There's been no demand for good men for a long time.
If you want success, act like a jerk.
(c) Disco Crash
John, unaware of what was happening at the foot of the mountain, and Quoren, who suspected a lot, meanwhile took out two guards, and John disarmed the third — who immediately disarmed him, albeit in a figurative sense: the third guard turned out to be not a smelly savage, but a young red-haired girl.
"This has never happened before, and now it's happening again," Quoren complained to fate. "John, can you count to five? We have provisions for five, and we left five horses down below.
"What should we do?" asked the noble John, who already felt that he had been wrong to throw himself at the girl, that it was somehow indecent.
"What else could we do?" Cuoren replied harshly. "Kill her."
If John's captive had reached her axe or stabbed John in the leg or his chain mail with a dagger, his warrior instincts might have taken over, but his captive was not so foolish. She tilted her head back and offered John her white, delicate neck.
"Hurry," whispered the girl, and John was defeated.
"Don't you touch her," John warned Quoren, kneeling beside his captive and nobly accepting her surrender, but not forgetting to slap her and take the dagger from her. "We need her tongue."
"Well, now you need a tongue," grumbled Cuoren, pulling together all the skins that the unfortunate guards were using to cover themselves, and John heard the obscene undertone in his words, while the red-haired girl laughed. "Hey, redhead, when are you supposed to be relieved?"
"Change?" asked the red-haired girl in surprise, and Quoren, giving a signal down below and sighing over the organisation of the savage guard service, arranged three sleeping places by the fire with his feet, offered John some skins to wrap himself in so he wouldn't freeze, and laid the captive between himself and John.
"Oh, John," sighed Quoren, deciding not to sleep so as not to lose the captive, who could then lead at least a few hundred Outcasts. "You're young. Well, you didn't kill her, fine, but what should you do when a girl offers you her neck?
John didn't even know how to respond to such an unchivalrous suggestion, and Quoren's silence only encouraged him. He even raised himself up on his elbow to admire the embarrassed faces of the young people in the dim light of dawn.
"I'm not going to explain to you what to do when a girl says 'come on,'" Cuoren continued to amuse himself. "There's a saying about that: 'If a beautiful woman throws herself at you...'"
"Shut up, Quoren," the captive finally couldn't take it anymore. Quoren was a bit of a dirty-minded fellow, and his talk made her a little embarrassed in front of the handsome young man, and besides, there were several continuations to the saying.
"Here she is, fame," Cuoren sighed pretentiously. "Did you recognise me right away, redhead, or was it the jokes?"
"My name is Ygritte!" the girl finally introduced herself. Cuoren knew how to strike up a conversation and create a relaxed atmosphere during the halt.
"That's a nice name, playful," Cuoren approved, receiving a poke from Ygritte that, after so many skins, only amused him. "Tell me, are you a free woman?"
"Yes!
"Then I can take a few liberties with you," promised Queren, and Ygritte decided to roll over John, away from the old devil, but the vigilant John caught her immediately, and she ended up on top of him instead of next to him.
"I'm not going back," Ygritte insisted when Jon tried to put her back in her place.
"Don't let her go, Jon!" Qoren reacted immediately. "I'm ordering you as your commander! You two look great together."
When Lionel, Sansa, and Arya climbed up to the pass, leading their horses along a long, gentle path, Qoren stopped his lewd behaviour, but suddenly found an ally in the young king, who took Jon and Qoren aside when he heard that Jon had taken a "tongue."
"Arya and Sansa are here," Lionel said reproachfully. "How are you going to get her to talk?
"You can drive needles under her fingernails, I have a couple," Qhoren suggested, either jokingly or seriously, "you can get her drunk and not let her sober up. Or John could stop pretending to be a Dragon Knight, and then she'd melt like ice in the spring sunshine. She'd do whatever he told her to do.
"What, is there any reason to think so?" Lionel asked cheerfully.
"I've been talking for three hours, and they can't even look at each other," reported Cuoren. "The motherland demands decisive victories from you, Jon Snow."
"What are you talking about?" John was taken aback, but he didn't remember his oath as a guard. "I've never... I would never..."
"Well, I can't," said Lionel reasonably. "And Qoren is in a different age group. What, you don't know anything, Jon Snow?"
Qoren went over to the captive, spoke quietly with her for five minutes, eye to eye, and returned.
"You did the right thing," said Cuoren approvingly, and John felt embarrassed again. "She knows everything, or almost everything, but she's lying that she doesn't. John, give me your honest word that you'll get her to talk in the next few days, and then we'll go back."
"What if I don't?" John muttered doubtfully.
"We don't have that word in the Watch!" Quoren suddenly boiled over. "We have the word 'yes' and 'yes, sir!' What other options do you have? Well, let's organise your escape with her, you'll play the defector among the savages, find out everything, then you won't be able to escape from them yourself, they'll shoot you if you try. Or let's get ourselves surrounded, you surrender to them and kill me to prove your loyalty. And then it's the same thing, our man in their team, and escape from there with uncertain prospects. That's better, isn't it? Better? I'll run away now, check out their main camp, and when I come back, I want a full report! Are you a man or not?
"Are you going alone?" Lionel asked the brave scout, but Quoren just waved him away, letting the modest John slip away with a "don't worry about your girls."
"They've already set up a picket line in that direction, there's no one else here before the camp," Queren reasonably objected to the king. "You'd better spare the girls from the sight of savage debauchery — there's a small cave just around the bend. John, do you hear me talking about the cave?"
Quoren ran off across the pass, and John went to look at the cave. When he returned, he noticed that Lionel had already taken the place by the fire that Quoren had made, and Sansa and Arya were lying down next to him, on his right and left, and there was something strangely indecent about the three heads sticking out from under the pile of skins. "Well, the three of us were just lying like that too," Jon tried to reassure himself as he set off to do his duty, but this reasoning did little to comfort him, only confused him.
"Do you know why I spared you?" Jon said harshly, dragging Ygritte to a cave that was more like a large hollow in the rock. "Because I liked you."
Meanwhile, John felt terrible about his unchivalrous behaviour and his obvious intention to take advantage of his captive's helplessness. The captive, however, was not helpless at all, and she immediately broke free and ran away. "Let her run," John rejoiced at being rid of his heavy burden. "Oh, she'll give us away, I'll ruin everyone!" And John caught up with Ygritte quite easily, because he was taller and faster. Ygritte tried to slip away several more times as Jon dragged her towards the cave, as if to make him feel like a scoundrel and a rapist, but she suddenly gave up in front of the cave.
"You're strong and agile," Ygritte said. "You'll have healthy children."
And Ygritte pulled Jon towards her before he could ask the stupid question of whether she really didn't mind.Meanwhile, Cuoren had run to Mance's camp, looked at the mammoth tusk and even the mammoth with a giant on its back attached to it, assessed the size and composition of Mance's army, as well as the chaos reigning within it, whistled quietly, and after a while returned, approaching his companions with the silent steps of a scout. Lionel, tired from a sleepless night and warmed by the sun, fell asleep shortly after Quoren left, since he was so sure that there was only one road to Mans' camp and had given the signal to retreat before leaving. Sansa and Arya laid their heads comfortably on Lionel's chest and fell asleep after him.
"What a man!" thought Queren about the young king, convinced that his guesses were correct. "I even envy him a little. What am I saying? I envied him a little when I noticed where his redhead's head was at night. And now I envy him madly."
"Don't sleep," Coren whispered, pretending he hadn't noticed anything. "The twilight cats will bite your ears off."
"If anything, the horses will neigh," Sansa replied, struggling to open her eyes, and immediately nudged her sister, noticing their position, but Cuoren disappeared just as quietly as he had appeared, and the alert Jon Snow was already standing in the cave to meet him. Jon and Ygritte had also fallen asleep, and Jon was now surprised that Ygritte had not tried to escape while he was asleep.
"I didn't learn anything new," Jon said quietly to Qoren, having forgotten all about it between the third kiss and the feeling of a woman's hand in the right place.
"What do you mean, nothing new?" Qoren disagreed. "Why is she wet down there? Well, it's a rough start, but we have to keep going for now. At least they change guards sometime."
Only when the squad had covered almost the entire previous day's march and stopped for the night did Quoren pull Lionel aside and, with a magician's flourish, pull a dragon's egg from his bosom.
"You're a demon, how did you do that?" Lionel was taken aback; it seemed to him that he had slept no more than two hours that morning.
"It didn't even tickle," Quoren replied with a slightly sinister humour. "But there's a catch: if a dragon with blue eyes and blue flames hatches from this egg, it's not my fault, but the fault of whoever sold the egg beyond the Wall in such freezing weather."
"Quoren," Lionel called to the scout as Quoren was about to return to the camp. "Do you seriously believe that John will find out anything from the captive?"
"No, of course not," Queren dismissed him. "Sooner or later they'll send a pursuit after us. They'll send good fighters, chiefs, maybe even another one of Mance's in-laws who wants to prove himself and show everyone that he deserves to rub shoulders with the King Beyond the Wall. If we manage to get almost to the Wall, or at least to Craster's, we'll send your girls to deliver the valuable prisoner to the Wall. Without a serious task, they'll try to be heroes and say they won't abandon you, but we'll take a real "tongue" and talk to him properly.
"Why are you messing with Jon?" Lionel said reproachfully, noticing Quoren's remark about "your girls."
"As if he needs it," Quoren smiled. "Isn't that what I'm teaching him? To melt in his hands like wax, to forget all loyalty except to him. He'll never listen to me if I explain the same thing to him by the campfire or over a mug, but he's a good soldier and a good comrade-in-arms. Now he won't let us down.
"Well, you're all celibate," Lionel reminded him half-jokingly, but Quoren just spat.
"Where there's celibacy, there's pederasty," Quoren snapped. "We don't need a Watch like that. Look for yourself, there are more whores in the villages around the Watch than there are peasant women, so what the hell kind of celibacy is that? And behind the Wall, normal women walk around in herds. There are some who are too good to pass up, but if a fighter gets jealous of his woman, she'll cheat on him, and he'll have to run back to her from his guard duty — it's a nightmare, debauchery and a death sentence on the spot. But if she waits for him, comes to him wherever he tells her to go, afraid to hurt him — what's wrong with that?
Quoren sensibly reasoned that if the pursuit was already underway, the pursuers would not sleep, hoping to catch up quickly and sleep later, and raised his detachment in the middle of the night, allowing everyone to sleep for only three hours.
"If you want to live to my age, get moving," Cuoren ordered, although there were no signs of pursuit yet.
The next hour-and-a-half rest stop at Quoren's was planned for noon, but Jon Snow saved everyone from the forced march by dozing off on his horse shortly before dawn and expressing himself in a long and unprintable manner, so that Ygritte, who heard it all, was even a little frightened and thought she had done something wrong.
"A ghost," replied Jon, still dazed from sleep, which did nothing to comfort Ygritte, only frightening her even more. "He was fighting an eagle. Arya almost shot it down."
"Did you see it too?" Arya asked in surprise, the image of the wolf fight on the pass above Mance's camp suddenly appearing before her eyes like a mirage and disappearing as soon as Nymeria fulfilled her wish and lunged at the eagle that had attacked Jon, or rather his direwolf."I didn't make it," said Sansa, who had also been caught up in the battle between the grey brothers.
"Yes, you didn't make it in time," Jon agreed, and this time it was Quoren who cursed loudly.
"I beg your pardon, young ladies," Qhoren said to Sansa and Arya. "I just haven't seen a werewolf in a long time, and now there are three of them in my squad. Jon, keep an eye out, is anyone chasing us?"
"I see," John replied, closing his eyes. "I'm wounded. Where are you going?"
The last part, however, was directed at Ygritte, who tried to jump off her horse, wary of the sorcerer. She had always disliked and feared sorcerers, and the night she had spent on guard duty next to the sorcerer who was now dead, but who had managed to tell her some terrifying stories about demons before he died, as if he really wanted to see her fear, was enough for her.
"That's right," Quoren immediately agreed. "You, redhead, be afraid of him, he's a werewolf. You won't be able to escape him now. And if he's not satisfied with you by the full moon..."
"Quoren!" John snapped, coming out of his trance. "Your superstitions are giving me a sore neck. I wish an eagle would drag you away like that!"
"Direct your wolf to the place where we left the guard," suggested Quoren. "Can you do that? Let us know later if the new guard has arrived or not."
"Aren't you afraid?" Leo Sans asked cheerfully, watching the cheeky and combative Ygritte, under the influence of Quoren's incantations, begin to pull her head into her shoulders, as if afraid that Jon, sitting in the saddle behind her, would turn into a wolf and bite her neck.
"No, of course not," Leo smiled in response. "I'm actually kind of curious."
"What if it's two against one?" Arya tried to scare Leo in turn, but the fearless Lionel looked at her so cheerfully and provocatively that Arya was taken aback, because she hadn't meant anything by it, they had just agreed!
"Fall back, guys!" Cuoren commanded half an hour later, after receiving a report from John that there was no one at the captured picket line and no pursuit, but commanding werewolves was not as easy as commanding simple sentries.
"They're calling us," said Arya, turning her horse around. "They need us." And again, that eagle.
Almost the entire journey after the night's rest was retraced, this time in the opposite direction, when running wolves appeared in the snow ahead — first two, then a third, white and stained with blood, became visible. The eagle had indeed left a deep wound on Ghost's neck, and Nymeria, who had rushed to Ghost's rescue, was limping slightly on her front paw.
"The eagle has reasons to hate you," Ygritte finally said to Jon when the Ghost's wound had been washed and bandaged, Arya had finally caught Nymeria and declared that "she doesn't want to," and the eagle that had flown away was mentioned many times in the most interesting combinations of words.
"Who is he?" demanded Jon, whose hands were stained with the blood of his white brother, and whose gaze and face were so terrifying that Ygritte thought Jon was really a wolf. "Speak!"
"He was a man before you killed him at the pass," Ygritte confessed, though she did not want to tell the story, as if by doing so she was cutting herself off from the Free Folk.
"Will he come back?" asked Jon, still angry and wanting revenge on the eagle, but as his anger cooled, he remembered his companions. "Can he bring a force after us?" Once again, his will and sinister reputation as a warg proved stronger than the stubbornness of the Free Folk.
"Not right away," Ygritte replied quietly. "He thinks like a bird and cannot speak. He can hunt for hours until he is full; that is more important to him. But he will return to his tribe, perhaps tomorrow. Maybe the day after tomorrow, everyone will realise that this eagle is not afraid of people, and then they will find another sorcerer and werewolf, although two sorcerers may not get along...
Grim John walked away, and Ygritte sat down in the snow, trying to understand what was happening to her, either regretting that she had fallen for a young sorcerer or saying goodbye to her past life. John also had a heavy heart: he had fallen asleep in the saddle because he had slept less than anyone else during the short, chaotic night, and he didn't want to scare and interrogate Ygritte after that, he wanted to kiss her again and feel her sweet tremors, and then her satisfied breathing.
Now the only one who was satisfied was Quoren, who approached Jon and quietly praised him for his service, to which Jon only gave an angry shrug.
"Let me tell you a story about family life," Qhoren suggested and signalled to everyone to unsaddle and lie down to sleep in the sun. "Once a maester brought his grandmother to his house, and he had a raven that was terribly talkative, worse than Mormont's. 'Well,' thought the maester, 'now the raven will tell the whole Watch about me,' and he threw his jacket over the cage so that the raven couldn't see anything. But the raven sat there listening to the maester and the old woman: "Let me go underneath, and you go on top. Now let me go underneath, and you go on top." And then the old woman blurted out, "Let me go on top, and you go on top!" And the raven immediately popped out from under the jacket and cried, "Tear out my tongue, but I must see this!"
"That's right, young man," said Quoren instructively. "You can't both be on top, it's either one way or the other. And if she's afraid of you, so much the better. She'll be less likely to mess around. Or do you want to run around on your hind legs in front of her?
"That's how it is, young man," said Quoren instructively.
I was as innocent as a baby,
Modest as a monk,
Until that night when I saw
The fear in your eyes.
(c) Mike Naumenko
Qoren's prediction that Ygritte would be less of a fuss was not entirely accurate: perhaps Qoren was comparing her to something completely unbearable, or perhaps Jon ruined everything that night with his typical indecisiveness and lack of imagination, and when Qoren rearranged the camp duty roster, the next morning there was a real spectacle at the campfire, which was allowed during daylight hours.
"You can't cook like that, Jon Snow!" said Ygritte, pushing Jon away from the pot of porridge and taking the ladle from him.
"What, don't I know how to cook porridge?" John asked, offended. After all, he had been the Lord Commander's steward for a month and a half, with a break for medical treatment, and had even learned how to warm wine with spices, which old Mormont was very particular about.
"You know nothing, Jon Snow!" Ygritte snapped.
No wonder that during the afternoon rest, grateful spectators had already gathered around the well-coordinated pair on duty. John tried to cook the salted meat he was tired of to boil out the salt, but Ygritte had no intention of heating up a second pot of water for him, only getting in his way.
"You don't understand, Jon Snow," Ygritte explained to him. "It'll only get worse. You have to smoke meat like that over a fire."
John stubbornly shook his head, scooped snow into the second pot himself, and tried to place a baking tray with corn under the pots on the side of the fire.
"You'll never manage it, Jon Snow," Ygritte continued to tease him. "You'll burn the corn on the big fire, and the water in the pots won't boil on the small one.
"Listen, do you have a brother in the Night's Watch?" John suddenly shouted, which was rare but effective when he lost his temper. "We have this guy, Edd the Grim, who's always complaining and predicting disaster."
Of course, Jon and Ygritte made up by evening; it's hard not to make up when you're riding on the same horse and the person sitting behind has to hug the person sitting in front, and the person sitting in front has to hold on tight to avoid being thrown out of the saddle. And if the body still remembers the previous night and is waiting for the next, it is useless to resist it — and by the end of the day, John's hands were already allowing themselves their usual pranks, accidentally supporting Ygritte's breast with his biceps, dropping the reins and missing the saddle bow, and a little closer, where he needed to caress her so that Ygritte's lips parted of their own accord and her breathing quickened slightly. Of course, thick winter clothes were a hindrance, but there was still fantasy, memories of how it was under the blanket, and that was more than enough.
"Do you want me to sing you a song about giants?" Ygritte suggested as they sat together on the saddles they had taken off their horses in complete darkness a short distance from the tent — Quoren had forbidden them to light a fire in the dark.
"I'll sing it to you now," Qhoren promised from the darkness. "John, are you going to chase him?"
"No," Jon replied. He had grown accustomed to finding Ghost by closing his eyes and aligning their aching necks, and now he moved his nose and absorbed his memory. The wolves were fifteen or twenty miles to the north, and there was no danger of a sudden appearance of pursuers.
It's a pity you didn't believe me then.
You couldn't believe me,
That your new friend wasn't like the others!
Cuoren suddenly sang in the darkness in an ominous voice, for he was harsh and stern in character and never gave his women any leeway.
You stayed with him alone,
Knowing nothing about him,
That he was dangerous to everyone, you didn't care.
"You're lying," Ygritte snapped and shrank back a little — Jon was hugging her shoulders, and she didn't want to leave him in the darkness, but she was also afraid to snuggle up to him, especially when he might still be in a trance and seeing the world through the eyes of a wolf. "You didn't tell me anything like that."
"The truth is not the same for bards as it is for you and me," Qhoren replied from the darkness. "They can see a truth that we cannot see, but that Jon can see, for example," and Jon did not have time to intervene before Qhoren began to sing again.
And you've fallen into the hands of a real sorcerer,
He's ruined many like you!
Like a puppet, in the dead of night
Now he can control you!
Everything is like a terrible dream.
And it's dangerous for me to be here! **
The last line was the absolute truth, and Quoren quickly slipped into the tent, not giving John a chance to throw a few punches at him.
"Quoren, leave John alone!" Arya commanded in a frightening whisper in the darkness of the tent. She felt a little sorry for her and Ygritte, even though she didn't really like Ygritte: it was Jon who thought Ygritte was beautiful, but Arya, with her slightly jealous female gaze, could see that Ygritte had crooked teeth.
"Indeed," Lionel agreed quietly. He felt more sorry for Ygritte; John would somehow cope with his sinister reputation, every good swordsman had one, and John was still a novice swordsman, but with potential. "You're being a bit harsh with her, Qhoren.""Come on," Qoren replied just as quietly, filtering only the swear words in the presence of noble ladies and leaving the rest as it was. "Who are you defending? She's probably had more men than you've killed in your entire life, and you're no spring chicken. I'm not going to hand Jon over to a cat like that to be torn to pieces.
Arya probably should have taken offence at such rude talk and told Quoren to shut up — but deep down she agreed with him, Leo had no business defending other girls!
"He's lying," said Ygritte, who had decided to snuggle up to Jon and was now trying to convince herself that it was the right thing to do. "Neither he nor you knew until yesterday that you were a direwolf.
"I've had wolf dreams before," replied honest John, and Ygritte became a little wary. She had seen a mad woman who had scratched out her own eyes when Varirion Sixskins tried to possess her, and it was a good thing that it had happened long after, and not during, because in the darkness next to Jon, who was possessed by the same monstrous power, Ygritte would have been completely terrified. "Like a puppet, he can control you now, in the dead of night!" She was a warrior and a hunter, but werewolves were a different matter entirely; you couldn't fight them like you fought the dead.
"Did you only see them through your wolf's eyes?" Ygritte asked cautiously.
"Well, yes, it's my wolf," Jon said as if it were obvious, and Ygritte breathed a sigh of relief: Jon didn't even know that a powerful warg could control other animals and people, or maybe he didn't have enough power to do that, maybe he was just a warg and could only control one wolf.
"You know nothing, Jon Snow," Ygritte said cheerfully and kissed Jon. "You don't even know why I say that."
Lionel woke up in the middle of the night and was surprised that morning had come so quickly.
"I'm bored," Arya declared, pulling him out of the tent and dragging him away from the camp. "You asked me to marry you on the Wall, and you've hardly kissed me since. What's stopping you now? You've been sleeping under the same blanket with Sansa for two weeks, and now I'm even on duty with the one-armed man. What does she do to you that you can't tear yourself away from her?"
"Maybe you should ask her yourself?" Leo suggested, trying to dissuade Arya from her determined mood. "I could tell you, but you'd probably be offended by what I have to say."
"Why would I be offended now?" Arya replied and looked away. "I already agreed."
"So, are you going to let me do whatever I want now?" Leo asked, a little provocatively, unable to imagine Arya as a submissive wife, and rightly so.
"Dream on, dream on," Arya said mockingly. "And then I'll grant you one wish, just like in a fairy tale."
Lionel quietly turned Arya's face towards him, embracing her with his other arm, and finally saw her eyes in the moonlight. That was all he needed, to catch the restless and elusive Arya and know that she would not escape him.
"Tell me you love me."
"I love you," Arya replied, and she herself reached for his lips, feeling as if she were flying into Leo's arms for the first time. He probably never got tired, or Arya was so light, because it seemed to her that she had spent at least a quarter of an hour in such weightlessness.
"Is that all you need? To kiss me and listen to me tell you I love you?" Aria asked, finally breaking away from her Leo, and it was unclear whether she was teasing him or surprised that he loved her so much.
"Everything," Lionel agreed. "Don't rush. The rest will come when the time is right."
"You still treat me like a child," Arya sighed softly.
"Not really," Leo smiled slyly and ran his lips over Arya's, feeling her shudder and lean towards him. "And if I do sometimes, it's for the best — when you do silly things and act capricious, I won't get angry with you."
In the past, Arya would have rushed to take offence and argue that she couldn't do silly things, let alone be capricious, but Leo was right in a way: how many times before had she recklessly thrown herself at him and how many times had she slipped away from him, as if frightened by the choice she had just made. And just now — well, yes, she had been a little capricious, demanding something that just a few days ago she would not have dared to dream of.
"If I saw myself a year ago, I would say that this is not me," Arya admitted, and it also sounded a little childish, but she really couldn't imagine herself like this — in love and surrendering to the power of her beloved's hands. Her head was resting on Leo's arm, and all he had to do was move his hand slightly, and she wouldn't move away from his lips.
"I wasn't planning on getting married a year ago either," Leo replied, seemingly serious, but with a smile as always. "Not to mention twice."
"You like to remember that, you rascal.
"And you don't? You're getting married for love and against all odds, just like you wanted."Leo is probably right again," thought Arya, falling asleep in Leo's arms. She didn't let him go, even when she returned to the tent. Well, let Quoren come tomorrow to wake her up for her shift and find them sleeping together. Let him think what he wants. Maybe that's how everyone would remember her, as the most headstrong and daring girl in centuries — she didn't care about anything and married a young king who was already engaged. Maybe even the minstrels, who always lied, would write songs about her enchanting beauty. But in reality, Leo simply picked her up, looked into her eyes, and she could hardly resist. Neither fencing nor archery would help here — you can't fight off or shoot someone like that. Even at the very beginning, if you chase him away, you immediately want to run after him, and if you tease him, you immediately want to hug him. And now, all she can think about is him.
Quoren had to answer for Ygritte's riddles: Jon woke up before the others with difficulty and shook Quoren by the shoulder.
"I'm not going to oversleep," Qhoren grumbled, opening his eyes and deciding to sit up and talk to Jon. In the semi-darkness, Qhoren noticed Arya's head between Sansa's and Lionel's, and he was willing to bet five to one that Arya was sleeping in Lionel's arms under the blanket. "He's only been a direwolf for two days," thought Qoren, who always looked out for his men. "He's had enough shocks for now."
Jon moved awkwardly, his eyes constantly closing: Ygritte had done something to him during the night that he didn't even know was possible, and so, in his surprise, he had done it three times. John's clouded gaze didn't notice anything strange in the tent, and Qoren pulled him outside, kicking the king disrespectfully on the leg as he went.
"Ouch," Arya woke up immediately because Leo twitched a little.
"Damn you," muttered a sleepy Sansa, weighed down by two blankets, one large one covering her and Leo, and a second small one covering Arya, which was now big enough for both of them. "It's warmer this way."
Thirty paces from the tent, Cuoren was explaining to the young guard Jon Snow the true meaning of the expression "You know nothing, Jon Snow" and other similar sayings.
"She's provoking you," Qhoren explained. "She's testing you. You yelled at her — you did the right thing, or she would have walked all over you. And don't be a fool: she says you can't cook porridge? Don't argue, let her cook it. In fact, don't go near the pot after that, and you'll see, everything else you do will turn out fine. And most importantly, practise being a werewolf: see how soft she is after that.
"I'm not a werewolf!" John exploded, and Quoren rightly led him away from the tent. "I'm not a sorcerer! I don't need everyone to shy away from me. And I don't need her to submit to a sorcerer. I'm not going to drag her behind me with a noose around her neck. If she wants me, she loves me; if she doesn't, to hell with her!"
"I approve of your fighting spirit," Quoren nodded. "But you should still check on the chase.
"They're thirty miles away," said Jon, opening his eyes a few minutes later, and an eagle appeared again in the northern sky.
In the light of the new day, the werewolf Jon Snow seemed not so sinister to Ygritte — he looked younger than her and didn't really know much: he even tried to shoot the eagle hovering overhead, but Qhoren stopped him, saying that the arrow wouldn't even come close. Ygritte was a little ashamed of her fear yesterday, and also of how she had melted in his arms, imagining that someone much stronger than her was holding her. She wanted to surprise him, to please him, to forget herself — and yet she burst into a silent scream almost as soon as he decided to take care of her a little. Strange, she even lost her voice then, because he said he didn't want his sisters to hear them, but she liked to scream at moments like that. Big deal, a captive," as if she didn't know what to do to make him her captive of his own free will.
John was stubborn and didn't want to fall behind the eagle, constantly glancing at it, and once even started jerking his head when he caught the eagle's gaze, but Ygritte just smiled at him — he was a warg, not a sorcerer, she wasn't falling for that again. Of course, it's not easy to escape from a warg — he'll sniff you out and catch up with you, possessing his wolf, but she had no intention of running away. Jon was funny and cute, maybe he would run away with her, and then she would scare everyone with his gift, just like Quoren had scared her.
But stubborn John kept looking up, leaning back in the saddle, sometimes jerking his head in the same funny way, and then the eagle began to descend.
"Now you can shoot," Quoren reminded John, but John didn't answer. The eagle continued to descend, strangely veering from side to side, sometimes gaining altitude, and when Ygritte stopped her horse and turned around to mockingly tell John that it was time to rest, she saw the white, witch-like eyes. John's face was angry and tense, his lips pressed together and white, and the eagle continued to descend because John's will was stronger than that of the old sorcerer fighting for his last breath."It won't work," John said in the voice of the sorcerer who had taken possession of his eagle as it began to gain altitude. "You'd better choose one of your own kind."
Ygritte was frightened by the dead man's words and clung to John's arm as if seeking protection, although it would have been better to run — if the sorcerer had taken control of John's body, he could have stabbed her with his dagger to avenge John or deprive the Watch of their captive. But Jon jerked his whole body, shook his head, and the eagle turned in the air and dove toward the ground even faster.
Sansa and Arya were already nearby, they took John by the arms, unable to help him in any way, and there was nowhere for Ygritte to run. All they could do was watch as the eagle approached the ground, as Qhoren threw a blanket over it, and as Jon shook his head, trying to drive out the dead sorcerer who was now trapped in the eagle's body, wrapped in Qhoren's blanket.
The sisters pulled Jon off his horse, and he fell to his knees, spat blood from his bitten lip into the snow and caught some snow in his mouth to ease the pain. Lionel asked Quoren something, seeing that his help was not needed, and Quoren began to explain to him what was happening, but there was no need to explain anything to Ygritte — she knew the witch tribe, and not many of them could boast of defeating an experienced sorcerer without having fully mastered their gift. "And you've fallen into the hands of a real sorcerer," Ygritte remembered. Forever. Or for as long as he wanted. There was no hiding from a powerful sorcerer; he would find you anywhere. They say that once the sinister Lord Rivers, known as the Bloody Crow, got angry with one of the Wildling chiefs and played a game of hand-for-hand with him: no one knows where Rivers was, but those sitting around the fire in the chief's tent took turns standing up and asking: "Lord Rivers, what should we do with this forfeiter?" And in front of everyone else, they cut themselves with a knife.
Cuoren the One-Armed was fearless and kept his wits about him in any situation, even to the point of being able to cheer up his comrades.
"What?" asked Queren, leaning towards John, who was still standing in the snow on all fours, coming to his senses.
"Uh," John replied affirmatively, glad that articulate speech was not yet necessary to achieve understanding.
"... and he also spoke the language of giants!" Cuoren pointed at John with both hands, as if presenting him to a distinguished audience, but the first joke fell flat, either because Lord Eddard had drunk little and did not tolerate drunkenness and debauchery around him, or because Cuoren was the only one to whom John was not related.
"They're so serious," Corren sighed to himself, looking at his companions. "I remember we had a serious foreman, a hunter. They went out for elk, waited a week, waited two weeks, and finally came back: the boys were drunk, the foreman had new scars and a cloak embroidered with some kind of insignia. Of course, they ate all the meat themselves during that time. We took his cloak and hid it as a joke, gave him a plain one, and told him it was an order from the command, that there was no discharge in the Watch, and that Watchmen weren't allowed to wear discharge uniforms. Oh, how ambitious he became! Deru gave him a pass to go beyond the Wall, he went to the Wildlings, and now he's even grown up to be the King Beyond the Wall, all because he doesn't understand jokes.
"Free, free woman!" commanded Cuoren, seeing Ygritte freeze in the saddle. "Say something useful. How do you help people when they're so upset, so that their guts don't fall out while serving their country?"
"Take Jon to the weirwood tree, it will restore his strength," Ygritte replied, wanting to help after all, and not even thinking at first about what she now could only hope was a fairy tale — that if the weirwood accepted the sorcerer, his powers would grow many times over while he was near it.
***
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