The last night fell black and moonless, but for once the sky was
clear. “I am going up the hill to look for Ghost,” he
told the Thenns at the cave mouth, and they grunted and let him
pass. So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through
pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a
boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of
heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers
sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the
Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he
shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the
same stars, and see such different things. The King’s Crown
was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned
Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their
Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the
Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman,
Ygritte insisted. “Like the night you stole me. The Thief was
bright that night.”
“I never meant to steal you,” he said. “I
never knew you were a girl until my knife was at your
throat.”
“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s
just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met
anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she
still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever? He had never truly been
a Stark, only Lord Eddard’s motherless bastard, with no more
place at Winterfell than Theon Greyjoy. And even that he’d
lost. When a man of the Night’s Watch said his words, he put
aside his old family and joined a new one, but Jon Snow had lost
those brothers too.
He found Ghost atop the hill, as he thought he might. The white
wolf never howled, yet something drew him to the heights all the
same, and he would squat there on his hindquarters, hot breath
rising in a white mist as his red eyes drank the stars.
“Do you have names for them as well?” Jon asked, as
he went to one knee beside the direwolf and scratched the thick
white fur on his neck, “The Hare? The Doe? The
She-Wolf?” Ghost licked his face, his rough wet tongue
rasping against the scabs where the eagle’s talons had ripped
Jon’s cheek. The bird marked both of us, he thought.
“Ghost,” he said quietly, “on the morrow we go
over. There’s no steps here, no cage-and-crane, no way for me
to get you to the other side. We have to part. Do you
understand?”
In the dark, the direwolf’s red eyes
looked black. He nuzzled at Jon’s neck, silent as ever, his
breath a hot mist. The wildlings called Jon Snow a warg, but if so
he was a poor one. He did not know how to put on a wolf skin, the
way Orell had with his eagle before he’d died. Once Jon had
dreamed that he was Ghost, looking down upon the valley of the
Milkwater where Mance Rayder had gathered his people, and that
dream had turned out to be true. But he was not dreaming now, and
that left him only words.
“You cannot come with me,” Jon said, cupping the
wolf’s head in his hands and looking deep into those eyes.
“You have to go to Castle Black. Do you understand? Castle
Black. Can you find it? The way home? Just follow the ice, east and
east, into the sun, and you’ll find it. They will know you at
Castle Black, and maybe your coming will warn them.” He had
thought of writing out a warning for Ghost to carry, but he had no
ink, no parchment, not even a writing quill, and the risk of
discovery was too great. “I will meet you again at Castle
Black, but you have to get there by yourself. We must each hunt
alone for a time. Alone.”
The direwolf twisted free of Jon’s grasp, his ears pricked
up. And suddenly he was bounding away. He loped through a tangle of
brush, leapt a deadfall, and raced down the hillside, a pale streak
among the trees. Off to Castle Black? Jon wondered. Or off after a
hare? He wished he knew. He feared he might prove just as poor a
warg as a sworn brother and a spy.
A wind sighed through the trees, rich with the smell of pine
needles, tugging at his faded blacks. Jon could see the Wall
looming high and dark to the south, a great shadow blocking out the
stars. The rough hilly ground made him think they must be somewhere
between the Shadow Tower and Castle Black, and likely closer to the
former. For days they had been wending their way south between deep
lakes that stretched like long thin fingers along the floors of
narrow valleys, while flint ridges and pine-clad hills jostled
against one another to either side. Such ground made for slow
riding, but offered easy concealment for those wishing to approach
the Wall unseen. For wildling raiders, he thought. Like us. Like me.
Beyond that Wall lay the Seven Kingdoms, and everything he had
sworn to protect. He had said the words, had pledged his life and
honor, and by rights he should be up there standing sentry. He
should be raising a horn to his lips to rouse the Night’s
Watch to arms. He had no horn, though. It would not be hard to
steal one from the wildlings, he suspected, but what would that
accomplish? Even if he blew it, there was no one to hear. The Wall
was a hundred leagues long and the Watch sadly dwindled. All but
three of the strongholds had been abandoned; there might not be a
brother within forty miles of here, but for Jon. If he was a
brother still . . . I should have tried to kill Mance Rayder on the Fist, even if it
meant my life. That was what Qhorin Halfhand would have done. But
Jon had hesitated, and the chance passed. The next day he had
ridden off with Styr the Magnar, Jarl, and more than a hundred
picked Thenns and raiders. He told himself that he was only biding
his time, that when the moment came he would slip away and ride for
Castle Black. The moment never came. They rested most nights in
empty wildling villages, and Styr always set a dozen of his Thenns
to guard the horses. Jarl watched him suspiciously. And Ygritte was
never far, day or night. Two hearts that beat as one. Mance Rayder’s mocking words
rang bitter in his head. Jon had seldom felt so confused. I have no
choice, he’d told himself the first time, when she slipped
beneath his sleeping skins. If I refuse her, she will know me for a
turncloak. I am playing the part the Halfhand told me to play.
His body had played the part eagerly enough. His lips on hers,
his hand sliding under her doeskin shirt to find a breast, his
manhood stiffening when she rubbed her mound against it through
their clothes. My vows, he’d thought, remembering the
weirwood grove where he had said them, the nine great white trees
in a circle, the carved red faces watching, listening. But her
fingers were undoing his laces and her tongue was in his mouth and
her hand slipped inside his smallclothes and brought him out, and
he could not see the weirwoods anymore, only her. She bit his neck
and he nuzzled hers, burying his nose in her thick red hair. Lucky,
he thought, she is lucky, fire-kissed. “Isn’t that
good?” she whispered as she guided him inside her. She was
sopping wet down there, and no maiden, that was plain, but Jon did
not care. His vows, her maidenhood, none of it mattered, only the
heat of her, the mouth on his, the finger that pinched at his
nipple. “Isn’t that sweet?” she said again.
“Not so fast, oh, slow, yes, like that. There now, there now,
yes, sweet, sweet. You know nothing, Jon Snow, but I can show you.
Harder now. Yessss.” A part, he tried to remind himself afterward. I am playing a
part. I had to do it once, to prove I’d abandoned my vows. I
had to make her trust me. It need never happen again. He was still
a man of the Night’s Watch, and a son of Eddard Stark. He had
done what needed to be done, proved what needed to be proven.
The proving had been so sweet, though, and Ygritte had gone to
sleep beside him with her head against his chest, and that was
sweet as well, dangerously sweet. He thought of the weirwoods
again, and the words he’d said before them. It was only once,
and it had to be. Even my father stumbled once, when he forgot his
marriage vows and sired a bastard. Jon vowed to himself that it
would be the same with him. It will never happen again.
It happened twice more that night, and again in the morning,
when she woke to find him hard. The wildlings were stirring by
then, and several could not help but notice what was going on
beneath the pile of furs. Jarl told them to be quick about it,
before he had to throw a pail of water over them. Like a pair of
rutting dogs, Jon thought afterward. Was that what he’d
become? I am a man of the Night’s Watch, a small voice inside
insisted, but every night it seemed a little fainter, and when
Ygritte kissed his ears or bit his neck, he could not hear it at
all. Was this how it was for my father? he wondered. Was he as weak
as I am, when he dishonored himself in my mother’s bed?
Something was coming up the hill behind him, he realized
suddenly. For half a heartbeat he thought it might be Ghost come
back, but the direwolf never made so much noise. Jon drew Longclaw
in a single smooth motion, but it was only one of the Thenns, a
broad man in a bronze helm. “Snow,” the intruder said.
“Come. Magnar wants.” The men of Thenn spoke the Old
Tongue, and most had only a few words of the Common.
Jon did not much care what the Magnar wanted, but there was no
use arguing with someone who could scarcely understand him, so he
followed the man back down the hill.
The mouth of the cave was a cleft in the rock barely wide enough
for a horse, half concealed behind a soldier pine. It opened to the
north, so the glows of the fires within would not be visible from
the Wall. Even if by some mischance a patrol should happen to pass
atop the Wall tonight, they would see nothing but hills and pines
and the icy sheen of starlight on a half-frozen lake. Mance Rayder
had planned his thrust well.
Within the rock, the passage descended twenty feet before it
opened out onto a space as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall.
Cookfires burned amongst the columns, their smoke rising to blacken
the stony ceiling. The horses had been hobbled along one wall,
beside a shallow pool. A sinkhole in the center of the floor opened
on what might have been an even greater cavern below, though the
darkness made it hard to tell. Jon could hear the soft rushing
sound of an underground stream somewhere below as well.
Jarl was with the Magnar; Mance had given them the joint
command. Styr was none too pleased by that, Jon had noted early on.
Mance Rayder had called the dark youth a “pet” of Val,
who was sister to Dalla, his own queen, which made Jarl a sort of
good brother once removed to the King-beyond-the-Wall. The Magnar
plainly resented sharing his authority. He had brought a hundred
Thenns, five times as many men as Jarl, and often acted as if he
had the sole command. But it would be the younger man who got them
over the ice, Jon knew. Though he could not have been older than
twenty, Jarl had been raiding for eight years, and had gone over
the Wall a dozen times with the likes of Alfyn Crowkiller and the
Weeper, and more recently with his own band.
The Magnar was direct. “Jarl has warned me of crows,
patrolling on high. Tell me all you know of these
patrols.” Tell me, Jon noted, not tell us, though Jarl stood right beside
him. He would have liked nothing better than to refuse the brusque
demand, but he knew Styr would put him to death at the slightest
disloyalty, and Ygritte as well, for the crime of being his.
“There are four men in each patrol, two rangers and two
builders,” he said. “The builders are supposed to make
note of cracks, melting, and other structural problems, while the
rangers look for signs of foes. They ride mules.”
“Mules?” The earless man frowned. “Mules are
slow.”
“Slow, but more surefooted on the ice. The patrols often
ride atop the Wall, and aside from Castle Black, the paths up there
have not been graveled for long years. The mules are bred at
Eastwatch, and specially trained to their duty.”
“They often ride atop the Wall? Not always?”
“No. One patrol in four follows the base instead, to
search for cracks in the foundation ice or signs of
tunneling.”
The Magnar nodded. “Even in far Thenn we know the tale of
Arson Iceaxe and his tunnel.”
Jon knew the tale as well. Arson Iceaxe had been halfway through
the Wall when his tunnel was found by rangers from the Nightfort.
They did not trouble to disturb him at his digging, only sealed the
way behind with ice and stone and snow. Dolorous Edd used to say
that if you pressed your ear flat to the Wall, you could still hear
Arson chipping away with his axe.
“When do these patrols go out? How often?”
Jon shrugged. “It changes. I’ve heard that Lord
Commander Qorgyle used to send them out every third day from Castle
Black to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and every second day from Castle
Black to the Shadow Tower. The Watch had more men in his day,
though. Lord Commander Mormont prefers to vary the number of
patrols and the days of their departure, to make it more difficult
for anyone to know their comings and goings. And sometimes the Old
Bear will even send a larger force to one of the abandoned castles
for a fortnight or a moon’s turn.” His uncle had
originated that tactic, Jon knew. Anything to make the enemy
unsure.
“Is Stonedoor manned at present?” asked Jarl.
“Greyguard?” So we’re between those two, are we? Jon kept his face
carefully blank. “Only Eastwatch, Castle Black, and the
Shadow Tower were manned when I left the Wall. I can’t speak
to what Bowen Marsh or Ser Denys might have done since.”
“How many crows remain within the castles?” asked
Styr.
“Five hundred at Castle Black. Two hundred at Shadow
Tower, perhaps three hundred at Eastwatch.” Jon added three
hundred men to the count. If only it were that
easy . . .
Jarl was not fooled, however. “He’s lying,” he
told Styr. “Or else including those they lost on the
Fist.”
“Crow,” the Magnar warned, “do not take me for
Mance Rayder. If you lie to me, I will have your tongue.”
“I’m no crow, and won’t be called a
liar.” Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.
The Magnar of Thenn studied Jon with his chilly grey eyes.
“We shall learn their numbers soon enough,” he said
after a moment. “Go. I will send for you if I have further
questions.”
Jon bowed his head stiffly, and went. If all the wildlings were
like Styr, it would be easier to betray them. The Thenns were not
like other free folk, though. The Magnar claimed to be the last of
the First Men, and ruled with an iron hand. His little land of
Thenn was a high mountain valley hidden amongst the northernmost
peaks of the Frostfangs, surrounded by cave dwellers, Hornfoot men,
giants, and the cannibal clans of the ice rivers. Ygritte said the
Thenns were savage fighters, and that their Magnar was a god to
them. Jon could believe that. Unlike Jarl and Harma and
Rattleshirt, Styr commanded absolute obedience from his men, and
that discipline was no doubt part of why Mance had chosen him to go
over the Wall.
He walked past the Thenns, sitting atop their rounded bronze
helms about their cookfires. Where did Ygrette get herself to? He
found her gear and his together, but no sign of the girl herself.
“She took a torch and went off that way,” Grigg the
Goat told him, pointing toward the back of the cavern.
Jon followed his finger, and found himself in a dim back room
wandering through a maze of columns and stalactites. She
can’t be here, he was thinking, when he heard her laugh. He
turned toward the sound, but within ten paces he was in a
dead end, facing a blank wall of rose and white flowstone. Baffled,
he made his way back the way he’d come, and then he saw it: a
dark hole under an outthrust of wet stone. He knelt, listened,
heard the faint sound of water. “Ygritte?”
“In here,” her voice came back, echoing faintly.
Jon had to crawl a dozen paces before the cave opened up around
him. When he stood again, it took his eyes a moment to adjust.
Ygritte had brought a torch, but there was no other light. She
stood beside a little waterfall that fell from a cleft in the rock
down into a wide dark pool. The orange and yellow flames shone
against the pale green water.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I heard water. I wanted t’see how deep the cave
went.” She pointed with the torch. “There’s a
passage goes down further. I followed it a hundred paces before I
turned back.”
“A dead end?”
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. It went on and on and on.
There are hundreds o’ caves in these hills, and down deep
they all connect. There’s even a way under your Wall.
Gorne’s Way.”
“Gorne,” said Jon. “Gorne was
King-beyond-the-Wall.”
“Aye,” said Ygritte. “Together with his
brother Gendel, three thousand years ago. They led a host o’
free folk through the caves, and the Watch was none the wiser. But
when they come out, the wolves o’ Winterfell fell upon
them.”
“There was a battle,” Jon recalled. “Gorne
slew the King in the North, but his son picked up his banner and
took the crown from his head, and cut down Gorne in
turn.”
“And the sound o’ swords woke the crows in their
castles, and they rode out all in black to take the free folk in
the rear.”
“Yes. Gendel had the king to the south, the Umbers to the
east, and the Watch to the north of him. He died as
well.”
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Gendel did not die. He cut
his way free, through the crows, and led his people back north with
the wolves howling at their heels. Only Gendel did not know the
caves as Gorne had, and took a wrong turn.” She swept the
torch back and forth, so the shadows jumped and moved.
“Deeper he went, and deeper, and when he tried t’ turn
back the ways that seemed familiar ended in stone rather than sky.
Soon his torches began t’ fail, one by one, till finally
there was naught but dark. Gendel’s folk were never seen
again, but on a still night you can hear their children’s
children’s children sobbing under the hills, still looking
for the way back up. Listen? Do you hear them?”
All Jon could hear was the falling water and the faint crackle
of flames. “This way under the Wall was lost as
well?”
“Some have searched for it. Them that go too deep find
Gendel’s children, and Gendel’s children are always
hungry.” Smiling, she set the torch carefully in a notch of
rock, and came toward him. “There’s naught to eat in
the dark but flesh,” she whispered, biting at his neck.
Jon nuzzled her hair and filled his nose with the smell of her.
“You sound like Old Nan, telling Bran a monster
story.”
Ygritte punched his shoulder. “An old woman, am
I?”
“You’re older than me.”
“Aye, and wiser. You know nothing, Jon Snow.” She
pushed away from him, and shrugged out of her rabbitskin vest.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you how old I am.” She unlaced her doeskin
shirt, tossed it aside, pulled her three woolen undershirts up over
her head all at once. “I want you should see me.”
“We shouldn’t—”
“We should.” Her breasts bounced as she stood on one
leg to pull one boot, then hopped onto her other foot to attend to
the other. Her nipples were wide pink circles. “You as
well,” Ygritte said as she yanked down her sheepskin
breeches. “If you want to look you have to show. You know
nothing, Jon Snow.”
“I know I want you,” he heard himself say, all his
vows and all his honor forgotten. She stood before him naked as her
name day, and he was as hard as the rock around them. He had been
in her half a hundred times by now, but always beneath the furs,
with others all around them. He had never seen how beautiful she
was. Her legs were skinny but well muscled, the hair at the
juncture of her thighs a brighter red than that on her head. Does
that make it even luckier? He pulled her close. “I love the
smell of you,” he said. “I love your red hair. I love
your mouth, and the way you kiss me. I love your smile. I love your
teats.” He kissed them, one and then the other. “I love
your skinny legs, and what’s between them.” He knelt to
kiss her there, lightly on her mound at first, but Ygritte moved
her legs apart a little, and he saw the pink inside and kissed that
as well, and tasted her. She gave a little gasp. “If you love
me all so much, why are you still dressed?” she whispered.
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Noth—oh. Oh. OHHH.”
Afterward, she was almost shy, or as shy as Ygritte ever got.
“That thing you did,” she said, when they lay together
on their piled clothes. “With
your . . . mouth.” She hesitated.
“Is that . . . is it what lords do to
their ladies, down in the south?”
“I don’t think so.” No one had ever told Jon
just what lords did with their ladies. “I
only . . . wanted to kiss you there,
that’s all. You seemed to like it.”
“Aye. I . . . I liked it some. No one
taught you such?”
“There’s been no one,” he confessed.
“Only you.”
“A maid,” she teased. “You were a
maid.”
He gave her closest nipple a playful pinch. “I was a man
of the Night’s Watch.” Was, he heard himself say. What
was he now? He did not want to look at that. “Were you a
maid?”
Ygritte pushed herself onto an elbow. “I am nineteen, and
a spearwife, and kissed by fire. How could I be maiden?”
“Who was he?”
“A boy at a feast, five years past. He’d come
trading with his brothers, and he had hair like mine, kissed by
fire, so I thought he would be lucky. But he was weak. When he came
back t’ try and steal me, Longspear broke his arm and ran him
off, and he never tried again, not once.”
“It wasn’t Longspear, then?” Jon was relieved.
He liked Longspear, with his homely face and friendly ways.
She punched him. “That’s vile. Would you bed your
sister?”
“Longspear’s not your brother.”
“He’s of my village. You know nothing, Jon Snow. A
true man steals a woman from afar, t’ strengthen the clan.
Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and
are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters.”
“Craster weds his daughters,” Jon pointed out.
She punched him again. “Craster’s more your kind
than ours. His father was a crow who stole a woman out of Whitetree
village, but after he had her he flew back t’ his Wall. She
went t’ Castle Black once t’ show the crow his son, but
the brothers blew their horns and run her off. Craster’s
blood is black, and he bears a heavy curse.” She ran her
fingers lightly across his stomach. “I feared you’d do
the same once. Fly back to the Wall. You never knew what t’
do after you stole me.”
Jon sat up. “Ygritte, I never stole you.”
“Aye, you did. You jumped down the mountain and killed
Orell, and afore I could get my axe you had a knife at my throat. I
thought you’d have me then, or kill me, or maybe both, but
you never did. And when I told you the tale o’ Bael the Bard
and how he plucked the rose o’ Winterfell, I thought
you’d know to pluck me then for certain, but you
didn’t. You know nothing, Jon Snow.” She gave him a shy
smile. “You might be learning some, though.”
The light was shifting all about her, Jon noticed suddenly. He
looked around. “We had best go up. The torch is almost
done.”
“Is the crow afeared o’ Gendel’s
children?” she said, with a grin. “It’s only a
little way up, and I’m not done with you, Jon Snow.”
She pushed him back down on the clothes and straddled him.
“Would you . . . ” She
hesitated.
“What?” he prompted, as the torch began to
gutter.
“Do it again?” Ygritte blurted. “With your
mouth? The lord’s kiss? And I . . . I
could see if you liked it any.”
By the time the torch burned out, Jon Snow no longer cared.
His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this
is so wrong, he wondered, why did the gods make it feel so
good?
The grotto was pitch-dark by the time they finished. The only
light was the dim glow of the passage back up to the larger cavern,
where a score of fires burned. They were soon fumbling and bumping
into each other as they tried to dress in the dark. Ygritte
stumbled into the pool and screeched at the cold of the water. When
Jon laughed, she pulled him in too. They wrestled and splashed in
the dark, and then she was in his arms again, and it turned out
they were not finished after all.
“Jon Snow,” she told him, when he’d spent his
seed inside her, “don’t move now, sweet. I like the
feel of you in there, I do. Let’s not go back t’ Styr
and Jarl. Let’s go down inside, and join up with
Gendel’s children. I don’t ever want t’ leave
this cave, Jon Snow. Not ever.”
The last night fell black and moonless, but for once the sky was
clear. “I am going up the hill to look for Ghost,” he
told the Thenns at the cave mouth, and they grunted and let him
pass. So many stars, he thought as he trudged up the slope through
pines and firs and ash. Maester Luwin had taught him his stars as a
boy in Winterfell; he had learned the names of the twelve houses of
heaven and the rulers of each; he could find the seven wanderers
sacred to the Faith; he was old friends with the Ice Dragon, the
Shadowcat, the Moonmaid, and the Sword of the Morning. All those he
shared with Ygritte, but not some of the others. We look up at the
same stars, and see such different things. The King’s Crown
was the Cradle, to hear her tell it; the Stallion was the Horned
Lord; the red wanderer that septons preached was sacred to their
Smith up here was called the Thief. And when the Thief was in the
Moonmaid, that was a propitious time for a man to steal a woman,
Ygritte insisted. “Like the night you stole me. The Thief was
bright that night.”
“I never meant to steal you,” he said. “I
never knew you were a girl until my knife was at your
throat.”
“If you kill a man, and never mean t’, he’s
just as dead,” Ygritte said stubbornly. Jon had never met
anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she
still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever? He had never truly been
a Stark, only Lord Eddard’s motherless bastard, with no more
place at Winterfell than Theon Greyjoy. And even that he’d
lost. When a man of the Night’s Watch said his words, he put
aside his old family and joined a new one, but Jon Snow had lost
those brothers too.
He found Ghost atop the hill, as he thought he might. The white
wolf never howled, yet something drew him to the heights all the
same, and he would squat there on his hindquarters, hot breath
rising in a white mist as his red eyes drank the stars.
“Do you have names for them as well?” Jon asked, as
he went to one knee beside the direwolf and scratched the thick
white fur on his neck, “The Hare? The Doe? The
She-Wolf?” Ghost licked his face, his rough wet tongue
rasping against the scabs where the eagle’s talons had ripped
Jon’s cheek. The bird marked both of us, he thought.
“Ghost,” he said quietly, “on the morrow we go
over. There’s no steps here, no cage-and-crane, no way for me
to get you to the other side. We have to part. Do you
understand?”
In the dark, the direwolf’s red eyes
looked black. He nuzzled at Jon’s neck, silent as ever, his
breath a hot mist. The wildlings called Jon Snow a warg, but if so
he was a poor one. He did not know how to put on a wolf skin, the
way Orell had with his eagle before he’d died. Once Jon had
dreamed that he was Ghost, looking down upon the valley of the
Milkwater where Mance Rayder had gathered his people, and that
dream had turned out to be true. But he was not dreaming now, and
that left him only words.
“You cannot come with me,” Jon said, cupping the
wolf’s head in his hands and looking deep into those eyes.
“You have to go to Castle Black. Do you understand? Castle
Black. Can you find it? The way home? Just follow the ice, east and
east, into the sun, and you’ll find it. They will know you at
Castle Black, and maybe your coming will warn them.” He had
thought of writing out a warning for Ghost to carry, but he had no
ink, no parchment, not even a writing quill, and the risk of
discovery was too great. “I will meet you again at Castle
Black, but you have to get there by yourself. We must each hunt
alone for a time. Alone.”
The direwolf twisted free of Jon’s grasp, his ears pricked
up. And suddenly he was bounding away. He loped through a tangle of
brush, leapt a deadfall, and raced down the hillside, a pale streak
among the trees. Off to Castle Black? Jon wondered. Or off after a
hare? He wished he knew. He feared he might prove just as poor a
warg as a sworn brother and a spy.
A wind sighed through the trees, rich with the smell of pine
needles, tugging at his faded blacks. Jon could see the Wall
looming high and dark to the south, a great shadow blocking out the
stars. The rough hilly ground made him think they must be somewhere
between the Shadow Tower and Castle Black, and likely closer to the
former. For days they had been wending their way south between deep
lakes that stretched like long thin fingers along the floors of
narrow valleys, while flint ridges and pine-clad hills jostled
against one another to either side. Such ground made for slow
riding, but offered easy concealment for those wishing to approach
the Wall unseen. For wildling raiders, he thought. Like us. Like me.
Beyond that Wall lay the Seven Kingdoms, and everything he had
sworn to protect. He had said the words, had pledged his life and
honor, and by rights he should be up there standing sentry. He
should be raising a horn to his lips to rouse the Night’s
Watch to arms. He had no horn, though. It would not be hard to
steal one from the wildlings, he suspected, but what would that
accomplish? Even if he blew it, there was no one to hear. The Wall
was a hundred leagues long and the Watch sadly dwindled. All but
three of the strongholds had been abandoned; there might not be a
brother within forty miles of here, but for Jon. If he was a
brother still . . . I should have tried to kill Mance Rayder on the Fist, even if it
meant my life. That was what Qhorin Halfhand would have done. But
Jon had hesitated, and the chance passed. The next day he had
ridden off with Styr the Magnar, Jarl, and more than a hundred
picked Thenns and raiders. He told himself that he was only biding
his time, that when the moment came he would slip away and ride for
Castle Black. The moment never came. They rested most nights in
empty wildling villages, and Styr always set a dozen of his Thenns
to guard the horses. Jarl watched him suspiciously. And Ygritte was
never far, day or night. Two hearts that beat as one. Mance Rayder’s mocking words
rang bitter in his head. Jon had seldom felt so confused. I have no
choice, he’d told himself the first time, when she slipped
beneath his sleeping skins. If I refuse her, she will know me for a
turncloak. I am playing the part the Halfhand told me to play.
His body had played the part eagerly enough. His lips on hers,
his hand sliding under her doeskin shirt to find a breast, his
manhood stiffening when she rubbed her mound against it through
their clothes. My vows, he’d thought, remembering the
weirwood grove where he had said them, the nine great white trees
in a circle, the carved red faces watching, listening. But her
fingers were undoing his laces and her tongue was in his mouth and
her hand slipped inside his smallclothes and brought him out, and
he could not see the weirwoods anymore, only her. She bit his neck
and he nuzzled hers, burying his nose in her thick red hair. Lucky,
he thought, she is lucky, fire-kissed. “Isn’t that
good?” she whispered as she guided him inside her. She was
sopping wet down there, and no maiden, that was plain, but Jon did
not care. His vows, her maidenhood, none of it mattered, only the
heat of her, the mouth on his, the finger that pinched at his
nipple. “Isn’t that sweet?” she said again.
“Not so fast, oh, slow, yes, like that. There now, there now,
yes, sweet, sweet. You know nothing, Jon Snow, but I can show you.
Harder now. Yessss.” A part, he tried to remind himself afterward. I am playing a
part. I had to do it once, to prove I’d abandoned my vows. I
had to make her trust me. It need never happen again. He was still
a man of the Night’s Watch, and a son of Eddard Stark. He had
done what needed to be done, proved what needed to be proven.
The proving had been so sweet, though, and Ygritte had gone to
sleep beside him with her head against his chest, and that was
sweet as well, dangerously sweet. He thought of the weirwoods
again, and the words he’d said before them. It was only once,
and it had to be. Even my father stumbled once, when he forgot his
marriage vows and sired a bastard. Jon vowed to himself that it
would be the same with him. It will never happen again.
It happened twice more that night, and again in the morning,
when she woke to find him hard. The wildlings were stirring by
then, and several could not help but notice what was going on
beneath the pile of furs. Jarl told them to be quick about it,
before he had to throw a pail of water over them. Like a pair of
rutting dogs, Jon thought afterward. Was that what he’d
become? I am a man of the Night’s Watch, a small voice inside
insisted, but every night it seemed a little fainter, and when
Ygritte kissed his ears or bit his neck, he could not hear it at
all. Was this how it was for my father? he wondered. Was he as weak
as I am, when he dishonored himself in my mother’s bed?
Something was coming up the hill behind him, he realized
suddenly. For half a heartbeat he thought it might be Ghost come
back, but the direwolf never made so much noise. Jon drew Longclaw
in a single smooth motion, but it was only one of the Thenns, a
broad man in a bronze helm. “Snow,” the intruder said.
“Come. Magnar wants.” The men of Thenn spoke the Old
Tongue, and most had only a few words of the Common.
Jon did not much care what the Magnar wanted, but there was no
use arguing with someone who could scarcely understand him, so he
followed the man back down the hill.
The mouth of the cave was a cleft in the rock barely wide enough
for a horse, half concealed behind a soldier pine. It opened to the
north, so the glows of the fires within would not be visible from
the Wall. Even if by some mischance a patrol should happen to pass
atop the Wall tonight, they would see nothing but hills and pines
and the icy sheen of starlight on a half-frozen lake. Mance Rayder
had planned his thrust well.
Within the rock, the passage descended twenty feet before it
opened out onto a space as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall.
Cookfires burned amongst the columns, their smoke rising to blacken
the stony ceiling. The horses had been hobbled along one wall,
beside a shallow pool. A sinkhole in the center of the floor opened
on what might have been an even greater cavern below, though the
darkness made it hard to tell. Jon could hear the soft rushing
sound of an underground stream somewhere below as well.
Jarl was with the Magnar; Mance had given them the joint
command. Styr was none too pleased by that, Jon had noted early on.
Mance Rayder had called the dark youth a “pet” of Val,
who was sister to Dalla, his own queen, which made Jarl a sort of
good brother once removed to the King-beyond-the-Wall. The Magnar
plainly resented sharing his authority. He had brought a hundred
Thenns, five times as many men as Jarl, and often acted as if he
had the sole command. But it would be the younger man who got them
over the ice, Jon knew. Though he could not have been older than
twenty, Jarl had been raiding for eight years, and had gone over
the Wall a dozen times with the likes of Alfyn Crowkiller and the
Weeper, and more recently with his own band.
The Magnar was direct. “Jarl has warned me of crows,
patrolling on high. Tell me all you know of these
patrols.” Tell me, Jon noted, not tell us, though Jarl stood right beside
him. He would have liked nothing better than to refuse the brusque
demand, but he knew Styr would put him to death at the slightest
disloyalty, and Ygritte as well, for the crime of being his.
“There are four men in each patrol, two rangers and two
builders,” he said. “The builders are supposed to make
note of cracks, melting, and other structural problems, while the
rangers look for signs of foes. They ride mules.”
“Mules?” The earless man frowned. “Mules are
slow.”
“Slow, but more surefooted on the ice. The patrols often
ride atop the Wall, and aside from Castle Black, the paths up there
have not been graveled for long years. The mules are bred at
Eastwatch, and specially trained to their duty.”
“They often ride atop the Wall? Not always?”
“No. One patrol in four follows the base instead, to
search for cracks in the foundation ice or signs of
tunneling.”
The Magnar nodded. “Even in far Thenn we know the tale of
Arson Iceaxe and his tunnel.”
Jon knew the tale as well. Arson Iceaxe had been halfway through
the Wall when his tunnel was found by rangers from the Nightfort.
They did not trouble to disturb him at his digging, only sealed the
way behind with ice and stone and snow. Dolorous Edd used to say
that if you pressed your ear flat to the Wall, you could still hear
Arson chipping away with his axe.
“When do these patrols go out? How often?”
Jon shrugged. “It changes. I’ve heard that Lord
Commander Qorgyle used to send them out every third day from Castle
Black to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and every second day from Castle
Black to the Shadow Tower. The Watch had more men in his day,
though. Lord Commander Mormont prefers to vary the number of
patrols and the days of their departure, to make it more difficult
for anyone to know their comings and goings. And sometimes the Old
Bear will even send a larger force to one of the abandoned castles
for a fortnight or a moon’s turn.” His uncle had
originated that tactic, Jon knew. Anything to make the enemy
unsure.
“Is Stonedoor manned at present?” asked Jarl.
“Greyguard?” So we’re between those two, are we? Jon kept his face
carefully blank. “Only Eastwatch, Castle Black, and the
Shadow Tower were manned when I left the Wall. I can’t speak
to what Bowen Marsh or Ser Denys might have done since.”
“How many crows remain within the castles?” asked
Styr.
“Five hundred at Castle Black. Two hundred at Shadow
Tower, perhaps three hundred at Eastwatch.” Jon added three
hundred men to the count. If only it were that
easy . . .
Jarl was not fooled, however. “He’s lying,” he
told Styr. “Or else including those they lost on the
Fist.”
“Crow,” the Magnar warned, “do not take me for
Mance Rayder. If you lie to me, I will have your tongue.”
“I’m no crow, and won’t be called a
liar.” Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.
The Magnar of Thenn studied Jon with his chilly grey eyes.
“We shall learn their numbers soon enough,” he said
after a moment. “Go. I will send for you if I have further
questions.”
Jon bowed his head stiffly, and went. If all the wildlings were
like Styr, it would be easier to betray them. The Thenns were not
like other free folk, though. The Magnar claimed to be the last of
the First Men, and ruled with an iron hand. His little land of
Thenn was a high mountain valley hidden amongst the northernmost
peaks of the Frostfangs, surrounded by cave dwellers, Hornfoot men,
giants, and the cannibal clans of the ice rivers. Ygritte said the
Thenns were savage fighters, and that their Magnar was a god to
them. Jon could believe that. Unlike Jarl and Harma and
Rattleshirt, Styr commanded absolute obedience from his men, and
that discipline was no doubt part of why Mance had chosen him to go
over the Wall.
He walked past the Thenns, sitting atop their rounded bronze
helms about their cookfires. Where did Ygrette get herself to? He
found her gear and his together, but no sign of the girl herself.
“She took a torch and went off that way,” Grigg the
Goat told him, pointing toward the back of the cavern.
Jon followed his finger, and found himself in a dim back room
wandering through a maze of columns and stalactites. She
can’t be here, he was thinking, when he heard her laugh. He
turned toward the sound, but within ten paces he was in a
dead end, facing a blank wall of rose and white flowstone. Baffled,
he made his way back the way he’d come, and then he saw it: a
dark hole under an outthrust of wet stone. He knelt, listened,
heard the faint sound of water. “Ygritte?”
“In here,” her voice came back, echoing faintly.
Jon had to crawl a dozen paces before the cave opened up around
him. When he stood again, it took his eyes a moment to adjust.
Ygritte had brought a torch, but there was no other light. She
stood beside a little waterfall that fell from a cleft in the rock
down into a wide dark pool. The orange and yellow flames shone
against the pale green water.
“What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“I heard water. I wanted t’see how deep the cave
went.” She pointed with the torch. “There’s a
passage goes down further. I followed it a hundred paces before I
turned back.”
“A dead end?”
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. It went on and on and on.
There are hundreds o’ caves in these hills, and down deep
they all connect. There’s even a way under your Wall.
Gorne’s Way.”
“Gorne,” said Jon. “Gorne was
King-beyond-the-Wall.”
“Aye,” said Ygritte. “Together with his
brother Gendel, three thousand years ago. They led a host o’
free folk through the caves, and the Watch was none the wiser. But
when they come out, the wolves o’ Winterfell fell upon
them.”
“There was a battle,” Jon recalled. “Gorne
slew the King in the North, but his son picked up his banner and
took the crown from his head, and cut down Gorne in
turn.”
“And the sound o’ swords woke the crows in their
castles, and they rode out all in black to take the free folk in
the rear.”
“Yes. Gendel had the king to the south, the Umbers to the
east, and the Watch to the north of him. He died as
well.”
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Gendel did not die. He cut
his way free, through the crows, and led his people back north with
the wolves howling at their heels. Only Gendel did not know the
caves as Gorne had, and took a wrong turn.” She swept the
torch back and forth, so the shadows jumped and moved.
“Deeper he went, and deeper, and when he tried t’ turn
back the ways that seemed familiar ended in stone rather than sky.
Soon his torches began t’ fail, one by one, till finally
there was naught but dark. Gendel’s folk were never seen
again, but on a still night you can hear their children’s
children’s children sobbing under the hills, still looking
for the way back up. Listen? Do you hear them?”
All Jon could hear was the falling water and the faint crackle
of flames. “This way under the Wall was lost as
well?”
“Some have searched for it. Them that go too deep find
Gendel’s children, and Gendel’s children are always
hungry.” Smiling, she set the torch carefully in a notch of
rock, and came toward him. “There’s naught to eat in
the dark but flesh,” she whispered, biting at his neck.
Jon nuzzled her hair and filled his nose with the smell of her.
“You sound like Old Nan, telling Bran a monster
story.”
Ygritte punched his shoulder. “An old woman, am
I?”
“You’re older than me.”
“Aye, and wiser. You know nothing, Jon Snow.” She
pushed away from him, and shrugged out of her rabbitskin vest.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you how old I am.” She unlaced her doeskin
shirt, tossed it aside, pulled her three woolen undershirts up over
her head all at once. “I want you should see me.”
“We shouldn’t—”
“We should.” Her breasts bounced as she stood on one
leg to pull one boot, then hopped onto her other foot to attend to
the other. Her nipples were wide pink circles. “You as
well,” Ygritte said as she yanked down her sheepskin
breeches. “If you want to look you have to show. You know
nothing, Jon Snow.”
“I know I want you,” he heard himself say, all his
vows and all his honor forgotten. She stood before him naked as her
name day, and he was as hard as the rock around them. He had been
in her half a hundred times by now, but always beneath the furs,
with others all around them. He had never seen how beautiful she
was. Her legs were skinny but well muscled, the hair at the
juncture of her thighs a brighter red than that on her head. Does
that make it even luckier? He pulled her close. “I love the
smell of you,” he said. “I love your red hair. I love
your mouth, and the way you kiss me. I love your smile. I love your
teats.” He kissed them, one and then the other. “I love
your skinny legs, and what’s between them.” He knelt to
kiss her there, lightly on her mound at first, but Ygritte moved
her legs apart a little, and he saw the pink inside and kissed that
as well, and tasted her. She gave a little gasp. “If you love
me all so much, why are you still dressed?” she whispered.
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Noth—oh. Oh. OHHH.”
Afterward, she was almost shy, or as shy as Ygritte ever got.
“That thing you did,” she said, when they lay together
on their piled clothes. “With
your . . . mouth.” She hesitated.
“Is that . . . is it what lords do to
their ladies, down in the south?”
“I don’t think so.” No one had ever told Jon
just what lords did with their ladies. “I
only . . . wanted to kiss you there,
that’s all. You seemed to like it.”
“Aye. I . . . I liked it some. No one
taught you such?”
“There’s been no one,” he confessed.
“Only you.”
“A maid,” she teased. “You were a
maid.”
He gave her closest nipple a playful pinch. “I was a man
of the Night’s Watch.” Was, he heard himself say. What
was he now? He did not want to look at that. “Were you a
maid?”
Ygritte pushed herself onto an elbow. “I am nineteen, and
a spearwife, and kissed by fire. How could I be maiden?”
“Who was he?”
“A boy at a feast, five years past. He’d come
trading with his brothers, and he had hair like mine, kissed by
fire, so I thought he would be lucky. But he was weak. When he came
back t’ try and steal me, Longspear broke his arm and ran him
off, and he never tried again, not once.”
“It wasn’t Longspear, then?” Jon was relieved.
He liked Longspear, with his homely face and friendly ways.
She punched him. “That’s vile. Would you bed your
sister?”
“Longspear’s not your brother.”
“He’s of my village. You know nothing, Jon Snow. A
true man steals a woman from afar, t’ strengthen the clan.
Women who bed brothers or fathers or clan kin offend the gods, and
are cursed with weak and sickly children. Even monsters.”
“Craster weds his daughters,” Jon pointed out.
She punched him again. “Craster’s more your kind
than ours. His father was a crow who stole a woman out of Whitetree
village, but after he had her he flew back t’ his Wall. She
went t’ Castle Black once t’ show the crow his son, but
the brothers blew their horns and run her off. Craster’s
blood is black, and he bears a heavy curse.” She ran her
fingers lightly across his stomach. “I feared you’d do
the same once. Fly back to the Wall. You never knew what t’
do after you stole me.”
Jon sat up. “Ygritte, I never stole you.”
“Aye, you did. You jumped down the mountain and killed
Orell, and afore I could get my axe you had a knife at my throat. I
thought you’d have me then, or kill me, or maybe both, but
you never did. And when I told you the tale o’ Bael the Bard
and how he plucked the rose o’ Winterfell, I thought
you’d know to pluck me then for certain, but you
didn’t. You know nothing, Jon Snow.” She gave him a shy
smile. “You might be learning some, though.”
The light was shifting all about her, Jon noticed suddenly. He
looked around. “We had best go up. The torch is almost
done.”
“Is the crow afeared o’ Gendel’s
children?” she said, with a grin. “It’s only a
little way up, and I’m not done with you, Jon Snow.”
She pushed him back down on the clothes and straddled him.
“Would you . . . ” She
hesitated.
“What?” he prompted, as the torch began to
gutter.
“Do it again?” Ygritte blurted. “With your
mouth? The lord’s kiss? And I . . . I
could see if you liked it any.”
By the time the torch burned out, Jon Snow no longer cared.
His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this
is so wrong, he wondered, why did the gods make it feel so
good?
The grotto was pitch-dark by the time they finished. The only
light was the dim glow of the passage back up to the larger cavern,
where a score of fires burned. They were soon fumbling and bumping
into each other as they tried to dress in the dark. Ygritte
stumbled into the pool and screeched at the cold of the water. When
Jon laughed, she pulled him in too. They wrestled and splashed in
the dark, and then she was in his arms again, and it turned out
they were not finished after all.
“Jon Snow,” she told him, when he’d spent his
seed inside her, “don’t move now, sweet. I like the
feel of you in there, I do. Let’s not go back t’ Styr
and Jarl. Let’s go down inside, and join up with
Gendel’s children. I don’t ever want t’ leave
this cave, Jon Snow. Not ever.”