14: To Hardhome, Part 4

To Hardhome, Part 4

Jon

The Lower Antler River, Within Sight of the SeaFull novel: Dragons of Ice and Fire — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

The river had been widening for the last several leagues, but as it made its final approach to the sea it opened up all at once.

It was a phenomenon of rivers quite unlike anything Jon had seen before, except on maps of far-off, distant lands he'd never thought he would see in person. Where there had been one great river channel, now it had dispersed into dozens, perhaps even hundreds of smaller riverlets that spilled outwards into a vast, flat floodplain. A wide muddy region scored by small waterways winding over the land like countless loose threads, braided streams and countless random oxbow lakes. All of it was mostly covered over by snow, but enough traces remained clear.

The wildlings had an apt name for this place - the Gullet. The mouth of the Antler, where it finally drained outwards into the Shivering Sea.

Jon rode ahead with the scouts atop a garron. Ghost padded along soundlessly at his right side, while Phantom was almost as near, stalking behind only a few dozen paces off.

Jon had finally abandoned the idea of using the shadowcat to patrol the rear of the refugee line - simply because the column of refugees behind them had grown too long. Mile after mile of disparate wildling clans and all their sledges, pigs and goats and garrons, wagons and boats and other goods, all stretching too far back for Jon to really keep an eye on it anymore. Even a few giants and their mammoths had recently joined in.

In all, it was too much: no single warg could guard all of that anymore. It had to be delegated to the less necessary men in the Weeper's warband, and to the chieftains with wargs of their own.

Hatch and Flint-Eye Fennel rode closest to him. Hatch was grumbling about strange weather that was creeping in, something about a weirdly early snowfall, but Jon dismissed it as nonsense: most of his focus was on Fennel. The scout was one of the very few spearwives in the warband, a fur trapper who had taken easily to being an advance scout and outrider for the Weeper's raiders. An ugly, but competent woman who seemed to know these lands as well as the back of her own right hand.

"I've heard there are a lot of clans at the mouth of the Antler," Jon commented as they rode together, garrons matching stride. "Perhaps too many. The rangers of the Night's Watch say this region is too chaotic to range in."

Hatch snorted. "Yeah, I can see why crows'd say that well enough."

Flint-Eye Fennel gave a grunt of agreement. "No one plants permanent camps in the Gullet, Snow; land won't allow it." She gestured to the rolling, snow-covered flats ahead with a gloved hand. The sea had been a grey bar on the horizon a few hours ago, but was now swiftly being obscured by yet another blizzard. "Folk in this here Gullet are always on the move because the Gullet itself is always on the move. Of course it'd all look like one great mess to the black cowards."

Jon looked at her curiously. "Are there no maps?"

She snorted. "Nah, ain't even possible to map it - if you were fool enough to try, most of your fool scribblings would get wiped out in the spring floods. That's why the clans here are so migratory - always on the move as the little rivers shift."

"Yeah, sounds right," Hatch agreed amiably. "You get all sorts of clans round here, since it's real thick-like with food and game - but no one can set down stakes that'll last. Same area might see a whole different folk every moon, following whichever little river feeds them best that season before it shifts someplace else. Clans have to learn to read the river like it's a living thing, or they'll starve when it moves on 'em," he paused, then added: "bad things can happen to a clan that finds their channel dried up overnight and their salmon run going into someone else's grounds."

Jon nodded. He could see the logic in that.

"Aye, it's all migratory folk in these parts," Fennel added. "Not much choice, really. How else would you live in a land that changes come every spring thaw?" she snorted. "Or jus' whenever it rains hard enough. Never know which little rivers will dry up or where new ones'll open up. Water shifts, a clan's got to move quick. It's rich feeding, but treacherous ground. You never know where the new little rivers will end up or who's gonna fight you for it. Always gotta be ready to pull up stakes and find some new hunting grounds—"

Jon heard something. Fennel went silent with a small, gasping sound. He turned to ask her what was wrong, what she'd seen.

An arrowshaft was buried in her eye. A fletching of white feathers, suddenly sprouting from her skull like some grisly bouquet.

What. Jon stared at the poor scout for a moment, mouth agape - and then: "Ambush!" he shouted. "To me!"

The dead spearwife swayed in her saddle, then her body finally caught up to the fact that she was dead. The moment she toppled from her garron into the snow, more arrows came screaming down.

No warning. Nothing. Jon's garron reared in fright when an arrow almost grazed its throat. The scouts all around him started shouting. He hauled on the reins, then drew Dark Sister. "To me! To me!"

The source of the arrows was obscured by the snows. Another scout over on the right jerked backward in his saddle when an arrow lanced into his throat. Another man crashed to the ground when his garron pitched him over with a screaming neigh - it had just taken an arrow to its hindquarters. More arrows lanced out of the falling snows, striking shields, punching into leather, skipping off the ice on the ground. Mounts and men screamed and whirled in sudden panic.

"To Snow!" Hatch roared, and the surviving scouts wheeled hard, spurring toward Jon's voice.

Who were their attackers? Who would even dare to ambush over a dozen mounted riders afield in broad daylight in winter, here beyond the Wall? He'd thought the risk so low he hadn't even bothered to scout afield with Ghost, gods damn it - no, he tore himself away from those thoughts. It doesn't matter. His self-recriminations could wait. The enemy is here.

He could see only indistinct shapes, barely visible at all through the snowfall: more as vague suggestions of movement than something he could properly discern. We're on open ground here. We're too exposed. He couldn't even begin to tell how many there were, not with his own eyes.

"Go! Follow me!" Jon kicked his feet into his garron and bolted for a nearby stand of trees he knew from Ghost's eyes was ahead in this direction, though he himself could barely see more than thirty paces through the sudden blizzard. Trust in Ghost.

The eight remaining scouts followed and closed around him in a ragged knot. More arrows kept coming after them through the falling snow, but mounted movement made the scouts harder to hit. And then they saw the stand of trees.

"Oh thank the gods," a scout Jon didn't know cried out the moment they came under the trees - even as deprived of leaves as they were in winter, the trunks at least would offer some protection.

Arrows were still coming after them. One thunked into a tree trunk beside his garron.

Jon and all the rest dismounted from behind cover. The eyes of all the scouts were wild as they scanned the white curtain beyond their stand. Falling snow obscured everything, muffled the sounds of everything else; their attackers were mere hints, suggestions of shapes amidst the flurry.

"Who are they?" One of the wounded scouts gasped out. His eyes were wide, crazed - there was an arrow stuck in the meat of his arm, one that somehow couldn't readily be pulled out. The man was bleeding like a stuck pig. "Who the fuck are they!"

There was no answer to give. There was no time to wonder, no time to think. They were coming.

What is that? He saw the shadows of shapes moving far too quickly over the snow, impossibly quickly - it was a pace no garron or man afoot could ever match.

Then he saw their enemies finally come into view.

He saw archers on long, smooth planks of wood that seemed to almost glide over the snow. Behind them came low white sleds like chariots, hauled by massive dogs. They all wore white furs, with bows and sleds painted white.

He had seen skis before, they were a common tool for sledges in the north, a means for winter recreation and conveyance of goods where regular horses and mules would fail - but he had never before seen them used for combat. These ones looked different, shorter and broader. Nor had he seen dog-pulled sleds used in battle. Even as he stared, one of the attackers drew back a short recurved bow, a bow painted white. Likely aimed directly at him.

Winter raiders, Jon thought with a chill, quickly pulling his head back behind his tree before an arrow could get him.

The rangers had told stories about clans like this. Wildling raiders who could move through winter with the ease of a shark in the sea. Raiders who specialized in winter hunting and battle. By their equipment alone he could see this was a different breed of wildling: he saw skis, dogsleds, bows and arrows. All painted white, all adapted to camouflage into winter. Even the archers atop the sleds wore pale sealskin furs that seemed to blend into the blizzard - even their faces were painted in that same bone-white warpaint.

But not all the enemies kept their distance.

A group of them broke from the pack circling their tiny, pathetic stand of trees; half a dozen winter raiders that easily shed their skis and charged through the knee-high snowpack. Clearly intending to press their advantage, refusing to give Jon and his scouts any time to regroup.

One of them charged straight for him. A huge bearded figure in crudely cut white sealskins. He came at Jon with twin hand-axes, roaring something in the guttural Old Tongue:

There was no time. Jon quickly calmed himself. He waited for this enemy, heart pounding, ignoring the ache in his leg. He looked, quickly taking in the details: the length of the savage's stride, the angle of his shoulders, the weapons in his favored and unfavored hand, mapping out an internal path to victory - and then he met the savage blade to blade.

Dark Sister was a longsword: meaning it was a weapon with quite a bit more reach than the raider's hand axes. In a circumstance like this, a battle in the snow where mobility over terrain would almost always mean life or death - doubtlessly the reason behind the winter raider's certainty of an easy kill - that advantage proved key.

Just as the winter raider's twin axes began their descent, Jon stepped in and lashed out with a single overhanded cut.

The winter raider had no choice but to defend. He raised his axe in a defense, but Jon wasn't aiming for a clash of blades.

The Valyrian steel bit through the wildling's raised axe-haft and collarbone alike, cutting through wood and flesh and bone as easily as a knife through warm butter. The winter raider's battle roar cut off in a wet choke - the white-clad figure immediately staggered, dropping his axes as he clutched at his throat.

A second, horizontal cut took the wildling savage's head.

But there was no time to take in the victory. The rest of the scouts were all desperately fighting some figure or another. For a moment he struggled to make sense of it, of who was friend and foe. Too much snow was falling. It was like he was surrounded by inscrutable bodies thrashing in the snow, men screaming, fighting and dying everywhere he looked— !

He ducked just as an arrow came for his head, launched by some outraged winter raider archer the moment they'd seen their comrade's body fall at Jon's feet. The nearest sled-archers roared their fury at Jon, and then a barrage of arrows came for him.

He cut one from the air with Dark Sister, then dropped into the knee-high snowpack before the rest could get him. From there he rolled behind the nearest tree trunk. Impacts thudded into the wood.

"Protect Snow!" Hatch roared from somewhere, and an instant later several of the surviving archers from among the scouts loosed their own arrows. The attackers' dog-drawn sleds veered away sharply, choosing distance and mobility over closing on foot again.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, Jon was aware of Ghost and Phantom, who had vanished into the snow together, silent white and grey blurs, predators waiting for an opportunity amidst the blizzard.

That chance came when one of the unknown attackers, a dog sled rider alone on his sleigh, drew too close to the trees.

The winter raider was in the midst of mushing his dogs, critically distracted. He had just enough time to turn his head: and then Phantom leapt high, jaws closing on his throat from behind even as he was atop his sleigh. Ghost slammed in from below, ripping into his belly and dragging him down. The man screamed - and then quickly cut off when both his throat and his intestines were torn free of his body at once in a red steaming mess of gore.

Jon's focus shifted to the rest of the attacking winter raiders. No, they're retreating. The rest of the winter raiders who'd attacked afoot were now peeling back to their comrades on the sleds, having found far stiffer resistance from the scouts than they'd anticipated. Perhaps they have no idea they attacked the Weeper's men.

Somehow, at some point another of the dog-drawn sleds had crashed into one of the trees. Jon was only vaguely aware of how. Ghost had done something earlier in the fight, driven the dogs driving this second sled into a panic - probably while Jon had been mid-fight. He'd only had the attention to spare for his second skins when they'd cooperated to take down that second sleigh rider.

It almost felt like his head was pounding, like something, some haze in the air was pressing at his skin. What was it? He only had a vague sense of death, death everywhere. What was this feeling? What was he sensing?

"Who the fuck are they!" Another scout growled out, blood weeping from a cut on his forehead, forcing Jon back to himself, away from whatever the strangeness in the air was. Jon thought this scout's name was Crawtooth, but he wasn't quite sure - he was staring at something. At the abandoned dog sleigh. It really was like a chariot, made for the snow. "What the fuck is this?" the scout said, staring at the thing.

Then he saw the same thing as Crawtooth: bones, hanging from the abandoned sleigh.

Human bones, lashed and hanging from belts. Some as trophies, others as… utility.

Disgusting. Even as inured as he was to the morbid sights of the far north by now, Jon still found himself staring: half a dozen human ribcages had been splayed open across the sides with white-bleached rawhide filling in the gaps, creating something like armor paneling for a war chariot. A wizened severed hand dangled from the front like a charm, apparently for nothing but decoration - or perhaps in the service of some unspeakably savage superstition. Utterly disgusting.

Hatch breathed heavily next to him. The big man had blood running from a graze on his cheek. He eyed the corpse of the winter raider Jon had cut down, then the sled - and spat a curse. "Fuck! Frozen Shore savages?"

"Neyj," another scout argued, in a guttural, thickly accented tone. Jon didn't know this one's name at all, just that he himself was a former Frozen Shore clansman come down from a far northern settlement called Boneharbor. "Ice river kllan. Kannibal kllan. Only dey wear bones like… this."

Like Rattleshirt. Jon supposed that savage had to have gotten the idea from somewhere. The ice river clans. Clans infamous for their savagery even among wildlings. Cannibals, then.

Jon's attention flickered back to the cannibal raider he'd slain. His gaze lingered as he noted the dead winter raider's fallen weapons, if only in contempt for how crude they were in make - crude things not forged from any sort of metal such as cold-worked copper, or even the knapped stone he'd seen from lesser clans. Certainly nothing approaching the Thenn's bronze; these were made of some carved… horn, or perhaps bone. He had never seen a more primitive weapon in his life - he almost couldn't believe it. Savages. Truly, these ones are savages.

More arrows rained down. The scouts quickly withdrew for cover behind the tree trunks. But the arrows now lacked the accuracy and sheer terror of the first volleys. The archers among the cannibal skiers and sleigh riders were keeping their distance. They've learned caution now, Jon thought in brief irritation. Their options would be far reduced if the attackers refused to come within fighting distance again.

Jon couldn't even tell how many attackers there were. The snows were falling too thick now to see. If I had to estimate, at least a dozen attackers - maybe as many as thirty. At either the low or the high guess, they were outnumbered. Possibly terribly outnumbered.

What made it worse, these foes were winter raiders in truth; moving in disciplined pairs, circling, shooting, vanishing into drifts, reappearing elsewhere. It was impossible to estimate them or anticipate them, let alone react to them in a way that mattered. And their dogs drove along their war sleighs like the Essosi chariots he'd read of in stories, a tactic that made so much sense now that he was seeing it in person: the things could slide over the snow faster than any horse could ever manage in these conditions.

For lack of better options, Jon reached back to his saddle and unstrapped his weirwood bow. He was no great archer; Robb had been better, fluid and sure, and Ygritte… Ygritte had been a prodigy. Still, he set a black-fletched shaft to the bowstring, sighted on a target, aimed, drew, and loosed.

The first arrow flew wide and vanished into the snow. The second uselessly clipped a corner of a sled.

The third arrow took one of the skiing enemy archers high in the shoulder. The ice river clansman fell over - and then the figure in white picked himself back up again and skied away, blood trailing behind him. Damn, Jon cursed internally. He was far too out of practice to use a bow in real combat - he hadn't even trained with one since his time under Ser Alliser in Castle Black's yards.

More white arrows came down. One impaled into a shield Jon had grabbed at some point from his garron for protection and jarred his arm harshly. Another scout let out an agonized cry and fell back with an arrow in his shoulder.

Jon pulled the arrow from his shield with a hard jerk, noting for a moment that the arrowhead was made of more of that primitive, carved bone. Bleached wood, white feathers for fletching, a bone tip. A white arrow that would be practically invisible in the snow. Strange. Strange skills from this clan, all of it.

Even now, he didn't want to kill these men - not truly. Jon could already see how these ice river raiders had valuable skills; their sleds and bows and dogs, their skis and mobile archery. They would be a valuable addition to his host. And he had sworn to bring all the wildlings south. He could think of a dozen different ways that winter raider tactics this sophisticated could be more widely adapted, improvised. And they were people too. People of the realms of man.

But when he'd sworn his oath to the greenseer, he hadn't thought of everything. It was a rumor spread far and wide even south of the Wall that some of the free folk were cannibals. He had known of those rumors… distantly, but he hadn't thought much of them. Just more fel exaggerations of distant myths, he might have said, if someone had asked him. Rumors only loosely based on reality - if at all.

And yet now those myths had proven all too real.

The rangers' darkest tales suddenly crowded in his mind. Tales of men like beasts, savages in human skin who ate their enemies. The monsters of the darkest, farthest north. The savages the Night's Watch existed to fight. At least in the modern era.

He thought about what the rest of the clans under him might have to say if he tried to recruit this ice river clan. He tried to visualize it, how it would go, what the chieftains might say - and saw only portents of disaster. My own people would kill me first, and then them, he was all but certain of it.

No, there was no place for these savages in his host. And Jon could feel out the sudden darkness in his own heart for what it meant: I couldn't stomach them either.

The cannibals kept their distance now, circling warily, loosing shafts from beyond the stands of trees. Jon could already see how this would go - they'd circle for hours if need be, picking them off one by one until he and his men were all dead. Retaliating against them directly was a hopeless prospect. I have to do something.

He set his back against the tree and closed his eyes. He let the world fade away.

Come. He reached inward, to the cold, hungry thread at the back of his mind. His warg reached across the land, miles upriver, across river bends and scattered hills. Sonagon!

The dragon's answer came instantly: as a distant roar that rolled down the frozen river like thunder, powerful enough to shake his bones.

Their ambushers faltered. He saw a few warsleds wildly veer off course as their dogs yelped in fear, without any of the disciplined movements of before.

But when nothing immediately happened, the cannibals regained command over their animals. And they pressed their assault.

Minutes passed, but minutes that stretched cruelly. Another scout fell with a white arrow through his neck. Hatch loosed his own shaft and dropped one of the painted archers, but took another graze across his forehead in return. The men grew frantic, desperate.

Then the ground trembled underfoot, and Sonagon came.

The dragon came barreling down the Antler like a living avalanche. Massive gouts of snow erupted into the air with every thunderous galloping stride, and the dragon was flapping its wings like a terribly oversized goose or chicken, not to fly but to run faster.

It looked, sounded, and felt like a storm made flesh. A storm that was staring at them all with hungry black eyes.

"BY THE GODS— !" someone screamed behind Jon.

"Oh fuck - oh FUCK!" another scout shouted, scrambling backward until half the scouts, too, were fleeing.

The cannibals broke instantly.

"Sōravok!" he distantly heard one of them shrieking in raw, animal panic in the Old Tongue. "Sōravok! Sōrav—!"

Their dogs howled in terror, pissing themselves, bolting in every direction at once. Sleds veered sideways, then away, far away. Archers on skis stumbled, fell, scattered. Some tried to flee downriver; others loosed frantic arrows that harmlessly bounced off Sonagon's scales.

Jon gulped. Sonagon hates arrows. "Hold— !" Jon tried to reach out to the dragon, half in panic himself. Hold back!

What came back was wrath.

An ocean of wrath, hopelessly beyond his ability to command. So much wrath, all blended into a greater sense of pure, joyous, exultant, ravenous hunger.

The dragon had sensed his request - and completely ignored him. Because the dragon had seen the cannibals, and the dragon saw nothing but prey.

Sonagon crashed down amid the fleeing dogsleds with an impact that sent even him stumbling to the ground. A nearby frozen river cracked open entirely, sending a garron and its rider screaming into the water.

Then the dragon's jaws descended and closed on a sled and took the rider and his archer and half of the sled's dogs in a single bite. Sonagon twisted his head and flung broken carcasses of the remaining few lashed-together dogs flying for hundreds of feet.

The dragon's tail lashed out like a whip and annihilated another sled team, which was then promptly devoured. A blast of frostfire destroyed a third sled and its painted riders and dogs, which were then also snapped up.

Their terrified enemies, now Sonagon's prey, just kept screaming as they tried to run. But it was no use.

Sonagon launched into the air again, a jump assisted by spread wings that took the dragon for hundreds of feet. It crashed down on the last few fleeing sleds and sent broken and shattered bodies scattering, and then, amidst the sudden pluming cloud of snow, he could see nothing but massive white jaws, biting out again and again as they snatched up more groups of screaming dogs and men like a wolf devouring mice.

Jon watched a dozen lashed dogs swallowed whole all at once, like treats on a string. Gods, he saw an ice river raider try to crawl out of Sonagon's jaws, screaming: "Neyj, neyj, neyj!" …only for the dragon's tongue to drag him back in.

At some point, something fell from the sky. A torso of indeterminable gender - just a torso, still clad in torn furs, with one arm attached. It had fallen from absolutely nowhere Jon could trace, less than twenty paces from his terrified, awestruck vanguard of scouts. He had absolutely no idea how it had gotten there, or who it had even belonged to.

It was all over almost before it had begun. In only seconds the floodplain lay littered with shattered sleds and ruined corpses - none were still in one piece.

His surviving men were all staring, speechless. "By the fuckin' gods," one of them muttered lowly.

Sonagon settled down amidst the thickest carnage and began to feed on the corpses that remained with methodical relish. Jon finally remembered to sheathe Dark Sister. After he did so, he tried to quell the pounding of his heart in his chest. He was still breathing hard.

He took stock of their losses. Four scouts dead. Five wounded.

The other three or four still alive that hadn't fled for their lives were still staring at the dragon with wide eyes. "…god's teeth," Hatch muttered faintly, an invective Jon didn't know and hadn't heard before, but could piece together from context. "…fuckin' gods," more than one man repeated.

Ghost returned with a crimson muzzle. Jon could sense Phantom slinking off, but he permitted it. He'd bring the shadowcat back in later - he could sense the cat dragging off a dead dog, and it wanted nothing more than to be left alone to eat in some shadowed hiding hole.

He could hear hooves pounding behind him. Someone shouting from a distance. He turned back and saw a group of garrons at a gallop, or the closest thing the ungainly beasts could manage in the snow.

It didn't take long to recognize the Weeper and twenty of his best raiders thundering up to support, with weapons drawn. But their reinforcements stopped the moment they saw the slaughter.

The Weeper reined in hard, taking in the feeding dragon, the burning bodies, the blood-soaked snow. Taking in the eight or so scouts who had fled out of panic, and were only now sheepishly returning. "The fuck happened here?" he demanded at a shout.

Jon wiped someone else's blood from his cheek and looked out over the ruined ambush. "Frozen Shore men," he said quietly. "Cannibals, I'm told."

"Any more?" The Weeper demanded roughly.

Jon shook his head. "Wiped out to the last."

Sonagon lifted his great head, and regarded the newcomers with lazy interest. A low, contented rumble rolled from the dragon's throat. The dragon's jaws were dripping with dark red blood.

The Weeper swallowed, hard, and for once had nothing more to say at all.

The cannibals had not been subtle.

Most of the scouts went back upriver to tend to their wounds and send word to the column's vanguard and the various chieftains, while the Weeper and his raiders, plus Jon and Hatch mounted up and followed the ice river clansmen's tracks.

It wasn't long before twenty-three battle-hardened men and spearwives were following the cannibal's tracks to the north. The trail led out through the river-braided heart of the Gullet and to a northeasterly rise, a slightly higher region that might pass for a highlands in this river country.

From atop his garron, Jon observed the sheer volume of the tracks warily. The snow had been scoured slightly thinner in this area by the wind coming off the sea - now revealing hundreds of old sled ruts and ski grooves beneath the day's fresh snowfall. Either there were far more ice river clansmen than he'd anticipated, or…

"Looks like these ice river cunts have been busy!" the Weeper barked out a laugh from atop his mount.

Yes, that was clear, but Jon saw nothing funny about that at all. And despite all his expectations, Furs laughed with the Weeper. "My gut says this here's gonna be a good raid, Weeping Man!"

Several more raiders laughed uproariously. Jon had to ask why.

"Snow," the Weeper said in response to his question, out from atop his garron. He was leading the vanguard through the snowpack at an almost-gallop, or what could pass for one in one of these northerly mounts. "Sometimes, just sometimes there ain't nothing more profitable than raiding other raiding cunts." he grinned nastily. "Get it, or do I need to say it out real slow for you?"

Jon flushed at the naked insult. Profit from raiding raiders. Yes, he could see that. Like the Bloodcloaks. Predators who preyed on innocents, grown fat and bloated on their grisly takings.

Jon pushed his frustration, his anger over the Weeper's condescension to a more remote part of his mind. I know nothing, he had to remind himself. When Qhorin the Halfhand had told him to ride with them, eat with them, this was precisely what he'd meant: to learn the ways of this savage people, to put a bottle and stopper on his boy pride until he learned.

They rode on, but it wasn't long before Hatch leaned in closer, voice lowered so only Jon could hear him.

"Snow, I got a bad feeling," he muttered. "There was somethin' off about that ambush, yeah?"

Jon glanced at him. "Off how?"

Hatch jerked his chin skyward, toward the low, iron-colored clouds. "That blizzard. The way it suddenly shat white down on us all at once." He shook his head with a grimace. "Shouldn't have been that much snow, not all at once. Was too early in the day."

Jon frowned. Hatch isn't wrong. He had noticed even then how strange it was that the snows had so suddenly turned against them, the way visibility had suddenly collapsed in moments. How perfectly the sudden wall of white had been timed to give the white-clad ice river raiders cover. But he'd dismissed it as mere coincidence, or at most as low opportunism, a chance capitalized on by cannibals who were clearly well-practiced in such hunting tactics.

And something about that storm had felt… wrong, somehow. Almost feverish. Though Hatch either wasn't mentioning that part or hadn't noticed. Or perhaps I only imagined it.

"I've hunted this stretch before," Hatch went on, still muttering, seeming distracted in thought. "And that wasn't normal. You don't get storms like that unless the sky's already been heavy for hours. Especially so long before the sun begins to go down. Only supposed to come when it's getting dark. Days mostly clear elsewise," he paused, then shrugged. "Except if they don't."

"What are you trying to tell me, Hatch?" Jon asked with more patience than he felt. "It's the weather," he stressed the word.

"I'm saying, that storm… it came exactly when they needed it. Not even Fennel saw 'em coming. Storm covered their approach. Covered their tracks," Hatch hesitated, then said the thing he'd clearly been turning over in his head. "Almost like it was called."

Jon had no answer for him. The north was cruel and strange, but storms were storms. Weren't they?

Or are they?

His memories intruded unbidden. The battle in the Frostfangs. The collapse of Mance's host. He remembered brief moments from that terrible night, how there had suddenly been a blizzard in the dead of an otherwise clear sky - a sudden blizzard covering and obscuring everything, making the panic and disorganization of that horrific battle so, so much worse. Mance hadn't even had the time to muster more than a fraction of his fighting men, hadn't even been able to issue and properly distribute his orders to the clans under him - all because of that blizzard.

The white walkers can control the cold. That meant it was possible. If they can call storms, can others do the same? Can men?

The Weeper's head turned slightly, his red eyes looking back at them from atop his garron at the fore of the vanguard. "You muttering about sorcery back there, Hatch?" he barked out with a grin, without slowing his garron.

Hatch looked embarrassed. The Weeper's sharp ears had caught on to more than he'd intended. "Was sayin' the snow came damn convenient for 'em, is all."

The Weeper didn't laugh this time. His rheumy red eyes narrowed, focusing on his man. "Oh? What's that mean, then? You think they asked a witch nicely and the sky obliged 'em?"

Hatch's mouth tightened. "I've heard rumors, Weeping Man. Folk say that some of those way north clans got strange tricks. Powers, some say. The really Old Ways. Weather, spirits, bones, blood." he shrugged. "Call it what you will."

"Those ain't just rumors," Urwen said lowly, adding his voice to the circle. The older, almost dark-skinned man was riding at the Weeper's side from atop his own garron. "You raid long enough, Hatch, you see things."

The Weeper nodded, then grinned nastily as he met Hatch's eyes. "So. You think it's sorcery, then?"

Jon watched the Weeper closely now. He isn't mocking this.

Hatch hesitated only a moment. "Maybe."

The Weeper nodded, as if confirming something to himself. "Well, ain't that sweet," the Weeper spat off to the side. "Might make some sense. If it's so, then we don't fuck about." Before Jon or Hatch could say anything else, the Weeper took in a deep breath, then shouted at a roar. "Listen up, you ugly sons of bitches!" Nearly two dozen faces, mounted raiders and spearwives all, turned towards their leader. "They've got a snow-witch or wizard, we'll kill them first! If they've got one. Got it?" his grin turned sharp and nasty. "And if they don't, well… either way, problem solves itself!"

Jon stared for a moment, and in the meanwhile, several of the vanguard's older raiders chuckled and rode on, while the younger ones looked distinctly confused. It suddenly occurred to him that Hatch, for all his size, was at least a decade younger than the Weeper, and if he remembered right he hadn't been marching with this warband for more than a few months.

But the Weeper had been raiding for at least fifteen years.

There was much Jon suddenly wanted to ask - starting with if the Weeper had ever fought such a strange foe before, if he had seen sorcery before… but his questions died unspoken in his throat as the vanguard moved on.

Because he could sense from Ghost that they were finally approaching their destination.

As they moved over the hills, he had been keeping a close watch on Ghost through their shared senses. The ice river cannibals had been skilled winter raiders; hunters of men that knew how to camouflage themselves against winter. Much like Ghost.

But Ghost was better at it than them for too many different reasons. Starting with how the direwolf was even whiter than they had been; especially now with the sun starting to set, with no visible moon in the sky to illuminate his fur. In these conditions Ghost would be like a white shadow, almost completely invisible to whatever cannibals remained, unlikely to be seen by the enemy.

Additionally, Ghost was far faster than the garrons in the snow.

For all those reasons and more, the direwolf ranged ahead as Jon's silent scout. Jon wanted no wrong turns, no wasted time, no possibility of their enemy's escape. He set the vanguard to unerringly follow the path set by his direwolf across the Gullet, across the region's ever-present frozen mudflats and low gravel bars and oxbow lakes and over too many frozen riverlets and dried-up channels to even begin to count.

Through it all, the Weeper's raiders followed. And underneath it all, he started to dread whatever they might find at their destination.

Less than an hour later, they found the cannibals' camp.

It was a cluster of low hide tents and windbreaks tucked against the base of a hill at the northern edge of the Gullet, mostly hidden by a stand of willows. Painted white furs and bleached white skins blending into the snows. A far, remote place with a commanding view of the river-twisted lowlands. Hidden and nearly invisible from a distance, almost unnoticeable even from up close. If it hadn't been for Ghost, they might not have been able to find it at all.

On the approach, there wasn't much to see. But from up close it was clear the ice river clansmen's camp was particularly crude even by wildling standards. Dogs barked furiously as the riders approached, then whimpered and cowered when Ghost appeared at the head of their column.

They had no fit warriors left to fight, certainly none that barred their way. Jon saw only women, children, and a handful of wounded or elderly men who had not joined the raid, all moving in frantic, panicked motions as the mounted vanguard swiftly closed in, twenty and more mounted men ahorse with blades drawn.

Someone shouted something at the vanguard's leading riders. But before Jon could even interpret the words, let alone speak in response, movement caught his eye - someone who was moving with purpose unlike that of the frantic ice river tribesmen.

The moment the vanguard entered the camp, an old figure stepped forward from between the tents.

The figure was so aged, so wizened and pale that Jon couldn't even tell what gender it was. Hairless and hunched, bloodless and skeletal. An ancient elder of vulturous aspect, wrapped in layers of white furs and stitched skins. Bones hung from the elder's neck and wrists, decorative strips of leather etched with crude runes.

Whoever he, she, or it was, the figure looked older than the gnarled trees all around them.

But Jon's focus immediately pivoted to two details. First, the ice river elder's hands were red and wet with freshly spilled blood to the elbow. As if he or she had just been caught mid-task in the midst of pulling out someone's guts.

Second, and far more importantly, the ancient figure lifted a staff capped with a human skull at the head of their column - at the Weeper - and shouted something terrible in the Old Tongue. Guttural words that seemed to echo strangely, as if the very air had bent to carry them.

Something immediately shifted in the air. It was as if the wind itself had gone still.

Jon felt it like a pressure quite unlike that of the wind against his skin - he didn't understand it, he'd never felt anything like it before. It suddenly felt hard to breathe, like the air had suddenly turned to water. Like something was clutching his tongue. Like a dozen different grasping hands were suddenly a tenth of an inch away from the skin of his throat. It felt like all of those at once and none of them.

A snow witch, he thought, a chill crawling up his spine even as he quickly unslung his bow with the breath he still had. So Hatch was right.

Unlike him, the Weeper didn't hesitate.

The warlord flung his scythe overhand at the chanting figure. The blade seemed to flash across the distance instantly.

A scythe made for an ungainly thrown weapon, but by unfathomable skill, or perhaps simple brute experience, the Weeper somehow made do.

The blade fully impaled the ice river elder's chest. A meaty thunk sounded out when it jammed into the bones of the elder's ribs and spine.

There was a croak of pain, and then the body quietly crumpled, shuddered and then went still. The skull staff fell from nerveless fingers.

The sound seemed unnaturally loud. The wind started moving naturally again. The ice river clansmen shouted out in dismay as they beheld their elder's corpse. Some started to run.

The runaways provoked the vanguard's instincts like foxes after pheasants afield. Hatch and Urwen shouted and chased them down, while a very few of the clansmen tried to put up a disorganized, hopeless resistance. From the corner of his eye, he briefly saw two men of fighting age as the vanguard entered the deeper camp, perhaps the last two men capable of fighting among them, both already wounded, and an older boy - but they were quickly cut down by the Weeper personally.

Jon was still staring at the elder's corpse. "Why?" he demanded, stepping forward before he could stop himself. "That was their shaman. I wanted to question— "

"Idiot boy!" The Weeper rounded on him with a snarl. "You always kill a clan's warg or woods witch first if they even look like they'll make trouble!" he growled, actually growled like an animal. "Always!"

He jerked his scythe toward the corpse. "Any raider who lives long enough learns that lesson - or learns to regret it. Leave a warg or anyone else with a weird gift alive, they'll find a way to make you regret it. They'll curse you at night and hide by day. Give a man's children the plague, haunt your dreams at night, make you rot from the inside. I've even known them to turn a warg's animals against their master." Jon hesitated at that, with an involuntary glance to Ghost. "You, never ever leave a witch or anything like a witch alive if you've spilled bad blood with them."

Jon didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know what he could say. It didn't matter. Because after that, matters quickly sorted themselves.

Soon the rest of the ice river tribesmen were dragged out and made to huddle together in the center of their own camp. Jon's stomach twisted when he saw how the women and children's eyes were wide with terror… until he remembered Flint-Eye Fennel's gasping form, how her body had still struggled to hold to life even after her brain had been impaled by an arrow. These people attacked without warning, gave no mercy, a darker part of Jon's conscience reminded him. They would have killed us all if they could have.

So he said nothing, did nothing when the Weeper started barking out orders with a raider's casual cruelty. It wasn't long before his raiders spread out and began kicking over sleds, ripping open tents. Yes, there was food and treasure aplenty - far more than such a small camp should ever have. Jon saw grins, laughs from the raiders when they found an entire pot filled with nothing but small, thin bars of crudely worked silver.

But what else they found turned even the most hardened of stomachs.

The ice river tribe's larders hung from smoking poles over a set of fires at the back of their camp, a dozen rows of long strips of flesh laid to dry over cold smoke. And there was no mistaking the nature of the meat.

He saw thighs and arms, carefully butchered. A pile of ribs and other long bones cracked open for their marrow. Beheaded skulls stacked in a pile. A cooking pot still simmered over one fire, half-filled with some meat soup thick with a floating layer of grease that turned his stomach just from the excessively rich, porklike smell of it.

Human meat, all of it.

Eight captives were found roped and lashed under a tree with their mouths bound. Not all of them were alive. The rest had frozen to death where they sat - evidently not of great concern to the cannibals, given the cold weather conditions. It wasn't long before the raiders were giving out their spare furs to three women and two children, all of them half-starved, then taking them away on faltering steps.

When a pair of desperate young women that clutched a third girl no older than nine or ten were brought out, Jon couldn't stop grinding his teeth. All three were shivering in thin sealskins - they'd been found elsewhere in the camp, evidently the chieftain's personal captives. Given the women's fair features, it wasn't hard to guess the reason why in particular had been taken. A raider quickly set about finding them something more substantial to wear. As for the third girl… he averted his eyes. He refused to contemplate the matter of why the chieftain had taken such a young girl into his tent.

Hatch dragged one of the ice river clansmen's surviving elders before the Weeper. It was an ugly old man, with deliberately filed teeth that resembled a shark's. Jon might have, in other circumstances, felt an instinct to give mercy on account of the man's old age - until he saw… fuck, Jon cursed to himself. What is he wearing?

His eyes were immediately drawn to the elder's necklace of fingerbones. His cloak, which looked like a man's skin flayed and turned to leather. His gloves, which looked like no leather Jon had ever seen before, thinner and paler. His attire…

"What the fuck," one of the Weeper's raiders muttered lowly.

It was manflesh, all of it: things harvested from the slain, harvested and processed into trade goods.

His grip on Dark Sister's hilt grew so tight he had to relax it, he could barely even feel his fingers. He could barely even breathe. It felt like he was staring at some intentional mockery of typical wildlings - the elder's manskin cloak, his filed teeth, his entire being mirrored theirs like some twisted hunter taking on the pelt of beasts to cover himself.

But this was no beast. This was something so much worse.

The Weeper held his scythe to the elder's throat. "Talk, you old cunt," he snarled. "Where's your chief!"

"Tu'vern skold'ros vekha thrōs, Weeping Man."

Even Jon could understand that, by tone if not in word. He'd just insulted the Weeper - who for his part just grinned sickly, as if someone had offered him a treat. "That was a mistake," Furs muttered lowly from somewhere behind him.

The Weeper stepped close to the ice river elder, hand on the hilt of his scythe. "Where's your chief? Last chance."

The elder didn't answer. He just met the Weeper's eyes with a level look, grinned that twisted grin of his, then visibly bit down on something, spat something out—

It was a gob of meat, pink and red. It took Jon a while to realize what he was looking at, even as the raiders around him recoiled. "This crazy old bastard!" Hatch laughed, actually laughing in as much surprise as anything else.

Distantly, Jon remembered Stonesnake's sardonic warning from the days before the end of their fateful ranging. After he'd first captured Ygritte, tried to interrogate her. If she spits out her tongue, don't say I didn't warn you. The old ranger had said that he'd known wildlings to bite off their own tongues before they'd answer a question. I thought he was only japing.

The Weeper, however, was singularly unimpressed. He only grunted with an ugly look, then cuffed the bleeding elder across the cheek so hard a sick crack rang out - had he just fractured the old man's jaw?

The ice river clan's captives screamed, but the Weeper only chuckled uncaringly. "Well, you asked for it, old cunt."

Then, even as Jon watched, stomach twisting in knots, the Weeper dug out the clan elder's right eye with his bare fingers.

The Weeper had a technique for it, Jon distantly noted. A method for cleanly plucking out eyes. He started from the little fingers, jamming them into the corner of the eye socket as a sort of pry bar, peeling back flesh until he could fit in one more finger, and then lastly the thumb - wedging them all in one by one and then pulling.

After the Weeper had taken both eyes, the elder was a gargling, thinly screaming, useless wreck. The Weeper cut the ruined old man's head off with his scythe and impaled it on a pike.

Then he moved on to the next elder. Another old man, but this one had grey hair rather than white. "Your turn, old fool. Where's your chief?" Then the Weeper repeated the same question in the Old Tongue.

That one stared at the Weeper in horror, and then - clearly not knowing a lick of the Common - quickly started spilling out words in the harsh, guttural dialect of the Old Tongue. "N-na malv! Na malv!" The Weeper tilted his head, listening with a sort of deceptively calm patience. "Thanej-krakh, na har! spar'veth na-havn! Neyj malv, grel, grel!"

The Weeper kicked the old man to the ground, then kicked him some more, brutally. Jon heard ribs crack. "I didn't ask you to beg for your dog life!" The Weeper roared, spraying spittle. "I asked where your fucking chief is!"

The Weeper glanced sideways at Furs. "You understand any of that?"

Another captive said something desperately: "Hroth vekh'rim isha-draal, na havn, na havn!"

"Well?" Jon demanded.

"Says their chief's not here," Furs muttered, giving that clansman a distrustful look. "Says the men all went out raiding this morning."

Jon clenched his jaw. Meaning Sonagon killed their chieftain at some point in the fight, and I didn't even realize it. "No matter." Even if I'd taken him captive, what would I have done with him? "Find out what this clan is. Why they're doing this. Why they're here. He must have answers."

The Weeper picked up his knife again. The captives spilled out more words, more frantic explanations. The Weeper could follow along readily enough, but Furs had to translate lowly for Jon, even as the Weeper continued his tortures.

"He says they're a tribe of the Kala," Furs muttered while the Weeper sliced off the man's fingers, one at a time. "That's, ah, one of the ice rivers way up north past the mountains."

"I've heard of them," a different raider muttered. "They're supposed to be blood enemies of the Marakks from way north. Fuck are they doing here?"

"Why did they come south?" Jon asked again, through gritted teeth. The elder's blood was dripping into the snow now. "Were they fleeing from the white walkers?" The Weeper grunted, then repeated the question in the Old Tongue.

"Na draugh," the elder shook his head, wide eyes fixated on the Weeper's knife. "M-morg'hon ānogar, qrinuntys ānogar… bar'raic ke'sir golos."

Whatever the savage's response had been, it made even Furs snarl. "No. Fuck, this old fool serious?"

The Weeper chuckled darkly. He drew his knife across the elder's cheek, provoking a pained groan. "What do you think? 'Course this old cunt is that much of a retarded sot."

"What did he say?" Jon demanded.

"Old bastard says he's never even seen the dead," Furs growled. His eyes weren't wavering from the captured elder. "Doesn't believe in the stories. Calls them tales for cowards. Tales for… prey-men."

Jon's stomach twisted. "Why prey on other free folk?" he demanded. "Were they truly that hungry?"

That provoked another round of questioning, torture. More pained, guttural words were painstakingly extracted from the old cannibal. "Says their hunting grounds up north are hard - true hunting grounds, he calls them," Furs reported with a flat, flat tone. "Seal, bear, elk when the herds come. In winter they come south with the herds - but then here in these southern lands - he means the Gullet - they found even better food. Not—" Furs hesitated as more words spilled forth from the ice river elder. "…what did he just call it? Forage-food? Fuck."

"Furs," Jon demanded.

It took Furs a moment to speak. He looked sickened. "…he says they do not forage. Their tribe, that is. He says that of all the clans, they're the only 'true hunters'. The little fish in the streams? The berries and roots the Gullet clans grub for? Beneath them. 'Soft food for soft folk,' he calls it. These ice river cannibals disdain it all - he says it weakens the blood."

Jon's voice came out half-strangled. "They choose to hunt people?"

Furs spat to the side but said nothing. One spearwife turned away. Another raider muttered, "Fucking animals," under his breath.

The Weeper asked more questions - but then, midway through, the ice river elder stopped speaking. His expression twisted into something more defiant. "Bar'doys golos!" he snarled. "Tu baa gol—"

But his sudden resistance melted away the moment the Weeper pressed his knife against the elder's eyeball. The old savage gasped out in pain, then more words in the Old Tongue tumbled out.

Furs' voice grew colder, translating: "…Because men are the worthiest prey, he says. Stronger than elk, cleverer than bear. The flesh of a warrior feeds the spirit as well as the belly. He says the Gullet folk grow fat and lazy on easy salmon and forage. 'Their meat is rich,' he says. 'Sweeter than seal, tender from soft living.'" Furs cursed. His sick expression deepened. "…it's sport to them. Tradition. Fuck, this disgusting old fool. He enjoys it."

The Weeper was already continuing his torturous interrogation, Furs translating. Jon listened to the babbling, pained words without really hearing them. Some barbaric superstition or other about how the ice river tribesmen had preferences in their manflesh, that they found the hearts of strong men and raiders more delectable than that of women or children. Why - no, he tuned out the rest. His ears rang. Somewhere far off he registered several men spitting on the ground in disgust, turning away. He stayed exactly where he was, unmoving.

When the Weeper started pulling out one of the second elder's eyes, which came out with a wet sucking sound - like a boot pulled from mud - Jon came back to himself.

The elder's scream had thinned into a gargle. Jon tasted iron; he had bitten the inside of his cheek at some point without really noticing. He realized he had stopped breathing. He forced air in through his nose, and immediately regretted that on account of the stench from the nearby cooking flame. "Enough," he said.

The Weeper paused, his fingers dripping red as he clutched a bloody eyeball. "You sure, Snow? We're just getting to the good part."

"I said enough," Jon repeated tightly. His jaw clenched so hard it ached. "End it, Weeper."

"Eh, fine." The Weeper gave him a chuckle, even as the elder of the cannibal tribe kept bleeding, screaming under his boot - until the Weeper stomped the old man in the throat hard enough that Jon heard his neck crack - after which point the gargled screaming quickly died. He gave the other two surviving elders an evil look. "And what about these ones?"

Jon gave the two wretches a passing glance. "Execute them."

The Weeper gave him a grin. "Why? You took in Marthe, the rest of the Bloodcloaks. What's a cannibal or fifty?"

Jon gave him a flat look. Either a bad joke, or a bad trap. Does he want to see me make a mistake that would cause the chieftains to turn on me? And it certainly would - if he dared to recruit these cannibals, the chieftains would betray him, he had to imagine. Or does he just think this is funny? He decided on the latter. "Your sense of humor has much to be desired, Weeper. Do it, or I'll do it myself." Jon hesitated, remembering his father's words. His father's sword. "No, let me— "

"Fuck off, you green boy. Their eyes are mine, their deaths are mine." The Weeper looked like he might have something else snide to say, but then his red, rheumy eyes looked around the clearing; he tsked, then cut the throats of the last two elders. He wiped his knife on the last corpse's furs and stomped away without another word.

Odd behavior, for the Weeper. But it wasn't lost on Jon that even the other raiders of the vanguard - hardened killers all - were giving their leader an aghast look. Speaking of recruiting cannibals had been a step too far even for them, even as a joke.

…For most of them, anyway. Men like Urwen, Rolf, and Gregg Sheepstealer had taken it all in stride, as if they had seen such horrors before and were inured to it. And Jon supposed that was likely true. It took a certain sort of wildling to march beside the Weeper.

After that, the order went out. The raiders put all the rest of the adult cannibals to the sword.

Jon would have asked for the women at least to be spared. Until it was impressed upon him by the raiders - all of them, without exception - that they were just as guilty as their menfolk. That the ice river clans were often led by matriarchs in their own right, and that their savagery knew no divide of gender.

In the end, only the youngest women, girls and boys of the ice-river clan were spared, bound and left under guard. Jon had no idea how they would be processed and accommodated for, and he did not care to know. He just wanted to leave. He wanted to breathe clean air again.

But the smell of that cooking pot would follow him for far too long.

Later that day, as the sun was beginning to descend in the pale grey sky, the vanguard encountered their twenty-ninth village on the long journey to Hardhome.

It was scarcely a mile from the sea. It lay along a firmer rise of ground where several of the lower Antler's many wandering channels bent around a line of low isolated gravel hills. A rare stony rise amidst the Gullet's flat, shifting floodplain, surrounded by a crude palisade, offering not only easy access to the sea, but protection from its harsh winds and tides.

It wasn't a village in the southern sense he knew, lacking anything in the way of organization or a center, or even a village commons. It was just a dense scatter of turf-roofed huts dug halfway into the earth of the hills with semi-permanent hide tents pitched between them. The stony rise was surrounded by water channels that couldn't quite be called rivers - smaller riverlets that offered easy access to the great twisting mass of the Antler just beyond.

The main point in its favor to Jon's mind was that it was clearly a good defensible location that could almost be considered an island, and probably was an island in summer, or during especially high tides. Its ease of access to several of the Gullet's better water routes - not to mention access to the coast - was immediately apparent. Moreover, even from a distance he was seeing quite a number of small river boats, dozens of frames dragged up and out of the water. Curious.

Jon reined in at the edge of the village. The villagers had seen the vanguard coming.

A line of men and spearwives was gathering atop the rise to face them, all of them armed with spears and axes and other crude weapons. He also saw a few archers who aimed shafts down the slope, but thankfully they were not loosing, not yet.

"Hold!" the Weeper bellowed up at the palisades. "We ain't here to raid, you river bastards! Lower them bows before someone gets hurt!"

A woman's voice cracked down from the palisade. "Weeping Man! Of course it's your bloody mug! Come back to our grounds with twenty mounted men and expect us to smile, do you? Name why you're here or you'll have our arrows in your bloody crying eyes!"

The Weeper laughed back up at her. "Got quite a mouth on you, bitch. That how you talk to the men who cleared out your cannibal problem? We even brought back presents."

The woman stepped forward through the gap in the palisade, an axe strapped to her side as she came into Jon's line of sight.

She was tall; as broad-shouldered as a man, not quite young but not old either. Perhaps in her mid thirties, with off-reddish hair. And something was wrong with her. Her face was painted with soot and chalk in jagged white-black patterns that might have been for war or for mourning; Jon couldn't tell. Another strange wildling tradition he'd seen from a few of these river clans.

Is she their chieftain? Whoever she was, the woman's cautious eyes passed over the vanguard and their captives before settling on the Weeper. Her voice was much lower now. "…What did you say?"

"You heard me!" The Weeper bellowed up at her. "Ice river cunts are dead! And we've got some of their captives. All them that were still alive. Most said this was their place!"

Jon eyed the villager's weapons briefly while the shouting continued, as the rest of the vanguard joined in and tried to convince the wary villagers that this wasn't a raiding party. They're on alert, Jon thought. And no wonder, if their folk have been getting taken.

It looked like every able-bodied adult in the village of either gender had come out to face them. And they were far too poorly armed to have fought the river raiders.

As far as he could tell from this distance, the villagefolk's weapons were all of crude make, things of chipped stone or cold-forged copper - none were arms he might consider respectable, let alone decent. Wildlings did not mine nor smelt, and there were few smiths and fewer forges north of the Wall. Most of the raiders and chieftains he'd met with decent weapons had stolen them from raiders or bought them from Thenns, or somehow in a rare few cases acquired them from overseas. It seems this village lacks such connections.

Even as the shouting from both sides continued to carry on, with the villagefolk disbelieving that the Weeper hadn't come here to rape and pillage, that the ice river tribe truly had been destroyed, he saw the village's children and old folk herded back into their huts.

Jon supposed that was reasonable enough: the first, instinctive reaction such a small village might show in the face of the Weeper's vanguard was fear - twenty and more mounted men could not have been a common sight in the far north, let alone with such a feared raider as their leader.

But the standoff didn't last: because after the fear, came recognition.

A woman broke from the village's line and ran toward them. She ran desperately, seeming to almost stumble in the snow with every second or third step. "Ingrid!"

When she reached the captives - being dismounted from the spare garrons behind the vanguard - she screamed the girl's name again and fell to her knees as she clutched the young girl to her chest. Moments later, both mother and daughter were sobbing. Others followed not long after. Cries rose around him as the villagers' disbelief turned to shouting as families found one another again.

Jon dismounted as well, taking care not to put too much weight on his slowly recovering leg. This moment, at least, needed no command, no order to give. He just let the moments pass as families reunited.

His eyes moved past the people towards the village itself. Now then, what is this place?

It was… humble, to say the least. Less charitable words like 'backwater hovel' also came to mind, but for all that it clearly had a character of its own. Every wildling river clan he'd seen had its own focus of some sort, something the clanfolk specialized in, a reason why they weren't migratory as most of the folk north of the Wall were.

And this place? Now that he could see from up close, its specialty was immediately apparent: river boats. He saw dozens of them set aside along the inner curve of the palisade and beside the nearest channel that hadn't yet frozen over.

Few of the boats were large craft; he saw mostly small dug-out canoes, unsuitable for the sea but doubtlessly far more suited to the Gullet's twisted river conditions, though a few looked larger, more suitable for being brought out into the ocean. More importantly, unlike most wildling constructions he'd seen in the far north, these were not crude constructs.

He stepped away from his vanguard, from the village's people to look more closely.

Now that he could see from up close, it was clear they were - one and all - canoes. The longer he looked, the more certain he became: these could be useful.

The canoes weren't made from lashed-together timbers like the Weeper's barges, but from individual trunks of (he believed, but was not entirely certain) oak and elm - lighter woods dug out and somehow cured to produce far sleeker, more elegant crafts. The newer ones looked beautifully made.

As for the older canoes, their gunwales had as often as not been repaired where the wood split, with wrapped rawhide that had been stitched tight and tarred. Given how rawhide contracted after being bound and dried, he could see how this was a clever and powerful way to bind damaged canoes together as firmly as if newly made.

This village has a very skilled leatherworker, Jon realized. He kept seeing more of the same pattern of craftsmanship as he looked at the canoes. The seats were slung with dark leather like hammocks, for no purpose but comfort as far as he could tell. Thongs and lashings ran everywhere: around ribs, along seams, reinforcing the canoes so they could be dragged across mudflats and ice without splintering. Gods, a few even had hide skirts: short, clever flaps fastened along the sides to keep spray and slush from soaking a rower's legs.

These would have been respectable even at Winterfell, he was certain. The river canoes carried the clear mark of many hours of skilled craftsmanship - to such an extent that it verged past normal utility and almost into luxury. Who could have made these?

Jon turned when he heard a certain shift in the voices. He saw the crowd of villagefolk parting as a broad, tall and grey-haired, grey-bearded figure made his way through - an aged man clad in finely cut furs, still walking strong for his age.

The village's chieftain came forward at last, apparently.

"Devyn?" Furs muttered, as did others. Jon didn't recognize the chieftain, but his appearance had certainly provoked a reaction from the vanguard. Then the Weeper barked out. "Devyn Sealskinner! Fuck are you doing here?"

The big chieftain laughed. "This is my fuckin' home, Weeping Man! Well met!"

It took a few minutes for Jon to realize who this man was.

Devyn Sealskinner. The same chieftain who had marched with Mance in the Frostfangs. Jon hadn't personally met him then, but he had heard of him. A chieftain of his own clan whom Tormund Giantsbane had named friend. A leader of sea raiders - mostly his own numerous sons - known for crossing the Bay of Seals on many an occasion to raid the hamlets of the southern coast. A figure of note among the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch, mostly for being an old veteran among raiders, an older and more clever foe of the Watch than most.

He was a big man, broad in the shoulders, with his red hair and beard gone mostly iron-grey and left to grow loose until they blended together into a single hoary rust-colored mane. It didn't take long for him and the Weeper to reacquaint themselves. How the two of them knew one another - let alone were friendly with one another - was beyond Jon's understanding.

Then after Devyn learned that it wasn't the Weeper that was here for him, but Jon, the man turned away and studied him for a long moment. His eyes flickered briefly to Ghost, whose muzzle was still stained slightly red with cannibal blood.

"You must be Jon Snow," Devyn Sealskinner said at last. "Tormund mentioned you. Before the mountains. You're the Stark's forsaken get, aye?" his eyes narrowed on Jon curiously. "You're the Halfhand's killer."

Jon had to hold back his grimace. He hesitated, nodded. Devyn grinned. "And now you're moving up in the world! Seems you're also the white crow I've been hearing about come downriver for weeks," he snorted. "I admit, wasn't, eh, too sure about that part of the stories."

"That is all true, yes," Jon said cautiously, not quite sure what to make of the man.

He only laughed good-naturedly. "The stories have been running ahead of you, lad. Folk don't even know what to call you! Oathbreaker, warg, sorcerer, Winterfell's bastard, turncloak, crow turned-dragon-rider, white crow… you're collecting titles faster than a whore collects coin. Keep going - might be you'll add King to the lot." He grinned again, then his expression faltered slightly when he saw how deeply Jon scowled at those words. Was the man trying to praise him or insult him? "Sorry if some of those fool's notions displease you," his voice turned a little lower. "You know how folk talk. Now then," he huffed. "Weeping Man says you're the one that went and cleared out those savages that've been plaguing the upriver hunting grounds?"

Relieved for the topic change, Jon inclined his head in the direction of one of the girls who had been taken. She was sitting by a tall boy she shared a strong family resemblance with, several tables over. "They tried to ambush us. Their captives said this was their home."

The chieftain's eyes briefly passed over the returned captives, scattered throughout the earthenlodge hall. "Aye. That they are." He looked past Jon again, his look sobering for a moment. Then he smiled amiably. "Yep. For that alone, you'd have my word, Snow. My folk and I owe you a blood debt. You're marching to Hardhome?" he nodded. "Aye, we'll come."

That drew surprised murmurs from the villagers. But Jon also heard shades of approval, relief from them. Far fewer protests than he would have expected.

It can't be that easy. "You don't want to test me?" Jon asked, gently. He knew the custom here. The wildling chieftains only followed strength - strength proved by martial prowess, or not at all.

"'Course I mean to test you, boy!" His face suddenly twisted. "You think Devyn Sealskinner will follow some wet-behind-the-ears boy, without a fight! You and me, sword to sword right now!" He stood from the table suddenly. "A man who kneels lives longer, but a free man lives taller! I'd rather die standing than live on my knees!"

Jon sighed, standing as he resigned himself to another fight.

…Until the older man snorted and fell back into his chair. "I'm japing, lad, japing," he laughed. "Shoulda seen the look on your face."

Jon didn't laugh. He had rarely felt less amused. The older man's expression quickly broke into something more chagrined. "I'd like to say such fighting words, Snow. Pretend to be some stubborn stone-brained fool like all the rest. But I'm getting on in years, lad." Then his tone turned flatter, joyless. "And I lost three sons in the Frostfangs. That matters more than any of my damned pride."

Jon wasn't sure what he could say to that. "I am sorry to hear that."

The chieftain waved a hand errantly. "Ain't your pain to bear, lad. And even if I were twenty years younger I'd be a dumb son of a dog to fight a man with the kind of reputation you've been getting. Hunting down an ice river clan in winter and lived to tell the tale? The Halfhand, Stonetooth and the rest - fuck, those are stories for a man to tell his grandkids. But I ain't that sort. I'm, ah, more of a builder than a fighter, you see?"

Jon could tell this was a sore point with Devyn, but he nodded politely. "There's no shame in that. Your boats are exceptional," Jon said sincerely. "They would be exceptional even south of the Wall. I doubt there are any better in the far north."

Devyn grinned. "Much obliged. Now, I've got a question. I hear you're the one who first raised the alarm that the dead were coming? Up in the mountains them months back?"

Jon hesitated. He disliked remembering that long, horrific night. But he nodded his head. "I only wish it had done more good."

Devyn scoffed. "Wasn't anything else you could've done, fool boy. I lost folk there too, like everyone else. It's my own bloody fool fault for staying for so long in those damn mountains for Mance's own fool sake. I'm sure Tormund would say the same were he here. We're all a damned circle of fools at the end of days, doing the best we can with what we got." Devyn grimaced, then grunted. "Don't suppose you got any new word of him? Or Mance?"

Jon shook his head. "Both are either dead or taken by the Night's Watch. None know for sure."

"Fuck," Devyn sighed, looking sad for a moment. Then he comported himself, nodded amiably. "One last question, lad. I've heard what walks with you. A beast beyond all beasts. Folk coming downriver call it a god made flesh." His gaze lifted briefly upriver. "But I ain't seeing no god."

"Sonagon is resting," Jon shook his head, while struggling to piece together words of explanation that wouldn't frighten this man. "He…"

"Snow's dragon ate every fighting man among those ice river cunts, and their dogs," the Weeper grinned. "It's sleeping."

A complicated look passed over Devyn's face. A mixture of gratification and fear. Jon cursed internally at the Weeper. "Long as you point your beastie at my folk's enemies and take us south, you'll find no bone to pick with my clan, Snow," he let out a breath, then harrumphed. "Now then. Let's get you all settled. Daylight's waning."

Devyn Sealskinner's home was a windowless, turf-covered longhouse dug halfway into the side of the gravel hill. Braziers burned in clay pots along the longhouse's sprawling length, and the walls were hung so thick with cured furs - elk and seal, bear and wolf and stranger ones besides - that scarcely a plank of timber could be seen. The hides drank in the brazier's heat and the hill itself kept the winter's chill at bay, the combined effect creating a warm and comfortable eating hall.

Almost too comfortable. Jon himself found the hall's heat felt almost stifling despite its size. A large part of him wanted to step outside for the clean air of winter. The cold and the quiet would have been so far more to his tastes.

He wasn't that much of a fool. He swallowed his discomfort. He wouldn't begrudge the vanguard the chance to rest after their past several days on a hard march - and if he left, now, before guest right had been granted, it would be taken for strange at best. Suspicious at worst.

It didn't take long for the rituals of guest right to be completed, and soon after that, the long oaken tables running up and down the longhouse's length were piled high with food. He saw trenchers of coarse black bread and smoked salmon, bowls of curds and more trenchers still of pickled turnips and onions being devoured as they came. The air was warm and thick with the smell of some simmering stew or another that even he found appetizing, being served out to the fifty or sixty wildlings, packed shoulder to shoulder on benches and piled furs.

Few of the wildlings were focusing long on their meal, though. Instead, they were listening raptly to a warrior's story, Hatch the Halfgiant playing the part of the storyteller. And the big man was in exceptionally high spirits.

"…and then the fucking sky just opens its arsehole to shit snow on us, right? White everywhere, thick as fleece. Couldn't see the arse-end of my own garron. Arrows coming from everywhere and— !"

"Where'd you even find this one, Weeping Man?" Devyn Sealskinner chortled at the Weeper. "Man's as big as an aurochs!"

"Fights like one too," the Weeper chuckled. "Ain't much smarter than one either."

Hatch was too far away to hear Devyn and the Weeper's ill-mannered japing. He stood atop a bench now, one boot planted on the table - men, women and children all staring raptly at the big man. A sloshing cup of mead was in his hand, which waved about to punctuate the exciting parts as he recounted the tale of the day's battle.

"—and then suddenly the whole bloody ground starts shaking…" Hatch paused for dramatic effect, "…and then the dragon comes!"

Jon sat near the head of the longest table, between the Weeper and Devyn Sealskinner himself. Ghost lay stretched out behind him like a great white rug, curled up and content to bask before a fire, happily digesting. The direwolf had been fed a pile of river salmon the size of a small child.

"Swear on my father's bones, biggest fucking thing any of you will ever see this side of a legend. White as death, coming down the river like an avalanche with wings! One bite takes out an entire cannibal sled, rider and dogs both. Then the beast jumps - jumps, mind you, like some giant snow-hare - and lands square in the middle of their line. Half of us had already shat ourselves and were already running away like little girls— !"

Laughter rolled through the hall. Several of Devyn's younger sons - broad, red-bearded men who clearly took after their father - banged fists on the table and roared their approval. Jon wondered if Hatch was perhaps sharing a little too much of what had happened, but it didn't seem like the other raiders minded.

"Meanwhile the dragon's going after cannibals like a direwolf in a chicken coop! And Snow's just standing there in the trees, calm as you please, while his monster eats thirty men and their dogs like they're breakfast. When it was done there wasn't enough left of those ice river bastards to fill a cooking pot!" The hall erupted again, men and children cheering, pounding benches. There were few women in the hall. "A cooking pot!"

Devyn, seated beside Jon, gave a short bark of a laugh and drained his own cup of mead. Jon scowled to himself - he disliked hearing Sonagon described in such terms, no matter how accurate they were.

And that—" Hatch swung his cup in a wide arc, sloshing mead onto the table, "—is why we're following Snow. A beast that can hunt cannibals like they're chickens can hunt crows just as easy."

…what exactly had Hatch just implied? Jon's scowl deepened. Then he flattened his expression when he saw the Weeper smirking at him.

"Pretty tale," Devyn said when the noise died down enough to speak. "Almost makes me wish I'd been there to see it." He leaned toward Jon, lowering his voice so only the three of them could hear over the din. "Almost. Heh."

"You doubt the word of the Weeper's warband?" Jon asked.

"Nah lad, just doubt my own ears sometimes." Devyn rubbed at his iron-grey beard. "But I've seen enough strange shit in my years to know when a story's got truth under the nonsense. The Gullet's one of the richest hunting grounds, so it draws wolves. Ain't the surprise you'd think when a bigger wolf," he gave the Weeper a pointed look, "clears out the little ones." He paused, snorted irritably. "Fuckin' cannibals."

"Have they been a problem for long?" Jon asked. "It can't be often that one of their clans comes south." Or at least Jon assumed so.

"Only in the worst winters," Devyn grunted. "But they've been a plague for generations - raiding south when the mood takes them and the snows are deep enough, letting the spring floods cover their tracks. These particular cunts turned up a few weeks after the battle in the Frostfangs. Took my cousin's wife and two of his boys, and others. We couldn't chase 'em - they're as bad as the skaggs, none of the clans could pin them down long enough to retaliate," the older man's expression turned grateful. "You did what we couldn't."

"I'm just glad to have returned your people," Jon said. "I hope to have earned some measure of your trust."

"Eh, you're a polite one, ain't you?" The old chieftain grunted. "Can't say I expected that. Listen to this old man, lad: trust is tested when the cold winds blow and shadows rise. For now, it's enough that we're all moving in the same direction as one folk. Stark or no." He paused, then snorted, chortling. "Still! Never thought I'd have to trust a Stark! Even if ye don't quite got their name."

"You know of the Starks?" Jon hesitated. "Not my uncle Benjen, surely."

"Benjen Stark, you mean?" Devyn frowned, then his expression turned thoughtful. "Aye, aye, that crow. Him I met twice. Last time was six or so years back. He wasn't too bad for one of them black devils!" He let out another bark of laughter, more scornful now. His lips pressed into a thin line. "But that one was truly a crow to the bone, not like you. Hear he went missing a while back. Meaning the rest of them up in their icy nest probably had to make some bloody southron ponce their new First Ranger."

If only, a small part of Jon thought. After his uncle's disappearance, Ser Jaremy Rykker had taken the First Ranger's role temporarily - only to be slain by the wight that had once been Jafer Flowers. Then Thoren Smallwood had taken up Rykker's cloak in turn, and he was so, so much worse. One of Ser Alliser's closest, most ambitious allies. A knight who had fought for the Mad King to the last. An inveterate, unashamed killer of wildlings. If he were only a ponce. Better a ponce than a bitter enemy.

But most of Jon's focus was on the matter of Benjen's disappearance; he hadn't held high expectations for whatever information Devyn Sealskinner might have held on that matter, but he still found himself disappointed.

Throughout these months wandering the far north, he had found few clues as to what his uncle's fate might have been. It was as if he had dropped off the face of the world after ranging into the southern Frostfangs. But given that some of his uncle's ranging party had returned as wights… perhaps it was for the best he never learned.

He didn't want to imagine his uncle's corpse roaming somewhere across the land, as a thrall with blue eyes. Not even for a second—

"Fuck the Starks, I say," someone said downrow, banging their cup on the oaken table. The sudden harsh words interrupted Jon's thoughts. "Fuck 'em all."

Conversation stopped along most of the oaken table. Jon's eyes snapped downtable and settled on someone he hadn't expected: that big auburn-haired woman they had initially thought was this village's chieftain.

"Who are you?" Jon asked brusquely.

"My Pa's too polite to give you the plain honest truth, Snow, so I will," she said, giving him a glare. "Name's Fia. We've never seen a Stark before in the Gullet, but we hear of 'em. And, under the god's own eyes, I'd be a lying dog if I said what we hear was good."

Jon hesitated. Around him, curious eyes shifted towards Fia. "What have you heard?" Jon cautiously asked. He was curious as well, in his own way.

The big woman snorted. "I say the Starks are the cause for half the coast's troubles," her lips twisted scornfully. "I say they're southrons playing at being northmen. They fancy themselves the great 'Wardens of the North,' yet they don't even know what the north is. They sit warm on some golden chair behind their castle's walls, carving wolves on everything, saying 'winter is coming' like it's some clever warning they invented - rich, coming from them, southrons who've never seen a real winter. The kind that buries the land in fifty feet of snow and you don't see the sun for months at a time, while you're praying to the gods that your larders last long enough, that your babes all cramped up in the tunnels don't sicken and die in the cold—"

"Fia," Devyn warned crossly. "You go too far. Don't insult our guest."

Jon felt heat rise in his face, and not from the fire. He had never heard the Starks spoken of with such casual contempt. It stung more than he expected. But he thrust those emotions away. "No," he said. Devyn opened his mouth to protest, but Jon cut him off with a belaying hand. "I would hear her out."

The old chieftain looked at him with some surprise, but Jon ignored him. "Go on," he told the spearwife.

Yes, he felt anger to hear his kin insulted so, but there was as much bafflement there as anything else. This reminded him too much of some of Ygritte's tales. Just as much, his father had once said something that had stayed with him. Know the men who follow you, he'd heard him tell Robb once, and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger.

A lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. Needed to hear them out, them and all their wants and their needs. The lesson had been intended for Robb, but Jon had been present and its meaning was universal. You can't ask men to fight for you if you don't understand them. A lord who cannot bear to hear his men's grievances will never truly command their loyalty.

Fia did not look grateful for his patience. Rather, she just gave him an unimpressed, mirthless look. "I'm only getting started, Snow - it all goes back thousands of years between the free folk and them 'kings of winter' kin of yours."

"Whatever you believe you know of the Starks, I would know as well. Go on."

She narrowed her eyes, surprised by his calm, then took a long draft from her cup of mead and set it down on the oaken table, hard. "What I… believe?" she tsked. "This is the free folk's truth, the gods' own truth. Every clan far and wide knows of their crimes, Snow."

Jon gave her a mirthless smile. "Well, I'm not from a free folk clan, am I?"

Several men up and down the table chuckled. "He's got you there, woman," Furs chortled.

"Sod off, man," Fia growled. Her eyes remained locked on Jon. "Them family of yours are the reason for everything that's ever gone wrong in the north. Folk call 'em the great betrayers to the old gods, who forgot that the gods made the earth for all men to share." Jon had to suppress a scowl. "Every child knows the gods made the forests, the rivers, and the mountains for all of us to wander - free as the wind, wild as the wolves. But the Starks grew greedy. They killed men of faith like the Barrow King and the Warg King, murdered Gaven Greywolf and the Horned Lord and so many others. Why? Because they wanted it all."

"They stopped those tree-burning men from across the sea, woman!" a man from farther downtable jeered. "Kneeler kings are at least good for something!"

She sneered. "Yeah, they beat back the Andals. Who cares? Just because they fought back the invaders and their burning swords doesn't mean they were fighting for the First Men - just for themselves, their own greed for power. They forgot what the First Men fought for, and imprisoned us at the far end of the world behind their great bloody Wall, them and the crows both. Those 'kings of winter' laid down their Wall, exiled anyone who wouldn't kneel to the far north out of sight from their golden chair a thousand leagues away, and then declared anyone who wouldn't kneel to be their enemy for all time," she snorted scornfully. "Yeah, we know of the Starks all right. That's what I think."

Jon held Fia's gaze without flinching, though inside his chest something cold and sharp twisted. How much of this was true?

He had grown up hearing the Starks spoken of only with reverence. One of the oldest Houses in Westeros, the keepers of the ancient ways. The descendants of Brandon the Builder, the Wardens of the North and the ancient defenders of the realm. Never once had he imagined that beyond the Wall the same name could be cursed with such ancient, unrelenting hatred.

She knows nothing. She doesn't understand what she's saying - most of this happened thousands of years ago. But he could not deny there was likely a kernel of truth in this, at least from the wildling's perspective. The Starks forged a kingdom, and kingdoms are not built with gentle hands.

The raiders along the table all sat by quietly, many nodding along. "Hear, hear," one said, with a thump of his cup on the table. "Sounds about right," said another.

The older spearwife sneered at the men's encouragement, but her eyes remained locked on Jon. She gave him a challenging glare. "You got anything to say to that, Snow?"

"Is that it?" Jon asked curtly. He could sense the eyes on him, from up and down the oaken table. "Or are you done?"

"Huh. A coldblooded one, ain't you?" she muttered. She took a slow pull from her cup of mead, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "You don't care when someone insults your family? Most would have pulled their blade by now."

"Of course I care," Jon said, in a low voice. "But by laws of men, I am a bastard, a Snow, and a crow. Thrice over, I have no family. Only my vows."

"Turncrow, more like," Furs snorted.

"Huh." The older spearwife - whom Jon believed to be Devyn's daughter, though he wasn't certain - looked vaguely impressed. He could tell that was the right thing to say, because the tension that had been rising around the oaken table suddenly dissipated. "Duty over family. Must be some weird southron nonsense to think that way."

It was, but Jon didn't care to get into the particulars of bastardy with wildlings. He could think of few topics that would be more fruitless - they were all bastards and rapers, or near enough.

"You're the one acting like a southerner, woman," Furs laughed, a touch mockingly. "The free folk judge a man for himself! Not for his ghosts! And the ghosts of the kings of winter are all so long dead that… fuck," he grumbled, "might as well be talking about the children of the forest. A waste of time. Naught but worms in a grave."

"Hear, hear," other men up and down the table intoned agreeably, thumping their cups on the table's oaken slab.

Seeing the tides turning against her, Fia scowled, then focused on Jon again. "I'll apologize for nothing I said, Snow. Like your man said, this was all far in the past. All would be well and good if the Starks and their troubles just gone fucked off and stayed fucked off on the other side of their Wall. Different land for different folks," her expression twisted. "But they can't even seem to manage that."

Jon hesitated. "What do you mean?"

The Weeper grunted from downtable. "She means the skaggs."

Jon focused on him. "The Skagosi?"

"Folk 'round here also call them the sea raiders," Devyn cut in, giving the Weeper a nod. "They're as bad as the Bloodcloaks and this ice-river scum."

"Free folk raiding free folk," someone else spat. "This won't be the last."

"Skaggs ain't free folk," a third man muttered.

"Doesn't stop 'em from raiding the coast, happy as the stony cunts please," the Weeper chuckled, gave Jon a look. "Starks claim Skagos as theirs, Snow, but they don't control it. Never have. Skagosi raid the mainland north of your precious Wall practically every summer, take women, cattle, whatever. Burn villages that don't pay tribute. And you wonder why this spearwife's mad."

Could it be true? Jon stared. "I didn't know."

"Hah!" The Weeper's laugh held only scorn. "Snow, south of the Wall, you kneelers call us savages. But the skaggs… they're just as bad as the ice river clans - they sit on their stony island and raid the coast as they please. Ice river cunts ain't the only cannibals - I've seen the bodies. Entire villages gone, the men and boys all dead with their hearts and livers taken, the women taken to gods only know where."

Devyn grunted in agreement. "Those Stark kin of yours know nothing, lad. Why would they, safe as they are behind the Wall and all their big stone castles? You southrons think of the Skagosi as nothing but 'difficult bannermen.' You rule them in name, and they allow themselves to be ruled in name," he snorted. "All polite-like. Then once or twice every summer Winterfell sends them polite ravens asking for taxes." Devyn smiled, but his eyes were cold now. "Where do you think they get the silver to pay those taxes?"

"You're saying the lords of Skagos have been paying their taxes by… raiding the free folk." Jon caught himself in time to call them free folk, and not wildlings.

"I've said what I've said."

"When?" Jon demanded. "When did this start? For how long?"

"Eh," Devyn's eyes went distant. "Six summers ago? Yeah," he nodded. "Sounds right." His lips twisted bitterly. "Eighteen, nineteen years back."

Jon's frown deepened. A little less than twenty years. He grimaced when the realization settled in his gut. 282, 283 AC. Robert's rebellion.

Firmly in the same years his father had marched south with the banners of Winterfell, when the rivers of the Trident had run red and Robert Baratheon had taken the Iron Throne.

He recalled Maester Luwin saying that on account of that war, House Stark had demanded not merely the second tallage, but a third as well - extra taxes to pull in enough silver and grain and other goods in kind to feed armies and pay for steel and horses. Winterfell had sent ravens to every lord and landed clan. Even to the remote, stony isle of Skagos, presumably. All of whom in turn would have extracted the value of the taxes from their peasants.

Except for Skagos, it seems. Jon had never heard of difficulties from gathering Skagos' taxes during the war, or in any living time past: they had been relatively quiet since their rebellion during the time of Daeron the Good almost a century ago. They paid for their tallages by raiding the northern coast? Truly?

"My father would not have allowed this," Jon muttered, half to himself. "Eddard Stark would have sailed north and put an end to it."

Devyn gave him a long, measuring look. "Maybe. Or maybe your Stark in Winterfell counted the cost and chose the easier road."

Jon had no answer to that. Any words he might have said refused to come past his teeth, tasted like ash in his throat.

It wasn't lost on Jon how the wildlings spoke of the Skagosi the way smallfolk south of the Wall spoke of wildlings. As raiders and reavers, coming from another land to burn and steal. The Starks had never truly brought the Skaggosons to heel - or so it had sometimes been said in Winterfell. And these were the consequences. Taxes paid to Winterfell in blood money. Perhaps his father had known, perhaps he hadn't. The results were the same for these people.

We're all the same to someone, he thought. Lines on a map, and blood on both sides. It has to end.

Devyn's eyes went distant. "It was a bad time, lad. Skaggs' brown sails coming over every other tide, burning and butchering whatever wouldn't pay tribute in women, cattle, or silver. That was when Thaldar rose up."

"Thaldar," Jon tried to recall more. "A chieftain?" He already knew the name from the Weeper, but not the details. A known leader of wildlings, a chieftain of repute for this region.

Devyn Sealskinner's mouth twisted. "Aye. Strongest man in the Gullet, and still proud enough to choke on it. Tried to make himself King-Beyond-the-Wall twenty-odd years ago. Lost to the Magnar of Thenn of that generation - Styr's father, gods eat that dead old cunt. Then he came home and decided he'd rather break Skagos instead of swallowing the shame - seeing as the skaggs stole one of his daughters while he was away, burned his village."

Scowls and mutters greeted those words from up and down the table. Devyn scratched at his beard. "Sailed to their island, he did. Broke a dozen of the skagg clans, burned their homes and planted heads on stakes until even their own Magnar took notice and drove him back into the sea. Every summer ever since, whenever skaggs come try to raid the Gullet, he's the one driving them back into the sea - that's why they call him the Tidebreaker."

"He's ruled his grounds ever since?" Jon asked.

Devyn gave a dry grunt. "Eh, rule's a strong word. But he's respected. Fair, when it suits him. Respected for his judgement. Clans all across the Gullet that've disputes go to him to settle; his hammer's had the last say in many a blood feud. When the Tidebreaker speaks, folk listen."

"He sounds reasonable," Jon observed.

Devyn grinned. "Just because I speak reasonably of the man, that don't make him reasonable. I remember when Mance came and called the Gullet's clans together - Thaldar just laughed and shut his gates. Said he'd sooner kneel to his wives than to any other man."

Those words provoked scattered chuckles, but the Weeper only snorted. "Reasonable? That old cunt?"

Devyn gave the Weeper a sidelong look. "He won't be pleased to see you again in especial particular, Weeping Man. That ain't no secret."

The Weeper snorted, while Jon looked on curiously. "Thaldar's got a head harder than a frozen mammoth turd and twice as full of shit. Still thinks he's the only free man left in the north because he refused to follow Mance. Just made him a coward."

Devyn laughed. "I'll leave it to you to tell him that in person, Weeper." He stood up from the table, gave Jon a toothy smile. "My clan will follow your folk in a few days, Snow. We'll pack tonight, be ready by dawn. It's about time I see to my men and womenfolk. But since I'm giving you guest right without conditions, and truths without blades, you'll take one more besides."

Jon focused on him. "I'm listening."

"When you get to his grounds, old Thaldar won't greet you like I have," Devyn warned. "You'll reach him soon enough, hugging the southern coast. He ain't a sensible sort, 'specially around anyone who's got the sniff of a maybe-king. Especially with him getting as old as he is, I'm guessing he'll want to fight to the death. I expect he'll ask for it. He might even deserve it. But don't kill him. Don't. He's got a lot of good folk behind him, who are loyal to him and him alone. Lots of refugees who went to him for safety - who I expect would otherwise scatter to the winds. If you mean to bring all the folk south with that beast of yours, you'll need him alive."

The next morning, after the warband's vanguard woke up and was preparing to set out, the villagefolk had a bit of a frightened surprise when Rag Rig Rog Kun Gor finally caught up, reaching the vanguard with himself and a pair of his companions, and bringing word that the giants of the forests were on the move.

Not long after, the vanguard proceeded at a sedate pace to the coast, and finally reached the sea.