Chapter 229

The North. The Wall. 301 AC.

Elena Snow.

“Mance Rayder is marching his forces south, his army will be here within two or three weeks. In that time we need to bring the Wall to a full defensive footing. Increase the number of patrols so that not a single wildling can slip across. Lord Umber, see to it.” The big man bowed and assured his liege he’d handle it properly. “Lord Commander, I’d ask you once more to check every hidden passage beneath the Wall, I’ll assign you a hundred men for it. Anything you find, wall it up.”

“It will be done.” Jeor Mormont had no objection to a young lord taking charge in his own domain. So long as the orders made sense, he would follow them.

“A question, if I may, Lord Stark?” Once Robb nodded, Dormund, a knight, went on. “The wildlings are moving because of the White Walkers?” Even hearing the name alone made battle hardened men glance uneasily at one another, so deep ran the northerners’ fear of that ancient enemy.

“Yes. The Night King’s army has begun to move, and that’s what’s forced Mance toward the Wall.” The sheer headache it had taken Elena to gather that information wasn’t something she cared to dwell on, especially not the part where the Night King had personally knocked her out of a bird; she’d spent two days unconscious afterward.

Up here in the North, Axel’s lessons had proven more useful than ever; without them she would have died of mental exhaustion long ago. It turned out she wasn’t the only one with this particular gift; the wildlings had their own wargs. Not as strong as her, but far more experienced, and there were far more of them besides. Endless tribal warfare among the wildlings had taught them tactics for countering their own kind, wargs included. It had cost her nearly three weeks just to locate the enormous army’s camp, and even then her birds were spotted quickly and killed with particular cruelty. The endless string of deaths weighed on her like an endless headache, but it had paid off in the end; now they knew the Night King existed, though they still needed proof.

The worst part by far had been trying to spy on the White Walkers directly. If the cold didn’t kill the animal first, the endless hordes of the dead did. A warg is bonded to their animal, and every sensation the creature feels passes through to its human companion. A hungry wolf means a warg who feels hungry too; a tired bird leaves the person feeling that same fatigue on some subconscious level; a rat in pain in its tail, congratulations, the skinchanger feels that too, tail or no tail. Dying to the teeth of dead beasts was already unpleasant enough, but slowly freezing to death was a whole different level of misery. In the end Elena had simply snapped and taken a desperate gamble: she drove nearly fifty birds into an aggressive reconnaissance run. Her flock flew brazenly straight into the largest cluster of the dead, and without regard for losses pressed on toward the center, trying to confirm or disprove the existence of a supreme Other. Only a couple of birds ever made it to the target, and in the instant before the connection snapped, she saw Him. The Night King looked like a typical White Walker, but crowned with jagged growths and clad in armor (before this she had only ever seen the Others half naked, with the odd scrap of armor here and there), and a single glance from him sent her whole being trembling with fear. The next moment she woke with a splitting headache and learned she’d been unconscious for two days.

“Once the reinforcements arrive…”

“Within the week…”

“Supplies…”

“…We can hold…”

…

She was dreaming. The same dream she’d had every night since coming home, back to the North. A small world, vast possibilities, and a great fear. However many years Elena had spent flying through the boundless sky, however much she had seen, felt, heard, she inevitably forgot it all upon waking. And through every one of those journeys, a single three eyed raven kept her company. Together they watched the world unfold: thousands dying for the ambitions of the few, brother killing brother in the name of oaths, a mother smothering her own child so it wouldn’t starve, a kind man giving alms that saved an entire family. Life, death, feeling, emotion, nature, ambition, need, time, history, people, animals, all of it wove together into that strange and sprawling tapestry called the World.

“Cast off your chains,” said a voice, high and thin.

“I’ve never been freer,” she said. Whatever misfortunes she’d endured, she was home now, surrounded by family. That suited her more than fine.

“You are bound,” the voice said, as it had a thousand times before.

“And you’re a raven,” Elena shot back, as she always did.

“Only I decide what I am to be,” his voice never wavered in the slightest. “And only you create the limits that bind you.”

“This is pointless. However many times we’ve talked, how many times have I forgotten every one of them? You’re about to preach me something, and by morning I’ll have forgotten it entirely.”

“It happened, so it was not pointless. The world will remember,” the raven said, something incomprehensible yet again.

“Why do you keep following me, what do you want from me?” She already knew the answer, and yet she asked the question every single time regardless.

“You must cast off your limits. Winter is close.”

“Ha! I know a fair bit more about that than you do.”

“Perhaps,” she thought she caught a note of irony in the raven’s voice. “Remember this: the Horn of Winter must never sound.”

“Once again, your warnings are wasted on me. I’ll forget all of it.”

“Every action in this world carries its own meaning.”

The raven opened its beak and let out a single piercing caw. Elena opened her eyes, and the boundless sky dissolved into the low ceiling of her chambers. Only then did she realize she was lying in Castle Black, on a tall bed, in a cold room.

And this time, Elena remembered her last dream.