Early March, 300 AC

The wind tugged at Theon's cloak as he watched his prey, waiting. The world was a sea of white, snow blanketing every inch of the forest. Some prey concealed themselves in pale furs, but not all of them were so clever. The noonday sun was weak, but there was plenty of light for hunting. Theon's eyes narrowed as he spotted dark fur. Even the cold could not slow his fingers as Theon bent the bow, slipped the string into its notches, drew, and loosed.

There was nothing half so mortal as a grey goose feather. The wildling fell to the ground, one less mole digging at the Wall. Still, aiming for dark blurs rather than picking his shot annoyed him. Theon grimaced as he reached for another arrow.

"Wishing you had a chance to show off again?" an old voice grumbled. Theon bit his tongue, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

"Show off to who, Dywen?" Theon asked, unable to keep the mockery from his voice. The old forester spat on the Wall and clacked his wooden teeth.

"We're low on arrows. Someone will need to fetch more soon. It's a cold ride to Castle Black, lordling."

Theon loosed an arrow at another dark blur, wishing he could shoot Ser Piggy instead. Every breath of cold air stung at his nostrils, his nose still sore from the old maester resetting it. Dywen was right, Theon realized to his great annoyance, ducking behind a merlon to avoid one of the rare arrows to reach the top of the wall.

Woodswatch-by-the-Pool was a good ten leagues from Castle Black. At Winterfell Theon could ride further than that in a single day. At the Wall, though... the road was choked with snow and ice, slowing horses to a grudging walk. Even Smiler, fierce as he was, could go no faster. It would take two days to reach Castle Black, and another two days to return. Theon did not fancy such an excursion if Dywen decided he was in need of chastising.

Twenty brothers had come from Castle Black, bringing food, furs, hundreds of arrows, and aught else they would need to keep the wildlings at bay. The gate beneath them had been blocked long ago, the tunnels sealed with rock and ice. But Mance Rayder had thousands of men and dozens of giants and mammoths, and they were digging at every abandoned castle along the Wall.

The first day at Woodswatch-by-the-Pool had been the worst. There had been five giants, great hairy beasts out of Old Nan's tales. Two of them rode mammoths, and three went afoot. The biggest giant had ripped the iron gate off the tunnel before they dropped a barrel of oil on his head. The mammoths fled the flames screaming, and one giant had smashed into a tree so hard that his head burst like a melon.

The rest of the giants had fallen on the second day, one filled with so many arrows he looked like a lady's pincushion, the other two burned to death by their last barrel of oil. The giants had screamed at them as they died, strange words in a tongue Theon did not recognize. The Old Tongue, Dywen had told him later.

Theon drew, loosed, and drew again. Few of the wildlings had white furs to hide them in the snow. How desperate were they to keep running for the tunnel when dozens of their brethren lay dead? They fear something worse than arrows.

He had laughed when one of the young rangers told him about the Others as they chased the wildlings to the Shadow Tower. Dead men attacking Lord Commander Mormont in the night? The story seemed ridiculous, a tall tale spun to frighten gullible new recruits.

Then Theon had seen the ugly burn scars on Jon Snow's hand. Red and mottled, like ribbons of flame, the price of thrusting a hand into fire. No man was fool enough to do such a thing... unless the dead walked and fire was their only fear. Theon loosed.

Jon Snow was still confined to his bed. Even from his place on the floor, blood trickling down his face, nearly blinded by fury, Theon could see how sick he was. The bastard had been naked under his furs, and they had fallen away when he rose from the bed. His skin was corpse white, the flesh melted off of his bones until Theon could count his ribs. The red mark on his thigh looked to be an arrow wound not yet healed, and his eyes... his eyes had burned with hatred, one eye marked with scars as if a bird had tried to rip it out. Theon's blood had frozen when Snow claimed the right to kill him... and then Snow had fainted.

He had landed on his front, exposing the horror of his back for all to see. Angry red lash marks criss crossed his back from his shoulders to his arse, the back of his thigh shining silver where the arrow had gone through. The fat boy sobbed as he and the great lummox gently lifted Jon Snow back into his bed, the scrawny one running for the maester. It's only been a year, Theon remembered thinking, unable to look away.

He had not bothered to bid farewell to Jon Snow when he departed Winterfell. Theon's time had been much better spent riding. On the second day he'd reached the Acorn Water and slain a red deer with an arrow through the throat. He spent the night beneath the miller's roof, annoyed by a brief rain that leaked through the thatching and onto the pitiful straw mattress he'd taken from the miller.

Matters improved in the morning when the miller left to deliver the grain he'd turned into flour. A few words from Theon's silver tongue and he had the miller's wife on top of him. Her belly might bear the pale stripes of childbirth, but her teats were still plump and pretty as they bounced. They were less pretty the next time he saw them. She was crying for mercy, crying for her sons, when Gelmarr's axe came swinging down. Her breasts had spilled from her dress when she fell, the gash in her chest deep and red and weeping. I did not tell Gelmarr to do it, there was no need for that.

When had he last seen Jon Snow? Theon searched his memory as he drew the string back to his ear. A few days before Snow left, perhaps. He loosed. They had happened to be in the baths at the same time, Snow returning from the practice yards, Theon from tumbling a blonde maid who'd come with the royal party. Jon Snow was slender and strong then, unmarked by scars except for those won in the practice yards. Theon could not imagine that Eddard Stark's sullen bastard boy would kill him. But Lord Snow, the man of the Night's Watch... Theon drew. He believes I killed his brothers. He loosed.

Perhaps he had. Bran and Rickon had fled Winterfell before Theon came, but they had only fled because they knew he was coming. So said Maester Luwin, anyway, babbling on with some nonsense about dreams. If they died in the woods during their flight... That is their own fault, not mine. I would not have harmed them had they stayed. The miller's boys had been a grim necessity, the only way to cow the defiant servants of Winterfell. It wasn't his fault that the fools were so easily taken in by a direwolf pin and a grey tunic.

There were so many easy targets below. Theon drew, then loosed. Dywen blames me. The old poacher was a northman, born and raised on Bear Island. The folk there were raised to hate krakens from the cradle, but there was something more to the old man's contempt for him. I did nothing wrong, Theon thought, smiling in cold satisfaction as his arrow took down a wildling. Balon gave me no other choice, him and that bitch Asha. Even if he tried to explain himself, he knew no one would believe him.

He was drawing back the string again when an arrow whistled past his ear, a rough hand yanking him out of the way just in time.

"Focus," Dywen snarled, cuffing Theon upside the head. "Or did you want a nice wildling arrow in your highborn arse?"

"Your teeth will grow back before I fear a wildling," Theon said sharply, his heart pounding in his ears.

"Fear keeps you alive," the poacher said as he drew his own bow. "Fear is why they're knockin' at our gates." He loosed.

"They'll never get through. We've shot every one of them who got within fifty feet of the Wall."

Dywen spat, jerking his thumb at the frozen corpse lying behind him. Theon didn't recall the name of the black-clad brother with the pimples, but it seemed that the gods had not liked him. By unlikely mischance a wildling arrow had caught him in the eye on the third day.

"There were less than a thousand sworn brothers, before the Great Ranging. Now there's only six, mebbe seven hundred. If each o' us killed ten o' them, there'd still be ninety three thousand wildlings down below. And what happens when the Others come, and raise every one that we've killed?"

Theon shivered, his fingers stiff as he reached for another arrow. He'd gone to see the maester on some pretense, hoping to catch the wildling girl nursing. Instead he'd found her talking quietly to the maester, her babe asleep in her arms.

"The first sign is the cold," she said as Theon listened from the doorway. "You can smell it, like thunder before a storm. They come out of nowhere, always more'n one, never more'n a dozen. Their armor shines like moonlight, and their steps don't make no sound."

"What weapons do they have, child?" Maester Aemon's voice was gentle.

"They carried swords," the wildling girl whispered. "I never seen them drawn from the scabbard, but Ferny said they look like crystal. What's crystal, maester?"

"A type of rock that shines with light. There should be one on my desk, unless Clydas moved it."

Silence, then a gasp of awe.

"Father said their swords could cut right through mail and plate. Can't fight them with steel, it'll shatter."

"Did your father say aught of obsidian? Or perhaps he called it dragonglass?"

"No," the girl replied. Then the baby whimpered, and Theon fled.

The sun was sinking toward the horizon when Theon paused to eat. A few brothers had remained below, cooking porridge over a small fire. The most surefooted ones had made the long climb to bring food to the archers. The porridge was already cold, but Theon shoveled it down, mindful that there would be nothing else for a good while. He was wiping his mouth when Dywen raised a hand, his head cocked to the side.

"D'you hear that?"

He listened. At first he heard naught but the soft sounds of men chewing and drinking. Then he began to notice other sounds, the scrape of boots on ice, the quiet clinking of metal. Below the wind whispered through the trees, but there was something else, faint in the distance...

"Horses," a brother said, "a whole column of them."

Dywen stared down at the forest. The wildlings below had stopped loosing arrows, turning toward the sound of hoofbeats and metal. The fools didn't post scouts was Theon's last thought before the knights emerged from the trees.

A few wildlings ran for their garrons, but for the rest it was too late. The knights were mounted on destriers and clad in steel. The wildlings were almost all afoot, armored in bronze if at all. A ragged cheer went up around Theon as the knights trampled the wildlings, slashing and stabbing at their hapless foes, steel shining in the light. Where steel flashed, life ended. It was over in minutes. Once there had been hundreds threatening their gate, now only a few survived to flee through the trees.

Dywen shouted down at the knights, but the wind carried his words away. Without even a glance at the top of the Wall the knights reformed their line, riding west. The brothers were still staring down, astounded, when more men passed through the trees, freeriders and mounted bowmen and men-at-arms, dozens of men, hundreds of men, thousands.

And over their heads, the yellow banners.