The hill jutted above the dense tangle of forest, rising
solitary and sudden, its windswept heights visible from miles off.
The wildlings called it the Fist of the First Men, rangers said. It
did look like a fist, Jon Snow thought, punching up through earth
and wood, its bare brown slopes knuckled with stone.
He rode to the top with Lord Mormont and the officers, leaving
Ghost below under the trees. The direwolf had run off three times
as they climbed, twice returning reluctantly to Jon’s
whistle. The third time, the Lord Commander lost patience and
snapped, “Let him go, boy. I want to reach the crest before
dusk. Find the wolf later.”
The way up was steep and stony, the summit crowned by a
chest-high wall of tumbled rocks. They had to circle some distance
west before they found a gap large enough to admit the horses.
“This is good ground, Thoren,” the Old Bear proclaimed
when at last they attained the top. “We could scarce hope for
better. We’ll make our camp here to await Halfhand.”
The Lord Commander swung down off his saddle, dislodging the raven
from his shoulder. Complaining loudly, the bird took to the
air.
The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall
that drew Jon’s eye, the weathered grey stones with their
white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss. It was said
that the Fist had been a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age.
“An old place, and strong,” Thoren Smallwood said.
“Old,” Mormont’s raven screamed as it flapped
in noisy circles about their heads. “Old, old,
old.”
“Quiet,” Mormont growled up at the bird. The Old
Bear was too proud to admit to weakness, but Jon was not deceived.
The strain of keeping up with younger men was taking its toll.
“These heights will be easy to defend, if need be,”
Thoren pointed out as he walked his horse along the ring of stones,
his sable-trimmed cloak stirring in the wind.
“Yes, this place will do.” The Old Bear lifted a
hand to the wind, and raven landed on his forearm, claws scrabbling
against his black ringmail.
“What about water, my lord?” Jon wondered.
“We crossed a brook at the foot of the hill.”
“A long climb for a drink,” Jon pointed out,
“and outside the ring of stones.”
Thoren said, “Are you too lazy to climb a hill,
boy?”
When Lord Mormont said, “We’re not like to find
another place as strong. We’ll carry water, and make certain
we are well supplied,” Jon knew better than to argue. So the
command was given, and the brothers of the Night’s Watch
raised their camp behind the stone ring the First Men had made.
Black tents sprouted like mushrooms after a rain, and blankets and
bedrolls covered the bare ground. Stewards tethered the garrons in
long lines, and saw them fed and watered. Foresters took their axes
to the trees in the waning afternoon light to harvest enough wood
to see them through the night. A score of builders set to clearing
brush, digging latrines, and untying their bundles of fire-hardened
stakes. “I will have every opening in the ringwall ditched
and staked before dark,” the Old Bear had commanded.
Once he’d put up the Lord Commander’s tent and seen
to their horses, Jon Snow descended the hill in search of Ghost.
The direwolf came at once, all in silence. One moment Jon was
striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting, alone in the
green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet; the next, the
great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning
mist.
But when they reached the ringfort, Ghost balked again. He
padded forward warily to sniff at the gap in the stones, and then
retreated, as if he did not like what he’d smelled. Jon tried
to grab him by the scruff of his neck and haul him bodily inside
the ring, no easy task; the wolf weighed as much as he did, and was
stronger by far. “Ghost, what’s wrong with you?”
It was not like him to be so unsettled. In the end Jon had to give
it up. “As you will,” he told the wolf. “Go,
hunt.” The red eyes watched him as he made his way back
through the mossy stones.
They ought to be safe here. The hill offered commanding views,
and the slopes were precipitous to the north and west and only
slightly more gentle to the east. Yet as the dusk deepened and
darkness seeped into the hollows between the trees, Jon’s
sense of foreboding grew. This is the haunted forest, he told
himself. Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First Men.
This was their place, once.
“Stop acting the boy,” he told himself. Clambering
atop the piled rocks, Jon gazed off toward the setting sun. He
could see the light shimmering like hammered gold off the surface
of the Milkwater as it curved away to the south. Upriver the land
was more rugged, the dense forest giving way to a series of bare
stony hills that rose high and wild to the north and west. On the
horizon stood the mountains like a great shadow, range on range of
them receding into the blue-grey distance, their jagged peaks
sheathed eternally in snow. Even from afar they looked vast and
cold and inhospitable.
Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east
the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and
limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a
patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and
sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to
turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of
branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a
moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and
heaving, eternal and unknowable.
Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything
could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort
through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees.
Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time,
until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and
darkness began to creep through the forest.
“Jon?” Samwell Tarly called up. “I thought it
looked like you. Are you well?”
“Well enough.” Jon hopped down. “How did you
fare today?”
“Well. I fared well. Truly.”
Jon was not about to share his disquiet with his friend, not
when Samwell Tarly was at last beginning to find his courage.
“The Old Bear means to wait here for Qhorin Halfhand and the
men from the Shadow Tower.”
“It seems a strong place,” said Sam. “A
ringfort of the First Men. Do you think there were battles fought
here?”
“No doubt. You’d best get a bird ready. Mormont will
want to send back word.”
“I wish I could send them all. They hate being
caged.”
“You would too, if you could fly.”
“If I could fly, I’d be back at Castle Black eating
a pork pie,” said Sam.
Jon clapped him on the shoulder with his burned hand. They
walked back through the camp together. Cookfires were being lit all
around them. Overhead, the stars were coming out. The long red tail
of Mormont’s Torch burned as bright as the moon. Jon heard
the ravens before he saw them. Some were calling his name. The
birds were not shy when it came to making noise. They feel it too. “I’d best see to the Old
Bear,” he said. “He gets noisy when he isn’t fed
as well.”
He found Mormont talking with Thoren Smallwood and half a dozen
other officers. “There you are,” the old man said
gruffly. “Bring us some hot wine, if you would. The night is
chilly.”
“Yes, my lord.” Jon built a cookfire, claimed a
small cask of Mormont’s favorite robust red from stores, and
poured it into a kettle. He hung the kettle above the flames while
he gathered the rest of his ingredients. The Old Bear was
particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much
nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and
dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron
heresy—which was queer, since he always took lemon in his morning
beer. The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord
Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a
boil. Jon kept a careful eye on the kettle.
As he worked, he could hear the voices from inside the tent.
Jarman Buckwell said, “The easiest road up into the
Frostfangs is to follow the Milkwater back to its source. Yet if we
go that path, Rayder will know of our approach, certain as
sunrise.”
“The Giant’s Stair might serve,” said Ser
Mallador Locke, “or the Skirling Pass, if it’s
clear.”
The wine was steaming. Jon lifted the kettle off the fire,
filled eight cups, and carried them into the tent. The Old Bear was
peering at the crude map Sam had drawn him that night back in
Craster’s Keep. He took a cup from Jon’s tray, tried a
swallow of wine, and gave a brusque nod of approval. His raven
hopped down his arm. “Corn,” it said. “Corn.
Corn.”
Ser Ottyn Wythers waved the wine away. “I would not go
into the mountains at all,” he said in a thin, tired voice.
“The Frostfangs have a cruel bite even in summer, and
now . . . if we should be caught by a
storm . . . ”
“I do not mean to risk the Frostfangs unless I
must,” said Mormont. “Wildlings can no more live on
snow and stone than we can. They will emerge from the heights soon,
and for a host of any size, the only route is along the Milkwater.
If so, we are strongly placed here. They cannot hope to slip by
us.”
“They may not wish to. They are thousands, and we will be
three hundred when the Halfhand reaches us.” Ser Mallador
accepted a cup from Jon.
“If it comes to battle, we could not hope for better
ground than here,” declared Mormont. “We’ll
strengthen the defenses. Pits and spikes, caltrops scattered on the
slopes, every breach mended. Jarman, I’ll want your sharpest
eyes as watchers. A ring of them, all around us and along the
river, to warn of any approach. Hide them up in trees. And we had
best start bringing up water too, more than we need. We’ll
dig cisterns. It will keep the men occupied, and may prove needful
later.”
“My rangers—” started Thoren Smallwood.
“Your rangers will limit their ranging to this side of the
river until the Halfhand reaches us. After that, we’ll see. I
will not lose more of my men.”
“Mance Rayder might be massing his host a day’s ride
from here, and we’d never know,” Smallwood
complained.
“We know where the wildlings are massing,” Mormont
came back. “We had it from Craster. I mislike the man, but I
do not think he lied to us in this.”
“As you say.” Smallwood took a sullen leave. The
others finished their wine and followed, more courteously.
“Shall I bring you supper, my lord?” Jon asked.
“Corn,” the raven cried. Mormont did not answer at
once. When he did he said only, “Did your wolf find game
today?”
“He’s not back yet.”
“We could do with fresh meat.” Mormont dug into a
sack and offered his raven a handful of corn. “You think
I’m wrong to keep the rangers close?”
“That’s not for me to say, my lord.”
“It is if you’re asked.”
“If the rangers must stay in sight of the Fist, I
don’t see how they can hope to find my uncle,” Jon
admitted.
“They can’t.” The raven pecked at the kernels
in the Old Bear’s palm. “Two hundred men or ten
thousand, the country is too vast.” The corn gone, Mormont
turned his hand over.
“You would not give up the search?”
“Maester Aemon thinks you clever.” Mormont moved the
raven to his shoulder. The bird tilted its head to one side, little
eyes a-glitter.
The answer was there. “Is it . . . it
seems to me that it might be easier for one man to find two hundred
than for two hundred to find one.”
The raven gave a cackling scream, but the Old Bear smiled
through the grey of his beard. “This many men and horses
leave a trail even Aemon could follow. On this hill, our fires ought to be visible
as far off as the foothills of the Frostfangs. If Ben Stark is
alive and free, he will come to us, I have no doubt.”
“Yes,” said Jon,
“but . . . what if . . . ”
“ . . . he’s dead?”
Mormont asked, not unkindly.
Jon nodded, reluctantly.
“Dead,” the raven said. “Dead.
Dead.”
“He may come to us anyway,” the Old Bear said.
“As Othor did, and Jafer Flowers. I dread that as much as
you, Jon, but we must admit the possibility.”
“Dead,” his raven cawed, ruffling its wings. Its
voice grew louder and more shrill. “Dead.”
Mormont stroked the bird’s black feathers, and stifled a
sudden yawn with the back of his hand. “I will forsake
supper, I believe. Rest will serve me better. Wake me at first
light.”
“Sleep well, my lord.” Jon gathered up the empty
cups and stepped outside. He heard distant laughter, the plaintive
sound of pipes. A great blaze was crackling in the center of the
camp, and he could smell stew cooking. The Old Bear might not be
hungry, but Jon was. He drifted over toward the fire.
Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. “I know this wood
as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn’t care to
ride through it alone tonight. Can’t you smell it?”
Grenn was staring at him with wide eyes, but Dolorous Edd said,
“All I smell is the shit of two hundred horses. And this
stew. Which has a similar aroma, now that I come to sniff
it.”
“I’ve got your similar aroma right here.” Hake
patted his dirk. Grumbling, he filled Jon’s bowl from the
kettle.
The stew was thick with barley, carrot, and onion, with here and
there a ragged shred of salt beef, softened in the cooking.
“What is it you smell, Dywen?” asked Grenn.
The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his
teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old
roots. “Seems to me like it
smells . . . well . . . cold.”
“Your head’s as wooden as your teeth,” Hake
told him. “There’s no smell to cold.” There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord
Commander’s chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was
not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need
of an extra supper to warm him against the night.
The wind was blowing briskly when he left. By morning, frost
would cover the ground, and the tent ropes would be stiff and
frozen. A few fingers of spiced wine sloshed in the bottom of the
kettle. Jon fed fresh wood to the fire and put the kettle over the
flames to reheat. He flexed his fingers as he waited, squeezing and
spreading until the hand tingled. The first watch had taken up
their stations around the perimeter of the camp. Torches flickered
all along the ringwall. The night was moonless, but a thousand
stars shone overhead.
A sound rose out of the darkness, faint and distant, but
unmistakable: the howling of wolves. Their voices rose and fell, a
chilly song, and lonely. It made the hairs rise along the back of
his neck. Across the fire, a pair of red eyes regarded him from the
shadows. The light of the flames made them glow.
“Ghost,” Jon breathed, surprised. “So you came
inside after all, eh?” The white wolf often hunted all night;
he had not expected to see him again till daybreak. “Was the
hunting so bad?” he asked. “Here. To me,
Ghost.”
The direwolf circled the fire, sniffing Jon, sniffing the wind,
never still. It did not seem as if he were after meat right now.
When the dead came walking, Ghost knew. He woke me, warned me.
Alarmed, he got to his feet. “is something out there? Ghost,
do you have a scent?” Dywen said he smelled cold.
The direwolf loped off, stopped, looked back. He wants me to
follow. Pulling up the hood of his cloak, Jon walked away from the
tents, away from the warmth of his fire, past the lines of shaggy
little garrons. One of the horses whickered nervously when Ghost
padded by. Jon soothed him with a word and paused to stroke his
muzzle. He could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the
rocks as they neared the ringwall. A voice called out a challenge.
Jon stepped into the torchlight. “I need to fetch water for
the Lord Commander.”
“Go on, then,” the guard said. “Be quick about
it.” Huddled beneath his black cloak, with his hood drawn up
against the wind, the man never even looked to see if he had a
bucket.
Jon slipped sideways between two sharpened stakes while Ghost
slid beneath them. A torch had been thrust down into a crevice, its
flames flying pale orange banners when the gusts came. He snatched
it up as he squeezed through the gap between the stones. Ghost went
racing down the hill. Jon followed more slowly, the torch thrust
out before him as he made his descent. The camp sounds faded behind
him. The night was black, the slope steep, stony, and uneven. A
moment’s inattention would be a sure way to break an
ankle . . . or his neck. What am I doing? he
asked himself as he picked his way down.
The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf,
deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the
hill. Black, they seemed . . . it was only when
his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of
green. Faintly, he heard the sound of water flowing over rocks.
Ghost vanished in the underbrush. Jon struggled after him,
listening to the call of the brook, to the leaves sighing in the
wind. Branches clutched at his cloak, while overhead thick limbs
twined together and shut out the stars.
He found Ghost lapping from the stream. “Ghost,” he
called, “to me. Now.” When the direwolf raised his head,
his eyes glowed red and baleful, and water streamed down from his
jaws like slaver. There was something fierce and terrible about him
in that instant. And then he was off, bounding past Jon, racing
through the trees. “Ghost, no, stay,” he shouted, but
the wolf paid no heed. The lean white shape was swallowed by the
dark, and Jon had only two choices—to climb the hill again, alone,
or to follow.
He followed, angry, holding the torch out low so he could see
the rocks that threatened to trip him with every step, the thick
roots that seemed to grab as his feet, the holes where a man could
twist an ankle. Every few feet he called again for Ghost, but the
night wind was swirling amongst the trees and it drank the words.
This is madness, he thought as he plunged deeper into the trees. He
was about to turn back when he glimpsed a flash of white off ahead
and to the right, back toward the hill. He jogged after it, cursing
under his breath.
A quarter way around the Fist he chased the wolf before he lost
him again. Finally he stopped to catch his breath amidst the scrub,
thorns, and tumbled rocks at the base of the hill. Beyond the
torchlight, the dark pressed close.
A soft scrabbling noise made him turn. Jon moved toward the
sound, stepping carefully among boulders and thornbushes. Behind a
fallen tree, he came on Ghost again. The direwolf was digging
furiously, kicking up dirt.
“What have you found?” Jon lowered the torch,
revealing a rounded mound of soft earth. A grave, he thought. But
whose?
He knelt, jammed the torch into the ground beside him. The soil
was loose, sandy. Jon pulled it out by the fistful. There were no
stones, no roots. Whatever was here had been put here recently. Two
feet down, his fingers touched cloth. He had been expecting a
corpse, fearing a corpse, but this was something else. He pushed
against the fabric and felt small, hard shapes beneath, unyielding.
There was no smell, no sign of graveworms. Ghost backed off and sat
on his haunches, watching.
Jon brushed the loose soil away to reveal a rounded bundle
perhaps two feet across. He jammed his fingers down around the
edges and worked it loose. When he pulled it free, whatever was
inside shifted and clinked. Treasure, he thought, but the shapes
were wrong to be coins, and the sound was wrong for metal.
A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon
unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the
cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out
onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives,
leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger
blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along
its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness.
Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered
some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for
thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place,
only . . .
Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an
auroch’s horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from
inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall,
and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped
in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double
weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the
ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to
the torch. Not dark. Black.
Even before Jon stood and shook it out, he knew what he had: the
black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch.
The hill jutted above the dense tangle of forest, rising
solitary and sudden, its windswept heights visible from miles off.
The wildlings called it the Fist of the First Men, rangers said. It
did look like a fist, Jon Snow thought, punching up through earth
and wood, its bare brown slopes knuckled with stone.
He rode to the top with Lord Mormont and the officers, leaving
Ghost below under the trees. The direwolf had run off three times
as they climbed, twice returning reluctantly to Jon’s
whistle. The third time, the Lord Commander lost patience and
snapped, “Let him go, boy. I want to reach the crest before
dusk. Find the wolf later.”
The way up was steep and stony, the summit crowned by a
chest-high wall of tumbled rocks. They had to circle some distance
west before they found a gap large enough to admit the horses.
“This is good ground, Thoren,” the Old Bear proclaimed
when at last they attained the top. “We could scarce hope for
better. We’ll make our camp here to await Halfhand.”
The Lord Commander swung down off his saddle, dislodging the raven
from his shoulder. Complaining loudly, the bird took to the
air.
The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall
that drew Jon’s eye, the weathered grey stones with their
white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss. It was said
that the Fist had been a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age.
“An old place, and strong,” Thoren Smallwood said.
“Old,” Mormont’s raven screamed as it flapped
in noisy circles about their heads. “Old, old,
old.”
“Quiet,” Mormont growled up at the bird. The Old
Bear was too proud to admit to weakness, but Jon was not deceived.
The strain of keeping up with younger men was taking its toll.
“These heights will be easy to defend, if need be,”
Thoren pointed out as he walked his horse along the ring of stones,
his sable-trimmed cloak stirring in the wind.
“Yes, this place will do.” The Old Bear lifted a
hand to the wind, and raven landed on his forearm, claws scrabbling
against his black ringmail.
“What about water, my lord?” Jon wondered.
“We crossed a brook at the foot of the hill.”
“A long climb for a drink,” Jon pointed out,
“and outside the ring of stones.”
Thoren said, “Are you too lazy to climb a hill,
boy?”
When Lord Mormont said, “We’re not like to find
another place as strong. We’ll carry water, and make certain
we are well supplied,” Jon knew better than to argue. So the
command was given, and the brothers of the Night’s Watch
raised their camp behind the stone ring the First Men had made.
Black tents sprouted like mushrooms after a rain, and blankets and
bedrolls covered the bare ground. Stewards tethered the garrons in
long lines, and saw them fed and watered. Foresters took their axes
to the trees in the waning afternoon light to harvest enough wood
to see them through the night. A score of builders set to clearing
brush, digging latrines, and untying their bundles of fire-hardened
stakes. “I will have every opening in the ringwall ditched
and staked before dark,” the Old Bear had commanded.
Once he’d put up the Lord Commander’s tent and seen
to their horses, Jon Snow descended the hill in search of Ghost.
The direwolf came at once, all in silence. One moment Jon was
striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting, alone in the
green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet; the next, the
great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning
mist.
But when they reached the ringfort, Ghost balked again. He
padded forward warily to sniff at the gap in the stones, and then
retreated, as if he did not like what he’d smelled. Jon tried
to grab him by the scruff of his neck and haul him bodily inside
the ring, no easy task; the wolf weighed as much as he did, and was
stronger by far. “Ghost, what’s wrong with you?”
It was not like him to be so unsettled. In the end Jon had to give
it up. “As you will,” he told the wolf. “Go,
hunt.” The red eyes watched him as he made his way back
through the mossy stones.
They ought to be safe here. The hill offered commanding views,
and the slopes were precipitous to the north and west and only
slightly more gentle to the east. Yet as the dusk deepened and
darkness seeped into the hollows between the trees, Jon’s
sense of foreboding grew. This is the haunted forest, he told
himself. Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First Men.
This was their place, once.
“Stop acting the boy,” he told himself. Clambering
atop the piled rocks, Jon gazed off toward the setting sun. He
could see the light shimmering like hammered gold off the surface
of the Milkwater as it curved away to the south. Upriver the land
was more rugged, the dense forest giving way to a series of bare
stony hills that rose high and wild to the north and west. On the
horizon stood the mountains like a great shadow, range on range of
them receding into the blue-grey distance, their jagged peaks
sheathed eternally in snow. Even from afar they looked vast and
cold and inhospitable.
Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east
the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and
limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a
patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and
sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to
turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of
branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a
moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and
heaving, eternal and unknowable.
Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything
could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort
through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees.
Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time,
until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and
darkness began to creep through the forest.
“Jon?” Samwell Tarly called up. “I thought it
looked like you. Are you well?”
“Well enough.” Jon hopped down. “How did you
fare today?”
“Well. I fared well. Truly.”
Jon was not about to share his disquiet with his friend, not
when Samwell Tarly was at last beginning to find his courage.
“The Old Bear means to wait here for Qhorin Halfhand and the
men from the Shadow Tower.”
“It seems a strong place,” said Sam. “A
ringfort of the First Men. Do you think there were battles fought
here?”
“No doubt. You’d best get a bird ready. Mormont will
want to send back word.”
“I wish I could send them all. They hate being
caged.”
“You would too, if you could fly.”
“If I could fly, I’d be back at Castle Black eating
a pork pie,” said Sam.
Jon clapped him on the shoulder with his burned hand. They
walked back through the camp together. Cookfires were being lit all
around them. Overhead, the stars were coming out. The long red tail
of Mormont’s Torch burned as bright as the moon. Jon heard
the ravens before he saw them. Some were calling his name. The
birds were not shy when it came to making noise. They feel it too. “I’d best see to the Old
Bear,” he said. “He gets noisy when he isn’t fed
as well.”
He found Mormont talking with Thoren Smallwood and half a dozen
other officers. “There you are,” the old man said
gruffly. “Bring us some hot wine, if you would. The night is
chilly.”
“Yes, my lord.” Jon built a cookfire, claimed a
small cask of Mormont’s favorite robust red from stores, and
poured it into a kettle. He hung the kettle above the flames while
he gathered the rest of his ingredients. The Old Bear was
particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much
nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and
dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron
heresy—which was queer, since he always took lemon in his morning
beer. The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord
Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a
boil. Jon kept a careful eye on the kettle.
As he worked, he could hear the voices from inside the tent.
Jarman Buckwell said, “The easiest road up into the
Frostfangs is to follow the Milkwater back to its source. Yet if we
go that path, Rayder will know of our approach, certain as
sunrise.”
“The Giant’s Stair might serve,” said Ser
Mallador Locke, “or the Skirling Pass, if it’s
clear.”
The wine was steaming. Jon lifted the kettle off the fire,
filled eight cups, and carried them into the tent. The Old Bear was
peering at the crude map Sam had drawn him that night back in
Craster’s Keep. He took a cup from Jon’s tray, tried a
swallow of wine, and gave a brusque nod of approval. His raven
hopped down his arm. “Corn,” it said. “Corn.
Corn.”
Ser Ottyn Wythers waved the wine away. “I would not go
into the mountains at all,” he said in a thin, tired voice.
“The Frostfangs have a cruel bite even in summer, and
now . . . if we should be caught by a
storm . . . ”
“I do not mean to risk the Frostfangs unless I
must,” said Mormont. “Wildlings can no more live on
snow and stone than we can. They will emerge from the heights soon,
and for a host of any size, the only route is along the Milkwater.
If so, we are strongly placed here. They cannot hope to slip by
us.”
“They may not wish to. They are thousands, and we will be
three hundred when the Halfhand reaches us.” Ser Mallador
accepted a cup from Jon.
“If it comes to battle, we could not hope for better
ground than here,” declared Mormont. “We’ll
strengthen the defenses. Pits and spikes, caltrops scattered on the
slopes, every breach mended. Jarman, I’ll want your sharpest
eyes as watchers. A ring of them, all around us and along the
river, to warn of any approach. Hide them up in trees. And we had
best start bringing up water too, more than we need. We’ll
dig cisterns. It will keep the men occupied, and may prove needful
later.”
“My rangers—” started Thoren Smallwood.
“Your rangers will limit their ranging to this side of the
river until the Halfhand reaches us. After that, we’ll see. I
will not lose more of my men.”
“Mance Rayder might be massing his host a day’s ride
from here, and we’d never know,” Smallwood
complained.
“We know where the wildlings are massing,” Mormont
came back. “We had it from Craster. I mislike the man, but I
do not think he lied to us in this.”
“As you say.” Smallwood took a sullen leave. The
others finished their wine and followed, more courteously.
“Shall I bring you supper, my lord?” Jon asked.
“Corn,” the raven cried. Mormont did not answer at
once. When he did he said only, “Did your wolf find game
today?”
“He’s not back yet.”
“We could do with fresh meat.” Mormont dug into a
sack and offered his raven a handful of corn. “You think
I’m wrong to keep the rangers close?”
“That’s not for me to say, my lord.”
“It is if you’re asked.”
“If the rangers must stay in sight of the Fist, I
don’t see how they can hope to find my uncle,” Jon
admitted.
“They can’t.” The raven pecked at the kernels
in the Old Bear’s palm. “Two hundred men or ten
thousand, the country is too vast.” The corn gone, Mormont
turned his hand over.
“You would not give up the search?”
“Maester Aemon thinks you clever.” Mormont moved the
raven to his shoulder. The bird tilted its head to one side, little
eyes a-glitter.
The answer was there. “Is it . . . it
seems to me that it might be easier for one man to find two hundred
than for two hundred to find one.”
The raven gave a cackling scream, but the Old Bear smiled
through the grey of his beard. “This many men and horses
leave a trail even Aemon could follow. On this hill, our fires ought to be visible
as far off as the foothills of the Frostfangs. If Ben Stark is
alive and free, he will come to us, I have no doubt.”
“Yes,” said Jon,
“but . . . what if . . . ”
“ . . . he’s dead?”
Mormont asked, not unkindly.
Jon nodded, reluctantly.
“Dead,” the raven said. “Dead.
Dead.”
“He may come to us anyway,” the Old Bear said.
“As Othor did, and Jafer Flowers. I dread that as much as
you, Jon, but we must admit the possibility.”
“Dead,” his raven cawed, ruffling its wings. Its
voice grew louder and more shrill. “Dead.”
Mormont stroked the bird’s black feathers, and stifled a
sudden yawn with the back of his hand. “I will forsake
supper, I believe. Rest will serve me better. Wake me at first
light.”
“Sleep well, my lord.” Jon gathered up the empty
cups and stepped outside. He heard distant laughter, the plaintive
sound of pipes. A great blaze was crackling in the center of the
camp, and he could smell stew cooking. The Old Bear might not be
hungry, but Jon was. He drifted over toward the fire.
Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. “I know this wood
as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn’t care to
ride through it alone tonight. Can’t you smell it?”
Grenn was staring at him with wide eyes, but Dolorous Edd said,
“All I smell is the shit of two hundred horses. And this
stew. Which has a similar aroma, now that I come to sniff
it.”
“I’ve got your similar aroma right here.” Hake
patted his dirk. Grumbling, he filled Jon’s bowl from the
kettle.
The stew was thick with barley, carrot, and onion, with here and
there a ragged shred of salt beef, softened in the cooking.
“What is it you smell, Dywen?” asked Grenn.
The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his
teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old
roots. “Seems to me like it
smells . . . well . . . cold.”
“Your head’s as wooden as your teeth,” Hake
told him. “There’s no smell to cold.” There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord
Commander’s chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was
not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need
of an extra supper to warm him against the night.
The wind was blowing briskly when he left. By morning, frost
would cover the ground, and the tent ropes would be stiff and
frozen. A few fingers of spiced wine sloshed in the bottom of the
kettle. Jon fed fresh wood to the fire and put the kettle over the
flames to reheat. He flexed his fingers as he waited, squeezing and
spreading until the hand tingled. The first watch had taken up
their stations around the perimeter of the camp. Torches flickered
all along the ringwall. The night was moonless, but a thousand
stars shone overhead.
A sound rose out of the darkness, faint and distant, but
unmistakable: the howling of wolves. Their voices rose and fell, a
chilly song, and lonely. It made the hairs rise along the back of
his neck. Across the fire, a pair of red eyes regarded him from the
shadows. The light of the flames made them glow.
“Ghost,” Jon breathed, surprised. “So you came
inside after all, eh?” The white wolf often hunted all night;
he had not expected to see him again till daybreak. “Was the
hunting so bad?” he asked. “Here. To me,
Ghost.”
The direwolf circled the fire, sniffing Jon, sniffing the wind,
never still. It did not seem as if he were after meat right now.
When the dead came walking, Ghost knew. He woke me, warned me.
Alarmed, he got to his feet. “is something out there? Ghost,
do you have a scent?” Dywen said he smelled cold.
The direwolf loped off, stopped, looked back. He wants me to
follow. Pulling up the hood of his cloak, Jon walked away from the
tents, away from the warmth of his fire, past the lines of shaggy
little garrons. One of the horses whickered nervously when Ghost
padded by. Jon soothed him with a word and paused to stroke his
muzzle. He could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the
rocks as they neared the ringwall. A voice called out a challenge.
Jon stepped into the torchlight. “I need to fetch water for
the Lord Commander.”
“Go on, then,” the guard said. “Be quick about
it.” Huddled beneath his black cloak, with his hood drawn up
against the wind, the man never even looked to see if he had a
bucket.
Jon slipped sideways between two sharpened stakes while Ghost
slid beneath them. A torch had been thrust down into a crevice, its
flames flying pale orange banners when the gusts came. He snatched
it up as he squeezed through the gap between the stones. Ghost went
racing down the hill. Jon followed more slowly, the torch thrust
out before him as he made his descent. The camp sounds faded behind
him. The night was black, the slope steep, stony, and uneven. A
moment’s inattention would be a sure way to break an
ankle . . . or his neck. What am I doing? he
asked himself as he picked his way down.
The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf,
deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the
hill. Black, they seemed . . . it was only when
his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of
green. Faintly, he heard the sound of water flowing over rocks.
Ghost vanished in the underbrush. Jon struggled after him,
listening to the call of the brook, to the leaves sighing in the
wind. Branches clutched at his cloak, while overhead thick limbs
twined together and shut out the stars.
He found Ghost lapping from the stream. “Ghost,” he
called, “to me. Now.” When the direwolf raised his head,
his eyes glowed red and baleful, and water streamed down from his
jaws like slaver. There was something fierce and terrible about him
in that instant. And then he was off, bounding past Jon, racing
through the trees. “Ghost, no, stay,” he shouted, but
the wolf paid no heed. The lean white shape was swallowed by the
dark, and Jon had only two choices—to climb the hill again, alone,
or to follow.
He followed, angry, holding the torch out low so he could see
the rocks that threatened to trip him with every step, the thick
roots that seemed to grab as his feet, the holes where a man could
twist an ankle. Every few feet he called again for Ghost, but the
night wind was swirling amongst the trees and it drank the words.
This is madness, he thought as he plunged deeper into the trees. He
was about to turn back when he glimpsed a flash of white off ahead
and to the right, back toward the hill. He jogged after it, cursing
under his breath.
A quarter way around the Fist he chased the wolf before he lost
him again. Finally he stopped to catch his breath amidst the scrub,
thorns, and tumbled rocks at the base of the hill. Beyond the
torchlight, the dark pressed close.
A soft scrabbling noise made him turn. Jon moved toward the
sound, stepping carefully among boulders and thornbushes. Behind a
fallen tree, he came on Ghost again. The direwolf was digging
furiously, kicking up dirt.
“What have you found?” Jon lowered the torch,
revealing a rounded mound of soft earth. A grave, he thought. But
whose?
He knelt, jammed the torch into the ground beside him. The soil
was loose, sandy. Jon pulled it out by the fistful. There were no
stones, no roots. Whatever was here had been put here recently. Two
feet down, his fingers touched cloth. He had been expecting a
corpse, fearing a corpse, but this was something else. He pushed
against the fabric and felt small, hard shapes beneath, unyielding.
There was no smell, no sign of graveworms. Ghost backed off and sat
on his haunches, watching.
Jon brushed the loose soil away to reveal a rounded bundle
perhaps two feet across. He jammed his fingers down around the
edges and worked it loose. When he pulled it free, whatever was
inside shifted and clinked. Treasure, he thought, but the shapes
were wrong to be coins, and the sound was wrong for metal.
A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon
unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the
cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out
onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives,
leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger
blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along
its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness.
Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered
some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for
thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place,
only . . .
Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an
auroch’s horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from
inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall,
and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped
in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double
weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the
ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to
the torch. Not dark. Black.
Even before Jon stood and shook it out, he knew what he had: the
black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch.