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In the mountain forest, the atmosphere was thick enough to wring water from.
Mance Rayder's face was darker than the stones in the Bloody Gate's ruins.
He stared at Tormund, eyes like he was deciding which piece to skin first.
"I'll say it one more time. I just told him to feel things out..."
Tormund's voice shrank with every word, and under Mance's killing glare, it died completely.
He was in the wrong. He knew it.
This had gone well beyond the scope of his orders.
Lynn's orders were to harass. To delay. To be a swarm of annoying flies.
Instead, Tormund had gone and torn the house down.
"So what do we do now?"
A Wildling chieftain broke the suffocating silence, voice careful.
"The gate's open. We can't just... walk away, can we?"
Every eye turned to Mance.
Go in, and they'd be defying direct orders.
Don't go in, when the door is standing wide open.
It was like spending all night prying open a girl's bedroom door, then standing in the doorway to wish her goodnight and walking away.
The more you thought about it, the worse it felt.
Mance drew a slow breath and crushed the anger back down.
He closed his eyes. His mind moved fast.
What was the core of Lynn's strategy?
Containment.
Use their force as a blade at the throat, pin the Vale's main army at the Bloody Gate, and buy time for Lynn at the Eyrie and Robb in the Riverlands.
The gate was gone. But the Vale's army was still here.
Nestor Royce's force was still on its way.
Their mission hadn't ended because a door fell down.
"Our mission is not to storm the castle."
Mance opened his eyes. His voice was steady again.
"It is to pin down the Vale's army."
"The Bloody Gate is gone. The men are still here."
"Plan doesn't change."
"Keep up the harassment."
"What?" Tormund's face twisted immediately. "Still harass them? They don't even have a gate anymore. We're going to stand at the rubble and hurl insults? That's just insane."
"Those are your orders."
Mance gave him a flat look.
"And from this moment on, you stay in the rear and keep your mouth shut. If you pull another stunt like that, I'll tie you to a tree and let the Frost Giants use you as a chew toy."
Tormund's neck disappeared into his shoulders. He said nothing.
He'd seen firsthand what happened to the Frost Giants' toys.
...
Night fell again.
On the ruins of the Bloody Gate, the Vale soldiers lit their bonfires.
Their morale was in the ground. Every face wore the same blank look, hollowed out by confusion and fear.
Commander Ser Ronald sat on a boulder, staring at the flattened pass.
One punch.
A single punch.
A thousand years of glory, turned to rubble.
He still couldn't make sense of it. Why had they shown that kind of power, godlike and absolute, and then simply walked away?
It felt worse than being killed outright.
Like a giant kicking your front door off its hinges, then strolling in while your whole family watches in terror, picking up an apple from the table, wiping it on his sleeve, setting it back down, and leaving.
The insult of it was vivid. He could see it perfectly.
But since they hadn't attacked, he couldn't abandon his post. The Bloody Gate still had to be held. Even if the gate was gone.
"Hey! You little shits! Your grandpa's back!"
The familiar bellow rolled out of the trees.
Tormund led his crew of bored Wildlings back to work.
This time, though, something was different.
The Vale soldiers behind the ruins looked up. They stared for a moment, dull-eyed.
And then nothing.
No curses. No hands on weapons. Nobody even raised a shield.
They just stood there, like puppets with the strings cut, letting the Wildlings' filth drift over their heads like smoke.
The enemy could flatten this place ten times over. The fact that they were still out here shouting insults made it obvious they were just playing games. There was nothing left to defend against.
The Vale soldiers couldn't even be bothered to draw their swords.
"Damn it."
Tormund spat.
He'd punched cotton.
The whole point of a fight was the back-and-forth. You hit me, I hit you. You curse at me, I put a blade in you. That was the fun of it.
But when the other side just lay there and took it? What was the point?
"Hey! Are you dead over there? Give me something!"
He grabbed a rock and threw it.
It cracked off a soldier's helmet with a sharp CLANG.
The soldier rocked slightly, rubbed the back of his neck, and went back to staring at the fire.
Tormund stared.
The Wildlings behind him exchanged glances.
This couldn't be done. There was nothing here to work with.
It was even more tedious than trading insults with the Night's Watch, and those men had no balls to speak of.
What followed got stranger by the day.
The Wildlings showed up on schedule and unleashed their routine barrage at the ruins.
The Vale soldiers gathered every night on schedule and watched with the dead-eyed calm of men who had simply stopped caring.
Eventually the Wildlings ran out of steam too.
The insults became conversation.
"Hey, you lot. What'd you have for dinner?"
"Black bread and salt pork soup. You?"
"Roasted deer leg. Still warm. Smells incredible."
By the third day, Tormund had hit his limit.
He watched a soldier across the rubble drinking from a waterskin. His own throat was parched.
He steeled himself, walked out of the trees, and moved toward the ruins one step at a time.
Everyone went rigid.
The Vale soldiers tightened their grip on their spears. The Wildlings put their hands on their axes.
Tormund stopped at the edge of the rubble. He pointed at the waterskin. Then at his own mouth.
The soldier blinked. He looked back at Ser Ronald.
Ronald was quiet for a moment.
Then he nodded.
The soldier unhooked the waterskin and threw it across.
Tormund caught it, yanked the stopper out, sniffed it, confirmed it wasn't poisoned, and tipped his head back to drink.
Cold water ran down his throat. He let out a long, satisfied belch.
"Cheers, brother."
The words came out simple and genuine, like a stone dropped into still water.
Something cracked open between them.
Nobody wanted to die for their ruler's war.
They were all just ordinary people trying to get through the day.
A Wildling dug a strip of charred, fragrant jerky from inside his coat and tossed it over.
A Vale soldier hesitated. Then he unclipped a small knife from his belt and threw it back as trade.
Within the hour, both sides of the ruins had turned into a makeshift market.
Wildlings swapped northern goods for the finer trinkets of the south. The atmosphere was warmer than it had any right to be.
A few of the bolder ones had their arms slung around each other's shoulders, talking across the rubble about the women waiting for them back home.
Mance Rayder stood at a distance and watched it all unfold. Something complex moved behind his eyes.
He knew the moment had come.
He straightened his robes and walked toward the ruins alone.
"I am their leader. Mance Rayder."
He looked at the Vale commander who had stepped forward to meet him. Ser Ronald.
"I think we should talk."
Ronald studied the man in front of him. Composed. Measured. Nothing like what he'd imagined a Wildling king to be.
He nodded.
"What is it you actually want?"
That was the question Ronald had been carrying since the beginning.
"Us?"
Mance smiled. There was something almost self-deprecating in it.
"We just want to live."
He didn't lecture. He asked instead.
"Aren't you curious, Ser?"
"Why we're south of the Wall."
"Why we abandoned everything we had and brought our families down here."
"Why we, who can bring down the Bloody Gate with a single punch, are standing here talking to you instead."
Each question landed.
Ronald had no answer.
"Because the real enemy isn't us."
Mance's voice dropped.
"It's the Long Night. The Others. A winter that will swallow all of Westeros whole."
"Our king, Lynn, is fighting for every living soul in this world."
"And what is your Lysa doing?"
His gaze sharpened.
"She poisoned her own husband. Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King."
"She framed the Lannisters to start the War of the Five Kings and bathe the entire continent in blood."
"And when Lord Lynn rode north to hold back the dead and buy everyone a chance at survival, she drove a knife into his back."
"She wants to cut every supply line to the North. Not just leave us to face the dead alone. She wants to starve us to death in the ice and snow."
"All of it, for her petty hunger for power. And for a sick obsession with a man who has never loved her."
Ronald's face had gone white.
He'd already pieced together some of it from what Lynn had done at the Eyrie. But hearing it spoken plainly, by the enemy himself, the weight of it was something else entirely.
"You have proof of this?" he asked. His voice was tight.
"Proof?" Mance almost laughed.
He gestured at the rubble around them.
"This is your proof."
"If our king were a conqueror, you'd all be corpses right now. Every last one of you."
"There would be no sitting here talking. No trading jerky for pocket knives."
"Lynn could have ordered the Frost Giants to level this valley. He could have scorched the Eyrie with dragonfire and left nothing but ash."
"He didn't."
"He gave you a warning. And he gave you a chance. One last chance."
"He wants to end this war, the war Lysa started, a war that was unjust from the first day, and he wants to end it with as little blood as possible."
"That is our king's mercy."
"So tell me, Ser. Who is the real victim here?"
Ronald had nothing left to say.
If they had Lynn's kind of power, they would have burned everything and moved on. Any sane man would have.
But Lynn hadn't.
The soldiers behind Ronald had heard every word.
Shock. Anger. And something else, a dawning, hollow shame.
They had believed they were fighting for honor.
But listening to Mance lay out what Lysa and Petyr had done, it all became clear.
They were pawns in a madwoman's game.
A blade pointed at the throat of the one man actually trying to save them.
And the king they'd called their enemy, with every advantage in the world, had chosen mercy.
The grace of sparing their lives.
Those words settled over every Vale soldier like a stone placed on the chest.
The looks they turned on the Wildlings across the rubble had changed. The hostility was gone. In its place, something quieter. Respect. Gratitude.
Then hoofbeats.
A scout came hard around the mountain path, face tight with urgency.
"Lord Ronald!"
"Ser Nestor Royce's army has reached the pass!"
What?
Ronald's stomach dropped.
He turned instinctively and looked at Mance Rayder.
Mance's expression hadn't changed. That same calm, easy smile. Like he'd known this was coming all along.
Nestor Royce.
The most stubborn man in the Vale. The most loyal servant House Arryn had ever had.
Would he believe any of this?
A new collision was coming. Ronald could feel it pressing in from all sides.
His grip tightened on his sword hilt. His palm was slick with sweat.
What was he supposed to do?
Follow Lysa's orders. Keep fighting. Stay the enemy.
Or listen to what his own conscience was telling him, and stand beside this merciful lord named Lynn.
➤ Next: Duel?