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Chapter Text

Ashara

“We will make King’s Landing within the hour, my lady,”

Ashara turned away from the rail and looked at Lord Baelish. He was standing there on the stern, looking at her with a mocking smile. “Are you sure that your man was right?” For some reason the prospect of facing her son again felt daunting.

The Master of Coin favored her with a half bow. Or rather she should address him as the old master of coin now who served the previous King. Rhaegar Targaryen was dead, they told her when Baelish had woken her up from her sleep in the cottage he had given her. “You wound me, sweet lady. And you worry me when you look at me with distrust in those lovely purple eyes. Have I given you any reason to doubt me so far?”

Many and more, Ashara thought. But she kept it to herself.

When she stayed silent, Baelish smiled. “None as you would clearly know.” His words were laced with poison, however with the heavy hint of honey coated over it. She could see that in the way he liked to smile at her, as if he was always holding a secret from her and almost as if he was mocking her. He’d been playing her ever since he had helped her break out of Rhaegar's dungeons and she could see that clearly. But she still had to admit that he helped her, in ways no one else had. Or rather no one else could help her. It took a different level of courage to stand up against Rhaegar Targaryen. And Petyr Baelish, despite his seemingly powerless nature was braver than she had initially thought.

She had come to know from where he had gotten the strength and the courage. Ashara had not been oblivious to miss the gold that flowed through the hands of Baelish and all the way down to his servants who attended her in his cottage where she spent her days of freedom. There was too much gold to be spared on the likes of maids and cooks and it flowed too consistently that Ashara knew that it wasn't coming from anywhere else. The cottage which housed her was too open and exposed for a hidden treasure. But the large cove on the other side of the isle where Giselle seemingly kept her sheep in a hovel would have been safe and large enough to hide mounds of gold and it's mines. Ashara had spied it when she was taken on a tour around the isle on her fifth day in the cottage. Ser Osney had been so eager to escort her that it was easy for her to get him open the door and let her out into the open air, where Ser Lothor had been more disinterested with Lord Baelish away. But he had accompanied them anyway more concerned about her safety than about showing off his lands.

Ashara had no doubts that Petyr's gold extended well into King's Landing as well for it is from there he had his reports carried across the sea. When he returned he brought her the news of the fall of King's Landing.

The king is dead, he told her hugging her tightly and pressing a moist kiss on her cheeks, never saying that if he was referring to her son or to his sovereign.

“Your son cut his heart out with his icy blade of vengeance,” he declared afterwards taking her hand softly in his. “His direwolf prowls the halls of the Red Keep now and the towers of the castle fly the icy banners of House Stark.”

Ashara had sat silent through it all, letting the words wash over her, her hand forgotten and nestled amidst his own. Andrew. My child. My son. My only child. Tears ran down her cheeks as she thought about him. Ashara tried to bring the his sweet face to mind, but his features kept turning into Ned's. It's been so long since she had seen him and the last time she saw him he was just a baby looking lost and forlorn, not understanding what was happening. He ought to have thought that she had deserted him as well, like everyone else. She would never forget the way her baby had clutched at her desperately even as she was putting him on the boat, afraid. He never cried though even as she sent him away, her sweet stubborn boy.

Ashara bunched a hand in the smooth silken skirts of her robes, wishing, wishing . . . If truth be told, she did not know what to wish for, any more than she knew what awaited her in the city of King's Landing. Ashara never seemed to do the things she set out to do. She had tried to deliver peace to Winterfell and King's Landing alike, only she had ended up putting her Ned in his grave and thousands along with him. When she escaped from Starfall with Andrew, Viserys took her captive and dragged her to the the black cells instead. Then Petyr Baelish had stolen her and dragged her to his cottage. And now he swore that he was taking her to her son, hoping to take some gift and gratitude from her son . . . only she didn't know if Andrew would believe him or accept her, not after what she had done and what she had put him through.

“You should get ready, my lady,” Lord Baelish said, breaking her from her thoughts once again.

Ashara simply nodded, leaning over the rail and looking down at the oars parting the blue waters of the Narrow Sea. The captain of the Merling King had shown his worth of knowing the narrow sea for thirty years once again. The trading galley had made it's way back to King's Landing much quicker than it had taken during it's journey out of the city.

She had certainly been a fast ship, trading her speed for secrecy when Rhaegar ruled from the Red Keep. Now that he was gone the captain was making a swift course across the Narrow Sea. Even with the winds against them much of the voyage, the galley’s oars had been swift and strong, and they were already skimming toward King’s Landing and journey’s end.

So close, she thought. Her right hand was still gripping the skirts of her gown. It was something that she kept doing as a child, Ashara thought, whenever she was unnerved. And her left was shaking already.

The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in perfect time. Ashara held her skirts as they billowed around her legs in the swirling wind and looked out over the passing shore.

Lord Baelish placed a hand close to hers on the rail. “I know I have not been the most valiant of protectors or the most honest of friends,” he said, “but I only hope that her grace will remember me and what I have done to her in my most wanted hours.”

He is scared too she could see that. Doubtless as well, as he stood to lose everything that he had built under the reign of Rhaegar Targaryen. He would be most fortunate if his head was not taken off by the headsmen of the new rulers. That was the most he could hope for. Yet Ashara felt some softness in her heart for him. He still saved her from Rhaegar's clutches regardless of his reasons for it. And no one else even dared to do so.

Ashara touched his arm with her free hand. “Worry not, my lord. You brought me here, Lord Baelish, and safely. That is all that truly matters. I will forever be in your debt for it.” Her right hand bunched the fabric tightly. “Now we must reach my son, and you will have my gratitude for it will never be forgotten.”

Petyr Baelish may be a man of secrecy, but she could see his relief palpable of his face. His hand went to his face to stroke his pointed beard again “My lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. I hope you understand that. There are those in the city who will know you on sight. And we can't trust anyone at this moment, no one except your son.”

Ashara's mouth grew tight. She did not like playing this mummer's farce but he had a point. Rhaegar might have fallen but there were still people who were loyal to him who might do her harm. “Yes, of course,” she murmured.

Lord Baelish cleared his throat. “I presume you have the septa's robes with you...” His thought trailed off uncertainly prodding her to finish it.

Ashara had not forgotten. “I do. And I do remember my part to play. I am a septa from Riverrun come to pray and serve the High Septon and the poor people of King's Landing. I will keep myself reserved within your place until you find a safe time to go and meet my son.” 

“Good,” Baelish's fingers twisted his beard once again. “You are a sharp woman, your grace. Real sharp”

High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. The Captain came scrambling across the deck, giving orders, and all around them the Merling King burst into frenetic activity as King’s Landing slid into view atop its three high hills.

Three hundred years ago, Ashara knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and only a handful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift river flowed into the sea. Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone. It was here that his army had put ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of wood and earth.

Now the city covered the shore as far as Ashara could see; manses and arbors and granaries, brick storehouses and timbered inns and merchant’s stalls, taverns and graveyards and brothels, all piled one on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish market even at this distance. Between the buildings were broad roads lined with trees, wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. Visenya’s hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with its seven crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of the Dragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors closed now for a century. The Street of the Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow. The city walls rose in the distance, high and strong.

A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships as the war had come to an end. Deep water fishing boats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and forth across the Blackwater Rush, some trading galleys were loading goods finally free to leave the harbor. They must have been holed up here for a long time. Ashara spied a few fat-bellied whalers and merchant cogs their crews finally unfurling their sails, while upriver a dozen warships still lined along the banks. Ashara looked for any banners or sigils but she couldn't find anything.

Above it all, frowning down from Aegon’s high hill, was the Red Keep; seven huge drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican, vaulted halls and covered bridges, barracks and dungeons and granaries, massive curtain walls studded with archers’ nests, all fashioned of pale red stone. Aegon the Conqueror had commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel had seen it completed. Afterward he had taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who had labored on it. Only the blood of the dragon would ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords had built, he vowed. Little did he know some men with no more than common blood would come to know it's secrets in the future. Her thoughts went to Quenn and wondered if he was alive or not. She hoped that he was and that was all she could do these days.

Ashara thought about the last time she had seen the castle as she fled from it in the dark, the three headed dragon flying from the towers as gloomy and menacing as the Lord of the castle itself. Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were white, not black, and where the three-headed dragon had oncebreathed fire, now raced the direwolf of House Stark.

A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its white sails huge with wind. The Merling King moved past it, pulling steadily for shore.

“My lady,” Lord Baelish said, “It is best to proceed as we have already decided about. These ships belonged to Rhaegar only a few days ago and some still do belong to him even today. You could not enter the castle straight away. I will go in your stead and bring you to your son in some safe place.”

She studied the warships as the galley moved past them and drew near to a pier. There were crude shouting all around the harbor in several different languages. “You would be as much at risk as I would,” Ashara said, turning around to look at him.

Baelish smiled. “I think not. I have my ways and my people to do my job for me. I believe I am safe enough, my lady. To do not have to worry about me.” If she wasn't sure that he still had many of whom who were deep in his pockets here in King's Landing, she sure was now.

The captain of the ship bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the river, then reversed and backed water. The galley slowed. Another shout. The oars slid back inside the hull. As they thumped against the dock, Braavosi seamen leapt down to tie up. As Baelish left to go and talk with the captain, Ashara slid into her cabin and changed out of her burgundy silken garb befitting the wife or daughter of a prosperous merchant and into the septa's robes. The gown was snug and warm, all white wool soft and simple.

By the time she was done and came out of the cabin their things were being carried down from the ship. She found Petyr Baelish speaking with the captain on the dock. “Good morrow,” Ashara greeted them as she emerged in her white robes, cinched at the waist with a woven belt of seven colors. Her long raven hair had been pulled back and tied in a heavy knot, hidden beneath a cotton coif and delicate veil of white and silver above it.

The captain took note of her change of garb at once. And Ser Osney glanced at the septa's crystal nestled on her bosom wistfully as he was holding loaded chests in his hands. It was Petyr Baelish who severed their attention on her. “That will be all,” he told the captain and paid him with a hefty pouch of coins. He whispered something to Kettleblack and the young knight went off obediently.

“King’s Landing, my lady,” he told her when they were alone. “White suits you. You look so pure and fair and innocent.”

Ashara ignored it. “Where am I staying until you bring me to my son?”

“I own several establishments here in the city, my lady,” Baelish said. “Rhaegar Targaryen confiscated and destroyed most of them when he realised that I had abandoned him. But there are others even his red priest doesn't know about, run by people who are dear to me. Perhaps you can have a pick of your choice, an inn, a brothel, some clean tavern by the river. Anything”

She chose an inn situated close to the Great Sept of Baelor finally. A septa so close to the Sept would be a common enough sight that wouldn't draw too much attention to herself. She was not new to the city and there were many those who knew her well during her time here as a maid in Aerys Targaryen's court. Ser Lothor Brune and Osney Kettleblack accompanied her with their chests while the rest of the Kettleblacks accompanied Lord Baelish. It was a rambling old place on Eel Alley. The woman who owned it was a sour crone with a wandering eye who looked them over suspiciously and bit the coin that Ashara offered her to make sure it was real. Her rooms were large and airy, though, and the window provided a beautiful view of Baelor's Sept.

“I think it best if you stay away from the common room,” Ser Lothor said, after she had settled in. “Even in a place like this, one never knows who may be watching.”

He had worn ringmail, dagger, and longsword under a dark cloak with a hood he could pull up over his head. That's bound to attract more unwelcome eyes onto her than her purple eyes. A septa with her own private guards, such a tale would draw unwanted questions. “You should keep your weapons hidden well,” Ashara said to him. “I might just as well be the most protected septa in the realm and septas don't have knights protecting them, not since Maegor destroyed the Faith Militant.”

The knight smiled and tugged his cloak tightly about his body. “I will be mindful about it,” he promised. “Rest now, my lady.”

Ashara was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no longer as young and healthy as she had been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops, with a view of the Great Sept of Baelor beyond. She watched the people crossing the busy streets for some time, taking in the war torn city. She watched them for some time but then she felt dizzy and sleepy. The bedding was stuffed with straw instead of feathers, but she had no trouble falling asleep, feeling more comfortable here in the inn than she had been on the ship or the cottage.

She woke to a pounding on her door.

Ashara sat up sharply. Outside the window, the rooftops of King’s Landing were red in the light of the setting sun. She had slept longer than she intended. A fist hammered at her door again, and Petyr Baelish called out, “My lady, it's me.”

“A moment,” she called out. Ashara wrapped the belt around her slender waist and covered her hair with the coif and veil. She unlatched the heavy wooden door and let the men enter into the room.

“I have found a way to get you into the castle safely,” Baelish said when the door closed behind him. “There is a sudden plague of holy men in the city from all around the realm. There are all manners of holy people; septons, preachers, septas and silent sisters alike it would seem to pay their respects to the remains of a certain Septon Reynard. They call him Reynard the Revered now and it's said that even his bones are most holy than it can heal anyone who is wounded.”

“His remains are in the castle now?” Ashara asked.

“Right in the yard of the Red Keep being prepared for a proper funeral,” Baelish said. “Though it's hardly needed if you asked me. Nothing much remains of him except for cracked bones, charred and burnt from wildfire.”

“Wildfire?” Ashara asked shocked.

“Rhaegar burnt him and his ragged band right outside the city walls and made a spectacle out of it,” Baelish said. “You would see many people in the city still in mourning because of that. If you asked me, they brought it upon themselves. It is never wise to poke a dragon and that too within its own den.”

Ashara gave him a reproachful look. Her thoughts went to the time when she had been a girl in the court of Aerys the Mad. They were uncomfortable thoughts, the way the mad man had murdered the Starks and all those who accompanied them. She still had nightmares of that day and often times Ned had comforted her through it. There were no warm hands or soothing kisses to comfort her now.

They climbed down Visenya's hill to the great central square that had been carved out by King Jaehaerys. The last time Ashara had seen it the central square had been full of trees with markets and arcades beneath. She had rode out with her brother and princess Elia and her friends then. Now she rode past burnt and blackened trees, and broken buildings and markets that had been reduced to ruins from the recent battle. She could not say how fresh the battle was but the denizens of King's Landing were already moving on with their lives. Two dozen wayns were lined up along the roadside, loaded with casks of cider, barrels of apples, bales of hay, and some of the biggest pumpkins Ashara had ever seen. Some wagon had their own guards; some pink-cheeked farmer’s son clutching a homemade spear with a fire-hardened point or an old man holding a pitchfork. Sometimes they saw patrols and riding parties of men-at-arms wearing the badges of a dozen lordlings, and knights in plate and mail carrying the banners of their lords. Ashara kept her face down as she trotted past them. She knew that she did not have a reason to fear them. These were her son's allies who controlled the city now. But she wanted to meet her son first before anything.

The gates to the Red Keep were open, but a dozen heavily armoured guards armed with pikes and halberds barred the way at the cobbled square in front of the barbican. They wore crimson cloaks with the roaring golden lion of Lannister on their backs. Their captain looked at them suspiciously as they came trotting up. “Who are you lot?”

“Good men here with a septa come to see Septon Reynard.”

The captain glanced at Ashara for a moment. “Come to see the bones, you mean. You’re not the first. Go inside if you must, but you should leave your horses behind. And see you make no trouble.” He waved them through and turned back to the block the road behind them.

It seemed a thousand years ago that Ashara Dayne had fled out of the Red Keep, crossing the Blackwater in a ship to bring the news of the murders of Rickard and Brandon Stark to her Ned in the safety of the Eyrie. It was a long journey indeed which took her to places she had only dreamt of and brought her a crown. And it was back at the Red Keep that her journey was coming to an end now, to see the son who had conquered the castle of the dragonlords.

Inside the castle gates the yard was a chaos of mud and horseflesh and shouting men. The crowd was larger than she had thought it would be. Half a hundred cookfires were put across the outer yard which filled the air with a pale smoky haze. Ashara saw men around each fires, holding tall staffs that held half a hundred banners of different lords. The siege engines that had been used to conquer the castle lined the walls leading upto the inner yard and the Throne Room, mangonels and trebuchets and siege towers and rolling rams mounted on wheels. Pavilions of the lords, high and low sprouted from the ground. She saw knights with the standards of their lords, men with spears and men with swords, men in steel caps and mail shirts, archers, pages and squires running messages and in between them moved a long line of septons and septas who had come to find blessings from the Septon Reynard.

Near all the realm had come to King's Landing it seemed. She saw banners everywhere: banners of the Northmen, Knights of the Vale, the Stormlords, the Rivermen, Westermen and even some Dornishmen. Chief amongst them she saw the moon and falcon of the Arryns, the crowned stag of the Baratheons, the silver trout and golden lion sewn on the doublets and cloaks of armsmen and, flapping and fluttering from the silk banners that adorned the lances and pikes. It was surprising to see all of them together, each very much different from one another yet they stood or seated around the fires together, sharing meat and enjoying horns of ale and regaling each other with accounts of the slaughter during the battle.

It was then Ashara spied the Stark banner flying alone towering over everyone else at the foot of the great steps leading to the Throne room. All along the steps she saw northmen, Winterfell men in their silvery mail and long grey cloaks. Men sworn to her son, men sworn to her.

Ashara recognized the man who commanded them. It was not that easy to miss him even in a crowd. She split away from the line and walked towards the throne room. “Lord Umber,” she addressed him, as deft and delicate as the countless times she addressed him before.

The Greatjon looked up at her from the stair, his greatsword thrust point first in front of him. He squinted his eyes at her for a moment and stared at her in silence, confused.

Ashara ripped her veil and coif apart and let her thick cascades of hair flow loose about her shoulders. The Greatjon's hardy eyes went wide. And the smiles of his men withered away like roses kissed by frost. Lord Umber stood up straight, placed his sword at her feet and bent his knee. “Your grace,” he rumbed. The rest of the northmen followed him.

All the men in the yard fell silent one by one and everyone was watching her. It had been a long time since Ashara had seen him that it brought a smile to her face. She had forgotten how well she liked it, how well she liked them, her husband's bannermen.

By then a great whisper had taken hold of the yard and everyone started gathering around her. Ashara felt a lightness in her chest after a long time. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have. The Greatjon shouted again, “Our benevolent queen is alive and she's come back,” and others took up the cry. “Queen Ashara” they called. They stepped down to pay their respects, kneeling before her and pressing their brows to her hand. “My queen!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her.

The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it brought in others from the outside to see what was happening. More people were streaming from the gates every moment, soldiers and commonfolk alike and as they came they started rushing towards her. Ashara didn't know whether they knew her or not. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to gaze upon her or touch her hand and for a moment the bones of the holy septon was forgotten even by the men and women of the faith.

“But how?” the Greatjon asked finally. “We heard that-”

Ashara cut him off. “It's a tale for another time,” she told him. Ashara clutched his hands tightly. “My son. Where is he? Where is Andrew?”

“In the Godswood,” the Greatjon said. “Come I will lead you.” He glanced at Lord Baelish and his men behind her and stopped. “These men-”

“They are with me,” Ashara assured him.

The Greatjon nodded. Ashara followed him, a trail of swordsmen and men-at-arms following behind her. Her thoughts flew back to the day she had left Andrew. His innocent face swam up before her; a boy’s face, afraid and confused. Her baby had Ned's face, she remembered. Ashara wondered what the years might have done to him. Did he grow up to look like Ned still? Maybe like her brother Arthur? He was not a baby any longer. He was a King now and he would know why I had done it. And if he didn't she would throw herself at his feet and beg him for his forgiveness.

The doors to the godswood was open without any guards. They passed beneath the arch into the quiet of the godswood. It was peaceful here. The thick walls shut out the clamor of the castle, and she could hear birds singing, the murmur of crickets, leaves rustling in a gentle wind. The heart tree in the center was an oak, brown and faceless, and beneath it she saw him. She found Andrew sitting on a bare rock beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall elms and lush green grass, feeding a wolf. For a moment it was almost as if she was taken back to her years in Winterfell and she was looking at the ghost of Ned sitting beside the green pool beneath the heart tree of Winterfell, cleaning his sword. Oh, Ned.

Her dreams hadn't lied to her. Andrew is Ned come again. He was handsome as Ned had been handsome; the same grey eyes, the same melacholic face that made her heart ache. His crown, the spiked circlet was beside him on the grass instead of on his brow. That was Ned's crown as well. There were tears in her eyes. Ashara wiped them away angrily.

At first he did not notice her … but his wolf did. The great white beast was lying in front of the rock, munching on the treats Andrew was throwing at him. But when Ashara took a step towards them he lifted his head, and his red eyes met hers. Andrew followed his wolf and saw her. For a moment he stared at her, not saying anything. “Mother?” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

The tears were running down her cheeks now. Ashara didn't wait for him. She ran to him, wrapping her arms around him and held him tightly in her arms. She kissed him on his brow and his sweet face and his cheeks until she couldn't anymore.

“You look so much like your father,” she said to Andrew looking at him at arms length, while Ghost sniffed her hand.

Andrew never said a word and just embraced her. “Momma,” he murmured hoarsely against her shoulder, burying his face into her gown. He looked so worn and tired, battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck and hand was bandaged where he had taken a wound. Ashara hugged him fiercely, safe in her arms shielding him away from any harm.

“Shh, it's okay,” Ashara murmured into his ear, stroking the dark hair that she had given to him. “It's okay. I'm here now. Mama's here.” And she was here indeed, back with her son once again near after ten long years and she was not going to leave him ever again.

Chapter Text

Argella

It snowed heavily for four days after they left the banks of the White Knife. The snow hindered their speed and made the progress into a crawl. Argella knew she should have reached the position of the eastern host by now, but they were no where to be seen. Every day they marched, until finally the trees thinned and gave way to a patchwork landscape of rolling hills, meandering streams, and snowy fields, where the husks of abandoned holdfasts and villages covered in the snow.

The autumn snows were heavy that moonturn. Ella had seen it with her own eyes. The snowfall had been pleasant enough at first when she arrived to the North as a southron woman and a Queen to the lands of this distant place. She had found it magical then and had loved to riden as the snowflakes dropped down all around her. But the cold was gnawing her bones now, and her cheeks were always flushed even as she had wrapped layers of fox furs and ermine around her.

Ser Trent and Brienne endured the cold much better than she did. If they were bothered by it, they never showed. Argella hardly had the patience that they had and she had cursed the snows more than once. Once Big Bucket had heard her doing it. He had simply laughed at her and informed her that it was only the start of autumn and she was yet to see the winter which would make these ones seem as warm as kisses. She was shocked to see the casual way in which he said that. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners were. Her husband had been a stranger to her. But his men were stranger still.

She had half a mind to return back to Winterfell as instructed by those who were around her. Brienne had been the foremost among them. The maid of Tarth had broken her solemn silence as Argella was taking refuge from the cold in her steaming hot bath. The hot water made her think of her home in the Stormlands, and she took strength from them throughout her time in the cold march. “Your grace,” she said as Ella was cleaning her hair and brushing it out until it sprang back in thick black curls. “Would you like to return back to Winterfell?”

Argella would have liked that in truth. Winterfell was warm even when it was snowing. Water from the hot springs was piped through the walls of the castle to warm those who resided within. And Ella had loved to bathe in the hot springs that steamed beneath the trees of the ancient godswood. She could be back in Winterfell safe and sound before long. Ser Trent would gladly escort her back should she ask for it. But she had made up her mind, long ago.

She would have a much better time living her life in Winterfell, Argella knew, but she could not leave them. They were her people now, her friends, and her followers, and if not for her they would still be safe at their homes the same way she could be in Winterfell. She brought them out for battle. If the snow or the invaders chanced to take the toll of us, I’ll will be here by their side to pay my price. I’ve commanded them for so long and I can do it longer still. I won’t let them take us; neither the cold, nor the invaders, she vowed silently, reaching back over her shoulder to touch her bow. I won’t.

Argella had simply shaken her head. “Would you like for me to send you back to Winterfell, Brienne?” she had asked instead. She had not missed the way Brienne stayed by her side throughout the march. No one spoke to her except Ella and she could see that most of the northerners didn't like her marching alongside them. For a moment she had felt bad for bringing Brienne alongside her.

That had taken Brienne aback. The tall girl had reeled back as if Ella had slapped her. “My lady-, your grace, I am yours to command. Your liege woman, or . . . whatever you would have me be. I swore to shield your back and keep your counsel and give my life for yours, if need be. I swore it by the old gods and the new. I only wish to be by your side.”

“And I am honored to have you by my side,” Ella informed the older girl.

“It's only that I thought you were cold and weary-”

“I am,” Argella admitted. “But I can't return back. Not now. Not when we are so close.” She had made her mind up. And she was not like to change it anytime soon. It was well known in the Stormlands that Argella Baratheon was nothing if not stubborn. She was determined to let her husband's men see that as well. If she returned she would be letting them all down, her father, her mother, her House. Argella could never bear the shame if she let it happen. She would show these northerners how strong their little queen could be.

So the next day and every day hence before the northerners would form up in the marching lines Argella would be waiting for them mounted on her silver mare. And so she was there with every step they made towards the battle with her bow and arrows while Ser Trent and Brienne took their accustomed place by her side.

They made a cold camp for the night in a dune to keep watch over the snowy plains that stretched beneath as far as her eyes could see. Her pavilion was the first to go up. As the men gathered some dry wood to build a fire, Ella took out the Myrish eye that she had taken from Ser Walys.

She stood upon the edge and peered through the lens. The lens only brought the distant snow closer. There was nothing else, no trees or grass or men. She swiveled around to the east and searched amongst the snowy plains for something, anything. There was no sign of the foreigners anywhere, at least not as far as the Myrish far-eye could see.

Argella brought the bronze far-eye down. “Perhaps they have left for some other place,” she said more to herself than anyone. However Brienne heard her from behind. “My lady?”

“Rhaegar's army,” Argella told her. “By the maps we should have already met with them. But they aren't here. Could it be that they moved somewhere else?”

That had been her biggest concern from the start. What if the King's armies played with her? What if they tricked her, leaving her off to chase a handful outriders while the eastern host had moved somewhere else? Somewhere she wasn't expecting. She had chosen to listen to her advisors into believing that they would be coming for Winterfell. But there were places other than Winterfell in the North, places which was far easier to conquer with much lesser effort.

“In this snow?” Brienne looked up to the sky. “There is little chance of that. The Northmen knew these places well and the Essosi don't. It's the snow which has slowed us down, and I would reckon its the same with the Essosi host. You should rest easy, your grace.”

Argella hoped that it was true. For her sake and all their sake as well as the sake of the North. She didn't remember how long it was since she had left Winterfell. It was hard to keep note of time with the snow and the cold. It would be a disaster to know that they had missed the slavers somehow only for them to show up in the gates of Winterfell or some other castle. They would have failed Andrew and his entire cause should that happen. She had placed her trust in her men and she could only hope that it wouldn't fail.

“It's been a few days since I've received word from Ser Donnel or his brother,” Ella said as she turned around to face the fire the servants had built. She sat on the log by the fire and peeled off her sable gloves to warm her hands as the servants fanned the flames.

Argella had expected Brienne to come to her side but the older girl was still shy around her. It was her title and the crown that she didn't wear that made her unease, Argella surmised. Even foregoing the crown didn't help Brienne feel the same way that Argella felt about her, as a good friend and companion. When she was littler she had always wished for a sister with whom she could play and explore whenever she was enough tired of the stupidity of her brothers. It was a good wish, something that never came to be. Instead she had replaced the lack with her friends. Now her friends were far away in the south and Brienne was one of the very few companions who had come with her to the North. She was also the only girl out of them. Thus Ella cherished her company more so than Brienne could imagine.

“Sit down, Brienne,” Ella patted on the space beside her. “It's cold. You need to keep yourself warm. Big Buckets say that he-”

She was saying when she heard the crunch of boots on snow behind her. Ella turned around to see Ser Trent and Eyron Slate leading a scout of the Flints.

The messenger gave Brienne a quick, queer look as he dropped to one knee before Argella. “My queen,” he said.

“Speak,” Argella said from her seat.

“Lord Donnel bid me tell you that the eastern host has stopped it's march towards north and is now moving back down to the east.”

Argella did not show her surprise. “Why?” she asked.

“They are struggling in the snow,” the messenger said. “The cold bites them hard and we have been hunting them down in the dark, burning their camps and looting their baggage. We screen their march as you have instructed. It has stalled them and thrown them back from the woods into the plains from where they had come.”

“Where are they going now?”

The messenger gave a shrug. “Captain Donnel says that they are going back the way they had come.”

“Back to their ships?”

The messenger gave a nod. Argella smiled. She could see what was happening. The North had these foreigners in it's teeth, like a wolf bites down on a wayward doe's throat. And it never lets go, not until it's blood has dried up. Her own army might have been stuck in the same snow, but they had shelters in the villages and castles of the northerners which kept the worst of the wind and weather at bay. They were well stocked with food and drink. Her men had fires to warm them when off duty, a place to dry their clothes, snug tents to lie down and sleep. These foreigners had none of that.

Argella stood up and took the messengers hands in hers. “This is such a good news,” she said to him. “Return to Captain Donnel and tell him not to fall back. He is to engage the foreigners just as he has done so far. I want him to harass their flanks and rear, bleed them as they run until we link up and finish them once and for all.”

“It will be as you command.” The rider took his leave.

Argella watched him leave. She had gained the upper hand. She knew it now for sure. Her outriders and their shaggy garrons could outrun any mount on the snow. They would cut down the slumbering infantry in their lines of march and melt away into the snow before they could even form up. The cavalry couldn't do much themselves except for getting into a race they could never win. They might pursue the northern riders only to split away from their main host and that was as good as being dead. If the northerners don't find them first, the cold and hunger will. This was it. This was her moment to break the back of the invaders and show her worth to these northerners.

Ella quickly sent words about the new plan through her Queensguard, instructing her commanders and knights to assemble their men at first light.

She turned back towards her own pavilion as they left. A long journey was still ahead of her and she terribly sought the comfort of her bed. Brienne followed her back inside. Argella plopped down on her back on the featherbed, sinking into the warmth of the furs. She remembered the nights in Riverrun during the early days of her marriage when she used to share her bed with Ghost rather than her Royal husband. The warmth of the direwolf had comforted in many ways than one. It was a queer feeling that she missed Ghost more than she did Andrew, something that made her giggle.

“I miss Ghost now more than ever,” Argella said to Brienne as she pulled a blanket up to her chin.

Brienne sat down on her own bed. “If I may, your grace-” she said and stopped waiting for Ella's approval.

Argella sat up on the bed. “Go on.”

“Why should you follow them when they have already failed here?” she said. “You have protected Winterfell and the enemy is turning back. Is it not wise to turn around and return to Winterfell now without endangering anything?”

Argella could hear her concern in her voice. She gave her friend a smile. “No, because they can hang back and attack somewhere else,” she said. “Remember the people of Oldbrook? That can happen again if we let them go. Even if they leave the North altogether, they could be used in battles against my husband. If we break them here they cannot be used against Andrew elsewhere.”

Brienne gave a nod. Argella stood up and moved over to her. “It wouldn't take long if you asked me,” she reassured her. “Now let's have some of the ham that Henley's cooked for us.”

Ella shared the ham with Brienne and let her finish it. She went to bed early, anticipating the next day's march and to escape from the cold beneath the warmth of her furs and her blankets.

She rose up early with dawn as Brienne was still snoring. Argella let her sleep and got herself readied for the day. The maids filled her tub with hot water and she almost forgot the chill of the dawn as she soaked in its warmth. By the time she was pulling on her leathers Brienne woke up, clamoring from the bed and apologising for her delay.

“You aren't late,” Argella told her. “The men are still forming up.”

Brienne left her bed and the pavilion in haste. Argella laced up her boots and clasped the hardened leather jerkin with a silver pin at her collar. Outside the soldiers were moving out of the camp, getting ready for the march.

“The gods of the north have unleashed their wroth on these foreigners,” Big Buckets announced in the morning chill as his vanguard started venturing out into the plains. Lord Wull stood upon the stirrups of his garron as he addressed his forces from atop a elevated slope. “They are strangers here, and the old gods will not suffer them to live.”

The northern warriors roared their approval, banging their spears against their shields. Argella mounted her grey filly and made the descent as her Queensguard rushed to her side. Ser Trent was waiting for her at the foot of the dune with the Stormlands and Manderly knights who would form the armoured fist of the main column.

As always Argella greeted her men as she climbed down. “Good morrow, your grace,” Ser Trent said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge. Beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads as far as her eyes could see, only the endless snow.

“Good morrow to you as well, Ser Trent,” Argella said with a smile. “It looks as if we will have to cross over frozen fields today.”

“Here and now, your grace,” Jon Waterman said. “You ought to see it when the snow and frost wear off and the land blooms. In summer these lands would be covered with lush blades of grass, as green as your meadows in the south.”

He was of these lands, his family sworn to Lord Manderly of White Harbour. He was also one of the first to pick up Andrew's banner. Jon had been the kin of the Clearwaters, the house which had the honour of seeing Andrew being back from the dead before anyone else did. He had been in Waterspring when it was liberated by the King. Jon had told her that more than once, as if he had been proud of it.

She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and her Queensguard had outdistanced the rest of their party, and now the others were climbing down the ridge behind them. Brienne rode at the front of them.

The snows continued to flutter down all around her but Argella did not have any complaints to make up right now. The day was too perfect. Her mood had improved ever since she had learned about the retreat of the mercenaries. The light snowflakes swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, and the air was cold on her face, but Ella felt at peace almost as if she had been raised in this place for her whole life.

“Well, let's explore what the fields of snow has to offer now,” Ella told Ser Trent and Jon Waterman. “I find the white as exciting as the green, particularly since Lord Wull told me that he was going to make it bloom red with blood.”

Her Queensguard smiled. Their smiles gave Ella comfort and warmed them in the cold. “Now you are learning to talk like a proper woman of the North, your grace.”

“If you believe so,” Argella said. “Now let's see if I could ride as well as the men of the North.” She wheeled her horse about and galloped down the ridge alone leaving all of them behind her.

The descent was steep and the fresh fallen left it hard for her filly to navigate the slick ride, but Ella rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of it were a song in her heart. She had been riding as long as she could remember, ponies when she was little and later horses. She was sure that on a horse she was better than anyone, better than Andrew, better than Ser Trent and better even than her brother.

At the bottom of the ridge, the snow had collected up to the knees of her horse, fresh and white. Argella slowed to a trot and allowed the others to join her as she rode out onto the plain, losing herself in the beautiful blanket of white that covered the ground. She decided that it was beautiful this way instead of being some shade of brown.

Ella rode on to the front of the lines where the White Harbour knights had formed their armoured columns. The snowy lands swallowed her up. The air was rich and cold, with the clean scents of frost and ice. They seemed to belong here. Argella breathed it all in, feeling herself a part of these plains.

They shadowed the invaders in their march, while her outriders bloodied their lines ahead of and behind them. Of late they only rode by day, and by night took refuge from the snow beneath their tents. Even as Ella struggled in the cold she took respite from the fact that the Essosi were faring worse. The North was no kindly country and the men from Essos seemed to learn it at their peril. They left a trail of dead and dying men behind them as they went for Argella and her men to find. Later that day they started seeing dead horses left behind alongside people. Further ahead she saw the handiwork of the Flint brothers. Ella saw dead men hanging from the branches of the treelines that were sparsely grouped along the trail, slumped at the ends of long ropes with hempen nooses tight around their necks, their faces swollen and black with frostbite and their heads hooded with snow. The crows had been at them, but the cold had turned them hard and black.

“They have hanged some men," Brienne observed as they passed, looking away from the grisly scene.

“As I've asked them too,” Argella replied as she passed a man who had been hanged from a hastily raised gibbet right on the middle of the trail. He and been quartered right there on the road and his entrails had been left open for anyone who passed the road might see. Even Ser Trent had to mutter a curse to the Seven as the bodies continued to sway along the road in the trees and gibbets. I asked them to do that, Ella told herself. Even still the sight frightened her heart and almost turned her sick. Ella held the reigns hard and steadied herself as they marched through. She had to be strong, for herself and her family. When they look upon my face they must see only Andrew's queen, not some little girl. She felt older than her sixteen years. If ever she had truly been a girl, that time was done.

There were others who had died not in fighting but who had succumbed to cold and hunger. Argella saw them lying on the trail, half buried in snow. And the corpses only increased as they continued further.

There was little forage to be done here in the plains, and less sources of water. In summer perhaps they might have found something. It was autumn now and there was nothing to be found other than snow and frost. The lands here had turned into  a serene and frozen land of snow and barren plains. The White Knife was behind them and the little streams they crossed were too small to quench an army. Argella had to bring fodder for their mounts back from Winterfell, but the cavalry of the invaders had to subsist on the toughbrown grasses and moss that grew in clumps at the base of rocks and dead trees once they emptied the supplies they might have brought with them. And Argella had sent outriders ranging ahead of the column, with specific commands of destroying their camps and hunting their baggage train. Where they found water from the hidden streams and springs from these lands courtesy of the guides sent by Lord Manderly, the Essosi would have only frozen streams and pools. The deeper they rode into the plains, the more she saw of the desolation that lay ahead.

Death received them throughout the road. With corpses of both men and mounts alike. At some point Argella thought it cruel for the land to have claimed so many, aided by the northmen whom she had sent hunting after them.

They rode south and east, away from the White Knife, following rutted trail road left behind by the advancing lines of Lord Wull. Somedays the snowfall would be too heavy that the fresh batch of snow would completely blanket the tracks of the vanguard. It was the guides who ran between their lines who served the most during those days. They crossed across the frozen fields and into the woods and streams the back at the plains once again. Here the snowfall was lower and lighter as they moved further south. Argella even saw the sun lightning up in the sky. She had taken the lead then, finding pleasure under the sun and a clear sky after riding under grey clouds and showers of snow for too long. She kicked her pale grey filly to a brisk heedless trot until the she had come quite far away from her army. Brienne and Ser Trent and her northern guards followed as best they could.

The next day, dusk was settling in as they were crossing a soft flat plain of brown earth, half frozen and half muddy. Ella was about to command them to make camp when her outriders came racing back at a gallop. “The Essosi had stopped, your grace,” they said. “They are making camp half a day’s ride from here, no more.”

“Are you sure?” Argella asked.

“We saw the fortifications being built,” the scout said. “Lord Donnel thinks they are meaning to hold and fight us there.”

“They must be disorganized and demoralised, your grace, putting up the the camp to rest until they get stronger,” Ser Trent urged. “These lands are not kind to the weak. We could ride on and destroy them right then and there.”

“But the scouts say that the camp is fortified?” Argella said.

The outrider gave a quick nod. “It is indeed,” he said.

“And night is falling too,” argued Harwood Stout. “It would be hard to mount an assault at night.”

The lords of the mountain clans agreed. “It is better to stay and rest here and face them on the morrow,” said Lord Harclay.

“Aye,” said Big Buckets. “With the dawn we will give them a reckoning of red ruin.”

Argella agreed. She turned towards the outrider. “Go back to Lord Donnell and tell him to keep close watch on their camp,” she told him. “I want to see their every movement.” She dare not stay idle, not now when she was close to the enemy, one that outnumbered her army. If they could cross hundreds of miles upon miles through the snow in an attempt to threaten Winterfell itself, then surely they could cross some more to threaten the Lady of Winterfell and her army. She turned towards her commanders. “I want our camp fortified as well,” she told them. “See to it. They could attack and if so I want us to be ready.”

Before long her men had the camp fortified with palisades and ringed with stakes. When it was done Argella went around the fortifications to see for herself. The lines of wagon and wooden stakes promised rest and safety, a chance to finally gather all their strength to rid the North of the invaders once and for all. Ella wanted nothing so much as to rush toward them now, while they are still resting feeling falsely secured in their encampment. Instead she turned to her advisors and commanders, able men all of them and veterans of several battles. They ought to know better than she did about these things.

That night it snowed again after days of respite. The first flakes came drifting down as the sun was setting in the west. By nightfall snow was coming down so heavily that the moon rose behind a white curtain, unseen. Argella muttered a quick prayer of relief to the gods as she dined on bread and ham that night for not leading her army out into a battle in the dark while a snow storm was raging about.

The snowfall made her feel at ease as well, knowing that the Essosi would be struggling more in the storm. The hot mulled wine that they gave her soothed her almost as the warmth of the bed, and Argella found her eyes growing heavy. She let them close, just for an instant, then snapped them wide again. The anticipation of the battle kept her awake. I can’t go to sleep, she screamed at herself silently, I can’t, I can’t. She knuckled at her eye and rubbed it hard to keep it open and then took an oilcloth and sat about to polish her bow in preparation for the next day as Brienne snored on the bed across the tent. She ran down the cloth on a smooth stroke from top to the bottom and then a few more until her eyes closed a second time. This time they did not open quite so quickly.

She must have fallen asleep like that, holding her bow. It was her maid who broke her sleep to tell her that Ser Trent was outside, awaiting her pleasure. “Send him in,” Argella commanded, skin tingling. She had gone to sleep still dressed in her riding clothes. If her mother were here she would have chastised Argella for it. She found herself missing that, and her mother.

“Your grace,” Ser Trent said, kneeling. “We've received word from the outriders.”

Argella sat up quickly on the bed. “What is it?”

Ser Trent rubbed the beard at his chin. “It's better if you heard it from him.”

Argella kicked off the sheets and hopped down from the bed. Brienne was already getting off her bed, tightening her swordbelt around her waist. Ella rushed out and found the outriders. “What’s happened?”

“They have fled in the night, your grace. We found the camp abandoned this morning, with only remnants of the embers of their nightfires and those who are injured and weak to be moved left amidst them. We have them captured.”

Argella tightened her mouth. “I want to see.” Ella mounted her filly, put her heels into her sides and followed the scout. Ser Trent, Brienne and her Queensguard followed, and then the rest of the commanders.

When the camp appeared before her, its hastily built fences pulled down and half sunken in the snow, she could see what the scout had said. The camp sat on a flat plain, where the numbers of the Essosi would have favoured them much in a battle. But it was completely deserted now and destroyed in the storm. Donnel and Artos Flint stood with a dozen of their men at the center, around a pile of ash and soot covered in snow while the other scouts were exploring the camp, gathering everything that had been abandoned by the mercenaries. They had left lot of arms, Argella saw, and a lot of burnt wood and ashes. To her right half a dozen swordsmen had gathered a ragged band of captured men. Argella counted eighty three among them. Some of those were so close to dead there was no hope for them, another five too weak to walk. The others were fit enough to walk but not to fight. Everyone of them was shivering in the cold, wearing clothes terribly unsuited for the cold. Behind them was a pile of corpses to which her men were adding more of those they had pulled out of the snow.

How long the camp had been deserted she could not know, but the wall made of a patchwork of wood and stones seemed, strong from afar, but were cracked and crumbling when seen up close. Inside was a maze of hastily put up tents, torn and ripped apart. Almost all of them were blank, but her men were leading prisoners out of them. They rode past heaps of snow and ash and rubble where the tents and pavilions had fallen in, and elsewhere saw the faded scars of dead fire.

The brothers Flint came to her when they saw her with her party. “Your grace,” they gave a small bow.

“What happened?” Argella asked as she hopped down from her horse.

“They fled in the dead of the night while the storm was still raging,” Donnel Flint said. “We kept watch over the camp as much as we could but the snow made it hard for us to keep watch. They had left the fires burning all night, to make it seem as if they were still here. Those who were weak and unable to make the escape were left behind. Some stayed behind on their own will, afraid leaving the fire and into the cold. We are finding quite a lot of them out here.”

That was true, but it's not enough. She should not let them escape. “Did you ask the captives where they are going?”

Donnel nodded. “Due east,” one of them admitted. “They are running back to their ships.”

Due east the plains and fields gave rise to hilly shores and a bleak coast. That was where they must have made their landing and left the ships behind. “We need to go east,” Ella said stubbornly as she turned around and walked towards her horse. “We could not let them escape.”

“They are done, your grace,” Ser Trent said. “Gone away from here. We have made them retreat and they are not like to come back. Not after this.”

“We should not stop now,” Argella replied stubbornly. Ella rushed to her horse and swung up on the saddle.

“Your grace look.” Eyron Slate pointed his fingers towards the way from where they had come.

Ella stopped to look. She could see riders, a bunch of them from the way they kicked up snow behind them as they rode. They carried a banner with them, Ella saw and it fluttered in the wind like a huge snowflake. She couldn't make out the device in it but she didn't need to. She knew it was the Stark banner the moment she saw the white colour.

The riders drew rein in front of her and her men, and looked up to see Ella on the saddle. “Your grace,” the messenger called thrusting his standard in front of her, “I have come to you in great haste on the command of Lord Manderly. Rode my horse so damn fast that I nearly killed him. But I have found you.” He caught his breath, as it steamed in the cold. “We have news from the south. The war is over. The city has fallen. King's Landing has fallen and Rhaegar is dead. The Targaryens are no more.”

Chapter Text

Dany

Outside the chambers where she was being held in Dany could hear the muffled noises of the revelry through the thick walls of her chambers. The sounds of drunken men and their laughter could not be stopped by the walls, nor by the crashing of the waves against the castle. The chambers she had been given was large and better furnished than what she had in the ship, if no less cold and damp. The smell of salt always hung in the air though the chambers were located well within the keep. The ceilings were so high that they were lost in gloom.

Dany had been surprised when she had been given a suite of rooms instead of some small cell after they reached land in Pyke, the seat of House Greyjoy. Though it wasn't much better than the cabin she had been forced into in The Silence. The wall hangings were green with mildew, the mattress musty-smelling and sagging, the rushes old and brittle. It must have been years since someone used these chambers. She knew it for sure that it had not been opened for some time now. The damp went bone deep and if not for the small fire in the hearth she might have died of frost already. Euron had given her a crone to serve as her handmaiden. But Dany knew that she was there to spy on her and watch over her.

That had been the case since she reached here on this godsforsaken island. Dany still remembered that day she was brought here. It had been raining as they came upon the small castle made up of timber and wattle which overlooked the harbour and the village beneath. As she thought about it, she noted that it had been raining ever since Euron Greyjoy had caught up to her. There was a rain when she was captured by him from Oldtown as the fled the city and she had seen it drizzle everytime she was taken out of her cell. It was almost as if a storm was constantly accompanying him.

The Greyjoy had kept her close even as she was taken out of his wretched ship. She was taken by him on a path that wounded up and up, into bare and stony hills until they reached the walls of Pyke, a crescent of dark stone that ran from cliff to cliff, with the gatehouse in the center and three square towers to either side. Dany had never once thought of Pyke or the Iron Isles before in her life. The only thing she had seen of an ironborn was when a couple of old men in dark furs and damp leather had come to swear fealty to her brother when she had been littler. They had not scared her much then with Rhaegar there to protect her, but her brother was not here to protect her anymore.

She had been shown to her rooms as soon as she was brought in and had never left the place. No one ever came to see her here except for the crone, not Euron or Ser Jorah. At times she feared that he had been killed and was thrown into the sea to be nibbled on by the fishes. But she could not bear the thought and hoped that it was simply a nightmare, induced by the salve Euron had forced her to drink sometimes.

Dany did not know how many days had passed since she arrived here. At first she had tried to keep count of the days, but every hour spent in solitude was longer than she had expected. She had given up on that attempt right on the very first day out of exhaustion. The rooms turned freezing cold at night and then the crone would lit up her fire in the brazier. That alone would tell her that night had come and another day had passed.

The passing of each day brought no relief. The crone brought her a bowl of some watery grey gruel and some salted fishand a fresh ewer of water, to sup and drink. No one else came to her but somehow Dany knew it wouldn't be long until she would have another visit from Euron Greyjoy. She did not know if she dreaded him or the wicked shade of evening that he made her drink the most. It clouded her mind and made her see things, things worse than anything from her maid's stories on monsters and maidens. They lingered with her even after Greyjoy left, tormenting her, never letting her to sleep and draining her strength.

She wondered what could be happening outside as the sounds grew louder and the thin slice of light through the small opening beneath her door began to creep further. The crone hardly ever lights this part of the castle, but today the torches seemed to brighten the gloomy hallway that she had seen on her way here. Why though? The more the time she spent in captivity the more she feared that she was abandoned. That no one was going to come to pry her out of here? She could not believe that she would be abandoned by her brother. That made it even worse, leaving her to worry about the war. She was going to get Oldtown subdued for her brother but instead she was locked up here in this salt stained island. And she had heard nothing more about the war or her brother or her nephews.

Barefoot and shivering she paced, a thin blanket draped about her shoulders. She was anxious for someone to come and tell her something about her family. Anything.

She heard the sound of distant shouting and laughing drifting up from the hall, but it was not clear what they were laughing about. When nothing was happening anymore Dany decided to curl up on her bed and go back to sleep once again.

She did not wake up at dawn. Or so it seemed but she suddenly woke up when her cell door swung open unexpectedly and the scent of salt and seaweed came rushing in. Dany woke up all at once, her nerves shaking and hands pulling the sheets to her chin. She knew who it was before even she saw him. “Euron,” she whispered mustering her courage. “Why are you here?”

The Greyjoy smirked. “Am l not allowed to be here? I came to see you since it's been a while.”

Dany was so exhausted that the words didn't even bother her like it used to at first. The door closed behind him and kept the sound and light outside of the chambers, but they could not keep out creepiness. She climbed out of her bed wearily, keeping her distance away from the ironborn as he went over to the brazier. “It's cold in here,” Euron told her as he knelt down beside the fireplace and worked on building a fire, snapping his flint and dagger. “I was told that you dragons don't like cold.”

Dany looked around the chambers. If only she could find something sharp and hard... But there was nothing there she could use except for the poker that Euron was using to stir the logs with to wake the flames anew.

Once the flames fired up Euron Greyjoy reclined back on the cool wooden chair nearby the brazier. He had the poker in his hands still, tapping the iron point against the floor. “I see a deep sadness written upon your face, my light of love.” He gave her a smile. “Could it be the sadness of a lost dream?”

“A dream delayed, no more.” Dany spoke, her voice tight. She did not know why he kept visiting her continuously. To talk he said, but they talked very little and it was the Greyjoy who did most of the talking. He hardly answered any questions that she had for him and almost all of his visits saw her gagging on the blue gooey paste that he forced her to drink, keeping her horrified to even sleep in fear of the nightmares. The fact that he treated her like this made her angry. Even as a captive of the Hightowers in the deep dark cell she was treated better than she was here. Dany had been a princess there. But Euron doesn't see me for a princess, she thought bitterly. I am only an afternoon’s amusement to him, a tool for his evil schemes.

Euron hissed as he laughed and it clutched at her skin like iron claws. Dany winced and shifted back against the bed, afraid that he was going to get up from the chair and make her hurt. He could do that and there was little she could do to actually stop him. But the attack never came. The Greyjoy hardly ever harmed her despite the countless warnings that has been issued. That had surprised her the most at the same time frightened her.

She was descendant of the ancient noble blood of Valyria, that had ruled much of the known world and the seas during its height. Daenerys Targaryen had also learned about the ironborn King who had been burnt down with his castle during Aegon the Dragon's conquest of Westeros. Harren was his name. Harren the Black, who had terrified everyone around him until Aegon had burnt him and his sons in his own castle along with his fleet. She was well versed in that story and it had been one of Dany's favourites during her girlhood. Afterward she had vowed to herself that Aegon's descendant would never be bowing down in fear of an ironborn.

The ironborn set down the poker to lean against the great wooden chair beside the fireplace, as the smoke started rising from the fireplace as the fires started stirring to warm up the room. He seemed so listless and weary unlike the last time she had seen him.

“There is no escape from here no matter how hard you try,” Euron said, laughing. “Besides where would you go even if you get out of here, queen of my heart?”

“Back to my home.” The word tasted sweeter than summer wine to utter, something she had been missing and longing for so long. “I have been away for too long from my home.”

“Home?”

“Yes.”

“You don't have any home now, my sweet,” Euron said. “This is your home now.”

“The blood of the dragon does not belong in shit stained and salt laden rock,” she said testily.

Euron simply smiled. Dany could feel a chill run down her spine just watching him smile. Somehow she knew that he had nothing good behind that smile. “So what is your home? King's Landing?”

Dany nodded weakly. She felt a sudden drop in her strength just by watching him smile. “Yes,” she said softly than she intended. “King's Landing is my home. My place is with my family.”

“Alas, you would sooner find a faceless man who would kill you as you slept in my castle than you would find your family,” Euron said.

Dany would sooner have a faceless man standing over her in the room instead of this. The Faceless Men were an ancient sacred guild of assassins from Braavos who took root during the Dragonlords of old Valyria. They had been no more than wretched slaves then, working in the mines of the Fourteen Flames that lit up the nights of Valyria. At times there were revolts. The dragonlords of the old Freehold were strong in sorcery, and lesser men defied them at their peril. The first Faceless Man was one who did. Dany would give anything just so she could hire a faceless man now to send him after Euron Greyjoy.

But she had neither the gold, nor the freedom to go and hire a faceless man. She couldn't even buy her a fishing skiff, or a mere sellsword. “You could find my brother's army on your gates on the morrow demanding my return,” she said.

“Even if the heat of the sun could reach past watery halls of the Drowned god in order to make him feel it's hot touch, it wouldn't bring back your brother or his army from where they are.”

“What do you mean?” Dany asked.

“Your brother is dead.” He paused. “That rogue from the North killed him. Stark rules King's Landing now.”

Dany did not know what he was talking about, but it seemed to her that it was full of lies. Lies. It was all she could do not to throw herself at him and rip his lying tongue apart. She could feel the tears on her cheeks now. “You are lying,” she whispered. “It can't be. You are lying. Let me go home. Let me go home to my brother!”

“I would be a fool to allow that,” Euron said. “Besides where do you think you can go? Stark will have you killed as he killed your brother and nephews. Oh, you might get a trial of sorts for sure but in the end it will be the executioner's block for you for you are the last of the Targaryens. I saved you, yet again.”

Dany was so exhausted that the words seemed nonsensical to her at first. She plopped down on the bed, feeling dizzy and light. She could not believe him. He was lying to her once again. How else could it happen? Her brother had been so sure about the victory. And her nephews, who had been closer to her than any of her brothers. Her thoughts were more on them. The more she thought about them, the more she wept. “My nephew, Aegon, he is Rhaegar's heir. If my brother is dead he should be the King?”

“He was the heir, my princess. Until Stark killed him and the Kingsguard protecting him.”

“You are lying,” Dany said. “I won't believe you.”

“Believe what you want,” Euron said, “but that doesn't diminish or change the truth. The realm is being ruled by the victors now, the great Lords of Arryn, Baratheon, Lannister and Tully. The Stark boy controls King's Landing. Ravens have been dispatched everywhere, bearing news of your brother's fall and calling for the ceasing of any fighting. Those who are still fighting under your brother's banner will accept it in haste. Word is that Mace Tyrell means to disband the army he has mustered in Highgarden for your brother and Randyll Tarly is reportedly marching back to Highgarden as well, taking his army with him away from the Oldtown countryside.”

Even her father-by-law had seemingly abandoned her and her family in their greatest need. It was bad news one after the other that Dany simply wanted to laugh in disgust. Traitors, she thought, the whole lot of them. “What of Lord Connington? He would never have approved any of this. He is my brother's Hand and a true and loyal man unlike Lord Tyrell.”

“Jon Connington is likely dead and much of his once great army has largely withered away and resigned as the strength of slavers faltered once they had the taste of battle without any dragons to protect them.”

“They fled as well?” She shivered. She was lost. She was doomed. There were no more family left for her, no more friends.

Even in her exhausted, frightened state, Dany knew she dare not trust her fate to madmen like Euron Greyjoy. Nor could she count on hoping for any miracle to intervene. She did not see any other way, not any way to escape from the grasp of the Greyjoy, no more than a way to get her vengeance. She did not dare ask about Jaehaerys as well, but then she wanted to know. “If it is the truth, if Aegon... is dead, then Jaehaerys is my brother's heir. Lest you forget.”

“He is at the Wall, thrown away his rights and have taken the black. It's an old, stale tale. That nephew of yours will likely die in the Wall sooner rather than later, buried in some unmarked grave where no one is like to miss him or remember him. My whisperers are singing the same sweet song. And then you will truly be the last dragon. You ought to learn to conduct your trial on your own from here on. And I will be there by your side to help you with anything, my queen.”

The same sweet song. Her wits were dull for want of sleep still she knew what it meant. Oh, Jaehaerys. If the gods were good, they might spare him the coldness of the Wall. He was her brother's heir and she had to be with him. She could find her brother's knights and his loyal lords? Surely there must be someone still loyal to House Targaryen. Lord Jon Connington, Lord Tyrell, Ser Jorah … She wondered what the Greyjoy had done with him. He must have killed him already. That was what might have happened anyway.

“I don't need your help in anything.”

Euron gave a smirk. “Who would help you instead? If you go anywhere near the mainland, you risk your life. The lords of Westeros are tripping over each other in order to get into the favour of the victor.”

“House Targaryen has friends in the Free Cities,” she reminded him. “Truer friends than you or the ironborn.”

“If you mean those slavers and fat cheese merchants, then you would be disappointed in them. For sufficient gold, they would sell you as quickly they would a slave.”

“How would you know that? I have been to Pentos and Lys and Braavos with my brother and we were always treated well.”

“Your brother was King then,” Euron said. “And you had dragons.”

Dany flushed. He had the truth of it, but she did not like the sharpness with which he put it. “They supported us when my brother asked them, and they believed in my brother’s cause.”

“I have dealt with these slavers and cheese merchants for far longer than you have known them. They believe in no cause but themselves and their gold. Gluttons are greedy men as a rule, and magisters are devious. You don't even truly know them?”

“What do you know of them?”

He snorted. “I know enough to know that they would be of no help to you.”

Somehow she knew that he was true in that as well. If her brother is truly dead then their cause was good as dead. She was not like to find any support even in Westeros. And she had no doubt that the Essosi wouldn't be too eager to help her even if she somehow managed to get out of here and ask them for it. It seemed to Daenerys Targaryen as if she was floating around aimlessly in a sea of sharks which have gotten the scent of the blood and none was there to help her out of there. “Even if they are, I don't need their help. I am neither deaf nor blind, neither lame nor weak. I am the blood of the dragon.”

“But without a dragon.” Euron Greyjoy stood up. “Only I am strong and powerful enough to enthrone you back to the Iron throne, not the slavers or anyone else who was of not any help to you no more than they were to your brother.”

“You would use me for your own gain,” she said.

“Everyone have their uses,” Euron laughed, “and you have your use for me as well. I mean to win your father’s throne for you.”

“You could never,” Dany said. “You have no gold here, no proper army. You don't have enough support.”

“You will never win back the Iron Throne with sweepings from the Free Cities. The realm is broken now more than ever, that is true. But nothing knits a broken realm together so quick as an invading army on its soil.”

“I am their rightful queen,” Dany protested. “Should I return, I can get them to pick up the dragon banners.” She can get

“You are another woman without your dragons. The lords of Westeros will never support you unless you make them.”

If she had her dragon then she would've reduced the Greyjoy to ashes first before doing anything else. She would find her support then, even those who defy her would have nothing to say when she is on Drogon. It was a wishful dream which didn't lead to anything. Drogon was gone, struck down by the evil sorcery of Leyton Hightower. She had not seen him or heard of him ever since.

The thought of her dragons made her sad. Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal, her furious children but with her they had been as gentle as house cat. Dany had hatched them with her warmth and raised them as her children and vowed that they would never come any harm. Andrew Stark had slain them instead, just as he had murdered her brothers and her her nephews. His hands were drenched in the blood of her family.

She would like to take her bloody vengeance against him, but she didn't know how. The Greyjoy promised to deliver justice, but Dany had not forgotten the things he had done to her in his ship. He might call her as his queen but she was nothing more than his captive. “Why would you want to help me?” she asked him. “What do you want?”

“The world.” Firelight glimmered in Euron’s eye. His smiling eye. “Would you like some wine? It's from the cellars of Lord Hewett. There’s no wine half so sweet as wine taken from a beaten foe.”

He offered her a cup. Dany doubted that he had poisoned it, but poison was the least of her worries. It would be much better to drink the most potent of the poisons than to drink the vile blue shade that Euron made her gulp down.

He smirked when she didn't make a move and drank from the same cup and downed it in a single gulp. He smacked his lips once he was finished. In the dim light from the fireplace his blue lips were black as pitch.

He popped an olive that was left by the crones for her and spit out the pit into the brazier. Euron wiped his mouth with the back of his hands. “I mean to do that with your help. The name Targaryen and the your blood still have power. I am of the mind to use that.”

She had not been wrong indeed. He crossed the room to open the window closest to the bed. Even in here Dany could smell the sea through the open window when he was done. She backed away on the bed, to put some distance between them. Euron turned to face her, his bruised blue lips curled in a half smile. “When I was a boy, I dreamt that I could fly,” he announced. “When I woke, I couldn’t … or so the maester said. But what if he lied?”

The wind came gusting through the window and Dany felt as if she was naked. There was something very disturbing about the way he looked at her through the red patch that covered one eye. “What do you mean?”

Euron seated himself on the bed. “I mean to fly the same way you did,” he said. “With dragons.”

“What?” Dany was confused and tired and grief-stricken that all she wanted to do was rest and sleep and to mourn her family. She did not want to keep thinking about any of it for now. “There aren't any dragons anymore.”

“So the world thinks, but I know better.” Euron snapped his fingers once. The door opened and Dany's eyes turned towards it. It was one of his mongrels answering the call, a monstrous man with a shaved head. Rings of gold and jade and jet glistened on his arms, and on his broad chest was tattooed some bird of prey, talons dripping blood.

He had something huge in his hands. It took her a moment to identify it as a horn. The horn was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly in the firelight.

“What is it?”

Euron walked to his man and stroked the horn softly as he would stroke a lover. “Some people call it a hellhorn and others a false relic,” he said. “But this is a Dragonbinder, used by the Dragonlords of Old Valyria to summon and bind their dragons.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I mean to find your dragon once again and make proper use of it.”

“My dragon?” Dany asked completely dazed. “Drogon?”

“Aye, he is alive,” said Euron. “At least that's what my priest tells me. He better be telling the truth lest he ends up in the same way as his predecessor did. The last one lied to me, so I killed him and fed him to his other friends. They refused to eat of their friend’s flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat.”

He is truly mad beyond anything Dany could imagine. She saw the malicious glint in his good eye. A dreadful chill ran down her spine. Euron laughed as of he could hear her thoughts. “Don't worry I am not going to reduce you to that,” he said. “What am I to do without you? I have need of you still. A king must have a wife, to give him heirs. I will lay the Iron Throne and the whole world at your feet, my love. But first I need you to try hard and find your dragon.”

“I can't... I-” Dany stumbled over her words.

“You can and you will.” He gripped her arm so tight that Dany winced. Euron let go of her arm and chuckled. “Because your King commands it. We don't have much time. I mean to gather my ironborn for the Kingsmoot soon where they will make me King. The same day I will present you in front of them and you will become my Queen when we wed by the salt and the sea. When word of the wedding between the kraken and the dragon reaches far and wide it will shake the world.”

It will, Dany thought, frowning. And all for the wrong reasons indeed.

“When that happens will surely turn the eyes of those in King's Landing towards us,” he continued. “I want you to find me your dragon before they catch up with us. Then vengeance shall be yours.”

She should have rejoiced at the prospect but for some reason Dany only dreaded it. She looked away but could still feel the false eye of Euron boring down into her heart. There was no escape for her from him anymore. She could defy him, but at what cost. There was nothing she could do now for herself or her family or anyone else. The least she could do was to find Drogon if he was really alive, if not for him then for her at least.

Chapter Text

Jaehaerys

Weary, Jaehaerys took another step. He was cold and tired and his feet had lost all warmth and his legs their strength. But somehow his feet moved again. One and then the other. Somehow he took a step, and then another, as the cold air hurt his face and lungs.

When he looked down he could see that the snow had risen up to his knees now. His boots had been black of the Night's Watch, but the snow had caked around them.

It had not stopped snowing, Jaehaerys thought as he trudged through the snow. It would not. The last he seemed to remember they hadn't gotten anywhere past his shins. The drifts were up past his knees now, and a crust covered his lower legs like a pair of white greaves. His steps were dragging, lurching. The heavy pack was not helping in anyway at all. Jaehaerys had offered to carry it for a while when Samwell Tarly had struggled to keep up with them while carrying the pack. It had made him look like some monstrous hunchback and Jaehaerys couldn't help but pity the boy when his huge legs gave out and tumbled down face first into the snow. It had taken all of them to get Samwell Tarly back up to his feet, and an ample amount of time that they couldn't lose. So Jaehaerys had offered to carry the pack for awhile. But he never thought that it would be so heavy. Maybe he should have let Gwayne Chyttering take over when he had asked. In his need to not show any weakness Jaehaerys had denied him and the denial hung heavy on his shoulders.

Every fourth or fifth step he had to reach down and tug at his swordbelt. Just to make sure that he had his sword there. The scabbard and the sword weighed him down even further. But Jaehaerys would rather lose his arms than his sword here, not now, not after he'd seen what he had seen. He had his sword and two knives; one of the dragonglass daggers that Qhorin Halfhand had found at the fist and the steel one he had brought with him from the Donal Noye's armoury. All that weight dragged heavy, but he was not ready to lose them for anything.

The others were stumbling as well. He could see that. Gwayne was still close enough that Jaehaerys could make out his cloak and he could hear Sam lumbering behind him. But he could not see the others. Grenn had stayed by their side for a while but he had moved past them. And he could see nothing of Blane or any of his Shadow Tower men. The others from Castle Black had left them behind it seemed, Kedge Whiteye, Dywen, Garth Greyfeather and Garth of Oldtown, Aethan, Goady, Eddison Tollett and Small Paul. They were no more than two dozen, all battered and bruised and scattered away from their fellow brothers.

Regardless he did not make haste in his desperation. There were other things to worry about apart from the snow and cold. There were rocks beneath the snow, and the roots of trees, and sometimes deep holes in the frozen ground. Black Bernarr had stepped in one and broken his ankle three days past. Blane, the officer from Shadow Tower who commanded their small party had put Bernarr on the last horse they had after that.

Grunting, Jaehaerys took another step. It felt more like he was a draft horse pulling his load, just moving forward and forward. He wanted to stop at times. He had been a prince once. But it seemed to him that it was another lifetime. When he had been a prince, he had a castle and warm bed to sleep beside a fire, and all the bite that he wanted to eat brought to him at his bed. And on the back of Viserion he had felt immortal. He could soar through the skies and fly to and fro from King's Landing like riding from Winterfell to the Winter Town. If only he still had his dragon with him now, he could save all of them and they could be having Three Fingered Hobb's three meat stew before long.

But he did not have his dragon here, nor his father and it was foolish to be wishful. It was time that he learned to walk on his own like Maester Aemon adviced him. He might not have chosen this path but he could very well walk through it alone and make it out alive. Jae knew that it was the only way. He couldn't stop now. They all knew that, the few who were left.

They had been thirty when they fled the Fist, maybe more, but some of them had been wounded and bled to death... There was nothing he could do for them, Jaehaerys had to tell Sam to get the Tarly boy moving whenever a dying man had to left behind. They were cut off from their fellow brothers during the fight and had lost the Lord Commander's party in the chaos as they scattered all over in order to save their lives. The baggage train with the food and drink and all the potions and medicines of Maester Aemon had been lost to them as well. Sometimes Jaehaerys heard shouts behind him, from the stragglers or other survivors, he believed. Once he thought he heard something so familiar that he believed that he had found the Lord Commander's party, but then a scream followed it and he had run away the other side. They were behind them, he knew. And they are still behind them.

He had been cold so long he was forgetting what it was like to feel warm. His aunt had often said that dragons did not like the cold. But Jaehaerys had seen Viserion content to lay down for a nap in the snows of Winterfell. The warm walls of the castle and the hot springs had kept him safe from the snow storms as well. Even still the cold and snows of the North were nothing in front of the cold here.

He wore three pairs of woolen hose, two layers of smallclothes beneath a double lambswool tunic, and over that a thick quilted coat that padded him against the cold steel of his chainmail. Over the hauberk he had a loose surcoat, over that a triple-thick cloak with the silver button that fastened tight under his chins. He had to pull the hood up to cover all over his forehead to keep his head out of cold. Heavy fur mitts covered his hands over thin wool-and-leather gloves, a scarf was wrapped snugly about the lower half of his face. And still the cold was in him. His feet especially. He couldn't even feel them now, but only yesterday his left had hurt so bad where Andrew Stark had wounded him in Winterfell that he could hardly bear to stand on it, let alone walk. He wanted to rest and sleep for a while but sleeping here meant death. Thus he'd limped his way through.

Jaehaerys had not slept since the Fist, not once since the horn had blown. He had fought and run and fought some more, and then ran and ran until he couldn't anymore. Then he had been walking ever since.

The snow swirled down around him continuously. Sometimes it fell from a white sky, and sometimes from a black, but that was all that remained of day and night. He wore it on his shoulders like a second cloak, and it piled up high atop the pack he carried and made it even heavier and harder to bear.

If only I had my dragon ... He didn't, though, and it was no good wishing. Off to the left and right and ahead and behind of them, the few riders who still had their mounts held the torches. Jaehaerys could hardly make the vague orange haloes in the falling snow. As he walked, it seemed as if he were chasing the torches ahead of him, but they had legs as well, longer and stronger than his, so he could never catch them.

Jaehaerys had been one of the torchbearers at first, who led the way for their poor column with the darkness pressing close around them. He had felt safer and warmer with the fire. But Blane had decided that Bernnar needed the horse more after he broke his ankle.

He had wrapped his scarf over his nose and mouth, but the cold still bit him hard. Even breathing was hard, and the air was so cold it hurt to swallow it. Even in the Fist of the First Men, further up north and nestled atop the solitary hill he had never felt such cold. It was their doing, Jaehaerys knew. It lingered close by even now and Jae couldn't even bear to look behind, afraid that one might be standing behind him. The mere thought of it sent sent a chill of horror through his spine. The evil threat that his father often talked about and warned them of it. It had been true after all and no one had believed Rhaegar Targaryen except for his sons and his sister and the giant red priest who had been his constant companion. He had to get back to his father and tell everyone what they had seen in the West. He shall do the same with King Andrew as well. He would have done a great service to the realm if he could convince them to end the war between them and look towards the creatures of snow and ice that seeks to destroy anything that was warm. His father had always told that it was his destiny to defend the realm from this exact threat. And he would have fulfilled it by preparing the realm for the Great War for the Dawn.

But Winterfell was a thousand leagues south and King's Landing even further. They can't hear me, no more than Deaf Donnel Pyle could. He need to get back safely to the Wall in order to even think about a journey south. The thought made him excited. He could meet his mother safe in the Red Keep and his brother Aegon as well. He could see his father and hear his gruff approval once again. His father would forgive him for losing Winterfell and the North. He had forgiven him for many a misgivings before. And if his heart was still hard then his aunt will have it softened for him. He wondered if she had married her betrothed or not. It's been so long since he had seen any of them and it would be nice to see all of them once again, even if it was for the last time. The thought warmed him better than any fire in the world would have.

The thought of his family gave him strength. Jae pulled the pack higher and he just walked with a strengthened vigor afterwards. A root beneath the crust caught his toe, and Jae almost tripped, but he groped for a tree branch and clutched it tight, pulling himself back to his feet.

“Are you okay, my prince,” Gwayne Chyttering asked as he helped him back to his feet.

“I am good,” Jaehaerys said as he dusted off the snow. He tugged at the sack to allow it to rest higher on his shoulder. The ache in his arm had eased a bit.

“You are hurt,” Gwayne pointed at his injured leg.

Jae pulled his cloak tightly over his collar. "It's nothing," he said.

“It's not nothing. Give me the pack. I will carry it for the rest of the way.”

“No, it's nothing,” Jae insisted. “I am not the only one hurt here. Go check on Sam.” That was true though. Hundreds had died on the Fist, they had died all around him, and more had died after, he'd seen them.

“Tarly is good enough to be on his feet,” Gwayne said. “You are not. Let me ease your burden at least for a while.”

Cold and weak on his feet, Jaehaerys had to admit that he was right. Shivering, Jaehaerys released his grip on Gwayne and eased himself down in the snow. It was cold and wet, but he could scarcely feel it through all his clothing. He let the pack fall down alongside him and Gwayne Chyttering picked it up with both his hands and slung it across his shoulder. He offered his free hand to Jae. “Come on now, my prince.”

Jaehaerys stared upward at the pale white sky as snowflakes drifted down. It felt nice to sit there like that even with the snow covering him like a thick white blanket. A few minutes time and he would be buried beneath the drifts before long. His calf and his feet hurt a lot that he wanted to simply refuse the offer. His legs felt like they were burning, the left one particularly. He would still have kept to his word and honored the oaths that he had sworn before the Heart tree in the Weirwood Grove. No one could call me a traitor or a craven anymore. If they speak of me they'll have to say I died a man of the Night's Watch. He would be the first Targaryen to receive the honor. He would have earned his honor back, just as maester Aemon  told him before he left for Lord Commander's Great Ranging beyond the Wall.

Jaehaerys had been one of Lord Commander's steward and as such it was his responsibility to accompany his charge and lord wherever he might go. That was why they had brought him along. He hadn't wanted to go at first, with the war still raging on in the south. Even Old Bear Mormont did not want to take him at first. But the old Maester had somehow convinced him to take Jaehaerys away with him. Lord Commander Mormont had given him his orders and his responsibilities were nothing more than to set up his bedding and his plates and heat his wine. He still had some of his friends with him, Sam and Grenn and Edd, but still he had preferred to go out for a scouting raid or two. Instead Jae had stayed behind with the Lord Commander until they made their camp on the Fist.

When the first horns blew Jaehaerys had been sleeping, in a small bed of straws away in the corner of the Old Bear's tent. He almost thought he was dreaming them at first, but when he opened his the Lord Commander's raven was fluttering all over the tent, screaming. The Lord Commander was already awake, pulling down his tunic over his head. Jaehaerys helped him into his mail and armour and donned his own afterwards. Outside the black brothers were all grabbing bows and spears and running toward the ringwall. Jaehaerys wanted to go with them to see what was happening. The Old Bear forbid him instead. Jae had never seen so much concern and regret on the man's face as he saw then when that third blast came moaning through the trees. “Quick, get me my horse,” he grumbled, and shouted loudly for Thoren Smallwood and the other officers he had with him. Jaehaerys knew what was happening without anyone telling him. One blast from the horn meant Brothers of the Night's Watch, two were for Wildlings and the third had not been heard in the Watch for thousands of years. Jaehaerys was stuck for a moment until Lord Commander Mormont's roar brought him back once again. He had clutched his sword, turned around and fled the place towards the horses straight away.

His mind had been occupied with several thoughts that he wasn't able to find Mormont's stallion for a while as he went through the lines of horses. And when he did his fingers had been strangely stiff and clumsy in the gloves, and he was shaking from fear and cold as he tried to pry the horse free from the ropes. Beside him ravens were shrieking furiously in a tent. Jaehaerys turned around and saw a few dashing out of the tent and taking to the air. He wondered where they were going as he watched them clawing their way up through the falling snow. It was a beautiful sight and he had stopped momentarily until he remembered the Old Bear's commands.

The warhorn had fallen silent by the time he had gotten back, but the Fist rang with shouted commands and the clatter of steel. The Old Bear got on the saddle hastily. “To the ringwall,” he said and rode off with the officers.

Jaehaerys followed clutching the hilt of his sword tightly, the fear growing inside him. There were dogs barking and horses trumpeting, but the snow muffled the sounds and made them seem far away. He could see nothing beyond three yards, not even the torches burning along the low stone wall that ringed the crown of the hill. Could the torches have gone out? That would doom them for good. The horn blew thrice long, three long blasts meant Others. The white walkers of the wood, the cold shadows, the monsters his father had always warned him of.

He remembered drawing his sword somehow through the fear, and plodded heavily through the snow holding it, catching up with the Lord Commander. A dog ran past barking, and he saw some of the men from the Shadow Tower, big bearded men with longaxes and eight-foot spears rushing towards the ring wall. When he saw the torches still burning atop the ring of stones a shudder of relief went through him.

The black brothers stood with swords and spears in hand, watching the snow fall, waiting. Ser Mallador Locke went by on his horse, wearing a snow-speckled helm. Jae stood at the front right beside the Lord Commander as was his place as his steward. Being a steward had its own benefits. He looked around for Gwayne and Sam and Grenn and Dolorous Edd, hoping to find any of his friends. But in the chaos he couldn't find any of them, not even Samwell Tarly who stood out in any crowd.

“Here they come,” he heard a brother say and Jaehaerys turned back to look out the Wall.

“Notch,” said the Old Bear, and twenty black arrows were pulled from as many quivers, and notched to as many bowstrings.

“Gods be good, there's hundreds,” a voice said softly.

“Draw,” Mormont said, and then, “hold.” Jaehaerys could not see where they actually were. The men of the Night's Watch stood behind their torches, waiting with arrows pulled back to their ears, as something came up that dark, slippery slope through the snow. “Hold,” he said again, “hold, hold.” And then, “Loose.”

The arrows whispered as they flew.

A ragged cheer went up from the men along the ringwall, but it died quickly. “They're not stopping, m'lord,” a man said to Thoren Smallwood, and another shouted, “More! Look there, coming from the trees,” and yet another said, “Gods ha' mercy, they're crawling. They're almost here, they's on us!” Jae's horse had been backing away by then. The beast did not like the smell and maybe it could have felt his own fear, Jaehaerys remembered thinking. It had been very cold that night. Even colder than now. But he had held strong.

“Fire arrows,” the Lord Commander roared that night on the Fist then, astride his horse, “give them flame.” He turned towards Jaehaerys. “Get over to the Shadow Tower men and tell them to burn the bastards!”

Jaehaerys nodded. He wheeled his horse around and rode hastily to the Shadow Tower men, under the command of the ranger named Blane. Blane was shouting commands to fill the air with as much arrows as possible.

“My lord,” Jaehaerys said, leading this mount through the brothers. “My lord, use fire arrows. Lord Commander wants us to use fire arrows.”

Blane looked around and pointed his archers towards the torches. “You heard the boy,” he had said. “Tip the arrowheads with fire and oil. Let's reduce these fuckers to ashes.”

Jaehaerys waited to see. The archers quickly used the torches to lit up their arrows. “Notch,” ordered Blane. “Draw. Hold. Hold. Loose now.” The men let the arrows fly in a single motion and the arrows filled up the dark snowy sky like fireflies and sent the dead tumbling down the hill.

Jae turned around and rode back to Lord Commander Mormont, to give him the word of Blane's success in holding their flank. The Old Bear was shouting orders to Smallwood and the other offers on the top of his lungs.

"I told them, my lord," Jaehaerys said to him. “They are holding strong.”

“Good,” said the Lord Commander. On Mormont's shoulder his own raven echoed, “Good, good.” The Lord Commander looked huge in fur and mail. Behind his black iron visor, his eyes were fierce. He spied something behind Jae and shouted. “Tarly!!! What are you doing? You're in the way here.”

Jae looked back to see Sam stumbling over to them. “I... I... I... got the messages out.”

Jeor Mormont barely gave a nod. “That's good. Now go back to your cages. If I need to send another message, I don't want to have to find you first. See that the birds are ready.” He pointed at Jaehaerys. “You go with him.”

Jae stayed behind though. “I want to be here,” he said. “I can fight, my lord.”

“Aye,” Mormont said. “That's why I want you to go with him. The messages are important and thus Tarly is important. I want the ravens sent, no matter what happens here. Now go.” He did not wait for a response, but turned his horse and trotted around the ring, shouting, “Fire! Give them fire!”

Disappointed Jae shook his head. “Come on, Sam.” He helped the fat boy get on the saddle and rode to the tent where the birds were kept. Sam fell down as he climbed down in haste. Jae jumped down and landed on his hands and feet beside him. He helped Sam to get back to his feet. “Get to those messages,” Jae told him. “I will keep watch.”

He stayed behind as Samwell Tarly went back to the birds, as fast as his fat legs could carry him.

The attack continued amidst snow and cold. A loud cheer went up among the men along the ring wall. Jae thought that the fire arrows had worked and they had thrown them back with fire arrows. He heard Thoren Smallwood's voice ring out with a command of, “Notch, draw ... loose.” The flight of arrows made a sound as sweet as a bird's whistle. “Burn, you dead bastards, burn,” Dywen sang out, cackling. The brothers cheered and cursed.

“They're still coming.” Someone else said and the cheering stopped for a moment as curses took hold of their place. “Spears,” said Ser Mallador Locke and the men with spears and pikes moved up with their weapons pointed out from the ringwall. He couldn't see the wights clearly. Through the drifting snow, all he could see was the men falling in ranks by the torches. Around the huge fire at the center of the camp, mounted men moving restlessly on their horses. The reserve, Jae knew, ready to ride down anything that breached the ringwall. They had armed themselves with torches in place of swords, and were lighting them in the flames. I will join them when I am done here, Jae had thought.

He heard the shouts from the north face once again. They were coming up from north and south at once. They were not some mindless beings, Jaehaerys thought. Spears and swords don't stop them, he had known that from his father and his red priest, only fire and the touch of the Lord of Light. “Loose, loose, loose,” Ser Ottyn was screaming in the night. Another shouted, “Bloody huge,” and a third voice said, “A giant!” and a fourth insisted, “A bear, a bear!” His horse shrieked in terror and Jaehaerys soothed it by patting his neck. The hounds were baying and barking all around him, and there was so much shouting that Jaehaerys couldn't make out the voices anymore. He heard the crash of steel on wood, which could only mean one thing. The Wights had climbed over the ringwall and the fighting had spread inside the camp. Jae pulled out his sword. “Whatever you are doing, Sam, do it quickly.”

A muffled reply came from inside the tent. “Just a minute, Jae.”

A dozen mounted brothers pounded past him toward the east wall, burning brands streaming flames in each rider's hand. He could see fire everywhere now. For the first time in months Jae had missed Viserion. If only he had been here...

One of the Shadow Tower men came staggering out of the darkness to fall at his feet. He crawled within a foot of the fire before he died.

Why must he remember the fight at the Fist? He didn't want to remember. He tried to make himself remember his mother, or his brother, or his first flight upon Viserion. But the dreams kept changing and memories of the battle came rushing back. He heard the warhorns sound once more. They are calling the Watch to horse. Two short blasts and a long one, that was the call to mount up. But there was no reason for everyone to mount, unless to abandon the Fist, and that meant the battle was lost.

“Sam, get out of there,” Jae said, holding his sword tight in his hand. “We need to leave. Sam.” He heard no response though. Jae cursed and threw the flaps open hastily as he stepped into the tent. Just as he entered inside the tent a flock of ravens flew right at his face. Jae backed away from them and lost his footing and plopped down hard on the fresh fallen snow. Only a moment later he saw Samwell Tarly running outside the tent chasing after the birds, his breath puffing out his nose in thick white clouds. “No.” He sobbed as they watched the last of the ravens flap up into the snowstorm. “No,” he'd squealed, “oh, no, oh, no.”

Jaehaerys got back to his feet and picked his sword up. “I set the birds free, Jae,” Sam said. He was shaking with fear like the last leaf on the tree when the wind kicks up. “I opened the cages, Jae. I was afraid for them... and I... I forgot to send any of the messages with them. The horns, Jae, I was afraid... I'm sorry.”

Jaehaerys had held him by his shoulders and shook him. “It doesn't matter,” he said to his friend. “If anyone asks you, you sent those messages. Now come on.”

The snow fell and the horns blew; ahooo ahooo ahooooooooooooooooooo, they cried, to horse, to horse, to horse. He got on the back of his horse and helped Sam behind him. Jae wheeled around and found himself ten feet from the ringwall.

He remembered the dead coming over the stones with arrows in their faces and through their throats. Some were all in ringmail and some were almost naked ... wildlings, most of them, but a few wore faded blacks. He remembered one of the Shadow Tower men shoving his spear through a wight's pale soft belly and out his back, and how the thing staggered right up the shaft and reached out his black hands and twisted the brother's head around until blood came out his mouth. Sam screeched and Jaehaerys turned the horse around. He did not know where to go or what to do but he just wanted to get out of there.

He did not know how he remembered the fire then, but he must have, because that was where he was riding to. The next he knew they were in the safety of the fire half a camp away, with old Ser Ottyn Wythers and some archers. Ser Ottyn was on his knees in the snow, staring at the chaos around them, until a riderless horse came by and kicked him in the face. The archers paid him no mind. They were loosing fire arrows at shadows in the dark. Jaehaerys saw one wight hit, saw the flames engulf it, but there were a dozen more behind it, and a huge pale shape that must have been the bear, and soon enough the bowmen had no arrows. One of the wights crawled all the way to him and clutched him by the leg so hard that the wound his cousin had given him in Winterfell started to ache so badly.

Jaehaerys still had his sword in his hand. But for the first time he didn't know what to do with it. Fear had him in it's grip and he couldn't even lift his sword.

The horns were still blowing and Sam was screaming behind him. Not knowing what to do Jaehaerys kicked the horse and turned him toward the sound.

In the midst of carnage and chaos and blowing snow, he found Gwayne riding to him on his garron with a plain black banner on a spear. He slashed so hard at the wight that the pale hand came clean off. The wight hardly cared about it's limb and started screeching and reaching for him with another hand. His palfrey bolted and kicked him right on the face smashing the round pale face.

“Your grace,” Gwayne said when the wight was not moving. “Through there,” he pointed with his sword.

More men were mounting up every moment. The warhorns called them back. Ahooo ahooo ahooooooooooooooooooo. Jaehaerys kicked the severed hand off his leg and rode over to them with Gwayne. “They're over the west wall, m'lord,” Thoren Smallwood screamed at the Old Bear, as he fought to control his horse. “I'll send reserves ...”

“NO!” Mormont had to bellow at the top of his lungs to be heard over the horns. “Call them back, we have to cut our way out.” He stood in his stirrups, his black cloak snapping in the wind, the fire shining off his armor. “Spearhead!” he roared. “Form wedge, we ride. Down the south face, then east!”

“My lord, the south slope's crawling with them!”

“The others are too steep,” Mormont said. “We have-”

His garron screamed and reared and almost threw him as the bear came staggering through the snow. The bear was dead, pale and rotting, its fur and skin all sloughed off and half its right arm burned to bone, yet still it came on. Only its eyes lived. Bright as blue. They shone like frozen stars. Thoren Smallwood charged, his longsword shining all orange and red from the light of the fire. His swing near took the bear's head off. And then the bear took his.

Jaehaerys cursed and almost retched.

“RIDE!” the Lord Commander shouted, wheeling.

They were at the gallop by the time they reached the ring. He had been riding a horse as long as he had ridden a dragon. The low stone wall loomed up before him and he kicked the sides of his palfrey. Sam whimpered behind him and clutched him tightly and the garron took them smoothly over the Wall. They plunged down the hillside at a run, through clutching black hands and burning blue eyes and blowing snow. Horses stumbled and rolled, men were swept from their saddles, torches spun through the air, axes and swords hacked at dead flesh, and Jaehaerys Targaryen clutched his horse desperately with a strength he never knew he had while hacking away at anything that tried to stop them.

He was in the middle of the flying spearhead with brothers on either side, and before and behind him as well. Gwayne was to his left and Grenn and Edd were nearby as well. A dog ran with them for a ways, bounding down the snowy slope and in and out among the horses, but it could not keep up. The wights stood their ground and were ridden down and trampled underhoof. Even as they fell they clutched at swords and stirrups and the legs of passing horses. Jaehaerys saw one claw open a garron's belly with its right hand while it clung to the saddle with its left.

Suddenly the trees were all about them, and he went splashing through a frozen stream with the sounds of slaughter dwindling behind. He turned, breathless with relief ... until he saw no one around him from the wedge. Jaehaerys never knew where he was or where his brothers were; all he knew was that he had been galloping away from the Fist as far as he could. Half a league farther Gwayne found him and Sam. Grenn and Dolorous Edd were with him.

That was his last memory of the Fist of the First Men. Later, hours later, they had found some of the other survivors who'd separated from the Old Bear's party, half mounted and half afoot. They were miles from the Fist by then. They had eight horses among them and six made it this far. Blane had taken away his palfrey and given it to Bennarr. The walkers were organized in a column, between the torch bearing riders and there two scouts protected their front but none preferred to hold the rear. Sam mourned the loss of the horse more than Jaehaerys did however. And Jae could see why, when he had begun to struggle and lag before an hour.

He was lagging now as well. Jaehaerys was happy to share the burden of the pack with Gwayne, but even without the pack Samwell Tarly couldn't keep up with them. Jaehaerys slowed down in order to keep him company and tried to get him keep moving. Finally the fat boy couldn't take in anymore when his feet tangled in a root and he fell hard on his face. He simply lay there weeping like a baby.

Jae knelt down and shook him by the shoulder. “Get up, Sam,” he told him. “Sam, we can't stop here. Get up and keep walking.”

“I can't,” Sam said, sobbing.

“You can.” Grenn's voice was harsh and husky. His thick brown beard was frozen all around his mouth. It made him look like some old man.

“Please go away without me,” Sam told them. “I just want some rest.”

Grenn loomed over them, his blacks crusty with snow. “Get up. There's no resting here. You'll die.”

Sam smiled at them. “No, truly, I'm good here. You just go on. I'll catch you after I've rested a bit longer.”

“You won't,” Jaehaerys said to him, his words frosting in the cold air. 

Grenn tried to lift him up. “You're going to freeze, or the Others will get you. Sam, get up!”

The night before they left the Wall, they had all shared a wineskin that Pyp had stolen from the cellar for them. Him and Gwayne and all of his new friends. Sam and Grenn and Pyp and Edd and Halder and Matthar and Todder and Jeren. Pyp had teased Grenn as they had shared the wineskin between them beneath a black sky, Jaehaerys remembered, smiling and saying how Grenn was a good choice for the ranging, since he was too stupid to be terrified. Grenn hotly denied it until he realized what he was saying. He was stocky and thick-necked and strong-Ser Alliser Thorne had called him "Aurochs," the same way he called Sam "Ser Piggy." Baseborn and of low birth as they were, when Jae had come to Castle Black they had always treated him nice and looked to him as if he was one of their own. Jaehaerys liked them. He's never had any true friends as them.

A tall brother with a torch stopped beside them, and for a wonderful moment Jaehaerys felt the warmth on his face. “Leave him,” the man said to them. “If they can't walk, they're done. Save your strength for yourselves.”

“He'll get up,” Grenn replied. “He only needs a hand.”

The man moved on, taking the blessed warmth with him. Grenn tried to pull Sam to his feet. Jaehaerys went to help. “That hurts,” Samwell complained. "Stop it. You're hurting my arm. Stop it."

“You're too bloody heavy,” Grenn complained. They jammed their hands into Sam's armpits, gave a grunt, and hauled him upright. But the moment they let go, the fat boy sat back down in the snow. “You need to get up and walk,” Grenn insisted. “You have to walk.”

Jaehaerys looked around to see if they could find anything that might be of help. If only they could make a sledge or something. Then he saw him.

Small Paul the black brothers called him but he was a giant of a man with a broad brutal face with a flat nose and small dark eyes and a thicket of course brown beard. Melting ice ran down into his eyes from the heat of the torch. "Can you carry him?" Jaehaerys asked him.

“If you take the torch, I can take the fat boy.”

Jaehaerys got the torch. Small Paul smiled gently. He knelt down on the snow beside Sam and put an arm under his knees and another one under his back. He jerked the fat boy up into the cold air as easily as he would heave a featherbed.

“I carried a calf once was heavier than him. I carried him down to his mother so he could get a drink of milk.”

“Good,” Jaehaerys said. “Let's go.”

They continued the chase, their small group getting smaller already. “Stop it,” Sam complained as Paul carried him off as one would carry a little baby, “put me down, I'm not a baby. I'm a man of the Night's Watch.” He sobbed. “Just let me die.”

“Be quiet, Sam,” said Grenn. “Save your strength. Think about your sisters and brother. Maester Aemon. Your favorite foods. Sing a song if you like.”

“Aloud?”

“In your head.”

Sam sobbed again and said, “I don't know any songs, Grenn. I did know some, but now I don't.”

“Yes you do,” said Grenn.

“I don't know any songs, Grenn,” he said weeping.

“Think about your ravens, then.”

“They were never mine,” said Sam. They were the Lord Commander's ravens, the ravens of the Night's Watch. “They belonged to Castle Black and the Shadow Tower.”

Small Paul frowned. “Chett said I could have the Old Bear's raven, the one that talks. I saved food for it and everything.” He shook his head. “I forgot, though. I left the food where I hid it.” He plodded onward, pale white breath coming from his mouth with every step, then suddenly said to Sam, “Could I have one of your ravens? Just the one. I want me a bird that talks and eats from my hand. I'd never let Lark eat it.”

“They're gone,” said Sam. “I'm sorry. So sorry. They're flying back to the Wall now.”

They were lagging now as well, Jaehaerys saw. He could not see any of the torches or the men in front of them anymore. He remembered Pyp saying once how Small Paul was the strongest man in the Watch. He must be, to carry someone like Samwell Tarly. Yet even so, the snow was growing deeper, the ground more treacherous, and Paul's strides had begun to shorten. But Jaehaerys kept his thoughts to him. He didn't want to frighten Sam more than he already was. He bid Gwayne to stay quiet as well when he raised the same concern by his ear.

Finally, hours later two horsemen came back for them, tall men clad all in black who looked at Sam with dull incurious eyes. “You're falling behind,” one told them, holding his torch high in his hand. The next agreed. “Blane bid us to come look for you. He says Craster's Keep is near but he will not wait for you. Paul, leave the pig for the dead men and come on.”

“No,” Jae said at once.

The other one pulled his scarf higher over his face. “He is not like to survive. Leave him behind and save yourselves.”

“No!” Jaehaerys said, louder this time. “No one is leaving anyone behind.”

They continued with the torchmen for a while until Gwayne stopped suddenly. “Wait.” He looked around them and scanned the trees. “We are not alone.”

The riders looked around as well and their horses were restless beneath them. Whatever they were feeling it wasn't anything good. “Drop him,” one of them said. “Run. Leave him behind and run for your lives.”

Sam was sobbing now, once again. “Please, don't leave me. Please.”

“We are not leaving you, Sam,” Jaehaerys said. He turned towards the riders. “If one of you could lend a horse, we could get him back safe.”

“Bloody fools," the torch man said. A lone crow screeched from deep within the woods. The riders bolted hastily never turning behind.

Jaehaerys ran behind them for a few paces. “Stop.” But they were long gone and they had even taken their torches and the light with them.

Gwayne came over to him. “Your grace,” he said, still holding the pack of Samwell Tarly. “We need to go.”

Behind him Small Paul gave a grunt and sank to his knees. His arms trembled as he laid Sam gently in the snow. “I can't carry you no more. I would, but I can't.” The big man shivered violently.

Jaehaerys knew that as well but he looked behind at his friends, Grenn and Sam and Small Paul who had lingered back simply because he had asked him to. He shook his head. He couldn't abandon them, no matter how much he wanted to flee the place.

He limped back to them and clutched the arm of Small Paul. “Come on, Paul,” he said, helping the big man to his feet once again. “We need to go. We are nearby, Paul. Just some more and we will be with our friends. Come on.”

Paul grumbled sadly. “I could carry him after a while,” he said. “I would carry him now, but I can't. Me hand aches.” He showed his large hands to him helplessly.

The wind sighed through the trees, driving a fine spray of snow into their faces. The cold was so bitter that it hurt his lungs. Jae squinted his eyes and looked with the help of the light from the Grenn's torch, but he couldn't see much. He could hardly see anything other than that they were all alone, without food or friends.

But that was wrong. They weren't alone after all just like Gwayne said. He could see something move. Jaehaerys pulled his sword free from the scabbard. Gwayne and Grenn did the same.

The lower branches of the great green sentinel shed their burden of snow with a soft wet plop. Grenn spun, thrusting out his torch. “Who goes there?” A horse's head emerged from the darkness. Jae felt a moment's relief, until he saw the horse. Hoarfrost covered it like a sheen of frozen sweat, and a nest of stiff black entrails dragged from its open belly. On its back was a rider pale as ice.

Jaehaerys was so scared he felt his body freeze all over again. The cold was in him, the cold and fear so savage that his limbs felt frozen solid. There it was the evil threat, the cold children of the Great Other, the cold gods of his father's dream. His father had always said that it was his destiny to face them, had prepared them for it but Jaehaerys felt his legs shaking at the very sight of it.

The Other slid gracefully from the saddle to stand upon the snow. Sword-slim it was, and milky white. Its armor rippled and shifted as it moved, and its feet did not break the crust of the new-fallen snow.

Sam made a whimpery sound deep in his throat behind him. Somehow Jae put himself in between of the fat boy and the Other.

Small Paul unslung the long-hafted axe strapped across his back. “Why'd you hurt that horse? That was Mawney's horse.”

Jaehaerys groped the hilt of his sword as tight as he could. Even with the cold his palms were sweating beneath the gloves.

“Get away!” Grenn took a step, thrusting the torch out before him. “Away, or you burn.” He poked at it with the flames.

The Other's sword gleamed with a faint blue glow. Jaehaerys couldn't help but remember how eerily similar the glow was to the cold blue sword his cousin had used to wound him in Winterfell. The creature moved toward Grenn, lightning quick, slashing. The ice blue blade brushed the flames so smoothly almost as if it missed it. The head of the torch tumbled sideways to vanish beneath a deep drift of snow, the fire snuffed out at once. And all Grenn held was a short wooden stick. He flung it at the Other, cursing, as Small Paul charged in with his axe.

“No,” Jae shouted but Paul was already beyond him. He followed.

“Your grace,” he heard Gwayne shout from somewhere and saw him closing in on him from the side. He could hear Sam still sobbing behind him.

The wights had been slow clumsy things, but the Other was light as snow on the wind. It slid away from Paul's axe, armor rippling, and it raised it's crystal sword towards the big man. The fear that filled Jaehaerys then was worse than any fear he had ever felt before. He forgot everything in his terror, his father and mother and brother and aunt and jumped in just in time to put his sword in front of Paul to stop the crystal sword of the Other. A horrible shrill rippled through the woods, a screech as sharp as a needle that stabbed his ears. The steel shattered as if it was the crystal instead, and broke apart into a thousand broken shards until he was holding a stump with a hilt.

“Get away, my prince.” Jaehaerys heard it but he hardly had the time as the Other slapped him away so hard that he was floating in the air and flying away until he slammed hard against a tree to land on the soft snow. The Other twisted his crystal sword and spun it to block Gwayne's sword as well. Jaehaerys looked that sword end up in the same way as well. The Other caught Gwayne's hand and raised it sword to impale him.

“No!” Jaehaerys screamed.

But then Grenn and Paul had surrounded the Other. It gave a good yank and threw Gwayne away nearly twenty feet away from where it stood and turned to face the new threats. Jaehaerys could hardly stand up as he looked at the Other, merely toying with the two men as it slipped between Grenn and Paul, shattering Grenn's sword and snatching Paul's axe clean from his hands. It threw the axe right at Grenn who barely escaped by getting behind a tree. The Other gave a hiss and grabbed Small Paul by the neck. It started lifting the huge man into the air with one hand as he choked and thrashed in it's hand. Jaehaerys felt a warmth in his breeches, but he mustered his strength still and limped his way towards the creature. He jumped onto it's back and grabbed it by its neck. “Ah,” he cried as the touch was cold and burned him through the clothes. But he never let go. The Other dropped it's crystal sword and Small Paul as it tried to reach him with his hands. Jae moved with it, keeping himself free of the cold hands.

As he struggled he saw Sam cowering and crying in the distance. “Sam!” he shouted. “Sam, help me. Help me, Sam. Please.” He was crying now and the tears froze on his cheeks. But he never let go of his grip.

The Other then got hold of his hair and then backed him against the tree. Jaehaerys cried in pain and it wrenched him from behind, holding him by his hair. Jaehaerys dangled in its grip weakly. This was it, he thought as he started back at death itself. He was going to die, yet again as a failure to his father.

Then he heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath a man's foot, and then he fell back into the snow. A screech so shrill and sharp split the night that he went staggering backward with his hands over his muffled ears, and pulled his legs up close to his chest.

When he turned over and opened his eyes the Other's armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its back. It reached down with two bone-white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.

Jaehaerys rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Other shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Grenn bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. “Mother, that's cold.”

"Obsidian." Sam struggled to his knees.

“Dragonglass,” Jaehaerys said. “They call it Dragonglass. Dragon glass.” He shivered then and closed his eyes.

Chapter Text

Asha

The ceremony began at dawn and continued until dusk, an endless day of drinking and feasting as the ravens from King’s Landing arrived bearing news of Andrew Stark’s victory over Rhaegar Targaryen. Asha had heard the news from Lady Allyria who was almost hopping with joy as she shared it with Asha with great vigor. The Dragons were dead and gone and for the first time in three hundred years the red three headed dragon banner of House Targaryen had been removed from King's Landing, the city founded by Aegon the Dragon himself. And now it was replaced by the direwolf of Stark to hear Allyria Dayne say.

Asha had hardly believed it at first. But word of Stark’s victory travelled quicker than anything. The ships and sailors sailing down from King’s Landing proved the contents of the letter. The city was had been liberated by the rebels and fighting had ceased to exist.

Asha Greyjoy sat picking at the salmon kept in front of her with the smooth edge of her fork. Asha and Ser Garrison were seated on the High Table just below the Daynes. The Hall of Gods looked splendid in the torchlight, it's white marble walls illuminating a faint white glow. Ser Robert Arryn and some of the other Knights of the Vale sat on the other side of the Daynes. Theirs was the place of high honor, just below the Daynes recognising their efforts in the defence of Starfall.

She remembered the day they were all saved from a certain death. Asha had sat on a wooden crate in the yard of Starfall, running a cold wet cloth along the smooth shaft of her throwing axe, all the while watching Lady Allyria Dayne smother her nephew in kisses. The winged knight who had saved them all was beside them, Ser Robert Arryn, and the legion of knights who had come with him waited patiently as aunt and nephew embraced each other after a very long time. She watched the defenders of Starfall who survived the battle holding the gates open as the victors brought in food and loot and prisoners. She watched the lords and ladies, the serving men, Lady Allyria's maester, the strange man Marwyn, and everyone else who had been cowering in the castle afraid of a certain death as they welcomed their saviours into Starfall. Women and children were showering flowers upon them and laying their clothes at their path as they rode.

The smallfolk and the nobles alike had eyes only for the knights in spectacular, shining armour and wings, not for Asha or Ser Garrison or anyone else who had been locked up there in the castle along with them for half an year, fighting for them and dying for them. Of the two thousand men who had taken up arms to defend the castle less than two hundred remained. The rest had all died trying to save the castle and it's inhabitants, including many of her own ironborn who had been her friends, companions, confidants and captains. Instead it was the Winged Knights of the Vale who had saved Starfall according to the smallfolk and the singers. It was carved into the pages of history already as the singers were already singing songs of the battle, of how the Winged Knights were sent by the gods to save all of them from the demons of the east. Asha hated the song.

Ser Robert had also brought with him wooden boxes with silver clasps and hinges loaded with food and provisions. Fine-looking boxes, no doubt, but many of those assembled here in the yard of Starfall were interested on what was in those chests. They had been starving for the past two months once the stores of Starfall had dried up and the promise of food had elated the people as much as the victory did.

And there were prisoners too. Plenty of them at that. After Robert Arryn's  Winged Knights had destroyed the unsullied and the Torrentine had smashed through the siege engines of the slavers, the surviving masters and their slaves had sought to escape on their ships only to see them destroyed or captured by the Hightower fleet led by Ser Gunthor Hightower. The masters and magisters and most of their followers had simply surrendered after that. Some of the mercenaries who wanted to avoid capture had vanished into the Red mountains. There were search parties sent after them and often the search parties found stragglers rotting at the side of the roads or half eaten by the wolves or their bones picked clean by the vultures.

It was the little Lord Edric Dayne who had judged the prisoners, not Lady Allyria. The lordling hardly had a trail, declaring them guilty and throwing most of them into the castle dungeons. When the dungeons were full the rest had been herded into the lower part of the island and were chained in the coves beneath the island guarded by the gaolers and the Torrentine. Most of them were to be taken to King’s Landing to be judged by the Dragonslayer. Asha did not think that most would survive the journey or the judgement. The slavers had come to fight for nothing but blood and gold. And they were not bound by any fealties to the Iron Throne that the lords of the Seven Kingdoms could use to save their own skin from the victors.

When Robert Arryn had spied her and her ironborn nursing their wounds he had looked at them with distrust and contempt. The arrogant, young knight would have thrown them into the dungeons as well had Lady Allyria not intervened.

The Commander of the Winged Knights sat in a chair to the right of Lord Dayne. He had removed his blazing armour and instead wore a slashed velvet doublet in cream-and-silver. His long blue cloak was pinned at the throat by a silver brooch shaped in the likeness of a rising falcon. A hundred scented candles perfumed the air. Gemstones glittered on the fingers of the lords and the girdles and hairnets of the ladies. Even Asha had worn her best. Lady Allyria had offered her pick of her clothes from the lady's own wardrobe but Asha had refused. She instead wore crisp black leathers with the golden kraken over her breast.

Ser Robert Arryn was taut as a drawn bow, Asha observed. The knight was tall and so handsome with hair the colour of fine gold and a neatly trimmed beard. His eyes were as blue as sapphires and there was contempt in them everytime he looked upon her. Her fingers itched for her throwing axes everytime she saw that look but the knight had done her some good as well. When he overran the slavers' camp he had brought some gifts for Asha as well- six of her ironmen whom she thought she had lost including Tris Botley and Qarl the Maid. The Winged Knights had found them naked and barely alive, being tortured by the slavers. The others weren't any better -Roggon, Grimtongue, Fingers, Rook and Cromm. When she first saw them like scarecrows with skin, filthy and bloody she had feared they would all die. But all had survived except for Cromm and were still under the watchful eyes of maester Marwyn.

She had been grateful for that even if she wasn't for saving her own life. He reminded her of Qarl in some way and the bards said that he was as good a fighter as Qarl too. Asha had seen the glorious charge of the Winged Knights herself from the outer walls of Starfall as they split through the unsullied like a lance through overripe melon. Asha had heard a lot about the reputation of the unsullied. The slavers had come to battle thinking that nothing could break the unsullied but the Winged Knights of the Vale had them broken and destroyed in one splendid charge. The battle looked glorious and terrific at the same time and she had felt relieved how it was not her facing those angels of death who had raced down the mountains and scattered everyone in their path. At the end of the day she didn't even find a dead knight from the Vale, but those who had fought them had died in their thousands. Asha was glad that she never would never have to face Robert Arryn or his knights in a battle. She was fortune to have these ones on her side, at least for now.

She allowed herself a brief glance at Robert Arryn once more. The knight was now smiling at one of the japes of his captains.

The high table hosted some of the captains of the Winged Knights along with Robert Arryn. Some Royce or Corbray or Waynwood or the heirs to another noble houses from the Vale.

“You should stop staring,” Tris Botley said as he struggled to cut into a piece of roasted pheasant. “It's not nice to stare at others.”

“I wasn't staring,” said Asha Greyjoy, in the tone that was more annoyed than amused.

“You were, my lady,” Tris replied. It was plain that he could hardly work with his knife on the dead pheasant. “The Valemen don't trust you. They might take it as an offense.”

“Does the thought of it trouble you, Tris?” asked Asha. She watched Tris fumbling with the knife and fork all around the plate. He hissed and caught his shoulder where the maester had covered a gash with fresh linen bandages. Asha snatched the knife and fork out of his fingers and started carving into the bird.

“It does,” Tris admitted, “and it should bother you as well. That knight was of the mind to throw us all in the dungeons only a few days ago. And he could do so if he wants to even now. They have no use of us anymore. We should leave.”

He might do that, but Asha knew better. She fidgeted her belt to adjust it right on her waist. “Leave where, Tris? I could see that they don't like us but we are here as Lady Allyria's guests. If anything, you should be grateful to those green boys for saving you from the slavers.”

Tris laughed until the ache from his wound made him hiss. “You were cursing them only yesterday.”

Asha sipped her wine. “That may be so, but I have found some use for them today.”

Tris was surprised. “What use?” he said. “You don't think-”

Asha stopped him as she saw little Lord Edric standing up from his throne. He rose with his cup in hand and proposed the toast. “Lords and ladies, friends and allies, let us all now drink to my cousin and the victor of King's Landing, for saving us all and the Seven Kingdoms from the evil grips of tyranny that had been terrorising us for so long. I once again extend my gratitude to all of our friends and allies without whom my home and everything I've held dear to my heart would have been lost to me. Thank you.”

Serving men had begun to move amongst the guests as the lordling was speaking, filling cups from the flagons that they bore. The wine was Dornish strongwine, dark as blood and sweet as vengeance. Asha had taken a liking to it in her time here. It was much better than the ale she drank at feasts in the isles.

A huge cheer erupted from the crowd as Edric Dayne finished his toast and took a sip from his cup. Robert Arryn and his prominent Winged knights followed, returning the smile and taking a courteous sip. The others followed as well. Lady Allyria and Gunthor Hightower and everyone else after them, both highborn and lowborn soldiers who had participated in the battle alike. Asha and her pitiful group of three ironborn sipped their wine as well. The rest had been too injured to attend the feast so it's was just her and Tris and Earl Harlaw.

The feast continued late into the night, presided over by the Lord Dayne and his aunt. It was much larger than the one thrown after the siege was lifted by the Arryns. Seventeen courses were served in total, in honour of the Born King's victory. The night started with a soup made with eggs and lemons. There were lamprey pies, capons glazed with honey, pheasants roasted in pepper and garlic, a swan stuffed with cheese and onions. Iced milk and sherbet followed, to cool down. For the sweet, each guest was served a cake of spun sugar. Inside the crust was filled with sweet custard and bits of plum and cherry.

Asha found Lady Allyria murmuring something into the ear of her nephew. The lady had sat between Asha herself and her nephew. She smiled at Asha when she found her eyes. “You eat very little, my lady,” said the Lady of Starfall. “I hope you are having a good time. This is a day for celebrations. Let us eat and drink and make merry for the war is over.”

Asha did eat little, she knew. A spoon of soup, a bite of the goat, the leg off a capon, some fish. She didn't have much appetite for food, not now when they had aplenty. Instead she hungered for something else. “Aye, the war is over, Lady Allyria,” she said to her. “I am glad that it is over and that I am happy that your nephew has won.” She brushed a strand of long hair away from her face. “I have enjoyed my time here in Dorne, my lady and I only hope that you remember the oath you swore to me. I only pray that you wouldn't forget about us now that we have served our purpose.”

Allyria looked at her as if she had been slapped. “You didn't think I would have forgotten it, did you?”

Asha had no answer for that. She had indeed thought that she had been forgotten. About a fortnight had passed since Starfall had been saved from the slavers and she and her men had been largely forgotten. It's been more than a week since Allyria Dayne or her nephew even visited her men at the maester's quarters.

“I swore an oath on my sister’s name and honour.”

“I know,” said Asha sipping her wine. “But your sister is dead. She has been dead for years now. However you have an army now.” She looked over to Arryn and his companions on the other side.

Allyria followed her gaze and found them. “That is not my army,” said Allyria. “They are not my men to command them to follow you or anyone else.”

Asha nodded her head unbothered and sipped her wine. “They are your nephew’s men thought.”

Allyria Dayne turned to look at the boy. “Not him,” Asha said. “The other one. They fly his banner and came here on his command. They ought to obey his voice.”

Lady Allyria turned to the her and said, “I don't speak with my nephew’s voice.” Asha saw the lady tense. “I can't, my lady. I know the oath I have given you and I am not like to forget it.”

“When though?”

“Give me some time,” the lady said. “I had been occupied with other things in the past few days. I thought you were content here and your men were being treated.”

“Everyone has been so hospitable to us, my lady,” said Asha. “But we cannot stay here forever. I need to get back to my home. I don't know what my uncle has done to my home and my people.”

Lady Allyria made a sad face. “Oh, I understand about that. I will raise the matter to my nephew today.”

Asha had been worrying about the survival of her crew and herself for so long that she had almost forgotten about her home and her family. She wondered what the Crow’s Eye had been upto. She knew that he hadn't returned back from his exile and attacked her brother’s convoy to make pleasantries with her father and the rest of her brothers. She wondered what had happened to the, rest of her family and the people she’d known as a child. The thought of her mother bothered her the most. It was hard to think what her uncle could do to the sickly, frail woman who is his brother’s wife. I will find out soon enough, no doubt.

The feast stretched long and deep into the night. It concluded for Asha long ago and it looked like it had concluded for the rest of them. Only bones and greasy platters remained upon the trestle tables. The rest were drinking or dallying with the wenches, and some were snoring while the servants were talking the used platters and half finished meals out to the kitchen.

The hall was quiet at last as one by one the nobles were bidding their farewells for the night. The dais was crowded still compared to the hall. Lady Allyria and the boy lord were still in attendance, and handsome Ser Robert Arryn was with them as well along with Gunthor Hightower. Ser Garrison was in his mail shirt and greaves, plus a dozen knights from the Vale, all heirs and sons of proud lords who were the commanders of the Winged Knights.  Asha slid closeby to Lady Allyria who was waiting by her nephew talking to Arryn. Lady Dayne saw her there and gave a quick nod.

She placed a hand on her nephew's shoulder. “Edric,” she called. “If I may, there's something I need to talk to you about. This-”

The tall white vaulting doors to the Hall of Gods opened with a creak that made them all turn. The old maester came running towards the dais where they were standing. He bowed to Lord Dayne and his aunt. “My lord, there has been a letter from King’s Landing.” Marwyn pulled a roll of parchment from his sleeve. “A response for our letter most like.”

It was. Asha could see. The letter was sealed with blue wax, the colour of Robert Arryn’s cloak.

“For me?” the boy lord asked.

The maester nodded and handed him the roll of parchment. Edric Dayne opened the letter and his eyes ran over its contents. He passed the letter to his aunt when he was done and turned towards Arryn and his captains. “Your lord  father has sent down word from the Red Keep. They are holding a Great Council in King’s Landing, such as the realm hasn't seen for a hundred years. Calls have been sent far and wide throughout the realm from Dorne to the Wall. We have been invited as well.”

“Great Council?” asked Ser Lyn Corbray one if the commanders of the Winged Knights. “What is it for?”

“To deal with the remains of the realm that has been won most like,” maester Marwyn said. “If they are sending out invitations to everyone then there will be seats for those who fought under the Targaryen banner as well.”

“It is a grand council after all,” said Lady Allyria. “That ought to mean that someone should represent the Iron Islands as well. They are still a part of the realm.”

Everyone stared at her. Asha blinked back at them. “What?”

“If what you said were to be true, then you are the rightful heir to your father’s seat, my lady,” the maester pointed out. “Thus you could represent your house.”

One of the captains of the Winged Knights snorted. “That is a big if.”

Asha glared at him. “Did you think that I crawled up here on my knees to become your prisoner out of my own liking?”

Another Valeman spat. This one wore a black velvet doublet. On his chest were nine black stars within a golden saltire. “Never trust the sea scum,” he said. “Nothing good ever comes of them. Let them kill each other on their isles.”

She looked around at their faces. “I have been sailing as long as I could walk. I know the winds and season as I know the back of my hands. And I know my uncle and what he's upto. Don't think he will be content to sit and brood on Pyke with a crown on this brow. You can think that would be the case, but soon enough he will be ”

“That may be so, my lady,” said another one. “But this is not something for us to worry about. If you uncle has indeed stolen your father’s throne then that is up to you to win it back.”

Asha looked to Lady Allyria for support. The girl gave a nod and stepped up. “Lady Asha came to Starfall, battered and bruised looking for help,” she said to the men. “Despite that when Starfall was in danger she and her men fought so valiantly to defend it and paid very dearly for our freedom. It is not right to cast her aside now, Edric.”

Edric Dayne studied her with dark blue eyes that almost looked purple in the fire light. “His grace only ever commanded us to rescue Starfall, nothing more,” the boy said.

“Aye, if the wench lost her father's throne then it's on her,” insisted the knight with the nine stars. “If she wants to take back her father's throne, let her go and take it.”

For a moment Asha forgot to breathe. Take it? It felt so easy to say it like that. How was she supposed to take it? To fight someone like Euron Greyjoy. She didn't even have enough ships to conquer Saltcliffe let alone to throw the Crow’s Eye off her father’s chair. Ships were the least of her worries. Asha didn't even have enough men to take her anywhere close to the isles.

Allyria Dayne placed a hand on her nephew's shoulder. “Edric, please,” she said. “I have given her my oath, swore it upon my sister’s name and her honour. It is not right to abandon the lady who's done so much for us. House Dayne never break it's promise.”

“Had it been within my power I’d do what you ask of me, aunt,” Edric Dayne said wistfully. “I can't ask anything more of these men. Besides we don't have enough provisions to make it to the Iron Isles for another war anyway. We cannot feed the whole army. Nor do we hope to lay in sufficient supplies for the journey. The country is ash, the villages taken over by the slavers, the harvest burnt or stolen. Autumn is on us, yet there is no food in store and it's only being planted now. We live on the food brought from Oldtown and what his grace had given us from the Riverlands, and that'll be over soon. We will be down to rats and shoe leather in a moon’s turn in the middle of the Narrow Sea.”

“If we're fortunate and if the gods are kind to us we might make it to Oldtown,” said Ser Gunthor Hightower. “But we are not going anywhere beyond that. You can be sure of that, nephew.”

Asha had almost forgotten that Ser Gunthor was kin to the Daynes. Maybe that could work in her favour.

“And you are required in King’s Landing, my lord,” the maester reminded him. “All of you. Lord Arryn has sent for you to come back.”

“And Andrew will be there as well,” said Lady Allyria.

“For sure, my lady,” the maester replied. “The city was won by him and is being held in his name.”

She took Asha’s hand in hers. “That's it,” the Lady of Starfall said. “We should go with my nephew to King’s Landing to meet Andrew. You can represent your house and state your plight in front of him and the other lords.”

“The Iron Islands is still a part of realm,” Gunthor Hightower informed. “If there's been any trouble there then King Andrew and the others must be informed of it.”

Allyria Dayne placed a hand on her shoulder. “I will support your cause even if no one else does, my lady,” she said. “My nephew will help you. He must. For his mother’s sake at least. Come with us and let us help you.”

Asha had lost all hope that she will be getting any help at all, either here or at King’s Landing. But what else she was supposed to do. She had thrown herself into the quicksand and was neck deep in it already. She could do nothing else but trust the ones standing on the banks offering a rope. At King’s Landing she will find if it's a rope or a snake that they offered. “When are we leaving then?”