"A Storm of Swords" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R. R.)JONThe 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. “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. 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. 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? 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. 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. 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 . . . 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. 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 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. 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.” “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 “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?” “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. 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. He walked past the Thenns, sitting atop their rounded bronze helms about their cookfires. Jon followed his finger, and found himself in a dim back room wandering through a maze of columns and stalactites. “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, 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 “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. 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.” 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 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. 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.” |
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