GOT: The Great — Chapter 299 - Finding the Culprit

They searched through the entire night and found nothing.

Torches swept back and forth along both banks until dawn. White Harbor's infantry trudged through ankle-deep snow, turning the riverbanks inside out, jabbing spear tips into every crack between the stones.

Every man came back empty-handed. One soldier had broken through the ice and his toes had turned black.

Drogo hadn't slept.

He sat leaning against the Black Dragon's leg. Drogon lay beside him, breathing slow and steady now, but every time the dragon twitched in his sleep Drogo's hand clenched without thinking.

Around midday, a commotion broke out at the edge of camp.

The skinchanger Borroq came riding back from the north on his boar.

The animal was nearly the size of a bull, its tusks curved like a pair of scythes, its bristles caked with snow and shattered ice, nostrils blasting jets of white vapor with every breath.

Borroq dropped off the boar's back. The crowd parted for him.

"King Drogo." He walked up, still short of breath, a branch-cut gash on his face, the blood already dried.

"I found polar bear tracks. Large ones, freshly made, heading north the whole way. I followed them into the forest. Halfway through the chase it jumped into the river. Current was too strong — I lost it."

Magnar Styr of the Thenns raised an eyebrow. "A polar bear? You chased a polar bear alone? One swipe and it could snap your boar's spine."

Tormund's expression was something more than complicated. "What's a polar bear doing here? This is the bloody Riverlands, not the Haunted Forest. Even if one was heading south, it shouldn't have wound up at the Twins."

"And we shouldn't be at the Twins either." Borroq reached up and touched the dried blood on his cheek. "Yet here we stand. Back to the point — that bear was under someone's control."

"The way it ran was wrong. A wild polar bear that gets chased will turn around. It'll rear up and roar at you, fight to the death. Polar bears don't flee."

"But this one did nothing but run, start to finish, never once looked back. I chased it the whole way. It kept hugging the riverbank, heading north."

He paused and looked at Drogo. "It had to be a skinchanger. And whoever controlled it had exceptional strength, strong enough to override a polar bear's instincts. An ordinary skinchanger could never manage that."

Several Hundred Captains exchanged glances.

Tormund furrowed his brow and rubbed his stubble with his thumb. "Being able to ride a bear is rare enough already. Beyond the Wall, tens of thousands of people, hundreds of years, maybe two or three ever managed it."

He shook his head. "I can't think of anyone with that ability."

Styr spoke up, voice flat as always. "Could you have been mistaken, Borroq?"

"You bastard—" Borroq dropped into a fighting stance.

Another skinchanger cut in, a scrawny man, missing half his teeth, his words whistling through the gaps:

"If there were no skinchanger driving it, with a polar bear's temper, Borroq wouldn't have made it back alive."

Borroq finally stopped scowling. His anger came fast and left fast; when it came down to it, he knew he couldn't beat Styr, so there was nowhere for his fury to go. Someone had backed him up. He was glad enough to take the off-ramp.

Tormund, Styr, and the skinchangers kept arguing, voices rising.

Drogo wasn't listening. His hand had closed around the hilt of his sword, already primed to draw. He wanted to kill every skinchanger in front of him.

Then, in the very moment his hand tightened on the grip, Borroq said: "The only ones who can control a polar bear are greenseers."

Drogo let go.

He thought of Bran. Crippled Bran Stark. The greenseer of Winterfell.

He went back over the previous night's search. Everyone had been accounted for. Not a single person missing.

The skinchanger wasn't inside his army. That meant they were outside it.

Bran is in Winterfell, yet he can ride a polar bear to shadow my column the whole way, then escape by jumping into a river.

He can hide behind an animal's eyes, watch from a distance, and no one would ever know.

This Bran. I can tolerate you watching the Iron Throne. I will not tolerate you stealing my dragon.

Do I go back to Winterfell and burn him? If I do, how do I explain it to Sansa?

"Drogo."

Sansa's voice.

He turned. She was walking over, Margaery at her side with their arms linked together, both their noses pink from the cold.

"Good news from King's Landing." Margaery said softly.

"What good news could come from King's Landing?"

"Jorah Mormont has taken Casterly Rock. He's escorting several hundred Lannisters back to King's Landing, Jaime Lannister among them, and the Frey sons, and Tommen Baratheon."

She smiled faintly, as though she expected him to be pleased.

Drogo found he couldn't quite get there.

Casterly Rock had fallen. Tywin's seat had been smashed open. Several hundred Lannisters taken prisoner.

Any other time, this would have called for three cups of wine and a long string of remarks about lions and gold.

But right now half his mind was on the dragon, half on Bran.

Casterly Rock is taken. What now? Back to King's Landing, or Winterfell first?

He had kept Bran alive to use against the Night King. But Bran had moved against him first.

And beyond rolling his eyes back and reading the past, Bran was of no real use against the Night King anyway.

His only value was tracking the movements of the White Walker army.

Unless he could somehow get inside their minds.

Kill Bran? Kill Bran? Kill Bran? The voice kept cycling through his head, over and over.

Margaery was still talking about Casterly Rock, how many prisoners, how much gold.

"What's wrong?" Sansa tilted her head up and leaned close to his cheek, her lips brushing lightly against his skin.

That faint sweet scent drifted over him. Drogo pulled her in, caught her tongue with his teeth, and kissed her for a long time before letting go.

"Back to King's Landing." No lingering. He broke camp and set out.

Two days later, news came from Riverrun.

The Blackfish, Brynden Tully, had seized the moment of House Frey's collapse and led his men to retake it. The Frey garrison hadn't held long before surrendering.

Drogo sat in his tent, fingers tapping against his knee. The Lannisters had been bundled off to King's Landing by Jorah. All that was left of House Frey was a row of flayed corpses strung up by the bridge.

Next target: Dorne.

The Dornish won't meet me head-on.

They'll fall back into the mountains, melt into the desert, and bleed me with guerrilla warfare.

That same strategy had killed a fully grown dragon and left Aegon Targaryen too wary to ever enter Dorne again. They'd even sent assassins for him, until he had no choice but to build the Kingsguard just to keep himself alive.

He smiled.

Aegon Targaryen had dragons. But not enough men.

I have Dothraki cavalry. If the Dornish want to play at guerrilla war, then let them play.

He'd like to see whether Doran's camels could run faster, or his nomads.

➤ Next: The Dragon That Cannot Breathe Fire