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, Brian judged, and perfectly placed to see anything moving in the pass below.
"Watchers in the Skirling Pass," said Harker. "What is it Mance Radar fears, I wonder?"
"If he knew they'd lit a fire, he'd flay the poor bastards," said Borba.
"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, and slept clothed and huddled beneath a pile of cloaks and furs, grateful for each other's warmth.
"They'll have a horn," said Stonesnake.
The Halfhand said, "A horn they must not blow."
"That's a long cruel climb by night," Borba said as he eyed the distant spark through a cleft in the rocks that sheltered them. The sky was cloudless, the jagged mountains rising black on black until the very top, where their cold crowns of snow and ice shone palely in the moonlight.
"And a longer fall," said Qhorin Halfhand. "Two men, I think. There are like to be two up there, sharing the watch."
"Me." The ranger they called Stonesnake had already shown that he was the best climber among them. It would have to be him.
"And me," said Brian.
"When it's done, throw down a burning brand," said Qhorin. "We'll come when we see it fall."
"No better time to start than now," said Stonesnake.
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.
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 Brian 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 were black. Now the rising moon had limned them in gold and silver.
Brian and Stonesnake moved through black shadows amidst black rocks, working their way up a steep, twisting trail as their breath frosted in the black air. It was hard going, and slow. To hurry here was to risk a broken ankle or worse. Stonesnake seemed to know where to put his feet as if by instinct, but Brian 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, Brian had glimpsed no living man since they'd left the wood behind and begun to make their way upward. The Frostfangs were as cruel as any place the gods had made, and as inimical to men. The wind cut like a knife up here, 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, Brian was not sorry he'd come. There were wonders here as well. He had seen sunlight flashing on icy thin waterfalls as they plunged over the lips of icy stone cliffs, and a mountain meadow full of autumn wildflowers, blue coldsnaps and bright scarlet frostfires and stands of piper's grass in russet and gold. He had peered down ravines so deep and black they seemed certain to end in some hell, and he had gone over a wind eaten bridge of natural stone with nothing but sky to either side. 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 shadowcat stalk a ram, flowing down the mountainside like liquid smoke until it was ready to pounce.
"Now it's our turn to pounce," Brian said to himself. He wished he could move as sure and silent as that shadowcat, and kill as quickly. A sword was sheathed across his back, but he might not have room to use it. He might have to just tear the wildlings' throats out with his teeth. They would have weapons as well, and he was not armored. He wondered who would prove the shadowcat by night's end, and who the ram.
For a long way they stayed to the trail, following its twists and turns as it snaked along the side of the mountain, upward, ever upward. Sometimes the mountain folded back on itself and they lost sight of the fire, but soon or late it would always reappear. In places Brian had to put his 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," Brian told himself. "One step and then another, and I will not fall."
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. "One step and then another, and I will not fall."
Soon they were high enough so 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 had told him during an easier climb a few days past. "Cling to her, press your face up against her teats, and she won't drop you."
"I always wondered who my mother was," Brian had joked. "But I never thought I'd find her in the Frostfangs." Peter had always told him that he found Brian out in the snow when he was a puppy. He had never known his parents at all.
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, the other end around Jon. "Follow me when the rope grows taut." The ranger did not wait for an answer but started at once, moving upward with fingers and feet, faster than Brian would have believed. The long rope unwound slowly. Brian 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 rock he was waiting on, but as soon as Brian reached him, 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 Brian winced with every blow, certain that the wildlings must hear them too. When the spike was secure, Stonesnake secured the rope to it, and Brian started after him. "Suck on the mountain's teat," he reminded himself. "Don't look down. Keep your weight above your feet. Don't look down. Look at the rock in front of you. There's a good handhold, yes. Don't look down. I can catch a breath on that ledge there, all I need to do is reach it. Never 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 and he did not fall. He could feel the cold seeping off the rock into his fingers, despite his fur. He hoped he'd still have all his fingers by the end of the climb.
Up they went, and up, and up, black shadows creeping across the moonlit wall of rock. Anyone down on the floor of the pass could have seen them easily, but the mountain hid them from the view of the wildlings by their fire. They were close now, though. Brian could sense it. Even so, he did not think of the foes who were waiting for him, all unknowing, but of Stewie. Stewie used to love to climb. Brian wished he had a tenth part of his courage.
Finally, they got to the top. They crawled along until they could see the dull orange glow of the fire… but where were the wildlings?
"The fire must have been a decoy to draw us out!" Stonesnake said. "It was a trap… unkh!"
An arrow hit him in the back and snuffed out his life forever.
Brian looked back over his shoulder. Three wildlings were standing there. One of them was a girl. "You know nothing," she said. "Did you think we couldn't 'ear all the noise you were makin'? All those crazy things you were shoutin'? 'One step and then another?' 'Don't look down?' And 'suck on the mountain's teat,' what was that about?"
"I didn't realize I was saying all that out loud," said Brian.
"Ha! You sounded like ten thousand airplanes crashin' into the ocean! And even if we 'adn't been able to 'ear you, we could 'ave seen your white fur glintin' in the moonlight from a mile away! You know nothing," she repeated.
She raised her bow to shoot Brian. Without thinking, Brian hurled his sword at her. It cut right through her bowstring. She stumbled and fell. Quickly, Brian snatched up his sword and pressed it down against the wildling girl's throat, keeping her from getting up again.
Suddenly, Qhorin Halfhand and the other two guys appeared out of nowhere. They cut down the other two wildlings with their swords.
"How did you guys get up here?" Brian demanded.
"Oh, we went up the other side of the mountain," said Qhorin. "There are stairs carved right into the rock there."
"Then why did you have me and Stonesnake go up this way?"
"So's the wildlings would go after you instead of us. You were the bait."
Brian seethed inwardly. Below him, the girl squirmed on the ground. "Go on. Finish me."
"Yes, finish her," said Qhorin.
But Brian couldn't bring himself to do it. He had never killed before. "Maybe we could take her captive and question her," he hedged.
"She won't answer our questions," said Qhorin. "She'd bite off her own tongue first."
"What's your name?" Brian asked her.
"Ygritte."
"I'm Brian Griffin."
"You know nothing, Brian Griffin. Your friend's right. If you don't kill me now, I'll come back and kill you. And you ought to burn the bodies of the two you already killed."
"Need a big fire for that, and big fires burn bright," said Qhorin. "Are there more wildlings close by, is that it? You want to summon more of your friends?"
"Burn them," Ygritte repeated stubbornly, "or it might be you'll need them swords again."
Brian remembered the two wights that had attacked him back at the Wall. It seemed so long ago. "Maybe we should do as she says."
"There are other ways." Qhorin knelt beside the man he'd slain, stripped him of cloak and boots and belt and vest, then hoisted the body over one thin shoulder and carried it to the edge. He grunted as he tossed it over. A moment later they heard a wet, heavy smack well below them. He did the same thing with the second body.
Ygritte watched and said nothing. She was older than he'd thought at first, Brian realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose. Her shaggy mop of red hair stuck out in all directions. She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Meg.
"Were you sent to watch for us?" Brian asked her.
"You, and others."
"What waits beyond the pass?"
"The free folk."
"How many?"
"'Undreds and thousands. More than you ever saw, crow." She smiled. Her teeth were crooked, but very white.
She didn't know how many, Brian realized. "Why come here?"
Ygritte fell silent.
"What's in the Frostfangs that your king could want? You can't stay here, there's no food."
No answer.
"Do you mean to march on the Wall? When?"
She stared up at the sky as if she could not hear him.
"You don't happen to know a guy named Thaddeus Griffin, do you?"
Ygritte ignored him. Qhorin laughed. "If she spits out her tongue, don't say I didn't warn you."
A low, rumbling growl echoed off the rock. "What's that?" Brian wondered.
Ygritte broke her silence. "It's a multi-bear. Oh, don't worry, 'e won't trouble us. It's the dead 'e's come for. Multi-bears can smell blood six miles off. 'E'll stay near the bodies till 'e's eaten every last stringy shred o' meat, and cracked the bones for the marrow."
"Do what you have to do," Qhorin said to Brian. "You are a brother of the Night's Watch." He looked at the others. "Come, brothers. Leave him to it. It will go easier for him if we do not watch." And he led them up the steep, twisting trail toward the pale glow of the moon, and before very long Brian was alone with the wildling girl.
Now Brian could hear the sounds of the multi-bear's many heads feasting on the corpses below. It gave him an uneasy feeling. "Were they your kin?" he asked. "The two we killed?"
"No more than you are. You know, by rights you're one of the Free Folk too, Brian Griffin. Direwolves don't come from the south."
"Winterfell's not in the south," said Brian.
"Everythin' below the Wall is south to us. 'Ow did a direwolf come to be a crow?"
"Well, Lord Peter Griffin always said he found me in the woods near Winterfell when I was a puppy. I have no idea how I got there. But I joined the Night's Watch to protect Westeros from wildlings like you!"
Ygritte laughed. "Us Free Folk, that you call wildlings, are just the people unlucky enough to 'ave been livin' north of the Wall when it was built. Your Lord Griffin 'ad the blood of the First Men runnin' in his veins, same as us. Your family 'as got more in common with us than with their kings in their fine palaces. And you're a direwolf, so you belong up 'ere anyway! Mance would take you, I know 'e would. There're secret ways. Them crows would never catch us."
"I'm as much a crow as they are," Brian said.
She nodded, resigned. "Will you burn me, after?"
"I can't. The smoke might be seen."
"That's so." She shrugged. "Well, there's worse places to end up than the belly of a multi-bear."
"Aren't you afraid?" Brian asked.
"I ain't afraid of nothin'. Strike 'ard and true, Brian Griffin, or I'll come back and haunt you. Go on, be quick about it."
Brian raised his sword, both paws tight around the grip. One cut, with all his weight behind it. He could give her a quick clean death at least.
But he just couldn't bring himself to do it. He lowered his sword. "Go," he muttered.
Ygritte stared.
"Now," he said, "before my wits return. Go."
She went.
