There's six of them out there – seven, technically, but none of them like looking at the corpse. The four rangers bear the pall through the clumped-together snow as best they can while still keeping their sword hands free. The snow on the ground is joined by the flurries that cut through the air like little sparkling diamonds as the little party makes its way beyond the Wall.
The maester, Tarly, follows behind the rangers, a dagger tucked at his hip. Next to him comes the dead man's wife, tan yet somehow pale at the same time, her hair shockingly, shockingly blond.
Finally, they reach their destination: the towering weirwood tree that makes up the godswood beyond the Wall. The rangers set the bier down, two refocusing on the whipping snows even as the other two draw shovels and begin to dig.
The maester and the wife watch, and if there are tears in the wife's eyes, no one who notices says a word. The two rangers finish their digging and without a word they step back to join their brethren even as the maester steps forward to begin his eulogy.
Up to this point the wife has retained her composure, standing as tall and proud as a girl of seventeen can. Then the maester's words hit her ears, the traditional beginning of the end for a man of the Watch and she cries anew, her sobbing the only other noise as Tarly's words falter and trip through the air:
"And now his watch is ended."
The wife's sobs turn into sniffles, then into nothing as she composes herself. The four rangers heft the casket off the bier and set it down into the ditch, piling dirt and snow and ice back atop it as best they can.
Satisfied that they've buried the man as best they can, the rangers set about dismantling the bier to use as firewood and keep the others at bay from this man as best they can. The fire crackles and sputters as they get it alight, choking slightly as bits of snow drift into it, but ultimately surviving to rise again.
For how long, though, is anyone's guess.