A/N: If you are enjoying this story, please leave a review! Thank you!
----------------------------------------
Year 300 AC
Sunspear, Dorne
The heat in the Old Palace was pressing down on Samwell Tarly's chest until every breath felt like sucking air through a wet woolen blanket.
He sat in the deep shade of a tiled alcove, sweat trickling down the back of his neck into the collar of his blacks. He had stripped off his cloak, but the heavy tunic and breeches of the Night's Watch were never meant for the Dornish sun.
He looked toward the fountain in the center of the courtyard. The water plashed gently into a pool of turquoise tiles, the only sound in the stifling afternoon. Gilly sat on the rim, her bare feet dipped in the water, rocking little Aemon in her arms. The babe was asleep, finally overcome by the heat.
Beside her sat Princess Myrcella. The girl was pale, her golden hair damp with perspiration. A silk veil obscured the side of her face where Darkstar's sword had taken her ear, but her visible eye was bright as she dangled a wooden horse for the sleeping baby.
"He likes the red one best," Myrcella whispered, her voice thin.
"He likes anything he can chew on, Yer Grace," Gilly said softly, offering a shy smile.
Standing over them was Prince Trystane. The boy couldn't have been much older than Sam, but he stood with a rigid, desperate sort of dignity, his hand resting constantly on the hilt of his sword. He watched the gates, the walls, the sky, trying to be the protector his betrothed needed.
Sam felt a pang of sympathy. He thinks the walls will save him.
Sam looked up at the Spear Tower, piercing the cloudless blue sky, and the massive bulk of the Threefold Gate. They were impressive fortifications, masterpieces of stone and engineering. To Trystane, they must have looked impregnable.
But Sam had seen real giants. He had seen dead men walking and old legends come to life. Walls were just stone. Stone didn't stop what Marwyn feared. Stone didn't stop magic.
Footsteps echoed on the tiles, sharp and purposeful.
Sam scrambled to his feet as Princess Arianne swept into the courtyard, her silks rustling like dry leaves. She was flanked by her cousins—the Sand Snakes. And Sarella. She still wore the loose trousers and tunic of a Sphinx, but she moved with the restless energy of her sisters now while Archmaester Marwyn brought up the rear.
"We should be on the water," Obara was saying, her voice a harsh rasp. She paced the edge of the fountain, making Trystane flinch. "My father did not wait for enemies to come to him. He went to them. If the ironborn are in the Stepstones, we should take the fleet and—"
"And do what?" Marwyn rumbled, lowering himself onto a stone bench with a grunt. "Throw spears at the wind?"
Obara whirled on him. "I am no woman to be dismissed by a grey rat in a chain. I am a daughter of Oberyn Martell. I fight with the spear."
"And your spear is useless against a man who doesn't care about land or gold." Marwyn gestured to the heavy pack at Sam's feet, where the tip of the ancient horn poked out from the leather. "He isn't coming for your city, girl. He's coming for that."
Obara frowned, looking at the dusty old horn. "A horn? He raids the Arbor and burns Oldtown for a broken horn?"
"It's not just a horn," Sam said quietly, pulling the Horn of Winter slightly further out. The runic carvings seemed to drink the sunlight. "It... it brings down the Wall."
"Magic," Tyene Sand said, wrinkling her nose. "My father studied it. He said it was a dying ember. A parlor trick for charlatans in Essos."
"Your father was a warrior, not a historian," Marwyn said, reaching into his robe for his sourleaf. "He saw the world as it is, not as it was. Magic didn't just fade, child. It was dammed."
The Sand Snakes paused. The metaphor hung in the still air.
"A dam?" Sarella asked, her eyes narrowing. "Like the Greenblood irrigation?"
"Bigger." Marwyn spat a glob of red juice onto the pristine tiles. "Thousands of years ago, the world was drowning in magic. The Children sang the hammer of the waters. The Others rode ice spiders. It was wild. Uncontrolled. Then came the Wall."
He gestured vaguely toward the north. "Brandon the Builder didn't just stack ice blocks to keep wildlings out. He built a spiritual dam. He cut the South off from the source in the True North. That's why your father thought magic was a dying ember. He lived in a drought that lasted eight thousand years."
Arianne looked pale. "So the Wall... it starves the world of magic?"
"Exactly," Marwyn said. "But the Valyrians..." His voice dropped, becoming grim. "They were cheats. They wanted magic in a world that had been drained of it. So they refused to fade. They found a substitute." He looked at the women. "Blood. Pain. Fire. They burned millions of lives to keep their magic alive. That's what Valyria was—a furnace fueled by slaves to simulate the magic the Wall was holding back."
"They brought the fire with them," Sarella said, picking up the thread. "But without the volcanoes, without the constant blood sacrifice, their dragons withered. They grew small. The magic dried up."
"Dried up?" Marwyn let out a harsh, barking laugh that startled Trystane. "Is that what they teach in the novice cells these days? That magic just evaporated like dew in the sun?"
He leaned forward, his bull neck flushing red. "The dragons didn't just wither, girl. They were murdered."
Sam felt a cold knot form in his stomach. "Murdered? By who?"
Marwyn turned his gaze on Sam, his eyes hard as flint. "By us, Slayer. The Citadel."
Arianne drew a sharp breath. "The Maesters?"
"Who do you think killed the dragons the last time?" Marwyn spat the words. "Gallant knights with spears? No. It was the Grey Sheep. With their poisons in the meat and their whispers in the ears of kings."
He gestured around the garden, at the orderly rows of trees and the stone walls. "The Order of Maesters does not trust magic. They do not trust what they cannot control, measure, or catalog. They wanted a world of reason. A world of ink and paper, not fire and blood. So they poisoned the hatchlings. They stunted the growth."
"But..." Sam stammered, thinking of Maester Aemon, of the kindly old men in the library. "They serve the realm."
"They serve order," Marwyn corrected grimly. "And dragons are chaos incarnate. Just as the Starks are."
Marwyn turned his gaze to Sam, and for a moment, the old man looked almost reverent.
"But the North..." Marwyn whispered. "The North found a different way. They didn't burn the magic to keep it. They didn't build a furnace. They swallowed it."
The courtyard went silent. Even Obara stopped pacing.
"The Stark line isn't just a dynasty," Marwyn murmured, his voice rough like grinding stones. "It is a vessel. A living storehouse of the First Men's power, kept alive and distilled in their blood for eight thousand years. They killed the Warg King of Sea Dragon Point, yes—but they married his daughters. They defeated the Marsh Kings and took their women. Generation after generation, the Kings of Winter conquered skinchangers, greenseers, and wargs, and they didn't wipe them out. They bred that magic into their own line."
Sarella pushed off the pillar and walked toward Sam. She moved like a predator stalking prey, her eyes intense.
"So this Jon Snow," she said softly. "He isn't just a Stark bastard, is he? If Marwyn is right, if the blood is the fuel..." She tilted her head, studying Sam with disconcerting focus. "Has he shown it? The old power? Does he walk with wolves, Slayer? Does he see through their eyes?"
Sam swallowed hard. He thought of Ghost, the silent white shadow that was never far from Jon.
"He..." Sam stammered. "He has a direwolf. Ghost. They... they are close."
"Close," Sarella repeated, a small smile playing on her lips. "Close like a man and his dog? Or close like a man and his own hand?"
Sam looked away, unable to meet her gaze. His silence was an answer loud enough for the Sphinx. She poked Sam in the chest with a hard finger.
"Tell us," she whispered. "Is he a monster?"
Sam swallowed hard. He thought of Jon's eyes, dark and grey and full of worries. He thought of the way Jon had ruffled his hair when Sam was scared. He thought of the reports of black scales and red eyes, but he pushed them down.
"He..." Sam stammered. "He's..."
"He ain't a tool."
The voice was fierce, cutting through the philosophical haze. Gilly stood up from the fountain, holding little Aemon tight against her chest. Her eyes were blazing.
"He ain't a tool," Gilly said, her voice trembling but loud. "And he ain't a monster. He's a man. He saved us. He saved me from Craster. He saved my baby. He's... he's Jon."
Sam found his voice. "She's right. He takes the weight so others don't have to. That's who he is."
The conversation died. But the silence that followed wasn't peaceful.
One moment, the fountain was plashing gently behind Gilly. The next, it was silent.
Sam turned. The water had stopped flowing. Not trickled to a halt, but stopped, as if the pressure driving it had simply vanished. The surface of the pool was glass-smooth.
High above, the great silk banners of House Martell on the Spear Tower, which had been listless in the heat, dropped completely dead. They hung straight down, heavy and limp, as if the air itself had solidified.
"What is that?" Trystane's voice was high, cracking with fear.
He was pointing toward the sea.
Sam followed his gaze, looking past the Winding Walls.
The horizon was gone.
A thick, unnatural grey mist was rising from the water. It wasn't drifting; it was rolling, tumbling over the waves with a speed that defied nature. It moved against the wind—or where the wind used to be. It swallowed the blue of the sea, the brightness of the sun reflecting off the water. It was a wall of dull, bruised charcoal, eating the light.
It moved toward the Shadow City like a living thing.
"The wind died," Obara whispered, her hand going to her whip. "How is the fog moving so fast if the wind died?"
"It's not weather," Marwyn said. He stood up slowly, the pouch of sourleaf falling from his hand to the tiles. His face, usually so cynical and hard, had gone the color of old parchment. "Gods have mercy."
A brazen blast shattered the silence.
It came from the Winding Walls, a deep, mournful note that vibrated in Sam's teeth. A second blast followed. Then a third.
Three blasts, Sam thought wildly. Three blasts means Others.
But they were in Dorne.
"Sails!" A lookout screamed from the Spear Tower, his voice thin and terrified. "Sails in the fog!"
The paralysis broke.
"Guard the Princess!" Trystane shouted, drawing his sword with a rasp of steel. "To the walls! To the walls!"
Daemon Sand, the Bastard of Godsgrace, came running from the barracks, shouting orders. "Archers! To the ramparts! Form up at the Threefold Gate!"
Dornish soldiers in scarf-helms and scale armor rushed past the alcove, their boots thudding on the stone. Myrcella shrank back against the fountain, clutching her veil. Gilly pressed little Aemon's face into her shoulder.
"Sam," Gilly whispered. "Sam, what is it?"
Sam couldn't answer. He was watching the mist.
It breached the harbor. It curled around the massive onion domes of the towers, snuffing out the sun. The temperature plummeted. The stifling heat vanished, replaced by a damp, biting chill that smelled of brine and old blood.
And then, breaking through the wall of grey, came the ship.
It loomed impossibly large, far bigger than any longship Sam had ever seen. It rode the water like a nightmare, silent and terrible. Its hull was painted a red so deep it looked like clotted blood. Its sails were black as the space between stars, hanging heavy and still, yet the ship cut through the water with terrifying speed.
The Silence.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Crossroads Inn, The Riverlands
The iron was stubborn. It fought him, resisting the hammer's persuasion, holding onto its shape with the obstinate pride of a highborn lord. Gendry gritted his teeth and brought the hammer down again. Clang.
Sparks showered across his bare chest, stinging like fire ants, but he barely felt them. The heat of the forge was a living thing, a roaring beast that kept the biting wind at bay, if only just. Sweat slicked his skin, cooling instantly into icy rivulets whenever he stepped away from the coals. It was dusk at the Crossroads, the hour when the grey sky of the Riverlands bruised into a sullen purple, and the cold came hunting in earnest.
He was making a rim for a wagon wheel. It was dull work. Necessary work. A sword could kill a man, but a wheel could move a family away from the killing. There were too many families these days.
Gendry paused to wipe his brow with a soot-stained forearm, his breath pluming white in the air. He looked out over the yard.
The inn was drowning in people. They were everywhere, a tide of misery that had washed up against the sturdy stone walls of the Crossroads Inn and refused to recede. They huddled under the eaves, wrapped in rags and stolen cloaks. They crowded the stables, sleeping in the straw where the horses used to be.
Too many mouths, Gendry thought with worry. The flour sacks are low. The salt beef is gone.
Willow had been watering down the stew for three days now. Soon it would just be hot water with a memory of onions.
He shoved the iron back into the heart of the coals and pumped the bellows. The fire roared, casting long, dancing shadows against the stable wall. A group of refugees had gathered near the warmth of his forge, drawn to the light like moths. They were talking in hushed, frantic whispers, their voices carrying over the hiss of the wind.
"I tell you, they're dead," a woman was saying. She was clutching a babe to her breast, though the child had been silent for hours. "The Boltons. Eaten. Every last one of them."
"By who?" a man asked, rubbing hands that were black with frostbite. "Stannis?"
"Nay," the woman hissed. "Wolves. A pack of demon wolves, big as horses. They say the North has gone wild. They say the trees are eating men now."
Gendry frowned, staring into the orange heart of the fire. He had seen wolves in the Riverlands, bold and large, led by that she-wolf that pulled corpses from the river. But eating a whole army?
"It wasn't wolves," another voice cut in. It was an old man, blind in one eye, leaning heavily on a crutch. "It was a dragon."
The group fell silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath for a heartbeat.
"Don't be a fool, old man," the frostbitten man muttered, though he crossed himself. "Dragons are gone. Dead and dust."
"I heard it from a man who ran from the Winterfell," the old man insisted, his voice trembling. "A black shadow from the Wall. They say the Bastard of Winterfell sold his soul to the Old Gods. He traded his humanity to become a beast. A dragon of fire and shadow."
Gendry pulled the glowing iron from the fire. Dragons and demons. The smallfolk always found new monsters to fear when the old ones failed to kill them fast enough. He placed the metal on the anvil and struck it hard.
Clang.
He had seen Thoros breathe fire onto a sword. He had seen Lord Beric rise from the dead with a hole in his chest. The world was full of dark magic, sure enough. But a man turning into a dragon? That was a mummer's farce. A story to scare children into eating their turnips.
Clang.
"He's coming," the old man murmured again, undeterred by the noise. "The Dragon of the North. He'll burn the Twins and then he'll come for us."
Gendry ignored them. He focused on the rhythm. Strike. Turn. Strike. Turn. It was the only thing that made sense. The world could fall apart, kings could die, and shadows could rise, but iron was honest. Iron did what you told it to, if you were strong enough.
He missed the Brotherhood. He missed the feeling that there was a shield between these people and the dark. Now, the shield was him. Just a smith with a hammer and a bad temper.
A sound cut through the wind.
It wasn't the shuffle of refugees or the creak of the inn sign. It was the heavy, disciplined thud of hooves. Many hooves. Iron-shod and purposeful.
Gendry stopped hammering. He rested the head of his sledge on the anvil, the heat radiating off the cooling rim.
"Riders!" Jeyne Heddle's voice rang out from the porch of the inn, sharp as a whip crack. "Get inside! Clear the yard!"
Panic rippled through the refugees. They scrambled like startled rats, diving under wagons, pressing themselves into the mud, trying to become invisible. They knew what riders usually meant. Rape. Fire. Death.
Gendry didn't move. He stood his ground by the forge, his chest heaving slightly, the sweat cooling on his skin. He gripped the hammer. It wasn't a sword, but he had cracked skulls with it before.
Out of the gloom of the High Road, a column emerged.
They weren't bandits. They weren't Freys.
These men rode tall destriers, their caparisons snapping in the wind. Their armor gleamed, polished and bright, mocking the filth of the Riverlands. Even in the dusk, Gendry could make out the banners.
Three candles on a field of grey. Waxley.
A green serpent on black. Lynderly.
Vale lords.
They rode with their chins high, looking down at the squalor of the yard with noses wrinkled in disgust, as if they had stepped in something foul. They looked clean. That was what offended Gendry the most. They looked arrogant and well-fed and clean.
The lead rider, a captain with a beard trimmed to a sharp point and a cloak of heavy blue wool pinned with the three candles of House Waxley, pulled his horse up short near the forge. The beast snorted, blowing steam into Gendry's face. The captain looked down at him. He didn't see a man. He saw a tool. A fixture of the yard.
"You there," the captain called out, his voice crisp and clipped. "Smith."
Gendry looked up. He didn't bow but he lowered his hammer. "My lord."
"Our mounts are spent from the High Road," the captain said, pulling a pouch from his belt. The coins clinked heavily. "We require fresh horses. We will pay honest coin for honest stock. Bring out what you have."
Gendry tightened his grip on the hickory haft of his hammer. They weren't raiders, then. They were paying men. But coin couldn't buy what didn't exist.
"We have no horses for you, my lord," Gendry said. His voice was flat, deep, carrying the resonance of the chest that produced it.
The captain frowned, not in anger, but in irritation. "Do not hoard for a better price, smith. This is the vanguard of the Vale. We ride on urgent business for the peace of the realm."
"I don't care about the realm," Gendry said, stepping out from behind the anvil to block the view of the stable doors. "And I'm not hoarding. The lions took the good horses. The wolves took the rest. All that's left are ponies for the children and mules that can barely pull a cart. They'd collapse under plate before you reached the ruby ford."
It was a dangerous thing to say, blunt and unrefined. He saw the captain's eyes narrow, assessing him.
"You speak boldly for a man covered in soot," the captain noted coolly. "A Riverlands peasant would have been on his knees by now."
"I'm from Flea Bottom," Gendry said.
"Ser Gerold," a voice drawled from behind the captain. A younger knight, wearing the green serpent of Lynderly on his surcoat, rode up alongside. He was handsome in a soft, lordly way, with hair that curled around his ears. He looked at Gendry, then at the shivering refugees, his nose wrinkling with a mix of pity and distaste.
"Leave the man be," the young knight said, waving a gloved hand. "Look at this place. It's a sty. If he had destriers, he wouldn't be living in mud."
"We need fresh mounts, Ser Hewin," the captain insisted, though his hand remained far from his sword. "The Lord Protector... excuse me, Lord Royce... will not accept delay."
The Lynderly knight sighed, looking around the bleak yard with open boredom. "Then we shall walk if we must. I will not ride a mule to a gathering of High Lords, Gerold. I have some dignity left, even if we are being sent on a fool's errand."
Gendry froze. The casual mention caught his ear.
"A gathering?" Gendry asked.
The young knight looked down at him, amused by the peasant's curiosity. "Aye, smith. We ride to scrub birdshit off the ruins of Harrenhal."
"Harrenhal?" The name slipped out, heavy with bad memories.
"A 'Great Council,' they call it," the knight said, adjusting his reins. "Lords from every corner of the Seven Kingdoms, coming to bend the knee or shout at each other." He laughed, a light, musical sound that seemed out of place in the grim yard. "Though if the rumors are true, we'll all be bending the knee to a ghost."
"The Stark bastard," the captain corrected, his tone stiff. "Has called the banners. It is not our place to mock it."
"King Aemon Targaryen, he styles himself now," the Lynderly knight mused, shaking his head. "What in the Seven is happening to this world?"
Gendry frowned, lowering his hammer. The name struck him wrong. "Targaryen? You mean the one in the Stormlands? The one with the sellswords?"
The knight looked down at him with amused pity. "No, smith. Not the mummer's dragon in the south. The Dragon of the North. Ned Stark's bastard claims he's Rhaegar's son." He smirked, adjusting his cloak against the wind. "A wolf in dragon's clothing, or a dragon in wolf's wool. We ride to prepare the castle for his arrival. Let us hope he brings enough fire to warm that cursed ruin."
He cast one last look at Gendry, tossing a single silver stag into the mud at Gendry's feet. Not as payment, but as charity.
"For your trouble, smith. Buy these people some bread. They look like they haven't eaten since summer."
With a shout, the column kicked into motion. They didn't trample the refugees; they simply rode around them, careful not to let their fine cloaks brush against the filth. They thundered out of the yard, riding south, toward the God's Eye.
Gendry stood in the yard, the wind cooling the sweat on his chest until he shivered. He stared at the silver coin sinking into the slush, but didn't pick it up.
Aemon Targaryen.
It wasn't just fear-talk. It wasn't just old men scaring children. It was true. The North was organizing. Something had happened up there, something big enough to make the arrogant lords of the Vale ride through the mud to prepare a cursed ruin for a king.
Gendry looked down at his hammer.
The knight had said it plain: Ned Stark's bastard.
Jon Snow.
The brother Arya had spoken of when the fire was low and she thought Gendry wasn't listening. She would whisper it like a prayer. Jon. She had wanted to go to the Wall to find him.
And now they were calling him a Targaryen? A dragon? It sounded like madness.
Arya.
He hadn't seen her since the Brotherhood sold her... no, that wasn't right. Since she had run.
"Are they gone?"
The sharp voice cut through his brooding. Gendry turned to see Willow standing in the doorway of the inn, a crossbow held loosely in her hands. Her face pinched with the constant stress of feeding too many mouths with too little grain.
"They're gone," Gendry said. "Just Vale lords. Peacocks looking for a nest."
Willow lowered the crossbow, letting out a breath. Behind her, the other orphans spilled out into the twilight. Ben and Pate carried wood for the fires, their arms thin but strong. They looked at Gendry with wide, anxious eyes.
"Did they take the ponies?" Ben asked, clutching a piece of firewood like a club.
"No," Gendry said, stooping to retrieve the silver stag from the mud. He tossed it to Willow. "They left this. Said to buy bread."
Willow caught the coin, her lip curling. "Bread. As if there's a baker within fifty leagues who hasn't been hanged or robbed." But she pocketed the coin. "Get inside, you lot. The stew's watering down, but it's hot."
Ben and Pate scurried past, but a small girl lingered behind Willow's skirts. It was Jeyne, the youngest of them, no more than five. She was staring at the forge, at the dying coals glowing orange in the dusk. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the embers.
"Smith?" she whispered.
Gendry crouched, bringing himself to her level. "What is it, Jeyne?"
"The men..." She pointed a trembling finger at the road where the knights had gone. "They said the Dragon King is coming. Is he coming here? Is he coming here?"
Gendry felt a heavy weight settle on his shoulders, heavier than any armor. He looked at Willow, who was watching him with hard, expectant eyes. He looked at Ben and Pate, waiting in the doorway.
"No," Gendry lied. His voice was rough, but steady. "He's not coming for you, Jeyne. Go inside, girl. It's getting cold."
Willow ushered Jeyne inside, casting one last look at Gendry before closing the heavy oak door.
He shoved the iron back into the fading heat. He would fix the wagons. He would sharpen the pitchforks. He would make anything to help.
Because winter was here, and he was the only shield they had left.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Blue Fork, The Riverlands
The river was a sluggish brown snake, choked with silt and ice, winding its way through the bruised landscape of the Riverlands. The barge drifted with the current, heavy and sullen in the water.
Black Walder Frey sprawled on a pile of furs near the stern, picking the meat from a capon leg with greasy fingers. He chewed slowly, his eyes half-lidded, but his mind was racing.
"Row, you lazy curs!" he shouted, kicking the nearest oarsman in the back. "Put your backs into it! I want to see the towers of Darry before the moon turns!"
The oarsman grunted but didn't complain. He dipped his oar back into the freezing water, pulling with mechanical exhaustion.
Walder tossed the bone into the river. It landed with a plop, vanishing into the murk.
He adjusted his sword belt. It was a fine piece of work, stolen from a Mallister knight he'd killed at the Twins. The gold chasing caught the weak sunlight.
Everything was finally falling into place. The raven from Riverrun had been a blessing in disguise. His father Ryman was dead. His grandfather Walder was dead. The rest of his kin were rotting in the Twins' great hall, slaughtered by some "ghost of vengeance" or whatever nonsense the smallfolk were whispering.
Good. Let them rot.
"Are you sure about this course, my lord?" Ryger asked, squinting at the grey horizon. "Darry is close to Harrenhal. The smallfolk at the inn... they said a dragon hunts in the Riverlands. A black beast that breathes fire."
"The rumors are peasant shit," Walder snapped. "They see a lightning strike and call it a god. They see a wildfire trap and call it a dragon. It's mass hysteria, Ryger, nothing more."
He grinned, a rictus of ambition. "With the Twins empty, I am the Lord of the Crossing. I have the gold. I have the men. Let the Bastard of Winterfell rot in the snow; he's a thousand leagues away. We stop at Darry only to water the horses. Then we march on Raventree Hall."
He looked at the heavy chests lashed to the deck. "Tytos Blackwood is harboring the Blackfish and this 'King Aemon' pretender. I'll burn them out. I'll crush their little rebellion and put their heads on spikes. Then I'll ride to Aegon Targaryen. I won't go to him begging for a commission; I'll go to him as the man who pacified the Riverlands. He'll have no choice but to make me Warden."
The barge lurched.
"Watch the current, you idi—" Walder started, then stopped.
The water wasn't moving.
The ripples from the oars had vanished. The surface of the Blue Fork had gone flat as a mirror.
And the birds had stopped singing.
Walder sat up straighter, wiping grease from his chin. The silence was sudden and absolute. No wind in the rushes. No creak of wood. No splash of oars.
"Why did we stop?" he demanded.
"We didn't, m'lord," the steersman said, his voice trembling. "The... the air..."
Walder looked up.
A shadow had fallen over the river. It wasn't a cloud. The sky was clear, a hard, cold blue.
But something was blocking the sun.
A speck, high above. Black against the blue.
A bird?
Walder squinted. It was growing. Fast. Too fast.
It plummeted, a black stone falling from the heavens.
The horses on the barge began to scream. Not a whinny of alarm, but a shriek of primal terror. They kicked at their stalls, shattering the wood, their eyes rolling white.
Walder stood up, his hand going to his sword.
The speck became a shape. Wings. Vast, leathery wings that blotted out the sky. A body like a mountain range, scaled in obsidian. A tail that lashed the air like a whip.
His eyes widened at the realization.
It is real.
The wind of its descent hit the water before the beast did. The river boiled. A pressure wave slammed into the barge, cracking the mast, sending men tumbling.
Walder didn't think. He didn't shout orders. He didn't rally his men.
He looked at the monster falling toward him, its maw opening to reveal a furnace of violet light, and his ambition evaporated like spit on a hot skillet. He looked at the gold chests—his leverage, his future.
He wants the ship, Walder realized. He'll burn the ship.
He scrambled to the rail. His armor, heavy plate and mail, clanked against the wood.
If I'm in the water... if I'm gone... I can swim to shore. I can reach Darry on foot.
He vaulted over the side.
The water hit him like a hammer. It was freezing, a shock that drove the air from his lungs. He sank immediately. The armor that was meant to protect him from Blackwood arrows was now an anchor, dragging him down into the silt and the dark.
He thrashes, his boots kicking at the mud. Above him, the surface of the water exploded.
BOOM.
The sound was muffled by the water, but the shockwave wasn't. It slammed into him, tumbling him over and over in the current. He saw a flash of purple light through the murk, brighter than the sun.
He was drowning. The river was filling his nose, his mouth. His lungs burned.
I'm going to die, he thought, panic clawing at his throat. I'm going to die in the mud, just like the rest of them.
Something shifted in the water. A current, massive and displacement.
Then, the pressure.
Something clamped around his waist. Hard. Unyielding.
Then he was moving. Up. Fast.
He broke the surface, gasping, retching water. The air was cold and sharp.
He was flying.
Walder looked down. The river was receding. The wreckage of his barge was a burning splinter in the water below. The purple fire was spreading across the surface, consuming his men, his horses, his gold.
He looked up.
And screamed.
He was clutched in a talon the size of men. Black scales, hard as stone, pressed against his ribs. Above him, the underbelly of the beast radiated heat like an oven.
The dragon banked, its wings beating the air with a sound like thunder. It climbed, higher and higher, until the world was a map below them.
Then it stopped. It hovered, wings fanning the air.
The massive head snaked down.
Walder found himself staring into an eye the size of a shield. It was molten magma, red and orange and swirling with ancient intelligence. A vertical slit pupil focused on him, pinning him with both horror and fear.
The dragon spoke.
"I AM AEMON TARGARYEN."
Walder whimpered, dangling helplessly.
"MY BROTHER DIED THROUGH YOUR TREACHERY AND YOU CUT THE THROAT OF MY AUNT, CATELYN STARK."
Walder's bladder released, warm urine soaking his breeches, instantly cooling in the wind.
"I..." he squeaked. "I... mercy! I have gold! The Twins! I am the Lord of the Crossing! I can give you the Riverlands!"
He tried to bargain. He tried to lie. That was what Freys did.
"I DO NOT WANT YOUR GOLD," the dragon rumbled. "NOR YOUR TITLES."
The jaws opened. Rows of teeth, black and sharp as dragonglass, gleamed in the light.
Deep in the throat, a violet light began to build. It started as a spark, then a glow, then a blinding radiance.
The heat hit Walder's face, blistering his skin.
"I WANT YOUR ASH."
The last thing Black Walder Frey saw was the color purple, beautiful and terrible, consuming the world.
----------------------------------------
Enjoy my writing? Support me on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/FullHorizon] and get early access to 10 chapters for each of my stories!