A Feast for Dragons

and opened it again.
What
you propose is nothing less than treason
. He thought of Robb, with
snowflakes melting in his hair.
Kill the boy and let the man be born
.
He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s
breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself.
You know nothing, Jon Snow
. He thought of Arya, her hair as
tangled as a bird’s nest.
I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the
six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride
back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …
    “I think we had best change the plan,” Jon Snow said.
    They talked for the best part of two hours.
    Horse and Rory had replaced Fulk and Mully at the armory
door with the change of watch. “With me,” Jon told them, when the time came.
Ghost would have followed as well, but as the wolf came padding after them, Jon
grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and wrestled him back inside. Borroq
might be amongst those gathering at the Shieldhall. The last thing he needed
just now was his wolf savaging the skinchanger’s boar.
    The Shieldhall was one of the older parts of Castle Black, a
long drafty feast hall of dark stone, its oaken rafters black with the smoke of
centuries. Back when the Night’s Watch had been much larger, its walls had been
hung with rows of brightly colored wooden shields. Then as now, when a knight
took the black, tradition decreed that he set aside his former arms and take up
the plain black shield of the brotherhood. The shields thus discarded would
hang in the Shieldhall.
    Hundreds of knights meant hundreds of shields. Hawks and
eagles, dragons and griffins, suns and stags, wolves and wyverns, manticores,
bulls, trees and flowers, harps, spears, crabs and krakens, red lions and
golden lions and chequy lions, owls, lambs, maids and mermen, stallions, stars,
buckets and buckles, flayed men and hanged men and burning men, axes,
longswords, turtles, unicorns, bears, quills, spiders and snakes and scorpions,
and a hundred other heraldic charges had adorned the Shieldhall walls, blazoned
in more colors than any rainbow ever dreamed of.
    But when a knight died, his shield was taken down, that it
might go with him to his pyre or his tomb, and over the years and centuries
fewer and fewer knights had taken the black. A day came when it no longer made
sense for the knights of Castle Black to dine apart. The Shieldhall was
abandoned. In the last hundred years, it had been used only infrequently. As a
dining hall, it left much to be desired—it was dark, dirty, drafty, and hard to
heat in winter, its cellars infested with rats, its massive wooden rafters
worm-eaten and festooned with cobwebs.
    But it was large and long enough to seat two hundred, and
half again that many if they crowded close. When Jon and Tormund entered, a
sound went through the hall, like wasps stirring in a nest. The wildlings
outnumbered the crows by five to one, judging by how little black he saw. Fewer
than a dozen shields remained, sad grey things with faded paint and long cracks
in the wood. But fresh torches burned in the iron sconces along the walls, and
Jon had ordered benches and tables brought in. Men with comfortable seats were
more inclined to listen, Maester Aemon had once told him; standing men were
more inclined to shout.
    At the top of the hall a sagging platform stood. Jon mounted
it, with Tormund Giantsbane at his side, and raised his hands for quiet. The
wasps only buzzed the louder. Then Tormund put his warhorn to his lips and blew
a blast. The sound filled the hall, echoing off the rafters overhead. Silence
fell.
    “I summoned you to make plans for the relief of Hardhome,”
Jon Snow began. “Thousands of the free folk are gathered there, trapped and
starving, and we have had reports of dead things in the wood.” To his left he
saw Marsh and Yarwyck. Othell was surrounded by his builders, whilst Bowen had
Wick Whittlestick, Left Hand Lew, and Alf of Runnymudd beside him. To his
right, Soren Shieldbreaker sat with his arms crossed against his chest. Farther
back, Jon saw Gavin the Trader and Harle the Handsome whispering together. Ygon
Oldfather sat amongst his wives, Howd Wanderer alone. Borroq leaned against a
wall in a dark corner. Mercifully, his boar was nowhere in evidence. “The ships
I sent to take off Mother Mole and her people have been wracked by storms. We
must send what help we can by land or let them die.” Two