A Feast for Dragons

attacked before we
all got out.”
    “Your best men.”
    “Or my worst. Every man o’ them has killed a crow.”
    Amongst the riders came one man afoot, with some big beast trotting
at his heels.
A boar
, Jon saw.
A monstrous boar
.
Twice the size of Ghost, the creature was covered with coarse black hair, with
tusks as long as a man’s arm. Jon had never seen a boar so huge or ugly. The
man beside him was no beauty either; hulking, black-browed, he had a flat nose,
heavy jowls dark with stubble, small black close-set eyes.
    “Borroq.” Tormund turned his head and spat.
    “A skinchanger.” It was not a question. Somehow he knew.
    Ghost turned his head. The falling snow had masked the boar’s
scent, but now the white wolf had the smell. He padded out in front of Jon, his
teeth bared in a silent snarl.
    “No!”
Jon snapped. “Ghost, down. Stay.
Stay!”
    “Boars and wolves,” said Tormund. “Best keep that beast o’
yours locked up tonight. I’ll see that Borroq does the same with his pig.” He
glanced up at the darkening sky. “Them’s the last, and none too soon. It’s
going to snow all night, I feel it. Time I had a look at what’s on t’other side
of all that ice.”
    “You go ahead,” Jon told him. “I mean to be the last one
through the ice. I will join you at the feast.”
    “Feast?
Har!
Now that’s a word I like to
hear.” The wildling turned his garron toward the Wall and slapped her on the
rump. Toregg and the riders followed, dismounting by the gate to lead their
horses through. Bowen Marsh stayed long enough to supervise as his stewards
pulled the last carts into the tunnel. Only Jon Snow and his guards were left.
    The skinchanger stopped ten yards away. His monster pawed at
the mud, snuffling. A light powdering of snow covered the boar’s humped black
back. He gave a snort and lowered his head, and for half a heartbeat Jon
thought he was about to charge. To either side of him, his men lowered their
spears.
    “Brother,” Borroq said.
    “You’d best go on. We are about to close the gate.”
    “You do that,” Borroq said. “You close it good and tight.
They’re coming, crow.” He smiled as ugly a smile as Jon had ever seen and made
his way to the gate. The boar stalked after him. The falling snow covered up
their tracks behind them.
    “That’s done, then,” Rory said when they were gone.
    No
, thought Jon Snow,
it has only
just begun
.
    Bowen Marsh was waiting for him south of the Wall, with a
tablet full of numbers. “Three thousand one hundred and nineteen wildlings
passed through the gate today,” the Lord Steward told him. “Sixty of your
hostages were sent off to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower after they’d been fed.
Edd Tollett took six wagons of women back to Long Barrow. The rest remain with
us.”
    “Not for long,” Jon promised him. “Tormund means to lead his
own folk to Oakenshield within a day or two. The rest will follow, as soon as
we sort where to put them.”
    “As you say, Lord Snow.” The words were stiff. The tone
suggested that Bowen Marsh knew where
he
would put them.
    The castle Jon returned to was far different from the one
he’d left that morning. For as long as he had known it, Castle Black had been a
place of silence and shadows, where a meagre company of men in black moved like
ghosts amongst the ruins of a fortress that had once housed ten times their
numbers. All that had changed. Lights now shone through windows where Jon Snow
had never seen lights shine before. Strange voices echoed down the yards, and
free folk were coming and going along icy paths that had only known the black
boots of crows for years. Outside the old Flint Barracks, he came across a
dozen men pelting one another with snow.
Playing
, Jon thought
in astonishment,
grown men playing like children, throwing snowballs the
way Bran and Arya once did, and Robb and me before them
.
    Donal Noye’s old armory was still dark and silent, however,
and Jon’s rooms back of the cold forge were darker still. But he had no sooner
taken off his cloak than Dannel poked his head through the door to announce
that Clydas had brought a message.
    “Send him in.” Jon lit a taper from an ember in his brazier
and three candles from the taper.
    Clydas entered pink and blinking, the parchment clutched in
one soft hand. “Beg pardon, Lord Commander. I know you must be weary, but I
thought you would want to see this at once.”
    “You did well.” Jon read:
    At Hardhome, with