A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei. Dunsen, Poliver, Raff the Sweetling, Ser Gregor and the Tickler. And the Hound, the Hound, the Hound.
By the time the rain stopped and the clouds broke, she was shivering and sneezing so badly that Clegane called a halt for the night, and even tried to make a fire. The wood they gathered proved too wet, though. Nothing he tried was enough to make the spark catch. Finally he kicked it all apart in disgust. “Seven bloody hells,” he swore. “I hate fires.”
They sat on damp rocks beneath an oak tree, listening to the slow patter of water dripping from the leaves as they ate a cold supper of hardbread, moldy cheese, and smoked sausage. The Hound sliced the meat with his dagger, and narrowed his eyes when he caught Arya looking at the knife. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I wasn’t,” she lied.
He snorted to show what he thought of that, but he gave her a thick slice of sausage. Arya worried it with her teeth, watching him all the while. “I never beat your sister,” the Hound said. “But I’ll beat you if you make me. Stop trying to think up ways to kill me. None of it will do you a bit of good.”
She had nothing to say to that. She gnawed on the sausage and stared at him coldly. Hard as stone, she thought.
“At least you look at my face. I’ll give you that, you little she-wolf. How do you like it?”
“I don’t. It’s all burned and ugly.”
Clegane offered her a chunk of cheese on the point of his dagger. “You’re a little fool. What good would it do you if you did get away? You’d just get caught by someone worse.”
“I would not,” she insisted. “There is no one worse.”
“You never knew my brother. Gregor once killed a man for snoring. His own man.” When he grinned, the burned side of his face pulled tight, twisting his mouth in a queer unpleasant way. He had no lips on that side, and only the stump of an ear.
“I did so know your brother.” Maybe the Mountain was worse, now that Arya thought about it. “Him and Dunsen and Polliver, and Raff the Sweetling and the Tickler.”
The Hound seemed surprised. “And how would Ned Stark’s precious little daughter come to know the likes of them? Gregor never brings his pet rats to court.”
“I know them from the village.” She ate the cheese, and reached for a hunk of hardbread. “The village by the lake where they caught Gendry, me, and Hot Pie. They caught Lommy Greenhands too, but Raff the Sweetling killed him because his leg was hurt.”
Clegane’s mouth twitched. “Caught you? My brother caught you?” That made him laugh, a sour sound, part rumble and part snarl. “Gregor never knew what he had, did he? He couldn’t have, or he would have dragged you back kicking and screaming to King’s Landing and dumped you in Cersei’s lap. Oh, that’s bloody sweet. I’ll be sure and tell him that, before I cut his heart out.”
It wasn’t the first time he had talked of killing the Mountain. “But he’s your brother,” Arya said dubiously.
“Didn’t you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?” He laughed again. “Or maybe a sister?” He must have seen something in her face then, for he leaned closer. “Sansa. That’s it, isn’t it? The wolf bitch wants to kill the pretty bird.”
“No,” Arya spat back at him. “I’d like to kill you.”
“Because I hacked your little friend in two? I’ve killed a lot more than him, I promise you. You think that makes me some monster. Well, maybe it does, but I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.”
“You’re lying,” she said at once.
“You don’t know half as much as you think you do. The Blackwater? Where in seven hells do you think we are? Where do you think we’re going?”
The scorn in his voice made her hesitate. “Back to King’s Landing,” she said. “You’re bringing me to Joffrey and the queen.” That was wrong, she realized all of a sudden, just from the way he asked the questions. But she had to say something.
“Stupid blind little wolf bitch.” His voice was rough and hard as an iron rasp. “Bugger Joffrey, bugger the queen, and bugger that twisted little gargoyle she calls a brother. I’m done with their city, done with their Kingsguard, done with Lannisters. What’s a dog to do with lions, I ask you?” He reached for his waterskin, took a long pull. As he wiped his mouth, he offered the skin to Arya and said, “The river was the Trident, girl. The Trident, not the Blackwater. Make the map in your head, if you can. On the morrow we should reach the kingsroad. We’ll make good time after that, straight up to the Twins. It’s going to be me who hands you over to that mother of yours. Not the noble lightning lord or that flaming fraud of a priest, the monster.” He grinned at the look on her face. “You think your outlaw friends are the only ones can smell a ransom? Dondarrion took my gold, so I took you. You’re worth twice what they stole from me, I’d say. Maybe even more if I sold you back to the Lannisters like you fear, but I won’t. Even a dog gets tired of being kicked. If this Young Wolf has the wits the gods gave a toad, he’ll make me a lordling and beg me to enter his service. He needs me, though he may not know it yet. Maybe I’ll even kill Gregor for him, he’d like that.”
“He’ll never take you,” she spat back. “Not you.”
“Then I’ll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off. If he doesn’t take me, he’d be wise to kill me, but he won’t. Too much his father’s son, from what I hear. Fine with me. Either way I win. And so do you, she-wolf. So stop whimpering and snapping at me, I’m sick of it. Keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you, and maybe we’ll even be in time for your uncle’s bloody wedding.”
JON
The mare was blown, but Jon could not let up on her. He had to reach the Wall before the Magnar. He would have slept in the saddle if he’d had one; lacking that, it was hard enough to stay ahorse while awake. His wounded leg grew ever more painful. He dare not rest long enough to let it heal. Instead he ripped it open anew each time he mounted up.
When he crested a rise and saw the brown rutted kingsroad before him wending its way north through hill and plain, he patted the mare’s neck and said, “Now all we need do is follow the road, girl. Soon the Wall.” His leg had gone as stiff as wood by then, and fever had made him so light-headed that twice he found himself riding in the wrong direction.
Soon the Wall. He pictured his friends drinking mulled wine in the common hall. Hobb would be with his kettles, Donal Noye at his forge, Maester Aemon in his rooms beneath the rookery. And the Old Bear? Sam, Grenn, Dolorous Edd, Dywen with his wooden teeth… Jon could only pray that some had escaped the Fist.
Ygritte was much in his thoughts as well. He remembered the smell of her hair, the warmth of her body… and the look on her face as she slit the old man’s throat. You were wrong to love her, a voice whispered. You were wrong to leave her, a different voice insisted. He wondered if his father had been torn the same way, when he’d left Jon’s mother to return to Lady Catelyn. He was pledged to Lady Stark, and I am pledged to the Night’s Watch.
He almost rode through Mole’s Town, so feverish that he did not know where he was. Most of the village was hidden underground, only a handful of small hovels to be seen by the light of the waning moon. The brothel was a shed no bigger than a privy, its red lantern creaking in the wind, a bloodshot eye peering through the blackness. Jon dismounted at the adjoining stable, half-stumbling from the mare’s back as he shouted two boys awake. “I need a fresh mount, with saddle and bridle,” he told them, in a tone that brooked no argument. They brought him that; a skin of wine as well, and half a loaf of brown bread. “Wake the village,” he told them. “Warn them. There are wildlings south of the Wall. Gather your goods and make for Castle Black.” He pulled himself onto the black gelding they’d given him, gritting his teeth at the pain in his leg, and rode hard for the north.
As the stars began to fade in the eastern sky, the Wall appeared before him, rising above the trees and the morning mists. Moonlight glimmered pale against the ice. He urged the gelding on, following the muddy slick road until he saw the stone towers and timbered halls of Castle Black huddled like broken toys beneath the great cliff of ice. By then the Wall glowed pink and purple with the first light of dawn.
No sentries challenged him as he rode past the outbuildings. No one came forth to bar his way. Castle Black seemed as much a ruin as Greyguard. Brown brittle weeds grew between cracks in the stones of the courtyards. Old snow covered the roof of the Flint Barracks and lay in drifts against the north side of Hardin’s Tower, where Jon used to sleep before being made the Old Bear’s steward. Fingers of soot streaked the Lord Commander’s Tower where the smoke had boiled from the windows. Mormont had moved to the King’s Tower after the fire, but Jon saw no lights there either. From the ground he could not tell if there were sentries walking the Wall seven hundred feet above, but he saw no one on the huge switchback stair that climbed the south face of the ice like some great wooden thunderbolt.
There was smoke rising from the chimney of the armory, though; only a wisp, almost invisible against the grey northern sky, but it was enough. Jon dismounted and limped toward it. Warmth poured out the open door like the hot breath of summer. Within, one-armed Donal Noye was working his bellows at the fire. He looked up at the noise. “Jon Snow?”
“None else.” Despite fever, exhaustion, his leg, the Magnar, the old man, Ygritte, Mance, despite it all, Jon smiled. It was good to be back, good to see Noye with his big belly and pinned-up sleeve, his jaw bristling with black stubble.
The smith released his grip on the bellows. “Your face…”
He had almost forgotten about his face. “A skinchanger tried to rip out my eye.”
Noye frowned. “Scarred or smooth, it’s a face I thought I’d seen the last of. We heard you’d gone over to Mance Raydar.”
Jon grasped the door to stay upright. “Who told you that?”
“Jarman Buckwell. He returned a fortnight past. His scouts claim they saw you with their own eyes, riding along beside the wildling column and wearing a sheepskin cloak.” Noye eyed him. “I see the last part’s true.”
“It’s all true,” Jon confessed. “As far as it goes.”
“Should I be pulling down a sword to gut you, then?”
“No. I was acting on orders. Qhorin Halfhand’s last command. Noye, where is the garrison?”
“Defending the Wall against your wildling friends.”
“Yes, but where?”
“Everywhere. Harma Dogshead was seen at Woodswatch-by-the-Pool, Rattleshirt at Long Barrow, the Weeper near Icemark. All along the Wall… they’re here, they’re there, they’re climbing near Queensgate, they’re hacking at the gates of Greyguard, they’re massing against Eastwatch… but one glimpse of a black cloak and they’re gone. Next day they’re somewhere else.”
Jon swallowed a groan. “Feints. Mance wants us to spread ourselves thin, don’t you see?” And Bowen Marsh has obliged him. “The gate is here. The attack is here.”
Noye crossed the room. “Your leg is drenched in blood.”
Jon looked down dully. It was true. His wound had opened again. “An arrow wound…”
“A wildling arrow.” It was not a question. Noye had only one arm, but that was thick with muscle. He slid it under Jon’s to help support him. “You’re white as milk, and burning hot besides. I’m taking you to Aemon.”
“There’s no time. There are wildlings south of the Wall, coming up from Queenscrown to open the gate.”
“How many?” Noye half-carried Jon out the door.
“A hundred and twenty, and well armed for wildlings. Bronze armor, some bits of steel. How many men are left here?”
“Forty odd,” said Donal Noye. “The crippled and infirm, and some green boys still in training.”
“If Marsh is gone, who did he name as castellan?”
The armorer laughed. “Ser Wynton, gods preserve him. Last knight in the castle and all. The thing is, Stout seems to have forgotten and no one’s been rushing to remind him. I suppose I’m as much a commander as we have now. The meanest of the cripples.”
That was for the good, at least. The one-armed armorer was hard headed, tough, and well seasoned in war. Ser Wynton Stout, on the other hand… well, he had been a good man once, everyone agreed, but he had been eighty years a ranger, and both strength and wits were gone. Once he’d fallen asleep at supper and almost drowned in a bowl of pea soup.
“Where’s your wolf?” Noye asked as they crossed the yard.
“Ghost. I had to leave him when I climbed the Wall. I’d hoped he’d make his way back here.”
“I’m sorry, lad. There’s been no sign of him.” They limped up to the maester’s door, in the long wooden keep beneath the rookery. The armorer gave it a kick. “Clydas!”
After a moment a stooped, round-shouldered little man in black peered out. His small pink eyes widened at the sight of Jon. “Lay the lad down, I’ll fetch the maester.”
A fire was burning in the hearth, and the room was almost stuffy. The warmth made Jon sleepy. As soon as Noye eased him down onto his back, he closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning. He could hear the ravens quorking and complaining in the rookery above. “Snow,” one bird was saying. “Snow, snow, snow.” That was Sam’s doing, Jon remembered. Had Samwell Tarly made it home safely, he wondered, or only the birds?
Maester Aemon was not long in coming. He moved slowly, one spotted hand on Clydas’s arm as he shuffled forward with small careful steps. Around his thin neck his chain hung heavy, gold and silver links glinting amongst iron, lead, tin, and other base metals. “Jon Snow,” he said, “you must tell me all you’ve seen and done when you are stronger. Donal, put a kettle of wine on the fire, and my irons as well. I will want them red-hot. Clydas, I shall need that good sharp knife of yours.” The maester was more than a hundred years old; shrunken, frail, hairless, and quite blind. But if his milky eyes saw nothing, his wits were still as sharp as they had ever been.
“There are wildlings coming,” Jon told him, as Clydas ran a blade up the leg of his breeches, slicing the heavy black cloth, crusty with old blood and sodden with new. “From the south. We climbed the Wall…”
Maester Aemon gave Jon’s crude bandage a sniff when Clydas cut it away. “We?”
“I was with them. Qhorin Halfhand commanded me to join them.” Jon winced as the maester’s finger explored his wound, poking and prodding. “The Magnar of Thenn—aaaaah, that hurts.” He clenched his teeth. “Where is the Old Bear?”
“Jon… it grieves me to say, but Lord Commander Mormont was murdered at Craster’s Keep, at the hands of his Sworn Brothers.”
“Bro… our own men?” Aemon’s words hurt a hundred times worse than his fingers. Jon remembered the Old Bear as last he’d seen him, standing before his tent with his raven on his arm croaking for corn. Mormont gone? He had feared it ever since he’d seen the aftermath of battle on the Fist, yet it was no less a blow. “Who was it? Who turned on him?”
“Garth of Oldtown, Ollo Lophand, Dirk… thieves, cowards and killers, the lot of them. We should have seen it coming. The Watch is not what it was. Too few honest men to keep the rogues in line.” Donal Noye turned the maester’s blades in the fire. “A dozen true men made it back. Dolorous Edd, Giant, your friend the Aurochs. We had the tale from them.”
Only a dozen? Two hundred men had left Castle Black with Lord Commander Mormont, two hundred of the Watch’s best. “Does this mean Marsh is Lord Commander, then?” The Old Pomegranate was amiable, and a diligent First Steward, but he was woefully ill-suited to face a wildling host.
“For the nonce, until we can hold a choosing,” said Maester Aemon. “Clydas, bring me the flask.”
A choosing. With Qhorin Halfhand and Ser Jaremy Rykker both dead and Ben Stark still missing, who was there? Not Bowen Marsh or Ser Wynton Stout, that was certain. Had Thoren Smallwood survived the Fist, or Ser Ottyn Wythers? No, it will be Cotter Pyke or Ser Denys Mallister. Which, though? The commanders at the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch were good men, but very different; Ser Denys courtly and cautious, as chivalrous as he was elderly, Pyke younger, bastard-born, rough-tongued, and bold to a fault. Worse, the two men despised each other. The Old Bear had always kept them far apart, at opposite ends of the Wall. The Mallisters had a bone-deep mistrust of the ironborn, Jon knew.
A stab of pain reminded him of his own woes. The maester squeezed his hand. “Clydas is bringing milk of the poppy.”
Jon tried to rise. “I don’t need—”
“You do,” Aemon said firmly. “This will hurt.”
Donal Noye crossed the room and shoved Jon back onto his back. “Be still, or I’ll tie you down.” Even with only one arm, the smith handled him as if he were a child. Clydas returned with a green flask and a rounded stone cup. Maester Aemon poured it full. “Drink this.”
Jon had bitten his lip in his struggles. He could taste blood mingled with the thick, chalky potion. It was all he could do not to retch it back up.
Clydas brought a basin of warm water, and Maester Aemon washed the pus and blood from his wound. Gentle as he was, even the lightest touch made Jon want to scream. “The Magnar’s men are disciplined, and they have bronze armor,” he told them. Talking helped keep his mind off his leg.
“The Magnar’s a lord on Skagos,” Noye said. “There were Skagossons at Eastwatch when I first came to the Wall, I remember hearing them talk of him.”
“Jon was using the word in its older sense, I think,” Maester Aemon said, “not as a family name but as a title. It derives from the Old Tongue.”
“It means lord,” Jon agreed. “Styr is the Magnar of some place called Thenn, in the far north of the Frostfangs. He has a hundred of his own men, and a score of raiders who know the Gift almost as well as we do. Mance never found the horn, though, that’s something. The Horn of Winter, that’s what he was digging for up along the Milkwater.”
Maester Aemon paused, washcloth in hand. “The Horn of Winter is an ancient legend. Does the King-beyond-the-Wall truly believe that such a thing exists?”
“They all do,” said Jon. “Ygritte said they opened a hundred graves… graves of kings and heroes, all over the valley of the Milkwater, but they never…”
“Who is Ygritte?” Donal Noye asked pointedly.
“A woman of the free folk.” How could he explain Ygritte to them? She’s warm and smart and funny and she can kiss a man or slit his throat. “She’s with Styr, but she’s not… she’s young, only a girl, in truth, wild, but she…” She killed an old man for building a fire. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. The milk of the poppy was clouding his wits. “I broke my vows with her. I never meant to, but…” It was wrong. Wrong to love her, wrong to leave her… “I wasn’t strong enough. The Halfhand commanded me, ride with them, watch, I must not balk, I…” His head felt as if it were packed with wet wool.
Maester Aemon sniffed Jon’s wound again. Then he put the bloody cloth back in the basin and said, “Donal, the hot knife, if you please. I shall need you to hold him still.”
I will not scream, Jon told himself when he saw the blade glowing red hot. But he broke that vow as well. Donal Noye held him down, while Clydas helped guide the maester’s hand. Jon did not move, except to pound his fist against the table, again and again and again. The pain was so huge he felt small and weak and helpless inside it, a child whimpering in the dark. Ygritte, he thought, when the stench of burning flesh was in his nose and his own shriek echoing in her ears. Ygritte, I had to. For half a heartbeat the agony started to ebb. But then the iron touched him once again, and he fainted.
When his eyelids fluttered open, he was wrapped in thick wool and floating. He could not seem to move, but that did not matter. For a time he dreamed that Ygritte was with him, tending him with gentle hands. Finally he closed his eyes and slept.
The next waking was not so gentle. The room was dark, but under the blankets the pain was back, a throbbing in his leg that turned into a hot knife at the least motion. Jon learned that the hard way when he tried to see if he still had a leg. Gasping, he swallowed a scream and made another fist.
“Jon?” A candle appeared, and a well-remembered face was looking down on him, big ears and all. “You shouldn’t move.”
“Pyp?” Jon reached up, and the other boy clasped his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I thought you’d gone…”
“… with the Old Pomegranate? No, he thinks I’m too small and green. Grenn’s here too.”
“I’m here too.” Grenn stepped to the other side of the bed. “I fell asleep.”
Jon’s throat was dry. “Water,” he gasped. Grenn brought it, and held it to his lips. “I saw the Fist,” he said, after a long swallow. “The blood, and the dead horses… Noye said a dozen made it back… who?”
“Dywen did. Giant, Dolorous Edd, Sweet Donnel Hill, Ulmer, Left Hand Lew, Garth Greyfeather. Four or five more. Me.”
“Sam?”
Grenn looked away. “He killed one of the Others, Jon. I saw it. He stabbed him with that dragonglass knife you made him, and we started calling him Sam the Slayer. He hated that.”
Sam the Slayer. Jon could hardly imagine a less likely warrior than Sam Tarly. “What happened to him?”
“We left him.” Grenn sounded miserable. “I shook him and screamed at him, even slapped his face. Giant tried to drag him to his feet, but he was too heavy. Remember in training how he’d curl up on the ground and lie there whimpering? At Craster’s he wouldn’t even whimper. Dirk and Ollo were tearing up the walls looking for food, Garth and Garth were fighting, some of the others were raping Craster’s wives. Dolorous Edd figured Dirk’s bunch would kill all the loyal men to keep us from telling what they’d done, and they had us two to one. We left Sam with the Old Bear. He wouldn’t move, Jon.”
You were his brother, he almost said. How could you leave him amongst wildlings and murderers?
“He might still be alive,” said Pyp. “He might surprise us all and come riding up tomorrow.”
“With Mance Rayder’s head, aye.” Grenn was trying to sound cheerful, Jon could tell. “Sam the Slayer!”
Jon tried to sit again. It was as much a mistake as the first time. He cried out, cursing.
“Grenn, go wake Maester Aemon,” said Pyp. “Tell him Jon needs more milk of the poppy.”
By the time the rain stopped and the clouds broke, she was shivering and sneezing so badly that Clegane called a halt for the night, and even tried to make a fire. The wood they gathered proved too wet, though. Nothing he tried was enough to make the spark catch. Finally he kicked it all apart in disgust. “Seven bloody hells,” he swore. “I hate fires.”
They sat on damp rocks beneath an oak tree, listening to the slow patter of water dripping from the leaves as they ate a cold supper of hardbread, moldy cheese, and smoked sausage. The Hound sliced the meat with his dagger, and narrowed his eyes when he caught Arya looking at the knife. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I wasn’t,” she lied.
He snorted to show what he thought of that, but he gave her a thick slice of sausage. Arya worried it with her teeth, watching him all the while. “I never beat your sister,” the Hound said. “But I’ll beat you if you make me. Stop trying to think up ways to kill me. None of it will do you a bit of good.”
She had nothing to say to that. She gnawed on the sausage and stared at him coldly. Hard as stone, she thought.
“At least you look at my face. I’ll give you that, you little she-wolf. How do you like it?”
“I don’t. It’s all burned and ugly.”
Clegane offered her a chunk of cheese on the point of his dagger. “You’re a little fool. What good would it do you if you did get away? You’d just get caught by someone worse.”
“I would not,” she insisted. “There is no one worse.”
“You never knew my brother. Gregor once killed a man for snoring. His own man.” When he grinned, the burned side of his face pulled tight, twisting his mouth in a queer unpleasant way. He had no lips on that side, and only the stump of an ear.
“I did so know your brother.” Maybe the Mountain was worse, now that Arya thought about it. “Him and Dunsen and Polliver, and Raff the Sweetling and the Tickler.”
The Hound seemed surprised. “And how would Ned Stark’s precious little daughter come to know the likes of them? Gregor never brings his pet rats to court.”
“I know them from the village.” She ate the cheese, and reached for a hunk of hardbread. “The village by the lake where they caught Gendry, me, and Hot Pie. They caught Lommy Greenhands too, but Raff the Sweetling killed him because his leg was hurt.”
Clegane’s mouth twitched. “Caught you? My brother caught you?” That made him laugh, a sour sound, part rumble and part snarl. “Gregor never knew what he had, did he? He couldn’t have, or he would have dragged you back kicking and screaming to King’s Landing and dumped you in Cersei’s lap. Oh, that’s bloody sweet. I’ll be sure and tell him that, before I cut his heart out.”
It wasn’t the first time he had talked of killing the Mountain. “But he’s your brother,” Arya said dubiously.
“Didn’t you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?” He laughed again. “Or maybe a sister?” He must have seen something in her face then, for he leaned closer. “Sansa. That’s it, isn’t it? The wolf bitch wants to kill the pretty bird.”
“No,” Arya spat back at him. “I’d like to kill you.”
“Because I hacked your little friend in two? I’ve killed a lot more than him, I promise you. You think that makes me some monster. Well, maybe it does, but I saved your sister’s life too. The day the mob pulled her off her horse, I cut through them and brought her back to the castle, else she would have gotten what Lollys Stokeworth got. And she sang for me. You didn’t know that, did you? Your sister sang me a sweet little song.”
“You’re lying,” she said at once.
“You don’t know half as much as you think you do. The Blackwater? Where in seven hells do you think we are? Where do you think we’re going?”
The scorn in his voice made her hesitate. “Back to King’s Landing,” she said. “You’re bringing me to Joffrey and the queen.” That was wrong, she realized all of a sudden, just from the way he asked the questions. But she had to say something.
“Stupid blind little wolf bitch.” His voice was rough and hard as an iron rasp. “Bugger Joffrey, bugger the queen, and bugger that twisted little gargoyle she calls a brother. I’m done with their city, done with their Kingsguard, done with Lannisters. What’s a dog to do with lions, I ask you?” He reached for his waterskin, took a long pull. As he wiped his mouth, he offered the skin to Arya and said, “The river was the Trident, girl. The Trident, not the Blackwater. Make the map in your head, if you can. On the morrow we should reach the kingsroad. We’ll make good time after that, straight up to the Twins. It’s going to be me who hands you over to that mother of yours. Not the noble lightning lord or that flaming fraud of a priest, the monster.” He grinned at the look on her face. “You think your outlaw friends are the only ones can smell a ransom? Dondarrion took my gold, so I took you. You’re worth twice what they stole from me, I’d say. Maybe even more if I sold you back to the Lannisters like you fear, but I won’t. Even a dog gets tired of being kicked. If this Young Wolf has the wits the gods gave a toad, he’ll make me a lordling and beg me to enter his service. He needs me, though he may not know it yet. Maybe I’ll even kill Gregor for him, he’d like that.”
“He’ll never take you,” she spat back. “Not you.”
“Then I’ll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off. If he doesn’t take me, he’d be wise to kill me, but he won’t. Too much his father’s son, from what I hear. Fine with me. Either way I win. And so do you, she-wolf. So stop whimpering and snapping at me, I’m sick of it. Keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you, and maybe we’ll even be in time for your uncle’s bloody wedding.”
JON
The mare was blown, but Jon could not let up on her. He had to reach the Wall before the Magnar. He would have slept in the saddle if he’d had one; lacking that, it was hard enough to stay ahorse while awake. His wounded leg grew ever more painful. He dare not rest long enough to let it heal. Instead he ripped it open anew each time he mounted up.
When he crested a rise and saw the brown rutted kingsroad before him wending its way north through hill and plain, he patted the mare’s neck and said, “Now all we need do is follow the road, girl. Soon the Wall.” His leg had gone as stiff as wood by then, and fever had made him so light-headed that twice he found himself riding in the wrong direction.
Soon the Wall. He pictured his friends drinking mulled wine in the common hall. Hobb would be with his kettles, Donal Noye at his forge, Maester Aemon in his rooms beneath the rookery. And the Old Bear? Sam, Grenn, Dolorous Edd, Dywen with his wooden teeth… Jon could only pray that some had escaped the Fist.
Ygritte was much in his thoughts as well. He remembered the smell of her hair, the warmth of her body… and the look on her face as she slit the old man’s throat. You were wrong to love her, a voice whispered. You were wrong to leave her, a different voice insisted. He wondered if his father had been torn the same way, when he’d left Jon’s mother to return to Lady Catelyn. He was pledged to Lady Stark, and I am pledged to the Night’s Watch.
He almost rode through Mole’s Town, so feverish that he did not know where he was. Most of the village was hidden underground, only a handful of small hovels to be seen by the light of the waning moon. The brothel was a shed no bigger than a privy, its red lantern creaking in the wind, a bloodshot eye peering through the blackness. Jon dismounted at the adjoining stable, half-stumbling from the mare’s back as he shouted two boys awake. “I need a fresh mount, with saddle and bridle,” he told them, in a tone that brooked no argument. They brought him that; a skin of wine as well, and half a loaf of brown bread. “Wake the village,” he told them. “Warn them. There are wildlings south of the Wall. Gather your goods and make for Castle Black.” He pulled himself onto the black gelding they’d given him, gritting his teeth at the pain in his leg, and rode hard for the north.
As the stars began to fade in the eastern sky, the Wall appeared before him, rising above the trees and the morning mists. Moonlight glimmered pale against the ice. He urged the gelding on, following the muddy slick road until he saw the stone towers and timbered halls of Castle Black huddled like broken toys beneath the great cliff of ice. By then the Wall glowed pink and purple with the first light of dawn.
No sentries challenged him as he rode past the outbuildings. No one came forth to bar his way. Castle Black seemed as much a ruin as Greyguard. Brown brittle weeds grew between cracks in the stones of the courtyards. Old snow covered the roof of the Flint Barracks and lay in drifts against the north side of Hardin’s Tower, where Jon used to sleep before being made the Old Bear’s steward. Fingers of soot streaked the Lord Commander’s Tower where the smoke had boiled from the windows. Mormont had moved to the King’s Tower after the fire, but Jon saw no lights there either. From the ground he could not tell if there were sentries walking the Wall seven hundred feet above, but he saw no one on the huge switchback stair that climbed the south face of the ice like some great wooden thunderbolt.
There was smoke rising from the chimney of the armory, though; only a wisp, almost invisible against the grey northern sky, but it was enough. Jon dismounted and limped toward it. Warmth poured out the open door like the hot breath of summer. Within, one-armed Donal Noye was working his bellows at the fire. He looked up at the noise. “Jon Snow?”
“None else.” Despite fever, exhaustion, his leg, the Magnar, the old man, Ygritte, Mance, despite it all, Jon smiled. It was good to be back, good to see Noye with his big belly and pinned-up sleeve, his jaw bristling with black stubble.
The smith released his grip on the bellows. “Your face…”
He had almost forgotten about his face. “A skinchanger tried to rip out my eye.”
Noye frowned. “Scarred or smooth, it’s a face I thought I’d seen the last of. We heard you’d gone over to Mance Raydar.”
Jon grasped the door to stay upright. “Who told you that?”
“Jarman Buckwell. He returned a fortnight past. His scouts claim they saw you with their own eyes, riding along beside the wildling column and wearing a sheepskin cloak.” Noye eyed him. “I see the last part’s true.”
“It’s all true,” Jon confessed. “As far as it goes.”
“Should I be pulling down a sword to gut you, then?”
“No. I was acting on orders. Qhorin Halfhand’s last command. Noye, where is the garrison?”
“Defending the Wall against your wildling friends.”
“Yes, but where?”
“Everywhere. Harma Dogshead was seen at Woodswatch-by-the-Pool, Rattleshirt at Long Barrow, the Weeper near Icemark. All along the Wall… they’re here, they’re there, they’re climbing near Queensgate, they’re hacking at the gates of Greyguard, they’re massing against Eastwatch… but one glimpse of a black cloak and they’re gone. Next day they’re somewhere else.”
Jon swallowed a groan. “Feints. Mance wants us to spread ourselves thin, don’t you see?” And Bowen Marsh has obliged him. “The gate is here. The attack is here.”
Noye crossed the room. “Your leg is drenched in blood.”
Jon looked down dully. It was true. His wound had opened again. “An arrow wound…”
“A wildling arrow.” It was not a question. Noye had only one arm, but that was thick with muscle. He slid it under Jon’s to help support him. “You’re white as milk, and burning hot besides. I’m taking you to Aemon.”
“There’s no time. There are wildlings south of the Wall, coming up from Queenscrown to open the gate.”
“How many?” Noye half-carried Jon out the door.
“A hundred and twenty, and well armed for wildlings. Bronze armor, some bits of steel. How many men are left here?”
“Forty odd,” said Donal Noye. “The crippled and infirm, and some green boys still in training.”
“If Marsh is gone, who did he name as castellan?”
The armorer laughed. “Ser Wynton, gods preserve him. Last knight in the castle and all. The thing is, Stout seems to have forgotten and no one’s been rushing to remind him. I suppose I’m as much a commander as we have now. The meanest of the cripples.”
That was for the good, at least. The one-armed armorer was hard headed, tough, and well seasoned in war. Ser Wynton Stout, on the other hand… well, he had been a good man once, everyone agreed, but he had been eighty years a ranger, and both strength and wits were gone. Once he’d fallen asleep at supper and almost drowned in a bowl of pea soup.
“Where’s your wolf?” Noye asked as they crossed the yard.
“Ghost. I had to leave him when I climbed the Wall. I’d hoped he’d make his way back here.”
“I’m sorry, lad. There’s been no sign of him.” They limped up to the maester’s door, in the long wooden keep beneath the rookery. The armorer gave it a kick. “Clydas!”
After a moment a stooped, round-shouldered little man in black peered out. His small pink eyes widened at the sight of Jon. “Lay the lad down, I’ll fetch the maester.”
A fire was burning in the hearth, and the room was almost stuffy. The warmth made Jon sleepy. As soon as Noye eased him down onto his back, he closed his eyes to stop the world from spinning. He could hear the ravens quorking and complaining in the rookery above. “Snow,” one bird was saying. “Snow, snow, snow.” That was Sam’s doing, Jon remembered. Had Samwell Tarly made it home safely, he wondered, or only the birds?
Maester Aemon was not long in coming. He moved slowly, one spotted hand on Clydas’s arm as he shuffled forward with small careful steps. Around his thin neck his chain hung heavy, gold and silver links glinting amongst iron, lead, tin, and other base metals. “Jon Snow,” he said, “you must tell me all you’ve seen and done when you are stronger. Donal, put a kettle of wine on the fire, and my irons as well. I will want them red-hot. Clydas, I shall need that good sharp knife of yours.” The maester was more than a hundred years old; shrunken, frail, hairless, and quite blind. But if his milky eyes saw nothing, his wits were still as sharp as they had ever been.
“There are wildlings coming,” Jon told him, as Clydas ran a blade up the leg of his breeches, slicing the heavy black cloth, crusty with old blood and sodden with new. “From the south. We climbed the Wall…”
Maester Aemon gave Jon’s crude bandage a sniff when Clydas cut it away. “We?”
“I was with them. Qhorin Halfhand commanded me to join them.” Jon winced as the maester’s finger explored his wound, poking and prodding. “The Magnar of Thenn—aaaaah, that hurts.” He clenched his teeth. “Where is the Old Bear?”
“Jon… it grieves me to say, but Lord Commander Mormont was murdered at Craster’s Keep, at the hands of his Sworn Brothers.”
“Bro… our own men?” Aemon’s words hurt a hundred times worse than his fingers. Jon remembered the Old Bear as last he’d seen him, standing before his tent with his raven on his arm croaking for corn. Mormont gone? He had feared it ever since he’d seen the aftermath of battle on the Fist, yet it was no less a blow. “Who was it? Who turned on him?”
“Garth of Oldtown, Ollo Lophand, Dirk… thieves, cowards and killers, the lot of them. We should have seen it coming. The Watch is not what it was. Too few honest men to keep the rogues in line.” Donal Noye turned the maester’s blades in the fire. “A dozen true men made it back. Dolorous Edd, Giant, your friend the Aurochs. We had the tale from them.”
Only a dozen? Two hundred men had left Castle Black with Lord Commander Mormont, two hundred of the Watch’s best. “Does this mean Marsh is Lord Commander, then?” The Old Pomegranate was amiable, and a diligent First Steward, but he was woefully ill-suited to face a wildling host.
“For the nonce, until we can hold a choosing,” said Maester Aemon. “Clydas, bring me the flask.”
A choosing. With Qhorin Halfhand and Ser Jaremy Rykker both dead and Ben Stark still missing, who was there? Not Bowen Marsh or Ser Wynton Stout, that was certain. Had Thoren Smallwood survived the Fist, or Ser Ottyn Wythers? No, it will be Cotter Pyke or Ser Denys Mallister. Which, though? The commanders at the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch were good men, but very different; Ser Denys courtly and cautious, as chivalrous as he was elderly, Pyke younger, bastard-born, rough-tongued, and bold to a fault. Worse, the two men despised each other. The Old Bear had always kept them far apart, at opposite ends of the Wall. The Mallisters had a bone-deep mistrust of the ironborn, Jon knew.
A stab of pain reminded him of his own woes. The maester squeezed his hand. “Clydas is bringing milk of the poppy.”
Jon tried to rise. “I don’t need—”
“You do,” Aemon said firmly. “This will hurt.”
Donal Noye crossed the room and shoved Jon back onto his back. “Be still, or I’ll tie you down.” Even with only one arm, the smith handled him as if he were a child. Clydas returned with a green flask and a rounded stone cup. Maester Aemon poured it full. “Drink this.”
Jon had bitten his lip in his struggles. He could taste blood mingled with the thick, chalky potion. It was all he could do not to retch it back up.
Clydas brought a basin of warm water, and Maester Aemon washed the pus and blood from his wound. Gentle as he was, even the lightest touch made Jon want to scream. “The Magnar’s men are disciplined, and they have bronze armor,” he told them. Talking helped keep his mind off his leg.
“The Magnar’s a lord on Skagos,” Noye said. “There were Skagossons at Eastwatch when I first came to the Wall, I remember hearing them talk of him.”
“Jon was using the word in its older sense, I think,” Maester Aemon said, “not as a family name but as a title. It derives from the Old Tongue.”
“It means lord,” Jon agreed. “Styr is the Magnar of some place called Thenn, in the far north of the Frostfangs. He has a hundred of his own men, and a score of raiders who know the Gift almost as well as we do. Mance never found the horn, though, that’s something. The Horn of Winter, that’s what he was digging for up along the Milkwater.”
Maester Aemon paused, washcloth in hand. “The Horn of Winter is an ancient legend. Does the King-beyond-the-Wall truly believe that such a thing exists?”
“They all do,” said Jon. “Ygritte said they opened a hundred graves… graves of kings and heroes, all over the valley of the Milkwater, but they never…”
“Who is Ygritte?” Donal Noye asked pointedly.
“A woman of the free folk.” How could he explain Ygritte to them? She’s warm and smart and funny and she can kiss a man or slit his throat. “She’s with Styr, but she’s not… she’s young, only a girl, in truth, wild, but she…” She killed an old man for building a fire. His tongue felt thick and clumsy. The milk of the poppy was clouding his wits. “I broke my vows with her. I never meant to, but…” It was wrong. Wrong to love her, wrong to leave her… “I wasn’t strong enough. The Halfhand commanded me, ride with them, watch, I must not balk, I…” His head felt as if it were packed with wet wool.
Maester Aemon sniffed Jon’s wound again. Then he put the bloody cloth back in the basin and said, “Donal, the hot knife, if you please. I shall need you to hold him still.”
I will not scream, Jon told himself when he saw the blade glowing red hot. But he broke that vow as well. Donal Noye held him down, while Clydas helped guide the maester’s hand. Jon did not move, except to pound his fist against the table, again and again and again. The pain was so huge he felt small and weak and helpless inside it, a child whimpering in the dark. Ygritte, he thought, when the stench of burning flesh was in his nose and his own shriek echoing in her ears. Ygritte, I had to. For half a heartbeat the agony started to ebb. But then the iron touched him once again, and he fainted.
When his eyelids fluttered open, he was wrapped in thick wool and floating. He could not seem to move, but that did not matter. For a time he dreamed that Ygritte was with him, tending him with gentle hands. Finally he closed his eyes and slept.
The next waking was not so gentle. The room was dark, but under the blankets the pain was back, a throbbing in his leg that turned into a hot knife at the least motion. Jon learned that the hard way when he tried to see if he still had a leg. Gasping, he swallowed a scream and made another fist.
“Jon?” A candle appeared, and a well-remembered face was looking down on him, big ears and all. “You shouldn’t move.”
“Pyp?” Jon reached up, and the other boy clasped his hand and gave it a squeeze. “I thought you’d gone…”
“… with the Old Pomegranate? No, he thinks I’m too small and green. Grenn’s here too.”
“I’m here too.” Grenn stepped to the other side of the bed. “I fell asleep.”
Jon’s throat was dry. “Water,” he gasped. Grenn brought it, and held it to his lips. “I saw the Fist,” he said, after a long swallow. “The blood, and the dead horses… Noye said a dozen made it back… who?”
“Dywen did. Giant, Dolorous Edd, Sweet Donnel Hill, Ulmer, Left Hand Lew, Garth Greyfeather. Four or five more. Me.”
“Sam?”
Grenn looked away. “He killed one of the Others, Jon. I saw it. He stabbed him with that dragonglass knife you made him, and we started calling him Sam the Slayer. He hated that.”
Sam the Slayer. Jon could hardly imagine a less likely warrior than Sam Tarly. “What happened to him?”
“We left him.” Grenn sounded miserable. “I shook him and screamed at him, even slapped his face. Giant tried to drag him to his feet, but he was too heavy. Remember in training how he’d curl up on the ground and lie there whimpering? At Craster’s he wouldn’t even whimper. Dirk and Ollo were tearing up the walls looking for food, Garth and Garth were fighting, some of the others were raping Craster’s wives. Dolorous Edd figured Dirk’s bunch would kill all the loyal men to keep us from telling what they’d done, and they had us two to one. We left Sam with the Old Bear. He wouldn’t move, Jon.”
You were his brother, he almost said. How could you leave him amongst wildlings and murderers?
“He might still be alive,” said Pyp. “He might surprise us all and come riding up tomorrow.”
“With Mance Rayder’s head, aye.” Grenn was trying to sound cheerful, Jon could tell. “Sam the Slayer!”
Jon tried to sit again. It was as much a mistake as the first time. He cried out, cursing.
“Grenn, go wake Maester Aemon,” said Pyp. “Tell him Jon needs more milk of the poppy.”