The trap that Serena had patiently waited for did not snap shut in Mole's Town. It snapped high in the freezing, jagged peaks of the Frostfangs, a hundred leagues north of the Wall.
It had been a year and a half since Serena first arrived in the North. Winter was drawing ever closer, and the Night's Watch patrols were growing more desperate.
A week prior, a scouting party of five rangers had left Castle Black in high spirits. The Quartermaster had issued them brand new, gleaming longswords—supposedly fine Castle-forged steel from a recent southern shipment. The rangers had joked and boasted, confident that with such prime weapons, they could carve through any wildling raiding party they found.
They were wrong.
The ambush happened at twilight in a narrow, snow-choked ravine. A dozen wildlings, dressed in thick pelts and armed with crude bone-axes and bronze daggers, dropped from the icy ridges.
"Form a line!" Ranger Garth had bellowed, drawing his shiny new longsword. "Send these savages back to the dirt!"
The rangers were skilled. Their swordplay was far superior to the wildlings' wild, uncoordinated swings. Garth parried a heavy downward strike from a massive wildling warrior's ironwood club.
He expected his fine steel to bite into the wood. He expected to push back and win.
Instead, a sickening CRACK echoed in the freezing air.
Garth stared in absolute horror as his brand-new longsword shattered like a delicate icicle. The top half of the blade snapped off completely, spinning away into the snow. The remaining jagged metal near the hilt splintered a second later when he tried to block another blow.
"My sword! It's brittle!" another ranger screamed from the left flank, holding up a broken hilt. "Fall back! The steel is cursed!"
The wildlings, realizing the crows were suddenly fighting with broken toys, roared in triumph and surged forward. The skirmish turned into a massacre. Out of the five skilled men, only two managed to escape the ravine. Garth and his companion ran through the biting cold for days, bleeding from deep cuts, enduring the freezing winds, and retreating from a meaningless death.
Late at night, inside Castle Black.
The Lord Steward's office was a place of cold, dark, and cramped functionality. It smelled of melting tallow candles, dusty parchment, and sour wine. The walls were lined with hundreds of ledgers, tallies of winter provisions, and inventory lists. It was an entirely unglamorous workspace.
But the man sitting in the heavy oak chair, Bowen Marsh, was not a man to be underestimated. As the head steward, he managed all the logistics, food, and accounting for the Night's Watch. He was a plump, red-faced man who loved numbers more than people, and he was currently rubbing his temples, trying to balance the cost of imported barley.
Suddenly, the heavy wooden door banged open.
Bowen Marsh frowned deeply, his quill snapping in his hand. He looked up, ready to shout at whoever dared interrupt his counting. "What time is it to bother me? Can you not see the hour?"
His anger vanished instantly. Standing in his doorway were Ranger Garth and his companion. They looked like walking corpses. Their black cloaks were torn and crusted with frozen blood. Garth was clutching a makeshift bandage around his shoulder, shivering violently.
"Lord Steward," Garth rasped, his voice trembling from cold and shock. "We... we were ambushed in the Frostfangs. Three brothers are dead."
Bowen Marsh stood up, knocking his chair back. His annoyance was replaced by grave concern. "Sit down. By the fire. What happened? Were there too many of them?"
"No," the other injured ranger spat bitterly, pulling something from his belt and slamming it onto Bowen's desk. It was the shattered, jagged hilt of his longsword. "We were winning. Until our swords broke. They shattered like cheap glass, Lord Steward! The wildlings chased us like helpless sheep!"
Bowen Marsh stared at the broken metal, his frown deepening into a maze of wrinkles. He picked up the hilt. It was unnaturally light, and the cross-section of the break looked grainy and porous.
"Are you telling the truth?" Bowen asked sharply, his bureaucratic mind instantly calculating the implications. "Did you really pick the fine steel from the new shipment? The ones unloaded from Eastwatch?"
"I swear it by the Old Gods and the New," Garth nodded furiously, wincing in pain. "We picked them ourselves from the prime crates. They looked beautiful. But in the freezing cold... they just snapped."
Bowen Marsh's face darkened with a quiet, dangerous fury. "Go to Maester Aemon immediately. Have him heal your injuries and give you milk of the poppy. I will investigate this treason myself. I will give you answers soon."
Feeling a sense of assurance from the Lord Steward, the exhausted men bowed their heads and left the office, heading for the rookery and the Maester's healing rooms.
Bowen closed his ledger with a loud, definitive snap. He grabbed his heavy cloak and a lantern, walking out into the freezing courtyard of Castle Black.
He headed straight for the armory, seeking out Ser Jaremy Rykker, a senior knight and master of the Watch's defenses. He found the knight inspecting a rack of spears near the forge.
"Ser Jaremy," Bowen called out, his breath pluming in the cold air.
"Bowen," Ser Jaremy replied, raising an eyebrow at the late-hour visit. "You look like you've swallowed a lemon. What is it?"
Bowen held up the shattered hilt. "I just had two rangers return half-dead. They claim the new swords from the Winterfell shipment shattered in combat. Did you personally allow them to pick these weapons?"
Ser Jaremy looked at the broken metal, his aristocratic face turning pale. "It's true. I let them pick the new swords for the mission myself. They were stamped with the official seal. They looked to be perfect Castle-forged steel. If they broke... it means someone tampered with the crates before they reached our forge."
Bowen nodded, his jaw clenched tight. "I am launching a full investigation. Someone is playing a very dangerous game with our lives."