A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out.”
    Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night’s Watch. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters’ own bucks, and it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
    â€œThe camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,” Will said. “I got close as I dared. There’s eight of them, men and women both. No children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow’s pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still.”
    â€œDid you see any blood?”
    â€œWell, no,” Will admitted.
    â€œDid you see any weapons?”
    â€œSome swords, a few bows. One man had an axe.Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”
    â€œDid you make note of the position of the bodies?”
    Will shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like.”
    â€œOr sleeping,” Royce suggested.
    â€œFallen,” Will insisted. “There’s one woman up an ironwood, half-hid in the branches. A far-eyes.” He smiled thinly. “I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that she wasn’t moving neither.” Despite himself, he shivered.
    â€œYou have a chill?” Royce asked.
    â€œSome,” Will muttered. “The wind, m’lord.”
    The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frost-fallen leaves whispered past them, and Royce’s destrier moved restlessly. “What do you think might have killed these men, Gared?” Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable cloak.
    â€œIt was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like.”
    â€œSuch eloquence, Gared,” Ser Waymar observed. “I never suspected you had it in you.”
    â€œI’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face.”
    Ser Waymar shrugged. “You ought dress more warmly, Gared.”
    Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. “We’ll see how warm you can dress when the winter comes.” He pulled up his hood and hunched over his garron, silent and sullen.
    â€œIf Gared said it was the cold …” Will began.
    â€œHave you drawn any watches this past week, Will?”
    â€œYes, m’lord.” There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the man driving at?
    â€œAnd how did you find the Wall?”
    â€œWeeping,” Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. “They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn’t cold enough.”
    Royce nodded. “Bright lad. We’ve had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of making