A Dance with Dragons asoiaf-5

by George R. R. Martin

  “It is those duties I would speak of.” She made her way down, the hem of her scarlet skirts swishing over the steps. It almost seemed as if she floated. “Where is your direwolf?”

  “Asleep in my chambers. Her Grace does not allow Ghost in her presence. She claims he scares the princess. And so long as Borroq and his boar are about, I dare not let him loose.” The skinchanger was to accompany Soren Shieldbreaker to Stonedoor once the wayns carrying the Sealskinner’s clan to Greenguard returned. Until such time, Borroq had taken up residence in one of the ancient tombs beside the castle lichyard. The company of men long dead seemed to suit him better than that of the living, and his boar seemed happy rooting amongst the graves, well away from other animals. “That thing is the size of a bull, with tusks as long as swords. Ghost would go after him if he were loose, and one or both of them would not survive the meeting.”

  “Borroq is the least of your concerns. This ranging…”

  “A word from you might have swayed the queen.”

  “Selyse has the right of this, Lord Snow. Let them die. You cannot save them. Your ships are lost—”

  “Six remain. More than half the fleet.”

  “Your ships are lost. All of them. Not a man shall return. I have seen that in my fires.”

  “Your fires have been known to lie.”

  “I have made mistakes, I have admitted as much, but—”

  “A grey girl on a dying horse. Daggers in the dark. A promised prince, born in smoke and salt. It seems to me that you make nothing but mistakes, my lady. Where is Stannis? What of Rattleshirt and his spearwives? Where is my sister?”

  “All your questions shall be answered. Look to the skies, Lord Snow. And when you have your answers, send to me. Winter is almost upon us now. I am your only hope.”

  “A fool’s hope.” Jon turned and left her.

  Leathers was prowling the yard outside. “Toregg has returned,” he reported when Jon emerged. “His father’s settled his people at Oakenshield and will be back this afternoon with eighty fighting men. What did the bearded queen have to say?”

  “Her Grace can provide no help.”

  “Too busy plucking out her chin hairs, is she?” Leathers spat. “Makes no matter. Tormund’s men and ours will be enough.”

  Enough to get us there, perhaps. It was the journey back that concerned Jon Snow. Coming home, they would be slowed by thousands of free folk, many sick and starved. A river of humanity moving slower than a river of ice. That would leave them vulnerable. Dead things in the woods. Dead things in the water. “How many men are enough?” he asked Leathers. “A hundred? Two hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?” Should I take more men, or fewer? A smaller ranging would reach Hardhome sooner… but what good were swords without food? Mother Mole and her people were already at the point of eating their own dead. To feed them, he would need to bring carts and wagons, and draft animals to haul them—horses, oxen, dogs. Instead of flying through the wood, they would be condemned to crawl. “There is still much to decide. Spread the word. I want all the leading men in the Shieldhall when the evening watch begins. Tormund should be back by then. Where can I find Toregg?”

  “With the little monster, like as not. He’s taken a liking to one o’ them milkmaids, I hear.”

  He has taken a liking to Val. Her sister was a queen, why not her? Tormund had once thought to make himself the King-Beyond-the-Wall, before Mance had bested him. Toregg the Tall might well be dreaming the same dream. Better him than Gerrick Kingsblood. “Let them be,” said Jon. “I can speak with Toregg later.” He glanced up past the King’s Tower. The Wall was a dull white, the sky above it whiter. A snow sky. “Just pray we do not get another storm.”

  Outside the armory, Mully and the Flea stood shivering at guard. “Shouldn’t you be inside, out of this wind?” Jon asked.

  “That’d be sweet, m’lord,” said Fulk the Flea, “but your wolf’s in no mood for company today.”

  Mully agreed. “He tried to take a bite o’ me, he did.”

  “Ghost?” Jon was shocked.

  “Unless your lordship has some other white wolf, aye. I never seen him like this, m’lord. All wild-like, I mean.”

  He was not wrong, as Jon discovered for himself when he slipped inside the doors. The big white direwolf would not lie still. He paced from one end of the armory to the other, past the cold forge and back again. “Easy, Ghost,” Jon called. “Down. Sit, Ghost. Down.” Yet when he made to touch him, the wolf bristled and bared his teeth. It’s that bloody boar. Even in here, Ghost can smell his stink.

  Mormont’s raven seemed agitated too. “Snow,” the bird kept screaming. “Snow, snow, snow.” Jon shooed him off, had Satin start a fire, then sent him out after Bowen Marsh and Othell Yarwyck. “Bring a flagon of mulled wine as well.”

  “Three cups, m’lord?”

  “Six. Mully and the Flea look in need of something warm. So will you.”

  When Satin left, Jon seated himself and had another look at the maps of the lands north of the Wall. The fastest way to Hardhome was along the coast… from Eastwatch. The woods were thinner near the sea, the terrain mostly flatlands, rolling hills, and salt marshes. And when the autumn storms came howling, the coast got sleet and hail and freezing rain rather than snow. The giants are at Eastwatch, and Leathers says that some will help. From Castle Black the way was more difficult, right through the heart of the haunted forest. If the snow is this deep at the Wall, how much worse up there?

  Marsh entered snuffling, Yarwyck dour. “Another storm,” the First Builder announced. “How are we to work in this? I need more builders.”

  “Use the free folk,” Jon said.

  Yarwyck shook his head. “More trouble than they’re worth, that lot. Sloppy, careless, lazy… some good woodworkers here and there, I’ll not deny it, but hardly a mason amongst them, and nary a smith. Strong backs, might be, but they won’t do as they are told. And us with all these ruins to turn back into forts. Can’t be done, my lord. I tell you true. It can’t be done.”

  “It will be done,” said Jon, “or they will live in ruins.”

  A lord needed men about him he could rely upon for honest counsel. Marsh and Yarwyck were no lickspittles, and that was to the good… but they were seldom any help either. More and more, he found he knew what they would say before he asked them.

  Especially when it concerned the free folk, where their disapproval went bone deep. When Jon settled Stonedoor on Soren Shieldbreaker, Yarwyck complained that it was too isolated. How could they know what mischief Soren might get up to, off in those hills? When he conferred Oakenshield on Tormund Giantsbane and Queensgate on Morna White Mask, Marsh pointed out that Castle Black would now have foes on either side who could easily cut them off from the rest of the Wall. As for Borroq, Othell Yarwyck claimed the woods north of Stonedoor were full of wild boars. Who was to say the skinchanger would not make his own pig army?

  Hoarfrost Hill and Rimegate still lacked garrisons, so Jon had asked their views on which of the remaining wildling chiefs and war lords might be best suited to hold them. “We have Brogg, Gavin the Trader, the Great Walrus… Howd Wanderer walks alone, Tormund says, but there’s still Harle the Huntsman, Harle the Handsome, Blind Doss… Ygon Oldfather commands a following, but most are his owns sons and grandsons. He has eighteen wives, half of them stolen on raids. Which of these…”

  “None,” Bowen Marsh had said. “I know all these men by their deeds. We should be fitting them for nooses, not giving them our castles.”

  “Aye,” Othell Yarwyck had agreed. “Bad and worse and worst makes a beggar’s choice. My lord had as well present us with a pack of wolves and ask which we’d like to tear our throats out.”

  It was the same again with Hardhome. Satin poured whilst Jon told them of his audience with the queen. Marsh listened attentively, ignoring the mulled wine, whilst Yarwyck drank one cup and then another. But no sooner had Jon finished than the Lord Steward said, “Her Grace is wise. Let them die.”


  Jon sat back. “Is that the only counsel you can offer, my lord? Tormund is bringing eighty men. How many should we send? Shall we call upon the giants? The spearwives at Long Barrow? If we have women with us, it may put Mother Mole’s people at ease.”

  “Send women, then. Send giants. Send suckling babes. Is that what my lord wishes to hear?” Bowen Marsh rubbed at the scar he had won at the Bridge of Skulls. “Send them all. The more we lose, the fewer mouths we’ll have to feed.”

  Yarwyck was no more helpful. “If the wildlings at Hardhome need saving, let the wildlings here go save them. Tormund knows the way to Hardhome. To hear him talk, he can save them all himself with his huge member.”

  This was pointless, Jon thought. Pointless, fruitless, hopeless. “Thank you for your counsel, my lords.”

  Satin helped them back into their cloaks. As they walked through the armory, Ghost sniffed at them, his tail upraised and bristling. My brothers. The Night’s Watch needed leaders with the wisdom of Maester Aemon, the learning of Samwell Tarly, the courage of Qhorin Halfhand, the stubborn strength of the Old Bear, the compassion of Donal Noye. What it had instead was them.

  The snow was falling heavily outside. “Wind’s from the south,” Yarwyck observed. “It’s blowing the snow right up against the Wall. See?”

  He was right. The switchback stair was buried almost to the first landing, Jon saw, and the wooden doors of the ice cells and storerooms had vanished behind a wall of white. “How many men do we have in ice cells?” he asked Bowen Marsh.

  “Four living men. Two dead ones.”

  The corpses. Jon had almost forgotten them. He had hoped to learn something from the bodies they’d brought back from the weirwood grove, but the dead men had stubbornly remained dead. “We need to dig those cells out.”

  “Ten stewards and ten spades should do it,” said Marsh.

  “Use Wun Wun too.”

  “As you command.”

  Ten stewards and one giant made short work of the drifts, but even when the doors were clear again, Jon was not satisfied. “Those cells will be buried again by morning. We’d best move the prisoners before they smother.”

  “Karstark too, m’lord?” asked Fulk the Flea. “Can’t we just leave that one shivering till spring?”

  “Would that we could.” Cregan Karstark had taken to howling in the night of late, and throwing frozen feces at whoever came to feed him. That had not made him beloved of his guards. “Take him to the Lord Commander’s Tower. The undervault should hold him.” Though partly collapsed, the Old Bear’s former seat would be warmer than the ice cells. Its subcellars were largely intact.

  Cregan kicked at the guards when they came through the door, twisted and shoved when they grabbed him, even tried to bite them. But the cold had weakened him, and Jon’s men were bigger, younger, and stronger. They hauled him out, still struggling, and dragged him through thigh-high snow to his new home.

  “What would the lord commander like us to do with his corpses?” asked Marsh when the living men had been moved.

  “Leave them.” If the storm entombed them, well and good. He would need to burn them eventually, no doubt, but for the nonce they were bound with iron chains inside their cells. That, and being dead, should suffice to hold them harmless.

  Tormund Giantsbane timed his arrival perfectly, thundering up with his warriors when all the shoveling was done. Only fifty seemed to have turned up, not the eighty Toregg promised Leathers, but Tormund was not called Tall-Talker for naught. The wildling arrived red-faced, shouting for a horn of ale and something hot to eat. He had ice in his beard and more crusting his mustache.

  Someone had already told the Thunderfist about Gerrick Kingsblood and his new style. “King o’ the Wildlings?” Tormund roared. “Har! King o’ My Hairy Butt Crack, more like.”

  “He has a regal look to him,” Jon said.

  “He has a little red cock to go with all that red hair, that’s what he has. Raymund Redbeard and his sons died at Long Lake, thanks to your bloody Starks and the Drunken Giant. Not the little brother. Ever wonder why they called him the Red Raven?” Tormund’s mouth split in a gap-toothed grin. “First to fly the battle, he was. ’Twas a song about it, after. The singer had to find a rhyme for craven, so…” He wiped his nose. “If your queen’s knights want those girls o’ his, they’re welcome to them.”

  “Girls,” squawked Mormont’s raven. “Girls, girls.”

  That set Tormund to laughing all over again. “Now there’s a bird with sense. How much do you want for him, Snow? I gave you a son, the least you could do is give me the bloody bird.”

  “I would,” said Jon, “but like as not you’d eat him.”

  Tormund roared at that as well. “Eat,” the raven said darkly, flapping its black wings. “Corn? Corn? Corn?”

  “We need to talk about the ranging,” said Jon. “I want us to be of one mind at the Shieldhall, we must—” He broke off when Mully poked his nose inside the door, grim-faced, to announce that Clydas had brought a letter.

  “Tell him to leave it with you. I will read it later.”

  “As you say, m’lord, only… Clydas don’t look his proper self… he’s more white than pink, if you get my meaning… and he’s shaking.”

  “Dark wings, dark words,” muttered Tormund. “Isn’t that what you kneelers say?”

  “We say, Bleed a cold but feast a fever too,” Jon told him. “We say, Never drink with Dornishmen when the moon is full. We say a lot of things.”

  Mully added his two groats. “My old grandmother always used to say, Summer friends will melt away like summer snows, but winter friends are friends forever.”

  “I think that’s sufficient wisdom for the moment,” said Jon Snow. “Show Clydas in if you would be so good.”

  Mully had not been wrong; the old steward was trembling, his face as pale as the snows outside. “I am being foolish, Lord Commander, but… this letter frightens me. See here?”

  Bastard, was the only word written outside the scroll. No Lord Snow or Jon Snow or Lord Commander. Simply Bastard. And the letter was sealed with a smear of hard pink wax. “You were right to come at once,” Jon said. You were right to be afraid. He cracked the seal, flattened the parchment, and read.

  Your false king is dead, bastard. He and all his host were smashed in seven days of battle. I have his magic sword. Tell his red whore.

  Your false king’s friends are dead. Their heads upon the walls of Winterfell. Come see them, bastard. Your false king lied, and so did you. You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me.

  I will have my bride back. If you want Mance Rayder back, come and get him. I have him in a cage for all the north to see, proof of your lies. The cage is cold, but I have made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell.

  I want my bride back. I want the false king’s queen. I want his daughter and his red witch. I want his wildling princess.

  I want his little prince, the wildling babe. And I want my Reek. Send them to me, bastard, and I will not trouble you or your black crows. Keep them from me, and I will cut out your bastard’s heart and eat it.

  It was signed,

  Ramsay Bolton,

  Trueborn Lord of Winterfell.

  “Snow?” said Tormund Giantsbane. “You look like your father’s bloody head just rolled out o’ that paper.”

  Jon Snow did not answer at once. “Mully, help Clydas back to his chambers. The night is dark, and the paths will be slippery with snow. Satin, go with them.” He handed Tormund Giantsbane the letter. “Here, see for yourself.”

  The wildling gave the letter a dubious look and handed it right back. “Feels nasty… but Tormund Thunderfist had better things to do than learn to make papers talk at him. They never have any good to say, now do they?”

  “Not often,” Jon Snow admitted. Dark wings, dark words. Perhaps there was more truth to those wise old sayings
than he’d known. “It was sent by Ramsay Snow. I’ll read you what he wrote.”

  When he was done, Tormund whistled. “Har. That’s buggered, and no mistake. What was that about Mance? Has him in a cage, does he? How, when hundreds saw your red witch burn the man?”

  That was Rattleshirt, Jon almost said. That was sorcery. A glamor, she called it. “Melisandre… look to the skies, she said.” He set the letter down. “A raven in a storm. She saw this coming.” When you have your answers, send to me.

  “Might be all a skin o’ lies.” Tormund scratched under his beard. “If I had me a nice goose quill and a pot o’ maester’s ink, I could write down that me member was long and thick as me arm, wouldn’t make it so.”

  “He has Lightbringer. He talks of heads upon the walls of Winterfell. He knows about the spearwives and their number.” He knows about Mance Rayder. “No. There is truth in there.”

  “I won’t say you’re wrong. What do you mean to do, crow?”

  Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night’s Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell… I want my bride back… I want my bride back… I want my bride back…

  “I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said.

  They talked for the best part of two hours.

  Horse and Rory had replaced Fulk and Mully at the armory door with the change of watch. “With me,” Jon told them, when the time came. Ghost would have followed as well, but as the wolf came padding after them, Jon grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and wrestled him back inside. Borroq might be amongst those gathering at the Shieldhall. The last thing he needed just now was his wolf savaging the skinchanger’s boar.