3: Battles fought, and those left behind

Battles fought, and those left behind

Val

The dead did not tire.Full novel: Dragons of Ice and Fire — read the rest free on N​o⁠v​e⁠l​C⁠o​d⁠e​x⁠.​o⁠r​g⁠

That was the thing Val kept coming back to, the thought that wouldn't leave her skull no matter how hard she ran, no matter how many leagues of mountain trail she put behind her. The dead do not tire.

She hadn't slept in three days. She wasn't sure most of them had.

She was exhausted. Dalla was struggling. Val stayed close to her little sister's side, watching the way she pressed her free hand against her pregnant belly as they descended another treacherous trail. Sometimes the stones underfoot weren't stones at all but black ice, the kind that looked like wet rock until some poor sod's foot twisted out from under them. Dalla had nearly slipped twice, and both times Val's heart had gone into her throat in pure terror. Her sister could not lose the baby - if she did, she might die too.

If only we had some horses, Val thought, cursing to herself. That fucking Weeper. Fucking Rattleshirt.

Almost all of the garrons had spooked with the approach of the Others, and between the Weeper and Rattleshirt, the two had taken just about all the rest when they'd split off with their warbands.

Harma's, Halleck's, and Wulf's warbands were all struggling. As for Jarl's - Jarl was dead. He had died saving her from a wight in the mountains on that terrible night. That idiot had been too sweet on her, she'd allowed too much of it and now she regretted all of it. She hadn't loved him, no, but he hadn't deserved to die like that. What remained of his warband had been absorbed into Harma's and Halleck's. Another of her allies, now dead and worse. Damn all of this, she cursed, her thoughts a tired haze.

The trail ahead of them was a descending, curving thing of nothing but more black ice, white snow and haphazard rocks, and somehow looked even nastier than the one before. "Tell me again why we came south," Dalla said through her teeth.

"Because north was worse," Val chuckled darkly.

Dalla considered this. "Fair."

Mance didn't always walk with them. Sometimes he stayed behind to lead night rearguards that killed off the fastest of the dead pursuing them in the dark, other times, during the daylight hours, he had to negotiate, threaten, placate and plead with some chief or another not to split off from what remained of their dwindling host. But Mance was close now. Val watched him from the corner of her eye as the column - what little remained Mance's once-great host - picked its way down the hills toward the Milkwater. He walked near the front with Tormund on one side and Styr on the other, Harma Dogshead trailing a little behind, and just about no one else at the moment. The host had fled in pieces, so many of the free folk were broken and scattered all over the woods.

Most of the top chiefs had gone. Not died - gone. Harle the Huntsman had taken his people east at the third pass, saying he knew those mountains and his band would take their chances. His brother, Harle the Handsome, had done the same two passes later - but going west instead of east (the brothers hated eachother). Devyn Sealskinner had gone straight for the Milkwater, saying he was done with all this and was returning by the river route to his home on the east coast. Rattleshirt, the self-styled Lord of Bones had said he was going to Deep Lake and was going to cross the Wall on his own the old fashioned way along with any raider who knew how to climb. Almost a thousand raiders had gone with him, along with Varamyr Sixskins and Alfyn Crowkiller's sons, leaving in the grey predawn without a word.

The Weeper, that evil cunt, had cursed Mance to his face - he had been one of the first to split off, saying he was going to take his chances in the east and try crossing over the Bay of Seals. It had almost come to blows, but the Weeper's warband was one of the strongest left and it would have taken too much blood to stop him.

Kyleg Stonehand, Big Agnes, Aki Twentysons, Blind Doss, Asta the Swimmer, Kyleg of the Wooden Ear, the Owl Lord, Haldur Bullspear, and the Great Walrus had all dispersed in their own ways as well, all of them going south or east somewhere or another, along with at least three score of lesser chiefs who'd managed to survive the mountains.

Howd Wanderer had left for entirely different reasons: there had been rumors going around that the Others weren't simply killing free folk but also capturing them. Half a dozen good men had sworn they'd seen wights carrying off Longspear Ryk and scores of others, and Howd had wanted to investigate. He left his family and older clanfolk to Borroq the Boar and led his band north along the Frostfang's base, which Val thought was either the bravest or the most foolish decision she had ever seen. Perhaps both.

She hadn't blamed any of them. That was the uncomfortable truth of it. She had watched Mance's kingdom dissolve in pieces and she had not blamed a single piece.

So much for the King-Beyond-the-Wall, she had heard men whisper, when they thought she wasn't listening. She herself just thought of something she'd once heard Tormund say: Men are not made kings. They make themselves kings, and they keep themselves kings, and the moment they stop, they're just men again. Only kneelers fool themselves otherwise.

Mance had almost chuckled at that when she'd told him, called it wisdom after the fact. His laugh had been more bitter than truly amused, though.

Styr was not laughing at all. Styr had not laughed in days.

"We stay too long in the mountains, Mance. I told you, warned you. Yet you stay anyway. Why?" Styr demanded that night, in his guttural, awkward grip of the Common tongue as great bonfires were set and free folk slept in shifts, taking wary watch against all the forest's shadows. Styr's voice was low and hard, as if he'd been sharpening his anger against his tongue for entire days. He probably had been - this was the first time any of them had been able to slow down and rest and confer and think. "I told you. Abandoned Thenn, my people did, I gave the order: because far villages said they were no longer so far away. Why stay in mountains for so long?"

"He had reason, Magnar." That was Tormund Giantsbane, he of many titles, most of them things for japing as she reckoned: the Tall-talker, the Horn-blower and Breaker of Ice. Tormund Thunderfist, Husband to Bears, the Mead-king of Ruddy Hall, Speaker to Gods and Father of Hosts. But Val saw none of those titles now, just a tired, white-bearded, big old man being attended to by his square-faced daughter. He was slouched against a log with his great arms folded, his eyes were dark, and there was no laughter in him at all. "Whether the reason was worth it is a different question."

"Reason." Styr said it like a word in a foreign language. Which, to him, it probably was. "Yes, I would hear this reason."

Mance didn't even look at the Magnar of Thenn. He just kept staring into the flames tiredly. His eyes were deep hollows of exhaustion, rimmed in black. He had new scratches, new cuts from their endless battles against the dead. He looked like a shadow of the man he had been.

"Feel free to curse me for it, Styr," Mance sighed. "Damn me for it, even - it would be your right. I've said no less to myself." No one took him up on the offer. The chiefs around the fire only stayed silent. "We stayed… because the diggers suspected they were getting close. And I believed them."

Even Val knew little of the digger's work - Mance's diggers, anyway. Many clans and chiefs had opened tombs all across that frozen valley, hundreds of them. She had led some of those digs herself; not that she'd found much worth mentioning, just some baubles.

But the biggest dig of them all - the one their hopes had been pinned on, the one Mance himself had been commanding - had been handled by a secretive cave dweller clan that hadn't survived the battle. They'd been sleeping underground when the dead hit, and were now all dead or worse, surely.

"You… suspected." Styr scoffed, with a dark expression. "We stayed in those mountains for three moons, Mance. Three moons of cold and short food and you had us all stay on a suspicion—"

"We found something, and that's the truth." Mance's voice was quiet. "We were… so close, Styr."

"Close to what?" Styr demanded, his eyes narrowing.

Many chieftains around the fire stared intently at Mance, dozens of them. Kingsblood, Harma, the Oldfather, Soren Shieldbreaker, the Magnar of Thenn and Tormund… Mag the Mighty was here too, quietly sitting further back, wounded, sitting on his furry rump and still looming over everyone and everything. Val could practically feel the disquiet in the air, the demand for answers - not that it would even do much good now that everything had gone to hell.

It was night now, and the dead might attack again at any minute, at any second. But still, there was no walking away from this. The folk deserve to know, she thought, fighting against this damnable exhaustion that threatened to drag her to sleep. Even if it won't make any difference at all.

"You know the old legends as well as I, man," Mance said quietly, finally looking up from the fire. "We always knew Joramun's seat was buried somewhere in the Frostfangs. You know why I set the diggers to that glacier in particular. The things we were finding… it had to be the place. The Horned Lord found it thousands of years ago, the legends said. Plumbed its depths. Discovered the secrets of magic."

Val felt a chill. Yes, the legends of the Horned Lord said that he had discovered Joramun's secrets of old, buried with the legendary first king in his great castle lost to ice and time. They also said he had judged them too dangerous to use. They said the sorcerer king had discovered some power 'beyond the ken of man to control'.

Harma Dogshead scoffed. "The Horned Lord was one of the greatest Kings we've ever had. And even he walked away from whatever he found down there, Mance."

"Aye," agreed Soren Shieldbreaker, one of the biggest chiefs that was left. "Witches say it was a sorcery not even he could wield."

"Legends I heard say he walked away from the Horn of Winter. Not from the other secrets in the castle," Harma corrected. "Those he stole away with well and properly - whatever they were. Not too many other kings managed to get south of the Wall. Especially not like he did."

Val could sense a dispute arising. Ygon Oldfather leaned in, looking at no one in particular. "I've heard other legends, witches saying it was a sword he walked away from - why else would the old king have called sorcery a 'sword without a hilt'?

"A sword? Pah. It must be the Horn of Winter. What else would it be, old man?" Gerrick Kingsblood chuckled. "What else would we have spent months digging for?"

The Oldfather shrugged, but his eyes were hard as he stared at Kingsblood. "Could just as well be a sword, or some spell the singers passed down," he rumbled impatiently. "Why would the Horned Lord have refused to take the Horn of Winter for himself after laying eyes on the damn thing? Don't make sense to me, never did - he called what he found in there a sword he could not swing. Maybe it was a too-big sword, some monster sword made for a giant? And what part of a sword or a spell looks like a horn, little man? I say the 'Horn' was something else."

"Enough," Styr said, staring hard at the King-Beyond-the-Wall. "What did you find down there, Mance?"

Mance's voice was soft. People had to quiet down to hear it carry - the King-Beyond-the-Wall looked almost dead on his feet, even sitting down as he was. "You all know the Frostfangs are lousy with old ruins. They ain't no secret. Strange places frozen in the mountains, older than any legend can properly remember." Several figures around the fire nodded, northern chieftains like Styr, a few cave dweller and mountain clan chiefs.

"This was like those," Mance went on. "The ruins under the glacier… it was the castle, Styr, had to be. Joramun's own. It matched with the legends. The scale of it alone, the stonework - nothing the folk have built since the Long Night could compare. It was built by the giants and the children of the forest, just as the legends said. A castle as big as Winterfell—" Mance paused, chuckled. "…Or near enough it wouldn't matter."

That drove the figures around the fire quiet with awe, with disbelief. Is it true? Val wondered. Did he really find Joramun's castle?

It was known among the chiefs that Mance Rayder had gotten himself down to Winterfell a few years past. He hadn't stolen any of the Stark's daughters, as the legends of Abel the Bard recounted of the old bard king millennia ago - but he had stolen a good number of other things, more than enough to make his claim credible. That feat had played a bit of a role in the former crow gaining the clout to rise as he had - because he could credibly promise the chiefs that he knew more than just how to fight the Night's Watch: he knew how to fight the dreaded wolf lords behind them too. The Starks. The final enforcers of the kneelers in the south, who for thousands of years had always stepped in where the crows had failed. The Starks, who had killed Kings-Beyond-the-Wall beyond counting.

But: forget stealing into Winterfell and walking away alive. Compared to this, that feat of years back was nothing. To find Joramun's castle… that was a feat out of myths. Even if Mance Rayder had failed to bring the free folk south, this alone would have solidified his legend forever - in normal times.

"The Horn of Winter…" Morna White Mask whispered avidly. "Did you see it? The—"

The warty face of Whitetree's old woods witch from her girlhood days suddenly flashed before Val's eyes. As the first king of the free folk lay dying in his bed, Joramun gave his heirs one final order: to let the Horn of Winter be buried with him under the ice. To wait for the day that the Horn will be most needed. To wait for the day a new king shall arise, a king who is worthy. A king who can sound the horn and blow down the kneeler's Wall, and give the free folk their freedom forevermore.

There were so many different tellings of that old myth - she'd heard them going all the way to when she was a little girl. The myths all agreed the Horn of Winter was buried there, in Joramun's lost castle. The myths were a bit less sure on what the Horn of Winter was, or what it could do, exactly. The details varied. But the location? That was agreed on in every myth.

Morna White Mask kept pressing on, without even a pause. The hunger in her voice, in the dark eyes behind the witch's white mask, was almost physical. "—Horn of Winter itself. Did you see the first king's treasure, did you see—"

"Shut up, you bloody nutter of a witch," Soren Shieldbreaker growled. "Let the Mance speak."

Mance nodded, giving him a faint, silent thanks. "We didn't get that far, not before… but we didn't find nothing neither, Morna. The diggers had broken through into the first chambers, and there we found… there were carvings." Something of pure fascination moved behind Mance's eyes. "Stories in the old Old Tongue. Murals, entire walls of runes. Myths straight out of the ages before the Wall was built, long lost to us. The Long Night. The Last Hero. The Nameless King." He said that last one quietly. "Things no living man still remembers. Things I've never even—"

The Night's King, Val thought with a chill. Mance was using the old nickname for that dark legend, the one she'd only heard whispered by the oldest woods witches. Why?

"—And then the dead came." Styr's voice was flat as slate.

Mance sighed. "And then the dead came."

No one spoke. The darkness felt cloying, and the silence stretched on.

"I'm going to say what everyone's thinking," Tormund said. He sat forward and unfolded his arms. "Because someone ought to."

"Tormund—" Mance began.

"No, not now. Hear me, all of you." Tormund glanced at the chiefs around the fire, at Styr, at Kingsblood and Soren, at Harma and Halleck, at Val and Wulf One-Eye and the wide stretch where Mag the Mighty sat, and at all the rest. "We were close to the Horn of Winter. You all know what the legends say: that it could wake the giants in the earth, bring the Wall down, open the way south for every living soul north of it. And you know what I think?" Tormund's lips pressed into a line. His ruddy face was rich with laugh lines, but here and now, there was no laughter at all. "I think the Others know them legends too."

Dozens of figures around the fire stiffened. Kingsblood, the Oldfather, Soren Shieldbreaker, Morna White Mask… none of them were willing to speak into that silence.

"Why do you think so, Tormund?" Out of everyone, Val herself was the one to ask.

"Because I don't believe in coincidence, girl," Tormund growled. "We were close, and then - not before, not a moon before or a fortnight before, but then, right then - thousands of wights in the night. The frosty demons even came themselves, saw them with me own eyes." He looked at Mance. "You know what I think? I think the Others were raiding. Like we do, but with the dead. They raided us to kill our people and steal them into their army. And they raided us for the Horn of Winter too."

Figures around the fire grimaced, scowled, or collapsed into despair. Tormund's words carried too much sense to dismiss.

"That's nonsense," a big Hornfoot chief in black leathers said. "Fuckin' nonsense. The white walkers don't think! They're monsters, demons, they don't— "

Stupid fool, Val thought viciously.

Everyone knew the stories about chiefs who'd made… deals with the white walkers, the legends of the Night's King. Some folk had tried to make new deals too, but it seemed the Others weren't interested any more. Anyone who tried to speak to them, died.

"Silence," Tormund growled. "Them icy demons would have gotten us totally unawares if not for that poor Snow boy." Right, Val remembered him, barely. Mance's pet crow. That novice of a warg was almost certainly dead and worse by now along with that spearwife of his. "They had us with our britches down. They killed our sentries all quiet-like," Tormund went on, his voice hard. "They knew exactly what they were doing. You can't deny it if you have a single bit of sense, Alvar. But you always were a dumb scunner—"

"Enough, Tormund," Mance sighed. Even Val could see how this talk was frightening the chiefs.

"That wasn't all you found, was it?" Styr asked, pressing the point. "Why was it taking so long, Mance? What did you find down there? Truly?"

The grimace left Mance's face. He turned solemn, remembering.

"We were close to the throne room, Styr. Where we believed the horn to be. That is true, and we would have reached it." He was quiet for a moment. "But the diggers kept finding references to… something else. Stories - written into the walls as I said. Original stories about the Long Night, written almost right after it. Stories about the white walkers themselves, where they came from. How the singers created them, the pact that ended the first war."

Val blinked. The singers created—

Did he say… a pact? What?

"And there was something else," Mance's tone was distant, remembering. "Something further down, beneath the throne room, beneath everything. Something the runes kept circling around without quite naming." He stared into the fire. "You all know the stories of the Horned Lord. That he journeyed into the mountains, found Joramun's hall, learned its secrets. Walked away with power no man had wielded before or since, without taking the Horn of Winter itself. The stories always said he was satisfied with what he found." Mance's voice turned dark. "But I don't think that's the whole of it. I think he found something else down there. Something he chose not to touch. Something he walked away from deliberately, and took only the castle's lesser secrets instead."

"Lesser secrets," Kingsblood repeated blankly.

"Aye. I don't think Joramun simply left the Horn of Winter in his big old castle. I think it had to be there, that it was sealing something." Mance's tone turned even darker. "And when the Horned Lord found out what it was, he was wise enough - or frightened enough - to leave it be."

The fire crackled. No one spoke.

Harma Dogshead leaned forward. "Do you have any idea what it was? This thing the sorcerer king turned away from?"

Mance looked at her for a long moment. Then he shook his head, and the bafflement on his face was genuine - Val had seen Mance dissemble a hundred times, and this was not that. "Truly, I don't, Harma. The carvings referred to it, but didn't describe it. The diggers found sealed passages leading down toward it, below where we believed the throne room was, below the oldest foundations." He paused. "The carvings called it, 'the Builder's Stables.'"

Once more, silence among the chieftains. The fire crackled softly.

"A stable," Styr said flatly.

"What?" Soren Shieldbreaker said, evidently baffled.

"A builder?" Gerrick Kingsblood frowned. "Who, even?"

"A graveyard, as best the diggers could determine," Mance said quietly. "The castle was built on top of it - or near enough, at least. Like it was under the main yard. Vast in scope either way…" Mance's eyes were distant. "If it was a graveyard, it wasn't for anything that had ever been human. I don't know what it was."

"Fables," Styr said. "Nonsense. Old bones and old stories and we are sitting here like children listening to—"

"Mance," Tormund's voice was soft, which was not a tone Val had ever associated with Tormund Giantsbane before. He was looking at Mance now with an expression she couldn't name. Something between anger, resignation, and pity. "…You found the name of the Night's King down there, didn't you?"

The chieftains around the fire all went silent. It was as pure a silence as Val had ever heard in her life. It was as if not a single person even breathed, apart from the slight hiss of the flames.

The king said nothing for a moment. A spit of wood in the fire split, crackled.

Then, slowly, Mance Rayder nodded.

The silence around the fire turned stifling.

Mance… Val thought, as much horrified as saddened.

Harma went very still. Halleck dropped his eyes to the ground. Even Styr's expression faltered. Mag, in the darkness beyond the fire, had stopped moving altogether.

Val, herself, was still speechless.

The name of the Night's King. The Nameless King himself.

It was the oldest taboo, the greatest superstition in all of free folk culture - right up there with guest rite and the basic facts of who they were as a people. It was a name that was forbidden - never to be spoken, written, or repeated. A name that wasn't even acknowledged to exist. The most fearless raiders wouldn't say it. The oldest of the woods witches wouldn't say it - had likely long forgotten it, though none knew for sure. The name of the evil that must not be named, and Mance Rayder had found it carved in stone in the depths of the earth under a place of legend, and he had read it.

No one was willing to speak into that poisonous silence. It lingered, and lingered - as complete and terrible a silence as Val had ever heard in her life.

Finally Tormund spoke, because someone had to.

"It cannot be a coincidence. You found that name down in the deep dark of Joramun's castle," Tormund's voice was an unending sigh, "and then the Others come. Right then. Not before. Not after. Then."

The reaction among the chiefs was not immediate. The fire burned on, quietly. A growing unease moved through the circle, slowly and silently, like a hairline crack moving through ice - you could almost watch it happen, watch the moment each face changed.

Gerrick Kingsblood stood first. He didn't say anything, for once. He just rose, looked at Mance with pity, and sighed. He quietly turned walked away into the dark. Three of his men followed without a word, along with Gavin the Trader.

Soren Shieldbreaker rose next. "He knows the name," he said, to no one in particular. "Mance Rayder knows the name of the Night's King." He shook his head slowly. "I'll not camp beside that." He turned and left, bringing his band with him.

"Mance." Ygon Oldfather had not moved yet. He was old, older than almost anyone left in the host, and he looked it now - a man carved down by too many years of life, and too many disappointments, and, just like that, Val could see the respect the Oldfather had held for Mance bleeding away by the moment, washed away by one last great disappointment of them all. "You should have gone for the horn alone. That was your mandate. That was what you promised every chief who followed you." His voice was not unkind, which somehow made it worse. "The Horned Lord was the greatest sorcerer our people ever produced. The Sorcerer King. There was no magic he could not master, no power he could not bend to his will. And even he walked away from what was in those depths." He sighed. "You should have asked yourself why, before you went and dug too deep."

He stood, and tucked his furs around him, and left. His sons followed him.

Other chieftains followed. Not all of them, but enough that Val could see the disaster playing out, one wound after another to the remnants of the body of Mance's host.

And Mance just… watched them go. He didn't argue, didn't call after them, didn't act the part of the king he had so clearly been until mere days ago. He just watched tiredly, with the expression of a man who had been expecting this.

When the footsteps had faded, what remained around the fire was very quiet. Only a third of the chieftains remained.

Tormund sighed, reached for his mead, and took a long swig, before setting it down again. He looked at Mance, and his face was tired and old, and in that moment, Val hated him. Why had he asked Mance that question. Why?

"Are you angry, Mance?" Tormund asked, his face neutral in a way that suggested he was prepared for whatever might come.

"No," Mance sighed. His expression hadn't so much as twitched, not for this entire time. "It had to be done, Tormund. Better to let the unsure split from us tonight than starve with us tomorrow. Just… wish you'd told me first."

Tormund looked just as tired as Mance. "Aye, we'll talk tomorrow."

Tormund was still, after everything, loyal in a stubborn unreasoning way that Val suspected had nothing to do with proper judgment and everything to do with the simple fact of counting Mance Rayder as his friend. It was as galling as it was infuriating.

"You stupid old man!" She stormed to her feet and - despite her exhaustion, despite her bruises and cuts from battle - shouted at Giantsbane with all she still had. "The free folk are all the way properly fucked now! You hear me? Fucked! We'd already lost half our chiefs, now you made it so much worse - over some stupid witch's tradition! How are we supposed to get past the Wall now?"

"I… had to know," Tormund Giantsbane couldn't even muster the energy to growl, or… anything. He just stared into the fire, eyes unfocused, along with Mance.

Harma stepped over to her. "We'll find a way, Val," the ugly old spearwife who was her best friend among the chiefs urged. "So long as we're still alive for tomorrow, we'll find something. Too many bellies to feed, not enough food. Would have killed us as surely as the Others."

Tormund nodded faintly. Mance didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

Idiots. Even if the host had to be partway dispersed, this wasn't the way—

Val swallowed her grievances, stomped away from the pathetic remnant of the circle of chiefs, and got herself back to the weirwood where she'd left Dalla and a few men to handle whatever she, Harma, Halleck, and Wulf and their warbands had that passed for a camp tonight. She barely even spoke to her sister. She just picked up her spear and moved to stand beside Wulf and Halleck, who were keeping watch along with their men near a set of fires, ready for… whenthefuckever the dead chose to attack this night.

They barely spoke, keeping wary eyes on the night's shadows. Their camp was just one of many, all the fires piled up within eyeshot of one another, all of them providing at least a little light into the northwards treeline. The Others and their wights only move by dark, Val knew. Until the dawn came, there was no safety, no time for rest, no matter how bone-dead exhausted she was. She seethed, staring into the shadows, almost hoping the dead might come so she had something to do, something to fight.

Eventually, though… several hours passed, and still the dead didn't come. Val couldn't take it any more. She was dead on her feet, she could feel her body fit to collapse around her. She begged relief from Wulf and Halleck and Morna, who didn't look much better themselves, and let herself finally fall beside her sister.

They had no tents, no blankets, no extra furs. She could only pull her cloak tighter around her as she lay down in the snow beside her sister under the weirwood's carved face, and let the first sleep in two days finally take her.

In those last few drifting moments before unconsciousness finally stole her away, she twisted and turned, worrying, praying despite herself that things wouldn't get worse than this. They couldn't take it. Mance couldn't take it.

And yet, things were about to get much, much worse.

…

In the late morning, close to midday, they finally reached the Milkwater.

Mance ordered Styr, Tormund, herself, Harma Dogshead and her brother Halleck, and Wulf One-Eye and a few others to keep order up and down the refugee column, to be on the lookout for more attacks from the dead.

The weird part was that none came. The dead hadn't hit in the night, and they weren't hitting now either, in the grey morning before the sun properly came out. It wasn't long before the scouts came back and reported that they'd seen the dead pulling back into the mountains instead of keeping up the chase. All of them, as far as they could tell.

It was welcome news, but few trusted it. Everyone knew the dead never let up a chase. Different folk had different ideas going around. Mance thought the Others were pulling some kind of trick, maybe circling around to intercept them from the south, and he didn't let up at all with their rearguard and sent out forward scouts as well.

Val herself had an inkling there was some other cause. In the early morning, Thistle - one of the spearwife scouts she especially trusted - had reported something strange. More out of gut instinct than seeing anything definite… she suspected something had happened in the north that was drawing the Others back that way. Strange storms were raging in the far northern peaks, she had said. In the same direction the dead had been sighted going in.

Either way, it didn't matter: fewer chiefs were following Mance's orders now. Kingsblood, the Oldfather, Soren Shieldbreaker and the rest, they'd all dispersed at first light, going their own separate ways through the woods. But:

It wasn't lost on Val that it was the less superstitious, smarter chiefs who'd stayed with Mance. Mance could still organize the free folk, could still offer some protection - couldn't do anything at all for the countless disloyal sodden idiots who'd split off from the host into their own clans and bands. They were spread out all over this part of the forest now, and would be rightly and properly fucked if the dead hit now. They'd deserve it, a bitter part of Val thought.

Mance hadn't committed an evil, not as most of the folk would reckon it. Not if he only knew the Name and wasn't speaking it to others. But he was carrying a curse now, a burden that the legends agreed was an omen of ill luck and bad fortune. Not quite an omen of disaster - that was for the fools in the myths who started speaking the name of the Night's King, often and without care. But it cast a pallor over what remained of the host.

The last thing people need is to think we have bad luck now on top of it all, Val cursed. Why'd you have to go and admit to knowing it, Mance?

She'd even asked him after, and it made her even angrier when he'd tiredly told her Harma's same reasonings: "We can't even feed the folk we've still got, Val. All the food, supplies, everything - it's all freezing up there on that damn glacier. We had to shed numbers. This was the best way. Let go those with shaky loyalties, those with somewhere elses to go. Had to get them gone so we could live. And I couldn't lie. Not about this."

She couldn't argue with - most of - that logic, but she hated it. Mance had put years into rallying the north's chiefs. Years. This wasn't far off from deliberately giving up his kingship, damnit. Who even knew how long it might take to rebuild now?

When she reached the Milkwater's banks with Dalla, she was close to the head of the column. The water was grey and cold and running fast with snowmelt, swollen enough to be dangerous. The western trail along the near bank was a mess of boot-churned slush already, the column having broken apart as people spread along the bank to drink, to wash their wounds or try to get fish out of the water.

Many, though, had simply sat down to stop and stare at the water.

…Those were the hard ones. The ones who were giving up on living.

Val left Halleck behind with Dalla, then walked the line herself, trying to keep order, trying to keep the folk moving. It was all she could do now. The only way she could distract herself from the despair she felt seeping into…

Someone slumped into the snow beside the trail grabbed her arm. She nearly put a knife in him before she saw: it wasn't a him at all. Some woman she didn't know.

"Please," the woman begged, looking up at her. Val stopped. "Please, I can't - my children, I can't carry them both, I can't…"

The woman had clearly been driven to her knees by exhaustion, she looked desperate and starved. A baby was swaddled on her back and a boy was in her arms. The baby was pale and silent. Too pale, on a closer look. Damnit. As for the boy, he was maybe four years of age, limp and glassy-eyed with cold all on his own.

"Help me carry them." The woman looked up at her with desperation. "Please. Just to the next rest, just—"

"The baby is dead." Val said it flatly, because this was no time for kindness. "Drop it and focus on the child you still have. Keep moving. It's warmer if you move."

"She's not dead, she's not—" the woman's voice cracked. "I've been moving for three days. My husband is—" She stopped. "He's gone. I have nobody, they're all dead. If you could just—"

"I can't carry your children, or your delusions either," Val said. "Drop the dead one and keep moving, or die here with the one you still got. That's all there is."

Val walked on, quickly, before the woman's desperation could consume her too, before she did the damn fool thing of giving into her own better nature and actually trying to help. But no, Val had no help to give her, not even if she tried.

She'd seen scenes like that a hundred and more times in the last few days. Desperate survivors who had nothing left to give, but whose needing and wanting would kill you too if you let them. All she could do for them now was to keep the host moving, keep them going until they were somewhere safer.

She saw Harma Dogshead over in the distance - without the dog's head banner she was famed for, there were no dogs left to eat - keeping order in the column much like Val herself was. Even now Val was keeping Harma and Wulf close with her in the middle parts of the column, close enough for shouting distance at least, but most of their spearwives were out foraging. Only Halleck and the spearwives she really trusted like Frenya, Thistle, Holly and Willow One-Eye were left to stay with Dalla. Amidst the hundreds of milling bodies, Harma gave her a weary, single wave of acknowledgement, barely even visible from this distance, and Val waved back.

An hour or two later, she saw another problem case just ahead. Some young man, barely older than a boy sitting at the water's edge with his head in his hands. She trotted over through the slushy snow.

"Get up," Val's voice was curt. "Keep moving."

She could see by the set of his shoulders that he'd been crying, or still was. Some poor, bare-footed Hornfoot boy.

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"They're all dead." He didn't raise his head. "Every one of them. My mother, my brothers, the whole clan. There's nobody left. What's the point… why would I even—"

"Get up," Val said again, harder. Please.

"Why?" He looked up at her, and his face was young, so young, ruined with grief and exhaustion and cold. "Why? Where am I even going? My clan's all dead, there's nothing - I have nobody…"

Clanless. She looked at him for a moment with real pity. She wouldn't wish that on her worst enemy. Aside from the Weeper, because fuck him.

"Nowhere to go is still somewhere," Val said. Her voice didn't soften. "Get up. Keep walking. Or do you want to die here?"

She pulled him up to his feet and pushed him onwards. When his feet started shuffling forwards, she moved on herself. This one at least she had been able to help.

How much longer to the Bay of Ice? Val wondered tiredly, complaining natter-mindedly to herself.

The southwestern coast was their destination, at least for now.

It had been Styr's suggestion. The Magnar, months ago, had sent most of his people, all the Thenn folk who couldn't fight - at least ten thousand of them - down south past the Milkwater trail and the Gorge and into the mouth of the Bay of Ice under the lead of his cousins Siegtar and Soren (a different Soren than the Shieldbreaker), and a Thenn jarl named Argluyd. Now, the Bay of Ice was where the Thenns and a lot of other clans who hadn't wanted to go up into the Frostfangs were waiting.

Waiting for Mance to break down the Wall. Which wasn't ever happening now.

Still. It was somewhere to go, at least. Somewhere that would probably have food, shelter.

But why'd it have to be the Bay of Ice? The thought came bitterly. Yeah, that small peninsula was protected by the northern mountains and probably still had enough food to go around thanks to its sea access. But that was all a trap - that peninsula was a prison for anyone but real killers among raiders like Alfyn or the Weeper. The kneeler lords on Bear Island and the mountain clans south of the western Wall watched the southern parts of the Bay of Ice like hawks, and killed all free folk on sight on principle when they came over by boat. Even women and children from what she'd heard.

In desperation, the refugee column might go to the western peninsula now, but where would they go after? The Gorge? The Bridge of Skulls? Try to cross over the Bay? Death, death, death.

She'd have preferred to head out east, try the Bay of Seals route which was said to be a bit easier now that the Night's Watch had so few crows left to patrol the water. Hells, Styr's son Sigorn was already out there, he had been further east with his own warband preparing for an attack on the Wall at the same time as when Mance would march south - gods only knew what he would do now.

But, for Mance's host's sake, there was no other choice but to head to the Bay of Ice. It would be a long walk between here and there. One that would bring them uncomfortably close to the Shadow Tower. It wouldn't have been Val's first pick, but there was no other choice. For now she had to keep order and try to keep the host's remnants together.

…Several hours later, as the sun was beginning to set, Val was thinking about where she might shelter with her sister for the night when she heard screaming coming from down-column.

Folk had been shouting in bits and pieces all morning and day long for any of a thousand different random reasons, so she didn't pay it much mind at first.

But it was only moments before her ears picked up on a certain, sudden sharpening in the screaming.

Before she'd even consciously registered what she was hearing, some animal part of her had recognized this wasn't plain old shouting. It was something that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

Then someone was running, actually running, barging through the shuffling exhausted trudge of the refugee column, pushing past a river of bodies. Then another did the same. Then panic began to spread, like fire picking up through dry grass.

Val already had her long knife out. She hadn't even realized she'd drawn it.

The hells was going on?

"What is it?" she shouted at the nearest man. "What's happening—"

He didn't answer, just shoved past her. A woman stumbled into her from the side and nearly knocked her down. The column was clenching, people shouting, braying and panicking, none of them really sure what the panic was about and panicking even more because of that. Hundreds of refugees were suddenly bunching and turning and pushing against each other—

And out of the chaos a snow sled came barreling along the side of the trail, its dogs barking frantically, scattering bodies left and right.

The man riding it was a Nightrunner chief whose name she'd never learned, a scarred, heavyset man with the right side of his face covered in intricate, curving lines, tattoos of black ink. A tested Nightrunner warrior. And he was running.

"Attack!" he bellowed as his sled careened past. "The enemy is here! Flee, free folk! Flee!"

"Where?" Val demanded at a shout. "Where is the attack? The dead? How many - which direction!"

The chief just stared at her in fright as he passed, whites showing around his eyes. He didn't even stop his dog sled. He was gone in moments.

"Fuck!" Val pushed forward, shouldering through the knots of bodies, shouting for people to hold, to face it, whatever it was, to stop scattering and hold. Halleck emerged from the press of bodies, panting as he faced her.

"Which way?" she demanded. "What's the enemy?"

"Don't know," his face was pale. "East, I think. Or west. I heard both." He looked past her. "I heard the ridge."

She heard more screaming from the scattering refugees, somewhere to the right. Something crazed enough it actually managed to carry over the din. "Attack, attack, they're on us, flee— !"

"Wights?" Harma had emerged from nowhere. The ugly, squat, loyal named raider already had her stone axe out.

"Wouldn't make sense," Val growled. The dead had been pulling back all night, everyone knew they didn't attack by day, and even the dead didn't fight like this. This felt like something else. Something worse, in a different way. "Some rogue clan? Maybe some warband's turning on us?"

Harma and Halleck both stared at her blankly. She saw Wulf coming, getting closer, pushing his way through the press of bodies. She grabbed a girl running past her, maybe sixteen, some clan's daughter. The girl nearly wrenched free before Val got a fistful of her red-brown hair. "Tell me what you saw. What hit us. What is it?"

"Let go—"

"What is it?" Val snarled.

The girl's face crumpled. "Crows," she gasped. "It's the crows. They're everywhere, they're on both sides, they're killing everyone— !"

Val let go.

The girl ran. Val stood still in the middle of the flowing panic, people parting around her like water around a stone, and felt a terrible fear run like blood up and down her spine.

Crows. Now. Fucking now?

"They were waiting for us," Harma growled, staring in the distance north.

She looked up at the ridgeline of the valley the refugee column was coming down, and saw there was no column any more: all semblance of organization had dissolved, countless people were just scattering across the valley like hares—

And then she saw the shadows moving.

It was hard to see them at first, almost melting into the lengthening shadows of the treeline and the setting sun, black on black like shadows at night. They came out of the last of the light like they'd been made from it, riding down from positions so well-concealed that Val's mind struggled for a moment to understand what she was seeing.

It was only when she pieced it together that she saw: rank after rank of black-cloaked men on heavy horse, descending from the ridges on either side of the valley, the long slopes and the shelf of black rock and the treeline above the river's curve - all of it, every shadow, every place that had looked like a shadow, was moving.

Crows. Descending from the near and the far side of the valley, east and west both.

An ambush. An ambush already made. Already placed. They had been there, still and patient in the cold, waiting all daylong until the column's scouts and warriors had passed on by, and the thickest, most vulnerable parts of the column were in sight and within reach of their blades.

For a moment, she stood there stunned with horror. Then she screamed out: "To me!" She raised her long knife high. "TO ME! Free folk! Hold your ground, blades out, hold, FREE FOLK— !"

Some did. A handful flocked to her - Harma's warband, two of Wulf's boys, a spearwife she recognized from the mountain clans. A dozen. Perhaps fifteen.

Around them, hundreds ran. Thousands. A sea of bodies, running for their lives. Scarcely anyone even looked at her.

Then she saw how they were running, and she realized something. What was really happening.

The free folk weren't running towards safety, not toward Mance specifically. They were just running away from the crows - away, in a pure animal scatter of people. Val watched the column dissolve around her in seconds, even as she kept shouting for the free folk to rally - and the words kept leaving her mouth long after she understood that no one was listening.

The realization stopped her. Entirely and totally. She finally understood.

Mance's host had not been broken tonight. It had been broken for days. It had broken into pieces in the mountains when the dead hit, then broken after that into splinters, into ones and twos, every chief who had walked away from the fire, every man who had taken his clan east in the quiet of night. Broken for every chief that stood up, tucked his furs around himself and walked into the dark, ignoring and uncaring of the fact that they still had hope, still had a King-Beyond-the-Wall.

What she had been working so hard to hold onto these past days hadn't been a host. It had been shards. Mance's crown, though he had never had a real one, was broken now, and it wasn't coming back. It didn't matter what she did. It was gone.

"Val." Harma was beside her. Her eyes were wide with fear, but unlike this cowardly horde she still had a spearwife's instincts - already looking for exits, threats, odds. "We have to find Mance."

"Aye," Val said. Her own voice sounded very far away. Dalla. Dalla's with Mance.

"Now, Val."

They ran. Amidst the sea of refugees breaking in every particular direction, Val and her people ran.

Mance was supposed to be somewhere up-column, near the head. They fled through the slush, amidst the sea of screaming bodies. Someone knocked her down, almost knocking the wind out of her - she picked herself up and kept running. They turned around a curve in the river and the head of the column was in sight.

Val cast a look back, and regretted it. The entire treeline was moving with black shadows. Men in black riding on black horses, cutting down everything in sight. No one even tried to fight them - they just fled, and fled, and mostly died.

They found Mance almost alone, on top of a slight rise in the river trail. Tormund and Dalla were there, and a few fighters. Mance didn't didn't say anything when she got to him. She just stopped in front of him, panting for her life. Her lungs were on fire. Blood was on her knife - she'd cut half the throat out of someone who had tried to barge her over. She'd barely even realized until now.

Mance didn't say anything to her. He just gave her a wan smile. Why was he so calm? Why wasn't he running? Why?

The crows were coming. She could feel the ground trembling under the weight of their horse's hooves. People weren't just fleeing into the woods, down the trail - some hundreds were mad enough to jump into the swollen, half-frozen Milkwater and were swiftly swept away. She heard the people around her screaming in terror, breaking every way.

Val felt them coming around the curve in the river trail before she saw them. Their horses - many of them had real horses, not just stocky little garrons - were charging in a line of armored heavy horse, butchering every free folk in their way. A wall of black and blades, coming for them.

"We are the swords in the darkness!" The words crashed over the river like a wave. "We are the watchers on the walls! We are the shields that guard the realms of men!" Their oath was both a war cry and a terror at once, and every crow was screaming it in unison.

She heard Tormund roar something that might have been either an order or a curse, she couldn't even hear it properly. Dalla's hand found hers and gripped it hard enough to hurt, and Val held on and felt the baby kick, felt it through her sister's palm, and thought with a clarity that surprised her: this is not how I expected to die.

The old crow at their head was broad and heavy, bald and bearded with grey, and his eyes instantly fixed on them. It was an unwavering glare from across an entire battlefield, an unquestionable promise of absolute, certain death.

"Mance Rayder!"

The old crow's voice carried across the slaughter like a thunderclap. And, truly, it was the most one-sided slaughter Val had ever seen in her life, had ever even imagined.

Mance didn't even twitch. He just wearily stared at the old crow with an expression that wasn't even fear or defiance, but recognition. Mance knows him, Val realized in horror. "Who… Mance, who is that?"

Mance just gave her a wan smile. "My death."

Val stared, speechless. He turned away from her, turned away from everything, and pulled Dalla close. Between them, there were no words. Dalla just cried, weeping into Mance's shoulder as the end came.

In that moment, for one wild, desperate moment, Val found she actually missed Jarl. She didn't… she didn't want to die alone.

"Mance Rayder, you treacherous, oathbreaking bastard! We've come for you at last! We've finally come for you!"

Val stared back. That must be the Lord Commander of the crows himself. She could feel the truth of it down to her bones.

Mance pulled away from Dalla. He stepped forward, towards the oncoming wall of crows on black.

"You go to certain death, Mance!" Val hissed in terror. "Y-you need to run. As long as you're still alive, maybe you could, maybe we could— !"

He gave her a tired smile. "All death is certain, goodsister. All that matters is how we face it."

This fucking madman. Even now, Mance Rayder was still quoting one of Bael the Bard's old songs.

Few stood with Mance in the end. Tormund had fled at some point, and Styr was nowhere to be seen at all. Both gone, as were pretty much all the other chiefs. It was just her, Harma, Halleck, and Wulf and a very few of the most loyal. More spearwives than men.

"The shields that guard the realms of men! THE SHIELDS THAT GUARD THE REALMS OF MEN!"

Dalla's hand found hers and gripped it hard enough to hurt, and Val held on and felt the baby kick, felt the baby's fear through her sister's palm. Val thought with a sudden, bitter clarity that surprised even herself: But as a place to die goes, this ain't so bad.

She couldn't hear anything. It was death and slaughter all around. Mance said something to Dalla that Val couldn't hear over the noise. Dalla shook her head, her expression one of despair. Mance said it again, and then, kissed her. Even Val could tell he was saying goodbye.

Then, he let go of her sister. Mance Rayder took up his sword and stepped forward, putting himself between them and the upcoming wall of black, the charge of crows, every black devil among them riding on a black horse.

"Don't run," he said. He raised his voice. "Don't run! Stay together! Stay—"

Whatever else he said was swallowed in the chaos.

Val held her sister's hand and watched death and darkness come alive on every side, naked steel and bright, hungering blades in hand.

Samwell

It was a glum grey day spent staring over the world from the top of the Wall.

The wind was nothing to speak of, not compared to the usual for being at the top of one of the highest structures ever built by man. Yet despite almost half a dozen layers of wools and furs, swaddling him from toe to fingertip to chin so thickly Sam felt like a trussed-up sausage - and probably looked almost as wide as he was tall - it still felt bitingly cold as he stared down from the lookout's ledge in anticipation.

From so high up, the morn after a snowfall, the land, the forests, the lake, all of it looked like an almost unbroken, gentle blanket of white. The men were like lines of ants skittering over the snow, black dots seen from miles and miles afar.

…There were a lot of men. Almost more than I expected to return, Sam thought with a gulp, stooping down as he counted them through the lookout's mounted Myrish spyglass. The weeks of Castle Black's fearful panicking, the knowledge of Mance Rayder's oncoming hundred-thousand man wildling horde had left him more than half-convinced that they were all doomed.

Sam was still counting, watching intently, when the watchman on duty sounded Castle Black's great horn: UUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo…

The horn's deep, throaty call sounded almost triumphant today, like a victory call. The clarion blast of sound called out across the miles, echoed off the forest and the hills, echoed off the ice of the Wall itself, until the sound faded slowly to silence.

And now everyone else in Castle Black - not just Sam and a few wind-bitten watchers - knew the rangers were returning. The Great Ranging was over. Two hundred and fifty men of the Night's Watch were returning to the Wall.

They had been three hundred when they left, and yet even Sam knew just from a good look that, all told, the Night's Watch had still lost more to desertion than they had to battle.

"Oi," Pyp called cheerfully. "Looks like the Old Bear is finally back. How many, do you think?"

"I'm counting two hundred and fifty or so," Sam said nervously, still staring through the spyglass. "Do you think they won?"

"I doubt there'd be so many of them coming back if they didn't," Pyp noted. The young man looked ready to skip for joy. "I was half-fearing I'd never see any of them again."

I was the same. But everything's alright now, isn't it? They're all coming back?

The few ravens they had received had been vague. They only mentioned a battle, that the ranging would be returning soon. "Do you think Jon's alright?" Sam asked nervously.

"Let's go and find out. Come on, now, we can leave the patrol for a moment. It'll be half an hour before they get to the gate."

Sam shook his head. Technically, Sam should still be excused from the rotas due to his injury, but Thorne had still assigned him patrol duty. Short numbers, Sam remembered the knight insisting. More likely, Thorne simply enjoyed sending Sam up here to freeze. "We can't," Sam muttered. "Ser Alliser will scream at us if we leave our posts."

"It's a bright day, there are two hundred men down there and clearly no wildlings around." Pyp grinned. "Come on, Killer, let Thorne scream for once."

Sam grimaced. Every man in black received a nickname eventually, and Sam supposed that 'Killer' was better than 'Lady Piggy', but it still made him squirm with embarrassment. His feet shuffled, glancing down at bandages covering his chest up to his shoulder. His left arm was still in a sling over his chest.

Killer. They had started calling Sam 'Killer' ever since he had killed a man.

…

It had been at the Fist of the First Men that the deserters had made their strike. It had been a cold night when fourteen 'sworn brothers' murdered their fellow brothers on watch, then tried to kill the Lord Commander himself and burn down the camp before running off. Sam had also been one of the traitor's targets.

Sam still didn't understand it. All of the other targets made some sense, at least. The deserters killed the men standing watch, they tried to kill the officers too, they released the dogs and set fire to the tents. They did whatever they could to ensure they would be able to run away, and that the rangers would be too disorganized to give chase.

But then they had also tried to kill him.

Sam had just been minding his own business with the ravens when an ugly man with boils named Chett came out of nowhere and tried to gut him with a knife.

Sam had only learned later that Chett was Aemon's former steward. A steward who couldn't even read, which was why he'd been dismissed. But why come after him? The only reason Sam could think of was maybe the man just hated him that much.

The knife descended. He felt his skin split open. It was so sudden there hadn't even been much pain, just… shock. The pain came later.

And then Chett had stopped, pausing with the knife. He could have killed Sam quickly, but he didn't. Sam still remembered the way Chett had grinned, savoring the moment. "You really are a whale. Fat's thicker than armor. How many more cuts 'til you start squealing, little piggy?"

The words had shocked Sam out of his dumb stupor. Honestly, he'd been as surprised as the traitor when he shrieked in fright and threw a birdcage at Chett's head. It hadn't been a deliberate move, his hand had just flinched, and then suddenly there was a squawking, frantic raven flying in Chett's face.

They had scrambled. Sam had screamed. Chett pushed him to the ground, bloody knife in hand, and Sam's arms had just thrashed. Sam vaguely remembered grabbing the closest object he could find in desperation…

And then there was a knife sticking out of Chett's eye.

Sam wasn't quite sure how it had happened. The same knife Sam used for sharpening quills. The man gagged, blood pouring down his face and over his boils. Chett had hovered upright for a good ten heartbeats before he finally dropped.

Chett died with a look of absolute amazement on his face.

…

The memory sent shivers down his spine. He could still feel the knife as it sliced downward, cutting across his arm as he tried to block and then into his chest…

I still hear it sometimes. I still feel how his eyeball splattered under my…

That was how Sam earned his 'Killer' moniker. At some point in Sam's shrieking, he'd drawn attention from nearby true sworn brothers: they'd found him, bloodied, standing over a corpse with a letterknife in its eye, repeating over and over to himself 'I killed him, I killed him'.

The alarm went up quick after that. The deserters died almost as quickly. There had been confusion and panic aplenty, and twelve good men had died when the fighting broke out, but the uprising that night had failed. Lord Commander Mormont overpowered the three men sent to assassinate him. Four of the deserters managed to run, but they were chased down and killed.

After that, Sam had been left bloody and injured from Chett's knife. Some thought he would lose the use of his arm altogether. Mormont sent Sam back to the Wall along with Grenn and a few other wounded. Sam had been unconscious for most of the journey. It took Maester Aemon's skill to stitch him up, and he was still in bandages.

Now, the rest of the Great Ranging had returned. Sam, along with Pyp, Grenn and Toad, watched with bated breath as the men finally returned and the gate was hoisted up. At some point, they descended down the ice stairs to welcome their brothers back (Sam took the ice cage, because he was too terrified of the stairs).

When the Great Ranging came through the gate, Sam saw lines of weary, rugged men in black, but there were also grins in the crowd.

"We killed them!" Thoren Smallwood announced proudly, riding through the gate. "Savages never knew what hit them. They ran straight into our trap!"

Sam's heart leapt. He looked for familiar faces in the crowd. He recognized Dolorous Edd's grey hair among those funneling through the gate.

"There was a battle?" Sam asked eagerly. Edd looked even wearier than most, walking alongside Dywen.

"Oh aye, several in fact." Edd paused. "Although I'm not sure if you can technically call it a battle, given as the other side didn't have a chance to fight back. The wildlings barely had any fight left in them."

The story came out quickly. After the attempted uprising, the Old Bear had proceeded apace with command's plan to ambush the wildlings. The rangers had split into multiple commands, and headed deeper into the mountains to wait for their opportunity. The main mass of their forces under the Lord Commander had went ahead to break the wildling's main column from behind, hiding in the forest on a high hill, all the while smaller groups of heavy horse stationed themselves across either side of the valley headed down to the Milkwater.

There, they had lain in wait.

A three-part pincer ambush, coordinated by flares, with heavy horse from all three sides. The rangers had expected at least some success, but they had turned out to be more successful than anybody had ever imagined.

The Great Ranging had expected to face a horde - a massive, yet disorganized and brittle tide of wildlings. Instead, they had encountered nothing but scattered groups already fleeing from battle, weakened and panicked.

Most of the wildlings had been running, fleeing. Infighting, Edd had called it. Most likely there had been some schism or disagreement in their camp - some challenge to Mance Rayder's rule, perhaps - and mass fighting must have broken out. The wildlings had scattered, and those fleeing down the Milkwater had been met by the well-prepared, fortified, and well-hidden men of the Night's Watch.

It had been a slaughter. "Well, several slaughters, in fact," Edd explained dourly. "One after another, in very short procession, actually."

The Night's Watch had ambushed the wildlings. Then they had chased them through the mountains, circled around the pass, and ambushed them again. The wildlings had been so disorganized that they hadn't stood a chance.

There had even been giants riding mammoths scattered in the battle, as Sam listened with bated breath. He could barely believe the tales of giants, but there were too many brothers telling them to lie. Soon, there was a group formed of rangers reciting the tale eagerly. The rangers killed the giants with arrows fired from the cliffs, and then fired burning arrows at the mammoths, sending the beasts wild and stampeding through the wildlings' own men.

There were some casualties, but far, far fewer than expected considering the numbers faced. Ottyn Wythers and ten other men were torn apart by a giant with white fur, which other men had brought down in the end, but that was the only one of the raid groups that had been totally lost.

"What about Jon?" Sam asked, eager. "How did he fare?"

The mood went quiet. Edd's expression darkened grimly. "We never saw him. Qhorin Halfhand's scouting party didn't make it back." He grimaced. "Nobody has seen him since he left."

Sam blinked, mouth dropping open. There was a long moment of dead silence. Jon, the first and best friend who had really looked after him. Sam hadn't truly believed that Jon would die. Couldn't die. Jon had always seemed so strong, so sure, so in control…

He can't be dead, Sam thought, ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut. Jon's with the Halfhand, he can't be dead.

The mood went dark. There were brothers glancing at him, but Sam didn't say a word. "Why are you back then?" Pyp demanded of the men. "Why not wait for the rangers to return? What about Benjen Stark, or Waymar Royce's group? The Old Bear said he was going to find them—"

"We couldn't wait. Buckwell's group barely arrived back in time, but there was no word from the Halfhand," Dywen protested, his wooden teeth clattering as he spoke. "We might have killed three thousand wildlings, but there were still plenty more. We caught them unprepared at the Milkwater, but let's not push our luck."

Sam's hand trembled. The wound over his chest ached. "…We did it though?" Grenn said after a long pause. "We won. We broke the wildling army."

It sounded a lot like the wildling army had already been broken and the Night's Watch had just swept up the pieces, but Sam stayed quiet. Jon's face lingered in his mind.

"Oh aye, we won," Edd glanced behind him. "And we brought prisoners."

Sam turned. Everyone in Castle Black was watching as the last of the rangers filtered through the gate. They walked double file through the tunnel, but then there were men wearing chains. There were ragged men wearing bloody furs, with haunted expressions and their hands bound. Yet they looked more special than most wildlings, with richer furs, bronze armor, bits of amber, gold and silver armbands. Those are wildling chieftains, Sam realized.

A mutter spread through the crowd. Everyone was watching avidly, like it was a sort of victory march. And Sam supposed it was, if a morbid kind.

Behind Sam, Donal Noye grunted as he watched.

"Well, I'll be damned," the one-armed armorer announced. "Now that's Mance Rayder. The King-Beyond-the-Wall himself has… graced us."

Sam heard ripples of laughter pass through the crowd of black brothers. The chieftain's chains rattled in the cold air as they walked.

There were two dozen captured wildlings in total. The men pointed as Mance Rayder walked at the front of the prisoner's line like some prize. He was a broad-shouldered but lean man, middle-aged with a worn face. His face was bruised and bloody, and although he was wearing a black cloak, it was stitched with red silk - not like that of any proper sworn brother. Apart from that his features were otherwise unremarkable and plain. He looked beaten and weak, but Sam noticed his sharp eyes.

Mance Rayder might have once called himself a king, but now he was nothing but a beaten and injured prisoner.

Still, the oathbreaker and wildling king glared at all them with a sharpness that made Sam pause. The other wildlings looked beaten, or resigned, or loudly and defiantly angry. Mance Rayder was different; he was silent and observant, there was something in his eyes that put Sam on edge.

Sam looked past the former King-Beyond-the-Wall, eyes flickering over all the other wildlings. "Who are the rest?" Sam asked, lowering his voice.

"Raiders. Wildling leaders. Clan chiefs. Chieftain's sons." There were three women in chains too - spearwives who looked every bit as tough as the men. "And a couple of daughters of clan chiefs."

Dywen pointed to a broad, ruddy-faced man with scruffy white hair and braided beard. He was snarling as a sworn brother stabbed at him to walk. "And that's Tormund Giantsbane. We lost three men trying to take him down. We got his daughter, too."

Most of the wildlings were injured in some way or the other. One of the men looked so bloody he could barely walk. He was a tall, earless man, with a thick bandage around his eye. He limped so badly that the brother escorting him had to half-drag him like an upright sack of potatoes. The severe-looking wildling's face was deathly pale.

"And that's Styr, Magnar of Thenn," Dywen explained. "I tracked that bastard myself. He took four arrows, one of them in his eye. We thought he was a corpse, but he still jumped up and tore Camryn's ear off."

The group was still muttering, but Sam barely heard it. It was Mance Rayder who Sam still stared at. The King-Beyond-the-Wall was infamous to the black brothers, the greatest traitor of their generation. Sam had never expected the dreaded leader of the wildlings to let himself be taken alive. "…How did you even catch the King-Beyond-the-Wall?"

"We didn't," Dywen admitted. "Mance surrendered himself. He made the Lord Commander promise to let his pregnant wife walk free in return for his surrender."

"Pregnant wife?" Sam's face paled. "There were women and children there too?"

"We let most of the women and children walk." That word 'most' hung in the air. It made Sam's skin crawl. "If we had tried to take them all, there would have been more prisoners than we had chains. We only brought back the ones of value."

"Why not just kill them?" asked Grenn, still staring entranced at the wildlings. The one called Tormund struggled like a chained bear, as if he could snap his restraints.

Dywen shook his head. "Most likely will, eventually." The ranger paused, then glanced at Mance Rayder. Sam knew that the King-Beyond-the-Wall was a deserter to the Night's Watch, and that meant certain death. "But first the Old Bear wants to question them. He wants to know the wildling's numbers, the biggest clans, their leaders. He wants to know what Rayder did with our missing scouts."

"You think he was the one that took them?"

"He does seem the likely suspect, doesn't he?" Edd sniffed. "We'll ask the other wildlings the same questions too, I expect. Some we could use as hostages against their clans, but I imagine most of them will end up hanging beside Mance."

Sam squirmed as the sworn brothers talked amongst themselves. By the tell of it, the Watch would hang the wildling chieftains over the edge of the Wall - just like the old glory days of the Night's Watch. Sam expected that the Lord Commander would be pleased. Not so long ago, some had said the Great Ranging was folly, and yet now the Old Bear had returned triumphant.

The rest of the day was hectic. It was like every man had a story to tell and a wound to patch up. Sam had never known Castle Black to be such a bustle. Thorne was so busy tending to the arrivals that he didn't even have time to berate Sam.

The steward watched as a few of the younger recruits threw stones at Mance and the other wildlings as they were dragged into the ice cells.

This is a victory, Sam told himself. They defeated the wildling army and came back victorious. The King-Beyond-the-Wall is beaten, we have won. They protected the realm.

If that army had hit the Wall, then they all might have been in trouble. The Watch didn't have the men to defend against a coordinated force like that, and the wildlings had a whole culture based around raping and murdering. The Old Bear did the right thing - hit them by surprise and break them before they had a chance to hit the Wall.

So why am I still so scared?

And why isn't Jon here?

Sam tried to distract himself by returning to his duties. There were letters to write and ravens to send. Clydas helped Sam with most of them while Maester Aemon tended to the wounded. Sam caught glimpses of information from the ravens that came in and out.

Ser Denys Mallister reported extremely fierce storms north of the Frozen Shore, and put out a warning in case the storms were to move south. Thoren Smallwood, Jarmen Buckwell and Blane were still out Beyond-the-Wall, tracking the movements of stragglers from the wildling host. There had been raiders that had attacked and hounded the rangers as they retreated, so Ser Mallador Locke and Byam Flint and some other men lingered behind as a rearguard.

The most interesting letters were the ravens from the south. News from the lower Seven Kingdoms came in patchily to the Wall at best, but Sam still clung to every mention of events from the lands beset by the War of the Five Kings. A raven from White Harbor reported Stannis Baratheon's defeat at the Blackwater, and that King Joffrey now ruled in King's Landing with Tywin Lannister as his Hand.

Those letters went straight to the Lord Commander. It was a hectic day.

It was nearly dusk by the time the ravens started to clear. Clydas retreated to his quarters, but Sam was still too worried to rest. Instead, Sam returned to the rookery, to Maester Aemon's quarters and the pile of unsorted books resting on a desk.

There were old tomes that Sam had brought from the library that needed cataloguing and sorting. The books were his solace, his refuge. He tried to distract himself into his task, but he couldn't help feel a nagging sensation in the back of his mind that something was wrong. That they had made a mistake.

Sam remembered the look in Mance Rayder's eyes as they marched him through the courtyard. It hadn't been angry, or vengeful, more… pitying.

Sam heard footsteps marching into the tower. He jumped up quickly, causing his wounds to sting. Sam's heart skipped as he saw Ser Alliser Thorne stomp into the rookery. The knight's face was dark as he looked at Sam.

"Maester Aemon is asleep," Sam said, his voice almost a squeal. "Hold on, ser, I'll go wake him—"

"Don't bother, piggy." The others might call him Killer now, but to Thorne he would always be piggy. "I'm here for you."

Sam's eyes were nervous. "Me, ser? I don't… I haven't…"

Thorne stepped closer, a vicious sneer on his face. He stared at Sam's bandages.

"I guess the piggy had some meat cut out of him," he grunted. "Did that hurt, boy?"

Sam gulped, nodding. He was always scared around Thorne. The knight reminded him of Sam's father too much.

"You got one taste of real battle and you came back squealing to the Wall," Thorne spat. "Even the Lord Commander is too soft on your wimpy behind. Make no mistake, they might laugh and call you 'Killer' now, but they're not laughing with you."

Sam quivered and shrunk into himself. Thorne turned and walked away. "Now come on," he ordered. "With me, now. The Lord Commander wants to see you. Bring quills, ink and parchment."

Hesitantly, Sam followed. It was already dusk. Thorne didn't even glance back at him. Sam thought he would take him to the King's Tower, but instead he headed straight towards the tunnels, down into the wormwalks that led under the castle, and towards the ice cells. Sam was shivering, and not just from the cold.

For a fearful moment, he thought Thorne was planning on ambushing him in the tunnels or worse, but then Sam saw figures standing ahead. Mormont was ahead, waiting with four brothers standing outside of the ice cells.

Along with the Lord Commander, there was another new arrival. Janos Slynt, formerly of King's Landing's City Watch - Janos had been close to Thorne ever since his arrival at Castle Black a week ago, helping to fill in the vacuum left by Mormont's absence. Gone from the gold cloak to the black, he had heard the man jape.

Before the Great Ranging had returned, there had been whispers floating about that the Lord Commander might have fallen. It had seemed ludicrous at first, but Janos Slynt had even been pushing to be the next Lord Commander. Janos had been trotting around telling everyone that the king himself recommended him for the position.

But now that the Lord Commander Mormont was back, both Janos and Thorne looked unhappy. A stopper had been put on Janos' ambitions, and Thorne lost the power he had been wielding in Mormont's absence. What Sam knew for a certainty was that he was glad that Lord Commander Mormont had returned; Janos looked at Sam with nearly just as much disdain as Thorne did.

"Tarly." Lord Mormont just nodded at Sam distractedly. "Good. Come."

On his shoulder, Mormont's raven cawed, "Come, come."

Sam blinked, confusedly, glancing between Thorne and Mormont. Thorne's face was bitter. "Um… why am I here, my lord?"

"We're questioning Mance Rayder. I think he's finally ready to talk," he said curtly. "You are to act as our scribe. Write down everything that Mance says - take note of any numbers and names he gives us - but sit in the corner and be quiet."

An interrogation. Sam felt his heart pound, but he managed a nervous nod, clutching at his parchment. Even with a wounded arm, Sam could still read and write better than most; he was Maester Aemon's steward and the maester was old. Of course they would ask for him to scribe.

Fortunately, Mormont and the other men went in first. The door opened with a large crunch. Sam hesitated at the boundary, but Thorne was behind him, shoving him forward.

The ice cell was freezing, even under Sam's furs. Mance Rayder wasn't wearing any furs. He wore only his smallclothes, which did little against the cold of the tunnels. The King-Beyond-the-Wall was shivering badly. Rayder looked frail, pale and gaunt, with painful welts and bruises across his body. His arms were chained to the ice walls. He stared upwards with dark, bitter eyes.

His fingers, Sam noticed with a gulp. Mance's fingers were all twisted and mangled. They must have broken his fingers one by one. Sam wondered briefly what they had broken when he ran out of fingers.

He's ready to talk, the Lord Commander had said.

Sam's hands were trembling so much he struggled to hold the quill. Mormont watched him fumble with the paper with a heavy, disapproving frown, before turning back to Mance.

"Understand this, Mance," Mormont said firmly. "You are a dead man. We will kill you for forsaking your vows. The only question is the manner of your passing. You can either face an executioner's axe with dignity." He paused, stepping closer. "…Or we can hang you off the Wall, alive, and let the cold do its job."

There was a long pause. The oathbreaker's voice was quiet. A broken man. "I'll talk…" he wheezed, body shivering.

"Good. You will tell us everything we want to know, and we will give you a clean death." Mormont glanced at Thorne. "Firstly, troops. How many clans united under you? How many leaders remain—"

"You are a fool, Mormont," he said quietly. There was a gasping sound. Mance Rayder was laughing, chuckling - or trying to, at least. "An old fool."

Sam was left suddenly unsure whether he should write that down. Mormont only frowned. "Fool," cried his raven. "Fool, fool."

"You haven't won." Mance muttered, glaring. "You haven't won a goddamn thing. That 'battle' was just crows picking up after the dead."

"Enough. Tell me about your troops."

"Gone. Dead. Worse. I don't know." Mance's eyes were vicious. "You killed a lot of men, women and children, Old Bear."

Thorne scoffed. "We killed murderers, rapists and savages."

"I let your women and children walk free," Mormont said curtly, ignoring Thorne.

Mance's chuckle was bitter. "Oh aye. You left them to die, alone, hungry on a deserted mountainside. How noble."

"Would you have preferred I had put them to death along with your warriors?"

"At the very least, I would have preferred you had burnt the bodies." Mance Rayder spat blood. "The only thing you've done is made our true enemy even stronger."

No one replied. Sam blinked. "Do you know why they attacked us?" the wildling king challenged. "For them, that was a recruitment drive. Forty thousand dead free folk - forty thousand more corpses for their army, is how they saw it. When you killed us, you just did their work for them - made their army a little bit bigger. That's your victory right there, Mormont."

"Enough of this," Mormont growled in warning.

Mance stared at him critically. "You know, don't you?" There was a pause. "I think you know. I think you've seen the dead walk too." Mance grinned nastily, causing Sam to shiver. "You are a fool, Mormont. I almost pity you when you have to face all of the dead you killed, walking again."

There was a moment of silence. Mormont and Thorne shared an uneasy glance. The memory of the undead corpses with blue eyes that they brought over the Wall lingered in the room. Sam remembered with a gulp the bodies of Othor and Jafer Flowers, the wights they had thought were just dead bodies, who had started moving again when they were brought across the Wall. They had murdered good, strong sworn brothers - even Ser Jaremy Rykker, the new First Ranger after Benjen's disappearance.

Janos Slynt just scoffed. "Savage superstitions!" Janos proclaimed. "The man is a fool and a craven."

Mance Rayder didn't speak: he just looked at Janos like he was dung under his heel.

"Enough!" Mormont bellowed. He glared at Mance Rayder. "There is information that I need from you, turncloak. You will speak only to answer my questions. What did you do to our rangers?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Mormont."

"Waymar Royce led a party of four a year and a half ago. They vanished. What happened to them?"

Mance shook his head. "Never even heard of them."

"Benjen Stark and a party of six a year and some ago," the Old Bear growled. "I know what fate befell his men." Sam belatedly remembered that the two wights Jon had burned in the Lord Commander's tower had - in life - been rangers serving under Benjen. "But what of him? Where is he? Where were they going?"

"Now Benjen I did hear about." Mance nodded. "Last I heard was from the free folk in the forest, Benjen was heading out past the Antler. He was asking about some nearby heart tree, I believe."

Mormont frowned. Sam nervously made notes. Past the Antler. That was rather far north, if Sam remembered his maps. Why was he going that far north?

"What did you do to him and his men?" Thorne demanded. He looked furious.

Sam stared at Thorne for a moment, mouth agape. As if Mance Rayder could have had anything to do with wights. Then Sam remembered that Ser Jaremy Rykker had been one of Thorne's friends - they had both served the Mad King until the sack of King's Landing, and had both been sent to the Wall together. And Ser Jaremy had died. No wonder.

"I never touched him," Mance spat. "We both know Benjen was far too good to fall to wildlings."

Thorne's lips twisted angrily. He looked more than ready to keep on questioning, but the Lord Commander cut him off. "Qhorin Halfhand," Mormont said firmly. "Led a party of four two moons ago. What happened?"

This time, Mance's savage smile turned sad. "Oh, I know about Qhorin. He was caught up the Skirling Pass."

Mormont's gaze turned dark. "You killed him."

"Well, not me." Mance's face twisted. "It was Rattleshirt's band that caught him. Mind, even the Lord of Bones would have brought Qhorin in alive - Qhorin was my friend, once - you know that, Mormont. I would have rather traded or ransomed him than killed him." Mance paused, glancing at the Lord Commander. "It was actually one of his own men that turned on him. Jon Snow killed the Halfhand."

Sam dropped his quill. Mormont's eyes flashed. "You lie."

"I do no such thing. Rattleshirt trapped Qhorin in a cave, and then Jon Snow turned on the man. That wolf of his tore Qhorin's leg open, while Jon took the Halfhand's head. I met Jon afterwards - the boy dropped his black cloak. He was with us at the Milkwater."

Mormont's face was stone. Thorne's eyes gleamed. Sam stared in horror. "No," Sam exclaimed. He knew he was supposed to stay quiet, but he couldn't. "He's lying. He's lying. Jon would never betray the Night's Watch, he wouldn't."

"Tarly, be quiet," Mormont snapped. From over the Lord Commander's shoulder, Thorne just looked at Sam, smirking sickly-sweet.

"But he's lying!" Sam shouted. "Jon isn't a turncloak, he's lying!"

"Lying," Mormont's raven echoed from the Lord Commander's shoulder. "Lying, lying."

"Like hell I am," Mance scoffed. "Last I saw, Jon stole a spearwife for himself and he was getting real comfortable - cute girl, red hair, hell of a fire in her too." Mance stared at Mormont with a smirk. It was a little victory for him that one of the crows had deserted the Watch. "What's the matter, Old Bear? Maybe your rangers just aren't as dedicated as you would like to believe."

"Where is Jon now?" Mormont growled. Sam could barely believe his ears. They were actually listening to the oathbreaker.

Mance Rayder shrugged. "Dead, most like. I don't think he escaped the Frostfangs."

Sam gaped at the former king, dropping his paper onto the ice. "He's lying," Sam shouted. "Jon would never betray the Watch, he's not dead - it's not - he can't be—!"

"Alliser, get rid of the boy," Mormont ordered.

Thorne grunted, grabbing Sam by the collar and dragging him out. For once, Thorne didn't say a word, but his eyes, gleaming with triumph, spoke volumes. Sam struggled weakly, even as Thorne pushed him roughly out of the cell.

"Get rid of the piggy," Thorne ordered to the guards, slamming the cell door shut behind him. The two guards grabbed Sam roughly, manhandling him as he shambled away.

Sam's head was in a daze. He wanted to go back and protest, he even squirmed against their grip. Why is the Lord Commander even listening to that man?

He was pushed out into the courtyard, stumbling over the stairs. One of the guards said something, but Sam didn't hear it.

Jon isn't dead. Jon couldn't be dead. He couldn't be a traitor and he couldn't be dead.

Sam didn't even know what he would do with himself without Jon. The thought of Jon lying in a ditch somewhere made his knees weak.

Mance Rayder is lying, Sam thought firmly. He is a liar and he is lying. That oathbreaker is just trying to spread discord in the Night's Watch with a petty little lie.

…Still, another part of Sam whispered treacherously. It is an awfully specific lie to tell…

Sam spent four hours standing in that courtyard, waiting for the Lord Commander to come out of the wormwalks. It was pitch black by the time he did, but Sam knew he wouldn't be able to sleep.

"My lord!" Sam called, as soon as the door opened again. Jeor Mormont's face was grim. Thorne was next to him, his eyes widening as soon as he saw Sam. "I'm sorry, my lord, I'm sorry for how I acted, but Jon is my friend and I couldn't let…"

His voice trailed off. Thorne had that look in his eye when he was ready to explode. Mormont raised a hand.

"Tarly," Mormont ordered. "Enough."

Sam gulped, and nodded.

Mormont's eyes flickered. "We spoke to the other prisoners, Tarly," he said after a brief pause. "They all said exactly the same thing. That Jon Snow came to the camp as Qhorin Halfhand's killer, looking to defect."

Sam blinked. "Then they're lying! They—"

"What, all of them?" Thorne sneered. "You think they all got together beforehand and fabricated the exact same lie to tell, in case they were captured? Why would they even bother?"

Sam couldn't answer that. They had questioned each prisoner separately. Even if Mance Rayder had made up the story for some reason, then how could the others know the same story?

Sam looked up at Mormont pleadingly. The Old Bear's face was hard, but he still looked disturbed. Mormont had been grooming Jon for command one day, everyone knew it.

"Face it, piggy," Thorne continued. "Lord Snow was a weak, spineless, spoiled little bastard. His first time ranging, things got difficult. And what does he do? He takes the coward's way out and killed a good ranger just so he could turn tail and defect." Thorne smirked triumphantly. "I knew it from the first time I saw him. He was an arrogant puffed up little snot from the beginning."

"Bastards are treacherous by nature," Janos agreed. "And treason runs in his blood. Even his lord father was a traitor and liar of the highest order, and clearly his bastard child was no better."

Mormont looked fit to be fuming. Mormont entrusted Jon with his family's sword, Sam pleaded quietly. Mormont couldn't give up on Jon now…

"If he should return, he will be given a fair trial. We will listen to his side of events and we will make judgement accordingly," Mormont said in a growl. Thorne scoffed, not quite under his breath. The Lord Commander stared at Sam, his voice hard. "But send a raven to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. From now on, the Night's Watch has no choice but to consider Jon Snow a traitor and a deserter."

"B-but…" Sam stammered. "…but… you can't…"

"Tarly," Mormont said, his voice firm as steel. "Enough."

"Enough," the raven crowed. "Enough, enough."