A Feast for Dragons

display in their ringmail, iron halfhelms, and black
cloaks, with tall spears in their hands and swords and daggers on their belts.
For this Jon had passed over all the green boys and greybeards in his command,
choosing eight men in their prime: Ty and Mully, Left Hand Lew, Big Liddle,
Rory, Fulk the Flea, Garrett Greenspear. And Leathers, Castle Black’s new
master-at-arms, to show the free folk that even a man who had fought for Mance
in the battle beneath the Wall could find a place of honor in the Night’s
Watch.
    A deep red blush had appeared in the east by the time they
all assembled at the gate.
The stars are going out
, Jon
thought. When next they reappeared, they would be shining down upon a world
forever changed. A few queen’s men stood watching from beside the embers of
Lady Melisandre’s nightfire. When Jon glanced at the King’s Tower, he glimpsed
a flash of red behind a window. Of Queen Selyse he saw no sign.
    It was time. “Open the gate,” Jon Snow said softly.
    “OPEN THE GATE!”
Big Liddle roared. His
voice was thunder.
    Seven hundred feet above, the sentries heard and raised
their warhorns to their lips. The sound rang out, echoing off the Wall and out
across the world.
Ahoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
. One long
blast. For a thousand years or more, that sound had meant rangers coming home.
Today it meant something else. Today it called the free folk to their new
homes.
    On either end of the long tunnel, gates swung open and iron
bars unlocked. Dawn light shimmered on the ice above, pink and gold and purple.
Dolorous Edd had not been wrong. The Wall would soon be weeping.
Gods
grant it weeps alone
.
    Satin led them underneath the ice, lighting the way through
the gloom of the tunnel with an iron lantern. Jon followed, leading his horse.
Then his guardsmen. After them came Bowen Marsh and his stewards, a score of
them, every man assigned a task. Above, Ulmer of the Kingswood had the Wall.
Two score of Castle Black’s best bowmen stood with him, ready to respond to any
trouble down below with a rain of arrows.
    North of the Wall, Tormund Giantsbane was waiting, mounted
on a runty little garron that looked far too weedy to support his weight. His
two remaining sons were with him, tall Toregg and young Dryn, along with three
score warriors.
    “Har!”
Tormund called. “Guards, is it? Now
where’s the trust in that, crow?”
    “You brought more men than I did.”
    “So I did. Come here by me, lad. I want my folk to see you.
I got thousands ne’er saw a lord commander, grown men who were told as boys
that your rangers would eat them if they didn’t behave. They need to see you
plain, a long-faced lad in an old black cloak. They need to learn that the
Night’s Watch is naught t’be feared.”
    That is a lesson I would sooner they never learned
.
Jon peeled the glove off his burned hand, put two fingers in his mouth, and
whistled. Ghost came racing from the gate. Tormund’s horse shied so hard that
the wildling almost lost his saddle. “Naught to be feared?” Jon said. “Ghost,
stay.”
    “You are a black-hearted bastard, Lord Crow.” Tormund
Horn-Blower lifted his own warhorn to his lips. The sound of it echoed off the
ice like rolling thunder, and the first of the free folk began to stream toward
the gate.
    From dawn till dusk Jon watched the wildlings pass.
    The hostages went first—one hundred boys between the ages of
eight and sixteen. “Your blood price, Lord Crow,” Tormund declared. “I hope the
wailing o’ their poor mothers don’t haunt your dreams at night.” Some of the
boys were led to the gate by a mother or a father, others by older siblings.
More came alone. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys were almost men, and did
not want to be seen clinging to a woman’s skirts.
    Two stewards counted the boys as they went by, noting each
name on long sheepskin scrolls. A third collected their valuables for the toll
and wrote that down as well. The boys were going to a place that none had ever
been before, to serve an order that had been the enemy of their kith and kin
for thousands of years, yet Jon saw no tears, heard no wailing mothers.
These
are winter’s people
, he reminded himself.
Tears freeze upon
your cheeks where they come from
. Not a single hostage balked or tried
to slink away when his turn came to enter that gloomy tunnel.
    Almost all the boys were thin, some past the point of
gauntness, with spindly shanks and arms like twigs. That was no more than