8: How to train your dragon… Part 1

How to train your dragon… Part 1

Jon

At least a dozens leagues later, the ground quaked as the dragon finally came to a halt.Full novel: Dragons of Ice and Fire — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

Each of the dragon's massive steps caused avalanches over the slopes, shook the snow from the branches of the soldier pines. The sheer noise of the dragon's every movement was so loud it dominated his entire world. It was all he could do just to hold on.

Jon's head was spinning, his body was trembling. He was gripping the dragon's horn so tightly he couldn't even feel his hands any more. There was absolutely nothing he could do but hold on for dear life as the dragon finally came to a stop. He let out a shaky, weary breath. Even through his furs, the mountain winds should have been bitterly cold, but he felt… fine. Just tired, and battered.

The dragon shuddered, let out a breath, and slowly lowered itself down. The dragon was breathing deeply, catching its breath. What a ride. Jon gagged, feeling vomit almost burst from his throat. We must have gone tens of leagues.

The dragon had stopped halfway up one of the smaller peaks in the northern Frostfangs, about three hundred feet off the ground along a good ridgetop - a small plateau on the snow-covered mountainside, offering a decent view of the surrounding hills. Jon was maybe another thirty or forty feet up - his head was still swimming, disoriented by the truly brutal, disorienting experience of riding the dragon. He couldn't judge the height too well.

In the air, when its wings had been whole, the dragon had certainly moved with ease, as if it were one with the wind. But on the ground, the dragon moved with all the grace of a mammoth trying to hop stairs.

It's injured, Jon realized. His eyes roamed over the dragon's immense form. Badly injured.

When the dragon had left its hilltop and waded through the army of the dead, it had been vulnerable. They had escaped the legion of wights and ice spiders, but now there were even more bloody wounds along the dragon's legs and lower hide.

The dragon's scales seemed thinner along the back of the joints, along the side of the belly, he noticed. Its scales were tough, but not indestructible. There were gaps where scales had been too badly damaged or destroyed. The dead had exploited that: they had somehow known precisely where to cut, where to cause the most damage to a dragon.

If they catch us again, the dragon will be in trouble, Jon realized. A thousand pinpricks could eventually kill anything, even a dragon.

Jon finally let go of the dragon's horn. He had to shake his arms to work circulation back into them, and then he was wincing. He didn't think that he had ever held onto anything that tightly in his entire life before. His entire body felt sore and ready to collapse into the snow, and Jon desperately wanted to rest - but he knew that he couldn't.

If the Others ambush us when we're recovering…

Jon did nothing but wince and curse as he shambled down from the dragon's neck. His body still screamed from the injuries he'd taken. They were light wounds, thankfully, but still painful, and he nearly lost his grip trying to clamber down the beast's neck. Even through his gloves, the dragon's white scales were so sharp his hands were scratched and bloody. He fell down outright for the last three feet, crumpling painfully into the snow.

Unfortunately, he landed on his bad leg. After biting back a shout of pain that came out as a hiss, after recovering and catching his breath, Jon turned back to face the dragon. It was already curling up around itself with a low growl, like some enormous cat. Its eyes were focused on Jon, though.

From up close, he was struck all over again by a simple truth: the dragon was larger than any living thing Jon had ever seen before. It wasn't even close. The dragon put mammoths to shame, it could have put a dozen or more of them to shame all at once. It was so large that even when coiled its body draped over the mountainside.

It's so big. It has teeth bigger than I am. The teeth were as black as pig iron. It made him feel weak just staring at this… living wall of muscle and flesh. His head was still spinning, struggling to think…

First things first. Fire. I need fire, and I need to tend my wounds. Maester Aemon had always said that any wound that wasn't treated quickly and with the appropriate poultices could fester. Qhorin Halfhand's own ranger lore on the matter, which plants and herbs to use to treat wounds in the field when you lacked a maester's luxuries, had been just as instructive.

Normally, Jon would have hesitated lighting a fire with so many looking for him, but he figured that the giant dragon was already enough of a giveaway. He needed the heat. Not only to warm himself, but to singe the worst of his wounds.

He stared around the area, but there were no trees on this barren mountainside. They were still too close to the frozen wastes. He had no kindling, he had left his blankets behind. He had nothing to work with for warming himself up. Jon cursed, and focused on an even more immediate problem: his shoulder was still bleeding slightly.

The ice spider. Jon gasped as he worked his arm around and managed to pull the spider's fangs out of the small of his back. He inspected them in his gloved hand, grimacing in pain. The fangs weren't made of bone or chitin, but of living ice, wickedly curved and white as milk. Even through his gloves, the biting cold the fangs radiated was a pain all its own.

Fortunately, the ice spider's bite hadn't gone deep through his thick furs and leathers. Still, some venom had gotten into him, and it was making him feel numb and woozy on his feet. Worse, it was making his old ice spider wound in his leg flare with pain, like the new was somehow nastily combining with the old.

Fire. That was what helped with an ice spider's bite. I need fire.

He looked around. There was no source of kindling in sight - not even a single tree. He didn't even have a flint.

Jon let out a breath and sighed. He paused, considering the problem.

Then he turned to stare at the dragon, looking it up and down.

"You're a dragon," he muttered, practically willing the dragon to understand. "You can breathe fire. I need warmth. Fire. Do you understand me?"

The dragon's unblinking black eyes stared at him.

Jon cursed. His furs were thick, but the air atop this mountain was colder than sin, and the lingering venom was worse: the cold sweat on his brow was not a good sign. Jon tried to close his eyes and concentrate on warging, like he'd done before, but it was harder. He couldn't concentrate deeply enough; his head was aching.

The dragon is from Old Valyria, he remembered the three-eyed crow mentioning. It must have encountered humans before. The Valyrians were dragon-tamers.

Jon struggled to think. What was the Valyrian word for fire? The only High Valyrian he had ever learnt from Maester Luwin had been the occasional word or phrase that popped up during his lessons.

"Umm… dracatrik!" Jon shouted, slurring his words. He knew the herb 'dragonthorn', which had Valyrian roots as 'dracatrik'. Targaryen names, he thought, Targaryen names were based on Valyrian words. "Draclarion… Dracagar… um… Dracaerys—"

Suddenly, the dragon inhaled. Great plumes of steam billowed from its mouth. Dracarys, Jon realized. It meant dragonfire. The name 'Aerys' had roots from the word 'fire', and 'draca' was a bastard form of 'dragon'. Dragonfire.

Jon saw white flames grow from the dragon's mouth. He jumped backwards instinctively, but the dragon wasn't aiming for him. The white stream of fire scoured over the rocks, causing evaporation to fill the air.

No; not fire. The air was split apart by a white jet of… something. A force that burned, but without heat. Something of such intensity that it looked like fire - but it wasn't hot. It wasn't fire.

Rocks split apart in sharp cracks of noise, and even ice shattered in a staccato of glasslike shrieks.

It was the first time Jon had felt the dragon's breath from up close - and contrary to what he had expected, he only felt the area grow colder. Dangerously so. Jon suddenly felt the temperature plummet even further. The backdraft was so cold it scalded his skin even through his furs.

The dragonfire was colder than anything he had ever imagined. It was so cold that the rocks cracked and snapped, while the frost scoured everything clean. The cold steam billowed like smoke - white mist scorching over the rocks and snow. It was so cold that the stones were still crackling.

The dragon's breath was so cold it burnt. If he had been unwise enough to put his hand in it, he had no doubt his hand would have snapped off. The dragon's breath was icefire, he realized, or perhaps frostfire was the better word, and it was beyond freezing.

Its breath had left spikes of ice as sharp as needles scattered around it, pointing away from the dragon's jaws like sharp daggers. In an instant, it froze the moisture in the air into spikes. The rocks were still hissing and crackling from the intense, concentrated cold while the icy mist caused him to shiver.

"…You breathe cold." The statement felt so unreal. It didn't even make sense. And yet now he was trembling even more. He would be even more a fool to deny the evidence of his own eyes. "You breathe cold… Of course you do. Ice dragon, breathes cold."

Despite himself, Jon felt a chuckle hit his throat. The venom was making him woozy. Should I try frost-burning my injuries? Somehow, that didn't sound like a good idea. He was chuckling even as his hands trembled. "…You breathe cold…"

His body was trembling. Slowly, Jon moved to put his hand against the dragon's scale, on its torso. The dragon didn't twitch. He could feel its quiet, steady breathing. It was just… watching him.

Even through his glove, the dragon's body felt cool. Not freezing cold, just cool.

No fire, then, Jon sighed. Not today.

"…You know," he said to no one in particular, still shivering, "when I was a boy, I once asked the maester how hot a dragon's fire was. Luwin said dragonfire would have been… far hotter than the forge of any blacksmith who has ever lived, impossibly hot, as hot as standing next to the sun." He wiped his watering eyes with the back of his glove. "He didn't mention the other kind of dragon. I feel somewhat misled."

The dragon kept staring down at him, with no reaction at all, apart from exhaling slowly through its nostrils. Two long pale plumes of frost curled away into the mountain air. It's like a castle is looking at me, he thought. Gods, the dragon is bigger than some castles. Or at least bigger than some of Winterfell's towers.

He tried to think practically. The venom was in him, the wounds needed tending, and there was no fire to be had. He had nothing. He could only hope that the ice spider's bite wouldn't fester, at least. It was a beast of living ice, not proper flesh, so maybe… ?

I don't know. Jon took a deep breath, pulling his furs up further and cocooning himself in his cloak. It would be a cold night, but there was nothing for it. There was nothing more he could do. He needed to rest; the adrenaline and battle fury had bled away so quickly he felt ready to collapse on the spot.

He stared up at the dragon again and found it still staring back. But after a moment, the dragon lost interest and settled down to rest. It laid its head down across the ridge, curling slightly inwards. Jon wasn't sure if it was intentional on the dragon's part or not, but now he was protected from most of the wind.

It's tired too, Jon thought. The dragon needed rest as well, no doubt even more than him. It was exhausted and tired - it had been fighting for days. It had been hunted for weeks, weeks - all the while the Others had never allowed it to properly sleep. It had actually galloped all those leagues over the hills and mountains, more or less, while he'd just been stuck clutching to its back scales and horns for dear life. The dragon needed to sleep and it needed to heal.

Jon stared upwards at the dragon's wings. Its left wing was still injured. It couldn't fly. It needed time to heal, and that meant that it needed food, shelter. A place of safety. And there was little safety to be had in the far north these days.

For a heartbeat, Jon debated trying to bring it to the three-eyed crow. There were merits to the idea, but… no. The greenseer had told him that his grove's protections were limited, and Jon doubted the children had the resources to feed a dragon. And the dragon most certainly could not fit in the tunnels in any case. I need some other safe place, a place where the dragon can be protected as well.

The Wall was an attractive option. South of it, he would not need to worry about the Others.

Still - the Wall was seven hundred feet high and the dragon couldn't fly. The dragon would be trapped at the foot of Wall, unable to fit through the tunnels. The Watch wasn't rich in food reserves, either. Then there was the issue of the sworn brothers; he had no idea how to even begin to explain all that had happened since he had first left with Qhorin.

They must think I'm dead, Jon quietly thought. It has been months. Few rangers ranged more than a few score of leagues beyond the Wall. I've been beyond the edge of the ranger's farthest maps. And he was still in the far, far north. It could take more months just to get back to the Wall. And even if I told them everything I've gone through, they'd never believe me.

But above all else: How would the Night's Watch react if I tried to bring an injured ice dragon into the realm?

Jon wasn't too keen to find out, and he wasn't even sure if he could stop the dragon from terrorizing innocent citizens. This dragon was immense, as large as any from the stories and histories that Luwin had taught him. If it chose to hunt humans, it could not be stopped. Until Jon was sure he could control it, it would be too dangerous to bring it into the north.

No, he decided. I need somewhere secluded, but safe. Somewhere I can learn how to tame the dragon. Somewhere the dragon has food and time to heal. Somewhere we can protect ourselves from the Others.

He could only think of one place; the most easily defensible location in the far north. A peninsula with its own natural harbor, its coastal waters rich with enough seals and walruses that even a dragon could be fed with ease. It was even close enough to the Wall that they could cross around it by water if they had to. A peninsula that was as far from the white walkers of the frozen wastes as could be.

"Hardhome," Jon decided finally, nodding. "We must go to Hardhome."

So far as he knew, the peninsula was deserted. Once, it had been the closest thing the wildlings had ever had to a true town, a gathering point for dozens of chieftains centuries ago to try to make a true city of wildlings… but then the settlement had been razed and all its people slain. Nobody, not even the maesters or the wildlings were quite sure what had happened to the settlement. All that was certain was, the wildlings and all their clans still avoided the place to this day - they considered the peninsula's ruins cursed.

But Hardhome would be secluded, defensible, and close to the Wall.

Yes, we can outrun the Others by heading through the haunted forest towards the coast. Even when Jon had been in Mance's army, the wildlings had whispered that the Others' forces were coming from the northwest, from the Lands of Always Winter. And now Jon knew the truth of it: they certainly were coming from there. Therefore, heading southeast as far as possible seemed like a plan.

The dragon needs time to heal. The Others still hadn't moved their forces in bulk, but he knew they were coming. An unending army of the dead. White walkers unlike any that had been seen since the Long Night.

But then, what of the white walkers that were already here in the wildling's lands? For hunting the dragon, the white walkers had dispatched only five of their number, and several thousand wights. Even at the slaughter in the Frostfangs, Jon doubted there had been many more of them: Mance's sprawling camp hadn't fallen to the dead, not truly, but to their own panic and lack of organization.

Jon was increasingly certain: the haunted forest had seen white walkers, but there couldn't be many of them. Perhaps they could all be considered scouts or outriders, in fact, as the greenseer had said. If he fled far enough into the haunted forest, the dragon would likely be safe. And from there…

From Hardhome, I could go to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Maybe I could even cross over to Skagos…

He took a deep breath, trying to focus himself. There was no shelter on the mountainside, instead he had to press up against the dragon to escape from the wind. He crawled under its wing, pressing near its chest. He was a bit scared that the dragon might shift and crush him, but the ice dragon seemed to be sound asleep. Its breaths were deep and evenly spaced, sonorous in a way that reminded him of a blacksmith's bellows.

Jon propped his head up against the dragon's scales, letting his eyes drift out over the mountain. The sun was foggy behind the clouds, not quite close to sunset, but it still felt late. The dragon wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold either: it was welcome shelter from the elements.

Strangely, Jon felt better the longer he touched the dragon's hide. He could still feel the cold, but it didn't have the same edge to it. The dragon wasn't giving him warmth, but it was like the cold and the venom lost some of its grip on him.

Jon started to get comfortable there, resting against the dragon's scales. He struggled to keep his eyes open. He knew he should stay awake, but his eyes felt so heavy… it was hard to even concentrate.

The dragon's snoring was a low rumble now, so deep it felt like a shiver running down Jon's spine.

"…You probably had a name once," Jon said, mostly to himself. It felt like the dragon needed a name. Or perhaps he was just too exhausted to think clearly. "The Valyrians named their dragons. The histories are full of them." He tried to remember the ones Luwin had recited, the Targaryen's histories and lineages, the beasts that had created the Seven Kingdoms. Balerion and Vhagar. Meraxes and the dragons of the Dance. He couldn't remember the names of the rest, not now, with his mind so thick with exhaustion. "They were all dead before I was born. Every one of them." He looked at the dragon for a long moment. Its eyes were already closed. "Except you."

His back settled into a less harsh spot amidst the dragon's scales. His head tilted backwards, thinking quietly. A great dragon of white and traces of red, one that could breathe ice colder than any storm…

"Winter," Jon said after a pause. Winter is coming, his family's words. It was the only word that seemed appropriate. "…You are winter."

It took him a while to remember the Valyrian word for winter. The time passed by in drowsy silence, until he eventually figured it out.

"Sonagon," Jon said, just as his eyelids began to close. "Your name is Sonagon…"

Jon was woken early by a stinging pain. His eyelids flickered, he winced. After a moment, he realized that there was a raven on his shoulder: it was pecking his face.

The greenseer, Jon realized, slowly coming awake. When his eyes opened, he saw he was covered in entire inches of snow. I slept under all that? He marveled for a moment. I don't even feel cold. How?

Still, he hadn't slept for long. He shoved the mystery to the back of his mind, worked his arms. Anything to shake away some of his exhaustion.

And then he heard the noise in the air.

…No, it had been there for the entire time. He was only now noticing.

The air was filled with the sounds of ravens fluttering around him. The birds cawed noisily, raising an entire racket, batting at his hair with their wings and pecking at his cheek. Jon could only grumble weakly as he gathered up the strength to move. The greenseer had said that he would try to hold the Others back from giving chase, but Jon doubted he would be able to do so for long. This was the only warning he could get.

Jon, still sitting back against the dragon's bulk, sighed. It's time. We need to move.

He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. He found Ghost quickly. His direwolf had survived the battle with little but a mildly injured rump, but had been forced to take a different path. The direwolf was circling around these mountains to avoid the wights, and he guessed they would see one another soon.

Phantom was harder to find. The shadowcat had almost managed to slip away from him whilst he slept; she had fled much further than Ghost had. Jon had to struggle to pull Phantom in again, but he did, and then he ordered both animals to return to him.

Jon clenched a fist, testing his chilled fingers. No stiffness. He let out a breath, and found his body wasn't shivering. He didn't understand how it was possible, but he set the thought aside. The ravens were still cawing around him. The dead must be close, Jon realized, eyeing the birds. I have to hurry.

He braced himself against Sonagon's hide as tried to stand, and ended up just staggering over himself. He felt stiff, and weak. His furs were good, but not so good to last exposed to the elements. His wounds had barely swollen shut, but he still had bruises and any injuries could easily fester.

And I'm starving, Jon realized, listening to his stomach growl. He hadn't eaten since the battle, and he had no rations with him. Gods, so hungry…

A raven popped onto his knee, absolutely fearlessly, staring with knowing eyes.

Jon paused. He stared at the raven. It was a bigger bird than the crows, no doubt carrying more meat on its bones. A bird well-used to being warged. "…Sorry about this," Jon said with a sigh, before reaching out to grab the offering. The raven trembled as Jon snapped its neck. The other ravens around him didn't seem to mind. Jon had never eaten raw raven before, but he was hungry enough to make do.

It wasn't a good tasting meat, as it turned out: oily, gamey and greasy, but still - the moment the warmth of its blood hit his tongue, he almost gasped. It felt like being alive again.

He handled his injuries as best as he could, before staggering upwards and wondering what he was supposed to do now.

Above him, Sonagon's deep, throaty breath caused a mist of cold air to evaporate across the ground. The dragon is hungry too, Jon knew. Starving, actually. Sonagon's breath became hoarser when it was hungry, a pattern he was starting to pick up on.

No use wasting more time, he thought, approaching Sonagon's head. "We've got to move." He pointed southeastwards, raising his voice. "This way. Come on, we can't rest now, we've got to go."

Beady black eyes the size of plates opened, and then stared at him. The dragon didn't move. It just stared at him.

"Easy," Jon said cautiously, stepping closer. "We have to go."

The dragon didn't twitch. The dragon is wounded and exhausted, Jon cursed quietly. And I'm poisoned and can barely walk. What a pair we are.

"The Others could catch up to us any day now!" Jon ordered. "The Others. The wights. The dead. They nearly killed you once, you can't let them catch us again. We've got to move now! Before nightfall - move!"

For a moment, Jon debated whether he should try to force another warg with it to get it moving, but then he heard a long, slow rumbling growl deep in the dragon's throat.

Jon hesitated for a brief moment, before cursing and limping away.

The dragon isn't the most vulnerable one here, Jon thought, struggling to move. I'm far more likely to die before the dragon does. He needed shelter and warmth more than the dragon did. Yet there was so little of either to be had on the mountainside.

His bad leg was almost too stiff to walk on - the back of his knee flared with pain with every step, precisely where the ice spider had bitten him. Think, Jon cursed, after a particularly bad flare caused him to stumble. I need to find a place to set up camp, to make a fire, to tend to my wounds. I'm not going to last long like this…

The thought of the greenseer's dead great elk caused him a pang of regret. That had been a truly magnificent beast, and much like direwolves, its kind was entirely extinct in the lands south of the Wall. He might never see the like of it again.

Still, its loss presented a more immediate problem. I'm not going to last on foot, he decided, feeling out the pain in his leg. Not when I'm bleeding strength. I need a mount, something to carry me.

Around him, the ravens cawed. His hands clenched. He tried to focus, and he found himself staring at the ravens as they circled around him. I might have an idea. Jon kept focusing, and before he knew it he had half collapsed into the snow, gasping for breath as he focused on one of the birds in particular.

The raven was well-used to warging, like a well-worn glove, but it was still difficult for Jon to pull himself into the small animal. The bird's senses were fluttery and wild, so flickering and Jon could barely make sense of it. Trying to warg with it was like trying to put on a boot several sizes too small - an annoying, frustrating experience. Worse, even after he succeeded, the raven wasn't grounded; it threatened to pull away from him, as if the connection between them might snap and his consciousness could get lost somewhere in between.

Jon wondered if he might ever be able to properly warg into these birds. He had made so little progress since his training in the cave. Still, he was desperate enough to risk it.

He used the raven's eyes to scout out around the mountainside, sweeping over rocky cliffs, trying to find anything edible, any kind of movement from a living thing at all. He had no particular expectations of what he might find, if anything, and was prepared to give up after a while: but then he saw a shape clambering easily over the rocks. Through a raven's blurry vision, Jon barely recognized the creature. A furry, stocky shape, hobbling over the cliffs.

A mountain goat, Jon thought. A goat might do.

He gasped as he withdrew from the bird and pulled himself back to his body. It took all of his strength to get back on his two feet urgently, whereupon he limped in the direction he had seen the animal moving. He left Sonagon behind him - the dragon was still sleeping away on the rocks.

Jon found the goat fairly quickly. It was a large mountain goat; a slightly aging male with white fur tinged with black around the neck, snow brushed into its woolly fur, and large, curved horns protruding backwards from its head. The goat stood perhaps up to his shoulder, yet it was bulky and hardy enough to survive the harsh climate. Jon saw the goat hobbling easily over the rocks, moving across the mountains. It must have seen the dragon pass by, he realized. It's fleeing from the dragon.

He stared, feeling his legs threaten to give out. I need a mount.

Jon got close enough to hear it bleat before he reached out towards it with his mind. The goat protested, trembled and tried to flee, run away by instinct.

This wasn't like Phantom. The shadowcat had tried to lash out, kill him for trying to master her: but the goat just wanted to gallop away. Jon's hold nearly broke, but he was desperate enough to force himself onwards, pulling himself further into the animal's skin. And then the goat's resistance broke.

The creature's mind felt… different. It was prey; its skin felt long and hollow, weak. Jon was so used to the sharpness and focus of predators like Ghost and Phantom; but the goat saw the world in terms of fear and threats, as if there could be hunters hiding behind every corner. It was a way of viewing the world that was totally alien; like being scared was its very nature as a being. It was an uncomfortable sensation, and Jon had no amount of liking for it.

Jon sagged, struggling to wrap his mind around the goat's skin. The goat didn't try to fight back against him; it just wanted to run from him - making the goat's presence feel so soft and mushy that Jon could barely hold onto it.

When Jon had first taken Phantom, the shadowcat had fought violently - but as soon as Jon had defeated it, he was in control. With the goat, it was harder, it took longer, because the creature's fear never ended. Instead, Jon had to take the goat's body slowly, piece by piece until there was nowhere to run. First he worked on just holding on to it, keeping the goat in his third eye, and then slowly pulling himself into its senses, and into the animal's limbs.

By the time Jon was finally in control, his human body had long since collapsed. The goat felt easier to control than a shadowcat, but also far, far more exhausting. Still, Jon turned the goat around and back towards him, feeling the way he bounded over sharp rocks on nimble hooves. His legs were strong, his hooves flexible enough to easily clutch onto the narrowest ledge, while the goat bounded over the rocks as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Jon was gasping for breath by the time he was finally able to touch the goat with his own hands.

The creature was terrified. He could feel its thick, rough fur in his fingers. Through great force of will, he managed to hold the animal still as Jon levered his body over his back, clutching onto the goat's horns to steady himself. The goat was the size of a pony, but nowhere near as docile. The goat wasn't a trained mount; instead Jon had to constantly force the goat to behave when every instinct the goat had ordered him to throw the human off and run.

Jon felt the goat internally scream in panic as Jon's weight dropped onto it. The goat isn't as strong as a horse or an elk either, Jon thought with a gulp. The goat struggled to carry a human's weight. Still, there was no choice.

"Easy," he said, as much to himself as to the goat. "Easy. I know you don't want to be doing this. I don't want to be doing this either. But that's how it is."

The goat did not appear comforted. Through the thin thread of warg connecting them, Jon could feel nothing in the animal but a low, continuous, abiding terror. It was exhausting just to keep this creature from bolting.

You poor thing, he thought, not unkindly. You were just trying to eat some grass.

With what little consciousness he had left, Jon struggled to think of a name for the goat. For some reason he couldn't quite explain, it felt like the goat deserved a name.

"…Hullen," Jon decided. The hard, rugged old goat reminded him of the old master of horses back at Winterfell. Jon had good memories of Hullen - the old man had always treated him fairly, despite his bastardy. He had taught him to ride his first ever steed right along with Robb. "I'm going to call you Hullen." He patted the goat's neck, once, carefully. "I hope you're nothing like the original," he added. "He had… opinions about how a man sat their horse. I don't think I could survive that right now."

The goat's only response was a long, miserable bleat. Jon had to fully focus his warging on getting the goat to move as he needed it to move. He let his body all but collapse on the animal's back, still clutching the horns, while his mind took over the goat's body and carried him through the mountainside. The goat proved unmatched at clambering over harsh terrain, even where there was no path. With the goat's help, Jon made good time: it wasn't long before he finally found a clearing of soldier pines and brambles, just over and beside a frozen mountain stream.

He made camp there for the night, at the base of the thickest tree where he might have some protection from the wind. And even with all his dedicated efforts, agonizing with his steel and flint over whatever tinder he could find, it was dusk by the time he finally got a fire going. He nestled himself under the thickest branches with his little campfire for warmth. It wasn't much, and he had no food to cook over it, but it would do for now. Fire is life up here, he'd once heard Qhorin the Halfhand say, but it can be death as well.

The Halfhand had brooked no fires while ranging, not anywhere the smoke or the flames might be within eyeshot of the enemy. Jon, however, had decided he wasn't made of such stern stuff - and the white walkers had other means aplenty by which to track him, starting with the dragon's own footprints, the broken trees and clawed hillsides it left in its unmistakable wake.

Perhaps the Halfhand might have opted for the better wisdom of avoiding setting flames that might betray his location, avoiding unnecessary risks, but truly, Jon saw no point at all in that sort of caution now.

While Hullen foraged in the hills, Jon warmed himself as much as he could over his small fire. If I survive this ranging, it won't be by stealth, he thought, holding his hands closer to the tepid flames.

He didn't entirely stay by his campfire. He periodically limped forth for whatever supplies he could scavenge from the nearby woods, and eventually loaded up his satchel with as much fire-dried kindling, withered berries and fresh water he could carry. He washed his wounds out as well, cleaning the injuries and then treating them with the children's medicinal poultice, after which he cut his oilcloth into pieces and stitched it over the worst wounds as a sort of bandage.

As for his single worst wound, the ice spider's bite he'd taken behind the knee while charging through the army of the dead, he cauterized the deepest of the bite by heating Dark Sister up over the fire, and scolding the burning blade against the injured skin.

It was agonizing, but prior experience from his first ice spider bite had taught him that the lingering poison could only truly be dissipated with fire: not even the children of the forest had a better way. Granted, cauterizing it with a blade wasn't the most pleasant of ways to treat the injury, but Jon had no time or resources for anything else.

He spent the rest of the night sleeping in pain, hungrier than ever, while he pulled his mind into Hullen to scout out the surroundings.

When night finally came, in the distance, he heard Sonagon roar.

The morning of the third day, weary but feeling stronger, Jon mounted up the goat again. Bracing himself for whatever he might find, he returned back along the mountain to the dragon's side.

The dragon had barely moved down the mountain from where Jon had left it the previous night. Sonagon's body was still weak, wounded. And yet the dragon glared hungrily at Jon as he approached on his goat, those dark eyes feral and vicious.

The dragon was attacked by wights during the night, Jon realized, looking at the ruined terrain and pieces of corpses. Not many, but a few - probably scouts sent searching into the mountainside. The wights must have ambushed the dragon as it slept; and then climbed onto the dragon's head where Sonagon struggled to shake them off.

The wights went for its eyes, Jon thought, staring at the new scratches across the dragon's snout; the wights must have tried to gouge out the eyes first. They hadn't succeeded, but by the look of it, they'd come close. Jon wondered what it would be like to wake up to find tiny undead, clawing monsters scrambling on your face.

If those were scouts, then the Others know where the dragon is, Jon thought with a grimace. If they really do warg into their wights, then chances are there is a white walker right now directing even more wights to Sonagon's location. Anything one wight sees, they all see.

Jon stumbled as he dismounted Hullen. "Dragon!" Jon shouted, staring into its beady eyes. "We need to move! There will be more coming!"

It was watching him, but it wasn't moving. Jon raised his voice, but it still barely echoed over the mountainside. "Do you understand?!" he shouted. "We're both in danger here! We have to move!"

There was nothing, no response to him at all but the dragon's steady breathing and unblinking, hostile stare. Jon cursed quietly, wondering what he was supposed to do now. For a while, Jon milled around the dragon, trying to find some way of moving it.

I need to control it, he decided finally. He closed his eyes and tried to warg with it, but then he heard the dragon's breathing freeze. Jon stared at the dragon's eye. Those eyes were sharp, threatening. It's alert, and angry.

After a long moment, Jon hesitated, retreated backwards and mounted Hullen to move a safe distance away. When he did, the dragon lowered its head again to rest.

Sonagon doesn't like it when I try to force a warg. The dragon wasn't a goat; it could quite easily kill him if Jon pushed it too far. But we have to go…

Entire hours were spent in awkward uncertainty. The dragon just refused to be budged, for hours on end.

Jon mounted Hullen, moved to a place he would at least see the dead coming in the off chance if more came by day, while he uncertainly reached out to Ghost and Phantom, told them to watch for wights. But most of his time was spent struggling to figure out what to do. Hours wasted, just encouraging Sonagon to move.

Jon quickly learned the subtle signs that kept him alive. The way the dragon would growl and snap, warning Jon to keep his distance. When the dragon was resting or tired Jon could come close, but it was safer to be cautious. The dragon was not a tame creature. Even if it could be friendly - on occasion - but it would never obey, only listen and perhaps comply. Jon had to treat it like he would an injured bear or wolf; respect it, but always be on guard.

The first time the dragon started moving again, at around midday, Jon nearly jumped out of his own skin when the dragon nearly crushed him when it stood up. The dragon ignored his gaping self, staggered off the ground and moved with great, earth-rumbling stomps as it lumbered forward.

The dragon wasn't even walking quickly by its standards, but its gait was so long that Jon still fell behind quickly. Without Hullen, Jon would never have kept up with it. He suspected that, when healthy, the dragon could easily trot at a pace akin to the south's best destriers at a full gallop.

The differences were even more staggering in rough terrain: the dragon was large enough to, in seconds, clamber over rocks and cliffs that even Hullen had to try and gingerly traverse across entire minutes - particularly when carrying a human. It was only because the dragon stopped to rest or sniff at various caves or the air that Jon could keep up at all, particularly because Hullen made for an especially rilesome mount.

For half the entire day, from late morning to well past midday, the dragon strode across the mountains. Not all at once - for such a large animal, it stopped to rest frequently and often. It took frequent breaks spent coiled and resting, moving only in fits and starts, not that Jon could do much better on his injured knee. Jon often looked with concern at the dragon's injuries, but the beast was hungry and in pain, and in no mood for him to approach too closely.

Eventually, though, the dragon picked up speed. After the first league Jon was afraid he was going to lose it again - that the dragon would go off its own way and get trapped once more, by the dead he could sense elsewhere in these mountains. Sometimes he tried shouting at the dragon, ordering it a certain way, but Sonagon would always just dismiss him.

Sonagon moved at its own pace. It didn't wait for Jon, and it didn't ask permission. If Ghost had been with him, the direwolf would have spared no effort to stay by Jon's side in these wounded circumstances - while the dragon, on the other hand, just expected Jon to follow at its heels - he could pick up on traces of the dragon's thoughts, vast and alien and languageless as they were, and the dragon did, in fact, expect him to be the follower.

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…It's treating me like a hatchling, Jon thought, with a vague sense of indignation when he finally managed to understand some of Sonagon's mental demands. It's making me follow it. Like a pup.

But he was not in a position to complain about the dragon's arrogance, or to insist on his dignity. If it wasn't for the fact that the dragon was going in a vaguely right direction - south, more or less, following Jon's directions, which in turn came from the greenseer's guiding birds - he didn't even know what he might have had to do.

Truly, Jon wasn't even sure if the dragon was following his directions, or if it could somehow sense the dead coming and was simply going in the opposite direction. Only when they warged did Jon feel like he had any measure of control over the creature.

Even then, Sonagon wasn't like Ghost. Jon could slip into Ghost's skin anytime at will, but the dragon was much more thorny, selective even. Sonagon would choose when and where Jon was allowed to warg with it.

It was hard work. Dangerous work. Sometimes, when Sonagon started snarling and growling, Jon would be forced to back away a safe distance. The more irritable Sonagon became, the more care Jon had to take.

Jon stuck to the goat's back across most of the mountainside, but it was difficult. He had to control Hullen nearly constantly, meaning he had so little concentration left to spare. It had never been harder to keep the leash on Phantom. One time, while Hullen was navigating a cliff, he left Phantom be, since the shadowcat had sighted another goat in the distance across a ravine, but the shadowcat took advantage of the opportunity to instead try fleeing over the mountains. Jon only barely managed to wrangle control back in time.

As for Ghost, his direwolf had been forced to go wide around another mountain, to avoid a large group of the dead. It might still be another day or two before they could reunite.

They came upon a particularly massive glacier, a river of ice miles wide descending from the northern Frostfangs into the borderlands of the frozen wastes. There was no choice but to cut around it. The dragon followed the glacier's edge, which presented one of the few routes southward Jon could see at all - these mountains were so high they didn't even have passes, it was all one unbroken white-capped escarpment marking the heights between earth and sky, varying only in whether those distant peaks were below or above the clouds.

As Hullen painstakingly clambered over a ravine in the glacier, Jon considered the icy depths, which were scarily visible at the moment and riddled with deep crevasses and caves of starkly blue ice. Ygritte told stories of giants buried deep below the Frostfangs, he remembered. She said Mance was searching for their treasure, for the horn of winter.

Those stories had sounded beyond outlandish, downright fanciful at the time, but now… ?

More than once, Jon noticed evidence of civilization from some long-passed age. In the distance, he twice noted raised circular hillocks with hints of stone walls buried under snow, which might have once been ringforts akin to the Fist of the First Men - but these ones were truly ancient by the look of them, more deeply sunk into the earth, as if the land itself had been slowly drawing them down over the millennia.

At one valley's entrance, he marveled at a grey monolith just under forty feet wide and approaching a height nearly thrice that, with not just hundreds but thousands of faded runes of the First Men etched into granite stone. Whatever meaning the runes held had long since been worn away by thousands of years of winter, but the signs of ancient stonework were unmistakable. What confused him was the monolith itself. It was all one stone of granite as far as he could tell, seamless and without gaps - how could the First Men have possibly raised such a thing? He even troubled himself to walk around it on his own two aching legs, twice, looking for evidence for how it had been quarried, any remnant signs of chiselwork, but there was nothing.

He stood before it for a moment, tilting his head back to look at the top.

What would Maester Luwin have thought, if he were here? He would have wept, Jon thought, remembering the maester's stargazing and ever-recorded bestiaries and botanies, his commitment to recording the natural world. "…he'd have spent a week here. A month," he said quietly, to nothing at all. Perhaps he just needed to hear his own voice sometimes, to endure this almost total solitude. Jon touched the stone with one gloved hand. The runes had been eroded almost unto nothing by time, by the harshness of the elements, all but completely unrecognizable to him. "He'd have had opinions about every single one of these. He'd have written down everything in his journal, and found what the meaning of it was."

And I cannot. He had no time, no resources even if he had had time. He'd already lingered longer than was strictly wise.

He turned away and limped back to his goat, then after the dragon.

Scarcely any further on, barely an hour's travel south of the monolith, he found something stranger still. A wide circle of standing stones stretching across a high, wind-blasted plateau, perhaps a hundred stones in two concentric nested circles, each one roughly the height of a man, and each one carved not with runes but with… faces. Despite himself, he rode Hullen slowly through the circle of stones and stared. The carvings were worn almost to nothing by the unending centuries of frost and wind - but not quite to nothing. Faces, narrow and thin, sad in aspect, and not quite human. The children of the forest made this, Jon realized, and in the center of it all was a blackened stump of what might have - ages ago - once been a massive weirwood, long-since turned to stone.

He didn't know what to make of it. It was impossible to say what purpose this place must have once held. He ended up riding the circle's full circumference in bafflement and came out back where he'd first entered feeling somehow observed… though by what, he couldn't have said.

How much knowledge has been lost? he wondered later, staring at two opposing sentinels standing guard at the entrance to another glacial valley - cliff promontories that had been somehow carved into statues of stern warriors nearly as tall as that monolith, now faded and eroded by time until only the barest suggestions remained that these high grey cliffs had once been carved in the shape of men. How many wonders destroyed? How many cities, nations, civilizations buried by ten thousand years of winter?

He couldn't even imagine. There were signs aplenty in the Frostfangs of some elder civilization from an ancient time beyond time, for those with the eyes to see. But who the builders of these works had been, how they had raised such things in these impossible latitudes, and where they had all gone - to those questions he had nothing, had not even the faintest ghost of an answer. He felt as if he were seeing glimpses down a well into primordial history, unfathomable and unreckonable. He had always thought that the First Men had been a primitive folk, naught but primitive clans that built little and preserved less. But to think they had once been capable of such great works before these lands had been frozen by the unending winter of the far north…

Had the First Men, truly, been the first men in Westeros? Or was he looking at the last remnants of the kingdoms of the elder races, the giants and the children of the forest? He didn't think so - these mostly were the works of men, surely, or of something close enough to men to have lived the way men lived, and the statues were proportionate enough to a mannish aspect. And he didn't think the first races even had kingdoms or countries, but who could say?

You know nothing, Jon Snow, Ygritte had said. But perhaps not even she had known the answers to the questions now twisting through his thoughts. He wished she was with him now, that he could feel her voice, her warmth, hear out more of her countless tales. But now she was gone and he was alone in the farthest north - and he had no one to ask, had not even the slightest answer in the scattered myths and legends he did know. These ruins were older than any record he had ever read or been taught: but he strongly suspected he was looking at ruins older than the Wall itself. Possibly far older. Remnants of a time so remote it didn't have a name in any history he knew, a time before the Long Night, before the Andals, before the Age of the First Men.

The First Men made war with the giants and the children of the forest, until eventually finding a peace between peoples, he remembered. These two blank-faced sentinels he was still inspecting, had these been their works? Perhaps. The details of the warriors they had surely once been had long-since eroded away, but the suggestions were enough. He could see the set of wide shoulders, the suggestion of arms crossed over broad chests, the rough shapes of a helm or crown - he couldn't tell which. Likely men, or something close to men. Or perhaps giants of a different kind.

But what he noticed most of all, by far—

The statues faced northwards. That was the thing that held him. They weren't facing inwards, toward whatever lay in the valley beyond. They were facing outwards, their stony gazes turned to the north as if standing watch against something coming down from the frozen wastes.

He thought about Bran the Builder. He raised the Wall to keep the Others back. The Wall is old, immeasurably old. And yet these ruins are older still.

Whoever had built these sentinels had believed that something in the far north needed watching, and they had believed it long before the Wall existed, before the Long Night. Before even, as far as he knew, the Others themselves.

…he filed these mysteries away with all the other things he didn't know. It was becoming quite an extensive list, and he had to keep moving. Daylight was waning and the dragon had little patience to wait for his laggard self.

Miles and leagues passed. He kept following Sonagon. Down hills, up the mountains, across glaciers and valleys, he kept following the dragon.

Always, always to the south.

The greenseer can't mean for us to keep taking this path, Jon thought later in the day. They were moving south-southwest, cutting through the hills and hinterlands running along the central spine of what had to be the northern Frostfangs. But there was nothing useful for hundreds of miles down this path - it was well known that the wastes west of the Frostfangs going down to Lorn Point of the western Frozen Shore were empty save for some of the most barbaric wildling clans of all, the ice lake tribes and the ice river tribes, both of which were rumored to practice cannibalism for sport. We have to cross the mountains soon.

He eyed said mountains and felt a touch of dread. That would be a hard, hard climb, except if they found some lower pass that might be traversable.

More miles passed underfoot. Sonagon was tiring at this point, walking slower, and from the dragon's mind he felt little but such a bone-deep hunger that it was as if the dragon was starving. But he didn't know how to help: he'd seen no game worth Sonagon's time, not even once. Most of anything the dragon might eat was on the other side of these mountains, and he had enough troubles of his own.

One time, when an ice river nearly collapsed while Hullen was crossing it - which caused his focus to slip - the panicking mountain goat all but tried to kill him. It did try to pitch him into the river before he managed to regain control. And in the midst of tightening his warg over the bucking goat, barely holding on, his bad leg screaming, trying to prevent the gods-damned goat from throwing him into a frozen river, Jon realized something - sardonically, with no small amount of aggravation:

I dreamed, as a boy, of riding a great destrier into battle, of glory and banners and the thunder of hooves. Well. Now I have a goat.

And it hated him. He wasn't satisfied with this arrangement either. They would have to make do.

After they crossed another glacier, he left Hullen to forage to regain some strength, while Jon lingered on a moraine beneath the glacier, refilling his waterskins from the cold clear water and wondering what to do. Sonagon was walking visibly slower now, exhausted and starved. And the dead were coming - Phantom had seen an entire column of them coming over one of the icy hills.

Suddenly, there was cawing in the distance. Ravens. Jon saw four birds circling over the cliffs, cawing to attract attention. The ravens would come and go, but Jon knew that the three-eyed crow was always working with him in the background. Jon hesitated for a long time, but he followed the ravens.

The wights will be on us soon, he thought. Sonagon is getting weaker. I can't control him, and I won't be able to fight the wights off.

He summoned Hullen back, despite the mountain goat's resistance - it yearned to keep foraging from the grasses it was finding under the snowbank beneath the glacier, but there was no time. The goat was tiring as well, along with him, but this was not a place for rest.

They reached the bottom of the cliffside, when slowly Jon heard the trumpeting echo through the air. Behind him, Jon noticed Sonagon perk up at that sound.

The sound of a mammoth's cry, Jon realized. Jon kept on heading in the direction, and behind him the ground shuddered as the dragon pulled himself up to follow. It was the first time Sonagon had followed Jon like this.

They reached a snowy basin between the mountains, where the rocks opened up into a snowplain. And then he saw a mammoth marching weakly across the snow.

The mammoth was a great beast larger than any ten horses, standing fifteen entire feet off the ground, almost as wide and long, with shaggy brindled brown fur and huge, hooked tusks that draped over the snow. Compared to Sonagon the mammoth was tiny, but it was still a huge lumbering beast by any standard. Jon stared in awe at the great woolly mammoth, until he noticed how the mammoth limped.

It's injured too, Jon suddenly saw. Old, rusted arrows and blades were jutting out of the mammoth's shaggy fur by the dozen. A giant clan, Jon recalled the greenseer mentioning. The three-eyed crow had taken control of the giant's mammoths to sacrifice them as a distraction against the Others.

From the look of things, this must have been one of the mammoths that had managed to survive. It had escaped the Others, but now it was wounded, struggling to move. The mammoth was weak, injured, and struggling.

But the three-eyed crow is still inside it, he realized. The greenseer must have directed it towards me for some reason, maybe as a mount or a—

Without warning, Sonagon snapped. Jon could barely even drop to the snow in time as the dragon bounded over him. He gasped as the great mass of white scales shot overhead. Hullen bleated in pure panic, breaking free of Jon's control briefly. The mammoth only managed to give out a short, strangled cry of panic.

Oh. The dragon needs feeding, Jon thought dumbly. The greenseer must have directed the wounded mammoth his way because he knew the dragon was starving.

Jon stared in shock as the dragon's breath burst in a concentrated white blast before the mammoth could even run. Sonagon dropped onto the beast without hesitation, even as the dragonfire turned the mammoth into cracking ice. In an instant, the mammoth turned into a cracking frozen statue, and then Sonagon's claws and teeth were crunching through it. Sharp teeth snapped through the frozen meat, swallowing chunks in huge, voracious breaths.

It eats its meat frozen, Jon realized. The ice dragon uses its breath to freeze its prey before eating it.

There was barely anything left of the mammoth by the time Sonagon was done. The dragon had a large appetite; a fully-grown mammoth was a good-sized meal for it, nothing more.

Jon was still staring in dumb shock and faint awe at the patch of ice-scorched ground that, not long ago, had been an entire mammoth. The dragon hadn't even left any scraps behind for him. Damn. Sonagon growled in satisfaction, the sound deep enough to make the air tremble and the snow shake under his feet. The dragon gave a final visible gulp before turning to lumber on away.

He wondered, briefly, how quickly Sonagon could eat a human on a goat - and snorted faintly at the thought. He could snap up ten of me and Hullen in less than a second.

Somehow, the dragon had been fed. There was nothing for it except to follow.

It was nightfall, or near enough. Sonagon was content. The dragon still lumbered and twisted, and panted in pain as it slept, but the much-needed meal had helped considerably. The dragon didn't snap or growl as much when he approached, which gave Jon the chance to spend a long while inspecting it, or him - Jon wasn't sure of the right word - from closer up. Not close enough to touch, but still, he could look as he liked now.

It's an animal, he thought, after he was done. A huge, magnificent animal, but still just an animal. All animals have similar needs; they need to be fed, they need to be kept safe, and they need to be kept well.

As the sky darkened, Jon stared upwards at the ravens cawing around him, and he started to plan. He looked at the peaks of the northern Frostfangs that lay ahead with a sense of foreboding. He looked at the snow-covered mountain goat, thinking about the horses of Winterfell.

Jon remembered the true Hullen, Winterfell's master of horses. How he had reacted each and every time Robb and he had brought in a new, temperamental stallion. Hullen used to brag that he could handle even the foulest stallion. But he also said there was no secret to it, except patience and experience. Hullen had never been forceful with his charges, but he would always be present, be there for them. Hullen could wait and sit by a horse's side for hours, calming and reassuring it with his presence. The trick to horsemanship is patience, Hullen had always said.

I've got to be as patient as him, Jon thought, before he finally slept.

By morning on the fourth day, Jon had a plan.

He started by unloading his satchel and taking a complete accounting of his remaining possessions.

His satchel contained all his most important travel items - the ones without which he would truly die. He had abandoned his ration packs and shoulder bag in the frozen wastes in order to survive the mad dash through the army of the dead. And ever since he had never truly stopped to take stock of what he had left.

Now, with a rare quiet hour, he finally poured everything out atop a rock he'd swept free of snow. He spread his scarce few possessions out with his fingers, inspecting each item in turn.

The contents were meager, to say the least. A steel sparker with its flint worn down to perhaps half its original size. A coil of roughly twenty feet of hempen cord. His spare knife. A small iron needle and two feet of remaining gut thread. A spare set of rabbitskin gloves and two scarves. A small cooking pot. Three waterskins, two empty. Two matched pairs of socks. One right sock, missing the left. A small clay jar containing the children's medicinal poultice. A strip of oiled cloth for waterproofing, which he'd torn in half to bind his wounds the day before. An empty bag of waxed linen - he'd eaten the last of the dried venison it had contained three days past. And… a handful of hazelnuts rattling loose at the bottom of the bag.

He counted the nuts after upending the satchel entirely, making sure they were all accounted for. Nine hazelnuts, total. He cupped them in his palm and looked at them forlornly.

There was also the weirwood bow the children of the forest had given him, with a quiver of a dozen remaining dragonglass-tipped arrows. And of course Dark Sister and its scabbard.

That was all. He had no medicines apart from the small poultice the children had given him. No rations beyond a bare handful of hazelnuts. The oilcloth was almost gone.

When including the journey to reach the dragon, he had been ranging alone for weeks now, far beyond the edge of any map. Even the farthest-going rangers of the Watch had never gone so far to his knowledge, and if they had it had been centuries ago. He thought again of Qhorin, who had oft said that the ranger's greatest enemy was not the cold or the wildling or the animal, but complacency. A man far afield who didn't carefully manage himself and his resources would die as surely as a wrongdoer kneeling before a headsman's axe.

Unlike Qhorin, though, he had no compass, no maps and no seeing-eye lens - even in the Watch those were scarce resources, only given out to true rangers. Jon simply hadn't been important enough to be given a set, and he keenly felt their absence now.

Out of his scarce possessions, the steel sparker was by far his most valuable - reliable firestarters were worth more than gold out Beyond the Wall. He set it aside carefully, wrapping it with his empty waxen linen bag, which then went into the inner breast pocket of his furs where his body warmth would keep it slightly dryer. He could not, under any circumstances, allow the sparker to turn to rust - that could so easily be the death of him.

As for his lesser items: the knife he kept sheathed at his waist, on the same side as Dark Sister. The cord he coiled tight into his breast pocket, tucked right against his flint and steel. The needle and thread went into a small side pocket, wrapped in what was left of the oilcloth. As for the hazelnuts…

He caught Sonagon staring down at him with interest - or rather, at his hand. The hand that held precisely nine hazelnuts. After a brief, passing moment - Jon staring dumbly upwards into beady black eyes all the while - the dragon audibly snorted and put its head back down, returning to its rest.

Sonagon needs, at minimum, a mammoth to be satiated, Jon considered. He had a handful of nuts. The dragon must have sensed my hunger, my thoughts. It knew I was about to eat. The bond goes both ways.

He wondered briefly if the dragon might accept the hazelnuts as a gesture of good faith and decided, on reflection, that this would probably just irritate it. He just put them into his mouth, two at a time, slowly, and he made himself chew each one completely before swallowing.

Not much of a meal, but better than nothing.

The rest of his items went back into the satchel after he cleaned it out. That done, Jon tipped his head back and stared upward through the branches of soldier pine.

If only I had a map. Rattleshirt had doubtlessly taken Qhorin's, and he had never been trusted with one in his time with Mance's host. Not that it would have mattered even if he did have one; there were no maps of the deep haunted forest that were worth anything, let alone the mountains beyond, and he was far beyond even those. No map existed that showed the lands beyond the Frostfangs in more than the broadest strokes. He had no compass and no guide but for the greenseer's ravens, and they made for a… dubious guide at times - he was fairly certain the birds were only sometimes controlled by the greenseer, given as the birds were only sometimes attentive.

The greenseer needs sleep as well, Jon presumed, thinking to his time in the caverns. Then he remembered how few hours in any given day that ancient sorcerer had been 'active'. Hells, he sleeps more than any man. And he has other tasks of his own, surely. I can't rely on him to watch me.

Hardhome lay to the southeast. He was certain of that much. But southeast was a wide arc of possibility, and the difference between finding Hardhome's peninsula and missing it entirely, stumbling instead into some cliff-edged headland above the Shivering Sea, was the difference between life and death. Without a compass this would be tricky. The rangers of the Watch used landmarks when they could, stars when they couldn't. Jon knew the constellations well enough - Maester Luwin had made sure of that - but he had never had cause to navigate by them alone, with his life depending on it.

The stars. Jon glanced skyward, to an upper firmament of thick grey clouds. Hopeless for now. He'd have to wait for evening and pray for an unclouded night.

"Time to go," he muttered, rising and readying himself.

Then he set about breaking camp: not that there was much to break given that he lacked a tent, bedroll, blanket, or other typically obligatory ranging supplies. Mostly he loaded his satchel with the sweet inner bark of a white pine tree that happened to be nearby; he lacked an axe, but Dark Sister made for a more than decent substitute. The Valyrian steel blade easily stripped the tree's craggy bark and let him get at its edible inner lining. It wouldn't be appetizing fare - he'd heard stories of rangers starving to death with a full belly of such fare - but it was edible, and it was all he had.

He could sense Ghost and Phantom. They were both coming south via their own routes through the mountains, and likely to arrive soon, gods willing. He would certainly starve to death otherwise without them to help him hunt.

Then, he quickly went to find Hullen.

The goat had given up on bolting. Instead, it had wedged itself into a crook of rock some distance away, stubbornly pretending Jon didn't exist. Jon snorted at the sight.

He was getting used to the goat's bloody-minded stubbornness. Hullen was not Ghost. Hullen was not anyone's idea of a loyal companion. But the animal was hardy and sure-footed on ground that would have broken a horse's legs, and Jon had learned to appreciate the goat for exactly that and nothing more.

Sonagon roused and began trotting down the mountainside. He stuck by the dragon's side for as long as he could, trying to keep pace on his goat. When Hullen tired, he gathered up all his determination, and limped at the dragon's side on his bad leg. Every time the dragon relaxed, Jon attempted to warg with it again, gently. Jon wasn't forceful, always soothing. Whenever the dragon had its moods, Jon would go a safe distance and try to meditate to reach it.

Jon had no idea how the Targaryens of old had tamed their dragons. He had heard vaguely that the even more ancient Valyrians had used sorcery, fire and whips to bind them. Jon did… not think that would have been a good idea, even if he had the knowledge or the means. He was forced to try and tame a dragon with nothing but patience, and a power that he didn't even understand. But it felt better. Right.

His wounds were debilitating him less. The worst of the cuts were closing. The ice spider's venom was still in him - he could feel it sometimes, as a dull numb ache in the small of his back, where the most recent bite had gotten him - but it was slowly fading. Jon counted that as a mercy.

As Sonagon trekked around a high mountain pass, Hullen trailed after with Jon splayed as best he could manage across the goat's spine. When they turned the corner around a shelf of rock, he saw - not sensed, saw Ghost bounding towards him.

The dragon took little notice of the direwolf, sensing that it too was connected to him. But Jon's heart surged with joy. He got off Hullen's back and waited for Ghost to reach him.

Ghost ran into him at a silent dead run. With white fur against white snow, the direwolf was barely visible until he was nearly on top of him - and then Jon's arms were full of direwolf, at least two hundred pounds of cold fur and hot breath slamming into his chest hard enough to stagger him onto his back into the snow.

Jon didn't even bother trying to stay upright. Instead he just sat back and let his direwolf enthusiastically lick his face and neck, even pushing his enormous head under Jon's chin, and Jon got his arms around the wolf's neck and brought him down. Ghost whined - a truly rare sound from him. "I know," Jon laughed in response. "I'm happy to see you too, boy."

But it was time to move again. Sonagon hadn't stopped walking, and was now almost crossing over a ridgeline. Jon let out a breath. "We have to go, Ghost."

He got himself back on top of Hullen. But this time, Ghost padded nearby, staying close to Jon's side. Hullen's terror at being so near a direwolf was an almost physical thing, but like everything else about this stubborn, cowardly goat, Jon kept it firmly under control. An hour or so later, Hullen managed to catch up to the dragon as it was resting.

They had covered ground over these past days. Not quickly, not easily, but they had covered it. Sonagon moved when it suited him, rested when it suited him, and seemed to have an appetite that was beyond bottomless. Jon wished he could take old Hullen's advice, the real Hullen, what he'd said years and almost a lifetime ago: stop fighting the beast's rhythms and nature, boy! Learn them instead! - but the conditions out here were too perilous, far too desperate. Old Hullen had always said you had to learn a horse before you could ever hope to ride one. But right now Jon was more concerned for surviving at all.

Speaking of. As the sun began to set, Ghost's ears pricked. Jon noticed his direwolf was watching the treeline to the northwest - where they'd just come from.

Jon followed the direwolf's gaze. Nothing moved in the dark tangle of pines, not that he could notice. But Ghost's unease said enough. We're still being tracked, he thought. The Others hadn't closed the distance, possibly lacking the forces in the area, but they hadn't abandoned the hunt either. They must be gathering their numbers. The white walkers were patient creatures. Patient as winter itself, the greenseer had said. They prefer to move by night, Jon remembered.

But moving by night wasn't an option for him.

Sonagon, tiring, kept trotting over the hills going south, staying along the western flank of the mountain range. The pure white spine of the northern Frostfangs loomed over the eastern sky, but still Jon saw no obvious way to pass through. It doesn't matter. We have to cross them at some point or another, he thought, and with some dread at that.

The mountains would undoubtedly be harsh, but life itself was to their east. The wastes west of the Frostfangs offered only a slow death, and that wouldn't change for hundreds of miles even if they kept going due south - as far as he knew. And even then, the wildlings of the western Frozen Shore, the ice rivers and the ice lakes… those were not tribes he cared to cross paths with: even other wildlings considered them barbarians at best, as dangerous foes more typically.

As the sky began to darken, the dragon settled on a place to rest: a high hill, starkly bare and surrounded by steep dropoffs of rocks and ice. An overlook of the surrounding hills and the frozen wastes beyond.

This will do, Jon thought, looking around. This rest point fit with the pattern he was seeing from Sonagon - the dragon preferred to sleep in high places with entire miles of visibility. It would make for a frigid pinnacle to sleep away the night, but for this night, Jon wouldn't complain: he needed the visibility.

It wasn't long before the sun finished dying behind the clouds. The temperature dropped another ten degrees at least. Ghost pressed against his side without being asked, and Jon was grateful for the warmth. He pulled his furs tighter, threw his giantfur cloak over both himself and Ghost, and rested with his back pressed to Sonagon's sleeping flank.

The clouds had been waning throughout the day, and now they were nearly gone. The moon, less than half full, was sliding in and out amongst icy high clouds so thin they were almost ephemeral. The last of the sunlight slowly bled from the sky.

He waited, patiently. It wasn't long before he was, absently, scratching behind Ghost's ears the same way he'd done since they were both younger, and in Ghost's case, considerably smaller.

Still he waited.

Then, after nothing remained of the sunlight but memory, after the last of twilight bled from the sky as well, he watched the stars begin to appear.

They emerged slowly at first, but as the dark sky turned to a darker shade of black, they came out faster and faster, until day was gone to the last and starlight filled the sky.

He could see all the constellations of the north now, in all their glory. This was what he'd been waiting for, all day long.

He let his eyes roam across the heavens. He oriented himself, finding the familiar shapes he knew. The Sword of the Morning thrusting up from the south, the Shadowcat and the Moonmaid high in the east, the Ghost stalking after the King's Crown in the west, the red and yellow wanderers…

Inevitably, his eyes were drawn first to the long bright line of the Giant's Lance nearly directly overhead. The Lance thrusted across almost a quarter of the sky, its tip pointing at an angle directly towards the bright blue eye of the most important constellation of all - and there it was, unmistakable, dominating the northern sky:

The Ice Dragon.

The constellation sprawled gargantuan across the northern sky. It was the most important constellation in all the world: at least as far as any man of the north was concerned. Maester Luwin had known that well enough, and had made sure Jon understood it before he was seven years old. Certainly the most important for any ranger or wildling Beyond the Wall. He himself considered it his first and oldest friend in the starry sky.

The Ice Dragon's 'wings' were flung wide lopsidedly between the Moonmaid and the Shadowcat. Its long serpentine tail curved away roughly southward. Its eye, the single bright star that rangers called the Blue Eye, blazed cold and pale as a chip of ice amidst the heavens.

That star always, always pointed north. Whatever else moved, no matter where one was in the world, no matter the season, the Blue Eye never moved. The whole constellation wheeled through the night across the seasons, the tail pointing whichever way at different times of year, but that one star always stayed fixed. With the Ice Dragon and its Blue Eye in view, any man with working eyes who wasn't blinded by cloud cover had no excuse whatsoever to not find his most basic bearings.

Jon mentally pivoted himself with respect to the Blue Eye. He imagined himself with respect to the terrain, visualizing his basic bearings. He saw himself trekking southwards with the Ice Dragon to his back with respect to the surrounding mountains. He chose a specific landmark - the shadow of a relatively close, particularly spindly peak of the Frostfangs that he could see by the moonlight.

South, then, he thought firmly, eyeing and marking it.

Now he needed an eastern guidemark to find his way. To find southeast, he first had to know east. A more experienced stargazer like maester Luwin could have already found it by memorizing the yearly orientations of the Ice Dragon's tail with respect to the Blue Eye, but Jon lacked that knowledge - it was fairly advanced starlore, not at all intuitive. Not necessary in normal circumstances, either - there were other, firmer east-west guides to follow among the stars.

The problem was these weren't normal circumstances. He was simply too far north.

He couldn't see the Sow at all: its ponderous expanse, which always hungrily faced a green emerald in the eastern expanse of stars, had disappeared somewhere in the southern sky. As a constellation, that one had always been rather low in the southerly sky of the north and far north, but now it was simply gone.

The Galley was typically almost as good; it always sailed west, with its lead oar-star, a shimmering red ruby in the sky, helping sailors around the world find their east-west bearing. The red oarsman is the night sky's straightest east-west guide, Maester Luwin had once told him. If he had been able to find it, it would have let him triangulate against the Ice Dragon's glimmering, beautifully visible tail and Eye.

But, he couldn't do it. Even this high in the mountains he couldn't see the Galley. It too had gone so far in the southern night sky that it didn't even exist.

He cursed to himself. He was scraping at the limits of his star knowledge now, with his secondary and tertiary east-west guides both absent. He studied the rest of the sky carefully, working out his angle.

Think, Jon told himself. Think like Luwin taught you. The sky always has a guide for those with the eyes to see.

He cast his eyes methodically across the starry sky, moving from the Blue Eye overhead, and then outward. There has to be something I know.

There were stars up here that he had never seen before, shapes that Luwin had mentioned only in passing, as curiosities, footnotes he had seen in certain books: things that mattered only to sailors who plied the seas very far north - like the whalers of Ibben who sailed far beyond the Seven Kingdoms. He hadn't ever thought he would be in similar circumstances to those men, and he cursed himself now for his lack of knowledge.

…He fell back on what he did know, what he was strongest in. The wanderers. He had learned the names of the twelve houses of heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers sacred to the Faith of the Seven. Yes, I can use those.

Most of them weren't visible currently, and the ones he did see - the yellow and blue wanderers - were useless for his purposes. That left the dark wanderer. The star of the Stranger, according to the Faith. The star of death's surest aspect, highest and coldest in the night sky. But here, where so many of the other stars were absent, the dark wanderer might be the only light at all he could rely on.

The dark wanderer always wanders east, Luwin had said off-handedly, long ago. It chases the night, because the Stranger always finds his home in darkness. Of the seven wanderers, the dark wanderer was the dimmest, the hardest to find of them all… normally.

But here it took scant seconds. He had never seen it so bright in the sky before. A glimmering brown point of light. The Stranger wanders near, Jon thought ironically, but unable to entirely hide the chill of how entirely foreboding that thought came.

He spent a long time tracking the dark wanderer's movement, memorizing the angle with respect to the Ice Dragon. He picked a landmark - a gap between two dark ridgelines - to what he was now all but certain was true southeast, at least when viewed from exactly where he sat.

If he could hold that bearing through tomorrow's travel, correct for the sun's position at midday, and re-check against the Ice Dragon tomorrow night, keeping his bearing lined up, and if he kept doing that, he might be able to survive this.

South and east, he thought. Hardhome was out there, somewhere.

He committed the angle and orientation to memory one more time, and finally pulled his gaze back down from the sky. Ghost was long asleep now. Close by, Sonagon's slow exhale sent a white plume of frosty mist into the darkness.

He noticed one of the greenseer's ravens perched in a nearby tree, keeping watch. Jon wasn't certain of how reliable such a watch might be, but there was nothing for it. He lay back down against the dragon's scales and finally closed his eyes.

On the fifth day, the dragon would not be budged.

First Jon tried rousing Sonagon with his voice, and when that failed, he - gently - tried to warg. But the dragon still didn't move, apart from momentarily opening one of its eyes and growling faintly at him. The dragon didn't even bother to raise its head, but it was more than enough for Jon to instantly abandon his efforts.

Apart from that, Sonagon's eyes stayed lidded over. The dragon's sides kept rising and falling in a slow, heavy constancy. Jon knew better than to push: Sonagon was truly asleep. Still, this late into the morning. Why?

He wasn't sure how healthy the sleep was. Concerningly, while the dragon's breathing was still deep and thick enough to shake the air, it was also faster than normal. Weaker. Was the dragon's strength fading? Or was it sickened, somehow?

I don't know. Perhaps it had something to do with the dragon's many wounds, which he still couldn't get close enough to care for. Or perhaps even a dragon needed rest, and this one had just eaten an entire mammoth the prior day. He didn't like having to stop here, but there was no choice. Jon could only trust in time and a full stomach to do for Sonagon what he could not.

He let the dragon be, and went to go find wood.

Most trees were useless for burning in winter, especially the sort of trees there were to be had in the northern mountains. As Hullen carried him along through the mountainous woods near the dragon, he paid close attention to the surrounding highland woods. He was seeing mostly scrub birches and shrub rowans, dwarf willows and aspens and the occasional wind-twisted oak. For the most part he'd almost be better off trying to burn the actual snow than these, though he did collect a few handlengths of birch bark for tinder.

No, he needed a naturally resinous type of tree. Something that was its own firestarter. Juniper would be best, but those were rare in the mountains. Atop Hullen, he roamed the nearby woods more deeply, and only allowed the mountain goat to stop moving when he found a stand of stunted soldier pines clinging to a ridge.

Soldier pine will do. Forget rangers, even smallfolk knew that soldier pine wasn't usually as good for burning as regular pine - but these ones were long dead, grey and splintered by years of wind, ripe for burning.

Jon snapped off what he could from the lower branches. Brittle branches, handfuls of dead needles, dry bark, anything that would burn. He lacked a saw, but Dark Sister was so sharp it made for a more than decent substitute, easily allowing him to chop off entire branches.

He hauled armful after armful of flammable fodder back to the lee of a decently protected boulder until he had a small heap. Then he crouched and dug out a burrow in the base of the pile, threw in his bits of tinder and charcoal from the fire the prior night, pulled out his flint and steel, and began to work up some sparks.

It took a while. His hands were stiff, the wind wouldn't stop biting, and his patience was growing thin as the sun crept lower in the sk—finally.

He had managed to produce a small, smoking ember. He shielded it from the wind with his body's bulk and outstretched cloak while he kept feeding it tinder and pieces of bark, and soon after that, twigs. Then the flame truly began to hold and he began to add thicker branches.

His campfire crackled to life. At last, Jon thought tiredly. He sat back in relief and held out his hands.

He warmed his hands over the fire, and they had badly needed to be warmed: it was as if his skin were full of needles. Many of the Watch's rangers had lost fingers to the cold, and Jon was loathe to join their number. A man needed all of his fingers if he hoped to wield a sword with anything approaching real skill, many rangers had said, the Halfhand notwithstanding.

Ghost arrived not long after, trotting silently through the snow with a hare in his jaws. The direwolf dropped it near Jon's feet, then vanished. Later he came again, with another. Then a snow fox, its spine broken just like the rest.

Jon skinned each in turn with Dark Sister, which was a bit of an awkward task due to the blade's length, but the spellforged steel's sheer sharpness made it more than worth the trouble. He foraged until he found a clean-enough looking branch of willow, skewered strips of meat along its upper length, and cooked them over his fire until the edges curled and browned. It wasn't long until his mouth was watering.

Then he finally began to eat. He closed his eyes, savoring the taste of his strip of fox flank and pieces of hare. Thank the gods.

His first warm, cooked food in weeks.

He threw the fox's bigger bones directly on top of some outer coals and cinders until they turned black. Then he cracked them open and sucked out the marrow, which turned out to be thick and greasy on his tongue. Cooked marrow, excessively rich in fat and flavor as it was, wasn't to his usual taste. But it was thick with the nutrients he needed - and he had rarely been more desperate for food than he was now.

When his hunger faded, he sat back and fed the fire again. It had been a good meal, worthy of a ranger of the Watch. Enough meat and fat like that for a few days and he might soon start to recover his strength again.

He shared a few of the scraps with Ghost, and though cooked meat wasn't to the direwolf's usual tastes, he still accepted the charred bones and other scraps.

But this brief time of peace didn't last, couldn't have lasted. As the sun set, the sky began to thicken with thick clouds and snow. The beginnings of a blizzard. Jon's heart sank at the sight.

Then his heart sank further when the greenseer's crows began to caw all around him in warning. Ghost's head rose, teeth baring in a silent snarl.

Damnit. Jon sighed, grimacing as he stood and unsheathed Dark Sister. The dead were coming.

He reached out to Phantom, wondering how they had gotten so close. And was met with an unfortunate surprise.

No wonder. The shadowcat had taken advantage of his distraction and had tried to escape his grip. He closed his mind over hers like a fist, and warned her to come back now.

The crows were still cawing. Ghost was glaring death at the treeline below the ridge. Jon didn't like the edge of unnatural cold in this blizzard.

Should I flee? The dead were coming at the least - possibly even something worse. But he saw no warning of such severity from the greenseer's birds. They would be far louder than this, screaming rather than cawing. He isn't telling me to run? So be it, then.

He saw the enemy not long after. Shambling figures stumbling through the blizzard, with an awkward and stumbling gait unlike that of any living man.

Wights, he could instantly tell, even without a good view through all the gods-damned snow. He raised Dark Sister and sized up his odds. Half a dozen, at least. Too many.

Jon prepared himself, settling into a stance. He took up a burning spit of wood from the fire, carrying it loosely in his offhand - his sword in one hand and a burning log in the other. His leg was still badly paining him, but there could be no room for pain in him, no distractions from the weakness of his body - not now.

"Come on, then," he muttered. He held Dark Sister with a loose, ready hand, waiting for whatever might come. It was too late to run, and he hadn't the legs for it in any case. Whatever the greenseer is planning, best it come soon.

These wights looked older than most, with skin shriveled like raisins. The closest still had bits of fur and leather frozen to it, the rest were near naked. Frost clung to their wind-blackened skin like rime on old bark. He couldn't even tell what tribe or clan they might have once come from. But despite how miserable they looked even by the standards of wights, their eyes were the same familiar shade of pale blue as all the rest.

And then they were upon him.

The dead came silently. That was something he was still getting used to. The dead never snarled, or growled or spat - they were as silent as men already in their graves, all of them. Of these ones, he counted four leading at a shambling run, and more still coming.

The first charged for him with graceless, hulking strength, like a puppet on strings. It lunged for his face.

He easily slid aside from its broad form and brought it down with a hooked foot around its ankle. Then he swung for the back of its neck.

The blade bit halfway through its spine, and he finished the cut with a shove of his boot. Its head was still biting and hissing for him as it dropped into the snows. Then he cut twice more, high and low, severing its spine in two places. That would cripple it far more than the loss of its head. Next.

Another lunged for him with a rusting sword. A woman, once - now wizened beyond all recognition.

Jon turned its blade aside and thrust his burning firebrand into the hollow of its neck. The wight instantly went up in flames. Its skin burned like tinder, and its flesh like tallow: just like the wights he had fought in the Lord Commander's tower months ago. No body of flesh should have burned so easily - something about the magic that animated these creatures made them like so much kindling for the flames. Next.

Another lunged for him, and he ducked under its grasping arms and shoved it away with a firm kick to the backside. It tumbled into the snow, and between him and Ghost, they managed to cut down the fourth wight with ease. Next—

But before he could focus on the last of the four, he saw disaster shambling his way. More of the dead. They were coming from the front, and more behind him. Too many. At least another dozen had emerged from the trees while he'd been fighting.

Instead of finishing that one off, he backed toward the fire. He needed another burning log. His breath came hard and fast as he tried to keep himself in the fight.

They have tactics. They're being directed by a white walker. The crows were cawing, shrieking all around him. Some were attacking the wights' eyes, harrying them, but it wasn't enough. Did the greenseer not see this coming? Was he not paying attention?

If so, he was doomed.

The nearest one caught his arm. Jon jammed another burning branch into its chest. The wight went up at once - yet again, the flames erupted across its body as quickly as lamp oil. The air was filled with the stench of burnt hair and flesh, and the shrieking of the dead.

After beheading its burning form, Jon kicked the writhing corpse aside, but others were already closing in from both sides. Ghost had already savaged one and was working on another, but still, the direwolf wouldn't hold them all. Both of them together couldn't. Why didn't the greenseer tell me to run?! Jon wondered, in a moment of near-panic.

He started to reach out to Sonagon in desperation, knowing it would almost certainly be pointless—

…and then, he heard something.

A deep, rolling howl filled the air.

He felt it as much as he heard it. A howl so deep, so sonorous that it was felt as much as heard, carrying a force that vibrated down to his very bones.

Another howl answered it, then another and another from the ridge above. Jon stared. Even the dead paused. All their pale blue eyes shifted, their heads and bodies turning towards this new threat.

And then massive shapes charged through the blizzard.

He didn't understand what he was seeing, not at first. It took him a moment to recognize the frost-blurred shapes for what they were: wolves, each of them huge, fast creatures - each the size of one of the Watch's garrons or a small horse. No, not wolves, Jon realized in sudden awe. Direwolves.

He couldn't tell how many there were. He saw great furred beasts flashing through the snow, with hides in a dozen different shades of red and auburn, brown and grey, and black as night and pale as snow. They weren't just bigger and far more powerful than the wights, there were more of them. He was seeing a scene fit for a northern legend, enough teeth and muscle to hunt mammoths. A pack of direwolves on the hunt.

The fight turned in an instant.

One wolf bowled through four of the dead, scattering them into the snow for the others to finish - even as he stared, the trailing wolves fell upon the dead and snapped their necks like twigs. Another took a crawling wight by the back and ripped out its spine. A black she-wolf darted in and hamstrung one before leaping back - and a moment later, three wolves gripped it by different limbs and pulled, scattering writhing limbs across twenty feet of snow. All he could hear was snarls and cracks of bone and the rending and tearing of flesh filling the night, everywhere around him.

Ghost stayed by Jon's side, silently snarling at the newcomers, as wary as Jon had ever seen him before. But the fight wasn't over.

A crippled wight was crawling towards him. He staggered over to it atop his bad leg, and then he swung past its feeble defense. The first cut took its arm, the second took its eyes. Then he cut off its head and the rest of its limbs. The body only stopped moving after he severed its spine in half a dozen places.

After that, he grabbed another spit of burning wood from his fire and burned another fallen wight, then another, then another and another. The night filled with fire.

When it was done, the snow was churned and blackened. The burning ones lay still. The rest were torn to pieces. Jon stood there breathing hard. His sword was still drawn, but he let it hang limply at his side.

The direwolves circled around him. Not in a hunting sense, he felt little bloodlust from them now. It felt more like… curiosity. But none came close to him, not yet.

Then Ghost trotted forward, and Jon saw. Oh. It was so clear now. They're interested in Ghost, not me. Of course.

His direwolf greeted the wild ones silently, and they answered him with low, nonaggressive sounds; a succession of growls, whines, yips. Jon could only stare in fascination as the wild ones circled around Ghost, looking at him from every angle. Several nudged his shoulder, sniffed his fur. An auburn one met Ghost's snout with its own. A big black one, likely the pack leader, sniffed under his tail.

It was a strange, almost magical moment. Jon just stood silently, watching Ghost meet his fellow direwolves.

Then the moment passed, after Ghost failed to do anything, show any reaction at all to the wild direwolves.

For a moment the wild direwolves stood together, some of the smaller ones whining, while the pack leader, a big, black-furred male, met Ghost's eyes. Perhaps something passed between them, but if so, it was entirely beyond Jon's ability to recognize or interpret.

Then the black pack leader turned away. It yipped to its pack, and then the great beasts all turned and returned to the blizzard.

In only seconds, as quickly as they'd come, the direwolves were all gone.

The night was silent. Jon sighed in relief. Ghost returned to his side. His direwolf brushed his hand with his snout, then sat down on his haunches. Jon sat down with him, scratched his direwolf behind the ears. "They wanted you to come with them, didn't they, boy?"

Ghost just leaned into Jon's hand, and soon Jon was scratching him with both hands. Ghost licked his face. It wasn't long before he was laughing, playing in the snow with his direwolf.

An hour later, the night was still silent. Jon had disposed of any of the wights' body parts that were still twitching, then gone back to feeding his fire, keeping the flames steady as he ate the last of his meat. He prepared more bark and tinder for later fires. Knowing how to set a fire to create small amounts of charcoal, and drying out bark and tinder until even the smallest of sparks could set it aflame was a critical set of skills for any ranger.

He listened to Sonagon's slow breathing on the ridge above. The dragon had slept through the entire fight. As for Phantom, Jon kept her more closely under control. If she hadn't ranged so far afield resisting his orders, he might have known those wights were coming. He should have known. That fight had been far, far too close.

But, the shadowcat's disobedience was a problem for another day. He could discipline her at his leisure now.

Jon stared out into the snow where the wolves had gone. "There are still direwolves beyond the Wall," he murmured quietly, still petting Ghost. "Still living things."