The King-Beyond-the-Wall had done everything he could, but the wildlings' lack of discipline was still enough to make a man despair.
A host of a hundred thousand free folk surged onward in a vast column, the line snaking for miles like a twisted great serpent.
Wildlings liked to go to war with their whole families in tow. Out of those hundred thousand, fewer than thirty thousand could actually lift a weapon and fight.
A third of those fighters marched at the front and rear of the host—some serving in the vanguard under "Dog-Head" Harma, others forming a brutal rearguard alongside giants, aurochs, and fire-throwers.
Another third, led by "Giantsbane" Tormund and Ygritte and the like, acted as scouts, foragers, or disciplinarians.
Their job was to keep the march from dissolving into chaos.
The rest stayed closer to Mance himself, hauling the host's supplies—carts, sledges, and dog-drawn wagons carving long tracks across the snow, piled high with loot taken from the invaders' four camps.
Those spoils strengthened the free folk, and they also bolstered Mance Rayder's confidence that he could push south ahead of schedule.
For thousands of years, the wildlings had been driven back and forth like stray dogs by the Night's Watch. And yet this time they had worked a miracle—four straight victories over invaders from the Seven Kingdoms.
Was it the will of the gods?
Mance couldn't help thinking so. The gods must have spoken—commanding him to lead his people south, to seek warm, fertile lands.
…
"Big enough for you?" Tormund asked.
A few clumps of snow drifted down, thudding onto his broad face and melting into his hair and beard.
Giants rode past on mammoths, swaying slowly, two abreast.
At the sight, Ygritte's little garron shied back in panic. The huge beasts had frightened it.
Once she steadied the pony, Ygritte tried to count how many giants there were in this column.
She had reached fifty-something when Tormund cut in, loud as ever. "Has to be more than a hundred. Look—one of the big giant clans turned out!"
Giants were enormous men—smaller ones around three meters tall, the largest nearing four.
Their barrel chests were not so different from a man's, but their arms were long, hanging down heavy at their sides. Their lower bodies were broader than their upper by half again, with thick, powerful legs—shorter than their arms—and they wore no shoes at all. Their feet were wide, black, hard, and callused like old leather.
They had no necks to speak of; massive heads jutted forward between their shoulder blades. Their faces were flat and savage, their little rat-like eyes no bigger than beads, sunk so deep into horn-hard skin they were hard to see—yet their noses were keen, sniffing as they walked.
Even beyond the Wall, giants were rare.
And yet Mance Rayder had somehow convinced a giant clan to join his host.
Ygritte thought it over and decided it wasn't so strange after all.
Under Mance, the free folk had united as never before—driving off the invaders four times, taking their camps, winning heaps of plunder, and forcing them out of the Haunted Forest for good.
Those victories gave hope to tribes that had been watching from the sidelines. One after another they began to honor this "King-Beyond-the-Wall."
With each tribe that joined, the host grew larger—and the chance of crossing the Wall and making it south grew with it.
But sometimes hope was a poison.
For reasons she couldn't name, Ygritte could not shake her unease.
The giants she saw were poorly equipped, carrying only clubs—most hacked from dead tree trunks, dragging broken branches behind them. A few had stone balls lashed to the ends and used them like crude maces.
Ygritte sighed. Her time as a slave laborer south of the Wall had taught her things. If those giants were all outfitted in steel helms and plate, each with a great hammer in hand, they would be an unstoppable force—what would the Wall even be to them?
But the free folk never truly produced anything, and they certainly didn't smelt metal. Most of their weapons were stripped from dead black brothers or stolen in raids south of the Wall—pitiful, makeshift trash.
Among the giants approaching them, one looked older than the rest. His hair was gray with white streaks, and the mammoth beneath him was larger too, mottled gray and white. He was likely the chieftain of this clan.
As he passed, Tormund shouted a few harsh, clanging words in the Old Tongue.
The giant opened his mouth, revealing thick, solid teeth, and made a sound that was half belch and half rumble.
Only after a moment did Ygritte realize he was laughing.
The mammoth beneath him also turned its huge head and gave Ygritte a brief glance before lumbering on, leaving massive prints in the snow.
…
Men of the Seven Kingdoms had always claimed the "wildlings" weren't even human.
No laws. No honor. Not even the most basic moral code.
They stole from one another without end, bred like beasts, glorified rape and scorned marriage, siring bastards everywhere.
But whatever the southron lords said, Ygritte knew what she was: a true wildling.
The thought only darkened her mood.
Without order, there is no such thing as freedom.
The free folk boasted that they "never kneel," yet the reality of that forest law was simple: the strong took almost everything, and the weak lived with no dignity at all.
And because the land itself crushed productivity, the free folk remained trapped in a primitive state.
Labor was barely divided. Choices were few. Tools were crude. Society was too thin, too scattered, too small.
Whatever your interests, men fought and raided, women bore children and picked wild fruit—and if you left your own clan, you could expect to be eaten by Thenns or made into a slave.
On the rare occasions the free folk united, it was usually because they were fleeing famine or disaster. The rest of the time they fought the sky, fought the earth, and fought one another.
The Seven Kingdoms' order wasn't exactly enlightened, but when Ygritte had been forced into labor in the Lonely Hills, at least your property wasn't stolen whenever someone stronger wanted it. At least your life wasn't taken on a whim. Even women had some protection—some claim to marriage, some right of inheritance.
Compared to a culture that called itself "free folk" while living like glorified raiders, that was far more civilized.
Freedom?
Had the free folk ever truly had freedom at all?
They loved to shout about freedom, but what they wanted was only the freedom of the strong.
A strong man among the wildlings could take a heap of wives. Slaves did the farming and the hard labor—slaves snatched in raids.
Their "freedom" was built on the backs of the weak.
Whatever else was true, the Seven Kingdoms were freer than the lands beyond the Wall. That much was beyond dispute.
The more Ygritte had seen, the harder it became to stomach the wildlings' hypocritical, ridiculous "freedom"—until a faint disgust began to rise in her.
…
The endless column moved slowly, burdened by livestock, children, and all the wagons of baggage. Heavy snow slowed them further.
Still, most of the host had already emerged from the Haunted Forest, following the riverbanks toward the Wall.
Ygritte understood what waited ahead. Behind that Wall were countless soldiers of the realm and black-clad brothers, fully armed, holding the choke points—waiting for them to rush in like moths into flame.
"Do you know 'The Last of the Giants'?" Ygritte suddenly asked from atop her garron.
"Of course!" Tormund bellowed. "You're speaking to Giantsbane—Tall-Talker, Horn-Blower, Breaker of Ice, Husband to Bears, Mead-King of Ruddy Hall, Father of Hosts, and the gods' own spokesman…"
Before she could say another word, he started singing at full volume:
"Aaah, aaah, aaah— I am the last of the giants, I have no companions."
Tormund's lungs were huge; his voice shook the trees, and snow slid off branches in hissing sheets.
"The last of the giants came down from the mountains— we once ruled the world."
He roared it through the falling snow.
Ygritte's voice joined in, lower and rougher. "Ah, the little folk stole the forests, stole the mountains, stole the rivers…"
"They built great walls in the valleys, and caught all the fish in the streams."
They traded lines—Ygritte's low notes, Tormund's booming thunder—while other wildlings fell into rhythm, striking leather shields with spear shafts as they marched and sang:
"They lit great fires in stone halls, and forged sharp spears. And I am alone in the mountains— no companions, only tears.
By day the dogs hunt me down; by night the torches burn. For if a giant lives beneath the sun, the little folk cannot sleep.
Aaah, aaah, aaah— I am the last of the giants, remember my song.
One day I will be gone; the song will fade, silence will remain, long, long, long…"
When it ended, tears hung on Ygritte's lashes.
"Why are you crying?" Tormund asked, baffled. "It's just a song. There are still hundreds of giants beyond the Wall. Look—our host has more than a hundred right here."
"I'm not crying about how many giants there are!" Ygritte snapped, voice shaking. "You don't understand anything!"
She spurred her pony into a run, racing along the column for two miles through swirling snow, weaving past a mess of baggage carts.
The snow fell harder. The drifts deepened. The wind turned colder.
Night was coming.
Yet through the storm she could see it—an enormous white rise looming beyond the trees.
The barrier between the free folk and the Seven Kingdoms—the Wall.
It stood nearly seven hundred feet high, three times the height of the tallest tower at Castle Black.
It was wide enough for twelve fully armored knights to ride abreast.
Great scorpions and monstrous trebuchets guarded its heights, and the men who walked along the top looked as tiny as ants.
The Night's Watch had built nineteen mighty strongholds along the Wall. Now only three were still garrisoned:
Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, high on a gray and wind-scoured shore; the Shadow Tower, stubborn in the mountains at the far end; and Castle Black between them, where the kingsroad ended.
The other castles had been forgotten, turned into lonely ghost keeps—cold wind whistling through black windows, dead men's spirits wandering the ruins…
For three hundred miles there was no gate in the Wall—only narrow tunnels burrowed beneath the ice.
To pass through, you had to cross three iron portcullises, each solid and heavy with thick chains.
…
Outside the Wall, in the wildling camp.
"The iron gates have been opened. The tunnel is clear. The scorpions and trebuchets atop the Wall have been taken away. Castle Black is completely empty—not a crow in sight. The invaders have vanished as well…"
Inside Mance Rayder's tent, a wildling scout delivered his report.
"Ygritte's team is already scouting thirty miles south of Castle Black. So far they've found no sign of the enemy."
The enemy had abandoned the Wall and Castle Black.
And yet…
The "King-Beyond-the-Wall" was grim, head lowered, lost in thought.
"Something's wrong," even Tormund muttered. For the invaders to abandon four half-built camps was one thing—those crude works were doomed the moment they fell.
But this was the Wall, stretching for hundreds of miles and rising near seven hundred feet—one of the world's great wonders.
A fortress so solid, so impossible to crack… abandoned without a fight?
"I smell a plot," Dog-Head Harma said suddenly, breaking her silence.
"No," Mance replied, eyes narrowing, the cold in him deepening. "Not a plot. An open snare."
Right now the wildling tribes were at their most united, their morale highest, their fighting strength at its peak.
Even if he knew it was a tiger's den, he still had to walk in.
If Mance turned tail at a moment like this, would the free folk ever gather again?
"Bad news!" A chieftain responsible for keeping order burst into the tent. "Some tribes won't listen. Their warriors have already led their people into the Wall in a rush. They're going south to raid, and we can't stop them…"
"Those damned fools," Mance snarled.
That was the free folk for you. With threats pressing in on all sides, they could just barely cling to unity.
But the moment the threat seemed to vanish, they indulged every impulse—ignoring even the King-Beyond-the-Wall's orders. They wanted to go south and plunder, seize a stretch of fertile land…
And they wanted it fast. Men who had fought shoulder to shoulder yesterday were rivals today. The irony was bitter.
"Into the tunnel," Mance commanded at last.
He had no choice. Even if it was a trap, he couldn't hesitate here.
If he did, the free folk would abandon him instead.
Because what they needed—what they truly needed—was a King-Beyond-the-Wall who could lead them south.
Mance Rayder led his followers beneath the Wall.
For three hundred miles there were no gates—only narrow tunnels carved under the ice.
The passages twisted and turned, dark and freezing. The ice walls bled cold into their bones, and the air felt like a tomb—worse than a tomb, heavier and still.
The three iron portcullises were already raised.
At last, Mance passed through the Wall.
When he emerged, the sun returned. Only a wall of ice had separated the two sides, yet to Mance the sunlight south of the Wall felt far warmer than anything he'd known beyond it.
Castle Black lay hard against the Wall.
It was not a true castle. There were no walls guarding its east, west, or south—only the Wall towering to the north.
That meant even if the wildlings took it, they could not use it to resist enemies coming from the south.
History had proven it. More than once, wildlings had crossed the Wall under a King-Beyond-the-Wall and marched south—only to be hunted down and destroyed by the armies of the North.
Mance Rayder let out a long, quiet breath.
May the gods grant it.
May this time… he succeed.
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🏰 Game of Thrones: Secrets Beneath the Dreadfort
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