A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

wolfswood, chariots sweeping across the barrowlands, free folk stealing the daughters of shipwrights and silversmiths from White Harbor and fishwives off the Stony Shore? “Are you a true king?” Jon asked suddenly.
    â€œI’ve never had a crown on my head or sat my arse on a bloody throne, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mance replied. “My birth is as low as a man’s can get, no septon’s ever smeared my head with oils, I don’t own any castles, and my queen wears furs and amber, not silk and sapphires. I am my own champion, my own fool, and my own harpist. You don’t become King-beyond-the-Wall because your father was. The free folk won’t follow a name, and they don’t care which brother was born first. They follow fighters. When I left the Shadow Tower there were five men making noises about how they might be the stuff of kings. Tormund was one, the Magnar another. The other three I slew, when they made it plain they’d sooner fight than follow.”
    â€œYou can kill your enemies,” Jon said bluntly, “but can you rule your friends? If we let your people pass, are you strong enough to make them keep the king’s peace and obey the laws?”
    â€œWhose laws? The laws of Winterfell and King’s Landing?” Mance laughed. “When we want laws we’ll make our own. You can keep your king’s justice too, and your king’s taxes. I’m offering you the horn, not our freedom. We will not kneel to you.”
    â€œWhat if we refuse the offer?” Jon had no doubt that they would. The Old Bear might at least have listened, though he would have balked at the notion of letting thirty or forty thousand wildlings loose on the Seven Kingdoms. But Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt would dismiss the notion out of hand.
    â€œIf you refuse,” Mance Rayder said, “Tormund Giantsbane will sound the Horn of Winter three days hence, at dawn.”
    He could carry the message back to Castle Black and tell them of the horn, but if he left Mance still alive Lord Janos and Ser Alliser would seize on that as proof that he was a turncloak. A thousand thoughts flickered through Jon’s head.
If I can destroy the horn, smash it here and now
. . . but before he could begin to think that through, he heard the low moan of some other horn, made faint by the tent’s hide walls. Mance heard it too. Frowning, he went to the door. Jon followed.
    The warhorn was louder outside. Its call had stirred the wildling camp. Three Hornfoot men jogged past, carrying long spears. Horses were whinnying and snorting, giants roaring in the Old Tongue, and even the mammoths were restless.
    â€œOutrider’s horn,” Tormund told Mance.
    â€œSomething’s coming.” Varamyr sat crosslegged on the half-frozen ground, his wolves circled restlessly around him. A shadow swept over him, and Jon looked up to see the eagle’s blue-grey wings. “Coming, from the east.”
    When the dead walk, walls and stakes and swords mean nothing
, he remembered.
You cannot fight the dead, Jon Snow. No man knows that half so well as me
.
    Harma scowled. “East? The wights should be behind us.”
    â€œEast,” the skinchanger repeated. “
Something’s coming
.”
    â€œThe Others?” Jon asked.
    Mance shook his head. “The Others never come when the sun is up.” Chariots were rattling across the killing ground, jammed with riders waving spears of sharpened bone. The king groaned. “Where the bloody hell do they think they’re going? Quenn, get those fools back where they belong. Someone bring my horse. The mare, not the stallion. I’ll want my armor too.” Mance glanced suspiciously at the Wall. Atop the icy parapets, the straw soldiers stood collecting arrows, but there was no sign of any other activity. “Harma, mount up your raiders. Tormund, find your sons and give me a triple line of spears.”
    â€œAye,” said Tormund, striding off.
    The mousy little skinchanger closed his eyes and said, “I see them. They’re coming along the streams and game trails . . .”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œMen. Men on horses. Men in steel and men in black.”
    â€œCrows.” Mance made the word a curse. He turned on Jon. “Did my old brothers think they’d catch me with my breeches down if they attacked while we were talking?”
    â€œIf they planned an attack they never