As of instinct, Ygritte flipped backwards and miraculously dodged a stray arrow coming her way. The arrow brushed against the young woman's skin so smoothly she could feel the arrow's nimble feathers tickle her soft cheek.
The arrow continued into the neck of a large Thenn behind her, biting into his flesh. He was a fleshly, bearded man clad in bronze chainmail but the armor hadn't covered his neck area. That proved to be his death. Ygritte watched in absolute horror as he fell onto his stomach and rolled around on the castle pavement while coughing and gurgling until he finally drowned in his thick, scarlet blood.
Despite the man's horrific death, Ygritte felt a surge of energy rush through her veins. It roared through her body like a summer thunderstorm, down her back, through her arms and into the very tips of fingers. She was dancing on the fine line between of life and death as if balancing on a swords's edge. The dance had almost ended there. In reality, she could have been the one lying on the stones, not the Thenn raider, and heaved her last breaths alone and surrounded by the raging fire, singing steel and endless crying. It could have been her. It had been close to being her.
The spearwife let out a shout of renewed vigour and fired a flint arrow off her curved shortbow. It lunged itself into the nearest crow. He was a young crow caught off guard. He was a thin boy not much younger than herself barely having the stubbles of a beard. He fought desperately to remove the arrow from his pierced body but Ygritte was over him in an instant and slit his throat.
Finding proper ground, the archer continued firing off arrows off into the distance. A well placed shot sent a crow falling from a wall, rolling down a roof and onto the battlements below. An older, broad-shouldered crow, who was holding his hand over a flesh wound while sternly fending off hordes of free folk, had an arrow sent to the chest, then his back and finally through his head. He fell over with a last gasp. Ygritte kept loosing her arrows at the Night's Watch, continuously pressuring the crows into submission.
The attack on Castle Black was a raging chaos. Ygritte had spent most of her adult years in a raiding party and killing was nothing new to her. But unlike the raids Ygritte was familiar with, this was an actual battle. A siege. The group of Thenns and free folk had not come to Castle Black to take armor, weapons or food. They had come to slaughter crows and to open the gates for Mance Rayder and his host
Unlike the other raiders, Ygritte was for a certain someone. She was at Castle Black to kill the blackest crow of them all: Jon Snow.
The boy crow had deceived her, manipulated her and used her as a means to get the free folk to trust him. He had stolen her, then pretended to love her and allowed her love him. And then he had betrayed her, his own wife. There were few sins greater.
Ygritte hadn't slept since Jon Snow flew home to his beloved crow's nest at the Wall. She hadn't had any appetite either. The past days had been an inferno of hatred and anger, mostly directed at herself for being foolish enough to love a crow. It was this anger which Ygritte now let out. With every arrow loosened from her bowstring, she imagined it was Jon Snow she killed. And even if it wasn't, hopefully it would be a loss which would cause him endless grief in whatever short amount of time he had left to live.
Consumed by rage, the spearwife barely felt it when a shield was slammed into her face. She only discovered she had fallen when she stared into the starry night sky above. How many nights had she not laid with Jon Snow beneath a bear fur and looked into the night sky while they talked about everything? Then they would talk and fuck until sunrise only to be wonderfully tired and spent the following day. Blinking frantically, she barely realized the shield-carrying crow lifting his sword over his head to strike at her before he was cut down by the raider Quort. The crow fell to the side and the child raider reached his hand out so Ygritte could take it. Before she could arise, an arrow tore into the back of Quort's head, penetrating it completely, and dark red blood splattered over Ygritte's frightened face.
She wiped the blood off of her and hovered over the lifeless boy. He had been a father and now he was dead. So many Free Folk laid dead across the castle grounds. She wanted to cry but eventually managed to stand up and run when a group of crows descended on her like carrion birds.
The young woman fumbled backwards, dodging arrows and rocks, until she finally regrouped with the Thenns and remaining free folk raiders. There was only a quarter left and Ygritte couldn't see Errok, Del or Bodger anywhere. Even Styr was gone. The thinning group of raiders was eventually surrounded by crows and pressed further and further against the dark walls of Castle Black.
Lashing out in wild attempts, a bold Thenn with two arrows in his back charged into the lines of crows as he roared. He managed to brutalize two grown men before they eventually brought him to the ground with steel-tipped spears. Ygritte couldn't believe she had scaled the majestic Wall only to die at the hands of crows. As all hope seemed to fade away, a dreadful silence fell upon the raiders like the mild snow from above, until only the cries of dying men were left.
"Drop your weapons," someone commanded and Ygritte immediately recognized the traitor's deceiving voice. He was sounded exhausted and forlorn. "Drop your weapons, free folk. It is over."
Jon Snow appeared from behind the wall of crows. He wore bandages around his leg and his face was a mess of blood and grime. The spearwife glared at him but he would not meet her eyes.
"Put them in chains," Jon commanded, "and search them for hidden weapons."
Ygritte wanted to leap at him, tear his heart like he had torn out hers and feed it to him until his cheeks bust. She wanted to tear his eyes out and shove them so far up his arse, he could see what an empty, heartless piece of shit he truly was. But she was having her hands put in iron shackles instead. She wanted to yell at Jon Snow and call him a turncloak but she didn't want to give him the pleasure of showing how much she had cared.
It was a horrible feeling to have her hands in chains. She felt like a beast but wouldn't be surprised if the crows touched themselves to the thought of being put in chains. Punish me, mi'lord, Ygritte imagined they'd beg at night, while a crow boy, no older than Quort had been, chained her wrists behind her back.
She and the sixteen raiders who had survived the attack on Castle Black were put in line and ordered forward. Some of the crows spit on them as they walked. Couldn't they just bring them to the execution-stump and not force them to march in a line like kneeler soldiers?
The raiding party was led to a building made out of square pieces of stone. It was a very strange sight to see rocks stacked so high on each and Ygritte wondered why they did not fall down. The walls were at least the size of two men and she would have loved to stand and admire it, along with the rest of Castle Black, but her captors led them inside. The room was empty except for a hole in the ground which Ygritte estimated to being a tunnel entrance. The crows meant to execute them underground? That was cruel and barbaric. Even the free folk let their prisoners die under the open sky.
The wet tunnels beneath Castle Black were pitch black except for the light of a few torches. Even so, the ice-covered stones seemed to radiate an unnatural coldness, which Ygritte couldn't begin to describe. The young woman wondered if she was really beneath the Wall itself. She couldn't see Jon anywhere and assumed he wouldn't be there for her execution. Maybe he had too much guilt in him. Maybe he hadn't cared as much for her as she hoped he would. Had she really been nothing to him? Nothing at all?
Without any warning, the young woman was shoved into a dark, cold room. She fell onto the floor, hurting her knees, and as she was about to rise, the cold stone stuck to her furs. She leapt at her captors like a shewolf, but a large wooden door with iron bars was shut in her face. No, Ygritte thought as she furiously began to knock on the door and pulled at the iron bars. Not imprisonment! Then she would rather be executed.
"Let me out! Let me out, you cravens! Come back here and kill me!"
None of the crows responded. They continued to imprison the raiders in the cold cells. Ygritte could hear free folk and Thenn from the other cells banging on their doors as well. She kept slamming her closed fist into the cold wood until she couldn't feel her hand anymore and slowly sank to her knees, feeling exhausted. She wiped blood, sweat and grime off her face and rested her back against the freezing cell door.
Captured. What were they now? The unfree folk?
Ygritte knew what happened to women who were captured in battle. Jon had told her the Night Watch wasn't allowed to touch girls, but she doubted any of the other crows were as uptight and true to their vows as her husband was. Without her weapons, she decided she needed to bite the cock off the first crow who tried to have his way with her.
Looking around the small space, Ygritte found a course, filthy blanket on the floor and wrapped herself in it. If it hadn't it been for the warm, stitched-up arrangement of pelts and rabbit furs the young woman wore, she knew she would most likely have frozen to death. The cell was so cold, she couldn't tell if ice ran down the walls like tears or if the walls themselves were really made of ice.
The spearwife closed her eyes. She leaned against a freezing wall.
Jon Snow had left her.
He had been hesitating to kill the old man Del had spotted, so much so that Ygritte was forced to kill him for him. Then a gigantic direwolf had leapt at them from out of nowhere and attacked. In the battle which ensured, Jon Snow had fled on the old man's horse while Ygritte had called for him and even tried to shoot at the horse, but he had left her behind.
Jon Snow had been a crow all along. Ygritte knew he was never loyal to the free folk but thought he would be loyal to her. But even as they had laid naked, sweating and panting together, he had never really taken the black cloak off. She cursed him to eternity.
Being caged in darkness was the worst thing Ygritte had ever experienced. She couldn't tell if minutes or hours passed. Her teeth were chattering as she laid in the warmest corner of the cell, which was still unfathomable cold, and she watched the flickering light of the torches on the other side of the iron bars. The flame danced its own hopeless dance in the cold breeze that surged through the prison corridor.
Time in the cell was relatively quiet. Most of the free folk kept to themselves, probably feeling as ashamed as Ygritte did with being imprisoned. They sung a single song and whenever a pair of crows passed by, they hurled insults at them.
Ygritte silently kept to her corner. She would rather save her strength for the turncloak Jon Snow.
She must have fallen asleep since she awoke when there was someone outside her cell door, shoving in a huge, fat key. The free folk were talking loudly and for a second she thought they were coming to execute her. But unless they started with her, there were still too many voices left for them to have begun the slaughter.
Four men entered the young woman's ice prison. They all wore black cloaks and wielded a one-handed steel swords and a torch in their hands. Ygritte stared furiously at them as they approached. There was something miserable over them. Like it was the first time they had seen a woman. They were probably going to take turns. Ygritte prepared herself to fight.
Then a fifth man entered. He was older and fatter and carried a piece of smooth wood with a circular metal disc on top of it. The disc had a white porridge on it. There was also a tin cup. They weren't going to rape her. Yet.
"Your hands," one of the crows said. He was tall and had red mustache.
Ygritte put her hands forward and they released her from her chains.
The old crow with the food placed it on the ground and shoved it towards her with the end of his boot. Ygritte quickly grabbed the disc and scooped as much the porridge into her mouth as she could, using her hand. It was very salted and felt like it would stick to her ribs. The crows locked the door behind her and continued feeding their prisoners.
Then clean water was the best of it. She hadn't even noticed how thirsty she was. As she finished eating, the spearwife licked her fingers clean and returned to the corner. She was almost immediately hit by a wave of nausea and vomited the entire meal through her stomach and into the wooden bucket in the opposite corner which she was supposed to piss and shit in. She coughed and gasped between each stream of harmful bile until she finally felt her body go limp and collapsed onto the floor, completely drained.
She then curled up into a ball and started to cry.