GOT: The Great — Chapter 280 - Brothers

Drogon was still circling when Drogo caught the smell.

The wind pushing up from the ground carried it, rendered fat scorched through, and underneath that the smoky, charred sweetness of roasting meat.

He brought the dragon lower. The outline of Last Hearth spread slowly across the grey-white snowfield: blackened house frames, half-collapsed stone walls, burned beams lying across the drifts at odd angles.

A dozen fires of various sizes were scattered through the town. Something was mounted over each one, dark shapes rotating slowly above the flames.

Horses. He recognized them.

Whole carcasses, skinned, headless, skewered on rough wooden poles run from haunch through shoulder blade, rotating slowly over the fires. Fat seeped from the cracks in the cooked meat and dripped into the flames below with a steady sizzle.

Rings of people surrounded the fires. Some sitting, some crouching, knives in hand, waiting for the right moment to cut themselves a piece.

It came back to him then.

After the battle against House Bolton's forces, the war horses that had fallen on the field had disappeared. He hadn't given it a second thought at the time, assumed the Vale knights had cleared them off during their retreat, or that the snow had buried them. Turned out someone had hauled them away in the night, dragged them here, dragged them straight into the fire.

He had Drogon set down in the open ground at the center of town.

When the wings folded, the gust they kicked up scattered a layer of ash from the nearest fire. Someone looked up, saw him, and got to their feet before they'd even finished swallowing.

Drogo swung down from the dragon's back, boots sinking into the snow. He moved through the people sitting around the fires and walked toward Tormund.

Tormund was crouched beside a fire, axe in one hand, the other pressing down on a section of horse leg bone. The blade was wedged into the joint. He was forcing it through with hard, steady strokes. The tendons snapped with a dull, meaty thud.

He saw Drogo coming. Didn't stop. Just tilted his head, gave him one look, and drove the axe back down into the joint.

Drogo stood beside the fire and swept his gaze around.

Most of Last Hearth had burned. Black scorch marks ran up what walls were still standing. Some roofs had caved in entirely, the snow settling across the broken beams in slanted white lines.

He remembered: before Tormund's assault on Castle Black, he had led the Thenns and other wildling warbands in a raid on this place. They had slaughtered everyone who had lived here.

If they had known back then that this would one day be where the Night's Watch settled the wildlings, would they still have burned it like this?

"Jon says you took people out hunting." Drogo pulled his gaze from the rotating carcasses and settled it on Tormund. "Turns out you've been hiding here feasting on your own. Sneaking off to eat without us — isn't that a bit much?"

Tormund set the split bone aside and wiped the splattered meat off his face with the back of his hand.

"That stubborn little fool Jon — that's exactly what I like about him. Otherwise I'd have had his head long before we crossed the Wall." He tilted his head and spat in the direction of Castle Black. "Eat meat with the crows? Give me a break."

A Thenn rose from beside a nearby fire.

Half a head taller than Tormund. Broad-shouldered, thick-backed, wrapped in old leather armor worn smooth and shiny with use. A long scar ran from his temple down across his cheekbone.

His voice was low and rough. "These are legitimate spoils. We fought Ramsay Bolton for the Night's Watch. These dead horses are our spoils of war. That's only right."

"I was talking to Tormund. Nobody asked you."

Tormund said, "He's the Magnar of the Thenns. Their lord. Commands one of the most disciplined, best-equipped free folk warbands there is."

Drogo cleared his throat, just slightly. "Of course. Horse carcasses are perfectly reasonable compensation for your service."

"What do you want?"

"I want to hit Ramsay Bolton again before he's had time to regroup." Drogo said. "I need your army to fight for me."

Tormund snorted. "Free folk kneel to no one."

"Come off it." Drogo looked at him. "Your people went down on your knees to Stannis Baratheon just to get through the Wall. He's dead now. You follow me."

Tormund's lips moved. Something came up to the edge of his mouth and he swallowed it back down.

"The Night's Watch won't let us leave Last Hearth. The road south is closed to us."

"Roads are made by the people who walk them. Since when do you lot answer to the Night's Watch?"

Drogo straightened up. He let his gaze move off Tormund and sweep across the wildlings sitting around the fires, all those hands holding meat-cutting knives.

He raised his voice.

"Do you know what I, Drogo, relied on to fight my way from the Dothraki Sea all the way to Westeros?"

"Sheer force. And since I've got that much force, the south of Westeros isn't enough for me — I'm taking the North as well. Call me King today, and from here on the North belongs to all of us."

He stopped. Waited.

The people around the fires looked at him. A few knives stilled. A few mouths chewed and swallowed. But not one person spoke.

He shifted his weight, then pushed on.

"What's so impressive about lords living in castles? I want every one of my people living in a castle. That's what's impressive."

He glanced at the burned ruins of Last Hearth. "We may all be eating horse carcasses right now, but I, Drogo, give you my word, sooner or later we'll all be sitting down together to suckling pig, fine abalone, and tender lamb."

The fat dripped into the fire. The wind moaned through the scorched beams.

The wildlings watched him. Faces blank. He felt like he was talking to a row of stones.

He dragged his gaze back from those silent faces and kept going, jaw set:

"I, Drogo, swear before this fire, once the North falls, on my lands, I will divide the lords' wealth, their women, and their food among every one of you. What do you say?"

Tormund finally answered. "Good!"

Drogo raised his fist. "Good."

A few scattered voices answered from around the fires.

He called out again. "Good!" More voices came. People set down their meat. People got to their feet. The responses closed in from all sides like a gap being slowly sealed.

By the third time he called it, the sound had spread from the nearest fires all the way to the bonfires farther off. Tormund's fist went up.

Then the Thenn's.

The giants' voices came rolling in from the back of the crowd, deep and slow, like boulders tumbling down a mountainside and crashing together in the valley below, each syllable carrying the full resonance of their chests behind it.

The roar swirled above Last Hearth for a long moment before it finally settled.

Firelight fell across the faces of the raised fists, warming frost-reddened skin with an orange glow. Drogo lowered his fist, turned, and clapped Tormund on the shoulder, palm coming down solid on the pauldron with a heavy thud. "Good brother."

➤ Next: The Wildlings' First Southern Campaign