A Feast for Dragons

Wall.” The old man glanced uneasily toward the trees in their
white mantles. “They’re never far, you know. They won’t come out by day, not
when that old sun’s shining, but don’t think that means they went away. Shadows
never go away. Might be you don’t see them, but they’re always clinging to your
heels.”
    “Did they trouble you on your way south?”
    “They never came in force, if that’s your meaning, but they were
with us all the same, nibbling at our edges. We lost more outriders than I care
to think about, and it was worth your life to fall behind or wander off. Every
nightfall we’d ring our camps with fire. They don’t like fire much, and no
mistake. When the snows came, though … snow and sleet and freezing
rain, it’s bloody hard to find dry wood or get your kindling lit, and the
cold
 … some
nights our fires just seemed to shrivel up and die. Nights like that, you
always find some dead come the morning. ‘Less they find you first. The night
that Torwynd … my boy, he …’ Tormund turned his face away.
    “I know,” said Jon Snow.
    Tormund turned back. “You know nothing. You killed a dead
man, aye, I heard. Mance killed a hundred. A man can fight the dead, but when
their masters come, when the white mists rise up … how do you fight a
mist
, crow? Shadows with teeth … air so cold it hurts
to breathe, like a knife inside your chest … you do not know, you
cannot know … can your sword cut
cold?”
    We will see
, Jon thought, remembering the
things that Sam had told him, the things he’d found in his old books. Longclaw
had been forged in the fires of old Valyria, forged in dragonflame and set with
spells.
Dragonsteel, Sam called it. Stronger than any common steel,
lighter, harder, sharper …
But words in a book were one thing.
The true test came in battle.
    “You are not wrong,” Jon said. “I do not know. And if the
gods are good, I never will.”
    “The gods are seldom good, Jon Snow.” Tormund nodded toward
the sky. “The clouds roll in. Already it grows darker, colder. Your Wall no
longer weeps. Look.” He turned and called out to his son Toregg. “Ride back to
the camp and get them moving. The sick ones and the weak ones, the slugabeds
and cravens, get them on their bloody feet. Set their bloody tents afire if you
must. The gate must close at nightfall. Any man not through the Wall by then
had best pray the Others get to him afore I do. You hear?”
    “I hear.” Toregg put his heels into his horse and galloped
back down the column.
    On and on the wildlings came. The day grew darker, just as
Tormund said. Clouds covered the sky from horizon to horizon, and warmth fled.
There was more shoving at the gate, as men and goats and bullocks jostled each
other out of the way.
It is more than impatience
, Jon realized.
They are afraid. Warriors, spearwives, raiders, they are frightened of
those woods, of shadows moving through the trees. They want to put the Wall
between them before the night descends
.
    A snowflake danced upon the air. Then another.
Dance
with me, Jon Snow
, he thought.
You’ll dance with me anon
.
    On and on and on the wildlings came. Some were moving faster
now, hastening across the battleground. Others—the old, the young, the
feeble—could scarce move at all. This morning the field had been covered with a
thick blanket of old snow, its white crust shining in the sun. Now the field
was brown and black and slimy. The passage of the free folk had turned the
ground to mud and muck: wooden wheels and horses’ hooves, runners of bone and
horn and iron, pig trotters, heavy boots, the cloven feet of cows and bullocks,
the bare black feet of the Hornfoot folk, all had left their marks. The soft
footing slowed the column even more. “You need a bigger gate,” Tormund
complained again.
    By late afternoon the snow was falling steadily, but the
river of wildlings had dwindled to a stream. Columns of smoke rose from the
trees where their camp had been. “Toregg,” Tormund explained. “Burning the
dead. Always some who go to sleep and don’t wake up. You find them in their tents,
them as have tents, curled up and froze. Toregg knows what to do.”
    The stream was no more than a trickle by the time Toregg
emerged from the wood. With him rode a dozen mounted warriors armed with spears
and swords. “My rear guard,” Tormund said, with a gap-toothed smile. “You crows
have rangers. So do we. Them I left in camp in case we were