When the tenth bonfire roared to life, more torches finally began flickering along the top of the Wall. They moved in scattered, uncertain clusters. The Watch was clearly short on men and even shorter on anyone who knew how to lead them.
Mance's plan was working perfectly. Qhorin's math had been dead-on. Standing there in the firelight, Lynn found it hard to picture how the Night's Watch could possibly hold Castle Black.
As the hours crawled by, the wildlings stripped the nearest stretch of forest bare. Some of the timber fed the fires. The rest they turned into crude, pointless contraptions—ramshackle carts, fake siege engines, anything that would look busy from above. Lynn asked what they were for. Mance just grinned: "So the crows think we're doing something. Keeps them nervous."
The massive bonfires burned for most of the night, turning the entire face of the ice into a golden wall that could be seen for ten miles. Every so often the wildlings launched another half-hearted charge, shoving their clumsy battering rams toward the gate. A few of the rams fell apart before they even got close.
From the top of the Wall the defenders answered with a few harmless arrows and the occasional stone from a catapult. The wildlings lost maybe a dozen men, nothing that slowed them down.
The giants kept blowing that huge black warhorn Mance had once hoped might be the real Horn of Winter. The low, gut-shaking note rolled across the snow and made anyone standing too close feel dizzy and sick. Lynn was glad it wasn't the real thing—the Wall showed no sign of coming down.
In the blackest hours before dawn—the wolf hour—Mance finally called a halt. Everyone except the sentries crawled back to camp and tried to grab some sleep.
Two hours later the sound of fighting drifted down from the top of the Wall. Shouts, steel on steel, then silence. It was over almost as soon as it started.
Exactly as Qhorin had predicted, Castle Black was almost empty.
Later they learned there had been fewer than fifty men left. Nominally they were under Ser Wynton Stout, the last knight at the castle. The problem was that Ser Wynton had spent eighty years as a ranger and had long since lost both his strength and his wits. They said he once fell asleep at supper and nearly drowned in his own bowl of pea soup.
The real commander had been the castle blacksmith, one-armed Donal Noye—tough, stubborn, and experienced. He liked to joke that he was the meanest cripple in the world.
Noye had been up on the Wall helping rig a new catapult and pitch barrels when word came that the wildlings were already inside. He moved too fast, too eager. Instead of taking the wooden stairs he rode the iron cage lift down on the winch. Faster, yes—but the Thenns were waiting at the bottom. Six black brothers, including Noye, were trapped inside the cage like fish in a barrel. The Thenns simply leveled their spears and waited.
With their commander taken alive, the rest of the defenders—old men, sick men, and boys still in training—broke. Every fighter worth anything had already marched south with Acting Lord Commander Bowen Marsh to help Ice Gate and Shadow Tower.
When the thick outer gate of the tunnel finally creaked open, the night was still pitch black.
Kassa stood just inside with a gaunt, white-haired blind man. Lynn didn't need an introduction. He knew exactly who this was: Maester Aemon Targaryen.
Lynn rode forward, Kuna and Lyanna close behind, Qhorin limping along on his new wooden leg, and a column of Thenn infantry marching in tight formation at their backs. Mance and Harma Dogshead had stayed behind to clear the road and start building the main camp for the thousands still coming.
Weeping Blood had been left in camp too. It was the first time the little dragon had been apart from him, but the beast had behaved. For now.
Lynn swung down from the saddle and approached the old maester.
"Maester Aemon," he said quietly, "I hope my men didn't frighten you."
"Taking the rookery first was wise," the blind man answered, his clouded eyes blinking slowly. "Your soldiers were courteous. They gave an old man no trouble. Truth be told, I never had time to loose a single raven, let alone write a letter."
He gave a small, dry smile.
"In any case, it would have done little good. We have been sending letters to every king and lord in the realm for some time now. No one has answered."
"Maester, it's freezing out here," Lynn said. "Let's continue this inside."
Aemon tilted his head. "I hear you have a dragon."
The question came out blunt and direct.
Lynn glanced at Kassa, who shook his head—no, he hadn't told the maester.
Aemon sensed the movement. "Word reached Craster's Keep. The dragon story traveled with the survivors who came south, though Craster himself refused to believe it."
Lynn saw no reason to lie. "Yes. A red dragon. It hatched from the egg that once belonged to Lord Bloodraven."
He unbuckled Dark Sister and placed the Valyrian steel blade gently in the old man's hands.
"The Wall does have its magic—the dragon can't cross it yet. Once we take Eastwatch you'll be able to see him. His name is Weeping Blood Star."
Aemon's trembling fingers traced the hilt. This sword had belonged to his own family for generations. It had seen the rise and fall of more Targaryens than anyone alive could remember. For a long moment the blind maester stood perfectly still, lost in memory. Then he returned the blade.
"I am only Aemon now," he said softly. "I gave up the name Targaryen when I forged my chain. A maester serves. My vows bind me to whoever holds the Wall… but I would at least like to know who I am serving."
They stepped into the long tunnel beneath the ice. It was even colder inside. The walls pressed in from every side, ninety meters of solid ice directly overhead. The passage curved and twisted for more than two hundred meters, broken every so often by heavy iron portcullises and murder holes above.
Even if an enemy somehow smashed through the outer oak door, the tunnel itself was a killing ground. A few dozen spearmen and archers could hold it against hundreds.
Lynn walked in silence, thinking how cheaply the Watch had just lost the heart of the Wall.