𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐘

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜱᴇᴠᴇɴ

𝟛

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Ghost was gone when the Wildlings led their horses from the cave. Torsten took a breath of the crisp morning air and allowed himself to hope, that Ghost had understood about Castle Black. The eastern sky was pink near the horizon and pale grey higher up. The Sword of the Morning still hung in the south, the bright white star in its hilt blazing like a diamond in the dawn, but the blacks and greys of the darkling forest were turning once again to greens, golds, reds and russets. Above the soldier pines and oaks and ash and sentinels stood the Wall, the ice pale and glimmering beneath the dust and dirt that pocked its surface. 
Tormund sent a dozen men riding west and a dozen more east, to climb the highest hills they could find and watch for any sign of rangers in the wood or riders on the high ice. The other Wildlings fell in behind Tormund. The Wall was often said to stand seven hundred feet high, but Tormund had found a place where it was both higher and lower. Before them, the ice rose sheer from out of the trees like some immense cliff, crowned by wind-carved battlements that loomed at least eight hundred feet high, perhaps nine hundred in spots. But that was deceptive, Torsten realized as they drew closer. 
Tormund had chosen to assault the stretch of ice along the ridge. Here, though the top of the Wall loomed eight hundred feet above the forest floor, a good third of the height was earth and stone rather than ice, the slope was too steep for their horses, almost as difficult a scramble as the Fist of the First Men, but still vastly easier to ascend than the sheer vertical face of the Wall itself. "Used to be you couldn't find a tree within a mile of the Wall. Crows would come out every morning with axes." Tormund informed. Once brothers in black had gone out every day with axes to cut back the encroaching trees, but those days were long past, and here the forest grew right up to the ice. 

"Your flock gets smaller every year." Orell mocked, with a wide smile that stretched across his face. The Wall did not awe Tormund's raiders, Torsten observed.

"You ever climbed it before?" Torsten asked the older man.

"Tormund here, has done it half a hundred times." Orell answered for him. Tormund held his axe out for Torsten to take, and with that the Wildling helped the young bastard to his feet. 

"Sink your metal deep and make sure it holds before taking your next step. And if you fall don't scream." Tormund gave the younger a big toothy smile. "You don't want that to be the last thing we remember. Har!" Tormund laughed at the thought.
Torsten watched the Wildlings scramble up the steep slope of the ridge and vanish beneath the trees. The patrols stumbled on climbers two or three times a year, and rangers sometimes came on broken corpses of those who had fallen. The only way to defeat the Wall was to go over it, and many raiders had. Climbers must of necessity to leave their mounts behind, and many younger, greener raiders began by taking the first horses they found. Then a hue and cry would go up, ravens would fly, and as often as not the Night's Watch would hunt them down and hang them before they could get back with their plunder and stolen women. 
Tormund would not make that mistake, Torsten knew. He glanced up to see the first climber emerge above the treetops. It was Tormund. He had found a sentinel tree that leaned against the Wall, and led his men up the trunk to get a quicker start. 

"Come, crow. You're next." Torsten moved towards the trees. The wood should never have been allowed to creep so close. They're two hundred feet up, and they haven't touched the ice itself yet. 
He watched the Wildlings more carefully from wood to Wall, hacking out handhold with short sharp blows of their ice axe, then swing over. Torsten wrapped the rope around himself securely. The rope around his waist tied him to the third man in line, still edging up the tree. 
Torsten remembered the Skirling Pass all too well, and the moonlight climb he'd made with Stonesnake. He had swallowed his heart a half dozen times that night, and by the end his arms and legs had been aching and his fingers were half frozen. And that was stone, not ice. Now, he'd have to do it all over again.
Ice was treacherous stuff at the best of times, and on a day like this, when the Wall, was weeping, the warmth of the climber's hand might be enough to melt it. The huge blocks could be frozen rock-hard inside but their outer surface would be slick, with runnels of water trickling down, and patches of rotten ice where the air had gotten in. Whatever else the Wildlings are, they're brave. 
Step by step, Torsten slowly made it to the Wall. As he moved higher, he began kicking out toeholds with his spiked boots when there were no natural ones to be found. 
Tormund looped his rope around a wind-carved pinnace and was using it to support his weight when the whole jagged thing suddenly crumbled and came crashing down, Tormund had caught himself, Torsten wasn't so lucky. 
Chunks of ice as big as a man's head bombarded the three below, but they clung to the handholds and the axes held, Torsten jerked to a sudden halt at the end of the rope as his heart fell in his throat. 

"Just seeing if you can take a hit, lad!" Tormund laughed and the others followed. If the gods are good, a patrol will chance by and put an end to this. No wall can keep you safe, Torsten thought. A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it. 
Tormund soon had his men edging upward again. Stone hammers pounded stakes deep into the ice to serve as anchors for the ropes, the iron stakes ran out before they were halfway up, and after that the climbers used horn and sharpened bone.
Torsten listened for the distant moan of the Wildlings warhorn. But the horns stayed silent, and there was no sign of the Night's Watch. The sun was high in the sky, and the upper third of the Wall was a crystalline blue from below, reflecting so brilliantly that it hurt the eyes to look on it. 
The sun had begun to sink, so they wasted little time. They unwound the long coils of hemp they'd looped around their chests, tied them all together, and tossed down one end, but Mance had planned better than that. The raiders Tormund had left below uncasked a huge ladder, with rungs of woven hemp as thick as a man's arm, and tied it to the climbers' rope. Tormund and Orell grunted and heaved, pulled the rope again to haul up a second ladder. There were five all together. When all of them were in place, Tormund shouted a brusque command in the Old Tongue, and five of the Wildlings started up together. Even with the ladders, it was no easy climb. 
The Wall was made of blood. Nor had it drunk its fill. By sunset, two of the Wildlings had fallen from the ladder to their deaths, but they were the last. It was near midnight when all the Wildlings had reached the top. The stars were out again. "The worst is behind us."

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