VAL
The third, terrible horn blast was still hanging in the air when Val and Alysane pulled down the last bar on the door and ran out of the King's Tower into the courtyard. As a result of the crows' constant exertion, the snow here was only ankle-deep, but even Val, the daughter of the wild, to whom summer, warmth, and the south were only dreams and stories, felt the cold take her broadside. It was a queer wrong cold, seemed to slick her very bones with ice, and neither stars nor moon were visible in the vast black firmament overhead. She wanted it to be a mistake, she prayed for it to be a mistake, but every instinct was confirming what the horns had already told her. Gods be good. Gods be good.
Doors were opening on all sides, spilling black brothers outside and into the winch cage – orders were bellowed, torches lit, and steel snatched. You could say this for the crows, they were admirably unencumbered by original thoughts. When summoned to muster and battle with their order's most ancient and dread foe, they obeyed without a flinch. Or mayhaps that was because Lord Snow had sent all the halfway intelligent ones away, and those that remained were too stupid to know what awaited them.
Val would not have blamed any brother for being scared spitless. Her knees felt watery, and her heart was going like a kettle-drum. Her only weapon was the bone knife – did she truly think she would climb to the top of the Wall with the crows, and help them rain fire arrows down on the enemy below? The Others completely aside, she would be in more danger up there; they might well do to her as she'd thought of doing to the monster, and throw her into the snows as a sacrifice. Even the most stalwartly godless of men would lose his convictions in moments like these. And if it came to hand-to-hand fighting, they were every one of them dead and damned, and the rest of the kneelers' kingdom to boot.
Nonetheless, Val would throw herself over the edge sooner than meekly return to her prison and sit and wait. She was no sharpshooter, but she could bend a bow passing well, and that was all that was necessary. They need every breathing soul they have.
"Come on!" Val shouted at her companion, and the two women, slipping and skidding in the snow, pelted across the bailey. Val had no doubts about Alysane's ability to fight; she was a Mormont of Bear Island, almost as good as one of the free folk. As for the girl who wasn't Lady Arya, and the monster and his wet nurses. . . well, they already knew what was nigh if they had to defend them in person.
Val did not want to think about that. She and Alysane reached the armory, which hadn't been properly stocked in days – queen's men, wildlings, and crows alike were sleeping with their steel. But among the dim warrens, there were still a few tattered black cloaks, and a pile of long-hafted axes, which would not be of appreciable use atop the Wall. Still, it was better than nothing, and Val, the taller of the two, fetched down a pair and ordered Alysane to prospect about for bows. But the She-Bear needed no telling; she was already on her hands and knees, in search of any the black brothers might have overlooked on the lower shelves. While she was hunting, Val braided her hair out of her face, tucked her skirt into her girdle and laced up a pair of waxed-leather braies and boots. Then with only a moment of instinctual revulsion, she grabbed a black cloak and shrugged it on. The wool was good weave, lined with fur, double-thick and resistant to wind and water, and it had more purposes than just warmth.
"Here," Alysane said, as Val was casting madly about in search of gloves. "Take these. And this." She held up what was unmistakably a wildling's bow, left there no doubt in the chaotic business of getting the lot of them through the Wall.
Val accepted the familiar weapon with gratitude, as well as the threadbare gauntlets Alysane had also located. She had just tied the hood of the cloak under her chin, and swung the half-full quiver onto her shoulder, when an aghast voice behind them said, "What in the name of the gods are you doing?"
Swearing under her breath, Val spun around. They had in fact been caught, and by the worst imaginable party. Bowen Marsh, his normally ruddy face gone sickly white, was staring at them from the doorway, apparently at a loss for words.
"I would think it's obvious what we're doing," Alysane cut in, as Val opened her mouth to make a heated reply. "The same you should be doing. Get out there and fight. Don't be standing in here counting up how much you still have left."
"Are you mad?" Marsh did not appear to have heard a word she'd said. "I need everything I have for my men, I can't be minding two women! Get back inside and take shelter with Queen Selyse, and don't do something you'll regret. I am the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and that is an order!"
Alysane stared at him for a long, mulish moment. It was plain she was thinking exactly what Val was: that riding out the battle with Selyse Baratheon might be worse than being gotten by the Others. Then she said, "You need all you have for the Watch?"
"Yes, I bloody do!" Marsh was getting agitated. "Now take that off, for the gods' sake, do the duty you were ordered and either go to the queen or guard Lady Arya. What can you possibly know about – "
"My lord uncle was the Old Bear," said Alysane Mormont. "I am the north and the Watch and the wild so much as he was. Lady Val. Hand me that black cloak there."
Surprised, Val did so. She expected Alysane to merely put it on and see how much Marsh liked arguing to the business end of a longaxe – at least, that was what she would have done. But the She-Bear donned it carefully and reverently, then knelt.
"Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow," she said, her voice echoing in the deserted armory. "Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It will not end until my death. I shall take no husband, hold no lands, bear no more children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."
The silence resounded thunderously after she had finished. Marsh appeared to be totally speechless. Finally he managed, "Are you. . . women can't. . ."
"I know the tales of Danny Flint." Alysane rose to her feet. "And of Night's King, and all the rest. And of the Long Night too. Get out of my way, m'lord."
Marsh looked like a sparrow in a serpent's eye. If he hadn't been so determinedly oblivious, and if he hadn't murdered Lord Snow, Val might almost have felt sorry for him. Instead, she shouldered him aside and emerged into the night.
The last carload of black brothers were just about to bang shut the winch door and start the ascent. Alysane broke into a run, and Val followed her. They squeezed in just in the nick of time. Someone was praying to the Mother in a hoarse panicky voice, and another's garlicky breath bathed Val's face as the chain jerked and shuddered into motion. The ground fell away beneath them, and each grating rotation brought them closer to the top, and whatever waited there.
The wallwalk was alive with shouts and torches. As they piled out, Val noticed a few other wildlings, hauling out barrels of pitch and running from crenel to crenel. Some mercifully clear-headed individual had organized the brothers into battalions, each armed with a longbow; all Lord Snow's insistence on their practice would not go wasted. Val felt an oblique pride in his foresight.
"Notch. Draw. Loose." Flaming arrows hissed into the falling snow on either side. Oil-soaked rags were tied around the shafts just behind the head, and a few of the crows were solely responsible for keeping the brands lit to kindle them. Val followed Alysane to a spot right on the brink, on the first row behind the snow walls, looked down –
And saw them.
Gods have mercy. She wished at that moment that the old gods had some prayers like the fancy formal ones of the Seven and the red god, just so she could utter them. What she glimpsed amassing before the Wall was nothing short of a nightmare made flesh, the Great Other unleashed. Thousands on thousands of rippling white silken things, eyes that burned like blue coals, and icy blades that reaved through darkness and flame alike. There seemed to be no end of them. Those that had reached the foot had already begun to climb.
"Notch."
Val reached into her quiver and fitted the first arrow. She felt as if she was moving very slowly, almost dreamily.
"Draw."
Val pulled the string back to her ear. A crow with a brand lit the arrowhead.
"Loose."
Another shivering hiss, and the arrows flew like vengeance. It seems as if the stars themselves are falling. They soared down and scattered among the crawling white shapes, and the eerie silence in which the Others tumbled was more frightening than if they'd screamed. Men would have screamed. For a fleeting instant Val thought of her late lover Jarl, what must have gone through his mind as his stakes came loose and the slabs of ice rumbled down to take him out. She thought of what it had been to watch the battle from the other side of the Wall, as crows who'd stood exactly where she was standing now had rained down barrels and burning oil and rocks and spears and arrows on the free folk swarming below. And now we brace together. Shoulder to shoulder.
Dimly Val caught sight of Leathers, bawling orders in the Old Tongue to a flank of jittery young wildlings, Lord Snow's hostages. Suddenly it occurred to her to wonder, no matter how strange it sounded, just why they were bothering to fight the Others, for every legend had always told her that they could not pass the Wall. As she reached for the next arrow, lit it, notched it, drew it, loosed, Val saw her sister in her mind's eye. In labor with the babe that would take her life, the babe that had gone safely south with Gilly and Fat Sam. But once the Wall is fallen, what will stop the Others?
It was not the true Horn of Joramun we found. Only a bluff, a lie, a trick. Val notched, drew, loosed. Her fingers were freezing even through the gloves, stiff and cramped. The gods only knew what ills they'd brought on themselves, digging in the deepest and most remote regions of the Frostfangs, valleys that had never known a human foot. Opening graves and releasing a thousand unquiet shades into the world. It may be they are marching against us even now. They might have been her friends in life, those with whom she'd shared food or fire, or her sleeping skins of a time. Among the free folk it was no shame to come together, to couple, to while away the long cold nights. She had not lain with a man since Jarl, yet had not much missed it. All the kneelers would have fucked her as they pleased for her pretty face and what they thought they owned of her. Now it mattered nothing.
Val lost track of how long she shot. Her first quiver ran out, but someone replaced it with another. The Others kept climbing, and the snow fell so thick and fast that it was all they could do to keep a spark alight. She was no longer aware of anything, no past or present or future. The ice of her breath encrusted the muffler across her nose and mouth. If she died right here, right now, she may well remain upright and shooting. We will dismay them. Dawn has to come. Yet Marsh, the bloody fool, had sealed the way below. There would be no way to run out and retrieve the arrows and missiles and barrels they'd already spent. And the Others would return the next night, and the next.
Briefly, Val felt one of her old surges of hatred for King Stannis. Since he had broken the free folk's back, there was no line of defense remaining against the Others save for the Night's Watch itself. She tried not to think of the countless blind spots along the length of the Wall, in all the unmanned castles. Dead things in the snow. Dead things in the water. Yet still, this gang of cripples and idiots and savages and women, they were holding, they were holding –
Val did not know if she heard the first man die, or merely sensed it. There was a choked gargle near at hand, and then a crow was pawing confusedly at the ice spike embedded in his chest. Then the air was full of exploding shards, one raking Val across the cheek so deep that she felt the skin tear away, and she looked into the dead opaque eyes not ten yards from hers, and knew.
Wights. Bloody, bloody hell. The Others themselves could not pass the Wall; there was something intrinsic in their nature that the spells within it repelled. That part was truth. But wights were merely dumb dead flesh, could cross like any mortal man. And there were hundreds of them, thousands, as the Others lifted them up and up and up. Gods. Be. Good.
The first of the necrotic things stumbled onto the wallwalk.
"To arms, men of the Watch! To arms!"
There was a scraping rasp as the crows drew their blades all at once. Val unslung the axe, though she barely knew why. No, no. If they met the wights like this, they'd be slaughtered.
There was another whistling sigh and shattering explosion. More frozen spears bladed the night, and suddenly black brothers were going down on every side, stumbling to a knee, blood gushing from the splinters in throat or chest or stomach. Steel rasped and screeched, jarring against the unholy milkglass weapons of the enemy. Steel sobbed as it broke and failed. Men cursed and screamed and died in the Common Tongue and the Old alike, but Val still felt almost numb, trancelike. Then a wight was on her, coming out of nowhere, hewing with a hatchet that had certainly been wildling-made in its life. The refugees of Hardhome. She wondered how many of them were coming across the Wall now in silent vengeance, to make the crows and Bowen Marsh pay for their willful ignorance.
She hauled and hacked away with the longaxe, desperately keeping the dead fingers from closing around her throat. The blade made the wrong noise when it buried in the pale white flesh, a hideous wet squelch, the ruin of rotted tendons and bones showing in its wake. It was bigger than her, and stronger. It was backing her up against a snow merlon, soon there would be no escape but down –
And then another contrail of fire split the night, and the wight crashed in a heap of flailing limbs, as Alysane Mormont wrenched her burning blade out of its back. The fire took it like greased paper; it turned to an inferno, hissing and steaming the great blocks of ice. Other wights were down and burning, but more were shambling over every instant.
"Retreat!" The voice of the commander shattered the chaos. "Into the cage, get down, get down, it's lost, get down! Hold the castle, fire the perimeter! Down!"
Those of the black brothers who still had enough of their limbs to obey did so, scrambling for the winch cage in such numbers that they almost overloaded it. Val knew that they would not live to see its return journey, so she seized hold of Alysane's hand – the She-Bear still fighting off another wight with the other – and the two women threw themselves onto the half-finished stair. It switched seven hundred feet down the icy face of the Wall to the ground, vertiginous even in daylight, and almost unthinkable under the conditions in which they now attempted it.
Val got to her hands and knees and crawled. Her fingers slipped out over empty air more than once, she had to jump from one section to the next. There were men coming behind her, but living or dead she did not know, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, Castle Black petered into sight below. She could hear the distant sound of Wun Wun roaring from under Hardin's Tower. The giant was wasted this side of the Wall, but might be their savior if the unthinkable happened. No, that will not, it will not. Daring a glance above her, Val could see nothing but flames and blundering black figures. The screams were ungodly.
The ground came up at her so suddenly that she fell the last ten feet headlong, and barely had enough time to curl herself into a ball and roll. There was a thump and a plume of snow as Alysane hit beside her, and they stumbled to their feet, dizzy and gasping. Looking up, they could see that their decision to avoid the cage had in fact saved their lives. Wights were crawling down the winch chain, thrusting their pale hands through the bars, breaking the necks of the men inside, so that it would be naught but corpses when they reached the bottom. And then those corpses will rise.
"If I die," Val panted to Alysane, "burn me. At once, burn me."
"So I will." The She-Bear was staring up at the slaughter above, mesmerized. "But you realize we're all going to die, don't you?"
Yes. Of course she did.
"It won't be long until the wights make it to the bottom." Alysane wiped the snow out of her face. "You get Wun Wun out of his lair. Do it, now."
Val nodded once, put her head down, and ran. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see – of all the bloody well-meant heroes – Satin the squire, the boy whore, hefting a crossbow from where he was perched on the stairs and taking out the wights assaulting the cage, one by one. But their little flames were useless, so useless, and now they would –
And then Val spotted Melisandre.
The red priestess emerged from the King's Tower, her stripling squire Devan Seaworth racing after her. She walked at a brisk but unhurried pace, as if she was out for a morning constitutional, and the ruby at her throat glowed incandescently, throwing dazzling refractions across the snow. The look on her face was fierce, almost exultant – yet then again it would be, for this was the very culmination of her moment, the battle she had whispered about, foretold before the nightfires every evenfall as she prophesied of daggers in the dark and blood on the snow, a hero come forth with a blazing sword.
More of the crows, seeing the fate that had befallen their fellows in the cage, had decided to risk the same path down as Val and Alysane. The wights were hard behind them, though, and their descent seemed certain to end in utter calamity. Until Melisandre began to sing. Her voice was rich and sweet, the words in what must have been the tongue of Asshai. And the shadows stirred, and sniffed, and danced.
The next moment, as Val was fumbling with frost-deadened fingers at the latch on Wun Wun's cage, the shadows were undulating upwards on all sides, spurred on by the blazing figure of the red priestess. A great chunk of ice broke off on the Wall above, slamming into the wights; disembodied parts flew everywhere, ropes of entrails. Val tasted ichor on her lips as she wrenched at the door. Melisandre was shining behind her, burning. The heat pounded on her back, the cold tore at her front.
The latch gave, and Wun Wun needed no further encouragement. He lumbered into the courtyard and met the first wight as it slithered off the winch chain, tearing it in half and launching the torso at its swarming fellows. The bailey was turning into a mess of living and dead and undead, as wights skittered and clawed and fell down off the Wall like a river. Some of them exploded on impact; the rest pawed over them. Some others, with the hoary fragments of their living memory, were making for the gate.
No. Val's heart turned to water. If the wights dug that out – if they opened the way back through –
The Others cannot pass, the Others cannot pass –
The hand-to-hand fighting she'd feared was in full evidence everywhere. She looked around madly for Alysane, but couldn't find her – until the She-Bear exploded out of the throng at the door to the King's Tower, caught Val's eye, and beckoned to her.
Cold hands groped at her as the wildling woman fought across the bailey toward Alysane Mormont, fought with everything that had ever been in her. Hardin's Tower was burning now, a great funeral pyre, and she saw Satin lying with his neck at a strange angle, eyes open and staring at nothing. Two half-disemboweled wights still lay twitching beside him. Ravens were appearing from nowhere, diving from the sky, shrieking.
The door gave, and Alysane and Val toppled through. They snatched up the bars they'd ripped down earlier in the night, and slammed them back in place, undead hands thrusting through the jamb even as they did. Black blood oozed beneath the threshold, and their footsteps sounded like thunder in the stairwell as they ran. Snow sloughed off their hoods and cloaks and piled in dripping trails, and the door crashed behind them. The bars would not hold for long.
Val could hear the monster crying when they reached their rooms. Lady Arya – well, not Lady Arya – for once, was not. She stood in the dark solar in her bloody nightdress, a pale frail ghost, eyes the size of trenchers. She looked at them in mute appeal.
"I'm sorry, child," Alysane said, breathless. "So sorry. But they're coming."
The door crashed again, distant but not distant, in proof of this.
"I'll fight for you to the end. You know that." The She-Bear took better hold of her gory blade. "But. . . go, child. Go. Run up to the queen."
"No." Jeyne Poole remained motionless. "I'll stay with you. You were kind to me. I'll die with you."
"Gods, lass." Alysane stationed herself by the door, back to the girl, as if she could not bear to look. "This is your last chance. Hold fast, and mayhaps some of you will live to see the dawn."
"I don't care." At last, Jeyne sounded almost serene. Then again, how frightening could this be, if half of the tales she told of her marriage to Ramsay Bolton were true? "I'll hold fast here. I'm a northerner too."
"You're a brave girl," Val said. "Both of you." She looked to Alysane. "It's not what I wished to say, but I'll be honored to die alongside you both."
"Be it so." Alysane didn't turn from the door. The heavy slopping footfalls of wights could be heard climbing the stairs.
Val's childhood in the wilderness had left little time for gods. Yet still she prayed now with all her heart, thinking of her sister and the parents she barely remembered, of Jarl, of Mance, of Tormund, even of Lord Snow, all the good men she'd known. And the good women. She threw her shoulders back, and waited for her death as a free soul should: with a smile on her lips, and a song in her heart.
The smell of decay wafted up. The uproar and shouting from the bailey was starting to die down. There must be too few alive to scream. She had wanted the Others to take Lady Melisandre for her lies and deceptions, wanted them to tear her limb from limb, but now she found herself straining for any sight of the red priestess' glow. She could almost say the words herself. The night is dark and full of terrors.
Val planted herself beside Alysane and braced her feet. The terrors were not the only thing there was. I pledge my life and honor. . . the sword in the darkness, the watcher on the walls. . . I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. Somehow, irrationally, she was. I am at peace now.
Jeyne Poole remained stock still behind them, waiting.
Dead eyes gazed up at them. Dead feet broke into a run. Dead hands reached out. And the wildling and the She-Bear began to fight.
This is the dance I was made for. She would have stuck out like a sore thumb at any southron court, yet some small part of her was sad that she would not live to see one. Only from curiosity. And to meet Dalla and tell her that I had. Val slashed and hammered and hacked. The fire in the hearth had been just enough to light a pair of torches, and she and Alysane thrust them into the wights' faces, smashing rotten teeth.
Out of intellectual inquiry, Val wondered if Bowen Marsh was still shut in the armory, counting until the end. She was past being afraid. She was only fighting, she would die so. The spreading pain in her shoulders made it hard to lift and swing her axe, and she could feel blood and sweat running into her smallclothes. But it was nothing. They were untouchable, they'd be sung of for years to come. Just as sad a song as Danny Flint's. Mance had sung it, sometimes. And now –
Alysane Mormont gave a small, muffled grunt. She sounded almost surprised. Then she slowly went to her knees, touching the ice spear that had driven her through from belly to backbone. Her sword fell from her hand.
Fumbling, the She-Bear picked up her torch and swept it in a fast circle. She grabbed her blade from the floor, but couldn't hold it. Blood was rapidly staining her black cloak, but she managed to take off the head of one of the wights crawling for Jeyne. Then another. "Gods, girl," she panted, more blood frothing on her lips. "Run!"
"No," Jeyne Poole whispered. "I'll be brave. Theon was brave too."
Val intercepted a wight stealing up on Alysane from behind. Standing over her, she kept on battening them off, as fast as they came. From her knees, Alysane was still fighting, trying to pull the ice shard out and gasping in agony with each wrench. Dead men closed from every side, impervious.
Alysane's breathing was rasping, slowing. "Val. . ."
"Aye?"
The She-Bear looked up at her fiercely. "Here We Stand."
Heartbroken, Val reached down to squeeze Alysane's hand. Neither of them let go, but kept on holding on. This was it. There was no way out. And now our watch is ended.
Alysane shuddered. Val felt the strength slip away from the callused paw still closed so tightly in her own. "No," she begged. "Don't. Don't leave me here with them."
"No fear," Alysane whispered. "Served well. Remember. Burn me. Scatter me to a strong north wind."
"I will." Fire was starting to spring up the walls from where the wights had fallen. This will be a pyre for all of us.
The She-Bear sank down. She was trying to form one last sentence, but could not get it out. Then she smiled, and died as well as she had lived.
Jeyne Poole gave a wail of despair. All was at an end.
And then Val heard the horn.