A Dance With Dragons

man close. He was always the more dangerous of the two. Instead he had dispatched a grizzled steward from the Shadow Tower to take command at Greyguard.
    He hoped the two new garrisons would make a difference. The Watch can make the free folk bleed, but in the end we cannot hope to stop them. Giving Mance Rayder to the fire did not change the truth of that. We are still too few and they are still too many, and without rangers, we’re good as blind. I have to send men out. But if I do, will they come back again?
    The tunnel through the Wall was narrow and twisting, and many of the wildlings were old or ill or wounded, so the going was painfully slow. By the time the last of them had bent the knee, night had fallen. The pit fire was burning low, and the king’s shadow on the Wall had shrunk to a quarter of its former height. Jon Snow could see his breath in the air. Cold, he thought, and getting colder. This mummer’s show has gone on long enough.
    Two score captives lingered by the stockade. Four giants were among them, massive hairy creatures with sloped shoulders, legs as large as tree trunks, and huge splayed feet. Big as they were, they might still have passed through the Wall, but one would not leave his mammoth, and the others would not leave him. The rest of those who remained were all of human stature. Some were dead and some were dying; more were their kin or close companions, unwilling to abandon them even for a bowl of onion soup.
    Some shivering, some too numb to shiver, they listened as the king’s voice rumbled off the Wall. “You are free to go,” Stannis told them. “Tell your people what you witnessed. Tell them that you saw the true king, and that they are welcome in his realm, so long as they keep his peace. Else-wise, they had best flee or hide. I will brook no further attacks upon my Wall.”
    “ One realm, one god, one king! ” cried Lady Melisandre.
    The queen’s men took up the cry, beating the butts of their spears against their shields. “ One realm, one god, one king! STANNIS! STANNIS! ONE REALM, ONE GOD, ONE KING! ”
    Val did not join the chant, he saw. Nor did the brothers of the Night’s Watch. During the tumult the few remaining wildlings melted into the trees. The giants were the last to go, two riding on the back of a mammoth, the other two afoot. Only the dead were left behind. Jon watched Stannis descend from the platform, with Melisandre by his side. His red shadow. She never leaves his side for long. The king’s honor guard fell in around them—Ser Godry, Ser Clayton, and a dozen other knights, queen’s men all. Moonlight shimmered on their armor and the wind whipped at their cloaks. “Lord Steward,” Jon told Marsh, “break up that stockade for firewood and throw the corpses in the flames.”
    “As my lord commands.” Marsh barked out orders, and a swarm of his stewards broke from ranks to attack the wooden walls. The Lord Steward watched them, frowning. “These wildlings … do you think they will keep faith, my lord?”
    “Some will. Not all. We have our cowards and our knaves, our weak-lings and our fools, as do they.”
    “Our vows … we are sworn to protect the realm …”
    “Once the free folk are settled in the Gift, they will become part of the realm,” Jon pointed out. “These are desperate days, and like to grow more desperate. We have seen the face of our real foe, a dead white face with bright blue eyes. The free folk have seen that face as well. Stannis is not wrong in this. We must make common cause with the wildlings.”
    “Common cause against a common foe, I could agree with that,” said Bowen Marsh, “but that does not mean we should allow tens of thousands of half-starved savages through the Wall. Let them return to their villages and fight the Others there, whilst we seal the gates. It will not be difficult, Othell tells me. We need only fill the tunnels with chunks of stone and pour water through the murder holes. The Wall does the rest. The cold, the weight … in a moon’s turn, it will be as if no gate had ever been. Any foe would need to hack his way through.”
    “Or climb.”
    “Unlikely,” said Bowen Marsh. “These are not raiders, out to steal a wife and some plunder. Tormund will have old women with him, children, herds of sheep and goats, even mammoths. He needs a gate, and only three of those remain. And if he should send climbers up, well, defending against climbers is as simple as spearing fish in a