Now we must get back to Brian.
It was dark in the Skirling Pass. The great stone flanks of the mountains hid the sun for most of the day. Icy fingers of water trickled down from the snowpack above into small frozen pools. Sometimes Brian and them would see a few weeds struggling from some crack in the rock or a splotch of pale lichen, but there was no grass, and they were above the trees now.
The track was as steep as it was narrow, wending its way ever upward. Where the pass was so constricted that rangers had to go single file, Borba would take the lead, scanning the heights as he went, his longbow ever close to hand. It was said he had the keenest eyes in the Night's Watch.
A wind carved arch of grey stone marked the highest point of the pass. Here the way broadened as it began its long descent toward the valley of the Milkwater. Qhorin decreed that they would rest here until the shadows began to grow again. "Shadows are friends to men in black," he said.
Brian saw the sense of that. It would be pleasant to ride in the light for a time, to let the bright mountain sun soak through their cloaks and chase the chill from their bones, but they dared not.
Borba and Harker went to sleep at once, but Qhorin Halfhand sat with his back to a rock, honing the edge of his longsword with long slow strokes. Brian watched the ranger for a few moments, then summoned his courage and went to him. "My lord," he said, "you never asked me how it went. With the girl."
"I am no lord, Brian." Qhorin slid the stone smoothly along the steel with his two fingered hand.
"She told me Mance would take me, if I ran with her."
"She told you true," said Qhorin. "I knew Mance when he was still one of us. We were friends as well as brothers, and now we are sworn foes."
"Why did he desert?" Brian asked.
"For a wench, some say. For a crown, others would have it." Qhorin tested the edge of his sword with the ball of his thumb. "He liked women, Mance did, and he was not a man whose knees bent easily, that's true. But it was more than that. He loved the wild better than the Wall. It was in his blood. He was wildling born, taken as a child when some raiders were put to the sword. When he left the Shadow Tower, he was only going home again."
"Was he a good ranger?"
"He was the best of us," said the Halfhand, "and the worst as well. Only fools despise the wildlings. They are as brave as we are, Brian. As strong, as quick, as clever. But they have no discipline. They name themselves the free folk, and each one thinks himself as good as a king and wiser than a maester. Mance was the same. He never learned how to obey."
"No more than me," said Brian quietly.
Qhorin's shrewd grey eyes seemed to see right through him. "So, you let her go?" He did not sound the least surprised.
"You know?"
"Now. Tell me why you spared her."
It was hard to put into words. "Peter Griffin never used a headsman. He said he owed it to men he killed to look into their eyes and hear their last words. And when I looked into Ygritte's eyes, I…" Brian stared down at his paws helplessly. "I know she was an enemy, but there was no evil in her."
"No more than in the other two."
"It was their lives or ours," Brian said. "If they had seen us, if they had sounded that horn…"
"The wildlings would hunt us down and slay us, true enough."
"But we took the horn, and her bow. She's behind us now, unarmed…"
"And not like to be a threat," Qhorin agreed. "Well, I didn't really think you would kill her. But to lead men you must know them, Brian Griffin. I know more of you now than I did this morning."
"And if I had killed her?" Brian asked.
"She would be dead, and I would know you better than I had before. But enough talk. You oughtta be sleeping. We have leagues to go, and dangers to face. You will need your strength."
When Brian closed his eyes, he dreamed of Stewie.
He was looking at a weirwood tree. The face carved into it was Stewie's, but something about it was different.
"Stewie! Have you always had three eyes?"
"Not always," the tree said with Stewie's voice. "Not before the raven."
"What does that mean?" Brian sniffed at the bark, smelled tree and boy, but behind that there were other scents, the rich brown smell of warm earth and the hard, grey smell of stone and something else, something terrible. Something that smelled yellow. Death, he knew. He was smelling death. He cringed back, his hair bristling, and bared his fangs.
"Don't be afraid, Bri. I like it in the dark. No one can see you, but you can see them. But first you have to open your eyes. See? Like this." And the tree reached down and touched him.
And suddenly he was back in the mountains, his paws sunk deep in a drift of snow as he stood upon the edge of a great precipice. Before him the Skirling Pass opened up into airy emptiness, and a long v shaped valley lay spread before him like a quilt, awash in all the colors of an autumn afternoon.
A vast blue white wall plugged one end of the vale, squeezing between the mountains as if it had shouldered them aside, and for a moment he thought he had dreamed himself back to Castle Black. Then he realized he was looking at a river of ice several thousand feet high. Under that glittering cold cliff was a great lake, its deep cobalt waters reflecting the snowcapped peaks that ringed it. There were men down in the valley, he saw now; many men, thousands, a huge host. And not only men. There were also giants riding wooly mammoths, gnomes, Manotaurs, and some things Brian had no name for. Their encampment had no plan to it; he saw no ditches, no sharpened stakes, no neat rows of horse lines. Everywhere crude earthen shelters and hide tents sprouted haphazardly, like a pox on the face of the earth. He spied untidy mounds of hay, smelled goats and sheep, horses and pigs, dogs in great profusion. Tendrils of dark smoke rose from a thousand cookfires.
This was no army, no more than it was a town. This was a whole people come together.
A sudden gust of cold made Brian's fur stand up. As he lifted his eyes to the ice white mountain heights above, a triangular shadow plummeted out of the sky. There was a terrible scream. The scream wasn't part of the dream; that came from Brian.
He woke up in a cold sweat. Harker had hold of him and was shaking him. "Quiet! You mean to bring the wildlings down on us? What's wrong with you?"
"A dream," said Brian feebly. "I was on the edge of the mountain looking down on a frozen river, and something attacked me. I don't know what it was, but it had only one eye."
Borba smiled. "It's always pretty women in my dreams. Would that I dreamed more often."
Qhorin came up beside Brian. "A frozen river, you say?"
"It was only a dream," Brian said, dazed.
"A wolf dream," the Halfhand said. "It may be that you saw what waits for us a few hours farther on. Tell me."
It made him feel half a fool to talk of such things to Qhorin and the other rangers, but he did as he was commanded. He told them about the tree with Stewie's face, and the thousands of wildlings, and the giants, and all the rest.
"Craster told the Lord Commander that the wildlings were gathering at the source of the Milkwater," said Qhorin.
"Does this mean my dreams are true as well?" Borba asked. "Brian can keep 'is mammoths, I want my women."
"Man an' boy I've served the Watch, and ranged as far as any," said Harker. "I've seen the bones of giants, and heard many a queer tale, but no more. I want to see them with my own eyes."
"Be careful they don't see you, Harker," Borba teased.
Just then the call of a hunting horn echoed through the mountains. "Looks like somebody's seen us already," Qhorin Halfhand said grimly.
