A Feast for Dragons

suckling babes. Is that
what my lord wishes to hear?” Bowen Marsh rubbed at the scar he had won at the
Bridge of Skulls. “Send them all. The more we lose, the fewer mouths we’ll have
to feed.”
    Yarwyck was no more helpful. “If the wildlings at Hardhome
need saving, let the wildlings here go save them. Tormund knows the way to Hardhome.
To hear him talk, he can save them all himself with his huge member.”
    This was pointless
, Jon thought.
Pointless,
fruitless, hopeless
. “Thank you for your counsel, my lords.”
    Satin helped them back into their cloaks. As they walked
through the armory, Ghost sniffed at them, his tail upraised and bristling.
My
brothers
. The Night’s Watch needed leaders with the wisdom of Maester
Aemon, the learning of Samwell Tarly, the courage of Qhorin Halfhand, the
stubborn strength of the Old Bear, the compassion of Donal Noye. What it had
instead was them.
    The snow was falling heavily outside. “Wind’s from the
south,” Yarwyck observed. “It’s blowing the snow right up against the Wall.
See?”
    He was right. The switchback stair was buried almost to the
first landing, Jon saw, and the wooden doors of the ice cells and storerooms
had vanished behind a wall of white. “How many men do we have in ice cells?” he
asked Bowen Marsh.
    “Four living men. Two dead ones.”
    The corpses
. Jon had almost forgotten them.
He had hoped to learn something from the bodies they’d brought back from the
weirwood grove, but the dead men had stubbornly remained dead. “We need to dig
those cells out.”
    “Ten stewards and ten spades should do it,” said Marsh.
    “Use Wun Wun too.”
    “As you command.”
    Ten stewards and one giant made short work of the drifts,
but even when the doors were clear again, Jon was not satisfied. “Those cells
will be buried again by morning. We’d best move the prisoners before they
smother.”
    “Karstark too, m’lord?” asked Fulk the Flea. “Can’t we just
leave that one shivering till spring?”
    “Would that we could.” Cregan Karstark had taken to howling
in the night of late, and throwing frozen feces at whoever came to feed him.
That had not made him beloved of his guards. “Take him to the Lord Commander’s
Tower. The undervault should hold him.” Though partly collapsed, the Old Bear’s
former seat would be warmer than the ice cells. Its subcellars were largely
intact.
    Cregan kicked at the guards when they came through the door,
twisted and shoved when they grabbed him, even tried to bite them. But the cold
had weakened him, and Jon’s men were bigger, younger, and stronger. They hauled
him out, still struggling, and dragged him through thigh-high snow to his new
home.
    “What would the lord commander like us to do with his
corpses?” asked Marsh when the living men had been moved.
    “Leave them.” If the storm entombed them, well and good. He
would need to burn them eventually, no doubt, but for the nonce they were bound
with iron chains inside their cells. That, and being dead, should suffice to
hold them harmless.
    Tormund Giantsbane timed his arrival perfectly, thundering
up with his warriors when all the shoveling was done. Only fifty seemed to have
turned up, not the eighty Toregg promised Leathers, but Tormund was not called
Tall-Talker for naught. The wildling arrived red-faced, shouting for a horn of
ale and something hot to eat. He had ice in his beard and more crusting his
mustache.
    Someone had already told the Thunderfist about Gerrick Kingsblood
and his new style. “King o’ the Wildlings?” Tormund roared. “Har! King o’ My
Hairy Butt Crack, more like.”
    “He has a regal look to him,” Jon said.
    “He has a little red cock to go with all that red hair,
that’s what he has. Raymund Redbeard and his sons died at Long Lake, thanks to
your bloody Starks and the Drunken Giant. Not the little brother. Ever wonder
why they called him the Red Raven?” Tormund’s mouth split in a gap-toothed
grin. “First to fly the battle, he was. ’Twas a song about it, after. The
singer had to find a rhyme for
craven
, so …” He wiped his
nose. “If your queen’s knights want those girls o’ his, they’re welcome to
them.”
    “Girls,”
squawked Mormont’s raven.
“Girls,
girls.”
    That set Tormund to laughing all over again. “Now there’s a bird
with sense. How much do you want for him, Snow? I gave you a son, the least you
could do is give me the bloody bird.”
    “I would,” said Jon,