"Can the dragon cross the Wall?" Mance asked.
Lynn shook his head.
"In theory, yes. But the dragon really doesn't want to. I'm not risking him. We'll go around Eastwatch later."
Mance nodded.
"Won't be long now. I just saw Varamyr's eagle heading back toward camp. That bird's terrified of your dragon—must've spotted us but didn't dare come close."
Lynn smiled. Weeping Blood treated chasing birds like play and hunting practice. Varamyr's eagle had learned that the hard way.
When they got back to the temporary camp, the gray-blue eagle passed right over their heads.
Weeping Blood, who normally went into full predator mode at the sight of anything with feathers, looked listless. The strange power on the Wall had clearly shaken him.
Harma Dogshead rode up and handed Mance a thin roll of scraped sheepskin.
Mance unrolled it. The symbols were the secret code he and Varamyr had worked out in advance.
"Kassa's group is in position—hidden in the hills west of Mole's Village. They're resting up and will hit Castle Black at the wolf hour tonight."
(Westeros timekeeping:
Bat hour begins at full dark.
Eel hour follows.
Ghost hour after that.
Owl hour runs from late ghost hour until just before dawn.
Wolf hour—"the blackest part of the night"—comes after owl hour.
Nightingale hour follows wolf hour.)
Mance passed the "real sheepskin" to Lynn. He knew Lynn couldn't read the cipher, but the gesture still mattered.
"We'll sound the horns after dark and light every fire we can. Draw as many crows onto the Wall as possible," Mance said.
Lynn stared at the strange marks on the sheepskin and wondered if he should teach the wildlings simplified characters someday. Creating a practical, easy-to-spread writing system would be a hell of a legacy.
Text was a logographic script—dense, efficient, and full of meaning in every character. A few hundred common characters could get someone reading and writing fast. It beat the alphabet system the maesters used, especially for total illiterates.
But the time wasn't right. They needed a safe base first, and everyone had to be fed before anyone would bother learning letters. Hungry people didn't care about books.
He tucked the idea away and went back to his tent.
Inside, he washed down some cold, rock-hard jerky with icy water. They were too close to the Wall to risk fires, so everyone was roughing it.
On the other side of the tent the forest witch was changing Qhorin's bandages. These women knew some herb-craft, but skill varied wildly—there was no Citadel training, just master-to-apprentice hand-me-downs.
Lynn watched her mix honey with a greenish paste, smear the sticky mess thickly over Qhorin's stump, and wrap it in coarse burlap. At least the honey had real antibacterial value. He'd seen wildlings pack open wounds with plain dirt before. Ash would've been better.
He made a mental note to stay healthy and uninjured. The medical care in this era could kill you faster than the wound.
After eating, Lynn wiped the grease off his hands with snow and sat down to write a letter on a two-foot sheet of thin sheepskin.
The letter was addressed to Mors "Crowfood" Umber, castellan of Last Hearth.
He recalled Bloodraven's courtly style from his years as Hand, dipped the quill (made from some unknown bird's tail feather) in the dark-green ink the witches used for tattoos, and wrote in elegant, formal script full of royal-court phrasing.
In short: Lynn Morningstar, Guardian of All Living Beings in Westeros, had taken command of the Wall to hold back the Others. He needed supplies and manpower to repair the abandoned castles and invited House Umber to join the effort and help protect the realm.
The letter was mostly bullshit. The real breakthrough would depend on Kuna and Lyanna, and Lynn wasn't counting on much.
Still, appearances mattered. This would become a template; once they held the Wall, the maesters would copy it and send it by raven to every named lord in Westeros.
When the ink dried, Lynn laid the sheet on the table.
Qhorin, freshly bandaged, limped over, read it, and gave a low whistle.
"That's fine work. I haven't seen handwriting like that since Maester Aemon still had his sight. Mullin at Shadow Tower couldn't manage half of it."
Lynn smiled. Bloodraven had run the Targaryen court for decades—writing diplomatic letters was child's play.
He found Kuna teaching Gilly how to care for the baby, handed her the rolled letter, and left.
Lyanna watched her mother with shining eyes, clearly still dreaming about the child she didn't have yet.
At dusk the army of more than four thousand stopped hiding.
When the last sliver of daylight vanished behind the mountains, dozens of horns—big and small—blared at once. Clansmen poured out of the haunted forest in plain sight, chopping trees, building campfires, and pitching shelters right under the Wall's nose.
The fires served two purposes: keeping wights away and announcing to the Night's Watch that the Free Folk had arrived.
Two horn blasts sounded from the top of the Wall.
One blast meant rangers returning.
Two blasts meant wildlings.
For a long time no one remembered what three blasts meant—until the slaughter at the Fist reminded the black brothers that something far worse than wildlings waited beyond the Wall.
Time is the cruelest rot. South of the Wall, people had forgotten the truth of the Long Night. The Others had faded from apocalyptic threat into nothing more than a scary bedtime story.