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Brienne had thought her ability to trust dead and gone, lost somewhere between Lord Renly’s camp at Highgarden and the Riverlands. At Castle Black, she discovered that she might not trust other people, but she could trust them to serve their own ends. She could trust them to take every opportunity to please themselves, even when pitted against dragons.
Hatched in the wilderness, never truly tamed – as much as that was even possible for a dragon – after their queen perished, the three dragons that had crossed the narrow sea and pushed back the army of the dead from beyond the Wall, turned next to pleasing themselves. They lay waste to the North, ranging far and wide. There were sightings of them as far south as Moat Cailin and White Harbor. And so the Seven Kingdoms’ champions of all stripes, gathered together in the ice-bound home of the Night’s Watch to defend the Wall from the dead, attempted to deal with this new menace.
Randyll Tarly’s gentle son, the trainee maester, was the one to announce that the eyes seemed to be a dragon’s one true weak spot. He was so unlike his father that Brienne forced herself to let go of her misgivings and lent her ear to the portly young man’s disquisitions on the subject, but it was Jaime who devised a practical solution to put young Tarly’s ramblings to use. Jaime’s brother had written him from Slaver’s Bay and sent his letter back by ironborn ship, choosing to stay away but also to set aside the brothers’ quarrel in the face of the dragon queen’s madness and inability to control her pet monsters. Tyrion Lannister’s letter provided a detailed description and even a pen drawing of the gigantic trebuchets which had been used at the siege of Meereen.
“More bloody trebuchets,” Jaime told Brienne with a rueful twist to his lips. “As if ‘Kingslayer’ weren’t sufficient for any man’s reputation.”
Despite his grim humor, he set about discussing the issue with siege engineers from the Reach and the best northern blacksmiths. Armorers and Dornish archers added their suggestions as well, and woodsmen felled centuries-old trees in the depth of winter, till at last the Night’s Watch’s smiths and carpenters produced three fair imitations of the Yunkish trebuchets, modified to loose quarrels as tall as a man and as thick around as Brienne’s thigh.
“How certain are you that this will work?” the grim commander of the Night’s Watch asked Jaime more than once.
“If you want certainty, go to a brothel, Lord Snow,” Jaime quipped. “Those dragons will roast us all for their supper. Anything short of that will be a victory for the singers to twist and misshape at their leisure.”
As it turned out, the scorpion-trebuchets worked best when paired with the dragons’ own wild nature and lack of fighting discipline. On a day when the snow-bearing clouds hung so low, Brienne thought she might stretch up to her tiptoes and touch them, they’d come, flying low and loosing jets of black and green and white flame over Mole’s Town and the castle.
Two of the trebuchets missed, one bolt flying wide of any airborne target, the other skimming just past the black dragon’s wingtip.
The third quarrel struck true, catching the green dragon in the left eye. The beast roared so Brienne felt the earth tremble under her feet, and crashed into his cream-colored brother in his agony and rage. The two dragons tangled in midair, biting and burning each other till their every scale looked limned in molten gold. The green dragon was already dead, yet its jaws remained fastened around the other’s long neck when they crashed to the ground in the half-league between the hamlet and the castle, where a black, bristling forest of archers and crossbowmen surrounded them and sent dense cataracts of bolts and arrows over the beasts till they both stopped moving. Two lines of pikemen and knights armed with broadswords waited behind the archers, just in case. The cream dragon defended itself fiercely in its death throes, burning up archers like kindling, its pale fire even reaching some of the armored warriors beyond. A man wearing the green turtle sigil of House Estermont went up like a torch in the cream dragon’s last gasp, right beside where Brienne and Pod stood, yet they never got close enough to stab at an eye, a nostril, the underside of the chin where the maesters speculated the scales took the longest to close and harden.
That left the black dragon, the biggest one, and the most dangerous, from what Tyrion Lannister’s missive had said. After its brothers’ deaths, it no longer approached either castle or hamlet, nothing bigger than the few lonely crofts whose inhabitants hadn’t fled with their sheep and their kin to Castle Black or to Lady Stark’s protection in the ruins of Winterfell. And it never flew lower than the clouds, a wingèd whip of black and red scale and flame far above the earth. To dispatch it would require a new stratagem.
*
Some proposals required bloodshed to lure the beast closer. Others hinged on dubious magics read about in books kept in the bowels of the Citadel. Others still required the construction of even more elaborate war engines than the complicated and expensive Yunkish-style trebuchets.
“Dragons are clever,” Samwell Tarly’s tremulous voice rose over the angry buzzing which filled Castle Black’s great hall. “Trebuchets and scorpions might not work again, now it knows what they look like and what they can do.”
“We could distract it with enough fresh kills while we line up the shot,” an ironman retorted, eyeing Sam like he considered the young maester a prime candidate for dragon bait.
“We cannot spare any oxen or sheep,” Jon Snow said soberly. The unwavering gaze he leveled at the sullen knot of ironmen spoke clearly enough of his feelings on the topic of using human bait.
A grizzled man with a stoop and a workingman’s hands stepped forward into the empty space dividing the highborn sitting at trestles or standing around the giant fireplace, and the hedge knights, servants, and even smallfolk crowded into the hall. He spoke with the guttural accent of a man of Qohor.
“Begging your pardon, my lords, my name is Tobho Mott. Till recently, I was the master and owner of the finest smithy and armory this side of the narrow sea. I had the honor of shaping many a fine weapon I see about me.”
Brienne shuddered at the man’s accent, though his words were sensible enough and soberly spoken, then she squeezed Oathkeeper’s grip at the next words which rang out over the hall.
“You smelted down my father’s sword into two lesser ones.” Everyone knew Jon Snow’s true parentage now, yet old attachments lingered in his tone and the flat look of his grey eyes facing down the Qohorik.
Master Mott offered a deep bow. “I did, my lord, and a finer weapon never passed through my hands. I am pleased to say the weapons it gave birth to are fine work as well.” He interlaced his broad, scarred fingers before him. “I have been speaking with the boy who went beyond the Wall and found the man who calls himself the three-eyed crow. Young Master Bran has shared with me what we might do to put an end to the fire from the sky.”
Then he explained the scheme that Bran Stark had laid out before him. Greenseer and cripple, young Stark was rarely seen in the great hall yet was taken much into the Lord Commander’s and the northern lords’ confidence.
The lords of the other kingdoms were less inclined to take the lad’s word at face value.
“Bugger you, swordsmith,” an ironman spat the words at Master Mott. Brienne did not know his name, but he carried a Valyrian-steel sword with a moonstone set in its pommel and wore a scythe sigil on his surcoat. House Harlaw. “You’ll take my sword up the arse before I’ll let your hand touch it. My great-great-grandfather paid the iron price for Nightfall. You want it? Kill me and take it.”
This last challenge was offered to all those assembled in the hall. Many ironborn sent up a cheer of support, though not all, Brienne noticed.
Wringing his pudgy hands, Samwell Tarly stepped forward again, his cheeks mottled like he would rather have been anywhere else, doing anything else. “My father’s sword passed to me on his death. I will gladly hand it over to Master Mott, if…” His tongue seemed to struggle after the right words. “If Bran Stark says this could work, I am prepared to lay my faith in him.”
“A pig’s faith is a boar’s fart,” the ironman lobbed back. A poor witticism, but some of his friends laughed.
Not many others did: the surviving warriors from southron houses may have had their reservations about a plan involving both Valyrian steel and strange magics, but none cared greatly for the ironborn, and the northern houses bowed unquestioningly to the surviving Starks and their bastard cousin.
“Well,” a bored voice drawled in a way which somehow cut through the hubbub. The voice of a man used to being deferred to and feared, even after everything that had happened. Especially after everything that had happened.
Jaime smiled broadly when all eyes turned to him, his beard golden in the torchlight, his clothing plain and his red cloak unadorned by any sigil. He’d discarded his Kingsguard whites and his golden hand after the fall of King’s Landing, yet his simple clothes served only to bring out his beauty, nicked and tempered and honed by all his trials like a… Like a sword, Brienne thought. A beautiful sword. Her hand ached, she was squeezing Oathkeeper’s grip so tightly.
“Well, I too am prepared to roll the dice on the word of a mere lad and a man who is also a tree.” Jaime offered an elaborate shrug. “Widow’s Wail may be an unblooded piece of metal saddled with a truly unimaginative name, but it is still Valyrian steel, and my…”
Brienne’s heart hurt as much as her hand at the rueful smile which tugged at the corner of Jaime’s mouth. She knew how complicated and how weighty were his feelings about the world knowing the shame he had bestowed on his children in fathering them, as well as his feelings at having fathered and then not claimed them till it was mostly too late.
“My son is a gentle boy and has never cared for such toys.” Jaime caught Jon Snow’s eye and held his gaze. “Smelting Widow’s Wail down with others of its kind for the greater good is the best thing for it, really.”
Some banged their tankards on tables in approval. Some jeered, lobbing the usual insults Jaime’s way. Brienne’s jaw tightened, but a woman’s voice rang out next, before Brienne could speak or act the fool in Jaime’s defense.
“Will you withhold Longclaw, Jon Snow, when lesser men come forth to give up their ancestral rights?” Maege Mormont called out pointedly to where the Lord Commander sat. “My brother bequeathed you that sword, and I’ve not pressed mine or my daughters’ claims to it. But I ask you, before all these people: will you pledge it, or do you think to go your own way in this?”
Jon Snow pinked in response, but he stood, drew the bear-pommeled bastard sword for all to see, and pledged it in solemn tones to their shared purpose.
Brienne gripped her sword belt in her fists and came forth as well, hunching into herself on instinct. She wished she hadn’t pulled her hair back and knotted it behind her head; it might have hidden her face a bit, at least the hideous scar on her cheek.
“This sword is called Oathkeeper, and it too was made from another man’s steel. A good man’s sword, who wielded it well. I used it to defend myself and those who could not defend themselves. I used it to avenge some wrongs, though not many. Now I pledge it and my troth.”
Her first words were mere murmurs, but by the end her voice rang clear over the hall, even as she kept her eyes on the flagstone floor. She expected mockery but heard only silence and the crackle of the great hearth. Glancing up, she saw some sour faces turned her way but also smiles, and nods of approval, and Jaime watching her like she was worth looking at. He’d told her that the tale of how she’d rescued Sansa Stark and brought her home had been making the rounds, but Brienne had been inclined to disregard this. She suspected that they spoke of her as a monster who’d snatched a maiden fair from one danger and tipped her into another – from a small man’s poisonous clutches in the Vale, and into the clutches of dragons.
Now Jon Snow watched her and the sword hanging from her hip, then he seemed to rouse himself and turned again to where the ironborn stood against the far wall. “Well, Lord Harlaw,” Snow called out. “A maid too can pledge her sword to this enterprise. Will you alone stand against it?”
Harlaw’s face twisted with disdain, but before he could speak, a tall, barrel-chested man pushed through the throng of ironmen, clapped a heavy hand on Harlaw’s shoulder, spun him around like he was a straw doll, and plunged a dagger into his stomach, once, twice, three times more, till his hand and the dagger were bright red and Harlaw folded to the ground, piss darkening his breeches and his limp legs tangling briefly with his fabled sword.
Brienne started violently and, for the first time in her life, did not know whether to intervene. She felt a hand squeeze her elbow. Half-turning, already lifting her elbow to wrench herself free and strike at her assailant’s nose, she saw that it was Jaime holding her, like he thought her so much a fool that she would rush in, unthinking. She lowered her elbow.
All around her, people started away from the murderer and his victim. Several brothers of the Night’s Watch surged against that retreating tide. Some seized the other men with scythe sigils before those could offer more violence, while the rest surrounded the murderer, who gripped his bloody dagger still and laid his free hand on the handle of a short axe hanging from his belt.
“The Iron Law forbids one ironman to raise his hand against another,” he intoned in stark tones. “But not when the purpose is just vengeance. House Greyjoy always knew the Harlaws stole Nightfall from us, but we could never prove it. Balon Harlaw just admitted it. I have my vengeance, and now I claim his lands, his chattels, his thralls and salt wives.”
A silence as dense as smoke filled the great hall, till Jon Snow cleared his throat and said, “Harlaw’s chattels include his sword.”
“My sword,” the murderer, Victarion Greyjoy, corrected Snow. “And you’re welcome to it. I have no need of Valyrian toys when I have my axe.”
No one dared point out that he hadn’t avenged himself on House Harlaw with his axe. Jon Snow still looked unhappy, and not only about the murder which had just taken place under his roof. “You are not the eldest of your brothers. You cannot claim anything on your House’s behalf while your brother Euron lives.”
The smile which graced Victarion Greyjoy’s face was one of the most frightening things Brienne had ever beheld.
“My brother brought us that thrice-damned hellhorn which the Qohorik says we’ll need beside all this Valyrian steel. My brother has volunteered to blow it when the time comes. Euron has always delighted in advancing the greater good.” Victarion Greyjoy laughed long and hard, like glass breaking under bootheels.
*
The maesters and the smiths and the armorers labored day and night, while the knights honed their blades and jousted in the yard, and the smallfolk mended and darned, hauled in firewood, and fretted. All drank and muttered at night.
“What’s the point o’ melting all those blades just to make one big one?” Brienne overheard a Castle Black serving man tell his fellows. “Ain’t no one ‘round ‘ere can lift it!”
“They say that Gregor Clegane was big enough to heft it,” another man replied. “But he’s twice-dead now and no use to man nor beast.”
Remembering all she’d heard about Clegane, Brienne shuddered, ill feeling squeezing her chest like a too-tight shirt of chainmail. The gathering at the Wall made for some very strange bedfellows indeed. Sometimes literally – Brienne shared a bedchamber with women from all Seven Kingdoms save the Iron Islands, the youngest just past her flowering and the eldest with hair as white as the snow. Castle Black overflowed with humanity for the first time in centuries, and only the highborn from great houses got tiny sleeping cells to themselves, Jaime being one of them; the rest mixed and bunked where they could. Among the assembled warriors were ironborn and Dornishmen and men of the Reach, stormlanders like herself and Jaime Lannister and even Jon Snow, who wielded no more power over the dragons than any peasant, despite his true parentage. And despite how they all rubbed against each other, like pebbles in a sack, Brienne was glad not to have the Mountain That Rides underfoot as well.
She was somewhat willing to revise that opinion the following morning, while watching various lords and knights and older squires and even brawny peasants, as well as the bold Greyjoy girl, two of the Sand Snakes, and a few spearwives from Bear Island and from beyond the Wall, line up to be fitted out with the specially-made gauntlets, greaves, and gorget – made too of Valyrian steel, with magical runes engraved all over them – and then attempt to lift the greatsword made under Bran Stark and Master Mott’s supervision.
The word “greatsword” befitted that blade as poorly as the word “pond” befitted the Sunset Sea. Even its pommel and grip were shaped of Valyrian steel, as were the pieces of magical armor meant both to help its wielder lift it and protect him from the dragon’s flame. The steel from half a dozen broadswords and greatswords had gone into it. It stood half again as tall as Brienne, more like a spear with a very short shaft and a very long blade, and that blade at least two handspans wide. The fullers which ran down its length looked like ditches in a field. The grey and black metal caught the weak winter sun oddly, like a living thing shifting, warming its long, scaly body.
Brienne shoved her hands into her pockets. Jaime lounged beside her, leaning back against the castle wall. He had not joined the line of men trying and failing to lift the sword by so much as the length of a thumb, nor showed any inclination to do so. His running commentary on the various candidates was as amusing as Brienne had come to expect from him when he was in good humor, but it failed to amuse her that morning. All she saw was disaster, their last hope dashed, the Seven Kingdoms handed over to the last of the dragons to rule, unchecked and unstoppable.
Jaime stretched and yawned. “Well, wench, what are you waiting for?”
Brienne did not register the import of the question till several moments slouched past and another knight went away, cursing, from the head of the line snaking around the castle yard and to the monstrous sword. “How do you mean?”
Jaime gestured at the spectacle before them. “You’re even stronger and healthier than when I first met you. Get in there, before some hedge knight whose mother bedded a whole company of giants steals your glory. Galladon of Morne slew a dragon, and he only had a little common sword.”
Jaime had forgiven her for what had happened at Pennytree and after, and they’d done each other many a good turn since then. But Brienne experienced a surge of anger so pure and strong, she might have been back in the Riverlands what seemed like lifetimes ago, guarding a valuable prisoner, suppressing the urge to throttle him every step of the way, and hating how he challenged every honorable intention and ambition she’d ever held dear. A part of her – a small and ignoble part, which she quashed at once, for it was too mean and unworthy – wondered whether Jaime wanted her to die, her very bones burning in black flames. Magic… Brienne trusted it not, though she’d come to esteem Maester Tarly and the young Lord Stark highly since she’d come north.
“That was just a story,” she said. “Galladon of Morne, Just Maid… They were never real. No one that worthy could be.”
Jaime stared at her like he had never seen her before. Brienne kept her face averted and avoided his eyes, but still his gaze bathed the side of her face like the strongest blush.
“I can think of no one worthier,” Jaime said at last. “And if you think you shouldn’t have a go just because you’re no knight, or because you told some lies once upon a time, or because you came out of your mother’s womb with a slit instead of a cock, you’re even stupider than I thought you were back then, when I didn’t know you at all. I’d have a go myself, but magic is no substitute for two good hands. Fucking Pod is waiting his turn to lift that thrice-damned thing, and he’s a brave lad but he’ll never be half the knight you are, you…”
He broke off, stood abruptly, and stalked away, toward the kitchens, muttering about wanting a cup of wine to rinse a bad taste from his mouth. Brienne sat motionless, the castle wall behind her and the line of men snaking before her, and trembled inside in a whirling storm of anger and hurt and something she begrudgingly recognized as pride. At first, she had disdained Jaime’s good opinion; then, she hadn’t dared desire or expect it; but how dare he say such things to her? How dare he, when he claimed he knew her?
The last man in the line went past Brienne, and she saw that he was little more than a boy, even younger than Pod, albeit tall and well-built for his age. No more came after him. The line still wound around the courtyard, but it grew shorter with each step the men took.
With a deep breath, Brienne rose, shook out her limbs like she was going to the jousting yard for her morning practice, and walked slowly to join the end of the line.
“Finally,” Maege Mormont called out in her flinty voice from where she sat with her people. “A woman to put all you men where you belong.”
“Aye, on their knees,” one of her attendants – or possibly her daughters – added, and all the Mormont women erupted into cackles.
Brienne’s ears were burning, but she kept her eyes on the back of the boy in front of her and shuffled along.
*
When the Black Dread Reborn came, everything seemed to last a lifetime, and yet Brienne was certain that it all happened in half a dozen heartbeats.
From where she stood, she could see the great horn they called Dragonbinder, looking the size of a child’s toy though it was so large it dwarfed the men who stood beside it. Euron Greyjoy, his head wrapped in a dirty bandage, had thrown his arms around the horn as around a lover. Brienne squinted in the pale winter sunlight and discerned that his wrists were tied together around the horn, so that he was pressed bodily against the horn’s curved, black side, his mouth brought forcibly close to the mouthpiece. His brother stood behind him, so close that Victarion’s chest was pressed to Euron’s back, and in his hand Brienne spied a dagger, its point pressed to Euron’s throat. She misliked this greatly, despite all she knew of Euron Greyjoy’s character and deeds, but she had not raised any objections thus far, and now it was too late to make different choices.
The Greyjoys and the instrument with which they proposed to summon and control the beast were the only ones on the plane before Castle Black, other than Brienne herself and the greatsword at her side. The blade seemed to vibrate slightly, Brienne could feel it through her hand on its grip, and its dark colors intensified in the watery light. It was like a living person, its chest swelling and its hands trembling in gleeful anticipation of violence. Everyone else was behind the castle walls, for all the protection those would afford if the dragon came and was merely riled by these attempts to best it.
The horn sounded. The ironborn claimed that its voice was like the dying screams of a thousand tormented souls, and in that moment which seemed to stretch forever, while the sound enveloped her like an armored fist and seemed to shatter the horizon, Brienne wished that it would all be over already, so she need never hear its like again. But the sound diminished and weakened and finally stopped, only its echoes winging their way in every direction like doom itself.
Twice more Victarion compelled his brother to blow the horn. The third blow sounded weaker than the other two, like Euron was losing his strength. There were stories about what had happened to the man who’d blown that horn at the ironborn’s kingsmoot, too.
Brienne tried to clear her head as the last call of the great horn was reduced to a brazen ringing in her ears. Almost at once, that ghost of a sound was replaced by the unmistakable shriek of an enraged dragon.
Black and red it was, and as large as the world as it approached, the air displaced by its wings shaking the very trunks of the bare trees and creating a storm wind all its own. The maesters insisted it was not yet fully grown, yet it seemed to Brienne to swallow all before it as it came: air, earth, frozen streams, the castle, the Wall, the three people and the horn and the sword waiting for it in the empty plane.
Its landing nearly overbalanced Brienne, but the sword did not shift under the impact, and she clung to it till she regained her balance. They had not bothered making a sheath for it – if its wielder had to pause to draw it, all would be lost indeed.
The dragon stood between her and the great horn, seeming taller than the Mountains of the Moon. Its scales and wings absorbed the daylight, and tongues of flame like the living hearts of rubies licked from its nostrils. It flapped its wings – Brienne’s hair fluttered under her helm, snow crystals like sharp little daggers pelted her face, air whistled past the edges of the rune-inscribed greaves and gauntlets and gorget she wore – and it emitted a scream of pure rage, but it breathed no flame, nor did it seem able to lift off and fly again.
Its molten yellow eye fell on Brienne. Its head was so large, and they stood so close, it had to turn its head sideways to keep her in its sight.
Brienne’s throat closed up, as though there were no further point to her drawing breath, and her heart drummed painfully against her breastbone. The dragon screamed again, at her, directing all its pent-up fury at being thus magic-bound solely at her.
Magic. Brienne still distrusted it, for she had learned to her sorrow to trust nothing and no one, but she could not deny that she felt it crackle in the air which wound around the dragon and herself, and in the runes which circled her throat, wrists, and legs. She felt it flare up and run down the great blade, the tip of which rested on the ground beside her. Fire to fight fire. Magic to fight a creature out of legend.
The dragon roared at her, and Brienne screamed back at it – not “Tarth!”, not “Evenfall!”, not even “Sapphires!”, but a wordless and, it seemed to her, soundless eruption of all her grief, all her fear, all the things for which she had trained and yearned and been denied them in all her few yet heavy years. She’d thought once before that she had no chance and no choice. She’d been right then, yet now…
Now, all she could do was heft the impossible weight of the greatsword, which was taller and heavier than herself, flames like secret writing running the length of it. She lifted and swung it with both hands, feeling the impossible strain in her arms and back, her knees buckling yet not betraying her under the sword’s weight. She charged at the bound and enraged dragon as she would have charged at any other foe who did not realize she was more than a match for him. That was all she could do. Trust the magic. Trust the knowledge and skill that Sam Tarly and Tobho Mott and Bran Stark had poured into the sword’s forging. Trust that all the men and women gathered at Castle Black were not mere fools, that they were not all about to throw theirs and all the Seven Kingdoms’ lives away on a throw of weighted dice. Trust that Ser Goodwin had taught her well, and that Jaime’s faith in her was not entirely misplaced.
All she could do. So she did it.
After, Brienne could never tell the tale to anyone’s satisfaction, least of all her own. For in that moment, in that heartbeat which stretched forever, she knew nothing, she just saw and heard and felt. The dragon’s great maw opening, its teeth like black scimitars parting to devour her. The coal-black of its fire-chased scales swallowing the sunlight, the snow, the air, the sky, the ground under her feet. The excruciating pain, in her arms, in her back, in her thighs, as she swung the greatsword and charged, her feet striking the ground as heavy and as slow as lead weights.
The dragon’s yellow eye with its narrow pupil, like a second sun before her. A sun which cared for her not, which only nurtured one life and disdained all others.
She thrust the blade forward, encountering more resistance than she would have thought possible, than she could possibly have the strength to defeat. She was not quick or sure in her movements. The sword did not sing in her hands, like it was a part of her. But she did not flinch. If only Ser Goodwin could have seen this. If only Jaime could see me. He would be so proud.
Time stretched and stretched as she pushed against that resistance. Then, all at once, she was through, and boiling blood like liquid flames splashed over her gauntlets and evaporated, hissing like so much hot water in the cold winter air, and harming her not.
The dragon was still roaring, and Brienne thought she’d never hear anything else ever again. Did you see? she thought, distantly. It was well done, wasn’t it?
When Jaime found her, she was on her knees in the melted snow and the churned-up mud beside the dragon’s great head, staring at the handle of the impossible greatsword, which was the only part of it which protruded from the dead beast’s skull. Her face felt wet and warm, but it did not hurt. She knew it should hurt, for she must have got burned in the ordeal. An ordeal had to involve fire, or deep water, or another test of strength and honor…
“Brienne!” Jaime grabbed her shoulder, shook her, bent and peered into her face. The skin above his beard was as pale as milk, and his eyes shone dark-green, like he had a fever. “Wench, are you injured?”
“Jaime,” Brienne whispered, surprised to find her mouth capable of forming sounds. She swallowed and tried again. “Oh Jaime. It was beautiful.” More wet warmth trickled down her face. It must be blood, she thought idly. It didn’t matter. “It was so beautiful. I’d never seen its like. And I was so afraid. I didn’t want to do it, Jaime, I didn’t think I could do it.”
Jaime’s astonished visage blurred before her, and at first she thought that it must have started raining. Then she remembered that it was winter and they were far north, and only then did she know with certainty that she was weeping.
Jaime fumbled her helmet off her head. His fingers inspected her face, her ears, her neck and skull for injury. He lifted first one, then the other of her hands, pulled off the gauntlets stained with black blood and checked her fingers and palms and the backs of her hands. Then his arms folded around her shoulders. He pulled her head gently to his shoulder, so she knew, unseeing, that he must have knelt before her. His maimed arm held her close while he stroked her hair and murmured to her, she knew not what, but whatever it was, it sounded sweeter than any song. Brienne allowed herself to fold her arms around him in turn. The feel of his ribs under his jacket, the length of his spine under her astonished hand…
“How…” She snuffled, snorted, rubbed her swollen eyes on Jaime’s sleeve. He laughed softly, his breath whuffing her hair. “How did you get here? Why aren’t you in the castle with the others?”
“Couldn’t let you face that thing alone, could I, even if you had a magical bloody sword? I think Lord Snow might have me hanged for opening the postern gate before it was over. My ears are still ringing from them all yelling at me.”
Brienne pushed herself upright on her knees, out of the circlet of his arms, so she was facing Jaime again. “I can hear them too,” she said.
Jaime glanced behind her, over her shoulder, and grimaced. “They’re all pouring out of the castle now that it’s safe.”
Brienne wasn’t really listening to the soft thunder of many pairs of feet, many voices raised in – anger? Joy? She cared not. She was gazing at Jaime’s face. Already she mistrusted her own memory of having found the dragon beautiful.
“Jaime,” she said simply, because she could. She said it while she could, before other people joined them and she remembered to be afraid.
Jaime watched her again like he misremembered who she might be. No – like he was seeing her for the first time, really seeing her, as she was, not as she always feared she would fail to be. His hand stroked her cheek, the maimed one, the one that would always fill her with shame and make her stomach twist at the memory. Brienne’s blood sang in her ears, but she did not believe that she was blushing, not even when Jaime brought their faces close, closer, and pressed his lips to hers. Like those moments in battle when everything seemed to happen in a heartbeat, it lasted one clench and release of her heart, and it lasted an eternity. Brienne breathed, Jaime’s beard tickling her chin, her nostrils, her lips, and Jaime hummed in his throat like he was laughing or like he was astonished, and he kissed her more firmly, his tongue startling her when it touched her lower lip for but an instant. His lips and hers, and their breaths, dancing.
Someone large and displeased cleared his throat above them.
They broke apart with a start. Brienne saw her own terror – the dragon had come alive again! – reflected back at her from Jaime’s expression, then they beheld Victarion Greyjoy looming over them where they knelt on the ground, holding each other close, their faces still mere inches apart. Greyjoy was alone, without his brother.
“Woman,” he growled at Brienne, and she nearly reached for the handle of the greatsword to try and pull it out of the dragon’s skull till she saw the ironman was grinning, then wished she had a weapon to hand after all.
“Woman! You fucking did it!” Greyjoy laughed again like glass shattering, waving his fists at the sky, the dead dragon a dark mountain behind him.
The roar of the approaching crowd broke over them like a wave, and when Brienne turned to look, she noticed Podrick Payne running ahead of the throng, and Jon Snow smiling more widely than she’d ever thought him capable of, and many others, all laughing, cheering, chanting her name like no tourney crowd ever had.
Jaime helped her to her feet. “Best prepare yourself, wench. You’ll never set foot in a lord’s hall or an inn or a peasant’s hovel again without someone striking up songs in your praise. They’ll send out ravens to spread the word of your bravery as far as Sunspear, after they’ve carried you back to the castle on their shoulders.”
Brienne felt the blood drain from her face, where it had rushed from as far away as her toes while Jaime kissed her. “They wouldn’t.”
“They bloody would, and they bloody will. They’d better!”
He cupped her cheek in his hand again, and she leaned into his touch. Her knees felt weak at the thought of all that attention directed at her, all those eyes on her face, her stature, her big hands…
“Brienne, this is the price one pays for being a hero,” Jaime told her more softly. “Let them have their time basking in your presence. Endure it till they’re all in their cups and happy to sing about you even when you’re not around. Then come find me. I’ll guard the chamber door, and you may get an honest night’s sleep in my bed.”
Brienne stared at him. He would not mock her now, surely?
Jaime smiled off her look. “Don’t look so stark, wench. I am an excellent guard dog, if a lame one, and the women with whom you’ve been sharing quarters are like to charge those who want to admire the hero in repose a penny a head. I doubt they’ll chance displeasing the kingslayer even for a glimpse of the dragonslayer.”
Brienne attempted to formulate a response, but before she could speak, the human tide engulfed them. Pod slammed into her middle and wrapped his arms tightly around her, calling up “Ser! My lady!” in his fluting voice. Jon Snow clapped Brienne on the shoulder and started to speak, but Maege Mormont shoved him aside and gathered Brienne and Pod into a bone-crushing hug. A hand seized Brienne’s left calf, another hand her right shoulder. She was wrenched out of Pod and Maege’s arms. She stiffened in instinctive terror, but she did not lash out, remembering who these people were. They lifted her overhead like she weighed nothing, twirled her around – the dragon’s carcass flashed past, still smoking in the wintry air, surrounded by many faces filled with wonder – and started to carry her back to Castle Black, still cheering her name.
Brienne twisted around, rested her hand briefly on someone’s unprotesting head and murmured an apology which got lost in the hubbub, and spied Jaime sauntering along with the last of the crowd. He smiled when he caught her eye, waved to her. Brienne mouthed “I’ll come find you,” and he mimed snatching her words out of the air and pressing them to his lips.
Brienne shook her head and turned to face the castle again, jostling along on several shoulders and pairs of hands. The clean, icy wind off the Wall blew back her hair and bathed her burning cheeks.
She supposed that, after all this, she too might please herself a little.