A part, he tried to remind himself afterward. I am playing a part. I had to do it once, to prove I'd abandoned my vows. I had to make her trust me. It need never happen again. He was still a man of the Night's Watch, and a son of Eddard Stark. He had done what needed to be done, proved what needed to be proven.
The proving had been so sweet, though, and Ygritte had gone to sleep beside him with her head against his chest, and that was sweet as well, dangerously sweet. He thought of the weirwoods again, and the words he'd said before them. It was only once, and it had to be. Even my father stumbled once, when he forgot his marriage vows and sired a bastard. Jon vowed to himself that it would be the same with him. It will never happen again.
It happened twice more that night, and again in the morning, when she woke to find him hard. The wildlings were stirring by then, and several could not help but notice what was going on beneath the pile of furs. Jarl told them to be quick about it, before he had to throw a pail of water over them. Like a pair of rutting dogs, Jon thought afterward. Was that what he'd become? I am a man of the Night's Watch, a small voice inside insisted, but every night it seemed a little fainter, and when Ygritte kissed his ears or bit his neck, he could not hear it at all. Was this how it was for my father? he wondered. Was he as weak as I am, when he dishonored himself in my mother's bed?
Something was coming up the hill behind him, he realized suddenly. For half a heartbeat he thought it might be Ghost come back, but the direwolf never made so much noise. Jon drew Longclaw in a single smooth motion, but it was only one of the Thenns, a broad man in a bronze helm. "Snow," the intruder said. "Come. Magnar wants." The men of Therm spoke the Old Tongue, and most had only a few words of the Common.
Jon did not much care what the Magnar wanted, but there was no use arguing with someone who could scarcely understand him, so he followed the man back down the hill.
The mouth of the cave was a cleft in the rock barely wide enough for a horse, half concealed behind a soldier pine. It opened to the north, so the glows of the fires within would not be visible from the Wall. Even if by some mischance a patrol should happen to pass atop the Wall tonight, they would see nothing but hills and pines and the icy sheen of starlight on a half-frozen lake. Mance Rayder had planned his thrust well.
Within the rock, the passage descended twenty feet before it opened out onto a space as large as Winterfell's Great Hall. Cookfires burned amongst the columns, their smoke rising to blacken the stony ceiling. The horses had been hobbled along one wall, beside a shallow pool. A sinkhole in the center of the floor opened on what might have been an even greater cavern below, though the darkness made it hard to tell. Jon
could hear the soft rushing sound of an underground stream somewhere below as well.
Jarl was with the Magnar; Mance had given them the joint command. Styr was none too pleased by that, Jon had noted early on. Mance Rayder had called the dark youth a "pet" of Val, who was sister to Dalla, his own queen, which made Jarl a sort of good brother once removed to the King-beyond-the-Wall. The Magnar plainly resented sharing his authority. He had brought a hundred Therms, five times as many men as Jarl, and often acted as if he had the sole command. But it would be the younger man who got them over the ice, Jon knew. Though he could not have been older than twenty, Jarl had been raiding for eight years, and had gone over the Wall a dozen times with the likes of Alfyn Crowkiller and the Weeper, and more recently with his own band.
The Magnar was direct. "Jarl has warned me of crows, patrolling on high. Tell me all you know of these patrols."
Tell me, Jon noted, not tell us, though Jarl stood right beside him. He would have liked nothing better than to refuse the brusque demand, but he knew Styr would put him to death at the slightest disloyalty, and Ygritte as well, for the crime of being his. "There are four men in each patrol, two rangers and two builders," he said. "The builders are supposed to make note of cracks, melting, and other structural problems, while the rangers look for signs of foes. They ride mules."
"Mules?" The earless man frowned. "Mules are slow."
"Slow, but more surefooted on the ice. The patrols often ride atop the Wall, and aside from Castle Black, the paths up there have not been graveled for long years. The mules are bred at Eastwatch, and specially trained to their duty."
"They often ride atop the Wall? Not always?"
"No. One patrol in four follows the base instead, to search for cracks in the foundation ice or signs of tunneling."
The Magnar nodded. "Even in far Therm we know the tale of Arson Iceaxe and his tunnel."
Jon knew the tale as well. Arson Iceaxe had been halfway through the Wall when his tunnel was found by rangers from the Nightfort. They did not trouble to disturb him at his digging, only sealed the way behind with ice and stone and snow. Dolorous Edd used to say that if you pressed your ear flat to the Wall, you could still hear Arson chipping away with his axe.
"When do these patrols go out? How often?"
Jon shrugged. "It changes. I've heard that Lord Commander Qorgyle used to send them out every third day from Castle Black to Eastwatch-bythe-Sea, and every second day from Castle Black to the Shadow Tower. The Watch had more men in his day, though. Lord Commander Mormont
prefers to vary the number of patrols and the days of their departure, to make it more difficult for anyone to know their comings and goings. And sometimes the Old Bear will even send a larger force to one of the abandoned castles for a fortnight or a moon's turn." His uncle had originated that tactic, Jon knew. Anything to make the enemy unsure.
"Is Stonedoor manned at present?" asked Jarl. "Greyguard?"
So we're between those two, are we? Jon kept his face carefully blank. "Only Eastwatch, Castle Black, and the Shadow Tower were manned when I left the Wall. I can't speak to what Bowen Marsh or Ser Denys might have done since."
"How many crows remain within the castles?" asked Styr.
"Five hundred at Castle Black. Two hundred at Shadow Tower, perhaps three hundred at Eastwatch." Jon added three hundred men to the count. If only it were that easy …
Jarl was not fooled, however. "He's lying," he told Styr. "Or else including those they lost on the Fist."
"Crow," the Magnar warned, "do not take me for Mance Rayder. If you lie to me, I will have your tongue."
"I'm no crow, and won't be called a liar." Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand.
The Magnar of Therm studied Jon with his chilly grey eyes. "We shall learn their numbers soon enough," he said after a moment. "Go. I will send for you if I have further questions."
Jon bowed his head stiffly, and went. If all the wildlings were like Styr, it would be easier to betray them. The Therms were not like other free folk, though. The Magnar claimed to be the last of the First Men, and ruled with an iron hand. His little land of Therm was a high mountain valley hidden amongst the northernmost peaks of the Frostfangs, surrounded by cave dwellers, Hornfoot men, giants, and the cannibal clans of the ice rivers. Ygritte said the Therms were savage fighters, and that their Magnar was a god to them. Jon could believe that. Unlike Jarl and Harma and Rattleshirt, Styr commanded absolute obedience from his men, and that discipline was no doubt part of why Mance had chosen him to go over the Wall.
He walked past the Thenns, sitting atop their rounded bronze helms about their cookfires. Where did Ygrette get herself to? He found her gear and his together, but no sign of the girl herself. "She took a torch and went off that way," Grigg the Goat told him, pointing toward the back of the cavern.