𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐘

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱɪxᴛᴇᴇɴ

𝟚

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They could see the fire in the night, glimmering against the side of the mountain like a fallen star. It burned redder than the other stars, and did not twinkle, though sometimes it flared up bright and sometimes dwindled down to no more than a distant spark, dull and faint. "Half a mile ahead and two thousand feet up." Torsten judged.

"Watchers in the Skirling Pass." Wondered the oldest among them. In the spring of his youth, he had been squire to a king, so the black brothers stilled called him Squire Dalbridge. "What is it Mance Rayder fears, I wonder?"

"If he knew they'd lit a fire, he'd flay the poor bastard." Said Ebben, a squat bald man muscled like a bag of rocks.

"Fire is life up here." Said Qhorin Halfhand. "But it can be death as well." By his command, they'd risked no open flames since entering the mountains. They ate cold salt beef, hard bread, and harder cheese. Slept clothed and huddled beneath a plie of cloaks and furs, grateful for the warmth of each other's bodies. It made Jon remember cold nights long ago at Winterfell, when he'd shared a bed with his brothers. Torsten remembered the cold nights as well, but he'd spent them alone.

"They'll have a horn." Said Stonesnake. Torsten could hear the wind kneeing as it shivered through the high pass above them.

"A horn they must not blow." Said the Halfhand. Stonesnake took the lead. He was a short wiry man, near fifty and grey of beard but stronger than he seemed, and he had the best night eyes of anyone Torsten had ever known. He needed them tonight. By day the mountains were blue grey, brushed with frost, but once the sun vanished behind the jagged peaks they turned black. Now the rising moon had limned them in white and silver.
They each took a long coil of rope. Stonesnake carried a bag of iron spikes as well, and a small hammer with its head wrapped in thick felt.
The black brothers moved through black shadows amidst black rocks, working their way up a steep, twisting trail as their breath frosted in the black air. Torsten felt almost naked without his mail, but he did not miss its weight. This was hard going, and slow. To hurry was to risk a broken ankle or worse. Stonesnake seemed to know where to put his feet as if by instinct, but Torsten needed to be more careful on the broken, uneven ground.
The Skirling Pass was really a series of passes, a long twisting course that went up around a succession of icy wind carved peaks and down through hidden valleys that seldom saw the sun. Apart from his companions, Torsten had glimpsed no living man since they'd left the ringwall behind and begun to make their way upwards. The Frostfangs were as cruel as any place the gods had made, and as inimical to men. The wind cut like a knife, and shrilled in the night like a mother mourning her slain children. What few trees they saw were stunted, grotesque things growing sideways out of cracks and fissures. Tumbled shelves of rock often overhung the trail, fringed with hanging icicles that looked like long white teeth from a distance.
Yet even so, Torsten Snow was not sorry he had come. There were wonderers as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of sheer stone cliffs. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell. Eagles nested in the heights and came down to hunt the valleys, circling effortlessly on great blue grey wings that seemed almost part of the sky. Once he had watched a shadow cat stalk a ram, flowing down the mountainside like liquid smoke until it was ready to pounce. He wished he could move as sure and silent as the shadow cat, and kill as quickly.
Longclaw was sheathed across Jon's back, but he might not have room to us it. Torsten carried a dagger for closer work.
For a long way, they stayed to the trail, following its twists and turns as it snaked along the side of the mountain, upwards, ever upwards. Sometimes the mountain folded back on itself and they lost sight of the fire, but soon or late it would always reappear.
In places they had to put their back to the cold stone and shuffle along sideways like a crab, inch by inch. Even where the track widened it was treacherous, there were cracks big enough to swallow a man's leg, rubble to stumble over, hollow places where the water pooled by day and froze hard by night.

"One step and then another." Torsten said softly, more to himself, but Jon was also thankful. He had not shaved since leaving the Fist of the First Men, and the hair on his lip was soon stiff with frost. Two hours into the climb, the wind kicked up so fiercely that it was all he could do to hunch down and cling to the rock, praying he would not be blown off the mountain. "One step and then another." He resumed when the gale subsided.
Soon they were high enough that looking down was best not considered. There was nothing below but yawning blackness, nothing above but moon and stars.

"The mountain is your mother." Stonesnake told them. "Cling to her, press your face up against her tits, and she won't drop you." The narrow track ended abruptly where a massive shoulder of black granite thrust out from the side of the mountain. After the bright moonlight, its shadow was so black that it felt like stepping into a cave. "Straight up here." The ranger said in a quiet voice. "We want to get above them." He peeled off his gloves, tucked them through his belt, tied one end of his rope around his waist, he then passed the rope down the line, Torsten was the last to wrap it around himself. "Follow me when the rope grows taut." The ranger did not wait for an answer but started at once, moving upwards with fingers and feet, faster than Torsten would have believed. The long rope unwound slowly. Torsten watched him closely, making note of how he went, and where he found each handhold, and when the last loop of hemp uncoiled, he took off his own gloves and followed, much more slowly.
Stonesnake had passed the rope around the smooth spike of a rock he was waiting on, but as Torsten reached him and the rest, he shook it loose and was off again. This time there was no convenient cleft when he reached the end of their tether, so he took out his felt headed hammer and drove a spike deep into a crack in the stone with a series of gentle taps. Soft as the sounds were, they echoed off the stone so loudly that Torsten and Jon winced with every blow, certain that the Wildling's must hear them too. When the spike was secure, Stonesnake secured the trope to it, and Torsten reminded himself to not look down.
Once his foot slipped as he put his weight on it and his heart stopped in his chest, but the gods were good, Jon had caught him.
The wall was broken two thirds of the way up by a crooked fissure of icy stone. Stonesnake reached down a hand to help Jon up, and Jon helped Torsten up. He had donned his gloves again, so both bastards did the same. The ranger moved his head to the left, and the two of them crawled along the shelf three hundred yards or more, until they could see the dull orange glow beyond the lip of the cliff.
The Wildlings had built their watch fire in a shallow depression above the narrowest part of the pass, with a sheer drop below and rock behind to shelter them from the worst of the wind. The same windbreak allowed the black brothers to crawl within a few feet of them, creeping along on their bellies until they were looking down on the men they must kill. One was asleep, curled up tight and buried beneath a great mound of skins. Torsten could see nothing of him but his hair, bright red in the firelight. The second sat close to the flames, feeding them twigs and branches and complaining of the wind in a querulous tone. The third watched the pass, though there was little to see, only a vast bowl of darkness ringed by the snowy shoulders of the mountains. It was the watcher who wore the horn.
For a moment, Torsten was uncertain. There were only supposed to be two. One was asleep, though. And whether there were two or three or twenty, he still must do what he had come to do. Stonesnake touched his arm, pointed at the Wildling with the horn, Torsten nodded in understanding while Jon nodded towards the one by the fire. It felt unusual, picking a man to kill. Half the days of his life had been spent with sword and shield, training for this moment. Stonesnake moved as fast as his namesake, leaping down on the Wildling in a rain of pebbles. Jon slid Longclaw from its sheath and followed, while Torsten grabbed his long dagger.
It all seemed to have happened in a heartbeat. Afterward, Torsten could admire the courage of the Wildlings who reached first for his horn instead of his blade. He got it to his lips, but before he could sound it Stonesnake knocked the horn aside with a swipe of his longsword. Torsten's man leapt to his feet, thrusting at his face with a burning brand. He could feel the heat of the flames as he flinched back. When the brand swung again, he bulled into it, swinging his dagger. The steel sheared through leather, fur, wool, and flesh, but when the Wildling fell he twisted, ripping the dagger from Torsten's grasp.
On the ground the sleeper sat up beneath his furs. Jon swung the bastard sword with both hands.
Torsten slid his dirk free, grabbing the man by the hair and jamming the point of the knife up under his chin as he reached for the horn.

"A girl." Torsten's hand froze at Jon's words.

"A watcher." Said Stonesnake. "A Wildling. Finish her." Torsten looked over towards her, he could see fear and fire in her eyes. Blood ran down her white throat from where the point of Longclaw pricked her.
His thoughts were pulled away from the girl as the back of the man's head lodged itself into Torsten's face. The snap that followed made blood shoot from his nose, and before Torsten knew it he was falling.

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