“What if we refuse the offer?” Jon had no doubt that they would. The Old Bear might at least have listened, though he would have balked at the notion of letting thirty or forty thousand wildlings loose on the Seven Kingdoms. But Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt would dismiss the notion out of hand.
“If you refuse,” Mance Rayder said, “Tormund Giantsbane will sound the Horn of Winter three days hence, at dawn.”
He could carry the message back to Castle Black and tell them of the horn, but if he left Mance still alive Lord Janos and Ser Alliser would seize on that as proof that he was a turncloak. A thousand thoughts flickered through Jon’s head. If I can destroy the horn, smash it here and now… but before he could begin to think that through, he heard the low moan of some other horn, made faint by the tent’s hide walls. Mance heard it too. Frowning, he went to the door. Jon followed.
The warhorn was louder outside. Its call had stirred the wildling camp. Three Hornfoot men jogged past, carrying long spears. Horses were whinnying and snorting, giants roaring in the Old Tongue, and even the mammoths were restless.
“Outrider’s horn,” Tormund told Mance.
“Something’s coming.” Varamyr sat crosslegged on the half-frozen ground, his wolves circled restlessly around him. A shadow swept over him, and Jon looked up to see the eagle’s blue-grey wings. “Coming, from the east.”
When the dead walk, walls and stakes and swords mean nothing, he remembered. You cannot fight the dead, Jon Snow. No man knows that half so well as me.
Harma scowled. “East? The wights should be behind us.”
“East,” the skinchanger repeated. “Something’s coming.”
“The Others?” Jon asked.
Mance shook his head. “The Others never come when the sun is up.” Chariots were rattling across the killing ground, jammed with riders waving spears of sharpened bone. The king groaned. “Where the bloody hell do they think they’re going? Quenn, get those fools back where they belong. Someone bring my horse. The mare, not the stallion. I’ll want my armor too.” Mance glanced suspiciously at the Wall. Atop the icy parapets, the straw soldiers stood collecting arrows, but there was no sign of any other activity. “Harma, mount up your raiders. Tormund, find your sons and give me a triple line of spears.”
“Aye,” said Tormund, striding off.
The mousy little skinchanger closed his eyes and said, “I see them. They’re coming along the streams and game trails…”
“Who?”
“Men. Men on horses. Men in steel and men in black.”
“Crows.” Mance made the word a curse. He turned on Jon. “Did my old brothers think they’d catch me with my breeches down if they attacked while we were talking?”
“If they planned an attack they never told me about it.” Jon did not believe it. Lord Janos lacked the men to attack the wildling camp. Besides, he was on the wrong side of the Wall, and the gate was sealed with rubble. He had a different sort of treachery in mind, this can’t be his work.
“If you’re lying to me again, you won’t be leaving here alive,” Mance warned. His guards brought him his horse and armor. Elsewhere around the camp, Jon saw people running at cross purposes, some men forming up as if to storm the Wall while others slipped into the woods, women driving dog carts east, mammoths wandering west. He reached back over his shoulder and drew Longclaw just as a thin line of rangers emerged from the fringes of the wood three hundred yards away. They wore black mail, black halfhelms, and black cloaks. Half-armored, Mance drew his sword. “You knew nothing of this, did you?” he said to Jon, coldly.
Slow as honey on a cold morning, the rangers swept down on the wildling camp, picking their way through clumps of gorse and stands of trees, over roots and rocks. Wildlings flew to meet them, shouting war cries and waving clubs and bronze swords and axes made of flint, galloping headlong at their ancient enemies. A shout, a slash, and a fine brave death, Jon had heard brothers say of the free folk’s way of fighting.
“Believe what you will,” Jon told the King-beyond-the-Wall, “but I knew nothing of any attack.”
Harma thundered past before Mance could reply, riding at the head of thirty raiders. Her standard went before her; a dead dog impaled on a spear, raining blood at every stride. Mance watched as she smashed into the rangers. “Might be you’re telling it true,” he said. “Those look like Eastwatch men. Sailors on horses. Cotter Pyke always had more guts than sense. He took the Lord of Bones at Long Barrow, he might have thought to do the same with me. If so, he’s a fool. He doesn’t have the men, he—”
“Mance!” the shout came. It was a scout, bursting from the trees on a lathered horse. “Mance, there’s more, they’re all around us, iron men, iron, a host of iron men.”
Cursing, Mance swung up into the saddle. “Varamyr, stay and see that no harm comes to Dalla.” The King-beyond-the-Wall pointed his sword at Jon. “And keep a few extra eyes on this crow. If he runs, rip out his throat.”
“Aye, I’ll do that.” The skinchanger was a head shorter than Jon, slumped and soft, but that shadowcat could disembowel him with one paw. “They’re coming from the north too,” Varamyr told Mance. “You best go.”
Mance donned his helm with its raven wings. His men were mounted up as well. “Arrowhead,” Mance snapped, “to me, form wedge.” Yet when he slammed his heels into the mare and flew across the field at the rangers, the men who raced to catch him lost all semblance of formation.
Jon took a step toward the tent, thinking of the Horn of Winter, but the shadowcat blocked him, tail lashing. The beast’s nostrils flared, and slaver ran from his curved front teeth. He smells my fear. He missed Ghost more than ever then. The two wolves were behind him, growling.
“Banners,” he heard Varamyr murmur, “I see golden banners, oh…” A mammoth lumbered by, trumpeting, a half-dozen bowmen in the wooden tower on its back. “The king… no…”
Then the skinchanger threw back his head and screamed.
The sound was shocking, ear-piercing, thick with agony. Varamyr fell, writhing, and the ’cat was screaming too… and high, high in the eastern sky, against the wall of cloud, Jon saw the eagle burning. For a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star, wreathed in red and gold and orange, its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could fly from the pain. Higher it flew, and higher, and higher still.
The scream brought Val out of the tent, white-faced. “What is it, what’s happened?” Varamyr’s wolves were fighting each other, and the shadowcat had raced off into the trees, but the man was still twisting on the ground. “What’s wrong with him?” Val demanded, horrified. “Where’s Mance?”
“There.” Jon pointed. “Gone to fight.” The king led his ragged wedge into a knot of rangers, his sword flashing.
“Gone? He can’t be gone, not now. It’s started.”
“The battle?” He watched the rangers scatter before Harma’s bloody dog’s head. The raiders screamed and hacked and chased the men in black back into the trees. But there were more men coming from the wood, a column of horse. Knights on heavy horse, Jon saw. Harma had to regroup and wheel to meet them, but half of her men had raced too far ahead.
“The birth!” Val was shouting at him.
Trumpets were blowing all around, loud and brazen. The wildlings have no trumpets, only warhorns. They knew that as well as he did; the sound sent free folk running in confusion, some toward the fighting, others away. A mammoth was stomping through a flock of sheep that three men were trying to herd off west. The drums were beating as the wildlings ran to form squares and lines, but they were too late, too disorganized, too slow. The enemy was emerging from the forest, from the east, the northeast, the north; three great columns of heavy horse, all dark glinting steel and bright wool surcoats. Not the men of Eastwatch, those had been no more than a line of scouts. An army. The king? Jon was as confused as the wildlings. Could Robb have returned? Had the boy on the Iron Throne finally bestirred himself? “You best get back inside the tent,” he told Val.<
br />
Across the field one column had washed over Harma Dogshead. Another smashed into the flank of Tormund’s spearmen as he and his sons desperately tried to turn them. The giants were climbing onto their mammoths, though, and the knights on their barded horses did not like that at all; he could see how the coursers and destriers screamed and scattered at the sight of those lumbering mountains. But there was fear on the wildling side as well, hundreds of women and children rushing away from the battle, some of them blundering right under the hooves of garrons. He saw an old woman’s dog cart veer into the path of three chariots, to send them crashing into each other.
“Gods,” Val whispered, “gods, why are they doing this?”
“Go inside the tent and stay with Dalla. It’s not safe out here.” It wouldn’t be a great deal safer inside, but she didn’t need to hear that.
“I need to find the midwife,” Val said.
“You’re the midwife. I’ll stay here until Mance comes back.” He had lost sight of Mance but now he found him again, cutting his way through a knot of mounted men. The mammoths had shattered the center column, but the other two were closing like pincers. On the eastern edge of the camps, some archers were loosing fire arrows at the tents. He saw a mammoth pluck a knight from his saddle and fling him forty feet with a flick of its trunk. Wildlings streamed past, women and children running from the battle, some with men hurrying them along. A few of them gave Jon dark looks but Longclaw was in his hand, and no one troubled him. Even Varamyr fled, crawling off on his hands and knees.
More and more men were pouring from the trees, not only knights now but freeriders and mounted bowmen and men-at-arms in jacks and kettle helms, dozens of men, hundreds of men. A blaze of banners flew above them. The wind was whipping them too wildly for Jon to see the sigils, but he glimpsed a seahorse, a field of birds, a ring of flowers. And yellow, so much yellow, yellow banners with a red device, whose arms were those?
East and north and northeast, he saw bands of wildlings trying to stand and fight, but the attackers rode right over them. The free folk still had the numbers, but the attackers had steel armor and heavy horses. In the thickest part of the fray, Jon saw Mance standing tall in his stirrups. His red-and-black cloak and raven-winged helm made him easy to pick out. He had his sword raised and men were rallying to him when a wedge of knights smashed into them with lance and sword and longaxe. Mance’s mare went up on her hind legs, kicking, and a spear took her through the breast. Then the steel tide washed over him.
It’s done, Jon thought, they’re breaking. The wildlings were running, throwing down their weapons, Hornfoot men and cave dwellers and Thenns in bronze scales, they were running. Mance was gone, someone was waving Harma’s head on a pole, Tormund’s lines had broken. Only the giants on their mammoths were holding, hairy islands in a red steel sea. The fires were leaping from tent to tent and some of the tall pines were going up as well. And through the smoke another wedge of armored riders came, on barded horses. Floating above them were the largest banners yet, royal standards as big as sheets; a yellow one with long pointed tongues that showed a flaming heart, and another like a sheet of beaten gold, with a black stag prancing and rippling in the wind.
Robert, Jon thought for one mad moment, remembering poor Owen, but when the trumpets blew again and the knights charged, the name they cried was “Stannis! Stannis! STANNIS!”
Jon turned away, and went inside the tent.
ARYA
Outside the inn on a weathered gibbet, a woman’s bones were twisting and rattling at every gust of wind.
I know this inn. There hadn’t been a gibbet outside the door when she had slept here with her sister Sansa under the watchful eye of Septa Mordane, though. “We don’t want to go in,” Arya decided suddenly, “there might be ghosts.”
“You know how long it’s been since I had a cup of wine?” Sandor swung down from the saddle. “Besides, we need to learn who holds the ruby ford. Stay with the horses if you want, it’s no hair off my arse.”
“What if they know you?” Sandor no longer troubled to hide his face. He no longer seemed to care who knew him. “They might want to take you captive.”
“Let them try.” He loosened his longsword in its scabbard, and pushed through the door.
Arya would never have a better chance to escape. She could ride off on Craven and take Stranger too. She chewed her lip. Then she led the horses to the stables, and went in after him.
They know him. The silence told her that. But that wasn’t the worst thing. She knew them too. Not the skinny innkeep, nor the women, nor the fieldhands by the hearth. But the others. The soldiers. She knew the soldiers.
“Looking for your brother, Sandor?” Polliver’s hand was down the bodice of the girl on his lap, but now he slid it out.
“Looking for a cup of wine. Innkeep, a flagon of red.” Clegane threw a handful of coppers on the floor.
“I don’t want no trouble, ser,” the innkeep said.
“Then don’t call me ser.” His mouth twitched. “Are you deaf, fool? I ordered wine.” As the man ran off, Clegane shouted after him, “Two cups! The girl’s thirsty too!”
There are only three, Arya thought. Polliver gave her a fleeting glance and the boy beside him never looked at her at all, but the third one gazed long and hard. He was a man of middling height and build, with a face so ordinary that it was hard to say how old he was. The Tickler. The Tickler and Polliver both. The boy was a squire, judging by his age and dress. He had a big white pimple on one side of his nose, and some red ones on his forehead. “Is this the lost puppy Ser Gregor spoke of?” he asked the Tickler. “The one who piddled in the rushes and ran off?”
The Tickler put a warning hand on the boy’s arm, and gave a short sharp shake of his head. Arya read that plain enough.
The squire didn’t, or else he didn’t care. “Ser said his puppy brother tucked his tail between his legs when the battle got too warm at King’s Landing. He said he ran off whimpering.” He gave the Hound a stupid mocking grin.
Clegane studied the boy and never said a word. Polliver shoved the girl off his lap and got to his feet. “The lad’s drunk,” he said. The man-at-arms was almost as tall as the Hound, though not so heavily muscled. A spade-shaped beard covered his jaws and jowls, thick and black and neatly trimmed, but his head was more bald than not. “He can’t hold his wine, is all.”
“Then he shouldn’t drink.”
“The puppy doesn’t scare…” the boy began, till the Tickler casually twisted his ear between thumb and forefinger. The words became a squeal of pain.
The innkeep came scurrying back with two stone cups and a flagon on a pewter platter. Sandor lifted the flagon to his mouth. Arya could see the muscles in his neck working as he gulped. When he slammed it back down on the table, half the wine was gone. “Now you can pour. Best pick up those coppers too, it’s the only coin you’re like to see today.”
“We’ll pay when we’re done drinking,” said Polliver.
“When you’re done drinking you’ll tickle the innkeep to see where he keeps his gold. The way you always do.”
The innkeep suddenly remembered something in the kitchen. The locals were leaving too, and the girls were gone. The only sound in the common room was the faint crackling of the fire in the hearth. We should go too, Arya knew.
“If you’re looking for Ser, you come too late,” Polliver said. “He was at Harrenhal, but now he’s not. The queen sent for him.” He wore three blades on his belt, Arya saw; a longsword on his left hip, and on his right a dagger and a slimmer blade, too long to be a dirk and too short to be a sword. “King Joffrey’s dead, you know,” he added. “Poisoned at his own wedding feast.”
Arya edged farther into the room. Joffrey’s dead. She could almost see him, with his blond curls and his mean smile and his fat soft lips. Joffrey’s dead! She knew it ought to make her happy, but somehow she still felt empty inside. Joffrey was dead, but if Robb was dead too, what did it matter?
&nb
sp; “So much for my brave brothers of the Kingsguard.” The Hound gave a snort of contempt. “Who killed him?”
“The Imp, it’s thought. Him and his little wife.”
“What wife?”
“I forgot, you’ve been hiding under a rock. The northern girl. Winterfell’s daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head.”
That’s stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she’d never marry the Imp.
The Hound sat on the bench closest to the door. His mouth twitched, but only the burned side. “She ought to dip him in wildfire and cook him. Or tickle him till the moon turns black.” He raised his wine cup and drained it straightaway.
He’s one of them, Arya thought when she saw that. She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. He’s just like they are. I should kill him when he sleeps.
“So Gregor took Harrenhal?” Sandor said.
“Didn’t require much taking,” said Polliver. “The sellswords fled as soon as they knew we were coming, all but a few. One of the cooks opened a postern gate for us, to get back at Hoat for cutting off his foot.” He chuckled. “We kept him to cook for us, a couple wenches to warm our beds, and put all the rest to the sword.”
“All the rest?” Arya blurted out.
“Well, Ser kept Hoat to pass the time.”
Sandor said, “The Blackfish is still in Riverrun?”
“Not for long,” said Polliver. “He’s under siege. Old Frey’s going to hang Edmure Tully unless he yields the castle. The only real fighting’s around Raventree. Blackwoods and Brackens. The Brackens are ours now.”
The Hound poured a cup of wine for Arya and another for himself, and drank it down while staring at the hearthfire. “The little bird flew away, did she? Well, bloody good for her. She shit on the Imp’s head and flew off.”
“They’ll find her,” said Polliver. “If it takes half the gold in Casterly Rock.”
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