Eleven-thousand men arrived to silence and resignation. By the time Davos Seaworth and the army had made it, he had lost the feeling in his right limbs. Maester Avery had told him that would have been more or less unavoidable – the dragonfire had stung him partly, but it was enough to cause permanent damage to his right hand and leg. He had hobbled to the north, at times been carried by men on wayns, but he was finally here. I wonder what Marya will think when she sees me so, Davos mused, realizing he had not thought of his wife for almost a year.
Davos had assumed Jon Snow would open the gates, but it was Dolorous Edd. “Finally,” he said with an odd high-pitched voice Davos never remembered him for. “Time to make the White Walker fuckers deader than they already are,” he said cheerily, while other men looked at him with eyes gloomy. Behind Edd, Davos had noticed the massive dragon, whose scales Jon was passing fingers over. His back was to them, and even though the army had made enough din to wake people in the Arbor, he did not turn to greet them.
There will be time to deal with this, Davos told himself, not wanting to go close to a dragon after what happened at Barrow Hall. Instead, he spoke with Edd. “We have a huge problem,” he told him. “We had marched from Barrowton with twenty-six thousand men. Six-thousand were Jon’s northmen and twenty-thousand were men of the Reach, sent by Queen Daenerys.”
Edd’s false smiles vanished, as he saw the soldiers behind went to take their lodgings in the castle. “Fuck me,” he said. “Tell me the rest have been held back by the blizzard.”
“That would have been good news,” Davos said. “But when the rumors of the attack spread, some Tyrell men fled.” He paused. “About fifteen-thousand.”
Jon Snow suddenly wanted to give Davos his attention. “I wonder what we did for the gods to hold us in such spite,” he said aloud. “I have tried to live up to the vows of the Watch, to the values of my father, and what did that bring me? A lost family, fallen friends, and an undefeatable enemy.” He turned to Rhaegal, but he was still speaking. “I once thought this dragon was a beast,” he said. “But when death stares at you, tapping your shoulder, suddenly you realize how beautiful the living are.”
The resigned, rueful state of him took Davos aback. “How much of the rumors were true?” he asked them, dreading the answers.
*
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