The north went on forever.
Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a
fortnight on the wild track that passed for the kingsroad up here
had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land
quite another.
They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all
the commotion of the royal departure, riding out to the sound of
men shouting and horses snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the
groaning of the queen’s huge wheelhouse, as a light snow
flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the sprawl of
castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the columns
of knights and freeriders turned south, taking the tumult with
them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his
nephew.
It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet.
West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall
watchtowers on their stony summits. To the east the land was lower,
the ground flattening to a rolling plain that stretched away as far
as the eye could see. Stone bridges spanned swift, narrow rivers,
while small farms spread in rings around holdfasts walled in wood
and stone. The road was well trafficked, and at night for their
comfort there were rude inns to be found.
Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way
to dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose
higher and wilder with each passing mile, until by the fifth day
they had turned into mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged
promontories and snow on their shoulders. When the wind blew from
the north, long plumes of ice crystals flew from the high peaks
like banners.
With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by
northeast through the wood, a forest of oak and evergreen and black
brier that seemed older and darker than any Tyrion had ever seen.
“The wolfswood,” Benjen Stark called it, and indeed
their nights came alive with the howls of distant packs, and some
not so distant. Jon Snow’s albino direwolf pricked up his
ears at the nightly howling, but never raised his own voice in
reply. There was something very unsettling about that animal,
Tyrion thought.
There were eight in the party by then, not counting the wolf.
Tyrion traveled with two of his own men, as befit a Lannister.
Benjen Stark had only his bastard nephew and some fresh mounts for
the Night’s Watch, but at the edge of the wolfswood they
stayed a night behind the wooden walls of a forest holdfast, and
there joined up with another of the black brothers, one Yoren.
Yoren was stooped and sinister, his features hidden behind a beard
as black as his clothing, but he seemed as tough as an old root and
as hard as stone. With him were a pair of ragged peasant boys from
the Fingers. “Rapers,” Yoren said with a cold look at
his charges. Tyrion understood. Life on the Wall was said to be
hard, but no doubt it was preferable to castration.
Five men, three boys, a direwolf, twenty horses, and a cage of
ravens given over to Benjen Stark by Maester Luwin. No doubt they
made a curious fellowship for the kingsroad, or any road.
Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen
companions, with an odd cast to his face that looked uncomfortably
like dismay. Yoren had a twisted shoulder and a sour smell, his
hair and beard were matted and greasy and full of lice, his
clothing old, patched, and seldom washed. His two young recruits
smelled even worse, and seemed as stupid as they were cruel.
No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the
Night’s Watch was made up of men like his uncle. If so, Yoren
and his companions were a rude awakening. Tyrion felt sorry for the
boy. He had chosen a hard life . . . or perhaps he should say that
a hard life had been chosen for him.
He had rather less sympathy for the uncle. Benjen Stark seemed
to share his brother’s distaste for Lannisters, and he had
not been pleased when Tyrion had told him of his intentions.
“I warn you, Lannister, you’ll find no inns at the Wall,” he had
said, looking down on him.
“No doubt you’ll find some place to put me,”
Tyrion had replied. “As you might have noticed, I’m
small.”
One did not say no to the queen’s brother, of course, so
that had settled the matter, but Stark had not been happy.
“You will not like the ride, I promise you that,”
he’d said curtly, and since the moment they set out, he had
done all he could to live up to that promise.
By the end of the first week, Tyrion’s thighs were raw
from hard riding, his legs were cramping badly, and he was chilled
to the bone. He did not complain. He was damned if he would give
Benjen Stark that satisfaction.
He took a small revenge in the matter of his riding fur, a
tattered bearskin, old and musty-smelling. Stark had offered it to
him in an excess of Night’s Watch gallantry, no doubt
expecting him to graciously decline. Tyrion had accepted with a
smile. He had brought his warmest clothing with him when they rode
out of Winterfell, and soon discovered that it was nowhere near
warm enough. It was cold up here, and growing colder. The nights
were well below freezing now, and when the wind blew it was like a
knife cutting right through his warmest woolens. By now Stark was
no doubt regretting his chivalrous impulse. Perhaps he had learned
a lesson. The Lannisters never declined, graciously or otherwise.
The Lannisters took what was offered.
Farms and holdfasts grew scarcer and smaller as they pressed
northward, ever deeper into the darkness of the wolfswood, until
finally there were no more roofs to shelter under, and they were
thrown back on their own resources.
Tyrion was never much use in making a camp or breaking one. Too
small, too hobbled, too in-the-way. So while Stark and Yoren and
the other men erected rude shelters, tended the horses, and built a
fire, it became his custom to take his fur and a wineskin and go
off by himself to read.
On the eighteenth night of their journey, the wine was a rare
sweet amber from the Summer Isles that he had brought all the way
north from Casterly Rock, and the book a rumination on the history
and properties of dragons. With Lord Eddard Stark’s
permission, Tyrion had borrowed a few rare volumes from the
Winterfell library and packed them for the ride north.
He found a comfortable spot just beyond the noise of the camp,
beside a swift-running stream with waters clear and cold as ice. A
grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter from the biting wind.
Tyrion curled up in his fur with his back against the trunk, took a
sip of the wine, and began to read about the properties of
dragonbone. Dragonbone is black because of its high iron content,
the book told him. It is strong as steel, yet lighter and far more
flexible, and of course utterly impervious to fire. Dragonbone bows
are greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An archer so
armed can outrange any wooden bow.
Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first
come to King’s Landing for his sister’s wedding to
Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point to seek out the dragon
skulls that had hung on the walls of Targaryen’s throne room.
King Robert had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but
Tyrion had persisted until he found the skulls in the dank cellar
where they had been stored.
He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even
frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they
were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to
shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed.
He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger
skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him.
The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of
the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far
greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that
the beast’s empty eye sockets had watched him go.
There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three
thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half. The
most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than
mastiff’s skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last
two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the
Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had
not lived very long.
From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great
monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and
his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old. The singers
had given them the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar.
Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. You
could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar’s gullet, although you
would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And
the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have
swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said
to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.
Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at
Balerion’s huge, empty-eyed skull until his torch burned low,
trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine how it
must have looked when it spread its great black wings and swept
across the skies, breathing fire.
His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to
stand against the fire when he joined with King Mern of the Reach
to oppose the Targaryen conquest. That was close on three hundred
years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and not mere
provinces of a greater realm. Between them, the Two Kings had six
hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten
times as many freeriders and men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had
perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers said, and most of
those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain,
their loyalties uncertain.
The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden
fields of wheat ripe for harvest. When the Two Kings charged, the
Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run. For a few
moments, the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an end . . . but only for those few moments, before Aegon Targaryen and his
sisters joined the battle.
It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were
all unleashed at once. The singers called it the Field of Fire.
Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern
of the Reach. King Loren had escaped, and lived long enough to
surrender, pledge his fealty to the Targaryens, and beget a son,
for which Tyrion was duly grateful.
“Why do you read so much?”
Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was
standing a few feet away, regarding him curiously. He closed the
book on a finger and said, “Look at me and tell me what you
see.”
The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this some kind of
trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister.”
Tyrion sighed. “You are remarkably polite for a bastard,
Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, twelve?”
“Fourteen,” the boy said.
“Fourteen, and you’re taller than I will ever be. My
legs are short and twisted, and I walk with difficulty. I require a
special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of my
own design, you may be interested to know. It was either that or
ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I
will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might
have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver’s
grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and
the grotesqueries are all the poorer. Things are expected of me. My
father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My brother later
killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of
these little ironies. My sister married the new king and my
repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the
honor of my House, wouldn’t you agree? Yet how? Well, my legs
may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I
prefer to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a
realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my
weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer,
and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a
whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the
leather cover of the book. “That’s why I read so much,
Jon Snow.”
The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if
not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away.
Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her
son. “What are you reading about?” he asked.
“Dragons,” Tyrion told him.
“What good is that? There are no more dragons,” the
boy said with the easy certainty of youth.
“So they say,” Tyrion replied. “Sad,
isn’t it? When I was your age, used to dream of having a
dragon of my own.”
“You did?” the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he
thought Tyrion was making fun of him.
“Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can
look down over the world when he’s seated on a dragon’s
back.” Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his
feet. “I used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock
and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire.
Sometimes I’d imagine my father burning. At other times, my
sister.” Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts
horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. “Don’t look at
me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You’ve dreamt the
same kind of dreams.”
“No,” Jon Snow said, horrified. “I
wouldn’t . . . ”
“No? Never?” Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “Well,
no doubt the Starks have been terribly good to you. I’m
certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And
your brother Robb, he’s always been kind, and why not? He
gets Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father . . . he must
have good reasons for packing you off to the Night’s
Watch . . . ”
“Stop it,” Jon Snow said, his face dark with anger.
“The Night’s Watch is a noble calling!”
Tyrion laughed. “You’re too smart to believe that.
The Night’s Watch is a midden heap for all the misfits of the
realm. I’ve seen you looking at Yoren and his boys. Those are
your new brothers, Jon Snow, how do you like them? Sullen peasants,
debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind
up on the Wall, watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other
monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part is there
are no grumkins or snarks, so it’s scarcely dangerous work.
The bad part is you freeze your balls off, but since you’re
not allowed to breed anyway, I don’t suppose that
matters.”
“Stop it!” the boy screamed. He took a step forward,
his hands coiling into fists, close to tears.
Suddenly, absurdly, Tyrion felt guilty. He took a step forward,
intending to give the boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder or
mutter some word of apology.
He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One
moment he was walking toward Snow and the next he was flat on his
back on the hard rocky ground, the book spinning away from him as
he fell, the breath going out of him at the sudden impact, his
mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves. As he tried to get
up, his back spasmed painfully. He must have wrenched it in the
fall. He ground his teeth in frustration, grabbed a root, and
pulled himself back to a sitting position. “Help me,”
he said to the boy, reaching up a hand.
And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The
damned thing never made a sound. He only looked at him with those
bright red eyes, and showed him his teeth, and that was more than
enough. Tyrion sagged back to the ground with a grunt.
“Don’t help me, then. I’ll sit right here until
you leave.”
Jon Snow stroked Ghost’s thick white fur, smiling now.
“Ask me nicely.”
Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed
it out with a will. It was not the first time in his life he had
been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps he even
deserved this. “I should be very grateful for your kind
assistance, Jon,” he said mildly.
“Down, Ghost,” the boy said. The direwolf sat on his
haunches. Those red eyes never left Tyrion. Jon came around behind
him, slid his hands under his arms, and lifted him easily to his
feet. Then he picked up the book and handed it back.
“Why did he attack me?” Tyrion asked with a
sidelong glance at the direwolf. He wiped blood and dirt from his
mouth with the back of his hand.
“Maybe he thought you were a grumkin.”
Tyrion glanced at him sharply. Then he laughed, a raw snort of
amusement that came bursting out through his nose entirely without
his permission. “Oh, gods,” he said, choking on his
laughter and shaking his head, “I suppose I do rather look
like a grumkin. What does he do to snarks?”
“You don’t want to know.” Jon picked up the
wineskin and handed it to Tyrion.
Tyrion pulled out the stopper, tilted his head, and squeezed a
long stream into his mouth. The wine was cool fire as it trickled
down his throat and warmed his belly. He held out the skin to Jon
Snow. “Want some?”
The boy took the skin and tried a cautious swallow.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he said when he was
done. “What you said about the Night’s
Watch.”
Tyrion nodded.
Jon Snow set his mouth in a grim line. “If that’s
what it is, that’s what it is.”
Tyrion grinned at him. “That’s good, bastard. Most
men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
“Most men,” the boy said. “But not
you.”
“No,” Tyrion admitted, “not me. I seldom even
dream of dragons anymore. There are no dragons.” He scooped
up the fallen bearskin. “Come, we had better return to camp
before your uncle calls the banners.”
The walk was short, but the ground was rough underfoot and his
legs were cramping badly by the time they got back. Jon Snow
offered a hand to help him over a thick tangle of roots, but Tyrion
shook him off. He would make his own way, as he had all his life.
Still, the camp was a welcome sight. The shelters had been thrown
up against the tumbledown wall of a long-abandoned holdfast, a
shield against the wind. The horses had been fed and a fire had
been laid. Yoren sat on a stone, skinning a squirrel. The savory
smell of stew filled Tyrion’s nostrils. He dragged himself
over to where his man Morrec was tending the stewpot. Wordlessly,
Morrec handed him the ladle. Tyrion tasted and handed it back.
“More pepper,” he said.
Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew.
“There you are. Jon, damn it, don’t go off like that by
yourself. I thought the Others had gotten you.”
“It was the grumkins,” Tyrion told him, laughing.
Jon Snow smiled. Stark shot a baffled look at Yoren. The old man
grunted, shrugged, and went back to his bloody work.
The squirrel gave some body to the stew, and they ate it with
black bread and hard cheese that night around their fire. Tyrion
shared around his skin of wine until even Yoren grew mellow. One by
one the company drifted off to their shelters and to sleep, all but
Jon Snow, who had drawn the night’s first watch.
Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the
shelter his men had built for him, he paused and looked back at Jon
Snow. The boy stood near the fire, his face still and hard, looking
deep into the flames.
Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed.
The north went on forever.
Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a
fortnight on the wild track that passed for the kingsroad up here
had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land
quite another.
They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all
the commotion of the royal departure, riding out to the sound of
men shouting and horses snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the
groaning of the queen’s huge wheelhouse, as a light snow
flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the sprawl of
castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the columns
of knights and freeriders turned south, taking the tumult with
them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his
nephew.
It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet.
West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall
watchtowers on their stony summits. To the east the land was lower,
the ground flattening to a rolling plain that stretched away as far
as the eye could see. Stone bridges spanned swift, narrow rivers,
while small farms spread in rings around holdfasts walled in wood
and stone. The road was well trafficked, and at night for their
comfort there were rude inns to be found.
Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way
to dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose
higher and wilder with each passing mile, until by the fifth day
they had turned into mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged
promontories and snow on their shoulders. When the wind blew from
the north, long plumes of ice crystals flew from the high peaks
like banners.
With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by
northeast through the wood, a forest of oak and evergreen and black
brier that seemed older and darker than any Tyrion had ever seen.
“The wolfswood,” Benjen Stark called it, and indeed
their nights came alive with the howls of distant packs, and some
not so distant. Jon Snow’s albino direwolf pricked up his
ears at the nightly howling, but never raised his own voice in
reply. There was something very unsettling about that animal,
Tyrion thought.
There were eight in the party by then, not counting the wolf.
Tyrion traveled with two of his own men, as befit a Lannister.
Benjen Stark had only his bastard nephew and some fresh mounts for
the Night’s Watch, but at the edge of the wolfswood they
stayed a night behind the wooden walls of a forest holdfast, and
there joined up with another of the black brothers, one Yoren.
Yoren was stooped and sinister, his features hidden behind a beard
as black as his clothing, but he seemed as tough as an old root and
as hard as stone. With him were a pair of ragged peasant boys from
the Fingers. “Rapers,” Yoren said with a cold look at
his charges. Tyrion understood. Life on the Wall was said to be
hard, but no doubt it was preferable to castration.
Five men, three boys, a direwolf, twenty horses, and a cage of
ravens given over to Benjen Stark by Maester Luwin. No doubt they
made a curious fellowship for the kingsroad, or any road.
Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen
companions, with an odd cast to his face that looked uncomfortably
like dismay. Yoren had a twisted shoulder and a sour smell, his
hair and beard were matted and greasy and full of lice, his
clothing old, patched, and seldom washed. His two young recruits
smelled even worse, and seemed as stupid as they were cruel.
No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the
Night’s Watch was made up of men like his uncle. If so, Yoren
and his companions were a rude awakening. Tyrion felt sorry for the
boy. He had chosen a hard life . . . or perhaps he should say that
a hard life had been chosen for him.
He had rather less sympathy for the uncle. Benjen Stark seemed
to share his brother’s distaste for Lannisters, and he had
not been pleased when Tyrion had told him of his intentions.
“I warn you, Lannister, you’ll find no inns at the Wall,” he had
said, looking down on him.
“No doubt you’ll find some place to put me,”
Tyrion had replied. “As you might have noticed, I’m
small.”
One did not say no to the queen’s brother, of course, so
that had settled the matter, but Stark had not been happy.
“You will not like the ride, I promise you that,”
he’d said curtly, and since the moment they set out, he had
done all he could to live up to that promise.
By the end of the first week, Tyrion’s thighs were raw
from hard riding, his legs were cramping badly, and he was chilled
to the bone. He did not complain. He was damned if he would give
Benjen Stark that satisfaction.
He took a small revenge in the matter of his riding fur, a
tattered bearskin, old and musty-smelling. Stark had offered it to
him in an excess of Night’s Watch gallantry, no doubt
expecting him to graciously decline. Tyrion had accepted with a
smile. He had brought his warmest clothing with him when they rode
out of Winterfell, and soon discovered that it was nowhere near
warm enough. It was cold up here, and growing colder. The nights
were well below freezing now, and when the wind blew it was like a
knife cutting right through his warmest woolens. By now Stark was
no doubt regretting his chivalrous impulse. Perhaps he had learned
a lesson. The Lannisters never declined, graciously or otherwise.
The Lannisters took what was offered.
Farms and holdfasts grew scarcer and smaller as they pressed
northward, ever deeper into the darkness of the wolfswood, until
finally there were no more roofs to shelter under, and they were
thrown back on their own resources.
Tyrion was never much use in making a camp or breaking one. Too
small, too hobbled, too in-the-way. So while Stark and Yoren and
the other men erected rude shelters, tended the horses, and built a
fire, it became his custom to take his fur and a wineskin and go
off by himself to read.
On the eighteenth night of their journey, the wine was a rare
sweet amber from the Summer Isles that he had brought all the way
north from Casterly Rock, and the book a rumination on the history
and properties of dragons. With Lord Eddard Stark’s
permission, Tyrion had borrowed a few rare volumes from the
Winterfell library and packed them for the ride north.
He found a comfortable spot just beyond the noise of the camp,
beside a swift-running stream with waters clear and cold as ice. A
grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter from the biting wind.
Tyrion curled up in his fur with his back against the trunk, took a
sip of the wine, and began to read about the properties of
dragonbone. Dragonbone is black because of its high iron content,
the book told him. It is strong as steel, yet lighter and far more
flexible, and of course utterly impervious to fire. Dragonbone bows
are greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An archer so
armed can outrange any wooden bow.
Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first
come to King’s Landing for his sister’s wedding to
Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point to seek out the dragon
skulls that had hung on the walls of Targaryen’s throne room.
King Robert had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but
Tyrion had persisted until he found the skulls in the dank cellar
where they had been stored.
He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even
frightening. He had not thought to find them beautiful. Yet they
were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to
shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed.
He’d thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger
skulls and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him.
The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond. The flame of
the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far
greater fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that
the beast’s empty eye sockets had watched him go.
There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three
thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half. The
most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than
mastiff’s skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last
two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the
Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had
not lived very long.
From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great
monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and
his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old. The singers
had given them the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar.
Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. You
could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar’s gullet, although you
would not have ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And
the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have
swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said
to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.
Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at
Balerion’s huge, empty-eyed skull until his torch burned low,
trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine how it
must have looked when it spread its great black wings and swept
across the skies, breathing fire.
His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to
stand against the fire when he joined with King Mern of the Reach
to oppose the Targaryen conquest. That was close on three hundred
years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and not mere
provinces of a greater realm. Between them, the Two Kings had six
hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten
times as many freeriders and men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had
perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers said, and most of
those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain,
their loyalties uncertain.
The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden
fields of wheat ripe for harvest. When the Two Kings charged, the
Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run. For a few
moments, the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an end . . . but only for those few moments, before Aegon Targaryen and his
sisters joined the battle.
It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were
all unleashed at once. The singers called it the Field of Fire.
Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern
of the Reach. King Loren had escaped, and lived long enough to
surrender, pledge his fealty to the Targaryens, and beget a son,
for which Tyrion was duly grateful.
“Why do you read so much?”
Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was
standing a few feet away, regarding him curiously. He closed the
book on a finger and said, “Look at me and tell me what you
see.”
The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this some kind of
trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister.”
Tyrion sighed. “You are remarkably polite for a bastard,
Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, twelve?”
“Fourteen,” the boy said.
“Fourteen, and you’re taller than I will ever be. My
legs are short and twisted, and I walk with difficulty. I require a
special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of my
own design, you may be interested to know. It was either that or
ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I
will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might
have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver’s
grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and
the grotesqueries are all the poorer. Things are expected of me. My
father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My brother later
killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of
these little ironies. My sister married the new king and my
repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the
honor of my House, wouldn’t you agree? Yet how? Well, my legs
may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I
prefer to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a
realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my
weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer,
and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a
whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the
leather cover of the book. “That’s why I read so much,
Jon Snow.”
The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if
not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face that gave nothing away.
Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her
son. “What are you reading about?” he asked.
“Dragons,” Tyrion told him.
“What good is that? There are no more dragons,” the
boy said with the easy certainty of youth.
“So they say,” Tyrion replied. “Sad,
isn’t it? When I was your age, used to dream of having a
dragon of my own.”
“You did?” the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he
thought Tyrion was making fun of him.
“Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can
look down over the world when he’s seated on a dragon’s
back.” Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his
feet. “I used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock
and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire.
Sometimes I’d imagine my father burning. At other times, my
sister.” Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts
horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. “Don’t look at
me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You’ve dreamt the
same kind of dreams.”
“No,” Jon Snow said, horrified. “I
wouldn’t . . . ”
“No? Never?” Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “Well,
no doubt the Starks have been terribly good to you. I’m
certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And
your brother Robb, he’s always been kind, and why not? He
gets Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father . . . he must
have good reasons for packing you off to the Night’s
Watch . . . ”
“Stop it,” Jon Snow said, his face dark with anger.
“The Night’s Watch is a noble calling!”
Tyrion laughed. “You’re too smart to believe that.
The Night’s Watch is a midden heap for all the misfits of the
realm. I’ve seen you looking at Yoren and his boys. Those are
your new brothers, Jon Snow, how do you like them? Sullen peasants,
debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind
up on the Wall, watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other
monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part is there
are no grumkins or snarks, so it’s scarcely dangerous work.
The bad part is you freeze your balls off, but since you’re
not allowed to breed anyway, I don’t suppose that
matters.”
“Stop it!” the boy screamed. He took a step forward,
his hands coiling into fists, close to tears.
Suddenly, absurdly, Tyrion felt guilty. He took a step forward,
intending to give the boy a reassuring pat on the shoulder or
mutter some word of apology.
He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One
moment he was walking toward Snow and the next he was flat on his
back on the hard rocky ground, the book spinning away from him as
he fell, the breath going out of him at the sudden impact, his
mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves. As he tried to get
up, his back spasmed painfully. He must have wrenched it in the
fall. He ground his teeth in frustration, grabbed a root, and
pulled himself back to a sitting position. “Help me,”
he said to the boy, reaching up a hand.
And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The
damned thing never made a sound. He only looked at him with those
bright red eyes, and showed him his teeth, and that was more than
enough. Tyrion sagged back to the ground with a grunt.
“Don’t help me, then. I’ll sit right here until
you leave.”
Jon Snow stroked Ghost’s thick white fur, smiling now.
“Ask me nicely.”
Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed
it out with a will. It was not the first time in his life he had
been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps he even
deserved this. “I should be very grateful for your kind
assistance, Jon,” he said mildly.
“Down, Ghost,” the boy said. The direwolf sat on his
haunches. Those red eyes never left Tyrion. Jon came around behind
him, slid his hands under his arms, and lifted him easily to his
feet. Then he picked up the book and handed it back.
“Why did he attack me?” Tyrion asked with a
sidelong glance at the direwolf. He wiped blood and dirt from his
mouth with the back of his hand.
“Maybe he thought you were a grumkin.”
Tyrion glanced at him sharply. Then he laughed, a raw snort of
amusement that came bursting out through his nose entirely without
his permission. “Oh, gods,” he said, choking on his
laughter and shaking his head, “I suppose I do rather look
like a grumkin. What does he do to snarks?”
“You don’t want to know.” Jon picked up the
wineskin and handed it to Tyrion.
Tyrion pulled out the stopper, tilted his head, and squeezed a
long stream into his mouth. The wine was cool fire as it trickled
down his throat and warmed his belly. He held out the skin to Jon
Snow. “Want some?”
The boy took the skin and tried a cautious swallow.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” he said when he was
done. “What you said about the Night’s
Watch.”
Tyrion nodded.
Jon Snow set his mouth in a grim line. “If that’s
what it is, that’s what it is.”
Tyrion grinned at him. “That’s good, bastard. Most
men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
“Most men,” the boy said. “But not
you.”
“No,” Tyrion admitted, “not me. I seldom even
dream of dragons anymore. There are no dragons.” He scooped
up the fallen bearskin. “Come, we had better return to camp
before your uncle calls the banners.”
The walk was short, but the ground was rough underfoot and his
legs were cramping badly by the time they got back. Jon Snow
offered a hand to help him over a thick tangle of roots, but Tyrion
shook him off. He would make his own way, as he had all his life.
Still, the camp was a welcome sight. The shelters had been thrown
up against the tumbledown wall of a long-abandoned holdfast, a
shield against the wind. The horses had been fed and a fire had
been laid. Yoren sat on a stone, skinning a squirrel. The savory
smell of stew filled Tyrion’s nostrils. He dragged himself
over to where his man Morrec was tending the stewpot. Wordlessly,
Morrec handed him the ladle. Tyrion tasted and handed it back.
“More pepper,” he said.
Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew.
“There you are. Jon, damn it, don’t go off like that by
yourself. I thought the Others had gotten you.”
“It was the grumkins,” Tyrion told him, laughing.
Jon Snow smiled. Stark shot a baffled look at Yoren. The old man
grunted, shrugged, and went back to his bloody work.
The squirrel gave some body to the stew, and they ate it with
black bread and hard cheese that night around their fire. Tyrion
shared around his skin of wine until even Yoren grew mellow. One by
one the company drifted off to their shelters and to sleep, all but
Jon Snow, who had drawn the night’s first watch.
Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the
shelter his men had built for him, he paused and looked back at Jon
Snow. The boy stood near the fire, his face still and hard, looking
deep into the flames.
Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed.