter and then stood with a grunt, before embracing Ned in a bear-hug that almost broke a rib or three. "Ned. Good to see you again! And you too, you Old Bear!" And with that she repeated the process with her brother, those eyes bulged slightly from the force of her embrace.

"The Long Night comes," Maege said eventually as she stepped back. "I never, in my darkest nightmares, think that I'd see the day."

"Aye," Ned muttered. "You had news for us though?"

"I do," she muttered as she unrolled a map and then placed it on the table. "Odd things have been happening on the Frozen Shore." She placed a finger on the map, which showed the area North of Bear Island. "Fishermen in the area have noted odd fogs and freezing mists there, on the shoreline, for some time now – at least the past two months. There's a river that comes down from the Western side of the Frostfangs, in the Land of Always Winter, but what many don't know is that there's another river, one made of ice, or a wall of it, a glacier, that comes south to the North-West of that.

"That spot, where the glacier meets the sea, is where the mists have been worst. And they freeze. I've talked to men and women who have seen sails start to stiffen with frost and ropes begin to freeze as they approached that mist, so much so that they turned around and sailed away from them." She looked at Ned and Jeor. "It must be the Others. There can be no other explanation."

Ned looked at the map and nodded slowly. "Apparently Mance Rayder was given a warning about something happening to the West. Perhaps this is it. Do you think that Bear Island is in danger?"

"I do," Maege said with a nod. "Which is why we were late. The defences of Bear Island have been strengthened. I don't know what might come, but we are ready. Given what we have heard though, we will need dragonglass."

Ned nodded slowly. "Aye. You'll have it. Supplies have been coming in from the Last Hearth and also from Dragonstone of all places." He looked back at the map. Something was nagging at him. "Send word to Winterfell if you lack for anything at all."

Maege nodded slightly. "Thank you Ned."

The door sounded from another knock and he peered at it. "Come?" It opened to reveal Maester Aemon, who was holding messages.

"A message from your lady wife, Lord Stark," the Maester of Castle Black muttered as he handed it over.

Ned unravelled it and read. Then he read it again. "It seems," he said in as level a voice as he could manage, "That some relatives of ours have arrived in White Harbour. The Company of the Rose has arrived there. They are led by a cousin of mine that I didn't know even existed." He looked at the assembled Mormonts. "There are also Mormonts amongst them. More than a few. Oh, and Jorah Mormont has travelled with them."

Well, now. He finally knew what it was like to see flabbergasted members of the Mormont family.

Tyrion

Well, the view was certainly spectacular from up here. The top of the Wall gave him the most amazing vista of, well, what appeared to be a good chunk of the North in one direction and an equally good chunk of the land beyond the Wall in the opposite direction.

He'd joked to Uncle Kevan that he'd be able to take a piss off the top of the Wall and be the tallest Lannister ever. Now that he was here... Well, the jape was no longer funny. Part of the reason for that was that the wind was so cold up here that any prospective piss would freeze – along with an appendage that he was very fond of. The other reason was that the people below might not like it.

He could see the campfires from there, all over the landscape. There were thousands of people out there. Men. Women. Children. Oh and Giants. He was still rather stunned by their very existence. He could see one now, at a distance. It was on a mammoth and was passing along a path through the forest, dragging some logs behind it.

They were all running for their lives. Running to the Wall. To safety. He looked at the horizon and his skin crawled. They were out there, somewhere. Pressing South all the times. Killing those who were too slow. Reanimating the dead. It was the most monstrous form of desecration that there was.

The lift ground to a halt behind him and he heard slow footsteps, along with a shivering sigh at the view. "They said you were up here," said Robb Stark. "Quite a view."

"The lands beyond the Wall," Tyrion said musingly. "In all its chilly beauty. I wanted to be able to tell my uncle that I'd been up here. I once joked to him that I would take a piss off the top."

"Have you?"

"No. The joke lost its point after I saw the reality beyond the Wall. All those poor bloody people, running for their lives. When will the gate open for them?"

"In a few hours. The Lords of the North will have finished their deliberations by then. The gates to the West are already open, as is the one at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea."

"You mean that your father and the Old Bear will have stopped shouting at them by then."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not that much shouting will be required. Father just has to wave the Fist of Winter under some noses." There was a pause. "Seen enough up here?"

"I am a little chilly. Why?"

"Time to plan our trip to the Nightfort."

He looked to the East, along the Wall. "I wonder why we have to go there?"

There was a silence for a long moment. "Our ancestors left warnings for us to heed. We failed them. Time for us to repair some of the damage. Whatever they left at the Nightfort – whatever we need to do there – we'll find it and do what we need to do."

The boy was such an optimist. "And if we cannot? What if we cannot put it right?"

For some reason this bought him a dry laugh. "Tyrion Lannister, you know nothing about what cannot be put right." It was an odd comment, but one that Robb Stark said with a deep sigh. "The Old Gods have done… well, quite a lot." And those last words were said with an intensity that made Tyrion look at the lad carefully.

"Of course things can be put right," he said jovially. "We must be cheerful, young Robb Stark! Why, we have to – we are going into a place of legend!"

But he had a funny feeling that Rob was referring to something else. What though?

Horas

If the North was nothing like The Reach, then the Lands beyond the Wall were nothing like the North. The cold was worse, the wind like a knife that cut you down to the very bone if you were not wearing the right garments.

He leant on the stanchion and looked ahead at the mist in front of them. The slow wind that was driving them into the shore was starting to shred the mist a little and he peered at it carefully. Hardhome. A place of ill omen, but the place where they had to go to. He'd arrived at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea with a small fleet of five ships sent by his father. Father had, admittedly, been in two minds over the whole thing. On the one hand he'd known that Lord Tyrell would not approve. On the other he knew that Lord Willas would approve. And Lord Willas was more important these days.

The mist tore and ripped and he found himself staring at… well, he wasn't sure quite what he was staring at. The remains of a settlement certainly. It was larger than anything that the lands beyond the Wall was supposed to have. It was also… well, a blasted ruin.

"No'one's ever known what happened here," Cotter Pyke said grimly as he stepped up next to him. "'Tis a place of ill omen."

"When was it destroyed?" It felt odd not adding a 'My lord', or 'Ser', but the fierce older man scorned anything like that. Although to be fair Pyke did not really know what to call the volunteers that had arrived at the harbour of the castle he commanded. 'You lot' was one phrase, with 'bloody southerners being helpful' being another.

"600 years ago," Pyke muttered. "Gone in a night. Someone or something burnt the place. No survivors. No-one lived in it since."

Horas looked ahead at the rough shacks that had been built in the ruins, and with the hasty repairs to some of the largest buildings. And then at the crowds of Wildlings that were watching the approach of the ships. From the way that some of them were running in clutching spears they would not get a warm welcome.

"Should I negotiate with them?" he asked Pyke. "They might not welcome a man of the Night's Watch."

The old man spat something overboard. "Oh, they'll not welcome me. But they won't have a fuckin' clue what that bunch of grapes on yer surcoat means, boy." He paused and then hoisted a spear with a pine tree branch on the end. "But they'll know what this means. Truce sign." And with that he started to wave it over his head.

Horas couldn't exactly see any difference, but after a long moment Pyke seemed to relax a little. "Well, we'll not get stuck full of arrows."

That was not reassuring. What was also not reassuring was the large hulking figures on the southern edge of the bay, on even larger creatures.

"Giants," Pyke grunted. "More of 'em than I've ever seen of them in one place before. Interesting."

They transferred into a large skiff that was sculled in with sure crisp strokes that Pyke muttered weren't too bad – for soft southerners – as they made for the remains of a jetty. Horas eyed it uncertainly as they approached it, but it seemed to be just about sturdy enough to take them. Like everything else there it had been repaired at various times over the years, or that at least was what it looked like.

"Night's Watch comes here sometimes, trying to puzzle out what happened," Pyke said out of the corner of his mouth as he heaved himself up onto the jetty. "Makes sense to repair this thing."

Horas followed the older man up and then looked at the patchworked surface. It looked as if random bits of wood had been hammered into it. And then he followed Pyke, who was still carrying the spear with the pine branch attached to it, along it. Much to his surprise neither of them fell through it.

As they reached the end they were approached by a group of wildlings, ranging in age from his age to… well, bloody ancient. Two wildlings led them, one dressed in what appeared to be a lot of mismatched furs and the other… well she was dressed in slightly better furs. And she was definitely a woman.

"Spearwife," Pyke muttered. "Don't stare."

"What do you want, Crow?" The Wildling man called the words roughly. "If you are a Crow that is. Our people still tell tales of the last slavers we caught near here. From Essos they were from, but they never saw their homes again. We killed them all and burnt their ship."

"I'm Cotter Pyke, from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Word came from Castle Black that you would be here. Mance Rayder has negotiated a truce with the Lord Commander. We know what chases you. What hunts you."

The Wildlings paused and muttered amongst themselves. Some of the older Wildlings looked a bit shifty and unconvinced, but the spearwife set her head a little, pulled her hood down and then stepped forwards. "Who else spoke with Castle Black?"

"One Rattleshirt, or the Lord of Bones," Pyke replied.

The Wildling stared at them – and then she nodded. "Karsi," she said eventually.

"Beg pardon?" Horas asked.

The Wildling transferred the stare to him. "Name," she said eventually. "Karsi. And who or what might you be?"

"Horas Redwyne, from the Arbour," he said with a touch of defiance. "In the Reach."

"The Reach of what?"

He looked at Pyke, who seemed to be trying not to smirk. "It's one of the Seven Kingdoms. In the South."

She raised both eyebrows at him and then turned back to Pyke. "So if there is a truce then why are you here?"

"To take you South. We can ferry your people South of the Wall." Pyke seemed to almost spit the words out.

The Wildling women peered at him. "You sound unhappy about that, Crow."

"I was brought up not trusting Wildlings." Pyke sighed. "But I have orders from Castle Black. Your 'King' has asked that you be taken to the Gift and the Lord Commander has agreed to it. So has Lord Stark."

There was a susurration amidst some of the Wildlings at that, but why that was so, Horas did not know. "South, to the Gift?" Karsi asked. "All of us?"

"Aye. The gates at the castles are opening, but it's been pointed out that there are a lot of you. So that's why we're here."

"You can ship the lot of us South on those… things?" The older Wildling pointed at the ships in the bay. "How will you get us out there?"

"Boats in the case of the larger ones. For the smaller ones we can use this jetty – but it will need to be extended. We need tree trunks hammered into the sea at the end, and then more logs laid out to them. I have men who can do the work, we just need the wood."

The Wildlings glared at the jetty and then at them. "I'll ask the giants," Karsi said eventually, almost in disgust at the reticence of the others. "They're only here for a day or so more. They can't take their mammoths onto those ships."

"Mammoths?" Horas asked, his skin crawling a bit. "Truly?"

Karsi just looked at him and then stalked off muttering. When she was amongst the crowd her voice could be heard shouting in what sounded like several languages.

The other Wildling leaders at the jetty also watched her go and then muttered to themselves. After a while the older one stepped forwards again. "I am Lanken," he said gruffly. "We will go with you. There is nothing for us here but death." And then he scowled at them. "But should you betray us, or we even hear a sniff of Essos – we'll kill you all."

Pyke stared back at him. "I am no slaver," he spat. "We take you South for one reason and one reason only – the Others come, and we have no wish you see your corpses join the ranks of their army of wights. The Wall is our only defence. We would not see it fall to a tidal wave of Wildling wights."

There was a bristling moment of tension and then the Wildlings nodded very slightly and with evident reluctance, before turning and adding their voices to the hubbub. Pyke watched them go with a sigh and then looked back at Horas. "Well, that went better than it might have." Then he looked about. "We need to find one of them that knows something about these caves and the wight cages, or remains of them, that they might hold."

Horas looked at the caves that were set into the cliffs to one side and shivered more than a bit. They looked… almost ghostly. Black and empty holes in the rock, some of which had paths carved into the rock leading to them. He nodded and then joined Pyke in stamping carefully on the solid parts of the jetty.

By the time that the first of the boats had started to come ashore a line of Wildlings had formed up at the shoreline. It was the first time that he had seen what Wildlings were like, truly like, and he watched with no small amount of… well, sympathy. They carried in age, from babes to old men and women. All had the marks of hunger and no small amount of desperation on their faces. And their weapons… some had spears with stone tips. Some had scraps of metal at the end of their spears. Others had swords of rust or axes of what might have been bronze.

Then he heard a noise like nothing he could imagine – and then watched as four huge figures dressed in furs strode past him. They were carrying tree trunks over their shoulders, Giants. He was really looking at giants. Hobber would never believe him.

The giants walked over to the jetty and after a moment of shock Pyke started shouting orders to them. They listened to him, looked at each other, shrugged and then placed the tree trunks as he directed, driving them into the sand and mud beneath the sea with smacks from their huge fists.

Other giants brought yet more trees and then Wildlings were there with planks stripped from buildings and after a while the jetty started to get a lot longer and sturdier. Pyke waved to some of the larger ships, which started to nose cautiously into the bay.

As he watched all this Horas noticed that Karsi had reappeared and was watching it all with a combination of a scowl and a smile. After a moment she seemed to notice him. "We're running," she said shortly. "I wish that we weren't."

He nodded sombrely. He could see why. Then he pointed at the caves. "I need to get into the caves."

"Why?" She said the word with total horror in her voice. "They are haunted! Cursed!"

Horas held up a placatory hand. "Word came from Mance Rayder – through this 'Rattleshirt' – that cages, or the remains of them, had been found there. We need to find them."

"Cages?"

"Erm, square things, about yay tall, with bars," he told her, gesturing the size with his hands. "They are used to store the hands of wights, to preserve them, so that those to the South, where the weather is a lot hotter, can see that they exist."

She eyed him as if he was raving mad. Then she jerked her head at the caves. "Go and search then, Red-wyne. We will not stop you. We are not the mad ones, to enter such caves."

And so off he went, with a sigh and a wince. Five of his men went with him and he sent three of them off to the cave next to the one that he entered first, kindling torches from bits of wood and the tar in the jars that they had brought with them.

The first cave made him sick to his stomach – and deeply thoughtful. It was blackened as if some great fire had seared it from inside out. Blackened bones were strewn everywhere. People had sought refuge there. And had died there. There were no cages, or the remains of cages, but there were odd gouges in the mouth of the cave, as if some gigantic hand had clawed at it.

The second cave was the same, and the third and fourth. Horas left the last one on that level with a sigh and then looked at the next level up, which held the largest cave. "The way is shut," he muttered, quoting part of a ghost tale that Father had once told Hobber and himself when they were children. "It was made by those who were dead. And the dead keep it. The way is shut."

Up the path he went and as he reached the mouth of the cave he looked back at the bay. The ships were filling fast now and he could see the second squadron already, the slower ones that had already been at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea when his own ships had arrived there.

There had to be another entrance to this place somewhere because he could hear an eerie wind keening somewhere deep inside it. He winced, suppressed the memories of Father's bloody tales, and walked in.

More blackness, more odd gouges and more shattered bones. And then he looked to one side. There was an unburnt section of the cave and the sight of alcoves carved into the rock caught his eye. Striding over to it with one of his men he peered at the alcoves. Yes. Yes! He reached forwards and pulled out a battered metal cage. It seemed to be half-melted, but he finally grinned and called for the bag. Into it went the cage – and then the three more that followed it, all in a similar shape.

"They can't all be melted," he muttered as he passed the torch around the deeper part of the unburnt section. And then he saw it. A whole one. Two of them in fact and he grinned at his men, who smiled back.

Well – two of them did. Where was the third? "Where's Edwyn?" he asked.

"He went further back in the cave, Ser Horas," came the reply. "Looking to see what caused the moaning noise."

Then he's a braver man than I am, Horas thought. "Find him," he sighed. "I'll not leave anyone behind in this place."

On they went, deeper into the cave. It narrowed a bit – more odd gouges there – and then widened. And then they saw the light of a torch ahead. It came closer as they approached – and then all of a sudden Edwyn appeared. He appeared to be gibbering with terror. "Ser Horas! There's something in there! Something terrible!"

"What did you see?" He stopped the older man with a hand on his shoulder. "What did you see?"

"A… a… dragon!"

He froze. Then he cursed. Of course. What else could have burnt this place in such a way, with so many killed before they could escape? And then he paused again. If there was a dragon in there, then why had it mot attacked the Wildlings?

"Describe it! Edwyn! Describe what you saw!"

Edwyn seemed to shake himself as he seemed to pull himself together. "A… a giant head… horns… great white claws everywhere. Claws all over the place!"

He frowned. "White claws? Lots of white claws?" That did not sound at all right. Was there one dragon or several? Then he steeled his nerves, his guts and where ever the hell his balls had shrivelled up into and turned to face the depths of the cave, before creeping down it.

Down he went, his terrified men lagging a bit behind him. Deeper and deeper into the cave. And then he froze. There was a flash of white in the darkness. He stood there for a long moment, his heart hammering at his ribs – and then he moved forwards a step. It was a huge white bone. And there was another to one side. He stepped up to it – and then he froze again. There was a head to his left. A giant head. With teeth. And… a white skull?

Relief flooded through him and very nearly made him piss himself. He stepped up to the skull and peered at it. Leathery scraps of skin remained in places here and there, but it was definitely a skull.

"Fetch Cotter Pyke," he called back to the others. "It's a dead dragon. Dead for centuries."

By the time that the commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea arrived Horas had been able to walk around the entire corpse. It puzzled him. It was not a huge creature, it had been no Balerion the Black Dread, not based on the skull that he had seen in the Red Keep. No, it was a bit smaller, quite a bit smaller. But what dragon had ever escaped to North of the Wall? Why had it come here to die?

When he saw the light of the torches from the small group that arrived – thank the Gods that his men had been discreet – he turned to them. Cotter Pyke and the others had stopped dead in their tracks and were gaping at the remains of the dragon.

"Well – now we know what happened here, all those years ago," Horas quipped weakly. It wasn't much but nervous laughter rippled from the group. Then he looked back it. "Tendons are mostly gone. I don't think that the Others could turn this thing into a wight."

Pyke shuddered at the thought of it. "Aye, well, pull it apart and sever any tendons you find. The Maesters will be in a right taking at the thought of not laying eyes on this."

"Aye," Horas replied as he peered at the jumble of wing bones and more leathery scraps that hung down over the middle of the dragon.

And then he saw the sparkle and shine of the clutch of eggs underneath.