A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

waist.
    â€œDalla’s time is near,” Mance explained. “She and Val will stay. They know what I mean to say.”
    Jon kept his face as still as ice.
Foul enough to slay a man in his own tent under truce. Must I murder him in front of his wife as their child is being born?
He closed the fingers of his sword hand. Mance was not wearing armor, but his own sword was sheathed on his left hip. And there were other weapons in the tent, daggers and dirks, a bow and a quiver of arrows, a bronze-headed spear lying beside that big black . . .
    . . . horn.
    Jon sucked in his breath.
    A warhorn, a bloody great warhorn.
    â€œYes,” Mance said. “The Horn of Winter, that Joramun once blew to wake giants from the earth.”
    The horn was huge, eight feet along the curve and so wide at the mouth that he could have put his arm inside up to the elbow.
If this came from an aurochs, it was the biggest that ever lived
. At first he thought the bands around it were bronze, but when he moved closer he realized they were gold.
Old gold, more brown than yellow, and graven with runes
.
    â€œYgritte said you never found the horn.”
    â€œDid you think only crows could lie? I liked you well enough, for a bastard . . . but I never trusted you. A man needs to earn my trust.”
    Jon faced him. “If you’ve had the Horn of Joramun all along, why haven’t you used it? Why bother building turtles and sending Thenns to kill us in our beds? If this horn is all the songs say, why not just sound it and be done?”
    It was Dalla who answered him, Dalla great with child, lying on her pile of furs beside the brazier. “We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”
    Mance ran a hand along the curve of the great horn. “No man goes hunting with only one arrow in his quiver,” he said. “I had hoped that Styr and Jarl would take your brothers unawares, and open the gate for us. I drew your garrison away with feints and raids and secondary attacks. Bowen Marsh swallowed that lure as I knew he would, but your band of cripples and orphans proved to be more stubborn than anticipated. Don’t think you’ve stopped us, though. The truth is, you are too few and we are too many. I could continue the attack here and still send ten thousand men to cross the Bay of Seals on rafts and take Eastwatch from the rear. I could storm the Shadow Tower too, I know the approaches as well as any man alive. I could send men and mammoths to dig out the gates at the castles you’ve abandoned, all of them at once.”
    â€œWhy don’t you, then?” Jon could have drawn Longclaw then, but he wanted to hear what the wildling had to say.
    â€œBlood,” said Mance Rayder. “I’d win in the end, yes, but you’d bleed me, and my people have bled enough.”
    â€œYour losses haven’t been that heavy.”
    â€œNot at your hands.” Mance studied Jon’s face. “You saw the Fist of the First Men. You know what happened there. You know what we are facing.”
    â€œThe Others . . .”
    â€œThey grow stronger as the days grow shorter and the nights colder. First they kill you, then they send your dead against you. The giants have not been able to stand against them, nor the Thenns, the ice river clans, the Hornfoots.”
    â€œNor you?”
    â€œNor me.” There was anger in that admission, and bitterness too deep for words. “Raymun Redbeard, Bael the Bard, Gendel and Gorne, the Horned Lord, they all came south to conquer, but I’ve come with my tail between my legs to hide behind your Wall.” He touched the horn again. “If I sound the Horn of Winter, the Wall will fall. Or so the songs would have me believe. There are those among my people who want nothing more . . .”
    â€œBut once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “
what will stop the Others?
”
    Mance gave her a fond smile. “It’s a wise woman I’ve found. A true queen.” He turned back to Jon. “Go back and tell them to open their gate and let us pass. If they do, I will give them the horn, and the Wall will stand until the end of days.”
    Open the gate and let them pass
. Easy to say, but what must follow? Giants camping in the ruins of Winterfell? Cannibals in the