Blood of Dragons

On a chill, fog-wrapped morning in the waning days of the eighth moon, three lean black-sailed galleys slipped like specters into White Harbor’s inner docks—ships of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, come on their periodic missions to trade for supplies and to collect new recruits. Their hulls were salt-eaten and ice-scarred, their crew clad in the black of the Night’s Watch, hard-faced and silent as they made fast beneath the mist-shrouded walls of the city.

What first seemed a resupply mission swiftly proved otherwise. At the fore of the company was Ser Adron Mooton, First Ranger of the Watch himself, a rare sight off the Wall and a signal of more serious business than wool and rations. With him came Ser Humfrey Westerling, the gaunt, grim-eyed knight once heir to the Crag; a stooped and weathered Dornish builder Arnald Qorgyle; a steward, Estin Corbray, sharp-tongued as he oversaw the off-loading of cargo; and a knight of the Vale bearing the Royce name and features—Ser Artos by most accounts, kin to the Royces of Runestone. These were no raw recruits or featherless crows, but seasoned men all.

Their arrival drew curious stares and a swift gathering of the harbor’s merchants, sailors, and courtly onlookers. The Watch brought strange wares from beyond the Wall: matted pelts from beasts not seen in the south, huge curving mammoth tusks, amber as big as fists, ground dragonglass cups, bone charms, and what some swore were the horns of unicorns. The air filled with the stink of musk and sea rot, and the voices of traders already vying to claim their share while Corbray drove them off and said everything needed to be tallied and secured in a warehouse before any trade would happen.

Among the nobles present were Lady Jannia Buckwell, Ser Orbert Farman, Ser Omrys Baratheon, and Ser Otho Royce. The moment that drew the most hushed attention was the pointed encounter between Lady Jannia and Ser Humfrey—once intended for marriage, long separated by scandal and exile. Their exchange was brief but brittle.

More tender was the quiet introduction of Joanna, one of Lady Jannia’s ladies, revealed as the granddaughter of Ser Adron Mooton. The First Ranger, known for his cold manner, seemed struck by the sight of her, and exchanged few but potent words with the girl—enough to mark the moment as something remembered. Her father, the famous lance Yohn the Riverrman, was still in White Harbor, and would no doubt encounter his taciturn father in the days to come.

The Watch’s business, however, was not cargo or recruits. Ser Adron made clear their purpose: to speak with Lord Manderly, Lord Stark, and Prince Daeron regarding the state of the Wall and the mounting pressures from beyond it. Mooton and his men soon made ready to call at the Wolf’s Den, where the city’s dungeon-sweepings might yield more recruits for the Watch, and even learned that some had been pirates that Prince Daeron ahd brought from the Sisters with the express intention of handing them over. While Orbert Farman argued against their being placed in Eastwatch, Mooton promised their labors there would be so arduous that they’d have no time for mischief.

With the fog lingering and the chill sharpening by the hour, the ships remain in port—but not for over long. Their business is urgent, and their presence a stark reminder: the Wall still holds, but its strength is drawn from the realm it guards. Ser Adron would later dine with the Starks—Jonnel excepted, awake and talking but still recuperating under the watch of the maesters—and Lord Manderly, and later had a private meeting with Prince Daeron. Though he had said on the docks, when questioned, that there was no wildling strong enough to proclaim himself King-beyond-the-Wall and unify the fractious tribes, clans, raiders, and chieftains, rumor from these meetings suggested that that may soon change, that two warriors had decided to jointly press their claim to ruling beyond the Wall, and together they might indeed threaten the Wall and the realm beyond it.