The King of Winters

Chapter - 79

"A year ago Rhaegar was the only king in the Seven Kingdoms, and the realm was at peace," declared Jarman Buckwell, the square stolid man who commanded the scouts. "Much can change in a year's time."

"One thing hasn't changed," Ser Mallador Locke insisted. "Fewer wildlings means fewer worries. I won't mourn them, whatever might have happened to them. Raiders and murderers, the lot of them. We don't have to mourn them, only have to kill them."

Jaehaerys didn't mourn the wildlings for what might have happened of them. He only mourned for what they might have become. The blue eyes like frozen stars, the grasping dead, black hands, were still fresh on his memory. What evil power that had made Othor move might have found these wildlings as well and Jaehaerys was not so excited about meeting another moving corpse whose sole intent is to kill him.

The prince heard a rustling from the red leaves above. Two branches parted, and he glimpsed a little man moving from limb to limb as easily as a squirrel. Bedwyck stood no more than five feet tall, but the grey streaks in his hair showed his age. The Giant sat in a fork of the tree over their heads and said, "There's water to the north. Might be a lake, I think so. A few flint hills rising to the west, not very high. Nothing else to see, my lords."

"We might camp here tonight," Smallwood suggested.

"I don't like it," Ser Gwayne said from beside him, low enough so only Jaehaerys could hear him. "We should leave."

The Old Bear glanced up, searching for a glimpse of sky through the pale limbs and red leaves of the weirwood. "Giant, how much daylight remains to us?"

"Three hours, my lord."

"We'll press on north," Mormont decided. "If we reach this lake, we can make camp by the shore, perchance catch a few fish. Jaehaerys, fetch me paper, it's past time I wrote Maester Aemon."

Jaehaerys found parchment, quill, and ink in his saddlebag and brought them to the Lord Commander. At Whitetree, Mormont scrawled. The fourth village. All empty. The wildlings are gone. "Find Tarly and see that he gets this on its way," he said as he handed Jaehaerys the message. When he whistled, his raven came flapping down to land on his horse's head. "Corn," the raven suggested, bobbing. The horse whickered.

Jaehaerys left them all beneath the weirwood and mounted his garron, wheeled him about to find Samwell Tarly. Beyond the shade of the great weirwood the men of the Night's Watch stood beneath lesser trees, tending their horses, chewing strips of salt beef, laughing and talking. When the command was given to move out again, the talk died, and they climbed back into their saddles. Jarman Buckwell rode out with his scouts first. Then went the vanguard under Thoren Smallwood, a proper double column of mounted riders. Jaehaerys rode with the Old Bear in the main force after them, with Ser Mallador Locke leading the baggage train and packhorses, and finally Ser Ottyn Wythers and the rear guard. Two hundred men all told, with half again as many mounts.

By day they followed game trails and streambeds, the "ranger's roads" that led them ever deeper into the wilderness of leaf and root. At night they camped beneath a starry sky. The black brothers had left Castle Black in good spirits, joking and trading tales, but of late the brooding silence of the wood seemed to have sombered them all. Jests had grown fewer and tempers shorter. No one would admit to being afraid—they were men of the Night's Watch, after all—but Jaehaerys could feel the unease. Four empty villages, no wildlings anywhere, even the game seemingly fled. The haunted forest had never seemed more haunted, even veteran rangers agreed.

As he rode, Jaehaerys peeled off his glove to look at his hands. Despite having gotten them on fire, his flesh had mostly been unharmed. He remembered how his father had once told him that he was the blood of the dragon and hence fire couldn't hurt a dragon. Jaehaerys had been quite hesitant to check it out in the past but he had done it at Castle Black not out of interest but out of necessity. Only fire seemed to triumph against the wight. They would need the help of his brother Aegon and his dragon if there was an army of wights roaming these lands. And the help of his aunt Dany and her dragon as well. They were far away from Jaehaerys though. And now, he was alone without his own dragon. Alone and with a sword. He had to keep his sword close and trust in the strength of his arm now more than ever. A man needed his sword beyond the Wall.

Jaehaerys found Samwell Tarly with the other stewards, watering his horses. He had three to tend: his own mount, and two packhorses, each bearing a large wire-and-wicker cage full of ravens. The birds flapped their wings at his approach and screamed at him through the bars. A few shrieks sounded suspiciously like words. "Have you been teaching them to talk?" he asked Sam.

"A few words. Three of them can say snow."

"One bird croaking dark words was bad enough," said Jaehaerys, "and snow is the last thing a black brother wants to hear about now." Snow often meant death in the north.

"Was there anything in Whitetree?"

"Bones, ashes, and empty houses." Jaehaerys handed Sam the roll of parchment. "Lord Commander Mormont wants to send word back to Maester Aemon."

Sam took a bird from one of the cages, stroked its feathers, attached the message, and said, "Fly home now, brave one. Home." The raven quorked something unintelligible back at him, and Sam tossed it into the air. Flapping, it beat its way skyward through the trees. "I wish he could carry me with him."

"Still?"

"Well," said Sam, "yes, but . . . I'm not as frightened as I was, truly. The first night, every time I heard someone getting up to make water, I thought it was wildlings creeping in to slit my throat. I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I might never open them again, only . . . well . . . dawn came after all." He managed a wan smile. "I may be craven, but I'm not stupid. I'm sore and my back aches from riding and from sleeping on the ground, but I'm hardly scared at all. Look." He held out a hand for Jaehaerys to see how steady it was. "I've been working on my maps."

The world is strange, he thought then. Only a year ago he had been at Winterfell, warm within the hot walls of the castle. Now there was a King who ruled from Winterfell while Jaehaerys is a black brother of the Night's Watch. And only a few months ago, two hundred brave men had left the Wall, and the only one who was not growing more fearful was Sam, the self-confessed coward who had been the one who was scared the most about the great ranging of the Old Bear. "We'll make a ranger of you yet," he joked. "Next thing, you'll want to be an outrider like Grenn. Shall I speak to the Old Bear?"

"Please don't do it!" Sam said shivering. He pulled up the hood of his enormous black cloak and clambered awkwardly back onto his horse. It was a plow horse, big and slow and clumsy, but better able to bear his weight than the little garrons the rangers rode. "I had hoped we might stay the night in the village," he said wistfully. "It would be nice to sleep under a roof again."

"Too few roofs for all of us." Jaehaerys said as he mounted again, but he didn't tell him why they had thought it to be too dangerous to stay there. He gave Sam a parting smile, and rode off. The column was well under way, so he swung wide around the village to avoid the worst of the congestion. He had seen enough of Whitetree.

They should be running low on supplies as well, Jaehaerys thought as he rode past the baggage train. The foragers Thoren Smallwood sent out after game always returned empty handed. The woods were as empty as the villages, Dywen had told him one night around the fire. "We're a large party," Jaehaerys had said. "The game's probably been frightened away by all the noise we make on the march."

"Frightened away by something, no doubt," Dywen said.

He could think of something which might have frightened them off, but he had stayed silent not wanting the men to be more unnerved than they actually were. He caught up to Mormont as he was wending his way around a hawthorn thicket. "Is the bird away?" the Old Bear asked.

"Yes, my lord. Sam is teaching them to talk."

The Old Bear snorted. "He'll regret that. Damned things make a lot of noise, but they never say a thing worth hearing."

They rode in silence, until Jaehaerys said, "If we are to find all these villages empty, then they could have very well been empty when Benjen Stark found them."

"And he would have made it his purpose to learn why," Lord Mormont said looking straight at the road. "There might well be someone or something that does not want us to know the truth behind these disappearances. Well, we'll be three hundred when Qhorin joins us from the Shadowtower. Whatever enemy waits out here will not find us so easy to deal with. We will find them, I promise you."

Or they will find us, thought Jaehaerys.