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I hope Summer isn’t scared too, Bran thought. The dogs in Winterfell’s kennels had always been spooked by thunderstorms, just like Hodor. I should go see, to calm him . . .
The lightning flashed again, and this time the thunder came at six. “Hodor!” Hodor yelled again. “HODOR! HODOR!” He snatched up his sword, as if to fight the storm.
Jojen said, “Be quiet, Hodor. Bran, tell him not to shout. Can you get the sword away from him, Meera?”
“I can try.”
“Hodor, hush,” said Bran. “Be quiet now. No more stupid hodoring. Sit down.”
“Hodor?” He gave the longsword to Meera meekly enough, but his face was a mask of confusion.
Jojen turned back to the darkness, and they all heard him suck in his breath. “What is it?” Meera asked.
“Men in the village.”
“The man we saw before?”
“Other men. Armed. I saw an axe, and spears as well.” Jojen had never sounded so much like the boy he was. “I saw them when the lightning flashed, moving under the trees.”
“How many?”
“Many and more. Too many to count.”
“Mounted?”
“No.”
“Hodor.” Hodor sounded frightened. “Hodor. Hodor.”
Bran felt a little scared himself, though he didn’t want to say so in front of Meera. “What if they come out here?”
“They won’t.” She sat down beside him. “Why should they?”
“For shelter.” Jojen’s voice was grim. “Unless the storm lets up. Meera, could you go down and bar the door?”
“I couldn’t even close it. The wood’s too warped. They won’t get past those iron gates, though.”
“They might. They could break the lock, or the hinges. Or climb up through the murder hole as we did.”
Lightning slashed the sky, and Hodor whimpered. Then a clap of thunder rolled across the lake. “HODOR!” he roared, clapping his hands over his ears and stumbling in a circle through the darkness. “HODOR! HODOR! HODOR!”
“NO!” Bran shouted back. “NO HODORING!”
It did no good. “HOOOODOR!” moaned Hodor. Meera tried to catch him and calm him, but he was too strong. He flung her aside with no more than a shrug. “HOOOOOODOOOOOOOR!” the stableboy screamed as lightning filled the sky again, and even Jojen was shouting now, shouting at Bran and Meera to shut him up.
“Be quiet!” Bran said in a shrill scared voice, reaching up uselessly for Hodor’s leg as he crashed past, reaching, reaching.
Hodor staggered, and closed his mouth. He shook his head slowly from side to side, sank back to the floor, and sat crosslegged. When the thunder boomed, he scarcely seemed to hear it. The four of them sat in the dark tower, scarce daring to breathe.
“Bran, what did you do?” Meera whispered.
“Nothing.” Bran shook his head. “I don’t know.” But he did. I reached for him, the way I reach for Summer. He had been Hodor for half a heartbeat. It scared him.
“Something is happening across the lake,” said Jojen. “I thought I saw a man pointing at the tower.”
I won’t be afraid. He was the Prince of Winterfell, Eddard Stark’s son, almost a man grown and a warg too, not some little baby boy like Rickon. Summer would not be afraid. “Most like they’re just some Umbers,” he said. “Or they could be Knotts or Norreys or Flints come down from the mountains, or even brothers from the Night’s Watch. Were they wearing black cloaks, Jojen?”
“By night all cloaks are black, Your Grace. And the flash came and went too fast for me to tell what they were wearing.”
Meera was wary. “If they were black brothers, they’d be mounted, wouldn’t they?”
Bran had thought of something else. “It doesn’t matter,” he said confidently. “They couldn’t get out to us even if they wanted. Not unless they had a boat, or knew about the causeway.”
“The causeway!” Meera mussed Bran’s hair and kissed him on the forehead. “Our sweet prince! He’s right, Jojen, they won’t know about the causeway. Even if they did they could never find the way across at night in the rain.”
“The night will end, though. If they stay till morning . . .” Jojen left the rest unsaid. After a few moments he said, “They are feeding the fire the first man started.” Lightning crashed through the sky, and light filled the tower and etched them all in shadow. Hodor rocked back and forth, humming.
Bran could feel Summer’s fear in that bright instant. He closed two eyes and opened a third, and his boy’s skin slipped off him like a cloak as he left the tower behind . . .
. . . and found himself out in the rain, his belly full of deer, cringing in the brush as the sky broke and boomed above him. The smell of rotten apples and wet leaves almost drowned the scent of man, but it was there. He heard the clink and slither of hardskin, saw men moving under the trees. A man with a stick blundered by, a skin pulled up over his head to make him blind and deaf. The wolf went wide around him, behind a dripping thornbush and beneath the bare branches of an apple tree. He could hear them talking, and there beneath the scents of rain and leaves and horse came the sharp red stench of fear . . .
JON
The ground was littered with pine needles and blown leaves, a carpet of green and brown still damp from the recent rains. It squished beneath their feet. Huge bare oaks, tall sentinels, and hosts of soldier pines stood all around them. On a hill above them was another roundtower, ancient and empty, thick green moss crawling up its side almost to the summit. “Who built that, all of stone like that?” Ygritte asked him. “Some king?”
“No. Just the men who used to live here.”
“What happened to them?”
“They died or went away.” Brandon’s Gift had been farmed for thousands of years, but as the Watch dwindled there were fewer hands to plow the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards, so the wild had reclaimed many a field and hall. In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers. But those were largely gone as well.
“They were fools to leave such a castle,” said Ygritte.
“It’s only a towerhouse. Some little lordling lived there once, with his family and a few sworn men. When raiders came he would light a beacon from the roof. Winterfell has towers three times the size of that.”
She looked as if she thought he was making that up. “How could men build so high, with no giants to lift the stones?”
In legend, Brandon the Builder had used giants to help raise Winterfell, but Jon did not want to confuse the issue. “Men can build a lot higher than this. In Oldtown there’s a tower taller than the Wall.” He could tell she did not believe him. If I could show her Winterfell . . . give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.
The dream was sweet . . . but Winterfell would never be his to show. It belonged to his brother, the King in the North. He was a Snow, not a Stark. Bastard, oathbreaker, and turncloak . . .
“Might be after we could come back here, and live in that tower,” she said. “Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?”
After. The word was a spear thrust. After the war. After the conquest. After the wildlings break the Wall . . .
His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. “It is a dream for spring, though,” Lord Eddard had said. “Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on.”
If winter had come and gone more quickly and spring had followed in its turn, I might have been chosen to hold one of these towers in my father’s name. Lord Eddard was dead, however, his brother Benjen lost; the shield they dreamt together would never be forged. “This land belongs to the Watch,” Jon said.
Her nostrils flared. “No one lives here.”
“Your raiders drove them off.”
“They were cowards, then. If they wanted the land they should have stayed and fought.”
“Maybe they were tired of fighting. Tired of barring their doors every night and wondering if Rattleshirt or someone like him would break them down to carry off their wives. Tired of having their harvests stolen, and any valuables they might have. It’s easier to move beyond the reach of raiders.” But if the Wall should fail, all the north will lie within the reach of raiders.
“You know nothing, Jon Snow. Daughters are taken, not wives. You’re the ones who steal. You took the whole world, and built the Wall t’ keep the free folk out.”
“Did we?” Sometimes Jon forgot how wild she was, and then she would remind him. “How did that happen?”
“The gods made the earth for all men t’ share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can’t eat them apples. My stream, you can’t fish here. My wood, you’re not t’ hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I’ll chop ’em off, but maybe if you kneel t’ me I’ll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t’ be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t’ kneel.”
“Harma and the Bag of Bones don’t come raiding for fish and apples. They steal swords and axes. Spices, silks, and furs. They grab every coin and ring and jeweled cup they can find, casks of wine in summer and casks of beef in winter, and they take women in any season and carry them off beyond the Wall.”
“And what if they do? I’d sooner be stolen by a strong man than be given t’ some weakling by my father.”
“You say that, but how can you know? What if you were stolen by someone you hated?”
“He’d have t’ be quick and cunning and brave t’ steal me. So his sons would be strong and smart as well. Why would I hate such a man as that?”
“Maybe he never washes, so he smells as rank as a bear.”
“Then I’d push him in a stream or throw a bucket o’ water on him. Anyhow, men shouldn’t smell sweet like flowers.”
“What’s wrong with flowers?”
“Nothing, for a bee. For bed I want one o’ these.” Ygritte made to grab the front of his breeches.
Jon caught her wrist. “What if the man who stole you drank too much?” he insisted. “What if he was brutal or cruel?” He tightened his grip to make a point. “What if he was stronger than you, and liked to beat you bloody?”
“I’d cut his throat while he slept. You know nothing, Jon Snow.” Ygritte twisted like an eel and wrenched away from him.
I know one thing. I know that you are wildling to the bone. It was easy to forget that sometimes, when they were laughing together, or kissing. But then one of them would say something, or do something, and he would suddenly be reminded of the wall between their worlds.
“A man can own a woman or a man can own a knife,” Ygritte told him, “but no man can own both. Every little girl learns that from her mother.” She raised her chin defiantly and gave her thick red hair a shake. “And men can’t own the land no more’n they can own the sea or the sky. You kneelers think you do, but Mance is going t’ show you different.”
It was a fine brave boast, but it rang hollow. Jon glanced back to make certain the Magnar was not in earshot. Errok, Big Boil, and Hempen Dan were walking a few yards behind them, but paying no attention. Big Boil was complaining of his arse. “Ygritte,” he said in a low voice, “Mance cannot win this war.”
“He can!” she insisted. “You know nothing, Jon Snow. You have never seen the free folk fight!”
Wildlings fought like heroes or demons, depending on who you talked to, but it came down to the same thing in the end. They fight with reckless courage, every man out for glory. “I don’t doubt that you’re all very brave, but when it comes to battle, discipline beats valor every time. In the end Mance will fail as all the Kings-beyond-the-Wall have failed before him. And when he does, you’ll die. All of you.”
Ygritte had looked so angry he thought she was about to strike him. “All of us,” she said. “You too. You’re no crow now, Jon Snow. I swore you weren’t, so you better not be.” She pushed him back against the trunk of a tree and kissed him, full on the lips right there in the midst of the ragged column. Jon heard Grigg the Goat urging her on. Someone else laughed. He kissed her back despite all that. When they finally broke apart, Ygritte was flushed. “You’re mine,” she whispered. “Mine, as I’m yours. And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we’ll live.”
“Yes.” His voice was thick. “First we’ll live.”
She grinned at that, showing Jon the crooked teeth that he had somehow come to love. Wildling to the bone, he thought again, with a sick sad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He flexed the fingers of his sword hand, and wondered what Ygritte would do if she knew his heart. Would she betray him if he sat her down and told her that he was still Ned Stark’s son and a man of the Night’s Watch? He hoped not, but he dare not take that risk. Too many lives depended on his somehow reaching Castle Black before the Magnar . . . assuming he found a chance to escape the wildlings.
They had descended the south face of the Wall at Greyguard, abandoned for two hundred years. A section of the huge stone steps had collapsed a century before, but even so the descent was a good deal easier than the climb. From there Styr marched them deep into the Gift, to avoid the Watch’s customary patrols. Grigg the Goat led them past the few inhabited villages that remained in these lands. Aside from a few scattered roundtowers poking the sky like stone fingers, they saw no sign of man. Through cold wet hills and windy plains they marched, unwatched, unseen.
You must not balk, whatever is asked of you, the Halfhand had said. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them, for as long as it takes. He’d ridden many leagues and walked for more, had shared their bread and salt, and Ygritte’s blankets as well, but still they did not trust him. Day and night the Thenns watched him, alert for any signs of betrayal. He could not get away, and soon it would be too late.
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