No one could say whether Wright's words of consolation had truly taken root.
For a long while, the Bone Armor King remained hidden within the shadowed vaults of the Hall, its black stone walls heavy with the smoke of old fires and older defeats. Yet at last, he forced himself to rise. Wrapped in pale armor carved from bone and horn, he emerged from the fortress into the cold air and sent runners to the garrisons of the other captured castles, commanding them to assemble at once.
It was not because he intended to fight the Northerners to the death.
Wright's counsel had rekindled his courage, yes, but courage alone did not make a king a fool. As a ruler, he understood his weakness all too clearly. With the strength he possessed now, he could not stand against the hosts of the North, not with a three-headed dragon looming behind them like a living god of war.
Retreat was the only path left to him.
Beyond the Wall, north of the haunted forest and the lands of men, lay the territories of the summoned creatures and the scattered free tribes. If the Northerners dared follow him there, he could draw spearwives and warriors from nearby clans, lure the enemy into ground he knew, and break them on ice and stone.
As the decision settled in his mind, a bitter weight pressed against his chest. He clenched his jaw until the old scars along his cheeks stood out white against weathered skin. Pride demanded battle, but survival demanded restraint.
"To stay," he murmured to himself, fingers tightening around the hilt of his axe, "is to bleed my people dry for nothing."
He would not do that.
The campaign, at least, had not been without profit.
He ordered his warriors to strip the Night's Watch bare. Everything that could be carried was seized. Swords and mail, spears and shields, grain sealed in old stone granaries, casks of wine, sacks of salt and spice, even iron tools and leather tack worn smooth by generations of use. The Watch's hoarded wealth vanished in a single night. Nor were the nearby petty northern lords spared. Their storehouses were emptied, their herds driven north.
Such goods were priceless in the frozen borderlands.
Though the invasion had cost him many lives, the spoils were vast. As he calculated the balance, the Bone Armor King allowed himself a thin smile. If he framed the retreat as a victory when he returned north, his standing among the tribes would not suffer. It might even grow.
Compared to the warriors he had personally led south, the forces garrisoned in the other castles were a disorderly rabble. They were hunters and raiders from many tribes, men who had lived their whole lives fighting alone or in small bands. Discipline had never been their way.
When the last reports reached him, the Bone Armor King mounted a stone step before the gathered chieftains. His voice carried across the courtyard, calm and unyielding.
"Burn the castles," he said, raising one gauntleted hand. "Take all that is worth carrying. When the fires die, we go home."
A low murmur spread through the crowd. Some faces tightened with unease. Others broke into eager grins.
He met their eyes one by one, letting the silence stretch. "We crossed the Wall," he continued, his tone hardening. "We took their steel and their food. We showed the crows that the free folk still have teeth. That is victory enough."
A few of the sharper chieftains shifted, exchanging glances. Doubt lingered among them. Yet most of the warriors had already filled their packs and bellies. For men drunk on plunder, the thought of returning north weighed lightly.
Their vision was narrower than their king's. The lands south of the Wall held little meaning for them. Even their own tribal territories were no more than hunting grounds that changed with the seasons.
Borders and dominion were the concerns of kneelers. What they wanted was strong drink, warm fires, and women who would sing of their deeds.
So when the order to withdraw was given, the greater part of the remaining savages accepted it readily. Only a handful, ambitious and keen-eyed men, argued in low voices, their hands restless on spear shafts.
The Bone Armor King silenced them with a single look.
By dawn, smoke rose from the Night's Watch castles, black pillars staining the pale sky. Flames devoured ancient timbers and crumbling towers alike.
Then the host turned north, passing once more through the Black Gate. No songs were sung, no banners raised. They did not look back.
Whether they would ever march south again, none of them cared to wonder.
*
Meanwhile, Baelon, riding hard for Last Hearth, found himself facing a peril no less dire.
When Tyraxes had plunged into the mountain valley, his wings beating thunder through the narrow air, he had disturbed things that should not have been stirred. Creatures that did not belong to the world of men. Even after Baelon turned his dragon toward the open sky and began his retreat, they pursued him without hesitation, as though the valley itself had risen in anger.
Baelon leaned forward in his saddle, gloved fingers tightening around the leather straps. His eyes swept the air around them, sharp and wary.
"What in the Seven Hells are these things?" he muttered, breath misting before his face. "Ice and snow given wings?"
Tyraxes beat his wings in a steady, powerful rhythm, his long crimson body cutting through the cold air. From the dragon's back, Baelon studied the creatures that had surrounded them.
Closest were shapes no larger than sparrows.
At first glance, they mimicked birds, but only in silhouette. There was no flesh to them, no feathers of down or bone beneath. Their bodies were sculpted entirely from ice and snow. Frost formed their plumage. Their beaks gleamed like sharpened crystal. Wings and talons were carved from frozen white, catching the pale light as they moved.
If they had been still, Baelon might have taken them for crude statues left behind by some mad hand.
But they were alive.
They flitted through the air in widening circles around Tyraxes, silent and watchful, and Baelon felt the malice in them as surely as he felt the cold biting through his cloak.
They did not attack at once.
They merely watched.
Farther back, larger shapes glided through the sky. Eagle-like forms, broad-winged and imposing, their icy bodies dense and heavy, their gaze fixed upon Baelon with chilling focus.
Baelon glanced downward. The valley floor lay far below, jagged and white. He saw no movement there yet. Either whatever else dwelled in this place had not caught up, or it was waiting, patient as death.
His jaw tightened.
"Tyraxes," he said quietly, his voice steady despite the hammering of his heart. "Burn them."
The dragon answered with a roar that shook the mountain air.
Blood-red flame erupted from Tyraxes' jaws, washing across the sky in a sweeping arc. The heat rolled outward, scorching frost from stone and air alike. At the sight of it, the smaller ice-creatures scattered in panic, darting away like prey fleeing a hunter.
It availed them nothing.
The dragonfire swallowed them whole. The sparrow-shaped beings vanished in an instant, their frozen bodies dissolving into steam before they could even cry out.
The larger creatures endured.
The eagle-forms were caught by the edge of the blood-flames, their wings and bodies splashed with burning crimson fire. Yet, impossibly, the flames did not cling. They dimmed, hissed, and went out.
Baelon's eyes widened.
As the fire died, the creatures visibly shrank. Their wings drew inward. Their bodies lost mass, as though the flames had devoured something essential to their being.
Baelon sucked in a sharp breath. "Strange," he murmured, unease creeping into his voice.
Tyraxes' blood-flames were no ordinary fire. They burned hotter, fiercer, clinging to flesh and scale alike until nothing remained. For these creatures to extinguish it so easily, even at such a cost-
What in the world are you?
Baelon's expression hardened. His gaze flicked to his own hands, then to the creatures circling closer.
Tyraxes feared nothing that flew. But Baelon was still a man of flesh and blood.
If even one of those things touched him, he knew what would follow. Ice creeping over skin. Breath stolen. A frozen death, like the men of House Karstark he had seen entombed in crystal frost.
As if sensing his fear, the surviving creatures surged forward.
They beat their wings in unison and charged straight at Tyraxes.
"ROAR!"
Tyraxes answered with fury. Another torrent of blood-red flame burst forth, brighter and broader than before, turning the air into an inferno.
Still, the eagle-creatures did not melt at once.
Baelon's heart thundered in his chest as he watched them push through fire and heat, their frozen forms streaking toward him through the burning sky, relentless and silent, closing the distance with every heartbeat.
---------
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