Capítulo 1625: 41
Chapter 41: SnowstormNotes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
41.
Snowstorm
Winterfell
Tyrion looked up at the sky with the only eye he had left, clouds squashed together, traveling so fast that patches of faded blue could emerge here and there. The now one-eyed dwarf helped himself to walk with a cane, the muscles in his injured leg still too tender.
"Ser Davos!" he shouted as he saw the old-smuggler-turned-in-King's Hand, standing on the side of the walkway, regarding the same view and perhaps the same thought as him. "I heard the uproar last night. Our young love-fools are already chafing at the struggles of marital strife?"
"I always wondered why, you little man, were so determined to see this union fall?" Davos asked him in return.
Tyrion sat on a long stool against the wall and gave him a hesitant smile.
"It's rather a prevision, Ser. I have seen many love stories unfold but rarely end well. Not in our world."
"That means things need a change," he said most assuredly. "The Realm could finally enjoy the rule of an honorable man and a just woman."
"If it were that simple only, old friend," Tyrion lamented.
"I am not your friend," Davos reminded him.
***
As the servants cleaned Bran's chambers and Sansa supervised the work, Arya approached Bran with a piece of broken wood in her hands: one of the fragments of the door that Jon had destroyed when he broke in.
"You know more than you let us know, why?" Arya questioned him.
Bran blinked slowly.
"The Gods have been merciful and cruel to gift us with knowledge and free will to act upon it. I'm no God but I possess the only weapon that would strip you from your own will."
"Ignorance is pretty much walking in complete darkness," Arya countered.
She saw his chest raised as he sighed, although undemonstrative, she could tell he was worried.
"We must all be prepared," he said, lifting his stare, "History likes to repeat itself."
Arya was about to insist but got interrupted by the sudden appearance of Gendry.
***
"Did you know these existed?" Gendry asked her as they both stood at the start of what seemed to be a long tunnel beneath the castle, in the crypts.
"I'm just discovering it," she answered, stretching her sight all she could manage and the light of the torch in her hand allowed, "It doesn't surprise me, though, many castles are built with this sort of safe passage. Red Keep was filled with them," she explained, "Do you know where it takes?"
"South, I'm more willing to wager on," Gendry replied.
Arya nodded and turned around to see the crypts.
"Our only safe passage if the castle falls and it's mined with the enemy's weapon: dead people," she pointed out.
There would be no refugees to worry about, at least not in Winterfell. If the castle fell then the next gathering point would be The Neck.
If The Neck fell, then she was no longer sure there was any chance of victory.
"Do we have enough lantern oil?" Arya blurted out with a sudden urgency.
"I think so," Gendry answered and burrowed his brow, noticing her big gray eyes turning stone.
***
The Neck
Jon left the Neck as quickly as he came, Rhaegal rising to the skies, his brothers shrieking at him almost angrily. When Daenerys hurried down the hill, she found Jorah with his expression befuddled.
"Jon. It was Jon," she told him, breathlessly, "I can't give you reasons right now, but I need to fly right back before he endangers his life and the life of my child!"
"You've just returned, Khaleesi! Your people need you!" Jorah berated her.
My child needs me! screamed the voice inside her head. And Jon, too. She was beholden to him by vows of marriage, the ones she spoke on her own volition.
The sense of duty weighed heavier than pain.
Two strangers approached them. A man well in his years and a young rough-looking woman Daenerys presumed his daughter.
"He's Lord Howland Reed, Khaleesi, he rules the lands, and by his side, his daughter," Jorah whispered in her ear.
Their heads bobbed into a curtsy.
"Your Majesty...My name is Howland Reed."
"My Hand has brought that forward to me, Lord Reed. What is the matter?"
"Jon Snow," he replied curtly, "I take her Grace understands that it is to the King in the North that I respond to?"
"I understand you're from the North."
"I had hoped to have a word with him, but to my astonishment, I saw him leave as quickly as he came. Riding on a dragon." His eyes squinted at her. "One of your dragons."
Daenerys' breath hitched and for a moment, she carefully judged the meaning beyond. Could it be that...? 'You know who Jon's mother is," Dany stated.
Lord Howland nodded slightly, eyes still cautious.
"I was with Lord Stark the day his mother trusted him with him, making him promise to protect him."
"I see," she responded, touching her forehead absently.
"And I assume he must know that too," Lord Reed continued.
"His brother told him," she revealed, discomfiture creeping up her skin; her face sick with worry.
"Bran?" Meera interrupted, asking.
Dany's eyes looked bewildered.
"Do you know him?"
"I saved him. I brought him all way back from the North beyond the Wall to Winterfell." Meera blinked and her eyes brightened with some outreach feeling. "I was there when he became the Three-Eyed Raven. When your kinsman transformed him."
"My kinsman?"
"Brynden Rivers," Meera said.
This time she could not rest importance on the effect of every word spoken. Her legs wobbled trying to support her own weight and Jorah had to heft her up.
"Khalessi, are you all right?" Jorah desperately asked her.
I'm just discovering that I had more kin alive and lost than I imagined, she thought, but she was fooling no one.
Looking into Jorah's eyes full of sincere concern, Dany admitted: "Jorah, Jon is not Ned Stark's bastard son. That is the lie with which Lord Stark protected him from Robert Baratheon's relentless fury. Jon is the child born out of Lyanna Stark's union with my brother Rhaegar. He is my nephew."
Jorah blinked in disbelief and waited for her to laugh and tell him it was a very bad joke. But like herself back then, Dany saw clarity slowly settling on his features, seeing how preposterous was to even question it.
"And now your husband, he is," Jorah added, perhaps with a tinge of wariness.
She was about to say that it didn't matter, that she needed to leave now. However, she addressed the Lord of Greywatch.
"Would you talk to him, Lord Reed? Would you bring him to his senses?"
The older man nodded.
"Of course, is that what I have wanted to do for so long now."
Dany rested in his reassurance, even if her nerves were still sizzling in the air.
***
Long Lake
She saw water. Deep and blue and still, with a thin coat of ice just forming on it. It seemed to go on forever.
There was a small town nearby the lake, where fear had just acquired a frantic nature in the early morning light, as evacuations took place.
She'd seen this place in the flames before.
"Has my Lady been enlightened?" the knight asked her, noticing the brightness that washed over her face all of sudden.
"We are close, so incredibly close," she just answered.
There was this ardor inside her chest, unmistakable. At last, the sacred tether was reckoned. Melissandre wondered to herself what might have changed but did not have much time to ponder it, a gelid wind blowing like a sharp caress across her face.
It was the Great Other.
And it was here.
"Did you hear that?" Melissandre turned, shaken by the sound of the sky. It sounded like a storm but it was something else.
Beric looked at her in incomprehension.
"Help me, my Lord! We need to lit a fire, a big one, enough to be seen from the skies!" she said hastily, getting off her steed.
***
Jon's eyes shut close as the wind turned bitingly cold. Rhaegal shrieked fiercely and raiders them both above the clouds. Even if Jon had wanted to fly higher, he knew the dragon would not allow it. They needed to breathe.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
A pang of frustration made him aware that no height could help to make the feeling go away. He wanted to end the part of him that had been awakened, to return to the sweet deception in which he was living, but nothing helped to bring peace of mind back.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
The dreams and the strange flow of images he couldn't place in an exact moment in his life, they were now sensible. It was him all the time. Misery and hurt underneath the very thin skin of his emotions.
And Dany.
It was Dany all the time.
Gods, the guilt compounded. After what he had done to her, to even consider that everything they had experienced was authentic was...a folly. And yet Jon couldn't help but hope it, that she had really loved him. Not just the carcass of the men he'd been but all parts of him. A fool's dream.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
His throat dried up and burned. Rhaehal uttered a sorrowful screech in response. Jon wished he hadn't separated him from his mother and brothers, but the bond between a dragon and its rider was unbreakable once forged; Rhaegal would not let him leave without him. You should have warned me, Jon found himself telling him. If I had known I would never have taken you.
If he had known anything about it all, Jon would never have walked back into Dany's life, knowing that he represented only pain and a burden to her. That feeling of defeat was the last thing he took with him to his second encounter with death, and the last. Why should he have to go through this again? What was the point of fighting? 'You will forever fight all their battles' Thorne had warned him, and he was right. Jon was chained to this fate even after death. A surge of anger spread through every inch of his body making him shake violently.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Jon did not even notice that he had long ago passed Winterfell, heading further north, where an adversary awaited him with a sinister, knowing gaze fixed on the sky, spear in hand.
***
An icy mist began to creep across the lake, coating its surface with a thin layer of ice. A general of the Army of the Dead emerged from the haze, stopping to watch the last ship filled with peasants. He raised an arm, aimed his spear, and loose it. A whistling sound sliced through the wind in its wake.
The ship's hull burst into hundreds of broken pieces, and the people wreaked havoc. The smell of death wafted through the air with the screams of people watching in horror at the amorphous mass of bodies coming their way.
Beric Dondarrion raised his flaming sword, atop his horse, riding toward the dead with the fierceness of a man who did not fear death. Resolved to embrace it but never surrendered. Melissandre knelt and recited her prayers, beseeching the god of light for fire.
In the midst of chaos, the mighty growl of the dragon.
"Dracarys!" commanded Jon naturally, showering the front line of the dead with fire to buy the fleeing men time. Rhaegal glided in low flight over the lake.
The Night King's hand opened and closed around the spear he carried himself, squinting at Jon.
Rhaegal turned and landed on top of a formation of stones on the land elevation. Jon watched the scene with dismay. The ship was damaged beyond repair.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
"South to Winterfell!" Jon ordered, even atop of a dragon still the King in the North.
People hesitated as they found themselves in the middle of two equally lethal beasts but eventually began to move around Jon's flanks. A crow fluttered overhead, cawing desperately. Jon shot a suspicious glance upward. Bran?
A shadow loomed over him and he had to duck quickly when his reflexes told him to. Above them Drogon's body stepped in just in time to take the Night King's spear himself.
***
Dany and Drogon shrieked at the same time, wave after wave of pain spreading through their bodies. The spear Drogon's shoulder had received, was much larger than the one the scorpion had shot when they faced the Lannisters, and even more painful as if it carried poison in it.
But it had been deliberate. Daenerys saw perfectly well the Night King's intention to hunt Rhaegal, to turn him into what Viserion had become. She would not let that happen again.
Drogon flapped his wings as best he could, every movement of his body pushing all the air from Dany's lungs. The bond between a rider and his dragon was not only mental but physical. Dany felt as if the spear was stuck in her own body. Before Daenerys could foresee it, a huge maw closed over the protruding spear and began to gnaw out.
Whether under Jon's command or not, both of them watched in amazement at it. Rhaegal was trying to help his brother. When the emerald dragon's intention proved futile, Jon's jaw tightened as he looked toward the distant horizon; toward the Night King. His army of reanimated puppets were beginning to cross his fire fence, and he knew there would be no chance to flee by water; the ship that was the last hope of those people only a flotsam of driftwood.
There was no choice.
Dany's petrified face watched Jon's dark determination settled in, commanding Rhaegal to retreat. For a moment she feared he was going to attempt a confrontation, but he did not go north.
He turned in the opposite direction.
"Dracarys..." Jon said barely in a whisper, his gaze fixed on the running people.
***
Winterfell
Sansa watched ill-at-ease from the battlements as the dragons flew over Winterfell, screeching as if about to start a contended fight.
"Prepare the hall. They are back," she said to the guards, as they trotted away.
The dragons landed on a close hill, Daenerys' black beast gaining high terrain over the green dragon.
Daenerys looked pointedly at Jon, as Drogon roared in fury against Rhaegal. She detested that her children were confronted like this but it was necessary to force Jon down. Dany knew that it was nothing that she could do to break the bond between a dragon and its rider but that didn't mean that their basic understanding of animal hierarchy couldn't serve to hold Rhaegal back.
It worked well, and her other child lowered his neck when Drogon stop berating him.
***
The ambiance just a day before had been one of joy and jolly, a glimmer of light amidst an impending darkness. Now the Great Hall was again that hostile and harsh place that has always been. Jon entered to the sound of the assembled lords rising to their feet.
Daenerys trailed close behind, her presence filling the the room with a waft of trouble.
"Long Lake village was attacked," Jon announced. His face darkened by a shadow. He turned to look every man and woman in the face, his gaze eyes trying to convey the severest alarm.
He also sought desperately not to look at Dany.
"By the dead?" someone asked a little bit too obvious to all of them.
"Evacuations were carried as planned but the village had been surrounded — people who didn't get into those boats were already in the Night King's numbers," Jon explained, circling the long table. He stilled nearing Sansa, torn from the inside by the confusion evoked by false memories.
Sansa was too caught up in her amazement and dismay to take note of the existing shift, a brokenness perhaps impossible to mend. She could only guess that between her brother and the Dragon Queen had occurred a disconnection.
"Have you—?" Sansa swallowed hard, careful with the supposition she already made. "Have you burned them?"
It was like the spark that lit the fire. Dany looked around as whispering voices spread.
"I spared them a worse fate," Jon replied bluntly.
It might turn out to be the most merciful course of action under the circumstances, but the way Jon distanced himself from it, whether it was to convey the necessary gravity of things or for his own sanity, the Northerners were not ready to accept dying in dragonfire. Dany felt the tension cut through the air as it had the first time she had stood in that hall.
Arya and Gendry walked in, Jon noticed his young sister — his young cousin, watching him the same way she had in the twilight: with an underlying caution, her hand like his moving nervously at her side with the itchy feeling in her palm...she wanted to go for her sword.
A strange feeling overcame her, that she had long since left behind at the same time that seemed so familiar: the fear of consequence, the wariness around an unstable temper. Dany knew she had to get him out of there as soon as possible.
Do not wake the dragon.
"We must leave the castle now," Daenerys spoke, "We can delay their pace, and attack on our fullest in The Neck."
"I...We cannot leave Winterfell!" Sansa opposed.
"She's right," Arya interjected, who was looking between the two of them. "And Winterfell must burn as well."
The sound of wood pounding on the floor. Jon's eyes swiveled in the direction of where Tyrion Lannister stood in the shadows, listening to all with a rapt attention.
"Husband," Daenerys finally interceded in a resounding voice. "We are one now. The Realm needs its King and its Queen..."
But it was too late. Daenerys lost the battle and his scalded temper was spreading like wildfire.
"Plotting and scheming from the shelter of your comfort, treating us as pawns and pieces on a board..." Jon started, never taking off his stare at Tyrion.
"Is there something you wish to say, say it now and loud," Sansa challenged him, oblivious to the thread getting thinner.
"Jon..." Dany pleaded.
Tyrion brow furrowed deeply.
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
Are you afraid?
His moved quick, leaping over the long table, pushing and shoving his way across the assembled lords. In his way young Podrick Payne stood, whom Jon punched for no better reason. But his real target was the small man who, with bulging, horrified eyes, saw him coming at him.
The sounds of swords being drawn out all around as guards moved to one side and another. Jaime Lannister pummeled himself forward but was forcibly stopped by Brienne before he could intervene.
Dany followed him as quickly, Jon lifting Tyrion off the floor and stoving his small body against the stone.
"JON!" Sansa cried in despair.
Daenerys tackled Jon's arm, which held Catspaw in hand. The dagger danced in the struggle between Dany and Jon, the latter's bloodshot, angry eyes fixed on the dwarf's battered face.
"What...sssort of sprite...sss gotteninto you-oof?" asked Tyrion in a voice barely above a high-pitched gasp.
"Ever the contemptible man collecting the weak-minded at your will for you to feel at last the ultimate voice of the downtrodden. It has enabled you to play a hand with masterful skill. And yet you are still rewarded for your idleness?" Vitriolic recrimination dripping from his voice.
Jon tried harder to near the weapon more and more toward Tyrion's only eye, making Dany's jaw clench with the effort of putting it down.
"You are defending him now? knowing the full truth and still defend him despite his lack of faith and easy sway?"
Dany glared at him with an excruciating look.
"His words may have seed the qualms in your mind," she severed, "But they did go as far as you allowed them to."
And losing the battle of strength, Dany's grip gave way as Tyrion nimbly pulled Jon's arm away, causing the swift blade of the dagger to graze Dany's arm on the inside, cutting her deeply.
Tyrion fell to the floor in a daze, watching Dany's blood fall in tingling drops.
The room fell eerily silent as the dagger slipped from Jon's grasp and clattered to the floor.
Notes:
You could argue that I stole from HOTD (which I did) but tbh never thought I'll make it this far
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