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The horn of Castle Black sounded across the Wall.
Inside the castle, brothers of the Night's Watch turned the winches at once. The great gate at the bottom of the tunnel opened with a groan of iron and wood.
Robb rode in on Bloodwind with snow clinging to his black cloak. The ice direwolf's dragonglass scale armor was cracked and broken across the chest and limbs.
Jon had heard the horn and come out to wait.
"Robb, Bloodwind's dragonglass armor is shattered. Are you hurt? What happened out there?"
Robb jumped down from Bloodwind's back and smiled. "I'm fine, Jon. We were ambushed by the Others, that is all."
"That is all?" Jon's face tightened. "Robb, you and Bloodwind are strong. I know that. But stop going out alone. I worry one day you will vanish like Uncle Benjen and never come back."
Robb heard the concern beneath the anger.
"I understand."
He stepped closer, clapped Jon on the shoulder, and leaned near his ear. "You sound more like family now. Should I thank Ygritte for teaching you?"
Jon stiffened.
Robb grinned. "Enough time has passed. How are things between you and her?"
Jon pushed his hand away. "I am talking about serious matters. What is happening beyond the Wall?"
"Others and wights everywhere. The closest signs have reached the ruins of Whitetree, two or three days from Castle Black.
"Still, unless some dragon flies beyond the Wall to die, the dead army can only wait for the Bay of Seals near Eastwatch to freeze before it can go around the Wall."
Jon's expression told Robb enough. He and Ygritte had not mended things.
Robb let the subject rest for the moment.
"Bloodwind. Dragons. Others," Jon said quietly. "In two short years, Westeros has changed beyond recognition."
"It has changed," Robb said. "You became Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. I became King of the Seven Kingdoms. Not all changes are bad."
He paused, then added, "If Father could see us now, he would be shocked beyond words and still trying to look stern."
Jon laughed despite himself.
For a few moments, the two brothers laughed as they had not laughed in far too long.
The laughter faded first from Robb.
"My only regret," he said, "is that I did not force Father out of King's Landing when I had the chance. Jon, Ygritte is a good woman. Do not leave yourself the same kind of regret."
Jon looked away. "She is free folk. I am a sworn brother of the Night's Watch."
"No wife, no lands, no children," Robb said. "That is the oath, yes?"
Jon frowned.
"Then do not marry her. Do not give her lands. Do not have children. Spend your lives together, and the words remain intact."
"You are twisting the oath."
"I am interpreting it correctly in my own way."
"Your Grace! Your Grace!"
Sam came running toward them, breathless. Castle Black had not thinned him. If anything, the hard life there had somehow made him a little rounder.
"A raven from King's Landing."
Maester Aemon was nearly one hundred and two and spent more time in bed than on his feet now. Sam had taken over much of the maester's work at Castle Black, though he still went out when he could to see Gilly and her child in the Gift.
Jon had asked Mance to make sure Gilly was looked after. With Mance's protection, she had little to fear.
Robb accepted the letter and could not resist one last jab. "Jon, you and Ygritte could take a lesson from Sam and Gilly."
Then he opened the letter.
The smile left his face.
"Robb?" Jon asked. "What is it?"
"Daenerys Targaryen has taken Yunkai and Astapor back from the slave masters. She has also subdued the khalasars at Vaes Dothrak."
Robb's voice tightened as he read on.
"She did it with four dragons."
Jon frowned. "Four?"
"Four. Why four?"
Jon did not understand why the number mattered. "Reports about dragons have been flying for more than a year. Half of them contradict the other half. Perhaps she always had four. You said yourself that the ships they seized from Theon were not enough to cross the narrow sea in force."
"That was what I thought," Robb said. "But the situation has changed."
He folded the letter. "Come with me to Mance."
From a tower in Castle Black, Littlefinger watched Robb and Jon leave. He wore a black cloak of the Night's Watch. Beside him stood Ser Alliser, Olly, and several others.
The Wall had nineteen castles across three hundred miles. Jon had given ten of them to Mance to distribute among the free folk according to how well the tribes could live together.
Most of those castles could not hold thousands of people as Castle Black now did. Chiefs and warriors occupied the strongholds, while the rest of the free folk built settlements around them and began breaking ground for fields.
The free folk had once lived by hunting, fishing, and raiding villages south of the Wall. Few had experience farming.
Robb had anticipated that. He had ordered Jory to hire commoners from Winterfell at high wages to teach them. The work had been difficult, but by autumn the free folk would harvest crops they had planted with their own hands.
Mance had taken his own people to Oakenshield, east of Castle Black and less than half a day's ride away.
The castle was not large, but its defenses were sound. When Robb and Jon arrived, free folk were moving in and out of its gates in such numbers that it looked almost like a fortress with the bustle of a market.
Since laws had been set for the scattered tribes, disputes came to Mance every day. Oakenshield had become the free folk's court as much as their stronghold.
Mance looked more gaunt than before. He was busy, tired, and still sharp-eyed.
Robb did not waste time.
"Mance Rayder," he said, "in the name of the King of the Seven Kingdoms, I summon the free folk to war."
Across the world, four dragons circled the sky above Meereen.
Their shadows swept over the city like moving storms.
Drogon had grown larger in the half year since Old Wyk, black-scaled and terrible, close enough to the old legends that men had begun calling him Balerion reborn. Rhaegal and Viserion were smaller but still monstrous, green-bronze and cream-gold. Dany, the red hatchling spotted with gold, was the smallest, yet even she was a great beast beside any man.
The freedmen below shuddered when the shadows passed over them. They knew the dragons obeyed their mother, but knowledge did not make it easy to stand beneath creatures that could decide life and death from the sky.
A giant wagon gilded like a moving palace rolled out from the Great Pyramid.
Daenerys sat inside in a white queen's gown, smiling through the window and waving to the freedmen who bowed to her. Missandei and Tyrion rode with her, though Tyrion looked faintly uncomfortable with the ceremony.
Ser Barristan Selmy rode beside the wagon in full armor, rare enough in Essos to draw stares. A knight in a red mask rode on the other side.
Nearly eight thousand Unsullied followed in perfect order, wearing fitted leather armor and spiked helms. They carried spears and shields, short swords at their waists, and throwing spears for closer work. If given time against a cavalry charge, they could change to longer formation spears.
Their obedience was more frightening than their weapons.
Behind them came the Dothraki.
The khalasars were the opposite of the Unsullied: loose, noisy, undisciplined to the eye. Men talked as they rode. Horses shifted across the line. Yet nearly eighty thousand Dothraki riders had become Daenerys's main striking force.
Behind them marched roughly thirty thousand freedmen soldiers drawn from Meereen, Yunkai, and Astapor. Add the sailors and fighters waiting at the harbor with Euron's ships, and Daenerys commanded more than one hundred and twenty thousand troops.
Her problem was not men.
It was ships.
Euron's fleet could not carry them all. Her movement through Meereen could not be hidden from spies. A round trip between Meereen and Westeros would take at least two months. If she landed too few soldiers first, Robb's armies could gather and devour them.
But Daenerys and Tyrion both looked confident.
At the harbor, the answer appeared.
A purple wave rose on the sea.
As it drew closer, men saw it was no wave at all, but a vast fleet of at least five hundred ships with purple hulls and purple sails.
There was only one purple fleet in the world.
The fleet of Braavos, the Secret City, commanded by the Sealord.
When the ships entered Meereen's harbor, the whole sea seemed to ripple violet. Miho Toth came down from the largest warship with Quarro at his side and met Daenerys before the watching army.
"Honored queen," Miho said, eyes fixed on the dragons in the sky, "as agreed, I have brought the fleet of the Secret City on time."
"Thank you, Sealord Miho," Daenerys said. "I will repay your help twice over. You will not regret today's choice."
"I believe in Your Grace's army and in your four dragons," Miho replied. "But as a merchant, I must insure my investment."
He turned. "Captain Harry, come forward."
Harry Strickland stumbled out of the crowd in bright yellow armor marked with a golden skull. He was fat, round-headed, pale-eyed, and looked nothing like the commander of one of the most feared sellsword companies in the world.
"Your Grace," Miho said, "this is Harry Strickland, captain-general of the Golden Company, the strongest, most famous, and most expensive sellsword company in Essos.
"In ordinary battles in Westeros, the Golden Company will not be required to fight, and I ask that you not restrict their freedom. But in decisive battles, they will help you win."
Daenerys did not know Miho's full intention, but she was not foolish enough to refuse a top sellsword company offered without cost.
"I have heard the name of the Golden Company," she said. "Everything will be as Sealord Miho wishes."
"Then I wish Your Grace a swift conquest of Westeros."
Daenerys's smile cooled.
"Not conquest, Sealord. Recovery."
Soon after, more than one hundred thousand soldiers and a great many horses boarded nearly six hundred ships of every size.
With four dragons circling overhead, the fleet raised sail toward Westeros.
Daenerys stood on the deck of Serenity and looked toward the land that had filled her dreams for most of her life.
'People of Westeros, your queen is coming home.'
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