The great doors of Winterfell creaked, their iron hinges shrieking like the rusted gate of some damp tomb as they swung open. At a nudge, Strider stepped through them, his hooves crashing against the stone of the yard with a sound like thunder. Lord Rickard Stark, dressed in grey and standing at the foot of the steps, looked up at Strider's approach and gazed at him with a stone face. Tywin could not help but notice, however, the little gesture that streaked across his face as he caught sight of the powerful muscles of the stallion's shoulders, nor the way in which his Adam's apple jerked as Strider blew out a cloud of dragon like steam.
"Lord Lannister," Rickard said, coldly and unforgiving as winter itself. "We had not expected you."
Tywin stepped off his horse, like a panther, and his boots made a crunching sound in the frost, "Anticipation is tedious." He checked for dirst on his sleeve, and waited for Rickard to grit his teeth. Standing behind Rickard, Brandon and Ned looked at each other, while Lyanna (as always, the unpredictable one), stood against a column, with her arms crossed. There was another presence, in the doorway, huddled in the shadow, a smaller boy, with dark eyes and a curious expression, Benjen Stark. The Night's Watch is not for you, little wolf. Tywin thought. At least, not in this world.
He took Rickard by the forearm, feeling the calluses of a man who was not afraid to wield a sword. "Your hospitality is renowned, Lord Rickard," Tywin said, with just enough of a smile to make it an insult. Rickard's grip tensed and relaxed. "It would be my pleasure… and my honor… if you would join us. Please." He stepped aside.
"Come. We will eat bread and salt together before—"
"I'd rather a tour." Tywin interrupted him, already walking past. "I've heard a great deal about the… quaintness of Winterfell." He said the last word in such a way that it made Ned bristle, but Rickard just smiled and walked with him. They walked through the keep, the dark stone and torches casting deep shadows, the smell of smoke and damp fur occupying the space. Tywin's fingers felt the walls as he passed, his eyes noting the tiny fissures in the mortar. Weak points he noted mentally.
Benjen came dashing up to join them. "Do you like our castle?" He said with excitement. None of his brothers and sisters had ever had much of a sense of humor, but there was something almost like innocence in the boy's open smile. His fingers seemed to be twitching with eagerness to draw the wooden sword that hung at his side.
"It's enough," he said as he saw the boy's face drop. "For a pile of rocks."
"Rocks?" Lyanna snorted, somewhere behind them. "At least our rocks don't weep gold."
"Lyanna," Rickard cautioned, but Tywin laughed, a deep menacing sound.
"Clever girl." He stopped at the edge of the godswood, where the weirwood's carved face stared out in sightless and serene gesture, its word was a deep and bloody red. "Tell me, Lord Stark… do you still believe in grumkins and snarks?"
Rickard's breath smoked as he spoke. "We keep the old ways."
"Ah." Tywin moved closer to the tree, speaking in a hushed tone that only Rickard could hear. "Then you won't be surprised when I tell you why I really came here." He rummaged in his doublet, producing a sliver of dragonglass black as sin, sharp as truth. "The Long Night is coming. And your Wall won't hold."
It was as if he had struck him—Rickard Stark did not move, did not blink, but he gripped hard around the shard of dragonglass. The godswood was very quiet. Then Brandon laughed, a sudden crack of sound like breaking ice.
"You expect us to believe that?" His hand already moving toward the hilt of his sword, his fingers flexing like a man who wanted a blade in his hand. Ned, always the thinker, thought differently, his eyebrows burrowed into a furrow deep enough to plant barley in. "The Long Night is a children's story," Brandon mocked.
Tywin didn't move. He just raised his eyes to the face of the weirwood and brought his close sight to the lines of sap — the sap that was their blood, dried and seeping and set long years before any of these pups were born. "And Brandon," he said, "do stories do that?" He pointed to the face of the tree, and this time they saw it. The sap wasn't just red. It was charred around the edges.
Finally, Lyanna spoke up. She took the dragonglass from her father's hand and rotated it in her palm. "How does it work?"
Tywin smiled. "You stab them with it."
Rickard snorted. "That's enough. Let's take this inside. Now."
The Great Hall was a dark and smoky hollow. Neither Tywin nor the Starks had tasted the bread or salt between them. Tywin leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers. "The Night King. He is no myth from Old Nan's tales. He is as real as you or me, and he will eventually lead an army of the dead south." The furrowed between Ned's brow deepened. Benjen, who had been sitting forward, straddling the edge of his chair, seemed both repelled and intrigued.
"And you just happened to know this?" Brandon asked incredulously.
Tywin smiled. "I know many things. For example, though your cherished legends of the First Men never spoke of it, Valyrian steel will serve you well against the darkness that is coming, as will dragonglass." He paused, studying Rickard's face as his eyes went to Ice.
Lyanna turned the dragonglass over in her hand. "Alright, so we just... give every man north of the Neck a piece of this stuff?"
"Or Valyrian steel," Tywin said. "Though as House Stark has not been especially prolific in stockpiling that either, I would begin digging up dragonglass."
"How does the Night King die?" asked Rickard stonely.
Tywin leaned forward, his face looked like a map of light and shadow in the firelight. "He dies like any man, when you cut him deep enough."
There was mothing, and then Ned, softly yet resolute, "How do you know all this?"
A glint came to Tywin's eye. "Would you believe that I dreamed it?"
"Then you would be full of shit," Lyanna said, with a snort.
"But if he's telling the truth," Benjen said, with full wide eyes.
Rickard slammed a fist on the table, making the plates and cups jump. "Enough." He rose, his shadow falling across the fire. "You say we are doomed, Lannister. Show me proof."
Tywin sighed, as if he was trying to explain a simple sum to a dull pupil. "Proof?" He dug into his doublet once more—slowly—and flipped a second fragment onto the table. That shard was longer, jagged, and still black with the dried blood that had caked it. "That," he said, "is from a wight. Killed it myself beyond the Wall."
Brandon recoiled. Ned's face clouded. "You've been beyond the Wall?"
Tywin said with a smile, "Wouldn't you like to know. "
Rickard took the fragment, examined it, and at last—reluctantly—nodded. "We will send to the Night's Watch."
***
The guest rooms at Winterfell were icy and damp. Tywin had to push a layer of frost off the window in the morning. He lay under the furs, his naked skin pimpled with gooseflesh, and stared up at the ceiling beams. Each one was older than House Lannister. Each one bore the scars of northerners' intractability. He could hear the noise of the Stark household making ready for the day. The sound of boots, the crack of leather, the whoosh of banners flapping in the wind, the howl of wolves in the distance. He could hear the scrape of Brandon sharpening his sword. At breakfast, most likely.
Tywin allowed his soldiers to rest. Or, he let them think they were resting. In reality, he had spent the early hours of the morning composing a letter by candlelight. With the flourish of a scalpel, his quill danced across the parchment. After he sealed the letter with red wax, it was impressed with the Lannister sigil and given to a rider whose mount had been fed extra oats. His mount had enough oats to reach White Harbor without needing a break. By the time the dawn broke over the horizon of Winterfell, Tywin was dressed. While awaiting his breakfast, his fingers were playing with the hilt of his dragonglass dagger. Lord Stark and his son were men of honor. It would take them days to summon their banners. Days that Tywin would spend asessing them of their northern pride like frost bitten layers of skin.
He discovered her in the yard, in the midst of pummelling a straw dummy, her breath was visible in the chill air. Her strikes were clumsy, and if she ever swung at an opponent that way in a real fight, she'd be skewered in an instant. Tywin rested his shoulder against the training post, arms folded. "You're dead," he pointed out, in a genial tone. "Twice over."
She spun around, the hair at her temples had been glued with sweat. "Why don't you come and demonstrate, my lord?" The last two words were poison-tipped.
Tywin twisted the wooden sword out of her hand. "With pleasure." Then he was before her, swift as that, the practice sword a whirl of wood until it had stopped with its tip buried in the hollow of her neck. She look shocked. "First rule," he whispered. "Do not let your foe decide the place and manner of battle." He flipped the sword back at her. She dropped it, and he laughed. "Or the choice of blade."
Lyanna blushed. "You cheat."
"Winning isn't cheating." Tywin said while making sure that there were no straws on his sleeve. "It's just winning."
By midday, Rickard gathered the Stark men in the courtyard of Winterfell, older ones, battle-hardened and with long white beards, in boiled leather. Rickard stepped up on the steps leading to the courtyard door and talked about the Long Night and the dragonglass. They didn't believe him. Tywin watched from the shadows, his superhearing hearing mutterings of "fucking southern nonsense" from the men. Rickard pulled out the piece of dragonglass with the wight still stuck to it and they stopped talking. One of the older Umber men took it in his hand, brought it to his nose and sniffed. "It smells real," he said. That is what they believed.
###
The ride to White Harbor was a gruesome slog through the icy mires and biting gales. Tywin rode Strider, his warhorse snorting in mist like it was an Iron Forge that bellowed. The rest of the Starks slouched in their saddles behind him, their pride in their North not proof against the cold. But Lyanna seemed invigorated, her own mount jogging to keep pace with Strider's longer strides. She held a pertinacious look on her face. "You didn't answer Ned's question," she said, as she called out across the gale. "How do you know all this?"
Tywin straightened his gloves. "What if I were to tell you I had made love to a sorceress?"
Lyanna laughed. "I would ask how she fared."
"Barely." His smile was sharp. "But she sang pretty while it lasted."
Their approach with the fog was slow, but when it finally broke they were looking out at White Harbor. Snow covered the city like a layer of new fallen snow and the wind whipped the banners that flew above it, silver mermen with tridents that shone in the grey light. He could also make out the black hulls of the ships that Tywin's letter had summoned. He was greeted by the Lord of White Harbor, Wyman Manderly. He was a large man who moved with difficulty, his jowls shaking as he walked. "Lord Lannister," Manderly said. "Your… lodgings… await."
"Sufficient," Tywin said, surveying the ships. "Can they sail or are they just festering hulks?"
Wyman laughed, jiggling his belly in the process. "Provisions, salt beef and hardtack and ale enough to float a kraken."
"Good." Tywin's eyes moved past him to the Starks, their faces still full of suspicion. "We leave for Dragonstone at first light." He did not need to add what they all understood—that this was not longer a northern problem. It was his.
Strider ascended the gangway and Tywin followed, leading the warhorse up onto the vessel where its hooves hit the deck with the heavy clatter of a stone door being shut in a tomb. The sailors were large men, stout of build and thick of beard, and they gawked at the animal and its thick muscles under its black coat like a pair of rams on pulleys. Lyanna came after, almost sliding along the frosty deck in her boots. "Your horse is a fucking killer," she said, hopping clear of Strider's thrashing tail.
Tywin did not turn. "He doesn't like the smell of fish."
The Manderly vessels strained under the burden of Northern boots, and the resounding crash of Strider's footfalls. Tywin stood at the prow, his cloak snapping in the sea breeze like a pennant as the fog-shrouded spires of White Harbor disappeared into the distance. Beside him, Lyanna gazed out at the waves, her complexion as wan as the foam that lashed the hull. "First time on a ship, wolf girl?" Tywin asked, observing the tight grasp of her fingers on the wood.
Before Lyanna could respond, a wave rolled in and the deck dropped beneath their feet. She staggered, and Tywin grasped her elbow with the sure-footedness of a man who had spent many years at sea despite hardly being at sea. "Try breathing in through your nose," he told her, letting go with the kind of disinterest he might have shown toward a curious bug. "And if you are going to vomit, please, for the love of the gods, do it over the side. The men detest cleaning it up from the decks."
***
The voyage was short, but unpleasant—for the northmen, at least. Lord Tywin seemed entirely unaffected by the rough pitching of the waves, his feet as steady on the deck as if he had grown roots into the ship's timber. Lyanna had been retching her way over the rail for two days. That morning she seemed better, though her glare could have melted frost. "Eat," Lord Tywin said to her. "You'll need your strength when we land." He tossed her an apple. Lyanna made a face, but caught the fruit and took a bite.
Dragonstone was a fist of black stone at the mouth of Blackwater Bay. The towers themselves was sharp as knives. The wind was blowing from the east as they made their approach, so they came to the dock from the north, past the little village and the dark castle with its steep stone walls. The ships bucked and heaved in the chop, their hulls creaking and groaning. Strider protested loudly as the docked, the sound of the cables scraping against the volcanic rock echoing across the water like the screams of tortured men.
Lord Tywin dismounted on the dock first, his boots thumping against the rough-cut dragonstone as he strode toward the gate. The sound of Strider's hooves was louder, sparks flashing whenever he placed a hoof on one of the dragonstone pebbles scattered throughout the obsidian shingle. The Lannister soldiers followed their lord in a river of crimson, looking like a bloody smear across the black stone; the northern men stayed clustered on the decks of the ships, suspicious and out of their environment.
Tywin didn't bother asking. He snatched a pick from a startled Manderly sailor and struck it into the nearest outcropping. The crack was very loud, and a shard of dragonglass broke free. It shone in his hand. He flipped it to a Lannister guardsman, who nearly dropped it. "Like that," Tywin said. "This is how we dig our way to victory."
For a moment, no one moved. Then, as if Tywin had broken a spell, the Lannister men swarmed forward, snatching up tools with something approaching religious fervor. Their lord was working alongside them—Tywin Lannister, the man who had once been said to conquer all Seven Kingdoms without raising a banner, now toiling like a common soldier. It made their chests swell; made their axes strike the rock with pride.
The Starks took a moment longer to follow. Northern pride set their teeth on edge at the notion of taking orders from a Lannister. But when Eddard Stark climbed down from his horse and picked up a pick without a comment, the others followed—reluctantly, sullenly, like wolves creeping into a camp. Within an hour, the black beach was filled with the clang of metal and the shout of orders, Lannister red and Stark gray mingling together in the sea-salt air.
At first, they worked in a guarded silence, separated by an unspoken moat of old hatreds and older bigotries. But there was nothing like hard work for making friends. When a barrel of fresh water was knocked over near the Lannister line, it was a giant of a Stark from Bear Island who set it aright without a word. When a Lannister guardsman's pick shattered against the rock, a Stark smith tossed him a new one with a, "Don't break this one, either, you numpty."
Tywin watched them from the shade of a basalt overhang, tapping idly on the hilt of his dragonglass dagger. The tension hadn't vanished not really, it was buried beneath the sweat and purpose. Though buried things always seemed to find their way back to the surface. It started with a muttered insult—something about "gold-shitting southrons" carried on the wind to Tywin's ears. Then a Stark archer "accidentally" kicked a pile of Lannister-mined dragonglass into the surf. The Lannister response was immediate: a whispered joke about northerners and their sheep, just loud enough to be heard.
Lyanna, lugging a basket of shards to the carts, sighed. "You're all such children."
That's when Tywin walked over and walked into the middle of the beach. Where the tide went out and had washed away a pit in the obsidian. And he rammed a Lannister pick and a Stark shovel into the black sand. "You," he said to a Lannister with a broken nose, "and you" to a Stark with a beard frozen with sea-spray. "Dig here. Together."
The two men stared at him. "My lord," the Lannister started.
"Or I'll have you both digging in the shit of Casterly Rock's stables by dawn," he said cheerfully enough. The Stark opened his mouth (to complain no doubt) but one icy look from Tywin shut his trap. They took up the tools.
At first it was clumsy. The Lannister made a joke about savage winters. The Stark made one about southern beds. But then their shovels hit something hard, a vein of dragonglass as big as a man's thigh. The Lannister's eyes widened. "That's enough to make a dozen spears," he admitted. The Stark, wiping the sweat from his brow, nodded. "Aye. If your lot can lift it."
The Lannister sneered. "I bet you my next ration of ale we can."
And like that, the dam broke. The men started pairing off, some reluctant, some competitive. All of them starting to realise that the real enemy wasn't the man who sweated next to him. It was the dead men waiting on the other side of the Wall.
By nightfall the beach was dotted with exhausted men swapping waterskins and full of dirty jokes. Even Ned Stark (who'd spent the day supervising carts of dragonglass up the cliffs) paused to accept a strip of salted meat from a Lannister sergeant. Tywin caught up with Lyanna as she was lugging yet another basket back to the ships. "Still think they're children?"
She slung the basket onto her hip and panted. "Just bigger ones." But there wasn't any malice in it now. Strider chose that moment to snort; his great head twisting to where a knot of Stark men were regarding his hooves with suspicious curiosity. One man reached out and then yelped as the warhorse nipped at his cloak. Tywin sighed. "He does that."
Lyanna giggled. "Menace."
Tywin's lip curled. He didn't smile. But as the first stars came out in the sky above Dragonstone, and the sound of laughter carried up from the beach, even the weirwood heart tree might have called it a victory.