TVXQ | The Songs They Will Sing | Yunho/Jaejoong | 01
→ Warnings: Game of Thrones Fusion AU. Action. Darkfic. Romance . Violence. Minor character death.
→ A prince without a kingdom, a lord without a name, and how how the two of them carve themselves into history.
Character Profiles | Fanart | Prologue
The Songs They Will Sing
[01]
rice_queen // Reblog on Tumblr
At the end of five years, Jung Yunho finally turned back west and fixed his eyes on the Iron Throne. His army had grown to over two hundred-thousand strong; bloodthirsty warriors who prayed to the horse-gods and possessed no sense of sin or shame. They would follow him across the Narrow Sea, over the water their horses would not drink, if he so commanded.
The Seven Kingdoms hear of his name long before he raised his ships. The Barbarian Prince, they called him when he began uniting the other Tribes under his banner, the familiar three-headed red dragon on black. When his conquests continued without any sign of slowing down, they began speaking of his new title in hushed whispers: The Dragon King.
His dragons had grown, thriving in the wake of destruction and battle. Hwayong was the smallest, only slightly larger than the stallion that had been his wife’s mount, but he could fly into a thunderstorm and dance between the raindrops. Jiyong was next, three times the size of Hwayong, and the most intelligent of his brothers. His levelheadedness and ability to keep Hwayong in check contributed greatly to many of Yunho’s victories, and ensured that there would be spoils for his warriors at the end of battle. Boyong was the largest, the wildest, and the most fearsome of the three. She was Yunho’s own mount, dark and red, with a wingspan so wide it could block out the sun. She was as fearsome as her namesake, and nothing could withstand her.
He unleashed all three of them upon the harbors of his ancestral home. The navy of the Seven Kingdoms was no match for his aerial assault and Dragonstone yielded to him as though it had been waiting for its rightful master all this time. His ships land safely and his two hundred-thousand warriors sweep across the land like pestilence.
The capital city of King's Landing was the first to fall. Whatever the Tribes lacked for in technology, they made up for in aggression and mobility. The knights who marched out to the battlefield were thrown by their screaming, wild ways, and they were lost from the moment they broke rank. His archers rained arrows into the fleeing masses, his warriors slaughtered those who stood and fought, and his dragons burn the walls of the city into the ground.
Boyong took him into the upper turrets of the Red Keep and he laid his eyes on the Iron Throne for the first time. The Conqueror, of whom he descended from, had forged it using dragonfyre and the swords of his fallen enemies. He had expected something a bit more impressive from Yonghwa’s tales, but he ran his hand across the back of it and found that many of the blades were still sharp. A ghost of a smile crossed Yunho’s face. His father had died on this throne, and now it was his.
The ruling family was dragged before him and he looked them all in the eye when he ordered their execution. The son of the Usurper was the first to die, followed by his sister, who threw herself on the blood-soaked floor of the Throne Room and begged for mercy as she sobbed hysterically. Yunho thought of Jihoon’s wife, who was disgraced before she was murdered, and of his niece, who was dragged out kicking and screaming from under her bed before being put to the sword, and showed no mercy. The Queen was the last to die, her face a frozen mask and her lips tight. For a moment, Yunho felt a twinge of something like remorse, but it did not last. Her twin brother put a sword in his father’s back, so she had to die too.
On the funeral pyre of his warrior queen and their unborn son, Yunho made a promise to both of them:
”I will take what is mine, with fire and blood.”
And he did.
//
The Barbarian Prince was weeks into his scourge before Jaejoong received his first raven. They came in flocks: House Lee of the Golden Rock and House Choi of Storm’s End demanded that he rallied the Night’s Watch to avenge the fallen boy-king, while House Park of the Sunspear and House Kwon of Highgarden ordered him to submit his forces to the true king. To each of them, Jaejoong replied with the same sentiments:
The Night’s Watch serves no king, only the realm.
The ravens return with angry words, with threats, and eventually nothing at all. No word of any form arrived from Kim Hyoyeon.
“You’ll incite the wrath of whoever is left standing,” Hyunjoong warned.
“Let them have their outrage,” Jaejoong shrugged. “I swore an oath.”
“You’re not at all concerned that he’ll come north once he’s done burning the south?” Seunghyun asked. He hailed from the Stormlands, and his land was the first to face the dragon’s fury. “Wasn’t your father one of instigators of the rebellion?”
“He would have to defeat the Warden of the East and the Warden of the West before he can take the north,” Jaejoong shrugged. “The Golden Rock has never fallen to invaders and the Eyrie is near impregnable in its defenses. Even if both of them should fall, the damage dealt to the Barbarian Prince will be significant, even with his dragons.”
“Besides, the Kingslayer of Golden Rock will not go down easily,” Hyunjoong said, and smirked. “Jung Yunho executed his twin sister and-if the rumors are to be believed-their children as well.”
“Be mindful of how you speak of the dead,” Jaejoong admonished without much heat. The Queen had plotted his father’s downfall and her son had ordered his execution. He would not sink as low as to revel in their deaths, but he would not shed tears for them either.
“What of your half-sister then?” Seunghyun pressed. “She has not declared for either side. House Han of the Vale stands loyal to her, but if they should fall, the North is not yet strong enough to take on three dragons.”
“He’ll have her head, make no mistake,” Hyunjoong added unnecessarily, because he was an ass. “The Choi princess cried out her pretty little eyes for him, and his idea of mercy was to roast her alive.”
He had not heard that piece of information. Jaejoong only laid eyes on her once before, when her father had taken his company north to declare the Lord Kim his new hand. Choi Sooyoung was only nine years old then, a spitting image of her lady mother, and she gazed at Kangin adoringly and blushed when it was appropriate. Hyoyeon had been like that, once upon a time, but she was no longer. If Choi Sooyoung had a chance at all to grow…well, what did it matter? Now, she was nothing but ashes.
“House Shim has declared for House Jung?” He asked instead. From the corner of his room, Ghost’s tail flickered.
“They say Shim Changmin rides at the head of the savages,” Seunghyun confirmed.
“Then the north is safe,” Jaejoong said. His brothers-in-black turned to him in surprise.
“Shim Changmin killed your brother and sacked your home,” Hyunjoong said bluntly. “Or did the winds sweep away your memories?”
“Ryeowook is still alive,” Jaejoong said crossly. So is Junsu, he wanted to add, but does not. As of late, his mind has returned frequently to thoughts of his middle-sibling, the closest of his half-brothers. When they were young, Junsu dreamed of being a knight, even though his stature would never cut an imposing figure and his training with a broadsword yielded less-than-satisfactory results. He had to believe that Junsu had succeeded in learning how to fight, how to survive. He had to believe that Junsu had escaped the capital city somehow.
Still, no tales of a boy and his yellow-eyed direwolf south of the Wall reach his ears, and his relentless inner voice reasoned that, if Junsu was indeed still alive, he should have found his way to the Wall by now, where Jaejoong had been waiting all this time.
“Anything you say, my lord,” Hyunjoong replied with a mocking bow.
Communication from the south halted soon afterward, and two months passed by with naught a bird in the sky. Men trickled in from all corners of the realm, torn and maimed, eyes wide with terror, whispering tales of dragons and screaming warriors. They join the Night’s Watch, as though taking the black would provide them any form of sanctuary. Jaejoong assigned them all to be builders and put them to work resurrecting the seventeen defunct watchtowers. Men who came to the Wall in times of war would resent it once the danger had passed, and he had no use for half-hearted stewards and rangers.
Finally, they received a raven and the letter it carried bore the seal of House Kim. “The Dragon King rides north in peace,” Seunghyun read, almost in disbelief. “He requests the presence of the Lord Commander in Castle North.”
“How convenient,” Hyunjoong drawled, though his expression was pinched. “The King seeks to cut off all the heads your family at once-the legitimate and the illegitimate.”
“He does not seek to wage war,” Jaejoong corrected. “Even a fool knows not to wage war with the north with winter on its way. If I had to guess, I would think our Dragon King is learning diplomacy.”
“So the Wall is declaring for House Jung, then?” Hyunjoong asked innocently.
“Don’t be stupid,” Jaejoong snorted. “The Wall declares for no man.”
//
The Kingslayer lived up to his name-he had learned from the downfall of Dragonstone and Storm’s End, and his knights did not ride out to do combat on the battlefield. He targeted the horses, who threw their riders when they were frightened, and made the difference in armor and weaponry felt by both sides. Yunho’s warriors suffered huge casualties, and Boyong took to the skies before House Lee’s banner-men betrayed him, in a delicious kind of irony, and sent the Kingslayer out of the city gates in chains.
Following the surrender of the Golden Rock, Yunho began preparations to take his war to the Eyrie in the Vale of House Han, and then the North of House Kim. Much to his annoyance, his generals demonstrate hesitance for the first time.
“The Eyrie is surrounded by near impenetrable mountain ranges,” Shim Changmin said as his fingers flew to indicators on the geographical map. Most visitors require a guide to complete the journey safely, and even the most skilled of your horsemen cannot traverse the mountainside in one piece, much less an entire army marching on at once.”
“My dragons-“
“The Vale is the only one of the seven to possess the means to take down your dragons,” Park Yoochun interrupted. “Even your dragons are not immune to trebuchets and missile turrets, especially when only one of them has a rider.”
“Then we will ride north and take House Kim first.”
“Unwise, your grace,” Changmin said, perhaps a little too quickly. “The North is too vast a territory and the summer months are almost over. The north winds will bring the cold before you ever reach the seat of House Kim and the frozen months grow longer every year. Your horsemen will not survive waging war against them.”
“You were fostered by the Lord Kim, were you not?” Yunho’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Are you speaking now out of fealty to me or concern for them?” Changmin flinched. “House Han aided House Kim and House Choi in their rebellion,” he continued. “They must die, by fire or blood, and my dragons do not fear the cold.”
“Your warriors do.” Changmin said, with an almost admirably imprudent bravery. “The other houses will not follow you without the horsemen of your Tribe, and half of them have fallen to illness and disease. We cannot keep fighting an endless war. What use is it to tear down the walls of strongholds when they cannot be used to guard your kingdom? What use is it to burn the land barren and rule over a wasteland?”
Yunho glowered. “Then what do you suggest?” he spat.
“Negotiate surrender with the Vale and the North.”
“Never.”
“The brother of Kim Yoojin is dead, executed for treason against the Usurper,” Changmin argued. “The seat of the north under the rule of his daughter, Kim Hyoyeon, and she is still in the process of rebuilding what the last wardens destroyed. She will be receptive to a truce and House Han will follow in her lead.”
“Her bastard half-brother is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch,” Park Yoochun said from the other side of the room. “He heads a militia of over ten-thousand. His duty is to keep out of the realm’s political affairs, but he may not be as honorable as his lord father.”
He heard the truth in their arguments, even as his blood boiled for war. He left his warriors in the central grassland that had been Riverrun, that he had Dragonstone absorb, and took only a small company as he traveled north. He left Hwayong in Dragonstone and Boyong in the Golden Rock, but Jiyong he took took with him. The North would not appreciate displays of grandeur and Jiyong was the calmest of the three.
A week into the journey, the northern winds cooled his blood, and he grudgingly realized the prudence of his generals. The North was vast, with few settlements and a great stretch of land in between each one. Men in the north did not fight as warriors; they stood as though they were sentinels.
“Why does the Seven Kingdoms hold the North as their own?” Yunho asked to his company. “They have no great warriors to further their name and they contribute nothing to the realm.”
“The North guards us against the White Walkers,” Yoochun said, his voice mocking. “Beings from the north beyond the Wall who raise armies of dead and wield swords so cold they freeze all that they touch-at least, that is what the nursemaids say when they want to frighten small children.”
“What do you say, Shim Changmin?” Yunho said, directing his attention to the young lord Shim, whose spine stiffened accordingly. “You lived here once before. Of all people, you should be able to provide an adequate explanation.”
“The North exists because it cannot be held by outsiders,” Changmin said slowly after a pause. “It’s too big and too wild, and they have their own way. They claim to have descended from the First Men and they still celebrate the Old Gods. House Kim commands the northerners’ loyalties and exerts a great amount of influence.”
“They fancy themselves kings, then?” Yunho scoffed.
“Not kings,” Changmin said, almost to himself. “Guardians, more like.”
Changmin did not speak anymore of the North and Yunho deigned not to ask any more questions. A fortnight later, they arrive at the seat of House Kim. He had expected a fortress at the very least and was thoroughly disappointed. The castle was thoroughly unimpressive-oh, it was certainly big enough, but just an ordinary large castle. Parts of its outer wall looked as though they had only recently been rebuilt and a few of its towers were still charred and broken.
My dragons could have taken this Yunho thought with disgust.
Yet the northerners greeted him, not with the tips of their broadswords, but a polite incline of their heads. Kim Hyoyeon received him graciously, her vassals a comfortable distance away. She was a striking young woman-not particularly beautiful, but with piercing eyes and a stillness that ran deep and commanded respect. There was an almost imperceptible twinge in her right shoulder, as though she had dislocated her shoulder and never had it set properly, but if he had not suffered a similar injury, Yunho never would have known.
“The North welcomes the throne of the South,” she said with only the barest nod of acknowledgement instead of a curtsy, and she did not smile or simper. Yunho decided he liked her more because of it. She extended similar platitudes to Yoochun and Changmin.
“My apologies for the death of your Lord Husband,” Yoochun said, rather rudely, as the ‘Lord Husband’ in question had been estranged, and was one of the many who fell alongside House Lee.
“His gold helped rebuild my home. He has served his purpose.” she said nonchalantly, with an unapologetic honesty. Her vassals do not hide their sneers and, compared to the mannerisms of soldiers of the south with their shiny armors and gallant ways, the north was a very different place indeed.
Changmin, he noted, did not meet her eyes once.
Kim Hyoyeon’s bastard half-brother arrived three days later, dressed from head to toe in black, as was the tradition. At the heels of his company was a massive snow-white direwolf with red eyes and sharp teeth, easily the size of Hwayong.
Yunho had heard whispers from all around of the 998th Lord Commander. He was the youngest to ever achieve that station and the bravest or the most foolhardy, depending on who was telling the story. Legends were already forming of how he ventured frequently north of the Wall taking no one else but his Ghost and living to tell the tale. The realm had been at war for so long, years before Yunho ever crossed the Narrow Sea, and the Lord Commander had been left to his own devices. He made peace with the wildlings, free people who lived north beyond the Wall, and they near doubled the numbers of his official militia of ten-thousand.
His hair was a shade darker than his half-sisters and his eyes were a shade lighter. He had the luminous pallor of one who rarely saw the sun, the smooth face of a man who rarely touched a razor, and he carried his blade with the ease of a man who slept holding the hilt in his hand.
And yet for all the mystery and intrigue that surrounded this man, whatever Yunho had expected to see, he had not thought Kim Jaejoong to look quite so…delicate.
Kim Jaejoong greeted his sister first: one knee bended and then he rose and kissed her warmly on the forehead. He glanced at Changmin next and a look passed between them that Yunho could not interpret. Then, Kim Jaejoong met his eyes and it was as though the horn of battle trumpeted in Yunho’s head. There was something familiar about him, just so, like an image in the smoke of the Tribal crones he could not decipher. Kim Jaejoong bowed, but his eyes did not leave Yunho’s face.
“My lord,” he intoned quietly, and Jung Yunho’s heart, which did not quiver once in the face of fire, war, and almost certain death…skipped a beat.
[ Chapter 2 ]
Notes:
+ Yunho’s method of war are largely based off of Genghis Khan’s military tactics.
+ I thought about giving Yunho the name ‘Rising God of the East’ but I just couldn’t go through with it.
+ On the names of Yunho's dragons:
--> Hwayong = 화용/和龍, meaning 'peaceful dragon' (ironically enough)
--> Boyong = 보용/寶龍, meaning 'precious dragon'
--> Jiyong = 지용/智龍, meaning 'intelligent dragon', and is not to be confused with G-Dragon's Jiyong (지용/志龍), which means 'willful dragon'.
→ A prince without a kingdom, a lord without a name, and how how the two of them carve themselves into history.
Character Profiles | Fanart | Prologue
The Songs They Will Sing
[01]
rice_queen // Reblog on Tumblr
At the end of five years, Jung Yunho finally turned back west and fixed his eyes on the Iron Throne. His army had grown to over two hundred-thousand strong; bloodthirsty warriors who prayed to the horse-gods and possessed no sense of sin or shame. They would follow him across the Narrow Sea, over the water their horses would not drink, if he so commanded.
The Seven Kingdoms hear of his name long before he raised his ships. The Barbarian Prince, they called him when he began uniting the other Tribes under his banner, the familiar three-headed red dragon on black. When his conquests continued without any sign of slowing down, they began speaking of his new title in hushed whispers: The Dragon King.
His dragons had grown, thriving in the wake of destruction and battle. Hwayong was the smallest, only slightly larger than the stallion that had been his wife’s mount, but he could fly into a thunderstorm and dance between the raindrops. Jiyong was next, three times the size of Hwayong, and the most intelligent of his brothers. His levelheadedness and ability to keep Hwayong in check contributed greatly to many of Yunho’s victories, and ensured that there would be spoils for his warriors at the end of battle. Boyong was the largest, the wildest, and the most fearsome of the three. She was Yunho’s own mount, dark and red, with a wingspan so wide it could block out the sun. She was as fearsome as her namesake, and nothing could withstand her.
He unleashed all three of them upon the harbors of his ancestral home. The navy of the Seven Kingdoms was no match for his aerial assault and Dragonstone yielded to him as though it had been waiting for its rightful master all this time. His ships land safely and his two hundred-thousand warriors sweep across the land like pestilence.
The capital city of King's Landing was the first to fall. Whatever the Tribes lacked for in technology, they made up for in aggression and mobility. The knights who marched out to the battlefield were thrown by their screaming, wild ways, and they were lost from the moment they broke rank. His archers rained arrows into the fleeing masses, his warriors slaughtered those who stood and fought, and his dragons burn the walls of the city into the ground.
Boyong took him into the upper turrets of the Red Keep and he laid his eyes on the Iron Throne for the first time. The Conqueror, of whom he descended from, had forged it using dragonfyre and the swords of his fallen enemies. He had expected something a bit more impressive from Yonghwa’s tales, but he ran his hand across the back of it and found that many of the blades were still sharp. A ghost of a smile crossed Yunho’s face. His father had died on this throne, and now it was his.
The ruling family was dragged before him and he looked them all in the eye when he ordered their execution. The son of the Usurper was the first to die, followed by his sister, who threw herself on the blood-soaked floor of the Throne Room and begged for mercy as she sobbed hysterically. Yunho thought of Jihoon’s wife, who was disgraced before she was murdered, and of his niece, who was dragged out kicking and screaming from under her bed before being put to the sword, and showed no mercy. The Queen was the last to die, her face a frozen mask and her lips tight. For a moment, Yunho felt a twinge of something like remorse, but it did not last. Her twin brother put a sword in his father’s back, so she had to die too.
On the funeral pyre of his warrior queen and their unborn son, Yunho made a promise to both of them:
”I will take what is mine, with fire and blood.”
And he did.
//
The Barbarian Prince was weeks into his scourge before Jaejoong received his first raven. They came in flocks: House Lee of the Golden Rock and House Choi of Storm’s End demanded that he rallied the Night’s Watch to avenge the fallen boy-king, while House Park of the Sunspear and House Kwon of Highgarden ordered him to submit his forces to the true king. To each of them, Jaejoong replied with the same sentiments:
The Night’s Watch serves no king, only the realm.
The ravens return with angry words, with threats, and eventually nothing at all. No word of any form arrived from Kim Hyoyeon.
“You’ll incite the wrath of whoever is left standing,” Hyunjoong warned.
“Let them have their outrage,” Jaejoong shrugged. “I swore an oath.”
“You’re not at all concerned that he’ll come north once he’s done burning the south?” Seunghyun asked. He hailed from the Stormlands, and his land was the first to face the dragon’s fury. “Wasn’t your father one of instigators of the rebellion?”
“He would have to defeat the Warden of the East and the Warden of the West before he can take the north,” Jaejoong shrugged. “The Golden Rock has never fallen to invaders and the Eyrie is near impregnable in its defenses. Even if both of them should fall, the damage dealt to the Barbarian Prince will be significant, even with his dragons.”
“Besides, the Kingslayer of Golden Rock will not go down easily,” Hyunjoong said, and smirked. “Jung Yunho executed his twin sister and-if the rumors are to be believed-their children as well.”
“Be mindful of how you speak of the dead,” Jaejoong admonished without much heat. The Queen had plotted his father’s downfall and her son had ordered his execution. He would not sink as low as to revel in their deaths, but he would not shed tears for them either.
“What of your half-sister then?” Seunghyun pressed. “She has not declared for either side. House Han of the Vale stands loyal to her, but if they should fall, the North is not yet strong enough to take on three dragons.”
“He’ll have her head, make no mistake,” Hyunjoong added unnecessarily, because he was an ass. “The Choi princess cried out her pretty little eyes for him, and his idea of mercy was to roast her alive.”
He had not heard that piece of information. Jaejoong only laid eyes on her once before, when her father had taken his company north to declare the Lord Kim his new hand. Choi Sooyoung was only nine years old then, a spitting image of her lady mother, and she gazed at Kangin adoringly and blushed when it was appropriate. Hyoyeon had been like that, once upon a time, but she was no longer. If Choi Sooyoung had a chance at all to grow…well, what did it matter? Now, she was nothing but ashes.
“House Shim has declared for House Jung?” He asked instead. From the corner of his room, Ghost’s tail flickered.
“They say Shim Changmin rides at the head of the savages,” Seunghyun confirmed.
“Then the north is safe,” Jaejoong said. His brothers-in-black turned to him in surprise.
“Shim Changmin killed your brother and sacked your home,” Hyunjoong said bluntly. “Or did the winds sweep away your memories?”
“Ryeowook is still alive,” Jaejoong said crossly. So is Junsu, he wanted to add, but does not. As of late, his mind has returned frequently to thoughts of his middle-sibling, the closest of his half-brothers. When they were young, Junsu dreamed of being a knight, even though his stature would never cut an imposing figure and his training with a broadsword yielded less-than-satisfactory results. He had to believe that Junsu had succeeded in learning how to fight, how to survive. He had to believe that Junsu had escaped the capital city somehow.
Still, no tales of a boy and his yellow-eyed direwolf south of the Wall reach his ears, and his relentless inner voice reasoned that, if Junsu was indeed still alive, he should have found his way to the Wall by now, where Jaejoong had been waiting all this time.
“Anything you say, my lord,” Hyunjoong replied with a mocking bow.
Communication from the south halted soon afterward, and two months passed by with naught a bird in the sky. Men trickled in from all corners of the realm, torn and maimed, eyes wide with terror, whispering tales of dragons and screaming warriors. They join the Night’s Watch, as though taking the black would provide them any form of sanctuary. Jaejoong assigned them all to be builders and put them to work resurrecting the seventeen defunct watchtowers. Men who came to the Wall in times of war would resent it once the danger had passed, and he had no use for half-hearted stewards and rangers.
Finally, they received a raven and the letter it carried bore the seal of House Kim. “The Dragon King rides north in peace,” Seunghyun read, almost in disbelief. “He requests the presence of the Lord Commander in Castle North.”
“How convenient,” Hyunjoong drawled, though his expression was pinched. “The King seeks to cut off all the heads your family at once-the legitimate and the illegitimate.”
“He does not seek to wage war,” Jaejoong corrected. “Even a fool knows not to wage war with the north with winter on its way. If I had to guess, I would think our Dragon King is learning diplomacy.”
“So the Wall is declaring for House Jung, then?” Hyunjoong asked innocently.
“Don’t be stupid,” Jaejoong snorted. “The Wall declares for no man.”
//
The Kingslayer lived up to his name-he had learned from the downfall of Dragonstone and Storm’s End, and his knights did not ride out to do combat on the battlefield. He targeted the horses, who threw their riders when they were frightened, and made the difference in armor and weaponry felt by both sides. Yunho’s warriors suffered huge casualties, and Boyong took to the skies before House Lee’s banner-men betrayed him, in a delicious kind of irony, and sent the Kingslayer out of the city gates in chains.
Following the surrender of the Golden Rock, Yunho began preparations to take his war to the Eyrie in the Vale of House Han, and then the North of House Kim. Much to his annoyance, his generals demonstrate hesitance for the first time.
“The Eyrie is surrounded by near impenetrable mountain ranges,” Shim Changmin said as his fingers flew to indicators on the geographical map. Most visitors require a guide to complete the journey safely, and even the most skilled of your horsemen cannot traverse the mountainside in one piece, much less an entire army marching on at once.”
“My dragons-“
“The Vale is the only one of the seven to possess the means to take down your dragons,” Park Yoochun interrupted. “Even your dragons are not immune to trebuchets and missile turrets, especially when only one of them has a rider.”
“Then we will ride north and take House Kim first.”
“Unwise, your grace,” Changmin said, perhaps a little too quickly. “The North is too vast a territory and the summer months are almost over. The north winds will bring the cold before you ever reach the seat of House Kim and the frozen months grow longer every year. Your horsemen will not survive waging war against them.”
“You were fostered by the Lord Kim, were you not?” Yunho’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Are you speaking now out of fealty to me or concern for them?” Changmin flinched. “House Han aided House Kim and House Choi in their rebellion,” he continued. “They must die, by fire or blood, and my dragons do not fear the cold.”
“Your warriors do.” Changmin said, with an almost admirably imprudent bravery. “The other houses will not follow you without the horsemen of your Tribe, and half of them have fallen to illness and disease. We cannot keep fighting an endless war. What use is it to tear down the walls of strongholds when they cannot be used to guard your kingdom? What use is it to burn the land barren and rule over a wasteland?”
Yunho glowered. “Then what do you suggest?” he spat.
“Negotiate surrender with the Vale and the North.”
“Never.”
“The brother of Kim Yoojin is dead, executed for treason against the Usurper,” Changmin argued. “The seat of the north under the rule of his daughter, Kim Hyoyeon, and she is still in the process of rebuilding what the last wardens destroyed. She will be receptive to a truce and House Han will follow in her lead.”
“Her bastard half-brother is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch,” Park Yoochun said from the other side of the room. “He heads a militia of over ten-thousand. His duty is to keep out of the realm’s political affairs, but he may not be as honorable as his lord father.”
He heard the truth in their arguments, even as his blood boiled for war. He left his warriors in the central grassland that had been Riverrun, that he had Dragonstone absorb, and took only a small company as he traveled north. He left Hwayong in Dragonstone and Boyong in the Golden Rock, but Jiyong he took took with him. The North would not appreciate displays of grandeur and Jiyong was the calmest of the three.
A week into the journey, the northern winds cooled his blood, and he grudgingly realized the prudence of his generals. The North was vast, with few settlements and a great stretch of land in between each one. Men in the north did not fight as warriors; they stood as though they were sentinels.
“Why does the Seven Kingdoms hold the North as their own?” Yunho asked to his company. “They have no great warriors to further their name and they contribute nothing to the realm.”
“The North guards us against the White Walkers,” Yoochun said, his voice mocking. “Beings from the north beyond the Wall who raise armies of dead and wield swords so cold they freeze all that they touch-at least, that is what the nursemaids say when they want to frighten small children.”
“What do you say, Shim Changmin?” Yunho said, directing his attention to the young lord Shim, whose spine stiffened accordingly. “You lived here once before. Of all people, you should be able to provide an adequate explanation.”
“The North exists because it cannot be held by outsiders,” Changmin said slowly after a pause. “It’s too big and too wild, and they have their own way. They claim to have descended from the First Men and they still celebrate the Old Gods. House Kim commands the northerners’ loyalties and exerts a great amount of influence.”
“They fancy themselves kings, then?” Yunho scoffed.
“Not kings,” Changmin said, almost to himself. “Guardians, more like.”
Changmin did not speak anymore of the North and Yunho deigned not to ask any more questions. A fortnight later, they arrive at the seat of House Kim. He had expected a fortress at the very least and was thoroughly disappointed. The castle was thoroughly unimpressive-oh, it was certainly big enough, but just an ordinary large castle. Parts of its outer wall looked as though they had only recently been rebuilt and a few of its towers were still charred and broken.
My dragons could have taken this Yunho thought with disgust.
Yet the northerners greeted him, not with the tips of their broadswords, but a polite incline of their heads. Kim Hyoyeon received him graciously, her vassals a comfortable distance away. She was a striking young woman-not particularly beautiful, but with piercing eyes and a stillness that ran deep and commanded respect. There was an almost imperceptible twinge in her right shoulder, as though she had dislocated her shoulder and never had it set properly, but if he had not suffered a similar injury, Yunho never would have known.
“The North welcomes the throne of the South,” she said with only the barest nod of acknowledgement instead of a curtsy, and she did not smile or simper. Yunho decided he liked her more because of it. She extended similar platitudes to Yoochun and Changmin.
“My apologies for the death of your Lord Husband,” Yoochun said, rather rudely, as the ‘Lord Husband’ in question had been estranged, and was one of the many who fell alongside House Lee.
“His gold helped rebuild my home. He has served his purpose.” she said nonchalantly, with an unapologetic honesty. Her vassals do not hide their sneers and, compared to the mannerisms of soldiers of the south with their shiny armors and gallant ways, the north was a very different place indeed.
Changmin, he noted, did not meet her eyes once.
Kim Hyoyeon’s bastard half-brother arrived three days later, dressed from head to toe in black, as was the tradition. At the heels of his company was a massive snow-white direwolf with red eyes and sharp teeth, easily the size of Hwayong.
Yunho had heard whispers from all around of the 998th Lord Commander. He was the youngest to ever achieve that station and the bravest or the most foolhardy, depending on who was telling the story. Legends were already forming of how he ventured frequently north of the Wall taking no one else but his Ghost and living to tell the tale. The realm had been at war for so long, years before Yunho ever crossed the Narrow Sea, and the Lord Commander had been left to his own devices. He made peace with the wildlings, free people who lived north beyond the Wall, and they near doubled the numbers of his official militia of ten-thousand.
His hair was a shade darker than his half-sisters and his eyes were a shade lighter. He had the luminous pallor of one who rarely saw the sun, the smooth face of a man who rarely touched a razor, and he carried his blade with the ease of a man who slept holding the hilt in his hand.
And yet for all the mystery and intrigue that surrounded this man, whatever Yunho had expected to see, he had not thought Kim Jaejoong to look quite so…delicate.
Kim Jaejoong greeted his sister first: one knee bended and then he rose and kissed her warmly on the forehead. He glanced at Changmin next and a look passed between them that Yunho could not interpret. Then, Kim Jaejoong met his eyes and it was as though the horn of battle trumpeted in Yunho’s head. There was something familiar about him, just so, like an image in the smoke of the Tribal crones he could not decipher. Kim Jaejoong bowed, but his eyes did not leave Yunho’s face.
“My lord,” he intoned quietly, and Jung Yunho’s heart, which did not quiver once in the face of fire, war, and almost certain death…skipped a beat.
[ Chapter 2 ]
Notes:
+ Yunho’s method of war are largely based off of Genghis Khan’s military tactics.
+ I thought about giving Yunho the name ‘Rising God of the East’ but I just couldn’t go through with it.
+ On the names of Yunho's dragons:
--> Hwayong = 화용/和龍, meaning 'peaceful dragon' (ironically enough)
--> Boyong = 보용/寶龍, meaning 'precious dragon'
--> Jiyong = 지용/智龍, meaning 'intelligent dragon', and is not to be confused with G-Dragon's Jiyong (지용/志龍), which means 'willful dragon'.