A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

warm them up, lads?” A dozen jars of lamp oil had been lined up on the precipice. Pyp ran down the line with a torch, setting them alight. Owen the Oaf followed, shoving them over the edge one by one. Tongues of pale yellow fire swirled around the jars as they plunged downward. When the last was gone, Grenn kicked loose the chocks on a barrel of pitch and sent it rumbling and rolling over the edge as well. The sounds below changed to shouts and screams, sweet music to their ears.
    Yet still the drums beat on, the trebuchets shuddered and thumped, and the sound of skinpipes came wafting through the night like the songs of strange fierce birds. Septon Cellador began to sing as well, his voice tremulous and thick with wine.
    Gentle Mother, font of mercy,
    save our sons from war, we pray,
    stay the swords and stay the arrows,
    let them know . . .
    Donal Noye rounded on him. “Any man here stays his sword, I’ll chuck his puckered arse right off this Wall . . . starting with you, Septon.
Archers!
Do we have any bloody archers?”
    â€œHere,” said Satin.
    â€œAnd here,” said Mully. “But how can I find a target? It’s black as the inside of a pig’s belly. Where are they?”
    Noye pointed north. “Loose enough arrows, might be you’ll find a few. At least you’ll make them fretful.” He looked around the ring of firelit faces. “I need two bows and two spears to help me hold the tunnel if they break the gate.” More than ten stepped forward, and the smith picked his four. “Jon, you have the Wall till I return.”
    For a moment Jon thought he had misheard. It had sounded as if Noye were leaving him in command. “My lord?”
    â€œ
Lord?
I’m a blacksmith. I said, the Wall is yours.”
    There are older men
, Jon wanted to say,
better men. I am still as green as summer grass. I’m wounded, and I stand accused of desertion
. His mouth had gone bone dry. “Aye,” he managed.
    Afterward it would seem to Jon Snow as if he’d dreamt that night. Side by side with the straw soldiers, with longbows or crossbows clutched in half-frozen hands, his archers launched a hundred flights of arrows against men they never saw. From time to time a wildling arrow came flying back in answer. He sent men to the smaller catapults and filled the air with jagged rocks the size of a giant’s fist, but the darkness swallowed them as a man might swallow a handful of nuts. Mammoths trumpeted in the gloom, strange voices called out in stranger tongues, and Septon Cellador prayed so loudly and drunkenly for the dawn to come that Jon was tempted to chuck him over the edge himself. They heard a mammoth dying at their feet and saw another lurch burning through the woods, trampling down men and trees alike. The wind blew cold and colder. Hobb rode up the chain with cups of onion broth, and Owen and Clydas served them to the archers where they stood, so they could gulp them down between arrows. Zei took a place among them with her crossbow. Hours of repeated jars and shocks knocked something loose on the right-hand trebuchet, and its counterweight came crashing free, suddenly and catastrophically, wrenching the throwing arm sideways with a splintering crash. The left-hand trebuchet kept throwing, but the wildlings had quickly learned to shun the place where its loads were landing.
    We should have twenty trebuchets, not two, and they should be mounted on sledges and turntables so we could move them.
It was a futile thought. He might as well wish for another thousand men, and maybe a dragon or three.
    Donal Noye did not return, nor any of them who’d gone down with him to hold that black cold tunnel.
The Wall is mine
, Jon reminded himself whenever he felt his strength flagging. He had taken up a longbow himself, and his fingers felt crabbed and stiff, half-frozen. His fever was back as well, and his leg would tremble uncontrollably, sending a white-hot knife of pain right through him.
One more arrow, and I’ll rest
, he told himself, half a hundred times.
Just one more
. Whenever his quiver was empty, one of the orphaned moles would bring him another.
One more quiver, and I’m done
. It couldn’t be long until the dawn.
    When morning came, none of them quite realized it at first. The world was still dark, but the black had turned to grey and shapes were beginning to emerge half-seen from the gloom. Jon lowered his bow to stare at the