A Dance With Dragons

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