A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

“We’re not like to find another place as strong. We’ll
carry water, and make certain we are well supplied,” Jon knew better than to
argue. So the command was given, and the brothers of the Night’s Watch raised
their camp behind the stone ring the First Men had made. Black tents sprouted
like mushrooms after a rain, and blankets and bedrolls covered the bare ground.
Stewards tethered the garrons in long lines, and saw them fed and watered.
Foresters took their axes to

the trees in the waning afternoon light to harvest enough wood to see them
through the night. A score of builders set to clearing brush, digging latrines,
and untying their bundles of fire-hardened stakes. “I will have every opening
in the ringwall ditched and staked before dark,” the Old Bear had
commanded.
    Once he’d put up the Lord Commander’s tent and seen to their horses, Jon Snow
descended the hill in search of Ghost. The direwolf came at once, all in
silence. One moment Jon was striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting,
alone in the green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet; the next, the
great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning mist.
    But when they reached the ringfort, Ghost balked again. He padded forward
warily to sniff at the gap in the stones, and then retreated, as if he did not
like what he’d smelled. Jon tried to grab him by the scruff of his neck and
haul him bodily inside the ring, no easy task; the wolf weighed as much as he
did, and was stronger by far. “Ghost, what’s
wrong
with you?” It
was not like him to be so unsettled. In the end Jon had to give it up. “As you
will,” he told the wolf. “Go, hunt.” The red eyes watched him as he made his
way back through the mossy stones.
    They ought to be safe here. The hill offered commanding views, and the slopes
were precipitous to the north and west and only slightly more gentle to the
east. Yet as the dusk deepened and darkness seeped into the hollows between the
trees, Jon’s sense of foreboding grew.
This is the haunted forest,
he
told himself.
Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First

Men. This was their place, once.
    â€œStop acting the boy,” he told himself. Clambering atop the piled rocks, Jon
gazed off toward the setting sun. He could see the light shimmering like
hammered gold off the surface of the Milkwater as it curved away to the south.
Upriver the land was more rugged, the dense forest giving way to a series of
bare stony hills that rose high and wild to the north and west. On the horizon
stood the mountains like a great shadow, range on range of them receding into
the blue-grey distance, their jagged peaks sheathed eternally in snow. Even
from afar they looked vast and cold and inhospitable.
    Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on
as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand
shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered
through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had
begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of
branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the
forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and
unknowable.
    Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving
under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood,
concealed beneath those trees.
Anything.
How would they ever know? He
stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed
mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest.
    â€œJon?” Samwell Tarly called up. “I thought it looked like you. Are you
well?”
    â€œWell enough.” Jon hopped down. “How did you fare today?”
    â€œWell. I fared well. Truly.”
    Jon was not about to share his disquiet with his friend, not when Samwell Tarly
was at last beginning to find his courage. “The Old Bear means to wait here
for Qhorin Halfhand and the men from the Shadow Tower.”
    â€œIt seems a strong place,” said Sam. “A ringfort of the First Men. Do you
think there were battles fought here?”
    â€œNo doubt. You’d best get a bird ready. Mormont will want to send back
word.”
    â€œI wish I could send them all. They hate