A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

were going to get.
    â€œWhy do we need to freeze it?” Grenn had asked him. “Why don’t we just roll the barrels off the way they are?”
    Jon answered, “If they crash against the Wall on the way down they’ll burst, and loose gravel will spray everywhere. We don’t want to rain pebbles on the whoresons.”
    He put his shoulder to the one barrel with Grenn, while Kegs and Owen were wrestling with another. Together they rocked it back and forth to break the grip of the ice that had formed around its bottom. “The bugger weighs a ton,” said Grenn.
    â€œTip it over and roll it,” Jon said. “Careful, if it rolls over your foot you’ll end up like Spare Boot.”
    Once the barrel was on its side, Jon grabbed a torch and waved it above the surface of the Wall, back and forth, just enough to melt the ice a little. The thin film of water helped the barrel roll more easily. Too easily, in fact; they almost lost it. But finally, with four of them pooling their efforts, they rolled their boulder to the edge and stood it up again.
    They had four of the big oak barrels lined up above the gate by the time Pyp shouted, “There’s a turtle at our door!” Jon braced his injured leg and leaned out for a look.
Hoardings, Marsh should have built hoardings
. So many things they should have done. The wildlings were dragging the dead giants away from the gate. Horse and Mully were dropping rocks down on them, and Jon thought he saw one man go down, but the stones were too small to have any effect on the turtle itself. He wondered what the free folk would do about the dead mammoth in the path, but then he saw. The turtle was almost as wide as a longhall, so they simply pushed it
over
the carcass. His leg twitched, but Horse caught his arm and drew him back to safety. “You shouldn’t lean out like that,” the boy said.
    â€œWe should have built hoardings.” Jon thought he could hear the crash of axes on wood, but that was probably just fear ringing in his ears. He looked to Grenn. “Do it.”
    Grenn got behind a barrel, put his shoulder against it, grunted, and began to push. Owen and Mully moved to help him. They shoved the barrel out a foot, and then another. And suddenly it was gone.
    They heard the
thump
as it struck the Wall on the way down, and then, much louder, the crash and
crack
of splintering wood, followed by shouts and screams. Satin whooped and Owen the Oaf danced in circles, while Pyp leaned out and called, “The turtle was stuffed full of rabbits! Look at them hop away!”
    â€œ
Again
,” Jon barked, and Grenn and Kegs slammed their shoulders against the next barrel, and sent it tottering out into empty air.
    By the time they were done, the front of Mance’s turtle was a crushed and splintered ruin, and wildlings were spilling out the other end and scrambling for their camp. Satin scooped up his crossbow and sent a few quarrels after them as they ran, to see them off the faster. Grenn was grinning through his beard, Pyp was making japes, and none of them would die today.
    On the morrow, though
. . . Jon glanced toward the shed. Eight barrels of gravel remained where twelve had stood a few moments before. He realized how tired he was then, and how much his wound was hurting.
I need to sleep. A few hours, at least
. He could go to Maester Aemon for some dreamwine, that would help. “I am going down to the King’s Tower,” he told them. “Call me if Mance gets up to anything. Pyp, you have the Wall.”
    â€œMe?” said Pyp.
    â€œHim?” said Grenn.
    Smiling, he left them to it and rode down in the cage.
    A cup of dreamwine
did
help, as it happened. No sooner had he stretched out on the narrow bed in his cell than sleep took him. His dreams were strange and formless, full of strange voices, shouts and cries, and the sound of a warhorn, blowing low and loud, a single deep booming note that lingered in the air.
    When he awoke the sky was black outside the arrow slit that served him for a window, and four men he did not know were standing over him. One held a lantern. “Jon Snow,” the tallest of them said brusquely, “pull on your boots and come with us.”
    His first groggy thought was that somehow the Wall had fallen whilst he slept, that Mance Rayder had sent more giants or another turtle and broken through the gate. But when he rubbed his eyes he saw that the strangers