Chapter Text
The cold burned.
Jon had been warned by Tormund once, when the Wildlings poured through the Wall as it wept, that fighting the others was like fighting the cold, a mist with teeth that crawled inside you and froze you from the inside out. Jon had thought, for just a moment, that he understood – he was a northerner, had never left the North, had played in the cold and trekked in the cold and killed in the cold – but kept his mouth shut, knowing that living men with cobbled-together weaponry could never truly compare to dead men built from shadows.
Can your sword cut through cold, Crow? Tormund had asked, not expecting an answer. And now, he would never get one, as Jon’s blood poured onto the ice underneath him, seeping between his body and the earth.
Can your sword cut through cold?
-
Melisandre remained inside her rooms as the Wall descended into chaos, Crow against Crow against Wildling against Queensman, every faction desperate to survive the night even as Snow’s body still laid in the courtyard where they had killed him.
Daggers in the dark, she had told him. Ice, and daggers in the dark. Keep your wolf beside you.
(She had seen the wolf be locked up in Snow’s quarters from her own window. She could not help those that would not listen, not matter how much she wanted to. Melisandre had learnt that many lifetimes ago.)
Melisandre's door was bolted shut, and though she did not know who else on the Wall would perish that night – friend or foe – she knew she would not be one of them, she knew that she would leave this small room she called her own unharmed. R'hllor would keep her safe. He needed her, like he needed her King, and Shireen too, locked in her own room by some Queensman or another.
Nevertheless, she would not be sleeping tonight.
-
Bowen doubted the blood would wash off his hands as easily it would be wiped from his sword.
I killed the Lord Commander, a voice whispered inside of him, I committed treason this night. I killed the Lord Commander, and I’ll likely kill half a dozen of mine own Brothers before the sun has risen.
He did not want to, could not even pretend that he would do so for any reason other to save his own skin, could not pretend he was a skilled warrior when he preferred counting swords to swinging them, but with his own life (and his honour, and his Watch) on the line, he’d slaughter any man who came too close. He needed to, so he would.
That was the reasoning that had led to his actions, and that was the reasoning that would see him through to dawn.
For the Watch.
-
The kneelers have gone mad, Tormund thought, as he stepped over the dead bodies of some of the Queensmen he had killed that night, the ugly bloke with the comically large ears and the young lad who was meant to marry Gerrick’s third daughter. The kneelers have gone mad, and now we will have half a hundred bodies to burn by dawn.
He was about to prepare for his departure for Hardhome to rescue whatever remained of Mance’s followers when he had heard yelling outside. Back home, Tormund would have thought little and less of such noise, but the kneelers and Crows practically lived in silence, too scared and small to live loud whilst they still could, and something about the yelling had seemed different to the drunken brawls he was used to.
By the time he had reached the courtyard, it was chaos.
He had not seen Snow’s body himself, had only been told what had happened by one of his own after killing every Queensman that came at him with his bare hands, and there would not be time to see the boy to rest for a while. Tormund could only hope that someone had moved his body to somewhere quieter, somewhere he would not be trampled or pissed on, somewhere more fitting for a good lad like Snow.
Tormund had threatened to kill Snow himself half a dozen times, but the boy had been decent, a good man, a good Lord Commander, and almost a good free man too at times, if not a bloody miserable shit. He had cared, almost as much as Mance had done, and the bastards had killed him for it. The kneelers hate us so much they’ll kill one another to prove it, Tormund thought, as he heard sounds of fighting inside and turned around to go join in, undoubtedly a free man or Crow loyal to Snow against one of the conniving bastards that had kill him. Moons ago, the thought of kneelers slaughtering one another would have made Tormund piss himself in glee, but not now.
We have more important enemies now.
And soon, half a hundred bodies to burn, too.
-
Death haunted Castle Black that night, but by dawn the fighting was done.
-
As the sun rose and the Wall began to weep (better it weep than not, Tormund thought, winter or otherwise), the dead were counted and the injured treated as best as could be. Only thirty dead in the end, mostly Queensmen and Crows who had their weapons turned against them, and the two surviving traitors that had plunged their knives in Snow’s back were thrown into the Ice Cells to be dealt with later, but even that smaller number seemed far too large in the light of day.
The bodies were already being piled on top of the pyre built when the fighting was done, with the survivors – free men, and the Crows who had seen the murder of their Lord Commander, including Satin, the pretty boy with hair softer than anything north of the Wall and the tracks from tears still upon his face – wanting to get the dead gone for good before they could rise.
(Tormund didn’t know if the dead could even rise this far south, but he didn’t see any reason to push their luck.)
The pyre grew higher and higher, with even the traitors laid gently in unity, and Tormund tried to recognise as many of the blue-tinted faces as possible, tried to whisper a sentence of prayer for each and every soul to safely reach whatever awaited them on the other side of life; they were murderers, yes, and cowards too, but so were many of the men in this yard. It was hard not to be afraid, nowadays. He saw a few Crows and traitors in the pyre, a handful of the free men that had been taken out before they could realise what was even going on, but most notably, half a dozen Queensmen, and the bloody woman herself, too, slain by some Crow or free man caught up in the madness (and Tormund did not pity the man who would have to inform the kneeler king of his wife’s death, but the kneeler king was several weeks ride down south, and as long as it wasn’t Tormund, Tormund didn’t particularly care who the unlucky fucker was). The only dead man not on the pyre was Snow himself – Tormund wanted to burn the man alone, as a thank you. Snow had not saved Mance, but he’d saved the rest of them, at the cost of his own life.
He would not see Snow reach the darkness in the company of his killers.
Besides, the wolf needed to say his goodbyes.
-
It wasn’t until noon that Satin released Ghost from Jon’s quarters.
The wolf had howled half the night long – Ghost, who never even sighed loud enough for Satin to hear – audible over the sounds of clashing swords and screams of man and giant alike. Ghost had howled and howled and Satin had been half tempted to let him loose on Jon’s killers himself, until he remembered the rumours of what had happened to Robb Stark’s own wolf at the hand of his master’s murderers.
But by noon, the bodies had been burned and most of the carnage cleared from the courtyard and mess hall; no one wanted to wade amongst the wreckage from the dark night longer than they needed to. All that remained was Jon, and the pink letter that had started it all; Tormund had taken the first, to burn that night, and the King’s Woman had taken the latter, appearing from her room to witness the burnings and disappearing back into them minutes later, letter in hand, no doubt to spend the rest of the day screaming and crying and praying feverishly. The daughter too – Shireen, Shireen is her name – had returned to her room before the fires finished consuming her mother, and her guards; Satin had knocked to see if she needed anything (she hadn’t), but he could not begrudge the girl her need for privacy today.
No one was up for much conversation.
The moment the wolf was free, it was running, and Satin had never caught up, reaching the room Tormund had stored Jon in several minutes later, the beast already curled up next to the table upon which rested Jon’s body. It barely even lifted his head to acknowledge Satin’s entrance, or his approaching of the man he’d called friend, called Commander. Tormund wasn’t around, either, although Satin knew he felt responsible to see to Jon’s burial for some reason or another, but he would return soon, undoubtedly.
Jon Snow had given Satin security and friendship on the Wall, more than he’d earned and far more than he’d expected. I talked often of being a whore, Satin remembered, a lump in his throat. I told Jon I missed the company of the men in King’s Landing, but I never told him how grateful I was for his own.
Jon Snow treated me better than any of the men that payed for the pleasure of my time. And now he is dead.
Satin did not know what would come tomorrow, or in the weeks to come, but without Jon, he doubted any of them would survive the wars to come.
-
Tormund knew he needed to burn Snow before the sun set for the night, but something kept him in the room, as the air got colder and the Wall ended its weeping for the day.
One hour more, Tormund insisted in the early afternoon, then the late afternoon, then the early evening. Soon. Twenty minutes more. The wolf needs to say its goodbyes.
(Ghost had not left Jon’s side in hours and everyone knew it. No one pointed it out.)
-
R'hllor could not have abandoned her now. Melisandre gripped the letter in her hands, re-reading the words that she had understood many hours ago.
Your false king is dead, bastard. I have his magic sword. I want the false king's queen. I want his daughter and his red witch.
It could not be; it would not be, if Melisandre had any ability to change it. Stannis was to lead her (everyone) into the long night – he was Azor Ahai, the Prince who was Promised, the man to take them into the darkness and bring them out alive and unharmed on the other side.
Your false king is dead, bastard.
The fires were never wrong; Melisandre, yes, always, I am flawed and human and R’hllor can only lead me so far, but she had seen Stannis in the fires, she had seen Dragonstone, she had seen the swords and the dead men and the victories of the Great Other, and she had done what she needed to do for R’hllor’s children to survive the wars yet to be fought. She could not give up now.
Stannis was Azor Ahai.
Your false king is dead, bastard.
As the sun began to set at the Wall, Melisandre knew that she would do what she needed to do, no matter the cost. Always.
She needed to find Shireen.
Her father needed them.
-
As the sun set at the Wall, Satin could smell the fire.
He walked outside, slowly, not wanting to see Tormund Giantsbane throwing Jon’s body onto the pyre. He did not want to see the flesh peel and crackle and turn into ash, did not want to be there when the fires faded and all that remained was logs to be removed and bones to be buried. But he had to; he owed it to Jon, and the Wildlings and loyal Brothers he had fought alongside last night.
So he dragged himself to watch Jon’s body be burned, ignoring the lump in his throat and the weight in his stomach that would not shift, no matter what he drank or ate or tried to ignore.
Until the red woman threw herself and King Stannis’ daughter, both screaming, onto the fires behind him.
-
As the sun set outside Winterfell, Stannis knew he could not act yet, as he stood at the head of the makeshift strategy table situated within his makeshift war room. Asha stood directly to his side – she was meant to be a prisoner, damn it, not an ally – with the Mormonts, Glovers, Umbers and a fair few clan leaders surrounding the rest of it. They were waiting on his word, on his strategy, and he would give it to them.
Bolton and his bastard invoked fear within the northerners (one-part fear for every two-parts hatred, Asha had commented, and as much as he hated to admit that the blasted woman got it right, she probably had the correct read of the situation in this case), but the man was not infallible. All Lord Bolton had needed to do was sit inside the castle whilst Stannis’ army starved in the cold; instead, he had sent a sizable portion of his own strength forth to give battle whilst Stannis’ men held the high ground. We held the high ground, we kept the high ground, and now one thousand men of his are dead, and barely one hundred of mine own. But Bolton wass not a fool, despite his hulking, brutish son. He would not make the same mistake again, Stannis knew, but he also could not commit to sending his men in waves against Winterfell’s walls, not realistically, not yet. The castle was old, and strong, and the men inside strong and ready for war – at least in theory, although Asha’s translations of her brother’s tales cast some doubt upon those last points.
Those doubts were what made Stannis’ plans possible.
They would wait here – now that the army was not trekking through piles of snow across hundreds of leagues, their limited amount of food was a much less pressing issue, as long as they had enough to keep their strength up. They would wait for one moon, two moons, three if needs be, until the tensions within the castle boiled over and those inside killed one another before Stannis even had to approach the walls. He knew better than any northerner the strains a siege could cause even amongst a devoted, united army, and the Bolton army was neither.
Besides, Davos would not be waiting to rescue Lord Bolton anytime soon.
“My Lords and Ladies, prepare your men for a siege. Make your camps comfortable and get your food rations in order. We will attack in two moon turns, if they have not killed themselves in the meantime.”
-
Tormund watched in horror as the red witch and the young monster burned up.
He did not know, would never know what caused her to throw herself and her king’s heir onto Snow’s burning pyre, and he was thankful for that. Tormund had seen a thousand horrific things beyond the Wall – both natural and manmade, and more recently, the horrifically unnatural had also assisted plenty in making the night’s a little bit harder to sleep through – and any one of those things would be fair cause for being driven into madness. He did not need to know which horrific event in her own life had caused the witch’s. However, it seemed unfair that she had taken the young monster down with her.
The crowd of bodies stood around the pyre watched in silence as the screams of the two people shrivelled up quickly, pain and terror quickly being swallowed up into death and the night. They had all seen too much death in the past day to be terrifically shaken by two more.
And besides, the flames were hypnotic this close. Tormund could understand how people lost themselves within them.
-
Burnings never last this long, Satin realised, long after the screams faded. The fires should have begun to consume themselves by now. We should be collecting the bones.
They were rising higher.
-
Jon Snow opened his eyes to flame and smoke.
And screams.