The Long Journey to Hardhome, Part 1
Jon
The Upper Antler River
"You ever seen a mammoth fuck before, Snow?" The man asked with a toothy grin, as they walked.
Jon blinked, stopping to stare. The snow was light underfoot, but the muddy terrain still made movement slow. "What?"
"A mammoth. Ever seen mammoths in heat?" The wildling asked, as others around them snickered dryly. Furs was a short, stocky man clad in a cloak of mottled fox fur, with rugged whiskers, narrow-set eyes and two missing front teeth. "You ever watched two mammoths rut?"
Jon wasn't quite sure how to reply, or if the man was mocking him. "Amazing thing, really," Furs continued. "Bull mammoths get really feisty certain times of the year. My mum always used to say - when the mountains are a-rocking, don't go mammoth knocking." The wildlings next to him snorted. "I never understood how it worked, really."
"Your mum never told you that one, eh Furs?" Another snorted. Two-Notch Haldur, Jon recalled. One of the better archers in the warband, and a friend to Furs from before either had joined this warband.
"Fuck off. I just mean, well, mammoths got those tiny little legs and great bodies," Furs continued. "And great tusks too. Those are bound to get in the way. So when the bull has to mount the cow, well… how does it even reach? How does it work?"
The men sniggered. Furs looked at Jon as if expecting an answer. He never replied. "The reason I ask, is well, mammoths I can kinda picture," Furs continued, with exaggerated hand motions. "But I was just looking at that dragon of yours, and well… how does that one work?"
In the distance Sonagon snorted, blowing cool mist as the dragon waded through the river. The look on Furs face made Jon's mouth drop. The large man next to him - Hatch - was bent over his knees in boisterous laughter. Furs seemed genuinely curious. Furs was a big, bearded, gregarious man for the warband's standards, a leader of his own band who carried a sharpened stone battle axe. Currently with a look of confusion on his face.
"I'm serious," Furs protested, motioning at the dragon. "I mean, you've got the tail, the wings, the bloody spikes on its back… ! How does he even… you know…" He demonstrated with a series of obscene finger arrangements - rough actions that could have come out of a bawdy alehouse. The wildlings howled. "So when that monster of yours meets a she-monster - there must be she-dragons, right? - What, does one have to lie on its back or something? They've got wings - do they fuck in the air you think? Maybe flying upside down or what?"
"Oh hells, now wouldn't that one be a sight!" Another roared, banging a hide shield.
Furs paused. "Wait, is your dragon a him-dragon or a she-dragon?" Furs had a perplexed look on his face. "I never thought to check."
Jon recovered his tongue. "Um, it's a him-dragon," he said, still staring dumbly, stunned by the turn this conversation had taken. I think. Jon had come to refer to Sonagon as a male, but in truth he wasn't entirely sure. The entire concept of gender seemed so… alien as far as Sonagon was concerned.
"Really?" Furs muttered, suspiciously. "I ain't seen no cock…"
Jon hesitated. Now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen one either...
He instantly cut that entire thought off.
Furs chortled, had the look of a man on a quest as he walked away.
"Furs, everyone!" Hatch guffawed after him - a great hulking figure of a man in thick furs, clutching a bone spear. "The seeker of dragon cocks!"
Hatch the Halfgiant and Two-Notch Haldur howled. Jon pushed himself to learn the names of everyone he encountered. The Weeper's warband were all hardened fighters and raiders, but many were at least affable enough to those who sought to know them. Others… were not. He had been with them for less than two days, but he took care to try and memorize every name he heard, dividing them into one category or the other, or perhaps into three groups - the ones who seemed friendly, the ones who certainly were not, and the rest who simply did not care.
Someday, knowing their names might save my life. He persisted in trying to learn.
He was making progress in reaching out - at least to a certain degree. Furs, Hatch, Haldur and a few dozen others were on the younger side, were almost easy to get along with. Men of competence who marched with the Weeper because they had sought to follow an effective leader, and the Weeper had been it.
As for the rest… it varied. Many of the Weeper's warband were harder to approach, didn't care to know him. Plenty were outcasts even in whatever wildlings had that passed for a society. And some seemed almost fiends in human skin.
Rolf, a grizzled one-eyed killer was the Weeper's second, and an ugly spearwife named Mharka was never far behind. Both were past forty years. An almost skeletal horserider named Rags and a severe-looking spearwife named Flint-Eye Fennel were in charge of the outriders and scouts respectively, and neither would even respond to Jon's greetings. Jon didn't care to approach men like Shieldface or Black Brogg or Volrik the Sayre, leaders of their own bands within the greater warband - they unsettled him, and had reputations almost seemed as vile as the Weeper's himself. Men who made sport of rape, kidnapping and murder. Lewie, Stump, Left-Handed Yoldo, Ranson Grin, Crab Mors and others fell somewhere in between: hardened raiders who were almost affable, but never friendly.
Overall: he got the sense that hardened killers from every corner of the far north had signed on to follow the Weeper over the years, and that they were far more loyal to their brute of a leader than they ever had been to Mance Rayder.
Jon tried to make connections in spite of the difficulties. But he was always aware of the distrustful eyes following him, and his hand never, ever strayed too far from Dark Sister's hilt.
The first night, two men tried to kill him. They weren't even subtle about it. Two raiders from the Frozen Shore clans - men with painted purple skin, bone piercings and sharpened teeth made to resemble a shark's. Almost without warning they tried to gut him open right in the middle of the camp. If it hadn't been for Ghost warning him…
Jon still had no idea why they attacked him, because neither of them spoke the Common. All he could pick up from their screaming was that he was a 'demon.'
Every other wildling just watched quietly as those men attacked him by the campfire, and they remained quiet when Jon killed them.
The next morning, Jon took care to keep Ghost close, and he forced himself to memorize as many of the raider's names as possible. He figured it would be harder for men to kill you if you knew their names.
He'd already known Furs, Hatch the Hatchgiant and Haldur. Urwen Rockfist, Bone Erik, Sten, Elda the Direwife, Dornak, Crab Mors, and Haldur Halfwit (in contrast to Haldur Two-Notch) were new to his acquaintance but seemed friendly enough - all to name only a few. He at least managed to have conversations with a few leaders like Rolf, Flint-Eye Fennel, Mharka, Lewie, Stump, Left-Handed Yoldo, and Ulf Three Blades. He refused to approach a few, like Rags, Shieldface or Black Brogg, who seemed as likely as not to gut him simply for speaking to them. And some names like Volrik the Sayre's, or Frozen Shore men with names so queer Jon couldn't so much as try saying them with his own tongue, remained beyond him in their meaning. Some men had names so queer that Jon wasn't sure he heard them right, names he couldn't even pronounce. It seemed a lot of the clans in the far north still spoke the Old Tongue exclusively.
Furs was from somewhere along the eastern coast, gregarious and friendly, something of a secondary band leader in the warband despite his relative youth - he was in his early twenties, while most of the warband was at least a decade older. Hatch was a man of stature so great he could rival any son of Umber, while Urwen was a dark-skinned man from one of the cave dweller clans, with a patchwork motley of blue and green tattoos. Rags, though they didn't speak, was noteworthy in how he walked so quiet with a bone dagger that Jon could never even hear him. Left-Handed Yoldo had only one arm (his right) but was still said to be vicious with a throwing axe, and Rolf had walked the length and width of the Haunted Forest a thousand times, while Two-Notch Haldur was a terrible bow marksman by even Jon's middling standards, yet the man could notch and fire arrows faster and more continuously than any archer Jon had ever seen.
There were a few spearwives as well, but they were every bit as hard as the men, and harder than most, with names like Kaela Stonearm, for the sling she used in battle, or Brygid Hornhunter, ironically named for her habit of killing Hornfoot men. Mharka, Flint-Eye Fennel, and Elda were the most prominent of the spearwives in a leadership sense.
They made a rough company, raiders united only in how they marched with the Weeper. But if that savage could recruit so many seasoned and experienced warriors to his band, from every corner of wildling society, he had to be doing something right.
They were making good time. The wildling warband spread out across the river valley, pushing along the trails running along either side of this northern prong of the Antlers. Five hundred men and women. Running down the river, as their nine supply barges floated in the current - laden with all manner of supplies and tents, animal hides as well as lumber, hemp rope and salted meat, winter turnips and root vegetables, berries and winter fruits, and a very few jars of honey and cheese.
The sails on the barges had yet to be built, so instead they let the current take them. The free folk shuffled along the wooden rafts with great poles to push them down the rocky stream, while others controlled them with ropes.
This prong of the Upper Antlers was a narrow, twisting thing of a river: eventually, it would become comparable to the Trident or maybe even the Mander as the Prongs converged and the Antler itself emptied out into the Bay of Seals, but there was a long distance between here and there.
For now, the river was long and winding as it snaked through the forest, and filled with salmon moving upstream, and river trout moving downstream. Chunks of ice still floated downstream from the mountains, and in the shallows the free folk would take the time to linger over the choicest bits of the freezing river, dragging fishing nets through the deeps or saving some effort by pulling their barges on foot.
The Antler and its prongs were the heart of wildling civilization in the eastern haunted forest. Apparently there were - or at least used to be - at least two dozen wildling clans across even this two mile stretch of river before they reached the next tributary. The raiders entertained one another with countless stories of the battles fought here throughout the long summer, seemingly a different battle for every different little bend in the river. Generations of battle, going well into his father's time and beyond. Perhaps the stories had been meant to impress, but Jon's interpretations were becoming darker than this company would have perhaps liked to hear.
As the trail curved around a stony rise, the river came into view again, choked with wind-slick ice and the half-rotted remnants of old log pilings. That was when Two-Notch Haldur called out, waving at a crooked, moss-covered cairn just off the trail - little more than a squat pile of river stones.
"There it is!" he barked. "Skaggy's Hill!"
Jon looked at it, unimpressed. The river wildlings had been warring amongst themselves since time beyond memory, going by the tales they'd been regaling him with for the last half hour. This tiny place was doubtlessly yet another such site.
Several of the wildlings laughed. It wasn't long before they were passing it on by, and Jon still saw little worth mentioning. Just another of the many barrows scattered throughout the haunted forest. "Other crows ever tell you this one, Snow?" Furs grinned over his shoulder. "Skaggy's Hill, how it got its name?"
The ranger's maps were for great landmarks, not for every petty wildling haunt. The maps would have been useless elsewise. But, out of politeness, Jon said nothing, he just shook his head faintly.
"Aye, we were feuding with the Splitwater Boys back then," Haldur said proudly. "They claimed this side of the river, so we staked a goat near the water and dared them to take it."
"A goat," Jon echoed flatly.
"Best we had!" Hatch said with a grin, as if recounting some great and noble deed. "Great beast, named Skaggy. Was meant for the spring stew, but, eh, fuck it - she had good horns."
"And so they came," Furs said. "Thirty of 'em, all painted up and pissed drunk. We met 'em right here. Blood in the mud, blood in the reeds, a whole day of fighting just for that goat. My da said the river turned red."
Haldur slapped his thigh. "And we still got our stew in the end!"
More raiders up and down the column laughed. Jon just stared at the cairn.
"How many dead?" he asked. "How long ago?"
That quieted them for a moment.
"Thirty-seven," Hatch muttered. "Maybe more. Can't rightly recall. Happened just this summer, but it was still a while back."
Thirty seven men, dead for a goat. Dead for a stretch of river too narrow to sail, too shallow to fish properly this late in the year. Thirty seven fighting men dead in the mud, their tale turned into a marching joke.I'd guess this isn't even one of the better hunting grounds. Jon clenched his jaw and turned away.
What a small way to live. These people would fight to the death over anything, anything at all: random insults, petty grudges, pettier prides. Even a goat.
And now they wonder why their people are being so easily hunted by the dead.
Jon withdrew into himself, brooding. Wondering what difficulties lay ahead with this path he had chosen.
They have to be better than this, if they'll ever want to live in the land south without being hunted just as well - but not by the dead. By men, hunting them like animals.
And perhaps those hunters would be right to do so.
The day marched onwards.
Even despite the thick stands of willow trees and rocky groves, the wildlings made good time. The men walking along the riverbank would wait for the barges to catch up the stream. The river was so cold that Jon didn't know how they could stand it, but he still saw wildlings easily jump into the water to swim to and from the rafts, or across the width of the water.
They had some horses that could serve as mounts, garrons apparently stolen from Mance's camp at some point or another, but few draft horses for labor and even fewer livestock. The wildlings relied on the huge barges to carry the bulk of their supplies. A few floated on the rafts, while the rest of the number - men, women, couple of children - trekked alongside in the forests. Just like armies in the south, a warband of this size would always have a certain number of camp followers.
Even when they were floating, the wildlings were still constructing their 'ships', Jon saw. The barges were crude in make, little more than lashed-together chunks of wood made to float, but even on the move they were still being built and expanded, men were tying hemp ropes or hacking on pine trees to the sides.
The barges had no sails - those would have to be built before they reached the sea. But for now, thanks to the river's current and the men on the barges and the long poles they held, it was good enough by their standards.
Apparently the wildlings have been building boats this way for centuries. Yet it was such a crude form of shipbuilding Jon expected it would cause a southern shipwright to squirm by the sight of it.
None of the warband seemed concerned about the safety of the barges per se, just the goods they carried. Not even when Sonagon splashed into the water, causing great waves against the riverbanks with every swing of his tail. They just moved a little farther away.
Jon was a bit surprised to find the dragon quite enjoyed the river. In places it was wide enough for the dragon to stretch out its wings, basking in the current. Sonagon would waddle in the center of the stream behind the free folk barges, occasionally snapping playfully at fish. The water was rarely deep enough for the dragon to swim, but he would splash and waddle down the center of the river, enjoying the space away from the trees.
One night, when Sonagon wanted to rest, the dragon simply took a deep breath and exhaled a gust of cold dragonfire - freezing the water beneath him solid to create a nest of ice to curl up on. That had caused quite a stir; the frostfire-formed ice plumed outwards so quickly that it nearly dammed the Antler, causing the water to flood outwards over the banks where the free folk were marching. Then, one of their barges had ended up caught in the fringes of the ice, and had to be hacked out with ice picks.
The Weeper had been furious. He hadn't appreciated the delay, and the ice continuously caused no end of trouble in bringing the barges downstream.
By the third day, they reached a joint where the Antlers pulled in one of its branches, and the river ran thicker and faster with more currents and gushing rapids across the stream. The barges needed ropes to the men on the riverbank to hold them steady to stop the rafts rushing off, while Sonagon seemed to enjoy either lazing on the riverbank or splashing in the rapids.
Jon might have been happy for the dragon, for the progress in Sonagon's healing, if not for the attitude in the warband. For every man that stared at the dragon with awe, there were another three staring with fear, suspicion or anger.
A few wildlings, like Furs, seemed happy to approach Jon, but most others glared at him from the distance.
Jon had seen the Weeper mutter quietly to his men in huddles, and Jon couldn't help but notice how the Weeper kept men with long sharp spears positioned around Sonagon at all times.
They don't trust me, he thought. And I don't trust them.
They wouldn't survive to Hardhome at this rate. Not without some breach of the peace, and Jon feared what might have to happen then. Something had to change.
On the fourth day, the hunters caught a boar in the forest - a great fat one almost the size of an ox.
They set up camp for the night while the men skinned, cut, smoked the game with ruthless efficiency. The prime meat was salted and left aside, while the hide was stripped, the tusks and bones claimed for carving, and absolutely nothing was wasted. The wildlings served smoked boar brain and eyeballs that night. Jon swallowed his hesitation and ate the meal, staring at the men hunched over the smokeless campfire. Even at night, the wildlings were never still. Some were trekking forward, while the ones camping now would catch up the next day.
"We'll be meeting up with Marthe of the Antlers tomorrow, at this rate," an aging one-eyed wildling next to him commented. Rolf, Jon recalled. He forced himself to try and learn the names. "That cunt."
"Marthe of the Antlers?"
"'The river lord,' as he likes to call himself," Rolf explained. "Fucking scunner. Him and his clan claimed Stag's Peak for years now. He's got himself a keep and everything."
"Will he be a problem?"
Rolf just scoffed. "As if," another wildling - Erik - retorted from Jon's other side. "Marthe's got thirty or so with him, and maybe half a dozen boats. The biggest clan around here, sure, but not enough to stop us. The Weeper will see him off to the gods and take his boats, I expect."
"Probably take his daughters, too," Rolf laughed. "I recall Marthe had a couple o' pretty ones."
Jon stayed silent, wondering. This was the first he had heard about meeting a rival river clan, but from the looks of things a warband had already been assembled against Marthe. Without him knowing about it.
The Weeper is intentionally keeping me in the dark about the journey.
Suddenly, the sound of angry shouts and yells filled the camp, coming from the river. The wildlings were on their feet in a second. Every man and woman kept a weapon by their hand at all times.
"No!" A man roared from the riverbank, shaking a stone maul. "Get back! Get away!"
There was the sound of a low growl. Jon's eyes widened as he saw Sonagon looming out of the water, his snout sniffing at one of the barges.
"Fuck off!" A wildling snapped. "That's our bloody meat!"
Dammit. The supply barges. They loaded up the carcass of the boar, along with the other salted fish and game they kept in the barges. Sonagon must have noticed. Jon tried to stop the dragon, but Sonagon was hungry and in no mood to listen. The dragon never had learned the concept of 'other people's property.'
A few men tried to fight Sonagon off, but then the dragon lunged and they all had to leap away into the river. In an instant, Sonagon's claws were tearing the barge off the water, and his great teeth were gnashing through the meat stored within. There was a snap of wood as the barge tore into chunks under enormous teeth.
Men were screaming. He saw torches and spears and arrows. Fuck.
About two weeks' worth of rations, as well as a whole barge, gone in a moment.
Jon tried to run, but he couldn't reach the riverbank in time. He saw a wildling throw a spear through the cold air. Sonagon snarled as the barbed tip caught his snout.
"No!" Jon shouted, but he could barely shout loud enough over the din. "Don't… !"
More people were throwing spears, even a few arrows, trying to drive the dragon away from the broken barge. Sonagon snapped out - the dragon really didn't like spears or arrows. Jon saw the dragon's head pull backwards, and great gushes of cold mist rise from his throat…
"Don't!" Jon shouted, dragging the first man back, jumping into the shallows of the water and raising his arms protectively in front of the wildlings. "Don't!"
Sonagon looked about two seconds away from demolishing the riverbank in dragonfire. Only the presence of Jon caused the dragon to pause. Jon tried to ease the dragon down, but Sonagon felt too angry to listen.
A few of the wildlings behind him tried to run. "Don't move!" Jon shouted, his voice raw. Don't do it Sonagon, please don't. "Stick close to me, or the dragon will kill you!"
And he might kill us all anyways, Jon thought in panic. The mist didn't stop streaming from the dragon's throat, causing the night air to crackle.
"The dragon ate our meat!" A man roared, still clutching a spear, as if ready to throw.
"And now he's about to eat you!" Jon bellowed, striking the man down with a sharp fist. Strong arms grabbed at him. "Are you ready to die over a boar?"
The whole camp was in turmoil, but Jon had eyes only for Sonagon. The dragon was prickly. Sonagon didn't understand mercy, or restraint. Hurt a dragon and you die. The image of the riverbank frozen in icy spikes flashed before his mind. Please Sonagon, Jon begged, don't do it.
After a long pause, Sonagon snarled, lowered his head and splashed away to the water. Jon could have sighed in relief, but then the wildling was up again, on his feet, and slamming the butt of his spear into Jon's stomach.
The brawl lasted a few minutes, splashing in the cold water in the dark. It was so chaotic he couldn't even tell who he was fighting, or how many. By the time it was finally broken up, Jon had a few more bruises.
The Weeper was furious. Nobody died, but a man broke his leg against the rocks jumping into the water. The loss of a good chunk of their supplies meant that the host would be even more hurt for food.
"You said you'd keep that dragon under control!" The Weeper spat, dragging Jon against a tree trunk. His breath was foul. "You said you'd control it!"
"I can't stop him from being hungry!" Jon said with groan, struggling to move.
"And I can barely feed my own men!" The Weeper roared, his sharp fingers digging into Jon's shoulder like knives. "I got a lot of hungry mouths, and a hundred leagues to go! And your dragon eats more than the lot of them!"
Jon groaned, gasping for breath. He grit his teeth, trying to throw the man off. "I can't control Sonagon when he's hungry…" Jon growled. "And we're not feeding Sonagon enough."
Sonagon hadn't been fed enough for a long time, Jon thought with a grimace. The dragon had a lot of mass to feed, and could be very gluttonous at times. The Weeper's eyes were mad and wide. "And what do you suggest?" He growled. "You expect me to let good men starve to feed that thing? Hells, why not feed people to it direct?"
The Weeper glared, spat, and then stormed, his men casting foul stares at Jon. He was left clutching his bruises. Jon froze, and then cursed. He felt like hitting something.
What did I expect in the north? Food is scarce enough as it is, without expecting them to feed a dragon too.
The next morning, everyone kept their distance from the dragon. The men's stares were far fouler, far more dangerous. The Weeper apparently sent out three times the number of hunting parties, and he gave the order that half needed to go to the dragon. Jon still wasn't sure if it would be enough to keep Sonagon placated.
Still, the Weeper also confiscated bronze and iron weapons from two dozen men in the night. There were raiders with hammers crudely smithing metal over campfires. They are crafting long metal spears or bolts, Jon realized. Weapons that might, might have been sharp and long enough to pierce a dragon's scales and cause some damage. They are starting to think about what might happen if they need to go dragon-hunting.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
It was a grim day. They set up camp early and made little progress as they waited for the hunting parties. Dusk came and went, and the horizon darkened with twilight.
When some of the parties failed to return outright, and when scouts reported movement in the shadows of the haunted forest, the Weeper sent out the alarm.
A cold beyond cold crept in with the night.
He could see the frost slithering out from the tree line, silvering the ground in jagged, unnatural patterns. Even the air seemed thicker, sluggish, carrying with it the faint stench of rot and death and wet earth. Somewhere in the blackness beyond the firelight, something moved - somethings, moving, he could hear them from the shambling steps crunching in snow and leaves, then silence again.
The Weeper stood on the other side of the fire, his scarred face flickering. He spat into the flames, jerked his head towards the trees. "They're out there," he said. "Been out there all night, testing my camp."
None of them wanted to say it. The Others. Jon's gaze followed the darkness beyond the ring of campfires. Hundreds of men, watching warily. "They're looking for weaknesses. Don't show them any."
The Weeper barked out a nasty laugh. "Don't tell me how to run my own camp, boy. I don't think they've got numbers to roll over this lot, anyway. Still, it's strange for the dead to haunt us so closely," the Weeper mused, darkly. "Dead men mean to fight us, I'd prefer they just go and get on with it."
Jon's fingers tightened on Dark Sister's hilt as he glanced at the dragon. Sonagon's tail twitched once, slowly, like a hunting dog's. The dragon's gaze had never once left the black line of the trees.
"They don't mean to fight. They're watching him."
The Weeper's gaze followed his. "…The dragon?"
"Yes," Jon insisted. His eyes flickered back to the Weeper's, and his voice turned lower. "They've been hunting him, hunting us from as far as the frozen wastes. Even here they still follow us."
"Aye," the Weeper nodded, suddenly agreeable. "That tracks."
Despite the tension of the moment, Jon frowned. "How so?"
The Weeper snorted, still staring into the trees. "You think I don't notice what's in my own camp? Every time your dragon moves, they start squirming, or whatever the fuck it is they're doing. I've only seen them like this before when they're after giants. They want your beastie." Then he grinned, cruelly. "Now what could the dead do with a dead dragon, I wonder?"
"Kill your people to the last, before turning on mine, I expect," Jon said flatly.
The Weeper's expression slowly sobered. "…that they would, boy. Might be the first truth coming out of your mouth I've heard."
The night turned even colder, frighteningly cold. They kept the camp fires and torches burning continuously, but four watchers on the edges of the camp died, freezing to death where they sat when their campfires froze over. Dark shapes and rustling bodies, the smell of death and cold.
They're testing us. The Weeper was careful and kept a tight perimeter, but the Others wielded cold like a weapon. Perhaps the white walkers didn't have the forces for an assault, but they still surrounded the camp at night, like a fog of deadly cold. The fires kept them at bay, but Jon knew the Others were somewhere out there, watching and waiting.
They won't be content to watch forever. How long before they launch a full-scale assault?
Jon spent the rest of the long night in Phantom's skin, stalking across the night. Jon could taste the fear, tension and distrust simmering in the camp. That sort of fear had a way of boiling over.
Some men couldn't take it. Towards the center of camp, a brawl broke out in the dead of night - some dispute or old grudge from the Hornfoots against the lake clans - and it ended up sucking half the camp into the chaos, despite the threat of the dead around them. Phantom heard the shouting. The brawl only ended when the Weeper stepped in personally.
The Weeper had little patience at best, and now, while the enemy was so near, none at all. The Weeper executed the man who threw the first punch by cutting off both arms with his scythe. That man lasted half an hour, screaming in the center of the camp, before he finally bled out. Then, the Weeper picked up a severed limb and beat the second man half to death with it. Both bodies were burned in the fires before they could rise. The Weeper was gnashing his teeth as he stormed away.
The camp turned very quiet after that.
Jon could only watch in quiet horror. There were no more brawls.
Later that night, towards morning, the Weeper's men - discreetly - gathered the corpses and floated the dead bodies of all the men who had died down the river, for Sonagon to swallow. When Jon stared at him, the Weeper only grunted and said it was easier than burning corpses.
Five hundred wildlings, Jon thought, in the dead of night. Five hundred raiders each with their own grudges and hatreds. The far north had been at war for so long, no one could even remember how half these clan's grudges had even begun. How am I even supposed to begin with rallying these folk? They truly are savages.
"Furs," Jon called as they stopped the next day. His leg felt stiff. "How many clans are left in the north? How many warbands, how many villages?"
The wildling shrugged. "Buggered if I know."
"Well what happened after Mance's collapse?" Jon pressed. "How many survived?"
"They said there were a hundred thousand with Mance," Furs mused. "Personally, I don't know who counted them. I reckon at least a third ended up dead on those mountains."
"A third?" Another grunted - a man with a long shaggy white beard. Jon suspected his name was Ulf or Wulf or something. "Try half, I'd say. Place was a slaughter."
Fifty thousand dead in a single night, Jon thought. That number was mind-boggling.
"Not so many," an old spearwife argued. Her name is Mo, Jon remembered. "Lots of corpses, but the camp was large enough that the vast part of the folk could get away. I say maybe ten thousand died - the rest scattered either west or east. I'd reckon most survived."
"Ten thousand the first night, possibly," another raider named Dugyll said grimly. "But how many died in the snow and cold in the weeks afterwards?"
Jon tried to remember that night. The fear and the panic. The cold, and the slaughter. He and Ygritte had fled fairly soon into the battle - and even then, there had been so many bodies that Jon knew that keeping count would have been hopeless. How many wildlings are there in the far north, anyway? he wondered.
He had thought that Mance's host was huge, but it suddenly occurred to him that his host might have been nearly the entire population of the far north. Every single man and woman. It was a hideous thought.
How many still remain?
That conversation set a foul mood over the camp. As they started moving again, Furs mentioned to Jon, "It ain't so grim," he said with a grunt. "A couple'a the older clans on the lower Antler didn't kneel to Mance - we'll be going right by 'em. Big clans, tough folk. Further north, the Frozen Shore always had a good number of tribes - savages, not worth recruiting, and not even Mance could rally the ice lakes to him: they want to fight the dead. There'll be cave dweller clans in the mountains buried so deep not even the Others could touch them, some of 'em don't even know what the sun is. The Skyclaws live on top of the Giant's Stair - I doubt the dead can touch them up there. The gorge and cave clans will be the last to fall, I'm sure of it. I hear some Thenns still hold out in the north, and who knows how many men could be even further north than that? I've heard stories about clans that live all the way up on the shores of the Lands of Always Winter, living in ice huts and hunting penguins and narwhals, and every few decades you hear of stories of whalers who get all the way up to Cannibal Bay - I hear there's an active whaling station the hairy men keep somewhere way up on the northern ice shores."
Hairy men? Ibbenese whalers, probably. Somewhere north enough the Watch's patrols wouldn't see them. Jon just looked at him, sighing. "Furs, I came with Sonagon all the way from the frozen wastes. I didn't see anyone."
"Well, you weren't going an' looking for them, were you?" Furs just shrugged. "You wondering how many the Others haven't killed, aren't you?"
That and how many they still have yet to kill. "Where are you from, Furs?" Jon asked after a pause. I know so little of these lands.
It was weird, now that he thought about it, to think of 'Beyond-the-Wall' as a single place - when in fact these lands were probably as vast as the civilized north itself - if not larger, once one started considering the wastes. There were many clans far enough northwards that they had never even seen the Wall, to hear the tell of it. Father sometimes said the north was nearly as large as the lower six of the Seven Kingdoms put together.
"Old Mother's Crock," Furs replied, and then he noticed Jon's confusion. "Up by the north-eastern shores. Bunch of rocks in the coast, call them the Old Mother. Good fishing. Five big rocks, five different clans on each one. Did you know that my father spent fifty years fighting for that rock? The folk from Old Mother's Bale used to come down demanding our salmon. My family fought those buggers for fifty years - they lived barely a hundred yards away."
Jon blinked. "…I see."
"Meh, you put a hundred free folk in the room, and they'll be a hundred different wars in a week. Maybe that's why most don't keep to the same place, you know," Furs continued. He motioned up towards Hatch, walking in front. "You see Hatch over there? I don't think he ever lived longer than a couple of weeks in one place. Most are constantly moving - you get clans that trek halfway around the north following the elk each year. And don't even get me started on the riverfolk; when the salmon run comes, you get a village of three hundred pop up overnight on the banks. Then that village will go and be gone in two weeks flat."
"There were villages around the Wall, in the haunted forest," Jon said slowly. To call them villages was an overstatement, admittedly. More like hamlets at best, just a few old shacks in the forest. Apparently, from what he had heard, the wildling's larger settlements were all somewhere or another along the forest's greater rivers. The Milkwater and the Antler mainly.
"Oh, aye some do," Furs agreed. "You also get some clans that lock down so tight - I know folks that I doubt will ever leave a hundred yards from where they were born. But most keep moving all their lives. What's the word? Migratory. Most of us roam like the giants."
Jon never replied. "You ever seen giants roam, Snow? The giant tribes used to herd their mammoths across the whole world. They would go as far north as north goes, to hear the tales. No one ever knew how far they went because none could follow them. My grandfather used to tell me about giant's clans and mammoth herds so big that the ground would rumble with their footsteps from miles off." There was a soft sigh. "Doubt we'll ever see the like again. Giants don't roam no more."
Jon stayed quiet. He thought back to that moment, so long ago, in the camp next to Ygritte. I am the last of the giants, they had sung at night. For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
He thought about thirty thousand, or fifty thousand, or however many wildlings dead in the mountains. He tried to imagine corpses that thick in the snow. More people than I have ever met, more names than I could memorize in a lifetime. Killed by the Others, and turned into their wights, in a single night.
It was a terrifying thought.
The free folk had no government, no organization. No tactics, no discipline. The south had a chance against the Others, especially with the Wall, but the wildlings had practically none. It would take strong castles and walls to defend against the Others. Fortifications and an organized military. The only thing that the free folk ever had that could remotely fill that gap was Mance, and even he failed, and was now gone.
I might be watching the extinction of every single man, woman, and child north of the Wall, Jon thought. An entire mountain of corpses for the Others to bring against the Wall.
That cannot happen.
In the evening, Jon watched the Weeper gather fifty men to scout ahead downriver, to go raid this 'Marthe of the Antlers' and steal his boats - the Weeper liked his night raids. It was probably deserved as well; to hear the tales, Marthe had a nasty reputation. Besides, the Weeper did need Marthe's ships. The raiders were almost eager for the battle, for the chance of plunder.
Tens of thousands have died already, Jon thought after a long pause. I can't let anymore die.
He made the decision in a moment. Jon waddled down to Sonagon by the bank, reaching out to the dragon gently. He clambered up onto Sonagon's horn, shivering slightly from the cold water. The Weeper has to cross the bend in the Antlers to reach Marthe, Jon thought, but Sonagon can just go through the river itself.
The water crashed as Sonagon lumbered upwards, rearing to his stubby legs as his forearms reached out. The river splashed with every flick of its tail, but the dragon powered through the river with ease. Jon heard shouts from the riverbank, but Sonagon was already moving, leaving the camp behind.
In an instant, they were charging ahead. The dragon made good time. Ten or so minutes later, Jon heard the shouts from downriver before he saw the small isle carved into a joint in the river. Stag's Peak 'Keep' was barely a keep at all - Jon would have called it more a cottage of thatch and pine, with river fishing sloops moored onto the muddy bank, skins covering the walls and great firepits dug into the ground. And at the sight of Sonagon lumbering down the river, Jon heard panic.
An arrow whizzed past his head and bounced into Sonagon's shoulder. The dragon roared.
He saw men running around Stag's Peak. River raiders clutching long harpoons and nets, or willow shortbows and barbed arrows. Jon saw a man who must be Marthe himself - a tall, skinny man wearing the great skull of a stag as a helm, elk furs over his shoulders, standing barefoot in the mud. Jon never even gave them a chance.
Sonagon would have instantly killed them all with a blast of frostfire - but, thankfully, Jon convinced the dragon otherwise. Sonagon's tail whipped around, striking like thunder. The thatch roof of the keep crashed open, sending splinters flying. Men crashed to the ground. Jon heard a babe wailing.
Don't give them a chance to protest. Take advantage of the confusion. In an instant, Jon dropped off the dragon's head onto the muddy beach, Dark Sister in his hand. One wildling tried to stop him, but Jon slid beneath his axe, knocked the man to the ground, kicked him in the head, and swept on by.
The fight was as sudden as it was decisive. Five men against one, but Jon moved through them swiftly. Valyrian steel slashed through wooden spears as easily as a warm knife through butter. Two men crashed to the ground, moaning - one was missing a hand - and then Jon saw the stag's skull helm, charging down at him from the stairs with a bronze axe.
Seconds later, that axe was cut in two, and Marthe of the Antlers was trying to stagger to his feet when Jon grabbed him and pressed Dark Sister into the man's throat. Marthe garbled something - is that the Old Tongue? - it sounded like a throaty sort of gibberish to him.
"There are raiders coming to take everything you own," Jon said, keeping his voice hard. He dragged Marthe down, holding his blade to his skull. An antler cracked. Other raiders were holding weapons, surrounding him, but Jon held their leader hostage and gave no quarter. "They are led by the Weeper. You are going to surrender your ships peacefully, along with half of your rations. In return, I will let you walk away with your lives, and protect you from him."
Behind him Sonagon roared anxiously. Don't eat them, Jon pushed. Not yet.
"You surrender now!" Jon shouted. "The raiders will not give you this chance."
The wildlings stared at him with the fear of god in their eyes. But that name - the Weeper's - meant something even here. Marthe looked at him almost babbling in terror. Jon counted twenty-six wildlings living on this tiny isle; six raiders, fifteen women, none of them actual spearwives, two old grandmothers, four children and one babe.
And, unfortunately, some of the women and one or two of the girl children were rather pretty, as Furs had said; this place would have become worse than a charnelhouse if the Weeper had gotten here first. If he had attacked, this tiny river clan would have tried to fight back to the last, and gotten themselves killed and worse in useless defiance.
But they couldn't fight back against the dragon.
Jon met the Weeper's men clambering into Stag's Peak half an hour later. Jon met the man himself with Dark Sister in his hand. "They surrender," Jon said. "They'll give you safe passage through the river."
The Weeper's eyes looked furious. "Bugger that, you think I'll trust this stinking river scum? Marthe's a slimehole, Snow. These fuckers die."
You're not one to judge. "I said, they surrender. Take their boats, not their lives."
"So they can ambush us again when our backs are turned?" The Weeper snarled. "I know how these river scum work. I'll give them the same mercy they'd give me."
Jon raised his sword, pointing Dark Sister at the man. The Weeper glared, clutching his scythe as he stomped forward. "… Oh Snow…" he hissed. "If you raise your sword against me you'd better be damn sure you know how to use it."
I could take the Weeper. Jon was a better fighter now than he had ever been. Acorn's training, abbreviated as it had been, had shown him heights of swordcraft he hadn't known humanly possible. Moreover, months in the wilderness had left him strong and lean, and he had fought more life and deaths battles in the last weeks than he had all his life. Jon's leg was still weaker, but he had learned how to compensate for it in a fight. I could beat the Weeper. Probably.
But do I want to take that chance?
"They surrender," Jon said. "And you don't have to trust them, because Marthe's coming with us. He's joining the warband."
The Weeper's nostrils flared. "You'd let fucking Marthe into my warband!"
"Aye. Marthe wants to see Hardhome too." Jon had already gotten the measure of the man - he was terrified to be on the wrong side of the dragon. Jon promised him protection if he joined, and vaguely implied that he'd demolish Stag's Peak Keep if he didn't. "You need men and boats; Marthe's got boats, and men who know how to use them. They're coming with us."
The look on the Weeper's face was somewhere between fury and horror. The man's scythe twitched. Jon stepped forward, so close he could whisper. "Pick your battles, Weeper," Jon muttered, meeting the man's eyes. "He's coming with us."
The Weeper growled. "You think you know Marthe, Snow?" He lowered his voice. "You don't know a goddamn thing. You want to know how Marthe got Stag's Peak? He never built it, he took it. Previous men who used to live here was a family of fishermen. Good folk, better than most - always had fish to sell to any band that came by, rarely gave insult, oftentimes had shelter to spare for those who needed it."
The Weeper almost whispered in Jon's ear, snarling. "Years ago, see, Marthe was a huntsman. He came along these parts, and traded a stag's corpse in return for shelter for a night, and passage across the river. Marthe feasted in those fisherman's homes, shared in their hearth." His voice was venomous. "…Except for one thing, just one little thing. That stag that he sold was diseased, boy. Marthe was a huntsman - he knew it. The fisherfolk did not. He sold it anyway." The Weeper's expression grew even darker. "Have you ever seen what greyscale does to a man, Snow?"
Jon hesitated. His eyes flickered, though he said nothing. He stared across the isle, looking at the tall, lean man with the stag's head crown. "…A week later, when the disease really started to kick in, old Marthe came back," the Weeper whispered. "The men were half-dead when he cut their throats. The women… well… they weren't dead enough for what Marthe did them."
The Weeper's voice turned into a growl. "Now why don't you have a real good look at the type of man you're protecting here, boy?"
Jon paused for a long moment, staring at the hatred in the Weeper's eyes. Guest right. Some things were sacred even to the free folk.
"…Doesn't matter," Jon said after a while, and hating himself slightly for it. "We need more living men, not more corpses."
"And you really think I would suffer scum like that still breathing?"
I suffer you. "He lives," Jon said. "He comes with us. If he tries anything, I cut his throat; but if you try anything now will I cut yours."
The Weeper snarled, with a feral grunt, before lowering his scythe and shoving past Jon. "…Next time you raise your sword to me, boy, you better be damn well prepared to bleed for it."
His voice was angry. The other raiders looked uncertain. "Get these bloody boats already!" The Weeper snapped. "Move! If Marthe even looks at me, I take his bloody eyes!"
Jon took a deep breath, sheathing his blade. He turned back to stare at Stag's Peak Keep. Stag's Peak Hovel, more like. He had rarely seen a more crude and petty domicile in his entire life. I risked my life for a handful of shacks, half a dozen rafts, a pantry of dried fish, and two dozen wildlings. Am I really doing the right thing?
They started moving later that day. They were about three days march from the where the north tributary of the Antler ended, but the Weeper and all the rest said it would get faster once they left this backcountry and could start using the trails on the side of the real Antler proper - the forest would grow less thick then, and it would be a straight shot to the coast if they stuck to the river trails.
They feasted at Stag's Peak that night, crammed around the firepits. Jon kept well away from the Weeper, trying to ignore the way the men from Marthe's clan stared at him. The gurgle of the rapids of the Antler was a drone in the background.
"How many river clans are still around here?" Jon asked, keeping his voice low as he thought.
Rolf shrugged, looking at him suspiciously with his single grizzled eye. "A dozen, maybe, that haven't ran yet? Marthe was the biggest of them in this bit of the northern Antlers, but you'll still get clans of ten folk each between here n' there."
"So a hundred men between here and the lake to the south? Maybe more?" Jon pressed, thinking intently. Probably more.
"What you thinking, Snow?"
I'm thinking that there are free folk around here who are going to die if they stay, but are too stubborn to run. "I'm thinking that we could get more men to us if we try to rally the clans," Jon said. "Has the Weeper thought about recruiting them?"
Rolf snorted. "Snow, the Weeper doesn't want more men," he scoffed, crunching on an old bone with grizzled teeth. "Especially not these upper river scum."
"What do you mean?" Jon asked.
Two-Notch Haldur snorted condescendingly, while Furs rolled his eyes.
"S'okay, why would a crow know the lay of free folk land?" Rolf said casually, chewing on another leg of chicken, before his eyes flickered back to Jon. "The Antler's the choicest bit of land the free folk've got, Snow. All the best hunting grounds're along the length of the river past Crosswater lake, where the water starts flowing all muddy. Up here the river's still tiny, more blue water than not - this here's jus' one of the four or five Antlers before it becomes the Antler. As hunting grounds go, these ones are pretty shit. Marthe and his bunch are just the dregs who couldn't hack it - buggers had to run away to this backcountry."
"Rolf's right, there," Furs muttered. He was sharpening a bone dagger from where he sat across the fire, giving the edge a gimlet eye. "The clans get way bigger as you go south and start marching along the Antler proper. Tough bastards with all the best hunting grounds. Bastards, most of 'em. Whole lotta clans that wouldn't follow Mance. They don't fear kings, and they don't fear the dead."
Two-Notch Haldur just snorted. "Too stupid, more like."
Jon frowned. "Then why doesn't the Weeper recruit them?"
The raiders eyed one another. Rolf didn't reply - he just grunted and picked up another leg of chicken from the fire, and started stripping off the greasy skin with his fingers, savoring it by the bite. Furs scowled. He was the one to speak, as he set down one knife and began sharpening another.
"You ever meet Val, Snow? Mance's… what do you call it…? Sister to Mance's woman? Goodsister, is that the word?"
Jon had to think for a moment, but nodded. "I remember her - Dalla's sister. Goodsister is close enough of a term."
Furs grinned. "Knew it. Anyways, after Mance's host broke up in the Frostfangs, that Val tried to regather it in the hills. I hear she even got quite a number to her. Maybe ten thousand or more. You want to know what they're doing now? They're starving."
"More men ain't an advantage. Only fools think that," Rolf agreed, scooting a little down on his log so the fire's smoke didn't blow his way. "More men you've got, the more injuries, the more weak, the more cripples, the more delays - the slower you go and the faster you starve. That's why Mance failed - he had too many men, women, children; the host was so big it couldn't even organize properly when they got hit, let alone fight back." He shook his head. "The Weeper don't want no more, even five hundred is bigger than he normally takes."
The Weeper was so angry I brought in Marthe's clan, and they were only thirty or so. How would he react to hundreds? Thousands? Jon grimaced at the thought. "The Weeper will just leave behind anyone who can't keep up? Even from his own warband?"
"Leave behind? Hell, the Weeper will cut the legs off any who can't keep up." Furs nodded at Jon's expression. "Oh aye, I know. None of us like the Weeper either. Doesn't matter - the Weeping Man doesn't care. He don't ask to be liked. At the end of the day, we're with the Weeper because the Weeper gets results."
"I used to march with Tormund, myself," said Rolf. Tormund and the Weeper were at war for decades, Jon recalled. Their rivalry was said to be almost as bad as Harma Dogshead and Rattleshirt. "I'd still say that Tormund was the better leader, personally. Still, the crows took Tormund and the Weeper is the second best."
That is all it comes down to, at the end of the day: the free folk will follow those they believe can save them.
Jon's gloved hands clenched at the thought. The Weeper is wrong. He'd leave people behind to face the white walkers, and that's wrong. The Weeper would keep his warband alive, rescue the strong warriors only, and leave the rest to die. It's wrong.
Jon looked at the firepit thoughtfully. The smoke seemed to twist and turn in the air, reminding him of how the Antlers traced through the haunted forest, before converging to one flow. Later, Jon stood up without another word.
He found Marthe of the Antlers quickly. The river raider stood at that back of his keep, staring at Sonagon in the water. His eyes widened as he saw Jon approach. "Marthe. You know every clan around these parts, don't you?" The man looked too speechless to do anything but nod dumbly.
"Good, gather your men, we're taking some of your boats. Quietly." Jon ordered. They were the Weeper's boats now and Jon doubted the Weeper would be keen to part with them. "We're going to rally the other clans. However many there are, they need to come with us."
I'm not leaving any behind. Marthe just hesitated, but Jon didn't feel like giving him a choice. "And take that bloody stag off your head!" Jon snapped. "You don't deserve a crown."
He gathered as many free folk who might come with him. It was lucky the camp was busy and distracted as he moved. Jon gathered Furs, Hatch, Haldur, and a dozen others and made the proposal in the middle of the night.
"I'm going to go on ahead," Jon said. "Quickly. We're going to go rally the river clans, bring more men to us. The Weeper would leave them all behind or kill them if they try to slow us down, but I won't do that."
"You want us to go against the Weeper?" A man said incredulously.
"It's the Weeper or the dragon. Which one would you rather have with you?"
Furs and Hatch agreed in an instant. Rolf and many others spat in his face. They left the camp very quickly that night - Jon, around fifty men, Ghost and Sonagon - before anyone really had time to stop them.
By morning, they were already on their way in the detour. Jon split the group up - sending Furs south and Hatch the Halfgiant north with a dozen men to spread the word up another of the Antlers, while Marthe took his boats down the river. Jon rode Sonagon, crashing through the forest early dawn with a groundbreaking roar.
All of the wildlings would spread the word. I want everyone to know. Come west to Hardhome with me if you want to live. Come with me if you want the dragon to protect you.
Jon visited half a dozen river clans that day alone, touring Sonagon down the valley. He saw tiny villages of old men and women or green boys. He saw river reavers so savage they couldn't even speak the Common. Every single one, no matter how tough or savage, reacted the same way in front of Sonagon; fear, shock, even awe.
The wildlings spread out. The message spread like wildfire; come to Hardhome with the host. Nobody gets left behind.
On the first day, he had only maybe thirty or so wildlings, not counting his raiders. The second, it was seventy. The more men they met, the faster the word spread.
The Weeper would be beyond furious. Jon stole his men and ran off by himself, but Jon didn't care. The free folk needed a dragon more than they needed another raider.
It was exhilarating. That look on their faces as they gazed upon the dragon… It sent shivers down his spine. Jon barely even needed to say anything, not when Sonagon's roar did all the work.
Marthe sent his boats ahead down the river, to meet up with the wildling raiders gathering at Crosswater. Jon tried to learn the names of the wildling leaders they might expect to find downriver; men with names like Barrad Bloodcloak, Braithe the Beaverhide, Alvin Whaletooth, Laisa Threespear, Gavin the Trader, Morna White Mask, Halrak Stonetooth, Bullden Horn, Gerrick Kingsblood.
By the fourth night, they had two hundred people to them. After talking to a dozen men, Jon expected he could have over five hundred in week. They might well have over a thousand by the time they reached Crosswater, and could begin the journey to Hardhome.
There are a lot of elderly, starved and frail, Jon admitted. Men and women that refused Mance's call as he gathered his host, instead clinging to their own little territories around the river. The Weeper's force had been seasoned warriors, but this force was frail, old and weak.
"You sure about this one, Snow?" Hatch asked him one night. "We march with this lot, a lot of people are going to end up dying on the way."
Jon had to grimace, but agree. "Yet they'll die anyways if they don't run. They need to move."
"And you're going to lead them all east to Hardhome, and then south to the Wall?"
"Somebody has to."
In the distance, Sonagon splashed with his tail into the water, and then used his breath to freeze the water into a blasted crater of ice. There were gasps and screams all around, as Sonagon snapped out and began chewing at the ice - apparently there were some fish in there.
"They look at that thing like he's some sort of god, you know that?" Furs commented.
Hatch just stared at him. "Are you sure it's not?"
The Weeper caught up with them by the end of the fourth day. Jon hadn't been sure if the man would keep on going without them, but apparently he turned back to search for Jon. Jon saw watery eyes so wide they looked mad, flanked by a dozen men stamping out of the forest. By Jon's side, Ghost growled.
"Snow!" The Weeper snarled. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Making my own warband," Jon replied, folding his arms.
"Your warband?" The Weeper scoffed, staring around the shambles of a camp. There might have been one decent-looking fighting man for every forty or fifty women, children or elderly. Even spearwives of fighting age were a decided minority. "You call this a warband? I call it fodder."
"I'm not leaving any behind. We can escort them to Hardhome with us."
"So I bloody hear," he growled. "…Snow, if you really want to help these… people, then you go get your ass to the Wall with your dragon, and open those gates as quickly as possible." The Weeper leaned in more closely, almost meeting Jon's face with his own. "This fodder. Ain't. Nece-ssary," he snarled, rolling the word over his tongue like it was a curse.
Jon shook his head. "The Others are on our tail, and everyone we leave behind is another corpse for their army. Either they come with us alive, or they will follow us, but as more of the dead. We clear the river, spread the word - we assemble another host."
"And leave us open targets? Leave us to starve in the meantime?" The Weeper threw his hands up in frustration. "Snow, we could get to Hardhome in a week - if you stop to pick up every bloody stray on the way there, how the fuck long is that fucking going to take? We ain't even at the lower river yet!"
"However long it needs to take." He kept his voice hard. His fingers stayed close to Dark Sister, staring at the Weeper's eyes. "I am not leaving them."
The Weeper turned to stare at the men next to him. Furs and Hatch shifted uncomfortably. "And you're all going along with this?" The Weeper spat. "Snow is green. He doesn't know these folk, he doesn't know how slow they will move or the disease they will spread. You're decent enough raiders, I thought you'd have more sense than this."
Hatch squirmed, refusing to eye the Weeper. Furs did, though, and just nodded frankly. "My vote's on the dragon, mate. No offense."
The Weeper's face twisted, growling at Jon. "You're a bloody fool, Snow."
"And you're a savage."
"You say that as if it's a bad thing," the Weeper scoffed, clutching his scythe hard enough to make the haft creak. "…How many do you have already? Three hundred?"
Two, though more are coming by the hour. Jon just nodded.
"I don't think your dragon is going to be able to protect them. Not all of them, not from all sides," said the Weeper. "I think you need me and my warband."
"I think we both need each other," said Jon. Unfortunately.
"Now that's what I'm wondering about. How useful are you really?" He snarled. "Why the fuck shouldn't I just kill you and be on my way?"
The Weeper had both hands on his scythe, the wicked long blade twitching.
I could draw my sword, Jon thought quietly, fingers twitching. One quick swing. Take the Weeper's head. The Weeper only rules by fear; kill him and take them…
The other free folk were watching, but none would interfere. Wildlings wouldn't step in on another man's fight. The free folk would follow whoever survived.
I do need the men. And the Weeper is a monster…
Jon met the Weeper's eyes. The Weeper's fingers were twitching too.
Jon hesitated for a long moment. Then, he shook his head. "No," he said slowly. "I think you want me to try and fight you."
"I want you to give me a reason, Snow," the Weeper growled. He was a short man, but stocky, muscled and strong. "Give me a reason to finally take your fool's head."
That's how he solves all his problems, isn't it? Jon shook his head again. "No," he said quietly. "We're not doing it your way. Either stay here or go on by yourself, but we are not doing this butting of heads anymore."
He turned and slowly walked away. Ghost hesitated, but then followed. "I'm on the side of the living, Weeper," Jon said, looking back at him with one eye. "Not the dead."
The Weeper looked frothing-at-the-mouth angry, his face twisted until he looked almost inhuman. Jon half-expected to hear the scythe swinging for his back at any moment, to hear Ghost pouncing at the man, but nothing happened.
About an hour later, Jon saw the Weeper's men filing into the camp. The raiders set up perimeter and patrols, secured the area, all of the things that Jon didn't have the manpower to do.
Towards the evening, was it Jon's imagination or were the Weeper's gazes - his brief stares at Jon - just slightly less hostile?
Two days later, they reached Crosswater Lake.