A Game Of Thrones [ASOIAF #1]

PROLOGUE

“We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around
them.
“The wildlings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a
smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen
the lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with
the dead.”
“Are they dead?” Royce asked softly. “What proof have we?”
“Will saw them,” Gared said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough
for me.”
Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He
wished it had been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men
sing no songs,” he put in.
“My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,” Royce replied. “Never believe
anything you hear at a woman’s tit. There are things to be learned even from the
dead.” His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.
“We have a long ride before us,” Gared pointed out. “Eight days, maybe nine.
And night is falling.”
Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. “It does that every day
about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?”
Will could see the tightness around Gared’s mouth, the barely suppressed
anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty
years in the Night’s Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being
made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could
sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous tension that
came perilous close to fear.
Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he
had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels
had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron
called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this
darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and
northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the
track of a band of Wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that
had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of
the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as
though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved
him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride hellbent
for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your
commander.
Especially not a commander like this one.
Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many
heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender
as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will
and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen
pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail
over layers of black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn
Brother of the Night’s Watch for less than half a year, but no one could say he
had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe was
concerned.
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. “Bet
he killed them all himself, he did,” Gared told the barracks over wine, “twisted
their little heads off, our mighty warrior.” They had all shared the laugh.
It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected
as he sat shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.
“Mormont said as we should track them, and we did,” Gared said. “They’re
dead. They shan’t trouble us no more. There’s hard riding before us. I don’t like
this weather. If it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow’s the
best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice storm, my lord?”
The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that
half-bored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long
enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like
that. “Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out.”
Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night’s Watch. Well, a poacher in
truth. Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own
woods, skinning one of the Mallisters’ own bucks, and it had been a choice of
putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as
silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
“The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,” Will
said. “I got close as I dared. There’s eight of them, men and women both. No
children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow’s pretty
well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but the firepit
was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever
lay so still.”
“Did you see any blood?”
“Well, no,” Will admitted.
“Did you see any weapons?”
“Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-
bladed, a cruel piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”
“Did you make note of the position of the bodies?”
Will shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the
ground. Fallen, like.”
“Or sleeping,” Royce suggested.
“Fallen,” Will insisted. “There’s one woman up an ironwood, half-hid in the
branches. A far-eyes.” He smiled thinly. “I took care she never saw me. When I
got closer, I saw that she wasn’t moving neither.” Despite himself, he shivered.
“You have a chill?” Royce asked.
“Some,” Will muttered. “The wind, m’lord.”
The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frost-fallen leaves
whispered past them, and Royce’s destrier moved restlessly. “What do you think
might have killed these men, Gared?” Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted
the drape of his long sable cloak.
“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last
winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows
forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the
real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you quieter than Will, and at first you
shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of mulled wine
and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a
while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you
don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to sleep. They
say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy, and
everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk.
Peaceful, like.”
“Such eloquence, Gared,” Ser Waymar observed. “I never suspected you had
it in you.”
“I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser
Waymar a good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears,
three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my
brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face.”
Ser Waymar shrugged. “You ought dress more warmly, Gared.”
Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with
anger where Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. “We’ll see how warm you
can dress when the winter comes.” He pulled up his hood and hunched over his
garron, silent and sullen.
“If Gared said it was the cold …” Will began.
“Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?”
“Yes, m’lord.” There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody
watches. What was the man driving at?
“And how did you find the Wall?”
“Weeping,” Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling
had pointed it out. “They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It
wasn’t cold enough.”
Royce nodded. “Bright lad. We’ve had a few light frosts this past week, and a
quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight
grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at
hand, and the means of making fire.” The knight’s smile was cocksure. “Will,
lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself.”
And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and
honor bound them to obey.
Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through
the undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones
and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its crust, waiting for the careless and
the unwary. Ser Waymar Royce came next, his great black destrier snorting
impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong mount for ranging, but try and tell that
to the lordling. Gared brought up the rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to
himself as he rode.
Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old
bruise, then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will
was grateful for the light.
“We can make a better pace than this, surely,” Royce said when the moon was
full risen.
“Not with this horse,” Will said. Fear had made him insolent. “Perhaps my
lord would care to take the lead?”
Ser Waymar Royce did not deign to reply.
Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.
Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and
dismounted.
“Why are you stopping?” Ser Waymar asked.
“Best go the rest of the way on foot, m’lord. It’s just over that ridge.”
Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A
cold wind whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind like
something half-alive.
“There’s something wrong here,” Gared muttered.
The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. “Is there?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Gared asked. “Listen to the darkness.”
Will could feel it. Four years in the Night’s Watch, and he had never been so
afraid. What was it?
“Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?”
When Gared did not answer, Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the
destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and
drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight
ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-
made from the look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in anger.
“The trees press close here,” Will warned. “That sword will tangle you up,
m’lord. Better a knife.”
“If I need instruction, I will ask for it,” the young lord said. “Gared, stay here.
Guard the horses.”
Gared dismounted. “We need a fire. I’ll see to it.”
“How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is
the last thing we want.”
“There’s some enemies a fire will keep away,” Gared said. “Bears and
direwolves and … and other things …”
Ser Waymar’s mouth became a hard line. “No fire.”
Gared’s hood shadowed his face, but Will could see the hard glitter in his eyes
as he stared at the knight. For a moment he was afraid the older man would go
for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by sweat, its edge
nicked from hard use, but Will would not have given an iron bob for the
lordling’s life if Gared pulled it from its scabbard.
Finally Gared looked down. “No fire,” he muttered, low under his breath.
Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. “Lead on,” he said to Will.
Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low
ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin
crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and
hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he
heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and
muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on
his splendid sable cloak.
The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had
known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid in
underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on the
empty clearing below.
His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight
shone down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to,
the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it had been a
few hours ago.
They were gone. All the bodies were gone.
“Gods!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar
Royce gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand,
his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the
stars for all to see.
“Get down!” Will whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong.”
Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed.
“Your dead men seem to have moved camp, Will.”
Will’s voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was
not possible. His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite,
stopped on the axe. A huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had
seen it last, untouched. A valuable weapon …
“On your feet, Will,” Ser Waymar commanded. “There’s no one here. I won’t
have you hiding under a bush.”
Reluctantly, Will obeyed.
Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. “I am not going back to
Castle Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men.” He glanced
around. “Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire.”
Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was
moving. It cut right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green
sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was
lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He
whispered a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of
its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The
taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.
Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Will heard
uncertainty in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.
The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a
distant hoot of a snow owl.
The Others made no sound.
Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through
the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it
was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with
wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the words
seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a
bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen,
after all?
“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He
was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have
felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so
cold?”
It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed
hard against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his
cheek.
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall,
it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor
seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there
black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The
patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.
Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. “Come no
farther,” the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy’s. He threw the long
sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his
sword in both hands. The wind had stopped. It was very cold.
The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none
that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade.
It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed
almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the
thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was
sharper than any razor.
Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high
over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from
the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of
the Night’s Watch.
The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human
eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high,
watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to
hope.
They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of
them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with
them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his
duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the
silence.
The pale sword came shivering through the air.
Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of
metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal
screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a
step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again.
Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient,
faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but
invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.
Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against
the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the
effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost;
the Other’s danced with pale blue light.
Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the
ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled
between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire
where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar’s fingers brushed his side. His
moleskin glove came away soaked with red.
The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was
like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.
Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up

snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it
around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry
was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a
hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to
his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers.
The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given.
Swords rose and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale
blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath
him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles.
When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the
ridge below was empty.
He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly
across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with
cold, he climbed down.
Royce’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable
cloak had been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how
young he was. A boy.
He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and
twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and
snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to
make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon.
Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.
Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword
transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long,
elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were
gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.