If it would just stop fucking snowing, everything would be all right. That wasn't much of a hope to hold onto, but he didn't think the night was going to end, and he didn't think the battle was going to stop, and he didn't think the stabbing pain in his shoulder was going to let up, so it was the only one that had a prayer of coming true. It had been swirling out of the charblack sky for what felt like forever, guttering the torches they were struggling to keep lit, crusting in their cloaks and hoods and in his beard, so he breathed the ice with every rattling gasp. And through the snow they kept on coming, blue eyes burning as they clawed up the face of the Wall, black fingers ripping out ice with a high keening sound like a sobbing child. Ahead of them were the wights, their eyes not blue but blank, dead, and horribly staring.
For a demented moment, when the three blasts first sounded, Grenn had thought they were safe. "Others can't cross the Wall," he'd panted to Pyp, as they were struggling up the terrifyingly rickety remnants of Long Barrow's switchback stair. "They can attack, but they can't cross. Everyone knows that."
It had been a mark of how utterly dire the situation was that even the mummer's monkey had no jape about how "everyone" must be a broad category indeed, to include Grenn. Instead he said, "Others can't cross, no. But wights can. Otherwise, Jon would never have had to kill that one in the Old Bear's room."
Jon. That was yet another thing Grenn could not hope for. When that unthinkable news arrived, when they were told that Bowen Marsh had been rewarded for his murder and treachery by being named Lord Commander, Grenn had wanted to ride to Castle Black in hell and fury and repay the villain back in kind. Pyp had seriously suggested that they all secede from the Watch and found their own order, with Long Barrow as their headquarters, a squashed pomegranate as their sigil, and Dolorous Edd as their Lord Commander. The wildlings had been almost as furious, though for varying reasons. Most were genuinely outraged at Marsh for leading the mutiny against the only Commander who'd ever treated them with respect, let alone as equals. Others felt it was simply further proof that every crow was rotten to the core, and a few of the most suspicious were sure that it had been planned all along – allow the free folk this side of the Wall, grant them castles, and huddle them together so they'd be easier to hunt and kill. Those ones had immediately vanished into the wilderness of the Gift, vowing never to return. If they were Sworn Brothers, we'd hang them for desertion, but we barely have enough resources to hold together, never mind hunt for traitors. They should start at Castle Black, if so.
Long Barrow – or Whore's Barrow as it was now so-cleverly called, thanks to its spearwife garrison – was no fortress. A tumbledown tower with a few stones of a curtain wall, a slagged keep, a thatch-roofed longhall for the women and a draughty stone cell for Grenn, Pyp, Iron Emmett, and Edd. The latter two were the Barrow's commander and steward, and the former two had arrived when Jon made fast the decision to send all his friends away. Pyp had joked that they shouldn't have picked the castle housing Edd, for he'd always dourly predicted he was certain to die first, but Grenn had thought it was a stupid idea altogether. If you banish your friends, who's left to guard your back from your enemies? Even he knew that too, and Jon had legions of them beyond a doubt. Yet Grenn had not said that to Pyp. They'd already agreed that Jon had been changed by the choosing and not for the better, that he was not their friend anymore but only Lord Snow for true. Such as at the moment, it was one of the few times Pyp was not jesting.
Don't look down. At Castle Black the wallwalk was level, strewn with salt and gravel, and merlons were built solidly waist-high of packed snow. At Long Barrow it was a wilderness, a frozen labyrinth, ice blocks as big as the mammoths they'd shot during the last battle for the Wall. But it was only men we were fighting then. Some of the spearwives had made bone climbing spikes for their boots, but it took steely courage, strong hands, and a head for heights to ascend the broken stair up there even in the full light of the too-short day. And now. . .
Grenn didn't need to think about that, though. Not that or anything. They'd found a place where the footing was better, where they could rain down pitch and barrels and boulders on the wights. Two of the spearwives, a pair of tough old cunts who might even have scared Alliser Thorne, had climbed up there countless times in the preceding fortnight, on Iron Emmett's orders, to prepare them for just such a potential assault. In other times, Grenn might have been astonished that the women so fearlessly attacked a task which daunted every man he knew, but he wasn't. They were just the folk he fought with, who did what must be done. Since they'd filched the spare black cloaks for warmth, he noticed nothing different about them now.
We will all die the same, besides. Their perch was becoming horrifically treacherous; not necessarily due to the undead things, but because their torches were melting the ice around them, turning it slick and clear as glass. One of the wildlings, one of the spearwives' sons, had already plunged to his death without ever taking a hit. Grenn wondered how it felt for them to defend it now, to give their lives for it, when their people's entire purpose had been to break it or climb it or defeat it. But this was it. This was why they'd being fleeing. Coming south with their tails between their legs, to get it between them and those things below.
I never thought it was anything like this. I thought grumkins and snarks were just stories. Grenn had been born and raised in a humble croft in the riverlands, sharing a straw mattress with his six siblings, though sickness had carried off his two littlest sisters and his mother had lost at least three more babes before birth. They worked dawn to dusk, raising potatoes and pigs and tilling the fields and chopping firewood and mending their wounds and of a time joining with the other tenants for a wedding or a harvest, or to rebuild a barn that the fire had gotten, or to await the traveling septon Meribald to consecrate their children and shrive their sins, kneeling in the tiny, muddy, straw-roofed sept. There was no thought of privacy; to survive in this world, you needed each other. The first time Grenn had ever known that a bedchamber meant for one person alone existed was when he came to Castle Black. But once when he was no older than the boy who had just fallen to his death, he had seen a tall proud lord on a high horse, with flowing auburn hair and impossibly white straight teeth, wearing the badge of a fish on a blue-and-red doublet. Then his mother had pulled him to his knees and hissed at him to bow his head and cast his eyes down. That was Edmure Tully, she said, the young heir, son to Lord Hoster himself. He lived in the great castle of Riverrun, and one day he'd rule over them, so they'd best do what he said and stay out of his way. When Grenn had asked why, his mother boxed his ears. When he persisted and said that he didn't think it was fair, she boxed them again, harder, and told him that that sort of talk would get him killed one day.
She wasn't that far wrong, Grenn thought miserably, his frozen fingers fumbling to nock and loose another arrow. He was so cold and weary, he was so sick of fighting, they couldn't possibly stop this enemy or even slow it. If the wights were here at Long bloody Barrow, they must be overwhelming the Shadow Tower, Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and Castle Black. And since Marsh, continuing his run of brilliant decisions, had sealed the passage under the Wall to prevent any more rangings, there was no way the Watch could have known they were coming. Only here, where Emmett had insisted that they prepare as if they would have to fight for their lives on the morrow, had they instated all the supplies and lookouts. It was what Jon would have done, he said, and no one had the heart to argue.
It seemed doubly strange to Grenn that they – Emmett, the spearwives, a mummer's boy, a crofter's brat, and Dolorous Edd – were the ones here, facing down the Others unleashed. Where are all the heroes now? Where are the men they sing songs about? He hadn't had a chance to look closely, but he thought they were running low on arrows. That was the only reason they had thus far dismayed the wights. Once the arrows were gone, so was the fire. And once the fire was gone. . .
I'll die well, though. I'll die a man of the Night's Watch, and a knight. That was an honor Grenn could never even have imagined. But when Emmett summoned them to arms, he told them that with the enemy at the gates, every breathing soul in this castle was a knight if they said the words. And so they had, all together, sworn a knight's vows, as if they'd spent all night fasting in a sept and walked barefoot to be dubbed with a fancy sword by a highborn lordling. Just as Pyp had opened his mouth for some stupid jape about "Ser Grenn," and Edd beat him to it by remarking morosely that the word "Ser Edd" made him think of was "screwed," the first of the horn blasts sounded.
No rangers returning. They hadn't sent any out. No more wildlings, or certainly not any in enough numbers to matter. Thus when the second blast winded, they'd all known, known and only waited for it, as the third howl, Ahooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, tore the night air like a scrap of fragile silk. In an instant Grenn had been back at the Fist of the First Men, and the dead things were coming up the hill, and Sam's ravens were fleeing from their cages and Chett's hounds going mad, and the bear, the dead bear. . . and torches, torches, burn you dead bastards burn, and trying to save Sam when Small Paul couldn't carry him anymore, and then seeing him kill that Other with the dagger Jon had given him, the dagger he'd found in the cache with the old broken horn. . . but to hear it at the Wall, at the Wall and not in the wilderness of the Frostfangs –
Grenn didn't even realize that he'd gone to his knees until Pyp was hauling him back to his feet. "Come on," the smaller boy was bawling, "come on, Aurochs, we've got to get up there, let's go. Come on, you're a bloody knight now, you're not going to go down in the songs as Ser Grenn the Groveling. You're too stupid to be afraid, remember?"
Grenn had wanted to protest, to tell him that he was stupid, he was afraid, but somehow he didn't do either. Instead he tightened his swordbelt and shrugged up the hood of his black cloak and shouted, "It'll be Ser Pyp the Prick, more like." And then he was pleased because he'd finally made a good jape, and sad because of course it came right when he was about to die anyway. And then suddenly he wasn't scared anymore, for there was nothing left to be afraid of.
He and Pyp had climbed the stairs on hands and knees together, and in that time, Grenn was happy. Happy that he'd been born, happy that he had lived, and happy that he wasn't going to be alone at the end. Happy that the end hadn't come in that hut in the riverlands, ignored out of hand. He hadn't wanted to join the Watch; what man did, these days? But the holdfast lord had said that Grenn had broken his forest laws, had poached that hare on his lands without his leave, and for that it was the black or losing a hand. His mother had cried when they took him away. Grenn remembered her toothless mouth calling after him, calling his name, how she was so worn down by endless work and endless pregnancies that she looked to be a hundred, but Conwy had him firm by the shoulder, and he already knew that if he ran, they'd kill him. It wasn't fair, but what in life is?
Ser Grenn. His shoulder was turning numb. He couldn't hold the longbow proper anymore, and blood was freezing in his smallclothes. There was a rending crash as a great chunk of ice broke off above them and thundered down, missing Iron Emmett by a hair and plowing into the dead men. They scratched and flailed like pale bloated spiders, disembodied black limbs writhing. But they still didn't stop. They wouldn't, they never, until –
Hold on. Grenn looked up sharply, his snow-blind eyes straining. Mayhaps he was just imagining it, driven mad by the need to believe that something, anything, was coming to save them, but he thought there was a faint reddish glow on the horizon. It was enough to eerily backlight the scuttering wights, and throw bloody shadows from them all. He'd never been so glad for it in his life.
"Sun!" His voice was harsh and husky and raw. "Sun's coming up! Night's over!" It would mean an even worse attack on the morrow, but he wasn't going to think about that right now.
Pyp was staring at him with a strange expression. Blood ran down his forehead, almost sticking one eye shut. "Grenn. Grenn the Gormless."
"What?"
"The sun doesn't rise in the north."
It took a moment to sink in. Then the cold seemed to punch him twice as hard. Pyp was right. No. No, it didn't.
"Joramun," one of the spearwives said hoarsely. "Gods ha' mercy."
Even the Others seemed to have noticed it by now. They turned from where they had been preparing to continue the climb, and stared back into the glow as if transfixed. In it, Grenn could make out winged shapes overhead. Ravens. More ravens than he had ever seen, diving and darting and cawing. For some impossible reason, he thought they were screeching a word, a name, like old Lord Mormont's raven had. Bran, they were saying. Bran. And something that almost sounded like Jon. But Jon was dead. Marsh had killed him, and Grenn and Pyp had been at Long Barrow and unable to do a damned thing about it. He couldn't –
Another of the spearwives seized his elbow. "Get down, boy," she croaked. "Gods be good, get down off this Wall."
"Why?" Grenn tried to ask, but she was already turning away, dragging him with her. The ravens continued to wheel and scream, flooding down to peck and tear at the Others.
"Now!" The spearwife cuffed him headlong onto the stair, and he almost fell off it. His useless hands groped at the steps, he had to go faster as the rest of the ravaged Long Barrow garrison stampeded after him. The ground was too far away and he was never going to make it, never –
It was ten or so feet below when Grenn heard the horn.
It was like thunder in his head. Cold and shattering as winter itself, the ruin and the wild. It rolled out clear and deep and mournful as if he was standing right next to it, skirling a lament like the northerners' great skinpipes, howling and howling until it seemed it would never end, would fill their skulls and thoughts and souls. And yet then, with a crack like lightning, it did.
One blast for rangers returning, Grenn thought madly. But they had sent no rangers out.
While he was still dumbstruck, the spearwife grabbed him by the scruff of the cloak and jumped. The ground smashed up to meet them, hard enough to knock his wind out even through several feet of snow. Pyp came tumbling after him, Dolorous Edd said almost cheerily, "Well, we're all dead now," and executed a nearly flawless swan dive, whereupon he was promptly piled on top of by the following spearwives. Grenn didn't see Iron Emmett. He had a confused memory of the young ranger covering their retreat, defending the stair against the wights; without fire arrows to daunt them, they were swarming greedily into the breach. He's dead, he's dead. But there was no time to stop. The echoes of that horn were hanging unearthly, resounding and magnified in the Wall itself.
A yard-long icicle broke off, nearly coring a wildling through the belly, and then another. Grenn again thought it was his imagination, prayed it was his imagination, but he saw fine splinters appearing in the millennia-old ice, cracks racing up it. Broken like a dropped mirror. He'd seen one – a mirror – at a traveling fair once. His mother and sisters had sighed over it and longed to buy it, but real glass was an unimaginably rare and costly luxury.
"Move! Move! Move!" Pyp screamed, and for once Grenn needed no further telling. Behind him, he heard the Wall make an utterly unholy sound, an almost human scream, and he dared a glance over his shoulder and wished he hadn't. The cracks were widening like veins of ore, and a heavy block crashed down not a dozen yards away, scattering splinters. The red glow had gone so bright that he almost thought it was dawn, but it wasn't. There was no way in his life that he could run fast enough.
They didn't stop at the castle. There was no time. Long Barrow would become their barrow in truth if they did. There were all sorts of cracks and pops now, more blocks and slabs falling, and in dumb blank numb screaming horror, Grenn was forced to acknowledge that what he had always dismissed as ghost stories and old wives' tales, the unthinkable and unsurvivable, was actually unfolding before his eyes. The Wall was coming down.
The woods began about a mile distant. There was a moderately cleared trail that led there, again by Iron Emmett's orders, and the spearwives, Grenn, Pyp, and Dolorous Edd ran as if the demons of all the seven hells were on their arses, which in fact they were. The ground shook with distant explosions, and flying shards stung Grenn's face. The snow was heaving as if the earth itself was trying to throw them off, as if it was breathing, as if things were awaking in its cold bones that had been slumbering for eons. By now, Grenn was too terrified to even feel terrified any more.
The trees loomed up in front of them, a jungle of dark pines half swallowed in white. They gasped and retched and cursed as they tried to flail through, beating with fists and blades and axes. Needles and broken branches clawed at them, snagging on cloaks and quivers, and they stumbled forward without any notion of where was sky and where ground. Behind them, the Wall was scored with jagged gashes almost all the way to the top. The stairwell hung skewed and broken, and Long Barrow had taken several direct hits from tower-sized sleds of ice; it resembled a spider trodden under a man's boot. The roar was deafening; Grenn could not even hear himself think. As if there was anything that could possibly be thought when you were watching the world end.
Swaying and screaming, shattering, the Wall began to collapse. It went down like a shipwreck, plunging madly to the ground as if beneath the storm-wracked waves, its prow driving in first and kicking up a bellowing thunder of blackness that raced across the ground in an avalanche of snow and ice and gravel. The trees bent almost in half, thrashing and snapping like matchwood. It was no use. There was nowhere left for them to run.
"Lads," said Dolorous Edd, in the instant of silence before the storm. "Ladies. It's been good to know you all. And may I take this moment to apologize. If I wasn't here, none of this would have happened."
Grenn glanced toward him, intending to say something in return. To him or to Pyp or even the spearwives. But all he could do was watch the avalanche. The sky itself had been eaten up, and distantly he saw wights and Others being thrown away like toys. Everything was red, and the ancient spells that warded the Wall, freed from their confinement at last, were taking fire. He smelled licking at the sky; he had never known until that moment that ice could burn. He tasted salt on his tongue, or perhaps that was the tears freezing on his cheeks. It was lunacy and supremacy and magnificence, all and none at once.
The trees moaned and seemed to take a desperate grip with their roots. A single red weirwood leaf drifted down from nowhere. And Grenn closed his eyes, thought of the Stranger's face chalked crudely in charcoal in that sept back home, and prayed.
He felt it when it hit them. He was ripped asunder, broken trees and boulders and ice and wood slamming into him from every side, pummeling his body, his puny mortal vessel. Pain came too fast and furious for him to process, from every pore and nerve and breath at once. Blood tasted crimson in his broken mouth. Over and over he was swept, kicked aside contemptuously, down and down and down. He could no longer breathe, for there was no air left. Smoke and snow hissed around him, ashes falling in a soft grey rain and broken icicles littered among the snapped branches. Yet in in his head Grenn could see the summer's sun on his family's fields, and the flash of the milkmaid's smile. He could even remember, for an instant, what it was like to be warm.
And so he lay there, cherishing the thought. The shaking didn't stop, but the avalanche finally did. Agonizingly, he opened one battered eye, and saw. . . nothing. Nothing but the ruin of broken trees and motionless bodies, and the inferno where the Wall had been. Nothing on the face of the earth.
The silence after that was deafening. Then at last, nearby, Grenn heard a voice. A man's voice. Mayhaps the last one that ever was or would be.
"Oh," Dolorous Edd said resignedly. "Of course it would be me." And died.