The shelter flap lifted.
Cold air rolled in.
Vesper stepped out first, Cael following a pace behind.
Morning had come, though the sky barely looked any brighter.
A pale sheet of cloud smothered the sun, leaving the world washed in grey.
The camp lay in ruins.
Snow that had been white the night before was now streaked with frozen blood.
Spears lay snapped in half where they had fallen.
Shields were split open as if struck by axes far too large for any man to swing.
Arrows jutted from overturned sleds and broken carts, their fletching fluttering whenever the wind found them.
A cookfire had collapsed into a mound of black ash, and nearby an entire tent had burned down to nothing but charred poles leaning at crooked angles.
No bodies anywhere.
Only long grooves carved into the snow where something heavy had been dragged away, ending abruptly in a confusion of footprints.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Somewhere beneath the snow, ice groaned as it shifted.
A raven’s wings beat the air hundreds of feet away.
Closer, a heartbeat sounded from inside the next shelter.
“So this is what’s left,” Vesper said.
“Most of the survivors are hiding together.
This way.”
They walked between the wreckage.
Vesper stooped once, picking up the broken head of a spear, shattered as cleanly as if struck by a hammer, and turned it over before letting it fall back into the snow.
“White Walker did this?”
“Yes.”
They reached the largest shelter still standing, canvas patched with mismatched hides hung over the entrance, faint voices drifting from within.
Cael paused beside the flap.
“After last night, they are on their guard.”
Vesper snorted.
“I don’t care whether they trust me.”
“No,” Cael agreed.
“But I need them alive.”
He pushed the flap aside.
The Wildlings were waiting when Cael led Vesper inside.
Conversation stopped.
Five pairs of eyes settled on the black cloak, and no one smiled.
Vesper met every stare in turn.
The oldest stood nearest the fire, broad across the shoulders despite his years, an axe resting easily against one leg and a bow slung across his back.
His hands were thick with old scars, the kind earned shaping wood and iron rather than swinging swords.
Beside him stood the man whom Cael had healed, still wrapped in fresh bandages, watching Vesper like he expected trouble.
Vesper’s new senses found him before his eyes did, old blood, faint but unmistakable, still clinging beneath the fresh wrappings.
A woman stood with her arms folded, openly suspicious.
Another heartbeat came from the thin young man sitting apart from the others, slower than the rest, carrying the dry scent of raven feathers along with it.
A bird perched on his shoulder.
The youngest lingered behind them all, saying nothing.
So these are the people Cael kept talking about.
Vesper hadn’t put faces to the stories until now.
Smoke from the fire pooled against the low ceiling, thick enough to sting the eyes, and the wind found every gap in the hides overhead and worried at them.
The silence broke when Cael finally spoke.
“You all know me as the healer, but I never told you my name.” A faint smile touched his face.
“I’m Cael.
Cael Drake.” He rested a hand lightly against Vesper’s shoulder.
“And this is my companion, Vesper Stone.”
The broad craftsman spat into the ground.
“Crow.”
Silence.
Somewhere behind Cael’s shoulder, the fire cracked and settled, and for a heartbeat the shelter felt one careless movement away from bloodshed.
“He was a brother of the Night’s Watch,” Cael said.
Several faces hardened.
“He saved my life.
And if any of you are wounded again, he’ll help you the same way I have.”
No one answered.
His attention moved to the woman.
“And you?”
She rested a hand on the shoulder of the boy beside her.
“I’m Nessa.” She nudged him gently.
“My younger brother.
Wick.”
The boy gave a shy nod before looking back at the floor.
Next was the broad craftsman.
“I’m Stigg.” He jerked a thumb toward the bow slung across his back.
“Craftsman, when there’s work for one.
Hunter, when there isn’t.”
The wounded warrior dipped his head before Cael could even ask.
“Hew.
I stood guard.” His hand unconsciously brushed the fresh bandages.
“Didn’t do a very good job of it.
I owe him my life,” he added, jerking his chin toward Cael, “doesn’t mean I owe his friends anything.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” Vesper replied.
Hew’s eyes narrowed.
A dry chuckle escaped Stigg.
“Got teeth on this one.”
Only Rolf and his raven remained, the young skinchanger sitting apart from the others.
Rolf shifted uneasily, one hand resting against the bird on his shoulder.
“My name….
my name is Rolf.
I am a..
skinchnager.”
“I have spoken with them,” Cael said.
“They will be nice to you now.
So don’t be so nervous.”
Vesper frowned.
“Skinchanger?”
“A man who can wear an animal’s skin,” Stigg said before Rolf could answer.
“Ravens, mostly.
Hawks and wolves too, in the old stories, but it’s mostly birds these days, not that I’ve ever asked why.”
His eyes returned to Vesper.
“Still.
If I were you, I wouldn’t let my guard down around him.”
Vesper studied the raven a moment longer than he needed to.
Not with suspicion, exactly.
More like a man trying to work out how something so small could be dangerous at all.
It was the first thing in the shelter that had made him curious rather than wary.
Rolf’s pale eyes lingered on him a long moment.
The raven on his shoulder shifted, feathers puffing out, one clawed foot stepping sideways along Rolf’s collar as if it meant to put more distance between itself and the black cloak.
“It doesn’t like you,” Rolf said, frowning at the bird.
The raven never took its eyes off Vesper.
“If he gives us trouble,” Hew said, “I’ll not hesitate in putting my spear through his heart.”
“You can try,” Vesper said, before Cael could answer.
Cael’s gaze swept the circle, Vesper first, then the Wildlings.
“None of us have to like each other.
But if we keep wasting time deciding who we hate more, the White Walker will make the choice for us.”
Nobody argued.
Not because they agreed, but because they knew he was right.
Vesper noticed it before anyone said a word about it.
Wick never quite looked at him straight on, his eyes sliding away and finding the ground every time Vesper’s gaze passed near him.
Nessa had shifted her spear an inch closer to hand and hadn’t shifted it back.
Hew had angled himself so his good shoulder stayed toward Vesper at all times, the kind of positioning a man only bothered with around someone he expected to have to fight.
Even the raven on Rolf’s shoulder hadn’t looked away from him once, small black eyes tracking him the way a hawk tracked something it hadn’t decided was prey yet.
He recognized the look immediately.
It wasn’t aimed at him.
Any brother who’d walked in wearing that cloak would have earned the same stares, the same hands drifting toward weapons.
Wildlings didn’t need to know a man’s name to hate what he wore.
Years of raids, years of Watch arrows loosed at anything crossing the Wall without leave.
That kind of hatred didn’t need an introduction.
He’d worn the black himself long enough to know exactly what it meant to the people on this side of it.
No one looked pleased to be standing beneath the same roof.
This wasn’t strangers becoming friends.
It was people measuring distances, counting weapons, deciding who they’d have to put down first if everything fell apart.
Cael let it last only a heartbeat.
They didn’t have time for pride.
“We don’t have much time.
The White Walker is coming here.
It’s tracking me.”
Hew frowned.
“So if we don’t go with you, it’ll leave the rest of us be?”
“I’m not sure about that,” Cael said.
“It attacked your camp last night, didn’t it?
We have a higher chance of survival if we work together.”
Hew nodded in agreement.
“First things first.” Cael looked around the shelter.
“We need every weapon that wasn’t broken last night.
Food.
Waterskins.
Blankets if they’re still dry.
“Easy enough,” Stigg grunted.
“And one more thing.” His eyes moved from face to face.
“Black stone.
It cuts like glass.
Dark as night.
Sharp enough to shave with.”
Hew’s brow creased.
“Black glass, you mean?
I’ve seen arrowheads made from it.”
“Some call it that.”
“Never heard it called anything else,” Hew said.
“Not much use for it beyond arrowheads, where I’ve seen it.”
“It’s called dragonglass, where I’ve heard it.”
Something tugged at the edge of memory the moment the word left his mouth.
A name, a place, gone again before he could close his hand around it.
That earned him a few puzzled looks.
Stigg scratched his beard.
“Never heard that name either.”
Hew frowned.
“Why do you care about black glass?
Never known a man to go chasing arrowhead stone in the middle of all this.”
“Because if what I heard was true,” Cael said, “it can kill the Others.”
That quieted the shelter more than the mention of dragonglass had.
“How do you know that?” Hew’s eyes narrowed.
“My father traded farther east than most men ever dream of,” Cael said, unhurried.
“Merchants hear stories.
Most are nonsense.
Some aren’t.”
Hew considered him a long moment, then let it go with a shrug that wasn’t quite trust but wasn’t suspicion either.
“Do any of you have any?” Cael asked.
“Even a broken arrowhead would do.”
“Lost mine years back,” Hew said.
“Never bothered finding more.”
Stigg only shook his head.
Nobody in the shelter had so much as a shard to show for it.
The conversation ended without answers.
A name for the stone wasn’t the same as knowing where to find it, and all of them knew it.
But standing still wasn’t going to change that fact, and it certainly wasn’t going to slow whatever was still marching toward them from the east.
If they meant to stay ahead of it, they needed supplies first.
The shelter emptied a few minutes later.
Cold air rushed in as everyone scattered through what remained of the camp.
The snow was churned black and red where men had fought.
Half-buried shields leaned against collapsed tents.
Spears lay snapped in two beneath frozen ash.
Here and there, blood had frozen into dark glass across the snow.
Nobody spoke much.
They all knew what they were looking for.
Anything still worth carrying.
Stigg caught Cael’s arm before he could leave and held out a pair of rough boots.
“I finished them.
Took longer than I meant to.
The hide kept catching wrong on the awl.”
The leather was dark, thick, and stitched with surprising care, fur lining the inside while strips of tough elk hide reinforced the sole and wrapped around the ankle.
“The elk hide Nessa brought,” Stigg said.
“They’ll keep your feet dry, anyway.
Better than those things you’ve been wearing.”
Cael smiled.
“Thank you.”
Stigg only grunted.
“You’ll thank me more if they don’t fall apart.”
Cael sat on a broken log, pulled off his ruined boots, and slipped on the new pair.
They were warm and comfortable, fitting almost perfectly.
He hadn’t realized how much his feet had been hurting until they stopped.
“I owe you.”
“No, I owe you.” Stigg said.
“for saving my leg”
“Search everything.” Cael looked around at the group.
“Weapons first, food second.
If you find usable spears, axes, hammers, knives, bring them back.”
“Furs too?” Hew asked.
“Some.
But don’t overload yourselves.
We’re travelling, not building another camp.”
Everyone spread out.
Only Rolf remained, the skinchanger standing beside the shelter with one black raven perched quietly on his shoulder, still hollow-eyed from a night spent barely sleeping.
Cael walked over, a strip of dried rabbit and a waterskin in hand.
“Eat first.”
Rolf took both without arguing, tearing off a piece of the meat and chewing slowly, like his jaw had forgotten the motion.
Cael waited until he’d swallowed twice before speaking again.
“I need a favor.”
“What?”
“I need to know where the White Walker is.”
Rolf’s expression tightened immediately.
“You want me to follow it?”
“From the air.
No fighting.
No getting close.
Just find it.”
Rolf looked toward the dark forest, then down at the half-eaten strip of meat in his hand.
“I can try.
But I can’t stay in the bird for long.
Not after last night.
The farther I go, the harder it is to hold on.”
“Do what you can.
Nothing more.
If it starts to slip, come back.”
Rolf managed a thin, tired smile.
“If it sees my bird…”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” Cael admitted.
“I don’t.”
Rolf sighed, tucking the last of the meat into his coat for later.
“I’ll try.”
He lifted the raven from his shoulder.
It spread its wings, and a heartbeat later it disappeared into the grey sky.
Rolf’s eyes rolled upward, then went unfocused, his body left standing empty, watching nothing.
Cael had seen it on a screen but in seeing it in reality it looked creepy like a corps was standing in front of him.
It still looked unnatural.
He left him there and began searching the camp himself.
More than one Wildling walked a wide arc around Rolf on their way past, careful not to touch a man whose spirit wasn’t entirely inside his own skin.
The ruined camp slowly gave up what little it had left.
Hew pried an axe loose from beneath a collapsed cart, testing its edge against his thumb before grunting in approval.
Nessa knelt beside a ruined tent, cutting long strips of usable leather away from the wreckage with quick, practiced strokes.
Wick crawled beneath a pair of broken sleds, chasing down anything the fighting had scattered and overlooked, emerging every few minutes with something small clutched triumphantly in his fist.
A whetstone, a coil of sinew, once a single unbroken arrow.
Stigg tested every weapon he found before deciding whether it was worth the weight of carrying, muttering under his breath about poor balance and cheap iron, tossing aside more than he kept.
Cael moved between them, saying little, only nodding when something worth keeping got added to the growing pile back at the shelter.
Nearly an hour later they gathered again inside, wind still worrying at the hides overhead, and one by one emptied what they’d found onto the floor.
“Edge needs work,” Hew said, laying down a heavy woodcutter’s axe.
“But it’ll split more than wood.”
Stigg leaned a long spear against the wall, the shaft scratched but the point still straight.
Nessa dropped a blacksmith’s hammer beside it.
“Not pretty.
But it’ll crush a skull.”
They’d found wool cloaks, leather gloves, two fur-lined blankets, a coil of rope, several cooking pots, a sack of dried beans and three smoked rabbits.
Then Vesper rolled a small barrel across the floor.
It came to rest against the spear.
“Ale.
Buried under a collapsed wagon.
The wreckage shielded it from the fighting.”
Several Wildlings stared.
Hew blinked.
“You carried that all the way here?”
Vesper shrugged.
“It’ll keep.”
A grin tugged at one corner of Hew’s mouth.
“Priorities.”
For the first time since meeting him, one or two of the Wildlings looked almost amused.
Not friendly, but less hostile than before.
Even Vesper’s mouth came close to a smile before he caught himself.
Then footsteps sounded outside.
“They’re still coming.
Slow, but they haven’t changed direction.” He swallowed, leaning a hand briefly against the doorframe.
“They’re following our trail.
The bird barely made it back before I lost it.
I won’t be able to go that far again anytime soon.”
No one moved to finish packing for a moment.
“Then we don’t have much time,” Cael said.
Another half hour passed while they finished sorting through what they’d found, packing what they could carry and leaving the rest behind.
Rolf sat apart from the others near the shelter wall, still working the last of the strain out of his eyes, saying little.
There was nothing left worth searching for.
Weapons had been divided.
Food packed away.
Cloaks bundled tight against the cold.
For the first time since the White Walker had appeared, no one was speaking.
Only the wind outside, hissing through the broken tents, carrying ash across the snow in thin gray streaks.
The camp had given up everything it had left to give.
Weapons, food, warm clothing, whatever scraps of use could be pulled from the wreckage of the night before.
Everything except the one thing they actually needed.
That was when Cael finally had room to chase down the memory that had only sparked and vanished the moment he’d first said the word dragonglass aloud.
He rubbed his temples.
Black stone.
Come on.
Where.
Somewhere, years from now, in a story he’d once watched from a couch on a different world entirely, Sam had found dragonglass.
Somewhere near the Fist of the First Men.
He couldn’t even be certain it was the Fist itself, only that the cache had been hidden somewhere in that area, buried long before the Night’s Watch ever found it.
It bothered him, how much of that world had already worn thin in his memory, reduced to fragments he had to chase down like a half-heard name at the edge of sleep.
He used to be able to recite whole scenes.
Now he was gambling three days of walking on a feeling that pointed, at best, somewhere in the right direction.
If they could reach it, there might be dragonglass there.
Enough, maybe, to matter.
“Hew.”
Hew turned.
“You’ve been beyond the Wall longer than anyone here.
Do you know the Fist of the First Men?”
A few of the Wildlings exchanged glances.
“I know it.
It’s west of here.”
“How far?”
“Depends who’s walking.” He studied the group.
“With everyone?
Three days, maybe four.”
Longer than he’d hoped.
Still, it was the only lead he had.
“Then that’s where we’re going.”
Hew’s brow furrowed.
“Why the Fist?
A moment ago you didn’t know where to look at all.”
Vesper’s eyes settled on Cael too, waiting.
Cael chose his words with more care than he let show.
“I don’t know for certain.
A few years ago, I overheard traders speaking with a few black brothers.
One claimed there was black glass somewhere near the Fist.
It may only be a rumor.” He shrugged, letting the uncertainty sit plainly on his face.
“It’s the only rumor I have.”
Please let my memory be right.
Hew’s mouth twisted like he’d bitten into something sour.
“Black brothers tell plenty of stories.
Funny thing to remember, out of all of them.”
Cael held his gaze and said nothing more.
Hew let out a slow breath.
“Hope your rumor’s worth three days of walking.”
But he didn’t argue further.
Out here, a rumor was still more than nothing.
Rolf stirred, blinking hard as the last of the fog cleared from behind his eyes.
“I found them.
The White Walker.”
Every head turned toward him.
“Half a day’s walk east.
The army stopped where the attack happened.
They’re moving again now.”
Good.
That meant the White Walker had already left the camp where Vesper dropped the knife behind.
“You can get your knife now,” Cael said.
“The camp’s behind them.
They’ve moved on.” He gestured toward the pile of recovered weapons.
“Take something until you find it.”
Vesper crossed the shelter without hesitation, his eyes passing over the spear, the axe, the knives, until he stopped beside the blacksmith’s hammer.
It was heavy enough that most men would have preferred both hands.
He lifted it one-handed, the weight feeling almost laughably light in his new grip, as though the iron had forgotten how to be heavy at all.
“It’ll do.
Until I get my knife back.”
He tucked it through his belt.
As he reached the entrance, Cael called after him.
“I don’t like splitting you off from us, but we’re slower with everyone together, and you’re not.” He held Vesper’s eyes a moment.
“After you find your knife, don’t come back here.
Go straight to the Fist of the First Men.
And if anything feels wrong, the knife, the trail, any of it, forget it.
Come straight to the Fist instead.
It’s not worth your life.”
Vesper weighed it only a moment.
The Wildlings would slow him.
Cael was right, whatever else he was.
Something unreadable crossed Vesper’s face before he gave a short nod.
“And you?”
“We’re taking everyone there.
You’ll get there long before we do.”
“I’ll wait.”
He disappeared into the snow at an unhurried pace, and none of the Wildlings paid him much attention after he vanished between the trees.
Once the ruined camp was well behind him, hidden by pine and falling snow, Vesper stopped.
There was no reason to pretend anymore.
He leaned forward.
And the world blurred.
Snow exploded beneath his boots.
The forest became streaks of white and black.
Branches whipped past faster than any horse could gallop, the cold wind screaming against his face.
For the first time in his life, running felt effortless.
Within seconds, he had vanished into the wilderness.
Back at the shelter, Stigg glanced toward the trees where Vesper had gone, shaking his head slowly.
“Quiet one,” he said.
“Didn’t say ten words all morning.”
“He’s not like the rest of us,” Cael answered, and left it there.
Everyone turned back to their own packs, tightening straps, settling the weight of what they’d chosen to carry.
There wasn’t anything left tying them to the ruined camp.
“Time to move,” Cael said, tightening the straps on his own pack.
The Wildlings shouldered their supplies.
Stigg carried the heavier tools.
Hew took point without needing to be asked.
Rolf walked near the center, his face still pale from the strain of seeing through the raven’s eyes.
Together, they left the ruins behind.
No one looked back at first.
Then, one by one, they did anyway.
Nessa last of all, her eyes lingering on the narrow crack in the rock where she’d hidden with her brother through the worst of the night before.
Wick’s hand found hers without either of them deciding it should, and neither let go.
The ruined camp shrank behind them, swallowed by trees and drifting smoke, until it disappeared completely into snow that had begun falling again, fine and steady, already smoothing over the drag marks and the black scars of dead fires.
Cael felt it settle over him somewhere in the first mile of silence, the particular weight of people who had started following him without ever quite deciding to.
He hadn’t asked for it.
He wasn’t sure he’d earned it, not with a rumor and a half-remembered story from a life none of them could ever know about.
But there they were, falling into step at his back all the same.
They weren’t Wildlings anymore, not in the way the word usually meant.
People with a camp, a home, ground they called their own beyond the Wall.
They were a people driven from their fires, walking west toward a story Cael only half remembered, carrying everything they owned on their backs and nothing behind them worth turning back for.
Their path turned west, toward the Fist of the First Men, and whatever waited for them there.
Far to the east, the Night King stopped.
The wind that had been driving snow sideways through the pines for hours died all at once, leaving a silence so total that even the wights around him seemed to hold whatever passed for breath in bodies that no longer needed it.
The endless cold chorus inside his mind shifted.
The single foreign presence had become two.
Separate, but connected.
Two flames burning from the same spark, one newly lit and still unsteady, learning its own shape.
The White Walker hunting the first presence felt it in the same instant, the awareness passing between them through whatever silent thread bound every one of the Others together across the miles of dark and snow.
The Night King turned his gaze south-west, toward a boy who should not exist and the new light now burning beside him.