When he heard the order, Will packed up his saddle and got ready for another ranging into the forest beyond the Wall.
"They are more close to us than I would've liked," Lord Commander Mormont told them. "More than once our men spotted them so close to the Wall that it does not feel right."
"Right," cried Mormont's raven. "Right, right, right."
The Old Bear extended some corn in his palm and the bird started to eat from his hand. "I fear that they are trying to climb the Wall and get into the realm. We can't let them pass. Go, chase them into those dark woods. Find our foes and kill them if need be. The First Ranger himself picked you for this ranging. All of you are skilled with a blade and good men, the brothers of the Night's Watch. Now go and do your duty to the realm."
Ser Waymar touched the hilt of his longsword. "I'll not fail you, my lord."
"Good," Mormont said. "Will and Gared will be with you. Both are seasoned rangers."
The lordling gave a disinterested look at Will and Gared. Will did not like it one bit but Ser Waymar was still his brother and his commander in his ranging. It was his first command and Royce was doubtlessly proud at that.
It was no easy thing to go ranging into the wild, because the chances were good that they might never return. The haunted forest had swallowed up many seasoned men without a trace. Still, they all were eager for the duty, even the new Ser Waymar Royce.
They led their horses through the cold tunnel under the Wall. Gared went first with a torch in hand. Then it was young Ser Waymar and Will came last with another torch in his hand. When they emerged on the other side of the tunnel the world changed before them. The familiarity of warmth and safety on the other side of Wall was gone and it was replaced with the cold, dark dangerous forest which lay ahead of them.
They rode hard and fast for the entire day, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. The cold was rising for the every foot they moved away from the Wall. By evening it turned to be the worst of it. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something was watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.
Especially not a commander like this one.
Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient noble house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of twenty, graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least in so far as his wardrobe was concerned.
When there was no sight of the wildlings for the entire day, his commander split the group and sent them hunting for the wildling in different directions, all alone, so that they could cover more ground. They had agreed to join again by nightfall in the base of the ironwood tree from where they split.
He was only half a league away from the tree when he saw the smoke coming from behind a broken tree.
Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and dismounted.
It was best to go rest of the way on foot. That way he could stay unseen and unheard by the wildlings. Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night's Watch. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters' own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters' own bucks, and it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
Will threaded his way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed.
His heart leapt in fear as he reached the top. Moonlight shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the fire pit, fresh fallen snow covered the great rock, the little half-frozen stream... And corpses or what was left of them. Whoever did this thing was stone of heart. The dead bodies were all ripped and the parts of their bodies were arranged in a weird pattern.
Will got back up in fear and turned to face a child impaled to a tree, dead and frozen. He rushed back to his horse and raced back to the tree to meet his brothers. Luckily, they were already back when he came back.
Will told his brothers of what he saw. They never interrupted him and heard the entire thing in silence.
" What do you expect?" Ser Waymar told him when he was finished. "They're savages. One lot steal a goat from another lot and before you know it they're ripping each other to pieces."
"I've never seen Wildlings do a thing like this," Will said. "I've never seen a thing like this, not ever in my life."
"How close did you get?" Royce asked him.
"Close as any man could."
"We should head back to the Wall," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.
"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He had seen the lordlings come and go. "Our orders were to track the Wildlings. We tracked them," he said. "They won't trouble us no more."
"You don't think they'll ask us how they died?" the commander said. "Get back on your horse."
Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent many years in the Night's Watch, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.
Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness the southron called the Haunted Forest had no more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise.
"Whatever did this to them could do the same to us," Will tried to argue.
The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that.
The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frost fallen leaves whispered past them, and Royce's destrier moved restlessly. "What do you think might have killed these men, Gared?" Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable cloak.
"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like."
"Such eloquence, Gared," Ser Waymar observed. "I never suspected you had it in you."
"Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?"
"Yes, m'lord," There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the man driving at?
"And how did you find the Wall?"
"Weeping," Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. "They couldn't have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn't cold enough."
Royce nodded. "Bright lad. We've had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of making fire." The knight's smile was cocksure. "Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself."
And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and honour bound them to obey.
Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through the undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser Waymar Royce came next, his great black destrier snorting impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. Gared brought up the rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode.
Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the colour of an old bruise, then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will was grateful for the light.
Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.
Will led his garron to the ironwood and dismounted. "It's best to walk from here, m'lord. It's just over that ridge."
Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in anger.
Ser Waymar led the way and Will and Gared followed him. When they came up the ridge Will's heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight lit the snow in a silver glint, the ashes were still in the fire pit which was smoking, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago.
They were gone. All the bodies were gone.
Royce looked down at the empty clearing. "Your dead men seem to have moved camp, Will."
Will's voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite. "They were right here."
Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men. Gared go back and bring the horses."
Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. He saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all?
Ser Waymar was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. It was cold.
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood behind Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armour seemed to change colour as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.
The wind had stopped. It was very cold.
It slid forward on silent feet. Its eyes blue, deeper and bluer than any human eye, a blue that burned like ice.
Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. "Come no farther," the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy's. He threw the long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very cold.
The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.
Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant.
The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.
They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . . . four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hid behind the ridge, and kept the silence.
The pale sword came shivering through the air.
Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.
Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.
Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light.
The Other said something in a language that Will did not know, his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.
Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For the Watch," he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other's parry was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers.
The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.
When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and below the ridge the camp was empty.
He stayed there, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, after a long time he climbed down.
Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.
He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.
Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. It burned blue and it saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat.
A/N: I tried my best to introduce the Others in different scenario but none felt right. So I had to stick with the canon version of it.