The garron shied away from him when he approached, no doubt

frightened by the blood on his face, but Jon calmed him with a few quiet words and finally got close enough to take the reins. As he swung back into the saddle his

head whirled. I will need to get this tended, he thought, but not just now Let the King-beyond-the-Wall see what his eagle did to me. His right hand opened and

closed, and he reached down for Longclaw and slung the bastard sword over a shoulder before he wheeled to trot back to where the Lord of Bones and his band were

waiting,  Ygritte was waiting too, sitting on her horse with a fierce look on her face. “I am coming too.”  “Be gone.” The bones of Rattleshirt’s breastplate

clattered together. “I was sent for the crow-come-down, none other.”  “A free woman rides where she will,” Ygritte said.&nbsp ; The wind was blowing snow into Jon’s

eyes. He could feel the blood freezing on his face. “Are we talking or riding?”  “Riding,” said the Lord of Bones.  It was a grim gallop. They rode two miles down

the column through swirling snows, then cut through a tangle of baggage wayns to splash across the Milkwater where it took a great loop toward the east. A crust of

thin ice covered the river shallows; with every step their horses’ hooves crashed through, until they reached the deeper water ten yards out. The snow seemed be

falling even faster on the and the drifts were deeper too. Even the wind is colder. And night was falling too.  But even through the blowing snow, the formaldehyde

shape of the great white hill that loomed above the trees was unmistakable. The Fist of the First Men. Jon heard the scream of the eagle overhead. A raven looked

down from a soldier pine and quorked as he went past. Had the Old Bear made his attack? Instead of the clash of steel and the thrum of arrows taking flight, Jon

heard only the soft crunch of frozen crust beneath his garron’s hooves.  In silence they circled round to the south slope, where the approach was easiest. It was

there at the bottom that Jon saw the dead horse, sprawled at the base of the hill, half buried in the snow. Entrails spilled from the belly of the animal like frozen

snakes, and one of its legs was gone. Wolves, was Jon’s first thought, but that was wrong. Wolves eat their kill.  More garrons were strewn across the slope, legs

twisted grotesquely, blind eyes staring in death. The wildlings crawled over them like flies, stripping them of saddles, bridles, packs, and armor, and hacking them

apart with stone axes.  “Up,” Rattleshirt told Jon. “Mance is up top.”  Outside the ringwall they dismounted to squeeze through a crooked gap in the stones. The

carcass of a shaggy brown garron was impaled upon the sharpened stakes the Old Bear had placed inside every entrance. He was trying to get out, not in. There was no HKBU BBA

sign of a rider.  Inside was more, and worse. Jon had never seen pink snow before.