When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon
knew their end was near. It will be good to feel warm again, if
only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare
branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches
watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead,
as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will
Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria,
wherever they might be?
The moon was rising behind one mountain and the sun sinking
behind another as Jon struck sparks from flint and dagger, until
finally a wisp of smoke appeared. Qhorin came and stood over him as
the first flame rose up flickering from the shavings of bark and
dead dry pine needles. “As shy as a maid on her wedding
night,” the big ranger said in a soft voice, “and near
as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can
be.”
He was not a man you’d expect to speak of maids and
wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life
in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could
not ask. Instead he fanned the fire. When the blaze was all
acrackle, he peeled off his stiff gloves to warm his hands, and
sighed, wondering if ever a kiss had felt as good. The warmth
spread through his fingers like melting butter.
The Halfhand eased himself to the ground and sat cross-legged by
the fire, the flickering light playing across the hard planes of
his face. Only the two of them remained of the five rangers who had
fled the Skirling Pass, back into the blue-grey wilderness of the
Frostfangs.
At first Jon had nursed the hope that Squire Dalbridge would
keep the wildlings bottled up in the pass. But when they’d
heard the call of a far-off horn every man of them knew the squire
had fallen. Later they spied the eagle soaring through the dusk on
great blue-grey wings and Stonesnake unslung his bow, but the bird
flew out of range before he could so much as string it. Ebben spat
and muttered darkly of wargs and skinchangers.
They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the
hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Each time
it seemed a little louder, a little closer. When night fell, the
Halfhand told Ebben to take the squire’s garron as well as
his own, and ride east for Mormont with all haste, back the way
they had come. The rest of them would draw off the pursuit.
“Send Jon,” Ebben had urged. “He can ride as fast
as me.”
“Jon has a different part to play.”
“He is half a boy still.”
“No,” said Qhorin, “he is a man of the
Night’s Watch.”
When the moon rose, Ebben parted from them. Stonesnake went east
with him a short way, then doubled back to obscure their tracks,
and the three who remained set off toward the southwest.
After that the days and nights blurred one into the other. They
slept in their saddles and stopped only long enough to feed and
water the garrons, then mounted up again. Over bare rock they rode,
through gloomy pine forests and drifts of old snow, over icy ridges
and across shallow rivers that had no names. Sometimes Qhorin or
Stonesnake would loop back to sweep away their tracks, but it was a
futile gesture. They were watched. At every dawn and every dusk
they saw the eagle soaring between the peaks, no more than a speck
in the vastness of the sky.
They were scaling a low ridge between two snowcapped peaks when
a shadowcat came snarling from its lair, not ten yards away. The
beast was gaunt and half-starved, but the sight of it sent
Stonesnake’s mare into a panic; she reared and ran, and
before the ranger could get her back under control she had stumbled
on the steep slope and broken a leg.
Ghost ate well that day, and Qhorin insisted that the rangers
mix some of the garron’s blood with their oats, to give them
strength. The taste of that foul porridge almost choked Jon, but he
forced it down. They each cut a dozen strips of raw stringy meat
from the carcass to chew on as they rode, and left the rest for the
shadowcats.
There was no question of riding double. Stonesnake offered to
lay in wait for the pursuit and surprise them when they came.
Perhaps he could take a few of them with him down to hell. Qhorin
refused. “If any man in the Night’s Watch can make it
through the Frostfangs alone and afoot, it is you, brother. You can
go over mountains that a horse must go around. Make for the Fist.
Tell Mormont what Jon saw, and how. Tell him that the old powers
are waking, that he faces giants and wargs and worse. Tell him that
the trees have eyes again.” He has no chance, Jon thought when he watched Stonesnake vanish
over a snow-covered ridge, a tiny black bug crawling across a
rippling expanse of white.
After that, every night seemed colder than the night before, and
more lonely. Ghost was not always with them, but he was never far
either. Even when they were apart, Jon sensed his nearness. He was
glad for that. The Halfhand was not the most companionable of men.
Qhorin’s long grey braid swung slowly with the motion of his
horse. Often they would ride for hours without a word spoken, the
only sounds the soft scrape of horseshoes on stone and the keening
of the wind, which blew endlessly through the heights. When he
slept, he did not dream; not of wolves, nor his brothers, nor
anything. Even dreams cannot live up here, he told himself.
“Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?” asked Qhorin
Halfhand across the flickering fire.
“My sword is Valyrian steel. The Old Bear gave it to
me.”
“Do you remember the words of your vow?”
“Yes.” They were not words a man was like to forget.
Once said, they could never be unsaid. They changed your life
forever.
“Say them again with me, Jon Snow.”
“If you like.” Their voices blended as one beneath
the rising moon, while Ghost listened and the mountains themselves
bore witness. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It
shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands,
father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I
shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am
the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the
cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the
sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my
life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all
the nights to come.”
When they were done, there was no sound but the faint crackle of
the flames and a distant sigh of wind. Jon opened and closed his
burnt fingers, holding tight to the words in his mind, praying that
his father’s gods would give him the strength to die bravely
when his hour came. It would not be long now. The garrons were near
the end of their strength. Qhorin’s mount would not last
another day, Jon suspected.
The flames were burning low by then, the warmth fading.
“The fire will soon go out,” Qhorin said, “but if
the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.”
There was nothing Jon could say to that. He nodded.
“We may escape them yet,” the ranger said. “Or
not.”
“I’m not afraid to die.” It was only half a
lie.
“It may not be so easy as that, Jon.”
He did not understand. “What do you mean?”
“If we are taken, you must yield.”
“Yield?” He blinked in disbelief. The wildlings did
not make captives of the men they called the crows. They killed
them, except for . . . “They only spare
oathbreakers. Those who join them, like Mance Rayder.”
“And you.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Never. I
won’t.”
“You will. I command it of you.”
“Command it? But . . . ”
“Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm
is safe. Are you a man of the Night’s Watch?”
“Yes, but—”
“There is no but, Jon Snow. You are, or you are
not.”
Jon sat up straight. “I am.”
“Then hear me. If we are taken, you will go over to them,
as the wildling girl you captured once urged you. They may demand
that you cut your cloak to ribbons, that you swear them an oath on
your father’s grave, that you curse your brothers and your
Lord Commander. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Do as
they bid you . . . but in your heart, remember
who and what you are. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with
them, for as long as it takes. And watch.”
“For what?” Jon asked.
“Would that I knew,” said Qhorin. “Your wolf
saw their diggings in the valley of the Milkwater. What did they
seek, in such a bleak and distant place? Did they find it? That is
what you must learn, before you return to Lord Mormont and your
brothers. That is the duty I lay on you, Jon Snow.”
“I’ll do as you say,” Jon said reluctantly,
“but . . . you will tell them,
won’t you? The Old Bear, at least? You’ll tell him that
I never broke my oath.”
Qhorin Halfhand gazed at him across the fire, his eyes lost in
pools of shadow. “When I see him next. I swear it.” He
gestured at the fire. “More wood. I want it bright and
hot.”
Jon went to cut more branches, snapping each one in two before
tossing it into the flames. The tree had been dead a long time, but
it seemed to live again in the fire, as fiery dancers woke within
each stick of wood to whirl and spin in their glowing gowns of
yellow, red, and orange.
“Enough,” Qhorin said abruptly. “Now we
ride.”
“Ride?” It was dark beyond the fire, and the night
was cold. “Ride where?”
“Back.” Qhorin mounted his weary garron one more
time. “The fire will draw them past, I hope. Come,
brother.”
Jon pulled on his gloves again and raised his hood. Even the
horses seemed reluctant to leave the fire. The sun was long gone,
and only the cold silver shine of the half-moon remained to light
their way over the treacherous ground that lay behind them. He did
not know what Qhorin had in mind, but perhaps it was a chance. He
hoped so. I do not want to play the oathbreaker, even for good
reason.
They went cautiously, moving as silent as man and horse could
move, retracing their steps until they reached the mouth of a
narrow defile where an icy little stream emerged from between two
mountains. Jon remembered the place. They had watered the horses
here before the sun went down.
“The water’s icing up,” Qhorin observed as he
turned aside, “else we’d ride in the streambed. But if
we break the ice, they are like to see. Keep close to the cliffs.
There’s a crook a half mile on that will hide us.” He
rode into the defile. Jon gave one last wistful look to their
distant fire, and followed.
The farther in they went, the closer the cliffs pressed to
either side. They followed the moonlit ribbon of stream back toward
its source. Icicles bearded its stony banks, but Jon could still
hear the sound of rushing water beneath the thin hard crust.
A great jumble of fallen rock blocked their way partway up,
where a section of the cliff face had fallen, but the surefooted
little garrons were able to pick their way through. Beyond, the
walls pinched in sharply, and the stream led them to the foot of a
tall twisting waterfall. The air was full of mist, like the breath
of some vast cold beast. The tumbling waters shone silver in the
moonlight. Jon looked about in dismay. There is no way out. He and
Qhorin might be able to climb the cliffs, but not with the horses.
He did not think they would last long afoot.
“Quickly now,” the Halfhand commanded. The big man
on the small horse rode over the ice-slick stones, right into the
curtain of water, and vanished. When he did not reappear, Jon put
his heels into his horse and went after. His garron did his best to
shy away. The falling water slapped at them with frozen fists, and
the shock of the cold seemed to stop Jon’s breath.
Then he was through; drenched and shivering, but through.
The cleft in the rock was barely large enough for man and horse
to pass, but beyond, the walls opened up and the floor turned to
soft sand. Jon could feel the spray freezing in his beard. Ghost
burst through the waterfall in an angry rush, shook droplets from
his fur, sniffed at the darkness suspiciously, then lifted a leg
against one rocky wall. Qhorin had already dismounted. Jon did the
same. “You knew this place was here.”
“When I was no older than you, I heard a brother tell how
he followed a shadowcat through these falls.” He unsaddled
his horse, removed her bit and bridle, and ran his fingers through
her shaggy mane. “There is a way through the heart of the
mountain. Come dawn, if they have not found us, we will press on.
The first watch is mine, brother.” Qhorin seated himself on
the sand, his back to a wall, no more than a vague black shadow in
the gloom of the cave. Over the rush of falling waters, Jon heard a
soft sound of steel on leather that could only mean that the
Halfhand had drawn his sword.
He took off his wet cloak, but it was too cold and damp here to
strip down any further. Ghost stretched out beside him and licked
his glove before curling up to sleep. Jon was grateful for his
warmth. He wondered if the fire was still burning outside, or if it
had gone out by now. If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires
will go out. The moon shone through the curtain of falling water to
lay a shimmering pale stripe across the sand, but after a time that
too faded and went dark.
Sleep came at last, and with it nightmares. He dreamed of
burning castles and dead men rising unquiet from their graves. It
was still dark when Qhorin woke him. While the Halfhand slept, Jon
sat with his back to the cave wall, listening to the water and
waiting for the dawn.
At break of day, they each chewed a half-frozen strip of
horsemeat, then saddled their garrons once again, and fastened
their black cloaks around their shoulders. During his watch the
Halfhand had made a half-dozen torches, soaking bundles of dry moss
with the oil he carried in his saddlebag. He lit the first one now
and led the way down into the dark, holding the pale flame up
before him. Jon followed with the horses. The stony path twisted
and turned, first down, then up, then down more steeply. In spots
it grew so narrow it was hard to convince the garrons they could
squeeze through. By the time we come out we will have lost them, he
told himself as they went. Not even an eagle can see through solid
stone. We will have lost them, and we will ride hard for the Fist,
and tell the Old Bear all we know.
But when they emerged back into the light long hours later, the
eagle was waiting for them, perched on a dead tree a hundred feet
up the slope. Ghost went bounding up the rocks after it, but the
bird flapped its wings and took to the air.
Qhorin’s mouth tightened as he followed its flight with
his eyes.
“Here is as good a place as any to make a stand,” he
declared. “The mouth of the cave shelters us from above, and
they cannot get behind us without passing through the mountain. Is
your sword sharp, Jon Snow?”
“Yes,” he said.
“We’ll feed the horses. They’ve served us
bravely, poor beasts.”
Jon gave his garron the last of the oats and stroked his shaggy
mane while Ghost prowled restlessly amongst the rocks. He pulled
his gloves on tighter and flexed his burnt fingers. I am the shield
that guards the realms of men.
A hunting horn echoed through the mountains, and a moment later
Jon heard the baying of hounds. “They will be with us
soon,” announced Qhorin. “Keep your wolf in
hand.”
“Ghost, to me,” Jon called. The direwolf returned
reluctantly to his side, tail held stiffly behind him.
The wildlings came boiling over a ridge not half a mile away.
Their hounds ran before them, snarling grey-brown beasts with more
than a little wolf in their blood. Ghost bared his teeth, his fur
bristling. “Easy,” Jon murmured. “Stay.”
Overhead he heard a rustle of wings. The eagle landed on an outcrop
of rock and screamed in triumph.
The hunters approached warily, perhaps fearing arrows. Jon
counted fourteen, with eight dogs. Their large round shields were
made of skins stretched over woven wicker and painted with skulls.
About half of them hid their faces behind crude helms of wood and
boiled leather. On either wing, archers notched shafts to the
strings of small wood-and-horn bows, but did not loose. The rest
seemed to be armed with spears and mauls. One had a chipped stone
axe. They wore only what bits of armor they had looted from dead
rangers or stolen during raids. Wildlings did not mine or smelt,
and there were few smiths and fewer forges north of the Wall.
Qhorin drew his longsword. The tale of how he had taught himself
to fight with his left hand after losing half of his right was part
of his legend; it was said that he handled a blade better now than
he ever had before. Jon stood shoulder to shoulder with the big
ranger and pulled Longclaw from its sheath. Despite the chill in
the air, sweat stung his eyes.
Ten yards below the cave mouth the hunters halted. Their leader
came on alone, riding a beast that seemed more goat than horse,
from the surefooted way it climbed the uneven slope. As man and
mount grew nearer Jon could hear them clattering; both were armored
in bones. Cow bones, sheep bones, the bones of goats and aurochs
and elk, the great bones of the hairy
mammoths . . . and human bones as well.
“Rattleshirt,” Qhorin called down, icy-polite.
“To crows I be the Lord o’ Bones.” The
rider’s helm was made from the broken skull of a giant, and
all up and down his arms bearclaws had been sewn to his boiled
leather.
Qhorin snorted. “I see no lord. Only a dog dressed in
chickenbones, who rattles when he rides.”
The wildling hissed in anger, and his mount reared. He did
rattle, Jon could hear it; the bones were strung together loosely,
so they clacked and clattered when he moved. “It’s your
bones I’ll be rattling soon, Halfhand. I’ll boil the
flesh off you and make a byrnie from your ribs. I’ll carve
your teeth to cast me runes, and eat me oaten porridge from your
skull.”
“If you want my bones, come get them.”
That, Rattleshirt seemed reluctant to do. His numbers meant
little in the close confines of the rocks where the black brothers
had taken their stand; to winkle them out of the cave the wildlings
would need to come up two at a time. But another of his company
edged a horse up beside him, one of the fighting women called
spearwives. “We are four-and-ten to two, crows, and eight
dogs to your wolf,” she called. “Fight or run, you are
ours.”
“Show them,” commanded Rattleshirt.
The woman reached into a bloodstained sack and drew out a
trophy. Ebben had been bald as an egg, so she dangled the head by
an ear. “He died brave,” she said.
“But he died,” said Rattleshirt, “same like
you.” He freed his battleaxe, brandishing it above his head.
Good steel it was, with a wicked gleam to both blades; Ebben was
never a man to neglect his weapons. The other wildlings crowded
forward beside him, yelling taunts. A few chose Jon for their
mockery. “Is that your wolf, boy?” a skinny youth
called, unlimbering a stone flail. “He’ll be my cloak
before the sun is down.” On the other side of the line,
another spearwife opened her ragged furs to show Jon a heavy white
breast. “Does the baby want his momma? Come, have a suck
o’ this, boy.” The dogs were barking too.
“They would shame us into folly.” Qhorin gave Jon a
long look. “Remember your orders.”
“Belike we need to flush the crows,” Rattleshirt
bellowed over the clamor. “Feather them!”
“No!” The word burst from Jon’s lips before
the bowmen could loose. He took two quick steps forward. “We
yield!”
“They warned me bastard blood was craven,” he heard
Qhorin Halfhand say coldly behind him. “I see it is so. Run
to your new masters, coward.”
Face reddening, Jon descended the slope to where Rattleshirt sat
his horse. The wildling stared at him through the eyeholes of his
helm, and said, “The free folk have no need of
cravens.”
“He is no craven.” One of the archers pulled off her
sewn sheepskin helm and shook out a head of shaggy red hair.
“This is the Bastard o’ Winterfell, who spared me. Let
him live.”
Jon met Ygritte’s eyes, and had no words.
“Let him die,” insisted the Lord of Bones.
“The black crow is a tricksy bird. I trust him
not.”
On a rock above them, the eagle flapped its wings and split the
air with a scream of fury.
“The bird hates you, Jon Snow,” said Ygritte.
“And well he might. He was a man, before you killed
him.”
“I did not know,” said Jon truthfully, trying to
remember the face of the man he had slain in the pass. “You
told me Mance would take me.”
“And he will,” Ygritte said.
“Mance is not here,” said Rattleshirt.
“Ragwyle, gut him.”
The big spearwife narrowed her eyes and said, “If the crow
would join the free folk, let him show us his prowess and prove the
truth of him.”
“I’ll do whatever you ask.” The words came
hard, but Jon said them.
Rattleshirt’s bone armor clattered loudly as he laughed.
“Then kill the Halfhand, bastard.”
“As if he could,” said Qhorin. “Turn, Snow,
and die.”
And then Qhorin’s sword was coming at him and somehow
Longclaw leapt upward to block. The force of impact almost knocked
the bastard blade from Jon’s hand, and sent him staggering
backward. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. He shifted
to a two-hand grip, quick enough to deliver a stroke of his own,
but the big ranger brushed it aside with contemptuous ease. Back
and forth they went, black cloaks swirling, the youth’s
quickness against the savage strength of Qhorin’s left-hand
cuts. The Halfhand’s longsword seemed to be everywhere at
once, raining down from one side and then the other, driving him
where he would, keeping him off balance. Already he could feel his
arms growing numb.
Even when Ghost’s teeth closed savagely around the
ranger’s calf, somehow Qhorin kept his feet. But in that
instant, as he twisted, the opening was there. Jon planted and
pivoted. The ranger was leaning away, and for an instant it seemed
that Jon’s slash had not touched him. Then a string of red
tears appeared across the big man’s throat, bright as a ruby
necklace, and the blood gushed out of him, and Qhorin Halfhand
fell.
Ghost’s muzzle was dripping red, but only the point of the
bastard blade was stained, the last half inch. Jon pulled the
direwolf away and knelt with one arm around him. The light was
already fading in Qhorin’s eyes.
“ . . . sharp,” he said, lifting
his maimed fingers. Then his hand fell, and he was gone. He knew, he thought numbly. He knew what they would ask of
me. He thought of Samwell Tarly then, of Grenn and Dolorous Edd, of
Pyp and Toad back at Castle Black. Had he lost them all, as he had
lost Bran and Rickon and Robb? Who was he now? What was he?
“Get him up.” Rough hands dragged him to his feet.
Jon did not resist. “Do you have a name?”
Ygritte answered for him. “His name is Jon Snow. He is
Eddard Stark’s blood, of Winterfell.”
Ragwyle laughed. “Who would have thought it? Qhorin
Halfhand slain by some lordling’s byblow.”
“Gut him.” That was Rattleshirt, still ahorse. The
eagle flew to him and perched atop his bony helm, screeching.
“He yielded,” Ygritte reminded them.
“Aye, and slew his brother,” said a short homely man
in a rust-eaten iron halfhelm.
Rattleshirt rode closer, bones clattering. “The wolf did
his work for him. It were foully done. The Halfhand’s death
was mine.”
“We all saw how eager you were to take it,” mocked
Ragwyle.
“He is a warg,” said the Lord of Bones, “and a
crow. I like him not.”
“A warg he may be,” Ygritte said, “but that
has never frightened us.” Others shouted agreement. Behind
the eyeholes of his yellowed skull Rattleshirt’s stare was
malignant, but he yielded grudgingly. These are a free folk indeed,
thought Jon.
They burned Qhorin Halfhand where he’d fallen, on a pyre
made of pine needles, brush, and broken branches. Some of the wood
was still green, and it burned slow and smoky, sending a black
plume up into the bright hard blue of the sky. Afterward
Rattleshirt claimed some charred bones, while the others threw dice
for the ranger’s gear. Ygritte won his cloak.
“Will we return by the Skirling Pass?” Jon asked
her. He did not know if he could face those heights again, or if
his garron could survive a second crossing.
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing behind
us.” The look she gave him was sad. “By now Mance is
well down the Milkwater, marching on your Wall.”
When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon
knew their end was near. It will be good to feel warm again, if
only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare
branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches
watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead,
as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will
Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria,
wherever they might be?
The moon was rising behind one mountain and the sun sinking
behind another as Jon struck sparks from flint and dagger, until
finally a wisp of smoke appeared. Qhorin came and stood over him as
the first flame rose up flickering from the shavings of bark and
dead dry pine needles. “As shy as a maid on her wedding
night,” the big ranger said in a soft voice, “and near
as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can
be.”
He was not a man you’d expect to speak of maids and
wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life
in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could
not ask. Instead he fanned the fire. When the blaze was all
acrackle, he peeled off his stiff gloves to warm his hands, and
sighed, wondering if ever a kiss had felt as good. The warmth
spread through his fingers like melting butter.
The Halfhand eased himself to the ground and sat cross-legged by
the fire, the flickering light playing across the hard planes of
his face. Only the two of them remained of the five rangers who had
fled the Skirling Pass, back into the blue-grey wilderness of the
Frostfangs.
At first Jon had nursed the hope that Squire Dalbridge would
keep the wildlings bottled up in the pass. But when they’d
heard the call of a far-off horn every man of them knew the squire
had fallen. Later they spied the eagle soaring through the dusk on
great blue-grey wings and Stonesnake unslung his bow, but the bird
flew out of range before he could so much as string it. Ebben spat
and muttered darkly of wargs and skinchangers.
They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the
hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Each time
it seemed a little louder, a little closer. When night fell, the
Halfhand told Ebben to take the squire’s garron as well as
his own, and ride east for Mormont with all haste, back the way
they had come. The rest of them would draw off the pursuit.
“Send Jon,” Ebben had urged. “He can ride as fast
as me.”
“Jon has a different part to play.”
“He is half a boy still.”
“No,” said Qhorin, “he is a man of the
Night’s Watch.”
When the moon rose, Ebben parted from them. Stonesnake went east
with him a short way, then doubled back to obscure their tracks,
and the three who remained set off toward the southwest.
After that the days and nights blurred one into the other. They
slept in their saddles and stopped only long enough to feed and
water the garrons, then mounted up again. Over bare rock they rode,
through gloomy pine forests and drifts of old snow, over icy ridges
and across shallow rivers that had no names. Sometimes Qhorin or
Stonesnake would loop back to sweep away their tracks, but it was a
futile gesture. They were watched. At every dawn and every dusk
they saw the eagle soaring between the peaks, no more than a speck
in the vastness of the sky.
They were scaling a low ridge between two snowcapped peaks when
a shadowcat came snarling from its lair, not ten yards away. The
beast was gaunt and half-starved, but the sight of it sent
Stonesnake’s mare into a panic; she reared and ran, and
before the ranger could get her back under control she had stumbled
on the steep slope and broken a leg.
Ghost ate well that day, and Qhorin insisted that the rangers
mix some of the garron’s blood with their oats, to give them
strength. The taste of that foul porridge almost choked Jon, but he
forced it down. They each cut a dozen strips of raw stringy meat
from the carcass to chew on as they rode, and left the rest for the
shadowcats.
There was no question of riding double. Stonesnake offered to
lay in wait for the pursuit and surprise them when they came.
Perhaps he could take a few of them with him down to hell. Qhorin
refused. “If any man in the Night’s Watch can make it
through the Frostfangs alone and afoot, it is you, brother. You can
go over mountains that a horse must go around. Make for the Fist.
Tell Mormont what Jon saw, and how. Tell him that the old powers
are waking, that he faces giants and wargs and worse. Tell him that
the trees have eyes again.” He has no chance, Jon thought when he watched Stonesnake vanish
over a snow-covered ridge, a tiny black bug crawling across a
rippling expanse of white.
After that, every night seemed colder than the night before, and
more lonely. Ghost was not always with them, but he was never far
either. Even when they were apart, Jon sensed his nearness. He was
glad for that. The Halfhand was not the most companionable of men.
Qhorin’s long grey braid swung slowly with the motion of his
horse. Often they would ride for hours without a word spoken, the
only sounds the soft scrape of horseshoes on stone and the keening
of the wind, which blew endlessly through the heights. When he
slept, he did not dream; not of wolves, nor his brothers, nor
anything. Even dreams cannot live up here, he told himself.
“Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?” asked Qhorin
Halfhand across the flickering fire.
“My sword is Valyrian steel. The Old Bear gave it to
me.”
“Do you remember the words of your vow?”
“Yes.” They were not words a man was like to forget.
Once said, they could never be unsaid. They changed your life
forever.
“Say them again with me, Jon Snow.”
“If you like.” Their voices blended as one beneath
the rising moon, while Ghost listened and the mountains themselves
bore witness. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It
shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands,
father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I
shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am
the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the
cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the
sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my
life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all
the nights to come.”
When they were done, there was no sound but the faint crackle of
the flames and a distant sigh of wind. Jon opened and closed his
burnt fingers, holding tight to the words in his mind, praying that
his father’s gods would give him the strength to die bravely
when his hour came. It would not be long now. The garrons were near
the end of their strength. Qhorin’s mount would not last
another day, Jon suspected.
The flames were burning low by then, the warmth fading.
“The fire will soon go out,” Qhorin said, “but if
the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.”
There was nothing Jon could say to that. He nodded.
“We may escape them yet,” the ranger said. “Or
not.”
“I’m not afraid to die.” It was only half a
lie.
“It may not be so easy as that, Jon.”
He did not understand. “What do you mean?”
“If we are taken, you must yield.”
“Yield?” He blinked in disbelief. The wildlings did
not make captives of the men they called the crows. They killed
them, except for . . . “They only spare
oathbreakers. Those who join them, like Mance Rayder.”
“And you.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Never. I
won’t.”
“You will. I command it of you.”
“Command it? But . . . ”
“Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm
is safe. Are you a man of the Night’s Watch?”
“Yes, but—”
“There is no but, Jon Snow. You are, or you are
not.”
Jon sat up straight. “I am.”
“Then hear me. If we are taken, you will go over to them,
as the wildling girl you captured once urged you. They may demand
that you cut your cloak to ribbons, that you swear them an oath on
your father’s grave, that you curse your brothers and your
Lord Commander. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Do as
they bid you . . . but in your heart, remember
who and what you are. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with
them, for as long as it takes. And watch.”
“For what?” Jon asked.
“Would that I knew,” said Qhorin. “Your wolf
saw their diggings in the valley of the Milkwater. What did they
seek, in such a bleak and distant place? Did they find it? That is
what you must learn, before you return to Lord Mormont and your
brothers. That is the duty I lay on you, Jon Snow.”
“I’ll do as you say,” Jon said reluctantly,
“but . . . you will tell them,
won’t you? The Old Bear, at least? You’ll tell him that
I never broke my oath.”
Qhorin Halfhand gazed at him across the fire, his eyes lost in
pools of shadow. “When I see him next. I swear it.” He
gestured at the fire. “More wood. I want it bright and
hot.”
Jon went to cut more branches, snapping each one in two before
tossing it into the flames. The tree had been dead a long time, but
it seemed to live again in the fire, as fiery dancers woke within
each stick of wood to whirl and spin in their glowing gowns of
yellow, red, and orange.
“Enough,” Qhorin said abruptly. “Now we
ride.”
“Ride?” It was dark beyond the fire, and the night
was cold. “Ride where?”
“Back.” Qhorin mounted his weary garron one more
time. “The fire will draw them past, I hope. Come,
brother.”
Jon pulled on his gloves again and raised his hood. Even the
horses seemed reluctant to leave the fire. The sun was long gone,
and only the cold silver shine of the half-moon remained to light
their way over the treacherous ground that lay behind them. He did
not know what Qhorin had in mind, but perhaps it was a chance. He
hoped so. I do not want to play the oathbreaker, even for good
reason.
They went cautiously, moving as silent as man and horse could
move, retracing their steps until they reached the mouth of a
narrow defile where an icy little stream emerged from between two
mountains. Jon remembered the place. They had watered the horses
here before the sun went down.
“The water’s icing up,” Qhorin observed as he
turned aside, “else we’d ride in the streambed. But if
we break the ice, they are like to see. Keep close to the cliffs.
There’s a crook a half mile on that will hide us.” He
rode into the defile. Jon gave one last wistful look to their
distant fire, and followed.
The farther in they went, the closer the cliffs pressed to
either side. They followed the moonlit ribbon of stream back toward
its source. Icicles bearded its stony banks, but Jon could still
hear the sound of rushing water beneath the thin hard crust.
A great jumble of fallen rock blocked their way partway up,
where a section of the cliff face had fallen, but the surefooted
little garrons were able to pick their way through. Beyond, the
walls pinched in sharply, and the stream led them to the foot of a
tall twisting waterfall. The air was full of mist, like the breath
of some vast cold beast. The tumbling waters shone silver in the
moonlight. Jon looked about in dismay. There is no way out. He and
Qhorin might be able to climb the cliffs, but not with the horses.
He did not think they would last long afoot.
“Quickly now,” the Halfhand commanded. The big man
on the small horse rode over the ice-slick stones, right into the
curtain of water, and vanished. When he did not reappear, Jon put
his heels into his horse and went after. His garron did his best to
shy away. The falling water slapped at them with frozen fists, and
the shock of the cold seemed to stop Jon’s breath.
Then he was through; drenched and shivering, but through.
The cleft in the rock was barely large enough for man and horse
to pass, but beyond, the walls opened up and the floor turned to
soft sand. Jon could feel the spray freezing in his beard. Ghost
burst through the waterfall in an angry rush, shook droplets from
his fur, sniffed at the darkness suspiciously, then lifted a leg
against one rocky wall. Qhorin had already dismounted. Jon did the
same. “You knew this place was here.”
“When I was no older than you, I heard a brother tell how
he followed a shadowcat through these falls.” He unsaddled
his horse, removed her bit and bridle, and ran his fingers through
her shaggy mane. “There is a way through the heart of the
mountain. Come dawn, if they have not found us, we will press on.
The first watch is mine, brother.” Qhorin seated himself on
the sand, his back to a wall, no more than a vague black shadow in
the gloom of the cave. Over the rush of falling waters, Jon heard a
soft sound of steel on leather that could only mean that the
Halfhand had drawn his sword.
He took off his wet cloak, but it was too cold and damp here to
strip down any further. Ghost stretched out beside him and licked
his glove before curling up to sleep. Jon was grateful for his
warmth. He wondered if the fire was still burning outside, or if it
had gone out by now. If the Wall should ever fall, all the fires
will go out. The moon shone through the curtain of falling water to
lay a shimmering pale stripe across the sand, but after a time that
too faded and went dark.
Sleep came at last, and with it nightmares. He dreamed of
burning castles and dead men rising unquiet from their graves. It
was still dark when Qhorin woke him. While the Halfhand slept, Jon
sat with his back to the cave wall, listening to the water and
waiting for the dawn.
At break of day, they each chewed a half-frozen strip of
horsemeat, then saddled their garrons once again, and fastened
their black cloaks around their shoulders. During his watch the
Halfhand had made a half-dozen torches, soaking bundles of dry moss
with the oil he carried in his saddlebag. He lit the first one now
and led the way down into the dark, holding the pale flame up
before him. Jon followed with the horses. The stony path twisted
and turned, first down, then up, then down more steeply. In spots
it grew so narrow it was hard to convince the garrons they could
squeeze through. By the time we come out we will have lost them, he
told himself as they went. Not even an eagle can see through solid
stone. We will have lost them, and we will ride hard for the Fist,
and tell the Old Bear all we know.
But when they emerged back into the light long hours later, the
eagle was waiting for them, perched on a dead tree a hundred feet
up the slope. Ghost went bounding up the rocks after it, but the
bird flapped its wings and took to the air.
Qhorin’s mouth tightened as he followed its flight with
his eyes.
“Here is as good a place as any to make a stand,” he
declared. “The mouth of the cave shelters us from above, and
they cannot get behind us without passing through the mountain. Is
your sword sharp, Jon Snow?”
“Yes,” he said.
“We’ll feed the horses. They’ve served us
bravely, poor beasts.”
Jon gave his garron the last of the oats and stroked his shaggy
mane while Ghost prowled restlessly amongst the rocks. He pulled
his gloves on tighter and flexed his burnt fingers. I am the shield
that guards the realms of men.
A hunting horn echoed through the mountains, and a moment later
Jon heard the baying of hounds. “They will be with us
soon,” announced Qhorin. “Keep your wolf in
hand.”
“Ghost, to me,” Jon called. The direwolf returned
reluctantly to his side, tail held stiffly behind him.
The wildlings came boiling over a ridge not half a mile away.
Their hounds ran before them, snarling grey-brown beasts with more
than a little wolf in their blood. Ghost bared his teeth, his fur
bristling. “Easy,” Jon murmured. “Stay.”
Overhead he heard a rustle of wings. The eagle landed on an outcrop
of rock and screamed in triumph.
The hunters approached warily, perhaps fearing arrows. Jon
counted fourteen, with eight dogs. Their large round shields were
made of skins stretched over woven wicker and painted with skulls.
About half of them hid their faces behind crude helms of wood and
boiled leather. On either wing, archers notched shafts to the
strings of small wood-and-horn bows, but did not loose. The rest
seemed to be armed with spears and mauls. One had a chipped stone
axe. They wore only what bits of armor they had looted from dead
rangers or stolen during raids. Wildlings did not mine or smelt,
and there were few smiths and fewer forges north of the Wall.
Qhorin drew his longsword. The tale of how he had taught himself
to fight with his left hand after losing half of his right was part
of his legend; it was said that he handled a blade better now than
he ever had before. Jon stood shoulder to shoulder with the big
ranger and pulled Longclaw from its sheath. Despite the chill in
the air, sweat stung his eyes.
Ten yards below the cave mouth the hunters halted. Their leader
came on alone, riding a beast that seemed more goat than horse,
from the surefooted way it climbed the uneven slope. As man and
mount grew nearer Jon could hear them clattering; both were armored
in bones. Cow bones, sheep bones, the bones of goats and aurochs
and elk, the great bones of the hairy
mammoths . . . and human bones as well.
“Rattleshirt,” Qhorin called down, icy-polite.
“To crows I be the Lord o’ Bones.” The
rider’s helm was made from the broken skull of a giant, and
all up and down his arms bearclaws had been sewn to his boiled
leather.
Qhorin snorted. “I see no lord. Only a dog dressed in
chickenbones, who rattles when he rides.”
The wildling hissed in anger, and his mount reared. He did
rattle, Jon could hear it; the bones were strung together loosely,
so they clacked and clattered when he moved. “It’s your
bones I’ll be rattling soon, Halfhand. I’ll boil the
flesh off you and make a byrnie from your ribs. I’ll carve
your teeth to cast me runes, and eat me oaten porridge from your
skull.”
“If you want my bones, come get them.”
That, Rattleshirt seemed reluctant to do. His numbers meant
little in the close confines of the rocks where the black brothers
had taken their stand; to winkle them out of the cave the wildlings
would need to come up two at a time. But another of his company
edged a horse up beside him, one of the fighting women called
spearwives. “We are four-and-ten to two, crows, and eight
dogs to your wolf,” she called. “Fight or run, you are
ours.”
“Show them,” commanded Rattleshirt.
The woman reached into a bloodstained sack and drew out a
trophy. Ebben had been bald as an egg, so she dangled the head by
an ear. “He died brave,” she said.
“But he died,” said Rattleshirt, “same like
you.” He freed his battleaxe, brandishing it above his head.
Good steel it was, with a wicked gleam to both blades; Ebben was
never a man to neglect his weapons. The other wildlings crowded
forward beside him, yelling taunts. A few chose Jon for their
mockery. “Is that your wolf, boy?” a skinny youth
called, unlimbering a stone flail. “He’ll be my cloak
before the sun is down.” On the other side of the line,
another spearwife opened her ragged furs to show Jon a heavy white
breast. “Does the baby want his momma? Come, have a suck
o’ this, boy.” The dogs were barking too.
“They would shame us into folly.” Qhorin gave Jon a
long look. “Remember your orders.”
“Belike we need to flush the crows,” Rattleshirt
bellowed over the clamor. “Feather them!”
“No!” The word burst from Jon’s lips before
the bowmen could loose. He took two quick steps forward. “We
yield!”
“They warned me bastard blood was craven,” he heard
Qhorin Halfhand say coldly behind him. “I see it is so. Run
to your new masters, coward.”
Face reddening, Jon descended the slope to where Rattleshirt sat
his horse. The wildling stared at him through the eyeholes of his
helm, and said, “The free folk have no need of
cravens.”
“He is no craven.” One of the archers pulled off her
sewn sheepskin helm and shook out a head of shaggy red hair.
“This is the Bastard o’ Winterfell, who spared me. Let
him live.”
Jon met Ygritte’s eyes, and had no words.
“Let him die,” insisted the Lord of Bones.
“The black crow is a tricksy bird. I trust him
not.”
On a rock above them, the eagle flapped its wings and split the
air with a scream of fury.
“The bird hates you, Jon Snow,” said Ygritte.
“And well he might. He was a man, before you killed
him.”
“I did not know,” said Jon truthfully, trying to
remember the face of the man he had slain in the pass. “You
told me Mance would take me.”
“And he will,” Ygritte said.
“Mance is not here,” said Rattleshirt.
“Ragwyle, gut him.”
The big spearwife narrowed her eyes and said, “If the crow
would join the free folk, let him show us his prowess and prove the
truth of him.”
“I’ll do whatever you ask.” The words came
hard, but Jon said them.
Rattleshirt’s bone armor clattered loudly as he laughed.
“Then kill the Halfhand, bastard.”
“As if he could,” said Qhorin. “Turn, Snow,
and die.”
And then Qhorin’s sword was coming at him and somehow
Longclaw leapt upward to block. The force of impact almost knocked
the bastard blade from Jon’s hand, and sent him staggering
backward. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. He shifted
to a two-hand grip, quick enough to deliver a stroke of his own,
but the big ranger brushed it aside with contemptuous ease. Back
and forth they went, black cloaks swirling, the youth’s
quickness against the savage strength of Qhorin’s left-hand
cuts. The Halfhand’s longsword seemed to be everywhere at
once, raining down from one side and then the other, driving him
where he would, keeping him off balance. Already he could feel his
arms growing numb.
Even when Ghost’s teeth closed savagely around the
ranger’s calf, somehow Qhorin kept his feet. But in that
instant, as he twisted, the opening was there. Jon planted and
pivoted. The ranger was leaning away, and for an instant it seemed
that Jon’s slash had not touched him. Then a string of red
tears appeared across the big man’s throat, bright as a ruby
necklace, and the blood gushed out of him, and Qhorin Halfhand
fell.
Ghost’s muzzle was dripping red, but only the point of the
bastard blade was stained, the last half inch. Jon pulled the
direwolf away and knelt with one arm around him. The light was
already fading in Qhorin’s eyes.
“ . . . sharp,” he said, lifting
his maimed fingers. Then his hand fell, and he was gone. He knew, he thought numbly. He knew what they would ask of
me. He thought of Samwell Tarly then, of Grenn and Dolorous Edd, of
Pyp and Toad back at Castle Black. Had he lost them all, as he had
lost Bran and Rickon and Robb? Who was he now? What was he?
“Get him up.” Rough hands dragged him to his feet.
Jon did not resist. “Do you have a name?”
Ygritte answered for him. “His name is Jon Snow. He is
Eddard Stark’s blood, of Winterfell.”
Ragwyle laughed. “Who would have thought it? Qhorin
Halfhand slain by some lordling’s byblow.”
“Gut him.” That was Rattleshirt, still ahorse. The
eagle flew to him and perched atop his bony helm, screeching.
“He yielded,” Ygritte reminded them.
“Aye, and slew his brother,” said a short homely man
in a rust-eaten iron halfhelm.
Rattleshirt rode closer, bones clattering. “The wolf did
his work for him. It were foully done. The Halfhand’s death
was mine.”
“We all saw how eager you were to take it,” mocked
Ragwyle.
“He is a warg,” said the Lord of Bones, “and a
crow. I like him not.”
“A warg he may be,” Ygritte said, “but that
has never frightened us.” Others shouted agreement. Behind
the eyeholes of his yellowed skull Rattleshirt’s stare was
malignant, but he yielded grudgingly. These are a free folk indeed,
thought Jon.
They burned Qhorin Halfhand where he’d fallen, on a pyre
made of pine needles, brush, and broken branches. Some of the wood
was still green, and it burned slow and smoky, sending a black
plume up into the bright hard blue of the sky. Afterward
Rattleshirt claimed some charred bones, while the others threw dice
for the ranger’s gear. Ygritte won his cloak.
“Will we return by the Skirling Pass?” Jon asked
her. He did not know if he could face those heights again, or if
his garron could survive a second crossing.
“No,” she said. “There’s nothing behind
us.” The look she gave him was sad. “By now Mance is
well down the Milkwater, marching on your Wall.”