15: To Hardhome, Part 5

To Hardhome, Part 5

Jon

The Shivering SeaFull novel: Dragons of Ice and Fire — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

The storm winds coming off the Shivering Sea came easy - for now.

The storm had not yet arrived in earnest, but every scout who had ridden the coastal ridges agreed; by this time tomorrow it would be upon them. Whether it would be an autumn or a winter storm, Jon honestly didn't know. Perhaps the white ravens had already flown forth from the Citadel's legendary Isle of Ravens to announce the coming of winter, perhaps not. It wouldn't matter either way, he thought grimly, sparing a thought for the thousands of vulnerable refugees trailing for miles up and down the Gullet's northerly coast behind the vanguard. This far north, there is no difference between late autumn and winter. The storm will bring nothing but ice and snow and misery either way.

However long they had until the storm arrived, there certainly wasn't much time left. The sky was already twisting with grey as the vanguard rode ahorse along the southern trail, which was one of the more gods-forsaken vistas he had ever seen. As far as could be seen in any particular direction, this region was a wind-torn desolation stripped of nearly all forest and all life. What few trees and bushes even existed here were stunted, gnarled things, barely clinging to life and growing at a steep slant away from the cold, rocky shores.

The beach itself was nothing but a frozen strand of black gravel piled high with dirty ice and rotting kelp, and beyond it lay the grey, storm-tossed plane of the northern ocean foaming under a leaden sky. White-capped waves, grey and cold kept breaking and crashing down along the shoreline. The air was rank with cold salt and the old kelp that had been piled ashore, half a dozen feet high in places and mostly all built up in just the last few hours.

Jon had not had high expectations for this region, and yet it still made for a truly bleak sight.

He had wondered why Devyn Sealskinner had chosen not to live directly on the coast. Now he knew: the coast marked where Westeros ended and the Shivering Sea began. And this far north, that truly meant something. The eastern coast of the far north past the Bay of Seals seemed all but uninhabitable to him. But he supposed wildlings were made of sterner stuff, given that they'd built Hardhome itself in this region.

They were close, now. Less than twenty leagues.

Presumably - like all the rest of the settlements that lay this far east and north - Hardhome had some sort of natural protection from the wind. He couldn't imagine aught else given these dismal environs. A sheltering, windward cliff like Devyn Sealskinner's home? It beggared belief if anything on the peninsula could have been settled elsewise. If so, it'll be needed, he thought. We'll need shelter soon too.

But not just yet.

First he had to see… whatever it was the vanguard's men had brought him out here for. A slight diversion from the coastal trail; they had wanted to show him some local free folk ruin before the storm hit.

"It's close now!" Furs called out - he was the man most familiar with these forsaken coasts, leading the way ahorse at the head of the vanguard. Jon rode beside and slightly behind, while Ghost ambled along silently at his garron's side. "See that rise over yonder? That's the Horned Lord's barrow!"

He could see it. The grave, or perhaps it was a shrine of some manner - it lay ahead. It was a rise at the very end of a modest peninsula, atop a snow-covered bluff towering over the twisted waters where the last of the Antler's muddy-brown waters finally drained into the Shivering Sea's cold grey-blue waves.

Jon urged his garron forward. A grave for a King-Beyond-the-Wall, that was his threadbare understanding of this ruin. Albeit one of centuries or millennia past. He still wasn't entirely clear on why the raiders of the Weeper's warband had insisted he come here. Some queer wildling raider tradition was all he'd managed to gather.

They were close to the end of the rocky promontory. A turf-covered barrow hill loomed just ahead of them, half-buried in the snow. The three large boulders on top of the hill, supporting a fourth held high, suspending it in the air, were the sign that this was a barrow hill - one deliberately made, long ago.

I've seen something like this before. Three runestones supporting a fourth was much the same style as the uncountable thousands of barrows scattered across the north's barrowlands, in House Dustin's domain. There'd been another like it in the Frostfangs as well, albeit he'd seen that one only from a distance.

If the pattern held true, if this barrow of the far north was like the ones south, then the stone atop the barrow was a runestone of some kind. But in these wind-blasted conditions, who could even say if any of the runes remained? Perhaps the stone's sides were unreadable, worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. It would have been likelier than not.

Once he arrived, he dismounted along with the rest of the riders. Jon tied his garron to a wind-twisted dwarf of a tree. "How you feeling, Snow?" Furs asked, casting Jon's leg a quick glance.

"Well enough," Jon replied. "It's still healing. Why are we here?"

His leg was not the ache it would have been. Not now that he was more regularly riding a garron along with the vanguard. The beast was technically a kind of horse, but it was closer to a mule or donkey in many ways, stockier and sturdier and surer of foot, albeit slower than the mounts preferred in the south. A few more weeks or months without needing to live afoot all day and he might even manage for good.

Furs grinned. "Because every raider with salt in his blood stops at one of the old king's barrows before he rides south. We're here for luck, Snow."

Urwen Rockfist chortled as he dismounted. "Hah! Good luck, aye. Let's put it that way. Always good luck to visit the fallen king's grave before going south to spill kneeler blood."

Jon grimaced. They can't be serious. He hoped this wasn't a complete waste of his time.

Hatch had already ducked inside the barrow's low arch. Jon couldn't see it clearly, but the barrow had a small space inside. Hatch came out brushing snow from his furs, with a broken bronze spear held in one meaty hand - which he held up like a trophy. "See this?" he crowed. "I'm betting some poor sod left it behind for a dead spearwife of his!"

Jon had to agree. The spear had been decorated with a plumage of colorful feathers; it had probably meant something at some point, to someone. He had never seen a man in the far north decorate his spear like so; he'd seen it more often from spearwives.

But still. "Put it back," Jon glowered up at the big man. "I won't see you steal mementoes from the dead."

Hatch grumbled. "But it's good bronze, man!"

"There's steel where we're going," Furs snorted. He scraped some snow from a nearby rock, packed it into a ball, and held it threateningly Hatch's way, tossing it up and down in his palm. "Do as the Snow says or I'll get you good."

"Get me, my hairy bollocks," Hatch grumbled - but still, he obediently went back in with the broken spear.

Furs chortled. "My da always said the Horned Lord remembers the ones who remember him," he said, glancing Jon's way. "You give him a trinket - a knife, bone, lock of hair, whatever - and he gives you his eye on the road. Keeps the crows from seeing you too clear at night, keeps them from glimpsing you when you're climbing their icy nest."

Meaning the Wall, presumably. Jon had to suppress a scowl at that.

The Weeper snorted coldly. "Waste of time, this. Man ain't even buried here."

"Really?" Jon asked. "Where, then?"

"He died fighting the Starks thousands of years ago," the Weeper gave him a nasty grin. "Where do you think he died?"

I think he died bitterly, on some nameless northern field under the blades of my father's ancestors. I think your people's sorcerer hero was buried in some unmarked pit in the ground, that he was buried without honor, without mercy, along with all the rest of his ilk who came to rape and despoil the north. I think he died receiving exactly what he gave unto others. But Jon could never, ever say that. "I see," he contented himself with saying, and nodded.

"Ah, come off it, Weeping Man," Furs gave the Weeper a snort. "Most of the Kings in the last thousand years have visited the Horned Lord's shrines. Every raider who goes south best visit at least one of 'em for good luck. You know that."

Hatch, Rolf and several others hooted in agreement, with hollers or stomps of their feet. "For luck, for luck!" the raiders were chanting before long, all of them to a man or spearwife grinning. "Luck, luck!"

In the face of such opposition, even the Weeper couldn't disagree with his raiders. He just crossed his arms, giving everyone and everything an impatient expression. "Bah. Get on with it then. Scunners and idiots, the lot of you."

More wildling superstitions, Jon thought dismissively, observing the mild mutiny of the raiders before their warchief. For once he was in entire agreement with the Weeper about what was and wasn't a good use of their time. But he held his tongue.

After Hatch exited - a bit of a cumbersome affair for such a tall man - Jon approached the barrow's entrance himself. It was unremarkable, a rather short doorless arch of stacked stones. Jon ducked inside alone. The space wasn't big enough for more than one person in any case.

"Anything else decent in there, Snow?" Someone hollered in after him. "Ain't like the Halfgiant's smart enough to tell what's what!"

"Fuck off," Hatch audibly grumbled.

Jon didn't reply at first, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.

There was a small shrine of dark stone, lower than knee-height and close to the ground, partway covered with a few petty objects that were beneath his interest. What gripped his attention wasn't those, but the artwork above the shrine - a thing of blue resin points and white chalk stripes. It took him a moment to realize what he was looking at.

Are those… stars?

He peered more closely, fascinated. It was a crude painting of a constellation. He knew these stars, but the wildlings had interpreted them entirely differently. A dozen and some points of light that he knew as the Stallion, a prominent point in the northwestern night sky. He had known that constellation ever since he was a child, and had never had cause to question it. But here, those same points of light had been vaguely filled in and painted to show a figure like a relief of a wildling raider in furs, with antlers branching up from the figure's head like a crown.

There was no Stallion to be seen here. Just a mural to the Horned Lord, one of the ancient Kings-Beyond-the-Wall.

What was the meaning of this? Why? What meaning did it hold?

There were no immediate answers to be had. He knelt down and brushed snow away from the shrine's altar. Even under closer examination he saw nothing of interest. It was just bare black rock, scattered about with a few random objects, small things laid atop the shrine - the broken spear from before, a chipped stone knife, a piece of amber, even a child's doll.

He looked around and noted the faint, faded impressions of various runes inscribed into the walls. Like the constellation, he couldn't even guess at their meaning.

Someone called out to him again, asking if there was anything worth mentioning inside the shrine.

"No," Jon called back, turning away. "Nothing at all."

He exited from the barrow and found the men waiting for him. "Are there more shrines like this?" Jon asked, glancing up at Furs.

The wildlings burst into laughter, all of them. He was suddenly surrounded by a cacophony of rough mockery.

"More?" Hatch wheezed, gave his own thigh a slap. "Aye, Snow - nineteen of 'em, scattered from the Bay of Ice to the Bay of Seals and everywhere in between. There's a long line of them between here and there, going all through the Frostfangs and the haunted forest. One for every star in the Horned Lord's constellation up there, they say." He pointlessly jabbed a thick finger at the overcast grey sky, where there wasn't a single star to be seen, not even the sun.

Nineteen shrines. Jon's memories vaguely flickered back to that strange barrow he'd seen at the top of a mountain, high in the northern Frostfangs. Could that have been another of these?

"Eh, half are long ruined now," Furs added, still grinning. "Woods witches say the old bastard still watches us from the stars, waiting for when someone finally tears down the Wall. Meantime all we can do is look back at his pretty face from down here."

Jon glanced skyward anyway, pointless as it was given that it was midday - and clouded besides. Nineteen, he thought. Strange number. That was a queer detail, indeed. The same as the castles along the Wall - the nineteen manned or abandoned keeps from Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower. A coincidence?

And the crude painting inside the barrow, marking the shrine. Nineteen stars to that constellation, or near enough. Why? There had to be some meaning. "Tell me about the Horned Lord, if you would," Jon asked the raiders. "I don't know much of him."

The laughter died. The wildlings looked at one another, many of them having suddenly uncertain glances.

"…there's a lot of superstitions around that one, Snow," one of the few spearwives in the Weeper's warband, Mharka, offered. "The witches say that if a man who ain't brave enough says his name, he'll haunt them into a coward's death."

Jon looked around the circle of raiders and a few spearwives. Hardened warriors all. "There is not a coward here, I'm sure. Tell me, who was he?"

Hatch stepped forward gamely. "They say he was a sorcerer, with antlers growing from his head like he was an elk. United the clans from the Frostfangs to every corner of the haunted forest. "

Furs grinned. "Aye, and more. Yeah, I've heard many say he was a sorcerer, but heard others say he was a warg king, or maybe even a greenseer - they say he was as tall as a tree, with horns sprouting from his brow like the old gods themselves."

"They say he was a giant's son," Urwen added. "My gran said he drank weirwood sap and ate weirwood acorns 'til horns grew from his skull like branches."

Rolf chuckled. "More likely he wore an elk's skull as a helmet." He paused, frowned. "Maybe a great elk in his case."

"A great elk," Furs sighed plaintively. "Now that would make for a worthy crown. I've never even met a man I'd trust who can claim to have seen one."

Jon remembered the greenseer's great elk that had died bringing him to Sonagon. A tragic waste, he thought quietly. He had never seen so fine a beast of that breed before, and likely never would again. As fine a mount as any horse in the north short of a castle-bred destrier, and better than most.

"Eh, horns were probably from a bull aurochs he killed, strapped to his helm to scare the kneelers," Rolf argued. "Witches do say he was half a greenseer and half a giant. An elk's horns ain't that big. He was a giant, he'd need aurochs horns to fit his head proper, aye?"

"Half a giant? Nah," Hatch chuckled. "Some real nasty chieftain or another always tries to get sons on a giantess once a while - never works. They ain't men, a different kind of creature entirely. Like dogs and cats."

"Really?" Rolf asked, evidently fascinated.

"Really really," Hatch the Halfgiant waggled his eyebrows. "You don't think I've tried? Where do you think I got me name from?"

Twenty and more men guffawed, started laughing. "How did he get south?" Jon asked, before the men's crude japing could take his questionings into useless directions.

The Weeper chuckled. "Snow, the Horned Lord was thousands of years ago. And even for Kings, he was a strange one - some legends say he used sorcery to part the Bay of Ice like a knife. Marched right across the seafloor like it was land. Led ten thousand raiders south, nearly beat the Stark's armies until they cut off his head and threw it back into the sea, horns and all."

"I've heard some legends say he walked over the water," the ugly spearwife, Mharka added. "Just walked on water like some dream."

"Hah! As if," Rolf chuckled.

Walking across the sea. That sounded too unbelievable to credit, even remotely. "What do you think?" Jon asked.

The Weeper snorted. "I don't trust any of the old stories. Centuries of witch-cunts adding their own spins on the story 'til nothing's left but spin. The only things a man can trust are a good blade in his hand and the arm that swings it."

Truly a motherless, fatherless savage, Jon thought. But his cynicism is reasonable enough. Even as a child, Jon had thought that at least half of Old Nan's tales were nonsense.

Still, he noted that the Weeper hadn't truly answered his question.

Furs scratched at his beard. "Whatever he was, every King-Beyond-the-Wall since has sought his secrets. Ascegan Sevencrowns dug up three of his barrows looking for the secrets of his sorcery. Raymun Redbeard slept in 'em, saying he got dreams of the man's secrets. Even Mance visited a lot of 'em. Just for luck, he said, but a lot of folk thought he was also looking for the secrets of sorcery. They all chase the myth, thinking the secret to the Horned Lord's power is still buried somewhere out there."

Strange. "What about Gendel and Gorne?" Jon asked curiously.

"Eh, he came well after their time," Hatch huffed. "Least a thousand years, the witches say. They've got their own pretty faces up there in the stars. We call 'em the Twin Kings."

The stars, Jon recalled slowly, thinking of what he'd just seen in the barrow. Ygritte mentioned this - the wildlings have their own names for their constellations. He tried to recall her voice, her stories. To them, the Stallion is the Horned Lord. Yes, that's how it was.

The wildlings named many of their constellations differently, come to think of it. Except for the Ice Dragon.

…that was, now that he thought about it, a truly queer coincidence. Why?

There was no one to ask. No one he could ask. There were no learned men Beyond the Wall, no maesters or lords who bothered to learn the true history of things, their broader nature and meaning. These savage people had no true writing, no history worthy of the name that could be trusted. Only their woods witches, their oral myths and legends passed down from their ancestors. It made him think of the legends of the First King of the barrowlands - the legendary ancestor of House Dustin, who was said to have laid down a spiteful curse on all the north to prevent any pretenders from ever rising to become his equal. A tall tale to scare children, surely.

The Weeper started barking out orders, and the vanguard kept japing amongst themselves as they mounted back up. Soon they were mostly all ahorse atop their garrons and trotting off. They would be returning to the refugee column and setting a hard pace for a nearby cove known to the local free folk. It wouldn't be particularly comfortable, but it would be shelter, for a time.

But Jon didn't mean to leave as yet. He lingered by the barrow until it was just him and the Weeper, who gave him an irritated look - he had just been about to pull himself atop his garron. "What are you waiting for, boy?"

Jon gave him a level look. "You never did say what you thought of the Horned Lord's legend, Weeper."

The Weeper gave him an impatient scoff. "I'm no storyteller. Why would you even care what I've got to say on that old king?"

Jon was starting to wonder that too. "I would hear what you think, regardless," Jon muttered, pushing on. "You know more of magic than most."

The Weeper was outright glowering at him now. "Just because I've killed a few wargs and wizards don't make me one, Snow." The Weeper said the words slowly, one syllable at a time, as if Jon was stupid. "Far as I'm concerned you're mostly better off killing that type soon as you see 'em. And I'm still not convinced on the matter of you, either," he leered. "Might be your heart is still black, crow."

He's trying to provoke me so he doesn't have to answer, Jon thought, sighing. If only it were possible to more easily cooperate with this savage. "I would still hear what you think, Weeper."

The Weeper didn't respond at first. He just pulled himself atop his garron. "The Horned Lord, aye? Fine, Snow. Fine." Once he was ahorse, he spat into the snow. "I say he was no giant or halfbreed. He was a raider like us, plain and bloody. Just cleverer than most - obviously, since he managed to become a King," the Weeper paused for a moment, working his jaw.

"Might be he picked up a few magic tricks to even the odds against the kneelers. Good tricks, probably. I've heard of raiders with tricks like that - mostly witches, but every so often there's a raider too with a queer knack. Not just wargs. There's knacked folk who'll look into fires or pools of water and see the south before they ever set foot there. Weird cunts who'll know in advance where the enemies are, where the food is, where rivers run shallow," the Weeper grunted. "If the Horned Lord was one of those types, I say his tricks made him overconfident."

Jon frowned. "How so?"

"Now that's obvious," the Weeper glowered down at him. "Just see how he ended up: the Horned Lord trusted magic once too often, and it cut him off in the south with no way out, death and Starks all around - not even a shred of hope for escape. He said that that sorcery is a sword without a hilt, there is no safe way to grasp it. Should have taken that warning more for himself, the idiot." The Weeper snorted, jerked his garron's reins, and turned away at a trot. "Magic doesn't solve problems for men, Snow. It only creates them. That's what I say."

The Weeper left him behind. Jon stared after his retreating back for a time, then mounted up and followed him and the rest of the vanguard.

Magic doesn't solve problems for men. It only creates them. Jon quietly considered those words, turning them over inside. He pondered what the greenseer might have said in response. Bloodraven. He thought of the greenseer who had once been that man, and his pale, bloodless body, slowly being devoured by the weirwood's roots. A true sorcerer. An ancient prisoner rotting in his own skin, with little but visions of the distant and the hereafter for company.

If that is sorcery, I want no part of it, Jon eventually decided.

As he left, he spared a glance back to the barrow shrine. A small part of Jon wondered if the Horned Lord's spirit still lingered somewhere, watching the end of days in the far north, judging the bastard crow who sought to lead his descendants south.

The vanguard couldn't make further progress southwards the next day. Jon refused to allow it.

The line of weary refugees following the trail set by the Weeper's warband stretched back for days now. With their advantage of garrons and being able to move ahorse overland, the vanguard had - inevitably, in retrospect - gotten too far ahead of the main column.

The refugees had hunkered down through the night's storm in every random crag and hollow across a great stretch of at least twenty miles of forest. Now they had been delayed in all their thousands, thanks to muddy trails befouling oxen and wagons and people alike. The slow-moving column of clans was so stretched across the land that they'd lost all organization, all semblance to a united host.

The Weeper wasn't blind. He too could see how vulnerable the column was. If they came under attack now, the enemy - whether it was the Night's Watch, predatory wildling clans, or the dead - would cut through the undisciplined column of clans with the ease of a hot axe through porridge. So he dispersed the vanguard for the day, ordering them divided into small bands under the likes of himself, Furs and Urwen, Rolf and Mharka, and ordered cooperative-enough chieftains like Halrak Stonetooth and Laisa Threespear to do the same. Between them they split up the vanguard's garrons twelve different ways and served as outriders, foragers, and whips, galloping up and down the column endlessly to keep it moving in a more or less orderly fashion.

More or less. Order was more easily spoken of than kept among wildlings, as Jon was reminded well before midday.

When a clan quarrel broke out in the main refugee camp, the sea wind carried the sound of the shouting over to him. He turned his garron upwards along the thickly populated beach and found forty or so wildlings of different clans shouting at one another. Near as he could tell, a Frozen Shore clan on the one side, a knot of Hornfoots on the other, and between them a scatter of bloody snow and bones - where, as far as he could tell, some animal had been recently butchered, likely during the night. There wasn't much left now but the bones.

As Jon approached, a heavy Frozen Shore man was trembling with rage. "…You thieving fucking cravens! That was a Hyragran doe!" His accent was so thick the words were scarcely intelligible.

A Hornfoot woman chuckled. "Was. Now she's Stonestrider stew."

Some clansman behind her laughed outright. One of them had a bloody hide balled in one fist, which he tossed over. "If you're all salty about it, here's the skin."

The Frozen Shore man didn't pick it up. "You cut her throat in the dark, you fuckin' - you stole my clan's meat— !"

"She wandered into our camp on her own four legs," the Hornfoot woman said plainly. "A doe with no shepherd belongs to the first hunter, and every clan from here to the Milkwater knows it."

"Wandered!" He spat the word contemptuously. "You dare! You dare call it that!? You thieving scum've been trailing after clan flock since the Antler, waiting your chance— !"

"What, was the doe one of your wives? Hah!" A barefoot youth shouldered forward, grinning through a wispy beard. "Your folk lifted three of our goats at the Gullet, and now you give us lip, you mouthy—"

"Those goats were owed us!"

"Ask your cousin how it's owed, next I catch him near my flock I'll— !"

"You touch him, you'll catch the sharp end of my— !"

"Peace," Jon walked his garron in between them, and for a moment the din between the clans quieted. "What's the argument here?"

"And who the fuck are you?"

Jon stared down at him. The Frozen Shore man hadn't even said it with much heat. He looked Jon up and down, currently lacking either Ghost or Sonagon, and clearly was unimpressed… and likely entirely ignorant as to who he was.

Jon was reminded, once again, that he'd had little to no part in recruiting many of the recent clans that had joined their march to Hardhome.

The Hornfoot woman wasn't so ignorant. She just sneered at him. "Where's your beast today, crow?"

"Sleeping," Jon replied evenly. "What's the issue here?"

"What's it to you?"

"Fuck off."

Jon's jaw set. I could bring Sonagon down on these pigheaded fools. One glimpse of white scales through the pines and they'd all be blubbering in the snow, begging for another chance to listen to his commands.

But then it would be the dragon that settled the next quarrel, and the next, onwards to every single petty meaningless little squabble from here to the Wall - and he would be no better than the Weeper, ruling people by terror.

…Perhaps he would do just that, if he was forced into extremities to stop the wildlings from savaging the Seven Kingdoms.

But it wouldn't be today. And it wouldn't be for a sheep. Or a goat, or whatever the bloody animal had been. He took a second look at the skin lying forgotten in the snow. A reindeer, perhaps.

Jon turned his garron away and rode back the way he'd come. If these arguing fools weren't so enraged as to step over the line into violence, if they kept their bickering to themselves, there was little for him to do. No one paid attention to him as he went.

Behind him, it was only moments before the clan's argument resumed. He kept half an eye on it until before long another of the Weeper's raiders came upon the scene and answered it the only way the free folk ever seemed to heed - with a raised axe, and a bellowing voice louder than any of theirs. And unlike Jon's polite approach, it actually worked.

As the hours passed, half a dozen more incidents just like that came and went, testing Jon's brittle control over so many small parts of the wildling host. But by midday, the leading parts of the refugee column resumed their march southwards, with the whole mass moving not long after. The vanguard lingered behind to keep order for now.

Half a day, Jon reminded himself. That was all the Weeper had been willing to delay for the sake of the stragglers after the storm. Jon would have preferred to wait even longer that they all move as one, of course, but that had proven quite impossible - the Weeper and his raiders were proving tetchy enough with this pace as it was. It didn't help that the rearmost lines of refugees were periodically straying from the column to forage for food. So little time to see to the people's safety.

He couldn't in good conscience stop the stragglers from foraging for food either. Yet there were few mounts to share and even less food. Shelter was scarce and medicine of any sort was priceless. Too many of the wounded, the young and the old, the sick and the infirm were vulnerable to the elements and to exhaustion. Every night of late had seen pyres to burn the bodies of those who had been unable to survive the journey.

For all these troubles, there was no perfect solution to be had - none. It wasn't possible. Just keeping the refugees within range of his ability to monitor most of them through Ghost and Phantom, and keeping them moving, always moving for Hardhome… that was all he could do for them.

Jon sat now on a grey bar of rock just above the cold shore, warging through his second skins to keep an eye on the refugee column and alert the outriders to those who strayed. It was necessary work. More to the point, boring work. Given there was no ongoing battle or dispute anywhere, it occupied only a fraction of his attention. So he found his own eyes wandering up and down the coast.

On just this stretch of cold, grey shoreline trail before him, he saw hundreds of refugees. Just a tiny sampling of the scope of the numbers following: thousands upon thousands of people, spread out across at least twenty miles, dozens of clans and hundreds of families.

The Weeper hadn't the horses to have all of his raiders help whip the refugee column, so he'd ordered the rest to spend this day foraging the local forest and the offshore rocks for food. Someone had brought in a brace of seal not too long ago, and he'd heard talk of rustling up a few boats to go after the walrus and sea cows that were thick in these waters. Hatch was offshore with some of Devyn's larger canoes and a few dozen of the raiders even now.

But for now, Jon found himself mostly alone. A few raiders stayed behind to guard him, but that was all.

He stared out towards the faint silhouette of a tall spire of cold, black rock rising from the sea just offshore, on the distant horizon near the direction of Hardhome. A basalt spire hundreds of feet tall, a famous landmark throughout the far north. Memories of the ranger's maps flashed through his mind. That's Storrold's Point, isn't it?

Hardhome was close, then.

The coast between here and there should be decently peopled,if I remember properly. It was common knowledge even south of the Wall that the Bay of Seals held the greater part of the wildling population along the haunted forest's eastern coast - if only because of how many raiders came from there.

But not all of the wildlings live near the coastal trail. It isn't the only route south from here, Jon knew that much. If only I had one of the ranger's maps. There ought to be a few hamlets or other small settlements between here and Eastwatch, somewhere in the forest. They will have to be found, rallied, fed—

The coastline trembled beneath his feet.

Screams rose from up and down the refugee column. Jon cursed, instantly realizing what was happening.

From the grey cliffs that loomed above the shoreline, something vast stirred. Rocks clattered down in miniature avalanches.

Then, above the cliff's edge, the white dragon appeared.

Sonagon stared down from its rocky perch, and Jon had to admit it was an awe-inspiring sight. Sonagon looked like some enormous lizard out of legend, with scales pale as milkglass and veined in faint red. The dragon's wings, almost fully healed now, were half-furled against the wind, their membranes catching the weak northern light.

But the people's terror scattered them like flocks of startled pheasants. Women clutching babes to their breasts fled screaming. Others fell back on their rears, babbling. Children clutched at their parents. Dogs barked like mad.

The dragon's eyes swept over the panicking throng below with a lazy sort of curiosity, a predator's interest.

"Sonagon!" Jon suddenly feeling a sense of dread, and shouted while pleading with the dragon. Not these prey. They are not prey. "Hold! Damn it, hold!"

The dragon's eyes passed from the refugees. Then it eyed him a long moment, head tilted. Then Sonagon snorted - a small blast of frosty steam in its own right - and launched itself down from the cliff's edge.

For a single heart-stopping moment, Jon thought Sonagon was about to start tearing into the refugees. It would have been a pure red slaughter, invalidating everything he'd done and been trying to achieve.

But Sonagon kept descending, passing over the people's heads entirely.

Sonagon's wings opened only wide enough to steady the dragon's plunge. The massive dragon sailed straight over the heads of hundreds of refugees, with a downdraft so terrifically powerful that it knocked hundreds of people to the ground, falling back in terror. Even Jon, well off to the side, felt his cloak and hair whipped up as if in a sudden gale.

And then - with a thunderous splash that sent cold white spray halfway up the beach - Sonagon struck the sea. After a few bounding steps into the grey deeps, they watched, every soul of them, as the white dragon knifed through the waves as sinuously as a seal but a thousand times the size, heading out to sea.

Farther out, a huddle of walruses that had been basking on some rocky skerry - Hatch and his raiders had been busying themselves to hunt that precise pod - bellowed in panic and flung themselves into the water.

He's going to hunt out at sea, Jon realized. Through their bond, Jon felt an unmistakable pure glee rippling back: the dragon's simple joy at the chase. Sonagon dove, surfaced in a burst of foam, and pursued the lumbering herd of great tusked beasts with enthusiastic snaps of his jaws, chasing them like a direwolf after a nest of rabbits. Of course.

The sea boiled white behind the spectacle, and before long, red.

It was only moments before the dragon slipped beneath the waves entirely, leaving only a white-churned stretch of waves. But the air was filled with the distant, panicked bellows of hundreds of walruses and seals - dozens of them had been so panicked that the stupid animals had fled onto other parts of this same beach: a fortuitous coincidence that jarred enough people out of their stupor to eagerly fall on the unlucky beasts with whatever weapons they had on hand.

Quiet fell over the beach. Every face turned toward him.

Wildlings by the hundreds stared at him with wide eyes. Hornfoots and Nightrunners, river clans and raiders of the Weeper's own warband. Not with fear, but with… awe. They whispered among themselves in the old tongue, in the Common, in the guttural accents of the far north.

It didn't stop, either. He didn't know what to do with all this attention on him. What did they even want of him? He turned away before it could become some manner of a prolonged scene, returning to his garron.

But the people remained silent. Jon's mouth tightened. He could almost literally feel the refugee's eyes - curious and wary, hopeful and afraid - prickling at his back. A spearwife mother with antlers braided into her hair lifted a child high so the girl could see him.

It wasn't all veneration. Another man, particularly savage of attire and with half his face dyed blue, spat into the snow when Jon's gaze passed over him. That one earned a kick from one of his fellows, but Jon noted the sentiment.

They follow the dragon, not me, Jon thought. His gaze lingered on the savagely dyed Frozen Shore clansman. All of them. Even the ones who scorn me.

And that, presented a problem he truly did not know how to solve.

Later that same day, the warband's scouts came back at a gallop.

Garrons couldn't quite gallop, not with anything like the surety and speed of proper southern coursers or destriers, but the wind-scoured coastal trail was free enough of snow that they could almost manage. When the scout's two garrons crested a rise of the coastal trail, coming back from the south at a speed that - for garrons - could mean nothing but news, the Weeper let up a shout.

The vanguard's own horses all came to a halt on the frozen gravel. The first scout reined in hard in front of the Weeper. "Battle ahead, Weeping Man!" he panted. "Looks like two warbands, somewhere between maybe one or two hundred a side. Right outside Tidebreaker Hold!"

Despite all his efforts to remember the men's names, Jon didn't know this scout. After the scout's ranks had been depleted after the battle with the ice river tribesmen, the Weeper had called up several of the warband's outriders to take their place. This rider - a Nightrunner shadow hunter from the northern haunted forest, judging from the intricate tattoos etched into his cheeks - was almost certainly one such.

"Who's dying, then?" The Weeper demanded.

The scout hesitated. "Neither," the Nightrunner scout hesitated, seemed to pick his words carefully. "It's the Lord of Seals, we think. Looks like he's come picking for a fight. Sort of."

"Sort of," Rolf repeated flatly. The warband's unofficial second-in-command had been riding at the Weeper's side.

The Weeper worked it over for a moment. Then he scowled, spat in the snow with an ugly look. "Of course he did. That fat cunt. I should've seen this coming. Let's go."

They pressed forward at a trot, cresting the coastal rises and strands - and about twenty minutes later, in the afternoon when the sun was past its peak in the sky, Jon saw their destination.

Tidebreaker Hold sat exactly as he had imagined it from Devyn Sealskinner's description: a ringfort of stakewalls and driftwood perched high on a bluff where the last of the Antler's muddy brown waters finally bled out into the Shivering Sea's grey waves. It commanded a view for miles in every direction, overlooking the southern edge of the Gullet. A proper stronghold by any northern standard short of a castle, with heavy seaward walls to shelter the settlement from the wind, and landward defenses almost as good as a proper castle's.

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But what was happening below the Hold was not what Jon had expected.

Refugees had flocked to the Hold by the thousands - that could certainly be seen at first glance, judging by the tents and ramshackle huts that had sprung up like mushrooms, overflowing from the coastal ringfort and spilling out into the lower river flats. Jon had expected that.

But he had not expected to see a battle. The men of Tidebreaker Hold were fighting some other force.

Jon's first instinct was to scan for the dead, for the Night's Watch or any other enemies. There were none.

His second instinct was to read the fight. And here Jon's usual instincts faltered.

What are they doing?

He saw two masses of men - different wildling factions - fighting each other across the expanse of frozen beach and gravel below the stronghold. The larger group - pressing from the waterward side, with boats visible on the beach behind them - numbered perhaps a hundred and fifty. The defenders of Tidebreaker Hold had come down from the bluff to meet them, roughly equal or slightly smaller in number.

They were fighting, that much was obvious. He saw lines of men, surging and ebbing like distant, two-legged ants. Men beat spears against their shields, shouting themselves red in the face. Here and there a pair would break from the lines entirely and grapple, wrestling in the frozen gravel until one went down or was dragged back by his fellows. At the edges of each line, individual warriors postured and roared, making great shows of lunging forward and then retreating when their opposite number held his ground.

But the blood on the ground was sparse, he could see that even from here. A few men were down, a few others were clutching arms or heads - but he saw none of the carnage he would have expected a battle of three or so hundred men to produce.

If only I had one of the Watch's spyglasses. "What am I even looking at?" Jon muttered, baffled.

"Hah!" Furs chortled, pulling up beside him. "First time watching a proper free folk scrap, is it?"

"They're not killing each other," Jon said. His eyes didn't veer from the sight below them. If only I could see.

"Not mostly." Furs settled back in his saddle, watching the churning lines with something close to professional appreciation. "That's mostly how it always goes between the big clans - 'cept they have real blood between them, obviously, or are trying to steal the other's hunting grounds."

Jon frowned. "I don't understand."

"Eh," Furs scratched at his beard. "When two free folk clans of basically even strength have a grievance to settle and the chiefs can't agree on a duel… hmm, let's say you're one of the two warchiefs. You could go for blood, sure, try to kill the entire enemy clan - but nah. Sometimes it's best to go out of your way to not shed too much blood. Making the big fights a blood battle can go very wrong for you, it would be stupid - because then it'll cut both ways and bleed both whole warbands dry, and then you'd just lose your hunting grounds anyway to some other clan."

"I see," Jon said.

There was a logic to it. He'd heard of things like this in the south, when petty lords with serious grievances would resort to battle between their domains - but there were always rules to such things, like avoiding the killing of smallfolk, accepting the surrenders of the fallen and so on - all rules to prevent the kind of mass death that would tempt the hunger of outsiders and third parties, or require the king to intervene. It seemed the wildlings had their own equivalent.

"It's organized cowardice between clans," the Weeper said, but without heat. "Lots of pushing and screaming. Warchiefs preening and posturing and cracking heads. The actual killing only comes if someone does something stupid or if the grievance is bad enough to want blood." He paused. "Doesn't mean it won't turn. These things can always turn."

Jon watched a moment longer, trying to piece together the structure of it: this seemed more of an organized show of dominance than proper battle. The actual fighting, when it happened, was contained to the flanks, or to men who broke off from the lines - more effort was being put into pushing and screaming loudly than to exchanges of blades. It was nothing like the disciplined, grinding lines of southern warfare that Ser Rodrik had drilled into him. But it wasn't chaos either. It had its own logic - in the end, the bigger, stronger, and mostly braver warband would take the field without killing too many of the other.

It was still far from certain which side that would be.

"Who is the Lord of Seals?" Jon asked, without averting his eyes from the fight sprawling below them.

"A fat cunt who builds good boats and carries bad grudges," the Weeper scoffed. "He calls himself a raider, but he really ain't - mostly he just rents out boats to them who actually raid, like me, and takes himself a fat cut of the loot. Most of everyone who raids the south coast of the Bay of Seals has to work with him at least sometimes."

Jon frowned. "He goes after other free folk who build their own boats?"

The Weeper smiled nastily. "Been doing it for thirty years. Wants to be the only chief with raiding boats in the Bay. He's the type that thinks having piles of silver makes him a great man." The Weeper's tone had gone particularly flat, which Jon had learned to recognize as the Weeper's sign of genuine and particular dislike, rather than his general scorn for all other men.

"Weeping Man and the Lord of Seals have history," Urwen grunted.

"What kind of history?" Jon asked the Weeper directly.

The Weeper glared. "The kind I, don't, discuss."

Jon decided not to press. "Fine. What's the grievance here? What are they fighting over?"

"Don't know for certain. But…" Furs squinted toward the waterward group. "Those are the Lord of Seals' boats on the shore there. He's come from the bay. Could be he had a plan to go south and Thaldar wouldn't cooperate, or could be he just wants the Tidebreaker's boats all for himself."

"He has a fleet?" Jon asked.

"A more generous word than I'd use, but, hmm, pretty much. Tidebreaker's got the most sea boats on the east coast - aside from the Lord of Seals himself." Furs scratched his chin. "Them's the situation, I'd reckon. Two men who both want to go south, aye? One won't cooperate, other decides to take what he needs."

Jon looked at the Weeper. "Can we stop this?"

"Sure," the Weeper said gamely. "Whether that makes it better or worse for us depends."

"On what?"

"On whether your dragon makes an impression."

Jon looked out to sea. Not that it did any good - Sonagon was too far away to be seen. Jon closed his eyes and focused. He had a distant impression of an enormous predator lazily chasing after packs of terrified prey, like small, delicious bags of meat and blood somewhere far out beneath the grey sea. Too far. He cursed under his breath.

"We go in on horses," Jon said. "Show of numbers, show of noise. Can we get between them and stop this?"

"Eh, probably," Furs said doubtfully. "Doesn't mean we should."

"More likely to get them both on us instead," the Weeper chortled. "Stupid idea."

Jon drew Dark Sister. Not to use, but to be seen. "If that happens, it happens. We go. Ride!"

The vanguard looked at one another doubtfully, but when the Weeper shrugged and followed Jon, they came readily enough. They came down off the rise at a canter, fifty riders spreading out in a wide line.

The effect on the battlefield - if it could be called that - was immediate. The shouting on the beach faltered. Heads turned. The two opposing warbands paused mid-battle.

Jon drove his garron down the slope and onto the gravel with the Weeper at his right and Ghost silently padding along at his left. "Hold!" He shouted, loud enough to carry as far as he could manage. "Both sides! Hold where you are!"

There was a moment where it could have gone either way. The nearest men on both sides did, in fact, hold - not out of obedience, Jon suspected, but out of sheer surprise.

Then shouts went up. Both opposing warbands quickly began clustering towards their chieftains. After a minute or so, two men stepped forward.

From the defenders' side, a big grey-bearded man in piled-on blued furs descended the gravel slope from the Hold's outer gate, moving with a deliberate, unhurried stride. He carried a wooden warhammer with a bronze head, inlaid with iron bands, with a gauntlet on his left hand. He looked at Jon's vanguard, at Ghost, at the Weeper - and then at Jon himself, with eyes that were grey and measuring.

Thaldar, had to be.

From the other side, a huge, fat man was being helped forward, up from the beach and through the ranks of the attackers. Helped, not led: he could barely stand on his two legs, with a left limp that was far worse than Jon's own. An almost equally large, but much younger man flanked the figure, steadying him over the uneven ground.

The crippled, yet still savage figure was both enormously fat and tall, standing near seven feet and wrapped in layered sealskins that made him look like a great grey boulder, with a wide battered face and dark eyes ensconced within deep folds of flesh. One leg dragged slightly as he walked, compensated for by a thick staff of driftwood, and by the slightly smaller man who looked like a younger version of himself, supporting his weight.

"Sealcunt," the Weeper said lightly.

"Weeping Man," the fat man said, in a voice that made it sound like a curse. He held himself up with his staff, as his helper or possible son withdrew. "I'd heard you died up the mountains," he snorted. "Or mayhaps I was just wishing it so."

"You fucking coward," the Weeper leered. "I sure remember you talking a big game to Mance about getting south on your own, that you didn't need to march with him to hit the crows. Yet here I find you, on the wrong side of the Wall and raiding other free folk. You really are a spineless pack of rotten rat leavings, aren't you?"

Jon stepped his garron between them. "I'll ask what this is before it goes any further." He looked from one to the other. "My lord—" to Thaldar— "and—" he paused.

"The Lord of Seals," Furs murmured from behind him.

"My lord," Jon said again, shifting his gaze to the fat man. None of these men were anything even resembling a true lord, but, best to be polite. "I would know what brought you and two hundred raiders off their boats and onto another chief's beach."

"I deny. It's naught but a misunderstanding, white crow," the Lord of Seals said, spreading his hands conciliatorily. His voice was suddenly as smooth as a merchant's. "Thaldar here is as stubborn as a man could be. Anyone who knows him will confirm. My men have, hmm, short tempers in the cold. I came to propose a joint venture. Nothing more."

"A joint venture," Thaldar repeated, in tones that made the words sound like something he had scraped from his boot.

"You came with two hundred men," Jon said.

"Negotiating from strength," the Lord of Seals said, entirely unabashed. "It is how things are done up here."

Thaldar's bearded lip curled. He spoke slowly, as if each word was precisely parceled out. "You shameless cur. I've executed men for breaking their oaths, for breaking guest rite. Kinslayers and cravens, heretics and thieves. More than I can rightly remember. And to a man, they still had more honor than your rotting carcass."

The Lord of Seals' men bristled. One in particular stepped forward, the big one who had supported their warchief in his walking. "I'LL KILL YOU, old man!" he bellowed.

Thaldar didn't even look at the younger one. He just kept glaring at the 'Lord' of Seals. "Get your gap-jawed, mealy-mouthed retarded cur of a son in line, Tatters. Or I'll bury him here with you."

Men by the dozens, of both the Weeper's and Thaldar's warbands, chortled - either at the insult, or at the mention of what, Jon presumed, was the original name of the 'Lord' of Seals.'

He, for his part just looked around at all and spat on the ground.

"I ought to take your entire Hold as blood price for that insult," the 'Lord' growled, as half his men raised their axes. "You ought to thank me for my forbearances." He sneered. "And m'boy's right anyways. You're getting old, Thaldar. You should be the one to get in line. Or be trampled under my boot."

Thaldar just snorted coldly. "The threats of a cur too old and weak to even stand on his own. Hiding behind his own sons. A real man would have died in battle before getting so weak."

A pot calling the kettle black, Jon thought, as the traded insults continued. If there was any difference in the age, or more importantly, the barbarity of the two men, Jon could scarcely see it. One simply had a crippled leg and the other didn't.

Before this could escalate further, he stepped forward. "Neither of you should be fighting at all," Jon said. "The common enemy of all is coming. Surely you both must know."

"Fuck you and your walking dead, white crow," Thaldar said simply. "Never seen 'em, not down here. My only concern is the men before me, and the folk I protect. That's the only fight I see."

Jon was speechless for a moment. The Weeper chortled and gave Jon a look. Jon knew what he was saying: Let's move on and leave these two to the white walkers.

He couldn't do that. "If the two of you would only—"

The Lord of Seals waved him off without so much as a glance. "There's nothing to settle, crow, till this old goat admits what he is - a stubborn relic squatting on the fattest bend of the Gullet, too proud and withered to know his time's done. That's the whole of the misunderstanding."

Thaldar's men growled or spat, clutching at their axes, but he held them back with a long arm. "You'll fuck off back down the way you came. With every cur boat and boy you came with, or I'll leave your bodies here in the mud." His gaze didn't veer from the other warchief. "I've taken the lives of fifty better chiefs than you, Tatters. What's fifty-and-one?"

"Both of you—" Jon tried. Neither so much as glanced his way.

"YOU'LL die here!" the Lord of Seals' overgrown son burst out, unable to hold his tongue. "My father's raided more coast than you've ever laid eyes on, you dried-up—"

"Your father hasn't set his hand to an oar in, eh, ten years," the Weeper put in pleasantly, clearly enjoying this. "He rents out boats while better men do the bleeding, and counts up his silver. That's the whole of his raiding, you overgrown pup."

Laughter rolled down both lines. The son, who looked like a big man in his own right, past thirty and battle-scarred, went scarlet to the ears. But the Lord of Seals, whose face had gone increasingly dark with each insult, smiled contemptuously. He jabbed his driftwood staff up toward the ringfort on the bluff. "Say what you like, Weeping Man. I'll have that Hold by dark, and every keel inside it, and I'll build my boy a proper hall out of Thaldar's own walls."

"Big talk," Thaldar said, "from a man who needs two spearwives to help him piss in the morning. When did you last take a boat out yourself, Tatters? Ten years? Twenty?"

"Tell me, old man," the 'Lord' sneered, "how many of your daughters are still on Skagos, warming skagg beds? Twenty years you've been paying the skaggs' butcher's bill, and you never once got your blood back. You couldn't defend your own hearth, and you'd stand here and lecture me about what's mine!"

The beach went very quiet.

Thaldar didn't even respond, not to that. He only looked at the Lord of Seals for a long moment, as his eyes darkened - and then his hand closed around the haft of his hammer, and he started forward across the shingle of the cold beach, clearly intent upon killing.

All of his men walked with him. The Lord of Seals' son screamed and wrenched his blade free. The Lord of Seals' men surged after him, and Thaldar's came down off the slope to meet them, and all along both lines the posturing sloughed away at once, as three hundred men remembered that they had come here to kill. Spears dropped level. Steel was already swinging for a throat.

"Enough!" Jon roared.

And, from somewhere far out on the Shivering Sea, past the last grey edge of sight, Sonagon roared with him.

The terrific sound came from over the water like a thunderclap. The dragon was too far away to even be seen, but his roar still hit powerfully enough that it struck every man present like a slap to the ears, reverberating in the chest with actual force.

It went on, and on, long past the point any living man's throat would have failed, echoing off the grey sea and the nearby cliffs. Gulls burst cawing in panic off the heights. Half the horses broke and galloped away. Three hundred men who had been a heartbeat from murder stood suddenly as still as frightened deer. An axe fell from someone's hand.

Jon felt as stunned as they looked. He hadn't planned for that. Not even remotely. Sonagon must have felt my anger, he suddenly realized.

He managed to catch up to his own thoughts while he could still seize the moment. In the silence, Jon trotted his garron forward. And this time, no one mocked him.

"I have listened," he said, quietly - there was no need to be loud now - "to every insult you two rotten fools can trade. I'm done listening. Here is how it will go. You will both put up your swords, make peace, and march with me to Hardhome. For the good of your people if naught else. If you don't march with me, you'll kneel to me and then march ere the day is done. You decide."

Kneel. Jon watched both men bristle, and he knew exactly what he had done.

The free folk knelt to no man, and to no king - that was the whole of what made them free folk, the one pride shared by every tribe from the farthest northern wastes and mountains to the shadow of the Wall in the southern forests. To the old gods a man might bend his knee, before the heart trees of their ancestors, but even that went tribe by tribe; Jon had learned as much. To be commanded to kneel to a man - and a crow, at that - was as black an insult as either warchief had likely heard in years.

Thaldar's jaw worked beneath his beard. The Lord of Seals had gone purple. All down both lines the men bristled, hands tightening on haft and hilt. Even some of the Weeper's men looked at him suspiciously—

And not one of them said a word. The dragon's roar was still dying away across the water, and there was not a soul on that beach who hadn't been terrified by it.

So Jon gave them another option, another road, before their stubborn savage pride could curdle into something he'd have to answer with blood.

"Or," Jon said slowly, "if the two of you can't agree to settle your grievances chief against chief, you will settle it against me. Steel to steel, as the old ways demand. Win or lose, the grievance dies with the fight - and then, if I win, we all march. I'll hold the field, and I'll see it done fair."

For a long moment, not a man on the beach moved.

Then Thaldar and the Lord of Seals glanced at one another. Something passed between them, Jon couldn't interpret it. A look shared between two old enemies who had scarce need of words in this moment.

But, they nodded each to the other. Then, to him.

They were agreed.

The two of them conferred, briefly. Then the Weeper took the first fight, squaring off against Orvald - the son of the Lord of Seals, apparently - off on the high part of the beach.

It hadn't been entirely obvious while he'd been supporting his father's weight, but Orvald was a great brute of a man, near seven entire feet tall and twenty-five stone if he was an ounce. Where his father was wide-jowled and fat, Orvald wasn't so dissimilar in stature, but with all the softness removed, leaving only hard edges of bone and jaw on a wide, beardless face. He wore thickly piled furs, and carried a club of ironwood banded in rings of actual iron - the metal had no doubt been taken from numerous raids, since the wildlings themselves could not smelt the stuff themselves.

None of that would have been too exceptional, except that he showed little fear squaring off against the Weeper, one of the far north's most notorious raiders. Mostly, his expression was mostly one of anticipation.

He actually thinks he's going to win. Small wonder, Jon dubiously supposed, given that Orvald was practically twice the Weeper's size. And the Weeper was already a big man.

He wondered how the Weeper would acquit himself against such a giant. For all their time marching together the past month, he still hadn't seen much of the Weeper's much-vaunted skills in battle. His suspicion was that it would take more than size differences to bridge a combat experience gap this massive: the Weeper had been fighting all his life, and had at least ten years on his opponent.

But there were no guarantees in battle. By Jon's estimate, Orvald had at least a hundredweight advantage here, and was a good few years younger. Those factors mattered.

He watched from the side as the Weeper handed his outer furs to Rolf and rolled his neck. Around him, the Weeper's warband watched with anticipation, trading jeers and mutters and rumors. Some were closer than others.

"…know that one?" Hatch asked Mharka, from right beside Jon.

She was one of the oldest and ugliest spearwives he had seen, something of a commander as things went in the Weeper's warband. As Jon listened in, she worked her jaw and gave Orvald a foul look. "That one's a bay raider, Halfgiant. Just hasn't earned a name yet - not last I heard anyway. You'll not have crossed him. He works the kneeler shores, mostly - hear he likes to go out with the likes of Asta the Swimmer and Sweety Tyk. Bullden Horn too sometimes. At night, when the crow's patrols can't see 'em. I hear he's stolen half a dozen southron girls and taken them to wife."

Hatch chuckled. "He's good at his craft then. Can't say I'm too interested though."

Mharka rolled her eyes. "I bet you wouldn't be, you big lout."

Jon felt a small moment of weariness at such a casual reminder of the brutalities of the far north. But the backchatter ceased when Orvald picked up his club. "They named you the Weeping Man." His voice came slow and thick. "That for the eyes? Or on account of how you'll be blubbering for your mother by the time I'm through with you?"

"Gods couldn't stand the sight of me." The Weeper said, in a bored tone. "It was, hmm, mutual." He worked his arm, then drew his scythe. "You'll make a big hole, I'll grant you. Hope your da thought to bring shovels."

"You talk a lot for a dead man," Orvald said.

The Weeper snorted coldly. But his weeping eyes were flat, and patient. "Cute. Put up your steel, and stop wagging your tongue like a little girl." He chuckled lowly. "Before I go and rip it out of your gawping mouth."

Orvald spat on the gravel. He hefted the club, and the anger bled from his face, only leaving behind a cold mask. And then the fight was met.

If it could be called that. The Weeper tried going for the kill immediately, but Orvald's defense was too quick, almost strangely quick for his size, and his weapon had to weigh several times the Weeper's scythe - there was no hope of blocking or parrying it.

As such, the first minute belonged to Orvald, and the Weeper mostly spent it retreating, Orvald plodding after him as stubbornly and steadfastly as an aurochs bearing for a watering hole.

"Who you betting on to win, Snow?" Furs asked, grinning.

I think it's a pity both sides can't lose. From amidst the circle of hard raiders, Jon stared between the combatants. Both men were raiders of the worst stripe, even among wildlings. But on reflection given his present company, he decided it best not to answer at all.

Orvald, despite the unfortunate look to him, wasn't a fool - he was an experienced enough a fighter to refuse to let the Weeper tire him. And the Weeper, wisely, refused to get into a clash of strength with such a massive man. Even after some time had passed there still hadn't been any decisive blows, mostly a battle of footwork and evasions.

It was to put it plainly, a bad matchup, and he suspected both men in the ring were full well aware of it.

The crowd around the ring rippled and murmured as the Weeper continued to give ground. Some of the Lord of Seals' men laughed. Jon kept watching, carefully.

Then the Weeper stopped retreating.

It was difficult to say exactly when the tenor of the fight changed, but the Weeper's sheer battle experience eventually shone through. He simply seized the initiative at a certain point, perhaps having read some pattern into Orvald's movements that Jon still couldn't see, and struck out only from somewhere other than where the massive club was going.

The muttering and jeering had stopped. Once the Weeper had regained the initiative, the feel of the fight turned into something very different. The Weeper was fast, and deadly for it, evidently far more so than the chieftains Jon had dueled on the way downriver.

When Orvald finally overcommitted, the Weeper stepped in past his guard and drove his scythe into the man's gut.

Jon frowned. Both because he'd asked the Weeper to try to avoid killing him… and because it should have ended there.

It didn't.

Most men would have died there, caught by Orvald's furious counterblow. But the Weeper stepped back easily - too easily. His scythe hadn't managed to cut into flesh or even fat, which should have tarried the blade's movements at least somewhat. Instead it had skittered across something.

Then Jon saw black steel rings, glinting through a wide seam in the infuriated bay raider's furs.

A hauberk of chainmail, black in color and hidden under layers of outer furs.

A nasty trick.Deliberate openings and hidden armor, to create killing opportunities. Jon grimaced when he realized that, given the hauberk's black color, this set had more than likely been stolen from a dead ranger. Possibly from more than one, and stitched together. He suspected it would take more than a single coat of mail cover this big brute of a savage.

And in theory, mail would be particularly advantageous against the Weeper. Because a scythe was not a sword. A sword could stab through mail when angled to pierce through. A scythe, however, was a cutting weapon lacking anything resembling a sword's precision. In such circumstances, mail was almost as sturdy a defense as actual plate.

And yet, the trick still didn't help the brute much. Because the Weeper, no doubt fully aware of those same concerns, saw through it all.

And then, he began to laugh.

"Cute. Any mail up here?" The scythe flashed out, and a thin red line opened high on Orvald's cheek, a hand's breadth above the black collar of his mail. The Weeper clucked his tongue mockingly. "No. Pity!"

Orvald roared and swung. The Weeper stepped around the blow, lunging in once more.

"Here, then?!" The scythe licked out and laid open the meat of his forearm, where the stolen sleeve ended. He was grinning now, his weeping eyes gleaming terribly. "Or here?"

That cut caught the back of the knee, where the hauberk's skirt rode up when Orvald lunged, and the big man staggered.

"You fat retarded scunner!" The Weeper laughed. "You overweened boy! Your dead crow had smaller arms than you. Smaller everything! Left you all manner of gaps!"

Cut followed cut. The soft place beneath the arm. The back of the club-hand. The Weeper's sheer experience and precision was swiftly making the difference, until within a minute it became less of a fight than it was a dismantling.

Jon reassessed his initial judgement. He'd overestimated this fool of a bay raider. He truly is just wearing a single coat of mail, and mutilated it to make it fit. No doubt filling in the gaps with inferior boiled leather or some even cheaper equivalent, elsewise he would have already fallen.

And yet, for the Weeper to so quickly deduce and take advantage of such a weakness was a high display of skill in its own right. Especially when wielding so poorly matched a weapon. Few knights could have done so.

The previous cheering and exuberance from the Lord of Seals' men had all long-since disappeared. Now, there was only a deathly silence from them, filled just as much by the loud cheering from the Weeper's own men.

And then it abruptly ended. After several more cuts and blows to explore the limits of Orvald's hidden armor - the Weeper didn't go for the kill.

He went for the wrist.

Orvald's right hand landed on the gravel with his grip still on the club's handle.

For a long moment the huge man only stared at the weeping stump where his hand had been, as though it belonged to some other man entirely.

Then he screamed. His knees went when the Weeper kicked them out from under him.

Then Orvald went still when the Weeper laid the curve of the scythe against the side of that thick throat.

The Lord of Seals, watching uneasily from the sidelines the whole while, erupted.

"MY BOY." An enormous bellow suddenly tore out of him. The bay raider warchief flung his driftwood staff aside and heaved himself up onto his own two ruined legs - or tried to. The crippled one folded under all that weight, pitching his body over - and still he tried to crawl over, dragging the dead floundering leg through the gravel toward his kneeling son. "My boy - MY BOY— !"

The Weeper looked up, across the ring, and found Jon's eyes.

For a moment the two of them only looked at one another over Orvald's kneeling wreck. The crowd, the sea, the whole grey world went quiet and far away. Jon held the Weeper's bloody-minded stare, and he shook his head, as plain as he could make it. No.

The Weeper visibly scoffed, then looked back down on Orvald consideringly.

He's going to do it anyway. Jon was certain of it, as certain as he'd ever been of anything. There was not one thing he could do to stop it. Truth be told, not even he was certain it should be stopped, so how could he ask another man, especially this man, to even hesitate—

The Weeper grinned.

And then he drew back his boot and kicked the great maimed brute sprawling face-first into the bloody mud.

"Easy enough!" The Weeper announced to the whole beach, cheerful as a man risen from a feast. He wiped his bloody scythe down his forearm, laughing like this entire bloody business had been the best jape he'd heard in a year. "Crawl on home, sealpup," he jeered back over his shoulder, not troubling to look. "And tell your da the Weeping Man sends his love."

Then it was Jon's turn.

When the space cleared, Thaldar stepped into the ring first. Jon took his place across from him, wondering if it would quickly come to battle or not.

It didn't. The grey-maned old chieftain, whom folk of this region called Tidebreaker, let his hammer of runed bronze simply rest against the snow, both his hands clasped over the pommel. Thaldar looked at him with calm, unerring dark eyes, like some statue of the very concept of patience. But one that watched him, and waited.

Jon was unsure what to say. The moment of quiet went on for a few breaths as both of them measured the other.

With that calm patience, the grey-maned old chieftain simply looked at him, doing nothing else apart from that, examining him, while sparing passing glances for the Valyrian steel blade in his hand, for the Weeper watching on with an ugly leer, for the direwolf sitting quietly behind the circle's edge, and lastly, for the cold grey expanse of the sea from where the dragon's roar had come.

Jon could see how this old, grey-maned chieftain considered it all, and still, didn't fear.

"Why did you tell the Weeper not to kill that overgrown lout?" Thaldar asked, ending the moment.

So he realized. "No one needs to die," Jon said firmly. "And, well…" he shrugged. "I'd have a far harder time bringing the free folk south if every bay raider in my path were put to the sword. They might be useful."

"Bah," Thaldar groused. "You'd have an easier time if you did. Get someone else to manage your boats. Sealskinner, maybe. Every man who goes raiding the Bay of Seals is a black-hearted scoundrel. Killers and cravens, the lot of them. Scum."

Jon gave him a look. "I thought you were a bay raider. I've been told hundreds have died on your command. That you brought blood to House Stane's lands on Skagos. That you tried to burn Driftwood Hall itself."

"Skaggs ain't people," Thaldar said, with a calm that belied the callousness of his words. "That isn't raiding. That's justice."

"I suspect they would disagree."

"Blood for blood, as the old ways demand," the old chieftain glowered down at him, his calm visage cracking a little. "You know nothing, boy. Nothing."

Jon gave him a mirthless smile. He was all too aware of the hundreds of men watching, from multiple warbands. Not to mention Thaldar's more distant clanfolk, watching from the overhanging rocks of the flat-topped, stakewalled promontory of their home. "So I have been told. Often, and loudly. And yet I must persist."

Thaldar just snorted, a trace of bitterness entering his words. "You want me to follow you, Snow. Me and my folk. Mance wanted the same when he came on by. And look where he is now." Men around them rippled, mostly in displeasure at those words. But none said anything. "Here's the bone of the truth, boy - I'll tell you same as I told him: I don't care what's happening in the rest of the north. I don't care about walking dead I've never seen, and I don't care how many clans you've got kneeling to you either. I've got my own to worry about. One sorry fight or another won't change that."

"None have kneeled to me," Jon said. Or few enough, anyway. Some chiefs had indeed sworn from bent knee, defeated in the mud.

The old chieftain's lip curled. "Do you have any idea, the rumors I've been hearing wagging on the lips of every refugee coming down upriver? You and that supposed god-beast of yours," Thaldar's voice was gruff, uncaring, and skeptical all at once. "They say you're the man who might be the next King - for all he denies it. That you walked from the Wastes alone as a clanless wanderer, that your skill with a blade has done as much as your beast to bring you this far - the conqueror of every clan in your path." He scoffed in bitter amusement. "I care not for hearing all that, then having you come all the way to my Hold and acting all humble."

Jon was, queerly, reminded in that moment of Tormund Giantsbane. A leader of his own clan, with little patience for plots or schemes. A decent enough man by the standards of these savage lands, who valued authenticity above all. Yet Tormund was friendlier.

"What do you propose, my lord?"

"I ain't no Magnar," Thaldar scoffed, more in derision than aught else. "I'd propose that you and your Weeping Man keep on marching by, and leave me and mine to me and mine. But you ain't the type to take no for an answer, are you, boy?"

Much, much friendlier. "You will be coming to Hardhome, my lord," Jon said evenly. "I will not leave you and your people behind to die and be raised by the white walkers, for nothing but your own stubborn pride."

Thaldar didn't respond at first. His eyes drifted away from Jon, taking in the men around them. "Don't I just feel like the prettiest girl at the dance," he muttered to himself, so quietly Jon could barely hear. Then his voice heightened. "Always some deluded fool who wants something. First it was Giantsbane. Kingsblood. Then Mance, now you. Tatters, the Weeping Man. All you would-be kings and your kingly solicitations. You can all fuck right off from my Hold. Never asked for none of you to come out here."

Jon wasn't sure what to say. "I am not trying to become a king."

"And fuck you in particular, boy," Thaldar's glare focused on him again now, harder than before. "Way I see it, what you are ain't a matter of debate. I ain't even sure who you're trying to fool. Might even be yourself. What's certain is: you're all intruding on my land." He raised his voice to a shout, to address not just Jon, but all of the onlookers from the Lord of Seals' warband, the Weeper's, even his own clan. "So, here's what I want. All of you! Fuck off, and keep fucking off until I see your backs scurrying over the horizon, and maybe I won't burn and bury the entire sorry lot of you!"

Devyn Sealskinner's words came to Jon. Old Thaldar won't greet you like I have. 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.

For the sake of those words, Jon tried one last time. "Who are you to be so obstinate, when over a dozen clans have come to you - you - for protection? You're a lord, or near enough - you owe it to your people to do right by them. To keep them safe. And even if you drive me away, the dead are—"

"Even if all the tales of the walking dead are real, that doesn't mean I've got to bring my folk south with some white crow and the gods-damned Weeper. I spit on that choice," Thaldar growled. The old, but powerful man took a deep breath and hefted his warhammer, his muscles clearly rippling even from beneath his furs and cloak. "I don't have enmity for you, Snow. I just don't care about you. Now put up your steel. Talk is for cravens."

Jon opened his mouth, but after a moment, closed it. There was nothing more to say. Nothing he could say. He raised Dark Sister in a ready stance, and prepared himself.

The fight started in the next moment. Thaldar took the first move, charging in with a bellow. His hammer swung in a wide arc toward Jon's midsection.

The old chieftain moved with surprising speed for a man his age. Jon backstepped quickly, yet the hammer's head still missed him by mere inches, audibly whooshing through the air.

Jon barely had time to sidestep around the next strike, then bring Dark Sister up - not to block, but to redirect the third swing. There was no blocking a warhammer without a decent shield, and even then.

Jon backstepped repeatedly, giving up space to buy himself time to prepare, time to think. This was the first hammer wielder Jon had fought in years, and he was uncertain how to go about it - the thing had more reach than his own blade by a fair margin. If he tried to approach without an opening, he would be punished for it. If he tried to use Dark Sister's superior sharpness to sever the haft of the warhammer at the wrong time, at a bad angle, he could all too easily end up with a face full of bronze.

The hammer came again, and again. Jon circled left, stepping or sliding around the next blows. He wanted a way to end this quickly - a sword, even a longsword - simply lacked the reach or the weight for him to effectively contest a two-handed hammer in an open field. The hundreds of men around them watched in silence, as Jon gave ground, and gave ground.

He, meanwhile, watched for the gap that would let him inside that weapon's crushing reach.

Vaguely, while circling, sometimes lashing out with his own responses to keep Thaldar from advancing too quickly, Jon noticed again the battered gauntlet covering the grey-maned chieftain's left hand: a handpiece of dark plate, dented and scored from some long-ago fight, laced on over leather gloves. Loot from a dead knight, Jon supposed, or perhaps salvage off a wreck. Wildlings always wore whatever iron or steel they could scavenge. He gave it no more thought than that, and kept his eyes on the hammer.

Then, when Jon had little space left to backstep into, Thaldar wound up for a great two-handed blow - an overhand stroke with all his weight and fury behind it - and Jon threw himself clear as it came down. The hammer struck the frozen ground with a thundering impact.

There! The hammer was down, the old chieftain had both hands fully committed. This was the opening he'd been waiting for. Jon lunged in fast, and drove Dark Sister at the old man's exposed flank—

Thaldar let go of his hammer. Quick as anything Jon had ever seen, the gauntleted left hand came up and swept Dark Sister aside with a shriek of steel on steel - and in the same breath the old chieftain's bare right fist came round and caught Jon full across the face.

It was like being kicked by a horse.

The world went white. Only long years of drilling kept his feet beneath him and Dark Sister in his fist as he reeled back and out of range, as his ears rang like a struck bell.

Damnit, Jon thought, nursing a watering right eye he knew would be bruised by morning.

The old chieftain didn't press the moment, preferring instead to retrieve his weapon. The crowd rippled around them. A few shouts rose - mostly encouragement for Thaldar, mostly wary silence for him. None of it mattered.

He fights like Ser Rodrik, Jon realized. Thaldar wasn't relying on his hammer: to him, it was simply a tool. His style was just… mastery. Mastery of the basics of combat, decades of sheer combat experience bringing down other men. And a weapon was only a tool to that end.

"You aren't bad for a whelp who still looks wet behind the ears," Thaldar said irritably, as he hefted his bronze-headed warhammer once more.

Jon just gave him a pained smile. "Put up your steel, my lord."

The old chieftain chuckled darkly. Then he took a look at the deep cut notched into his gauntlet and growled. His eyes flickered to examine Dark Sister with more wariness than before. "What is that sword of yours, boy?"

Jon didn't answer him. He hadn't met a wildling yet who knew what Valyrian steel was, and didn't care to elaborate now. His silence was its own answer. And as the old chieftain settled into a high-handed guard, Jon's mind slipped back to a distant memory. To a memory so distant it was almost a dream.

The training yard at Winterfell, years ago, when Ser Rodrik Cassel had first put a blunted warhammer in the hands of a squire and ordered a younger Jon Snow to defend himself.

It was a crisp summer morning, chilled by the light dusting of summer snows that had covered the castle's training yards in the night. Jon found himself beset by Winterfell's master-of-arms - retreating from one stunning blow after another across the yard of slush-slicked cobblestones, alone and outmatched.

Robb had already finished his bout and was watching from the upper rail with Theon, both of them grinning as they placed wagers. Jon, fourteen and gangly and panting, knew he was gripping his practice sword too tightly. He couldn't help it - he was having a particularly hard time.

Ser Rodrik swung his padded hammer in a slow practice arc. "Warhammers are crude to some eyes, boy," he spoke through his bristling walrus mustache, clear enough that his voice carried over the yard - no doubt for the benefit of the annoying onlookers. "But never underestimate them! Might be they're less wieldy than a sword, aye, but the weight - gods, the weight. One clean blow and you'll shatter a man's bones like kindling! Even through plate and mail. King Robert himself fought with one, and he defeated some of the finest knights in the realm, he even brought down the last dragon; Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident! Remember that!"

Jon nodded, trying to look confident. He knew certain… others were watching. He'd spied Arya peeking around a corner earlier. "How do I beat a knight armed with a warhammer?"

"Not with a sword!" Ser Rodrik looked down at him with a fierce grin. "What you need, boy, is reach. Battles are won by the longer weapon. Always have been, always will be. A wall of spearmen will spit a swordsman a dozen times over before ever he steps close enough to swing that pretty blade of his." He lowered the hammer. "Swords aren't the best weapon in an open field - mostly they're what a fighting man draws when his spear's been shattered, or he's got nothing better left to hand. Even knights only use them after the time for lances has passed. A sword is your sidearm on a battlefield, and best it stays that way! Whatever the singers would have you believe. Now, what arms will you switch to?"

Jon eyed the yard's near wall, which housed racks holding all manner of training weapons. Spears, pikes, halberds, great hammers much like the one he faced - anything with a haft and a heft to it would be an appropriate counter.

"None of them," he said, with more confidence than he felt. "I will stick to the sword."

Ser Rodrik gave him a sinister smile. "A brave choice! Stupid, but brave!" He passed the padded warhammer to Jory, his nephew, who proceeded to square up against Jon. "If that's your choice, best you learn to defend yourself!"

The lessons were brutal. Jory drilled him against hammer, mace and flail before returning to the hammer - a session of training apparently meant to teach survival. Though he mostly suspected Ser Rodrik was punishing him for his stubborn insistence on the sword.

Jon tried, he did. But Jory was near twice his age, with thrice the weight and strength. It wasn't long before Jon found himself on his back clutching a cracked training shield. It was like the bones in his arm were still rattling.

"Never trade blow for blow!" the master-at-arms barked. "You're lighter on your feet and have the lighter weapon - use those advantages! Keep your distance, circle around, wait for the overcommit. A hammer's slow to recover; when it misses, the enemy himself gives you your openings!"

From the rail, Robb called down, "You owe me three stags, Theon! I told you he'd eat dirt inside two bouts."

Theon laughed. "The bastard fights like a wolf, might have the brains of one too - stupid to block that much against a hammer."

Robb protested. "I told you to stop calling him that!"

Jon shot them both a heated glare. His pride stung as much as his ribs.

But more importantly - beneath the ache of embarrassment and defeat, he was committing this defeat to memory. Trying to figure out a means by which he could, above all - win.

Ser Rodrik pulled him back to his feet. "You forgot the most important thing, boy." He nodded toward the warhammer in Jory's hand. "Swordsmen think in lines and slashes, thrusts and parries. A man with a hammer thinks in arcs and nothing else, doesn't need to - can't even parry a hammerblow without taking damage, especially on the swing. One mistake - one single mistake - and there is no block strong enough, no parry deep enough. The hammer's weight carries through on the strike. Always."

Jon could see the logic in that. A warhammer was an ugly, crude weapon, lacking the elegance or versatility of a longsword. It did not care for an opponent's skill or speed - only for force, and for where that force fell.

He bent to retrieve his fallen sword, even as his mind continued to twist with thoughts on how to win. "Again?" Jory asked, raising the hammer once more.

Jon straightened, even as Robb and Theon groaned impatiently behind him. "Again."

The memory passed over him - but it was not Ser Rodrik's voice that stayed with Jon as he came back to the frozen strand and the old chieftain waiting in his high guard.

It was Acorn's.

You slow as giant, but with none of the strength. He had spent this entire fight following the same patterns she had spent weeks beating into him. She, however, would have long-since toppled this frustrating foe. Why?

Despite all his efforts, he never had managed to learn from Ser Rodrik how to properly defeat a hammer wielder, apart from leveraging his mobility as a more lightly-armed fighter… a mobility that he no longer truly had, not with his leg still as it was.

And in that void, out of all his experiences, it was his newfound training under the earth that sprang to mind. But how should I—

Without warning, without another word, Thaldar charged once more. And then there was no more time for thought.

Jon met his aggression with retreat. He slid around the first crushing blow, feinted high, then slashed low at Thaldar's flank. The chieftain shifted his weight smoothly, dropping his hammer to block, then snapped a short kick at Jon's wounded leg.

Pain flared white-hot; Jon staggered half a step, barely keeping his guard up as the hammer whistled past his face. He knows. The old chief had marked his leg as a target at some point, it was the only explanation.

Thaldar's swings kept coming. But Jon regained control over his mental state, periodically lashing out with his own ripostes and swings to keep enough pressure on. He had to regain control over this fight - and end it as Acorn would have.

So he stopped chasing the fight. Instead, he let it come to him.

He set his feet wide and sank his weight down into them, dropping his shoulders and bending his knees slightly. A wide, rooted stance with his center hung low and heavy over the frozen shingle. He let Dark Sister settle back into a single hand, loose and angled behind his body, in the strange reactive guard he had built out of Rodrik's swordbreaker forms and the children's dances both.

And then, in the middle of a fight for his life, he simply stopped moving. He went still. Still as a weirwood in the dead of winter.

Let the wind come to you, the greenseer whispered, down all the miles and months between them. Let it pass.

A ripple of confusion ran through the watching hundreds. The white crow had ceased to move. He stood planted at the heart of the ring of watchers, as calm as still water. He did not attack, and he did not flee.

Thaldar's dark eyes narrowed. He did not understand it either. But a target that would not move was an invitation, and the old chieftain unhesitatingly took it - with a short brutal chop, meant to break Jon where he stood.

Jon saw it coming from a league away. And at the last instant he slid around the strike. Dark Sister flashed outwards, aiming for Thaldar's fingers.

The old chief kept his gauntleted hand higher up on the haft, closer to the head, which was the only thing that saved him from being maimed by the hungry blade. But his steel took a deep cut - if not for the plate, his hand would have been shorn of several fingers and the fight over.

Thaldar's eyes widened in disbelief. Then he let out a roar of frustration, swinging his hammer in a wide, desperate arc. Jon saw the opening.

And when it does,strike!

Thaldar's eyes widened; he gave ground, hammer haft crossing to parry frantically.

Dark Sister sheared it clean in two.

As he'd predicted might happen, the hammerhead kept coming, carried by all that furious momentum straight for his face - or where it would have been, if he hadn't ducked. Instead it passed over his shoulder to gods-only knew where.

Thaldar didn't falter for even a second for the lack of a weapon. He just lowered his stance and charged before Jon could get his guard up, bellowing like a bull as he tried to shoulder barge him and bring them both down to the ground.

But somehow Jon managed to twist aside in the last instant, turning all the way around like a dervish and sweeping Dark Sister in a tight arc across Thaldar's passing side.

The Valyrian steel blade bit for blood, cutting through the chieftain's fur cloak and furs. The pain of the wound broke his poise. And Jon followed up instantly - stepping in hard and slamming his shoulder into Thaldar's chest, Dark Sister chasing him down to the ground.

The point stopped a hair from the chieftain's throat.

Both men froze, chests heaving.

Thaldar stared up the entire length of Dark Sister's blade, gnashing his teeth.

"Yield, my lord," Jon gasped. They were both heaving for breaths. Jon stood over him, Dark Sister raised over the old man's neck, poised to deliver the final blow.

Around them, the men of both sides reacted in their ways - the Weeper's warband mostly hooted and hollered in approval, while the rest showed several hundred different expressions of anger or fear or defeat.

"You think you can take the Wall, eh?" From down on the ground, Thaldar's lips curled. "Boy."

"I do." Behind him, Jon was all too aware of the various figures looking on. The Weeper, Furs and Rolf and Hatch and the rest of the vanguard of the Weeper's warband, the Lord of Seals and his folk, even Thaldar's own folk looking from higher on. "Yield, now," Jon said, though his chest heaved with exertion. "This is over."

"Nothing is over," Thaldar growled, but his tone was almost despairing. "Nothing ever ends."

"This fight, is over. Yield or die, my lord."

"Tell me, Snow. Now," Thaldar's words came out an order, but his eyes, his voice… there was no order there. More wanting, almost, or entreating. A man begging for something to believe in. "Why should I trust you? Why should we go with you?"

Jon grimaced. The hundreds of onlookers were all as silent as a grave. "Every time I try to explain it to some chief or another, I sound like a naive fool even in my own ears. But, my father once told me that when winter comes and the cold winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. Do you understand?" He did not, judging from the look in his eyes. "That is - truly - my only reason for demanding all the free folk march to Hardhome, Thaldar. I don't ask for trust, and I'm not here to conquer your people. I'm here to bring you south. The lands beyond the Wall are doomed. The dead are coming, and they'll take everything if we don't stand together, with the Wall under our feet."

Something shifted in Thaldar's eyes. After a grimace, he sighed. "I yield."

Jon nodded to his men, and they poured in. Three of them helped the grey-maned old chief back to his feet. "You won't regret this," Jon said. "I swear it."

Thaldar just scoffed. "Aye, Snow. I'll follow you to Hardhome. Reluctantly. I… suppose I can't just ignore all these tales of the dead," he said it with grief as the men helped him back to his feet, like it was painful to even admit that concession. "But, I will never make peace with skaggs. Never. Never, never."

"…Why?" Jon gave him a chance, he tried to understand. "If you stay in the north, you will all die. Why are you unwilling to consider peace with Skagos?"

Thaldar shrugged off his men, and stood alone. "Every man of the folk, with every step he walks, with every breath he takes, knows that he is the son of his fathers before. I can see them when I sleep, Snow." His voice darkened. "The faces of my ancestors, howling for skagg blood. The faces of my daughters, stolen twenty years ago and begging for me to go and save them… or avenge them. The blood of Skagos is owed to the people of the Bay of Seals. Enough to fill an ocean of it. By earth and water, bronze and iron, ice and fire, I will have my vengeance. If I ever waver in this vow, I will have forsaken my blood. Should that day ever come, may I be shrived from the brotherhood of the folk, dragged down from grace, and be eaten by the gods."

Onlookers cheered at those words by the hundreds. Even men from the Lord of Seals' warband. Even some of the Weeper's.

Jon didn't know what to say. Despair and fatigue settled over him like a cloak, as he realized the potential - no, likely - implications of sparing this man.

The houses of Skagos are sworn to Winterfell. I should kill him, before I give him the chance to commit crimes that can't be undone, Jon thought. But he dared not take the risk. To attack now, after Thaldar had yielded, would be seen as the height of dishonor, a violation of the old ways that these savage people held dear. And it didn't end there.

Kill this fool, and half the wildlings will claim I am protecting the houses of Skagos - my family's bannermen. His people will refuse to follow me, and many of the ones that already are will split away.

Release him, and he will bring his own little war to the lands south if given the slightest opportunity at all.

And yet. This wasn't the first clan he'd met that had bad blood with Skagos, and it likely wouldn't be the last either.

There was nothing Jon could say. Nothing he could even think to say that wouldn't either damn him in the present, or plague him in the future.

Instead, he turned away and chose to say nothing at all.