"Well," (he looks a little sheepish,) "Not anymore. I bent the knee to the woman who's pressing her claim -- I thought it was the best thing, for all of us. But I went to the parlay as King in the North."

When she asks what the real threat is, he frowns gently, still reluctant.

"Might be that you won't believe me. No one ever really does, until they see them, or have to fight them. That's the trouble... no one expects something like this. They think it's a story told to frighten children."

He sighs, swallows.

"It was an army of dead men, controlled by a king who can raise them, so that whoever his army kills can become one of his soldiers. They don't negotiate; they don't eat or sleep or even tire. He isn't human. I saw him kill a flying dragon by throwing a spear at it from the ground."

The despair and frustration that enters his tone with that last bit might indicate that killing a dragon that way seems, in itself, almost impossible -- as impossible as dragons themselves, or armies of dead men, or inhuman kings who lead them and use them as his puppets.