“We should start back,” Garedxy urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.
“The wildlings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy asked with just the hint of a smile.
Garedxy did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.”
“Are they dead?” Roycexy asked softly. “What proof have we?”
“Willxy saw them,” Garedxy said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.”
Willxy had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put in.
“My wet nurse said the same thing, Willxy,” Roycexy replied. “Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead.” His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.
“We have a long ride before us,” Garedxy pointed out. “Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling.”
Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy glanced at the sky with disinterest. “It does that every day about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Garedxy?”
Willxy could see the tightness around Garedxy’s mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Garedxy had spent forty years in the Night’s Watchxy, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Willxy could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.
Willxy shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wallxy. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wallxy, hard on the track of a band of Wildlingxy raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Willxy had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Garedxy had felt it too. Willxy wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wallxy, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.
Especially not a commander like this one.
Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Willxy and Garedxy on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymarxy had been a Sworn Brotherxy of the Night’s Watchxy for less than half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was concerned.
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. “Bet he killed them all himself, he did,” Garedxy told the barracks over wine, “twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior.” They had all shared the laugh.
It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Willxy reflected as he sat shivering atop his garron. Garedxy must have felt the same.
“Mormontxy said as we should track them, and we did,” Garedxy said. “They’re dead. They shan’t trouble us no more. There’s hard riding before us. I don’t like this weather. If it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow’s the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice storm, my lord?”
The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Willxy had ridden with the knight long enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that. “Tell me again what you saw, Willxy. All the details. Leave nothing out.”
Willxy had been a hunter before he joined the Night’s Watchxy. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallisterxy 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 Willxy, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
“The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,” Willxy 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.”
“Did you see any blood?”
“Well, no,” Willxy admitted.
“Did you see any weapons?”
“Some 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.”
“Did you make note of the position of the bodies?”
Willxy shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like.”
“Or sleeping,” Roycexy suggested.
“Fallen,” Willxy 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.
“You have a chill?” Roycexy asked.
“Some,” Willxy muttered. “The wind, m’lord.”
The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frost-fallen leaves whispered past them, and Roycexy’s destrier moved restlessly. “What do you think might have killed these men, Garedxy?” Ser Waymarxy asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable cloak.
“It was the cold,” Garedxy 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 Willxy, 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.”
“Such eloquence, Garedxy,” Ser Waymarxy observed. “I never suspected you had it in you.”
“I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Garedxy pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymarxy 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 Waymarxy shrugged. “You ought dress more warmly, Garedxy.”
Garedxy glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where Maesterxy Aemonxyxy 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.
“If Garedxy said it was the cold …” Willxy began.
“Have you drawn any watches this past week, Willxy?”
“Yes, m’lord.” There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the man driving at?
“And how did you find the Wallxy?”
“Weeping,” Willxy said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. “They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wallxy was weeping. It wasn’t cold enough.”
Roycexy 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 fire.” The knight’s smile was cocksure. “Willxy, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself.”
And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and honor bound them to obey.
Willxy went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through the undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy came next, his great black destrier snorting impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. Garedxy brought up the rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode.
Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old bruise, then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Willxy was grateful for the light.
“We can make a better pace than this, surely,” Roycexy said when the moon was full risen.
“Not with this horse,” Willxy said. Fearxy had made him insolent. “Perhaps my lord would care to take the lead?”
Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy did not deign to reply.
Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.
Willxy pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and dismounted.
“Why are you stopping?” Ser Waymarxy asked.
“Best go the rest of the way on foot, m’lord. It’s just over that ridge.”
Roycexy paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A cold wind whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind like something half-alive.
“There’s something wrong here,” Garedxy muttered.
The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. “Is there?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Garedxy asked. “Listen to the darkness.”
Willxy could feel it. Four years in the Night’s Watchxy, and he had never been so afraid. What was it?
“Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Garedxy?” When Garedxy did not answer, Roycexy slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it. Willxy doubted it had ever been swung in anger.
“The trees press close here,” Willxy warned. “That sword will tangle you up, m’lord. Better a knife.”
“If I need instruction, I will ask for it,” the young lord said. “Garedxy, stay here. Guard the horses.”
Garedxy dismounted. “We need a fire. I’ll see to it.”
“How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is the last thing we want.”
“There’s some enemies a fire will keep away,” Garedxy said. “Bears and direwolves and … and other things …”
Ser Waymarxy’s mouth became a hard line. “No fire.”
Garedxy’s hood shadowed his face, but Willxy could see the hard glitter in his eyes as he stared at the knight. For a moment he was afraid the older man would go for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but Willxy would not have given an iron bob for the lordling’s life if Garedxy pulled it from its scabbard.
Finally Garedxy looked down. “No fire,” he muttered, low under his breath.
Roycexy took it for acquiescence and turned away. “Lead on,” he said to Willxy.
Willxy threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Willxy made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.
The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Willxy had known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Willxy slid in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on the empty clearing below.
His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago.
They were gone. All the bodies were gone.
“Godsxy!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.
“Get down!” Willxy whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong.”
Roycexy did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. “Your dead men seem to have moved camp, Willxy.”
Willxy’s voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped on the axe. A huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it last, untouched. A valuable weapon …
“On your feet, Willxy,” Ser Waymarxy commanded. “There’s no one here. I won’t have you hiding under a bush.”
Reluctantly, Willxy obeyed.
Ser Waymarxy looked him over with open disapproval. “I am not going back to Castle Blackxy a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men.” He glanced around. “Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire.”
Willxy turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fearxy filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.
Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Willxy heard uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.
The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl.
Willxy saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Willxy opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all?
“Willxy, where are you?” Ser Waymarxy called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Willxy felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”
It was cold. Shivering, Willxy clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek.
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Roycexy. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.
Willxy heard the breath go out of Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy in a long hiss. “Come no farther,” the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy’s. He threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very cold.
The Otherxy slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Willxy had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Willxy knew it was sharper than any razor.
Ser Waymarxy met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Willxy thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watchxy.
The Otherxy halted. Willxy saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.
They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymarxy may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Willxy had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.
The pale sword came shivering through the air.
Ser Waymarxy met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Roycexy checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.
Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.
Again and again the swords met, until Willxy wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymarxy was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Otherxy’s danced with pale blue light.
Then Roycexy’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Bloodxy welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymarxy’s fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red.
The Otherxy said something in a language that Willxy did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.
Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy found his fury. “For Robertxy!” he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Otherxy’s parry was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Roycexy went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Bloodxy welled between his fingers.
The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swordsxy rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Willxy closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.
When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge below was empty.
He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down.
Roycexy’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.
He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Willxy knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Garedxy would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormontxy or Maesterxy Aemonxyxy. Would Garedxy still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.
Willxy rose. Ser Waymarxy Roycexyxy stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Willxy closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.