Part 51 (1/2)
”Send two hundred wolves against ten thousand sheep, ser, and see what happens,” said Smallwood confidently.
”There are goats among these sheep, Th.o.r.en,” warned Jarman Buckwell. ”Aye, and maybe a few lions. Rattles.h.i.+rt, Harma the Dogshead, Alfyn Crowkiller . . .”
”I know them as well as you do, Buckwell,” Th.o.r.en Smallwood snapped back. ”And I mean to have their heads, every one. These are wildlings. No soldiers. A few hundred heroes, drunk most like, amidst a great horde of women, children, and thralls. We will sweep over them and send them howling back to their hovels.”
They had argued for many hours, and reached no agreement. The Old Bear was too stubborn to retreat, but neither would he rush headlong up the Milkwater, seeking battle. In the end, nothing had been decided but to wait a few more days for the men from the Shadow Tower, and talk again if they did not appear.
And now they had, which meant that the decision could be delayed no longer. Jon was glad of that much, at least. If they must battle Mance Rayder, let it be soon.
He found Dolorous Edd at the fire, complaining about how difficult it was for him to sleep when people insisted on blowing horns in the woods. Jon gave him something new to complain about. Together they woke Hake, who received the Lord Commander's orders with a stream of curses, but got up all the same and soon had a dozen brothers cutting roots for a soup.
Sam came puffing up as Jon crossed the camp. Under the black hood his face was as pale and round as the moon. ”I heard the horn. Has your uncle come back?”
”It's only the men from the Shadow Tower.” It was growing harder to cling to the hope of Benjen Stark's safe return. The cloak he had found beneath the Fist could well have belonged to his uncle or one of his men, even the Old Bear admitted as much, though why they would have buried it there, wrapped around the cache of dragongla.s.s, no one could say. ”Sam, I have to go.”
At the ringwall, he found the guards sliding spikes from the half-frozen earth to make an opening. It was not long until the first of the brothers from the Shadow Tower began wending their way up the slope. All in leather and fur they were, with here and there a bit of steel or bronze; heavy beards covered hard lean faces, and made them look as s.h.a.ggy as their garrons. Jon was surprised to see some of them were riding two to a horse. When he looked more closely, it was plain that many of them were wounded. There has been trouble on the way.
Jon knew Qhorin Halfhand the instant he saw him, though they had never met. The big ranger was half a legend in the Watch; a man of slow words and swift action, tall and straight as a spear, long-limbed and solemn. Unlike his men, he was clean-shaven. His hair fell from beneath his helm in a heavy braid touched with h.o.a.rfrost, and the blacks he wore were so faded they might have been greys. Only thumb and forefinger remained on the hand that held the reins; the other fingers had been sheared off catching a wildling's axe that would otherwise have split his skull. It was told that he had thrust his maimed fist into the face of the axeman so the blood spurted into his eyes, and slew him while he was blind. Since that day, the wildlings beyond the Wall had known no foe more implacable.
Jon hailed him. ”Lord Commander Mormont would see you at once. I'll show you to his tent.”
Qhorin swung down from his saddle. ”My men are hungry, and our horses require tending.”
”They'll all be seen to.”
The ranger gave his horse into the care of one of his men and followed. ”You are Jon Snow. You have your father's look.”
”Did you know him, my lord?”
”I am no lordling. Only a brother of the Night's Watch. I knew Lord Eddard, yes. And his father before him.”
Jon had to hurry his steps to keep up with Qhorin's long strides. ”Lord Rickard died before I was born.”
”He was a friend to the Watch.” Qhorin glanced behind. ”It is said that a direwolf runs with you.”
”Ghost should be back by dawn. He hunts at night.”
They found Dolorous Edd frying a rasher of bacon and boiling a dozen eggs in a kettle over the Old Bear's cookfire. Mormont sat in his wood-and-leather camp chair. ”I had begun to fear for you. Did you meet with trouble?”
”We met with Alfyn Crowkiller. Mance had sent him to scout along the Wall, and we chanced on him returning.” Qhorin removed his helm. ”Alfyn will trouble the realm no longer, but some of his company escaped us. We hunted down as many as we could, but it may be that a few will win back to the mountains.”
”And the cost?”
”Four brothers dead. A dozen wounded. A third as many as the foe. And we took captives. One died quickly from his wounds, but the other lived long enough to be questioned.”
”Best talk of this inside. Jon will fetch you a horn of ale. Or would you prefer hot spiced wine?”
”Boiled water will suffice. An egg and a bite of bacon.”
”As you wish.” Mormont lifted the flap of the tent and Qhorin Halfhand stooped and stepped through.
Edd stood over the kettle swis.h.i.+ng the eggs about with a spoon. ”I envy those eggs,” he said. ”I could do with a bit of boiling about now. If the kettle were larger, I might jump in. Though I would sooner it were wine than water. There are worse ways to die than warm and drunk. I knew a brother drowned himself in wine once. It was a poor vintage, though, and his corpse did not improve it.”
”You drank the wine?”
”It's an awful thing to find a brother dead. You'd have need of a drink as well, Lord Snow.” Edd stirred the kettle and added a pinch more nutmeg.
Restless, Jon squatted by the fire and poked at it with a stick. He could hear the Old Bear's voice inside the tent, punctuated by the raven's squawks and Qhorin Halfhand's quieter tones, but he could not make out the words. Alfyn Crowkiller dead, that's good. He was one of the bloodiest of the wildling raiders, taking his name from the black brothers he'd slain. So why does Qhorin sound so grave, after such a victory?
Jon had hoped that the arrival of men from the Shadow Tower would lift the spirits in the camp. Only last night, he was coming back through the dark from a p.i.s.s when he heard five or six men talking in low voices around the embers of a fire. When he heard Chett muttering that it was past time they turned back, Jon stopped to listen. ”It's an old man's folly, this ranging,” he heard. ”We'll find nothing but our graves in them mountains.”
”There's giants in the Frostfangs, and wargs, and worse things,” said Lark the Sisterman.
”I'll not be going there, I promise you.”
”The Old Bear's not like to give you a choice.”
”Might be we won't give him one,” said Chett.
Just then one of the dogs had raised his head and growled, and he had to move away quickly, before he was seen. I was not meant to hear that, he thought. He considered taking the tale to Mormont, but he could not bring himself to inform on his brothers, even brothers such as Chett and the Sisterman. It was just empty talk, he told himself. They are cold and afraid; we all are. It was hard waiting here, perched on the stony summit above the forest, wondering what the morrow might bring. The unseen enemy is always the most fearsome.
Jon slid his new dagger from its sheath and studied the flames as they played against the s.h.i.+ny black gla.s.s. He had fas.h.i.+oned the wooden hilt himself, and wound hempen twine around it to make a grip. Ugly, but it served. Dolorous Edd opined that gla.s.s knives were about as useful as nipples on a knight's breastplate, but Jon was not so certain. The dragongla.s.s blade was sharper than steel, albeit far more brittle.
It must have been buried for a reason.
He had made a dagger for Grenn as well, and another for the Lord Commander. The warhorn he had given to Sam. On closer examination the horn had proved cracked, and even after he had cleaned all the dirt out, Jon had been unable to get any sound from it. The rim was chipped as well, but Sam liked old things, even worthless old things. ”Make a drinking horn out of it,” Jon told him, ”and every time you take a drink you'll remember how you ranged beyond the Wall, all the way to the Fist of the First Men.” He gave Sam a spearhead and a dozen arrowheads as well, and pa.s.sed the rest out among his other friends for luck.
The Old Bear had seemed pleased by the dagger, but he preferred a steel knife at his belt, Jon had noticed. Mormont could offer no answers as to who might have buried the cloak or what it might mean. Perhaps Qhorin will know. The Halfhand had ventured deeper into the wild than any other living man.
”You want to serve, or shall I?”
Jon sheathed the dagger. ”I'll do it.” He wanted to hear what they were saying.
Edd cut three thick slices off a stale round of oat bread, stacked them on a wooden platter, covered them with bacon and bacon drippings, and filled a bowl with hard-cooked eggs. Jon took the bowl in one hand and the platter in the other and backed into the Lord Commander's tent.
Qhorin was seated cross-legged on the floor, his spine as straight as a spear. Candlelight flickered against the hard flat planes of his cheeks as he spoke. ”. . . Rattles.h.i.+rt, the Weeping Man, and every other chief great and small,” he was saying. ”They have wargs as well, and mammoths, and more strength than we would have dreamed. Or so he claimed. I will not swear as to the truth of it. Ebben believes the man was telling us tales to make his life last a little longer.”
”True or false, the Wall must be warned,” the Old Bear said as Jon placed the platter between them. ”And the king.”
”Which king?”
”All of them. The true and the false alike. If they would claim the realm, let them defend it.”
The Halfhand helped himself to an egg and cracked it on the edge of the bowl. ”These kings will do what they will,” he said, peeling away the sh.e.l.l. ”Likely it will be little enough. The best hope is Winterfell. The Starks must rally the north.”
”Yes. To be sure.” The Old Bear unrolled a map, frowned at it, tossed it aside, opened another. He was pondering where the hammer would fall, Jon could see it. The Watch had once manned seventeen castles along the hundred leagues of the Wall, but they had been abandoned one by one as the brotherhood dwindled. Only three were now garrisoned, a fact that Mance Rayder knew as well as they did. ”Ser Alliser Thorne will bring back fresh levies from King's Landing, we can hope. If we man Greyguard from the Shadow Tower and the Long Barrow from East.w.a.tch . . .”
”Greyguard has largely collapsed. Stonedoor would serve better, if the men could be found. Icemark and Deep Lake as well, mayhaps. With daily patrols along the battlements between.”
”Patrols, aye. Twice a day, if we can. The Wall itself is a formidable obstacle. Undefended, it cannot stop them, yet it will delay them. The larger the host, the longer they'll require. From the emptiness they've left behind, they must mean to bring their women with them. Their young as well, and beasts . . . have you ever seen a goat climb a ladder? A rope? They will need to build a stair, or a great ramp . . . it will take a moon's turn at the least, perhaps longer. Mance will know his best chance is to pa.s.s beneath the Wall. Through a gate, or . . .”