A Feast for Dragons

them to pass beneath
the Wall, Tormund Giantsbane produced the last one. “My son Dryn. You’ll see
he’s well taken care of, crow, or I’ll cook your black liver up and eat it.”
    Jon gave the boy a close inspection.
Bran’s age, or
the age he would have been if Theon had not killed him
. Dryn had none
of Bran’s sweetness, though. He was a chunky boy, with short legs, thick arms,
and a wide red face—a miniature version of his father, with a shock of dark
brown hair. “He’ll serve as my own page,” Jon promised Tormund.
    “Hear that, Dryn? See that you don’t get above yourself.” To
Jon he said, “He’ll need a good beating from time to time. Be careful o’ his
teeth, though. He bites.” He reached down for his horn again, raised it, and
blew another blast.
    This time it was warriors who came forward. And not just one
hundred of them.
Five hundred
, Jon Snow judged, as they moved
out from beneath the trees,
perhaps as many as a thousand
. One
in every ten of them came mounted but all of them came armed. Across their
backs they bore round wicker shields covered with hides and boiled leather,
displaying painted images of snakes and spiders, severed heads, bloody hammers,
broken skulls, and demons. A few were clad in stolen steel, dinted oddments of
armor looted from the corpses of fallen rangers. Others had armored themselves
in bones, like Rattleshirt. All wore fur and leather.
    There were spearwives with them, long hair streaming. Jon
could not look at them without remembering Ygritte: the gleam of fire in her
hair, the look on her face when she’d disrobed for him in the grotto, the sound
of her voice. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she’d told him a hundred times.
    It is as true now as it was then
. “You might
have sent the women first,” he said to Tormund. “The mothers and the maids.”
    The wildling gave him a shrewd look. “Aye, I might have. And
you crows might decide to close that gate. A few fighters on t’other side,
well, that way the gate stays open, don’t it?” He grinned. “I bought your
bloody horse, Jon Snow. Don’t mean that we can’t count his teeth. Now don’t you
go thinking me and mine don’t trust you. We trust you just as much as you trust
us.” He snorted. “You wanted warriors, didn’t you? Well, there they are. Every
one worth six o’ your black crows.”
    Jon had to smile. “So long as they save those weapons for
our common foe, I am content.”
    “Gave you my word on it, didn’t I? The word of Tormund
Giantsbane. Strong as iron, ’tis.” He turned and spat.
    Amongst the stream of warriors were the fathers of many of
Jon’s hostages. Some stared with cold dead eyes as they went by, fingering
their sword hilts. Others smiled at him like long-lost kin, though a few of
those smiles discomfited Jon Snow more than any glare. None knelt, but many
gave him their oaths. “What Tormund swore, I swear,” declared black-haired
Brogg, a man of few words. Soren Shieldbreaker bowed his head an inch and
growled, “Soren’s axe is yours, Jon Snow, if ever you have need of such.”
Red-bearded Gerrick Kingsblood brought three daughters. “They will make fine
wives, and give their husbands strong sons of royal blood,” he boasted. “Like
their father, they are descended from Raymun Redbeard, who was
King-Beyond-the-Wall.”
    Blood meant little and less amongst the free folk, Jon knew.
Ygritte had taught him that. Gerrick’s daughters shared her same flame-red
hair, though hers had been a tangle of curls and theirs hung long and straight.
Kissed by fire
. “Three princesses, each lovelier than the
last,” he told their father. “I will see that they are presented to the queen.”
Selyse Baratheon would take to these three better than she had to Val, he
suspected; they were younger and considerably more cowed.
Sweet enough
to look at them, though their father seems a fool
.
    Howd Wanderer swore his oath upon his sword, as nicked and
pitted a piece of iron as Jon had ever seen. Devyn Sealskinner presented him
with a sealskin hat, Harle the Huntsman with a bear-claw necklace. The warrior
witch Morna removed her weirwood mask just long enough to kiss his gloved hand
and swear to be his man or his woman, whichever he preferred. And on and on and
on.
    As they passed, each warrior stripped off his treasures and
tossed them into one of the carts that the stewards had placed before the gate.
Amber pendants, golden torques, jeweled daggers, silver brooches