Apr 10, 2023
Priest by Hypnotic Nausea (featuring Jon Voyager) from the album The Death of All Religions - Video by Shiny Happy People
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Priest by Hypnotic Nausea (featuring Jon Voyager) from the album The Death of All Religions - Video by Shiny Happy People
Operation Stumpy Re-Read
ADWD: Jon V (Chapter 21)
Bowen Marsh had urged him to move into the Old Bear's former chambers in the King's Tower after Stannis vacated them, but Jon had declined. Moving into the king's chambers could too easily be taken to mean he did not expect the king to return.
He's not entitled to your chambers, you stupid boy.
+.+.+
Jon washed and dressed and left the armory, stopping in the yard outside just long enough to say a few words of encouragement to Hop-Robin and Emmett's other charges. He declined Ty's offer of a tail, as usual. He would have men enough about him; if it came to blood, two more would hardly matter. He did take Longclaw, though, and Ghost followed at his heels.
You're surrounded by wildlings and dissenters, you stupid boy.
+.+.+
Marsh pursed his lips. "Lord Commander Mormont—"
"—is dead. And not at wildling hands, but at the hands of his own Sworn Brothers, men he trusted.
+.+.+
Dolorous Edd had heard the entire exchange. As Bowen Marsh trotted off, he nodded toward his back and said, "Pomegranates. All those seeds. A man could choke to death. I'd sooner have a turnip. Never knew a turnip to do a man any harm."
+.+.+
It was at times like this that Jon missed Maester Aemon the most. Clydas tended to the ravens well enough, but he had not a tenth of Aemon Targaryen's knowledge or experience, and even less of his wisdom.
Check his temperature, he's delirious.
Thank god Aemon won't be anywhere near Jon when Daenerys arrives.
+.+.+
The Night's Watch has lost too many of its best men, Jon reflected, as the wagons began to move. The Old Bear, Qhorin Halfhand, Donal Noye, Jarmen Buckwell, my uncle …
. . . you.
Something feels off about him saying uncle instead of Benjen.
+.+.+
Half a mile south of Castle Black, Edd urged his garron close to Jon's and said, "M'lord? Look up there. The big drunkard on the hill."
The drunkard was an ash tree, twisted sideways by centuries of wind. And now it had a face. A solemn mouth, a broken branch for a nose, two eyes carved deep into the trunk, gazing north up the kingsroad, toward the castle and the Wall.
A twisted drunkard with a broken branch for a nose? Is this Tyrion gazing towards the Wall?
+.+.+
The wildlings brought their gods with them after all.
Good.
+.+.+
Jon glanced back at the face, wondering who had carved it. He had posted guards around Mole's Town, both to keep his crows away from the wildling women and to keep the free folk from slipping off southward to raid. Whoever had carved up the ash had eluded his sentries, plainly. And if one man could slip through the cordon, others could as well. I could double the guard again, he thought sourly. Waste twice as many men, men who might otherwise be walking the Wall.
Wild speculation within the fandom over who carved these faces. Was it Bloodraven? The children? A crow? Pretty sure it was wildlings being defiant, like the book suggests.
I thought it was widely understood Bran and Bloodraven don't need trees to see?
"Once you have mastered your gifts, you may look where you will and see what the trees have seen, be it yesterday or last year or a thousand ages past. Men live their lives trapped in an eternal present, between the mists of memory and the sea of shadow that is all we know of the days to come. Certain moths live their whole lives in a day, yet to them that little span of time must seem as long as years and decades do to us. An oak may live three hundred years, a redwood tree three thousand. A weirwood will live forever if left undisturbed. To them seasons pass in the flutter of a moth's wing, and past, present, and future are one. Nor will your sight be limited to your godswood. The singers carved eyes into their heart trees to awaken them, and those are the first eyes a new greenseer learns to use … but in time you will see well beyond the trees themselves." - Bran III, ADWD
+.+.+
A mile farther on, they came upon a second face, carved into a chestnut tree that grew beside an icy stream, where its eyes could watch the old plank bridge that spanned its flow. "Twice as much trouble," announced Dolorous Edd.
The chestnut was leafless and skeletal, but its bare brown limbs were not empty. On a low branch overhanging the stream a raven sat hunched, its feathers ruffled up against the cold. When it spied Jon it spread its wings and gave a scream. When he raised his fist and whistled, the big black bird came flapping down, crying, "Corn, corn, corn."
Now a chestnut tree is reminding me of Theon.
Is this a Bloodraven or a Branraven? I pick Bran. Always Bran.
+.+.+
He wondered if they would all be reduced to eating ravens before the coming winter had run its course.
One boy will eat raven.
+.+.+
Just north of Mole's Town they came upon the third watcher, carved into the huge oak that marked the village perimeter, its deep eyes fixed upon the kingsroad. That is not a friendly face, Jon Snow reflected. The faces that the First Men and the children of the forest had carved into the weirwoods in eons past had stern or savage visages more oft than not, but the great oak looked especially angry, as if it were about to tear its roots from the earth and come roaring after them. Its wounds are as fresh as the wounds of the men who carved it.
Is this someone? Angry, freshly wounded face. . . Jorah?
I'm crazy. I'll stop.
+.+.+
Pig ignorance, Jon thought. The free folk were no different than the men of the Night's Watch; some were clean, some dirty, but most were clean at times and dirty at other times. This stink was just the smell of a thousand people jammed into cellars and tunnels that had been dug to shelter no more than a hundred.
[...]
There are wolves amongst these sheep, still.
Val had reminded him of that, on his last visit with her. "Free folk and kneelers are more alike than not, Jon Snow. Men are men and women women, no matter which side of the Wall we were born on. Good men and bad, heroes and villains, men of honor, liars, cravens, brutes … we have plenty, as do you."
She was not wrong. The trick was telling one from the other, parting the sheep from the goats.
Love how the show turned Jon's basic empathy into him wanting to be a wildling.
+.+.+
There were three women for every man, many with children—pale skinny things clutching at their skirts. Jon saw very few babes in arms. The babes in arms died during the march, he realized, and those who survived the battle died in the king's stockade.
That's fucked.
+.+.+
The tumult and the shoving died. Heads turned. A child began to cry. Mormont's raven walked from Jon's left shoulder to his right, bobbing its head and muttering, "Snow, snow, snow."
It's Mormont's raven? Why is Mormont's raven near Mole's Town instead of in Jon's room?
BRAN?!
+.+.+
"You crows eat good enough." Halleck shoved forward.
For now. "We hold the Wall. The Wall protects the realm … and you now. You know the foe we face. You know what's coming down on us. Some of you have faced them before. Wights and white walkers, dead things with blue eyes and black hands. I've seen them too, fought them, sent one to hell. They kill, then they send your dead against you. The giants were not able to stand against them, nor you Thenns, the ice-river clans, the Hornfoots, the free folk … and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, they are growing stronger. You left your homes and came south in your hundreds and your thousands … why, but to escape them? To be safe. Well, it's the Wall that keeps you safe. It's us that keeps you safe, the black crows you despise."
"Safe and starved," said a squat woman with a windburned face, a spearwife by the look of her.
"You want more food?" asked Jon. "The food's for fighters. Help us hold the Wall, and you'll eat as well as any crow." Or as poorly, when the food runs short.
[...]
An old man with a turnip cradled against his chest said, "You kill us, you starve us, now you want t' make us slaves."
[...]
"You have to pick," Jon Snow repeated. "All of you. No one is asking you to take our vows, and I do not care what gods you worship. My own gods are the old gods, the gods of the North, but you can keep the red god, or the Seven, or any other god who hears your prayers. It's spears we need. Bows. Eyes along the Wall."
[...]
"The choice is yours," Jon Snow told them. "Those who want to help us hold the Wall, return to Castle Black with me and I'll see you armed and fed. The rest of you, get your turnips and your onions and crawl back inside your holes."
The word slave was not a mistake.
Notice how they're given a choice? Notice how they'll still receive food and land in the Gift if they don't assist the Night's Watch?
Daenerys Stannis didn't offer them true freedom, but Jon does.
+.+.+
Sigorn's father, the old Magnar, had been crushed beneath the falling stair during his attack on Castle Black. I would feel the same if someone asked me to make common cause with the Lannisters, Jon told himself.
Lol.
+.+.+
I will take any boy above the age of twelve who knows how to hold a spear or string a bow. I will take your old men, your wounded, and your cripples, even those who can no longer fight. There are other tasks they may be able to perform. Fletching arrows, milking goats, gathering firewood, mucking out our stables … the work is endless.
Those too old or young to be of use had been cast into the streets, along with the infirm and the crippled. - Daenerys I, ADWD
Both will be stabbed, but only one earns a ticket back.
+.+.+
And yes, I will take your women too. I have no need of blushing maidens looking to be protected, but I will take as many spearwives as will come.
Oh my god, the death of my ship. We'll never recover from this.
+.+.+
"And girls?" a girl asked. She looked as young as Arya had, the last time Jon had seen her.
"Sixteen and older."
"You're taking boys as young as twelve."
Down in the Seven Kingdoms boys of twelve were often pages or squires; many had been training at arms for years. Girls of twelve were children. These are wildlings, though.
You better get over that quick, I'm told you'll be falling in love with an 11-year-old.
+.+.+
A pair of striplings followed her, boys no older than fourteen. Next a scarred man with a missing eye. "I seen them too, the dead ones. Even crows are better'n that." A tall spearwife, an old man on crutches, a moonfaced boy with a withered arm, a young man whose red hair reminded Jon of Ygritte.
Lol.
+.+.+
The dam broke then. Halleck was a man of note. Mance was not wrong. "Free folk don't follow names, or little cloth animals sewn on a tunic," the King-Beyond-the-Wall had told him. "They won't dance for coins, they don't care how you style yourself or what that chain of office means or who your grandsire was. They follow strength. They follow the man."
And they don't follow Stannis.
+.+.+
By the time the last withered apple had been handed out, the wagons were crowded with wildlings, and they were sixty-three stronger than when the column had set out from Castle Black that morning. "What will you do with them?" Bowen Marsh asked Jon on the ride back up the kingsroad.
Hilarious. Three Jon foils.
Reek II -> Jon V
In the previous chapter, Theon convinces 63 ironborn to surrender, and escorts them to their death.
Along the rotting-plank road, wooden stakes were driven deep into the boggy ground; there the corpses festered, red and dripping. Sixty-three, he knew, there are sixty-three of them. One was short half an arm. Another had a parchment shoved between its teeth, its wax seal still unbroken. - Reek II, ADWD
Then Ramsay displays those 63 corpses on wooden stakes, which is a nod to Daenerys crucifying 163 Meereenese nobles.
Meanwhile, Jon recruits 63 wildlings to fight with him.
One of these things is not like the others.
+.+.+
The Lord Steward glanced back. "Women too? Our brothers are not accustomed to having women amongst them, my lord. Their vows … there will be fights, rapes …"
"These women have knives and know how to use them."
"And the first time one of these spearwives slits the throat of one of our brothers, what then?"
"We will have lost a man," said Jon, "but we have just gained sixty-three. You're good at counting, my lord. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my reckoning leaves us sixty-two ahead."
Marsh was unconvinced. "You've added sixty-three more mouths, my lord … but how many are fighters, and whose side will they fight on? If it's the Others at the gates, most like they'll stand with us, I grant you … but if it's Tormund Giantsbane or the Weeping Man come calling with ten thousand howling killers, what then?"
"Then we'll know. So let us hope it never comes to that."
Update: pomegranate still unhappy.
I don't envy Jon's position at all.
Final thoughts:
Sure, Jon's chapters may be agonizing, but think about how much fun it will be when it's Daenerys narrating her own downfall.
It's our reward after Ned, Robb, and now this.
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Jon + Glasses
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Operation Stumpy Re-Read
ASOS: Jon V (Chapter 41)
Halfway!
Brandon's Gift had been farmed for thousands of years, but as the Watch dwindled there were fewer hands to plow the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards, so the wild had reclaimed many a field and hall. In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor, helped feed and clothe the black brothers. But those were largely gone as well.
Weird, there's a tremendous amount of attention being paid to fifty leagues of barren land in back-to-back Bran and Jon chapters.
I can't imagine it's going anywhere.
+.+.+
If I could show her Winterfell . . . give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.
Boy, who are you talking about, because it sure as fuck isn't Ygritte.
+.+.+
The dream was sweet . . . but Winterfell would never be his to show. It belonged to his brother, the King in the North. He was a Snow, not a Stark.
Well.
+.+.+
"Might be after we could come back here, and live in that tower," she said. "Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?"
After. The word was a spear thrust. After the war. After the conquest. After the wildlings break the Wall . . .
[...]
"This land belongs to the Watch," Jon said.
God I love when he ignores her questions.
+.+.+
His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. The plan would have required the Watch to yield back a large part of the Gift, but his uncle Benjen believed the Lord Commander could be won around, so long as the new lordlings paid taxes to Castle Black rather than Winterfell. "It is a dream for spring, though," Lord Eddard had said. "Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on."
If winter had come and gone more quickly and spring had followed in its turn, I might have been chosen to hold one of these towers in my father's name. Lord Eddard was dead, however, his brother Benjen lost; the shield they dreamt together would never be forged. "This land belongs to the Watch," Jon said.
Does it still count as foreshadowing when it's this easy?
Did you know George announced the title change of the final book (A Time for Wolves -> A Dream of Spring) in March 2006? Did you know A Storm of Swords was released in August 2000?
And did you know the above wasn't intended to be as blatantly obvious as it is now?
I call that accidental Gifts.
+.+.+
"You know nothing, Jon Snow. Daughters are taken, not wives. You're the ones who steal. You took the whole world, and built the Wall t' keep the free folk out."
I'm no history buff, but I believe that was done for the Others, Ygritte.
+.+.+
"The gods made the earth for all men t' share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can't eat them apples. My stream, you can't fish here. My wood, you're not t' hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I'll chop 'em off, but maybe if you kneel t' me I'll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t' be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t' kneel."
She's circling around a good point, but the problem is her answer to that is murder, theft, rape, and lawlessness.
+.+.+
"Harma and the Bag of Bones don't come raiding for fish and apples. They steal swords and axes. Spices, silks, and furs. They grab every coin and ring and jeweled cup they can find, casks of wine in summer and casks of beef in winter, and they take women in any season and carry them off beyond the Wall."
"And what if they do? I'd sooner be stolen by a strong man than be given t' some weakling by my father."
"You say that, but how can you know? What if you were stolen by someone you hated?"
Given to some weakling by her father? Stolen by someone you hated?
You don't have to listen carefully to hear Sansa's storyline blaring in the background of this conversation.
+.+.+
"Maybe he never washes, so he smells as rank as a bear."
"Then I'd push him in a stream or throw a bucket o' water on him. Anyhow, men shouldn't smell sweet like flowers."
"What's wrong with flowers?"
"Nothing, for a bee. For bed I want one o' these." Ygritte made to grab the front of his breeches.
Jon caught her wrist. "What if the man who stole you drank too much?" he insisted. "What if he was brutal or cruel?" He tightened his grip to make a point. "What if he was stronger than you, and liked to beat you bloody?"
Quick, someone find us a honey bee!
What's so amusing about this exchange is the fandom's ability to completely ignore it, and constantly reference Jon's imaginary contempt for women who can't defend themselves.
+.+.+
I know one thing. I know that you are wildling to the bone. It was easy to forget that sometimes, when they were laughing together, or kissing. But then one of them would say something, or do something, and he would suddenly be reminded of the wall between their worlds.
I like her until she opens her mouth.
+.+.+
"A man can own a woman or a man can own a knife," Ygritte told him, "but no man can own both. Every little girl learns that from her mother."
What does that even mean?
+.+.+
Wildlings fought like heroes or demons, depending on who you talked to, but it came down to the same thing in the end. They fight with reckless courage, every man out for glory. "I don't doubt that you're all very brave, but when it comes to battle, discipline beats valor every time. In the end Mance will fail as all the Kings-beyond-the-Wall have failed before him. And when he does, you'll die. All of you."
It's difficult to not think of the Dothraki every time this point is made.
+.+.+
Ygritte had looked so angry he thought she was about to strike him. "All of us," she said. "You too. You're no crow now, Jon Snow. I swore you weren't, so you better not be." She pushed him back against the trunk of a tree and kissed him, full on the lips right there in the midst of the ragged column. Jon heard Grigg the Goat urging her on. Someone else laughed. He kissed her back despite all that. When they finally broke apart, Ygritte was flushed. "You're mine," she whispered. "Mine, as I'm yours. And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we'll live."
"Yes." His voice was thick. "First we'll live."
Remember the 'still a better love story than Twilight' meme? This wouldn't make the cut.
+.+.+
She grinned at that, showing Jon the crooked teeth that he had somehow come to love. Wildling to the bone, he thought again, with a sick sad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He flexed the fingers of his sword hand, and wondered what Ygritte would do if she knew his heart.
Oop.
+.+.+
Would she betray him if he sat her down and told her that he was still Ned Stark's son and a man of the Night's Watch? He hoped not, but he dare not take that risk.
Trust he knows the answer to that question.
+.+.+
Once I shed a brother's blood I am lost. I cross the Wall for good then, and there is no crossing back.
That potentially has two separate meanings.
+.+.+
And he feared for Ygritte as well. He could not take her, but if he left her, would the Magnar make her answer for his treachery? Two hearts that beat as one . . .
The most heartbreaking thing about Jon's entrapment is that he's genuinely concerned he's going to get her killed, while she doesn't give a shit about his safety at all.
+.+.+
They shared the same sleeping skins every night, and he went to sleep with her head against his chest and her red hair tickling his chin. The smell of her had become a part of him. Her crooked teeth, the feel of her breast when he cupped it in his hand, the taste of her mouth . . . they were his joy and his despair. Many a night he lay with Ygritte warm beside him, wondering if his lord father had felt this confused about his mother, whoever she had been. Ygritte set the trap and Mance Rayder pushed me into it.
Once again, the teenage boy tells us that he loves her tits and taste.
Her kind heart? Her pure soul? Her charming personality? Her gentle nature? Her warm demeanor? Anything to say about that, Jon?
+.+.+
Every day he spent among the wildlings made what he had to do that much harder. He was going to have to find some way to betray these men, and when he did they would die. He did not want their friendship, any more than he wanted Ygritte's love.
You almost start to wonder if you're reading a different book than everyone else.
+.+.+
He didn't want to know about Del's girl or Bodger's mother, the place by the sea that Henk the Helm came from, how Grigg yearned to visit the green men on the Isle of Faces
Same. Someone better take me.
+.+.+
Jon wondered where Ghost was now. Had he gone to Castle Black, or was he was running with some wolfpack in the woods? He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off. Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he felt alone. He did not want to die alone.
No really, you could fill a country with the amount of people who believe this is the book's central love story. Pathetic.
He doesn't feel Ghost because the Wall is between them, correct?
+.+.+
Two of the Thenns had thrown the man to the ground and were going through his things. Another held his horse, while three more looted his saddlebags.
Jon walked away. A rotten apple squished beneath his heel.
You better plant some new apple orchards in honour of that old man.
+.+.+
"I know this place," he told her when she sat beside him. "That tower . . . look at the top of it the next time the lightning flashes, and tell me what you see."
[...]
The holdfast did have a grim haunted look, standing there black against the storm on its rocky island with the rain lashing at the lake all around it. "We could go out and take a look," he suggested. "I doubt we could get much wetter than we are."
"Swimming? In the storm?" She laughed at the notion. "Is this a trick t' get the clothes off me, Jon Snow?"
"Do I need a trick for that now?" he teased. "Or is that you can't swim a stroke?" Jon was a strong swimmer himself, having learned the art as a boy in Winterfell's great moat.
Ygritte punched his arm. "You know nothing, Jon Snow. I'm half a fish, I'll have you know."
+.+.+
"Yellow," she said. "Is that what you meant? Some o' them standing stones on top were yellow."
"We call them merlons. They were painted gold a long time ago. This is Queenscrown."
Across the lake, the tower was black again, a dim shape dimly seen. "A queen lived there?" asked Ygritte.
"A queen stayed there for a night."
Isn't that funny, because two kings are doing the same right now.
+.+.+
The king had matters to discuss with his Warden of the North, and Alysanne grew bored, so she mounted her dragon Silverwing and flew north to see the Wall.
Don't forget to tell her about that dragon refusing to cross the Wall, Jon. That's the funniest part of the story.
+.+.+
"I have never seen a dragon."
Well.
+.+.+
"Good Queen Alysanne, they called her later. One of the castles on the Wall was named for her as well. Queensgate. Before her visit they called it Snowgate."
Would Kingsgate have been a little too revealing?
+.+.+
"If she was so good, she should have torn that Wall down."
No, he thought. The Wall protects the realm. From the Others . . . and from you and your kind as well, sweetling.
He's sassy!
A good monarch would have torn down the Wall...
+.+.+
"I had another friend who dreamed of dragons. A dwarf. He told me—"
"JON SNOW!" One of the Thenns loomed above them, frowning.
"So they say," Tyrion replied. "Sad, isn't it? When I was your age, I used to dream of having a dragon of my own."
"You did?" the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun of him.
"Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he's seated on a dragon's back." Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his feet. "I used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes I'd imagine my father burning. At other times, my sister." Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. "Don't look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret. You've dreamt the same kind of dreams." - Tyrion II, AGOT
Where exactly was Jon going with that story?
"I had another friend who dreamed of dragons. A dwarf. He told me he liked to daydream about his sister and father burning alive." ???
Awkwardly remind me they're friends one more time, George.
+.+.+
"He must die," Styr the Magnar said. "Do it, crow."
The old man said no word. He only looked at Jon, standing amongst the wildlings. Amidst the rain and smoke, lit only by the fire, he could not have seen that Jon was all in black, but for his sheepskin cloak. Or could he?
Sheepskin cloaks can't disguise a wolf's true colours.
+.+.+
Fire is life up here, he told them, but it can be death as well. That was high in the Frostfangs, though, in the lawless wild beyond the Wall. This was the Gift, protected by the Night's Watch and the power of Winterfell. A man should have been free to build a fire here, without dying for it.
Lol.
+.+.+
He is an old man, Jon told himself. Fifty, maybe even sixty. He lived a longer life than most. The Thenns will kill him anyway, nothing I can say or do will save him. Longclaw seemed heavier than lead in his hand, too heavy to lift. The man kept staring at him, with eyes as big and black as wells. I will fall into those eyes and drown.
My unpopular Jonsa opinion is that I'm not a big fan of this foreshadowing because of the context.
Longclaw seemed heavier than lead in his hand, too heavy to lift.
+.+.+
What matter if it is my hand that slays him? One cut would do it, quick and clean.
[...]
He turned his back on the man. "No."
Always answering his own questions.
+.+.+
"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte snatched her knife from its sheath. Three quick strides, and she yanked the old man's head back by the hair and opened his throat from ear to ear. Even in death, the man did not cry out. "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" she shouted at him, and flung the bloody blade at his feet.
Count your days, Lucky.
+.+.+
Then the lightning turned the night to day, and he saw the wolf standing on Del's chest, blood running black from his jaws. Grey. He's grey.
Darkness descended with the thunderclap. The Thenns were jabbing with their spears as the wolf darted between them. The old man's mare reared, maddened by the smell of slaughter, and lashed out with her hooves. Longclaw was still in his hand. All at once Jon Snow knew he would never get a better chance.
He cut down the first man as he turned toward the wolf, shoved past a second, slashed at a third. Through the madness he heard someone call his name, but whether it was Ygritte or the Magnar he could not say. The Thenn fighting to control the horse never saw him. Longclaw was feather-light.
Longclaw seemed heavier than lead in his hand, too heavy to lift.
+.+.+
Lightning crashed down from the sky, a searing blue-white bolt that touched the top of the tower in the lake. They could smell the fury of it, and when the thunder came it seemed to shake the night.
[...]
Lightning shivered through the black dome of sky, and thunder rolled across the plains. The shouts dwindled and died behind him.
Who invited Daenerys?
+.+.+
There was a deep throbbing ache in his right thigh. When he looked down, he was surprised to see an arrow jutting out the back of it. When did that happen?
[...]
After a while, he realized that if he did not make himself move he was like to bleed to death. Jon crawled to the shallow stream where the mare was drinking, washed his thigh in the cold water, and bound it tight with a strip of cloth torn from his cloak. He washed the arrow too, turning it in his hands. Was the fletching grey, or white? Ygritte fletched her arrows with pale grey goose feathers. Did she loose a shaft at me as I fled? Jon could not blame her for that. He wondered if she'd been aiming for him or the horse. If the mare had gone down, he would have been doomed. "A lucky thing my leg got in the way," he muttered.
Ygritte dying from an arrow after shooting Jon with one? Perfection.
+.+.+
He tried to think back on the madness at the inn, but all he could remember was the beast, gaunt and grey and terrible. It was too large to be a common wolf. A direwolf, then. It had to be. He had never seen an animal move so fast. Like a grey wind . . . Could Robb have returned to the north?
I know he's badly injured, but is this seriously his best guess?
+.+.+
Thunder rumbled softly in the distance, but above him the clouds were breaking up. Jon searched the sky until he found the Ice Dragon, then turned the mare north for the Wall and Castle Black. The throb of pain in his thigh muscle made him wince as he put his heels into the old man's horse. I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?
He rode till dawn, while the stars stared down like eyes.
Maybe because it's not your home?
Anyway, speaking of thunder, betrayal, and defection, you won't believe who's next.
Final thoughts:
Did you know Ygritte says "You know nothing, Jon Snow" NINETEEN times in this story? I don't care if I sound elitist, this girl needs to read a book and learn some new words, I can't deal.
Ygritte Death Countdown
8 down, 2 to go. I smell blood! :D
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Operation Stumpy Re-Read
ASOS: Jon VII (Chapter 55)
Fam, we made it.
"I have need of every man who knows which end of the spear to stab into the wildlings."
"The pointy end." Jon had told his little sister something like that once, he remembered. Noye rubbed the bristle on his chin. "Might be you'll do. We'll put you on a tower with a longbow, but if you bloody well fall off don't come crying to me."
I remember too. It was right before a Daenerys chapter transition.
Because of his injury, Jon will spend the entire fight in the King's Tower, narrating the action from above.
Game of Thrones didn't like that, so they made him a superhero instead.
+.+.+
Grigg the Goat, Quort, Big Boil, and the rest will be coming as well. And Ygritte. The wildlings had never been his friends, he had not allowed them to be his friends, but her . . .
He could feel the throb of pain where her arrow had gone through the meat and muscle of his thigh. He remembered the old man's eyes too, and the black blood rushing from his throat as the storm cracked overhead. But he remembered the grotto best of all, the look of her naked in the torchlight, the taste of her mouth when it opened under his.
Almost like his body and mind are trying to interrupt.
Again... the look of her naked, the taste of her mouth... how about her big brain, Jon? Her gentle soul? Her winning personality? Any thoughts?
+.+.+
Ygritte, stay away. Go south and raid, go hide in one of those roundtowers you liked so well. You'll find nothing here but death.
Or let's not do that?
+.+.+
Men in black cloaks were visible on other roofs and tower tops as well, though nine of every ten happened to be made of straw. "The scarecrow sentinels," Donal Noye called them. Only we're the crows, Jon mused, and most of us were scared enough.
[...]
Jon had six scarecrows sharing the roof of the King's Tower with him, along with two actual breathing brothers.
[...]
The King's Tower was not the castle's tallest—the high, slim, crumbling Lance held that honor, though Othell Yarwyck had been heard to say it might topple any day. Nor was the King's Tower strongest—the Tower of Guards beside the kingsroad would be a tougher nut to crack. But it was tall enough, strong enough, and well placed beside the Wall, overlooking the gate and the foot of the wooden stair.
If there's a message hiding here, it's not being received.
+.+.+
Satin, they called him, even in the wool and mail and boiled leather of the Night's Watch; the name he'd gotten in the brothel where he'd been born and raised. He was pretty as a girl with his dark eyes, soft skin, and raven's ringlets.
From this we can deduce that Jon is not pretty like Satin.
These are the facts that matter most to me.
+.+.+
The first time he had seen Castle Black with his own eyes, Jon had wondered why anyone would be so foolish as to build a castle without walls. How could it be defended?
"It can't," his uncle told him. "That is the point. The Night's Watch is pledged to take no part in the quarrels of the realm. Yet over the centuries certain Lords Commander, more proud than wise, forgot their vows and near destroyed us all with their ambitions. Lord Commander Runcel Hightower tried to bequeathe the Watch to his bastard son. Lord Commander Rodrik Flint thought to make himself King-beyond-the-Wall. Tristan Mudd, Mad Marq Rankenfell, Robin Hill . . . did you know that six hundred years ago, the commanders at Snowgate and the Nightfort went to war against each other? And when the Lord Commander tried to stop them, they joined forces to murder him? The Stark in Winterfell had to take a hand . . . and both their heads.
Is any of this important? I don't know.
True story, while I was investigating the above passage, I saw someone on Reddit suggest Rodrik Flint is foreshadowing Jon's ending, because Jon has Flint blood in him. Apparently that part about selfish ambitions destroying everything was missed.
+.+.+
A couple of them saw Jon looking down from atop the King's Tower and waved up at him. Others turned away. They still think me a turncloak. That was a bitter draft to drink, but Jon could not blame them. He was a bastard, after all. Everyone knew that bastards were wanton and treacherous by nature, having been born of lust and deceit.
Starting now we're going to read a lot about bastards being wanton, and born of lust. The stigma has always been there, but now we're introducing the idea of bastards being sexually unrestrained.
You might remember Jon was coerced by Ygritte, and submitted because of duty and fear. It was not lust or a bastard being wanton.
So, where's this going?
"Where are you going? Are you afraid? Such wanton behavior must be punished, but I will not be hard on you. We keep a whipping boy for Robert, as is the custom in the Free Cities. His health is too delicate for him to bear the rod himself. I shall find some common girl to take your whipping, but first you must own up to what you've done. I cannot abide a liar, Alayne." - Sansa VII, ASOS
x
"So you admit it now? It was you, just as I thought. You are as wanton as your mother." Lysa grabbed her by the wrist. "Come with me now. There is something I want to show you." - Sansa VII, ASOS
+.+.+
He [Rast] was raking dry leaves into piles under the stairs just now, but every so often he stopped long enough to give Jon a nasty look.
He's quite good at sprinkling in small details that spoil what's to come.
+.+.+
Well, ravens might have wings, but lords and kings do not. If help was coming, it would not come today.
We'll see.
+.+.+
As morning turned to afternoon, the smoke of Mole's Town blew away and the southern sky was clear again. No clouds, thought Jon. That was good. Rain or snow could doom them all.
You have no idea how right you are.
+.+.+
Jon sat between two merlons with only a scarecrow for company and watched the Stallion gallop up the sky. Or was it the Horned Lord? He wondered where Ghost was now. He wondered about Ygritte as well, and told himself that way lay madness.
They came in the night, of course. Like thieves, Jon thought. Like murderers.
That's the second time Jon's thoughts about Ygritte are seemingly interrupted.
If something is hiding in that first paragraph, I missed it again.
Edit: @a-maid-with-sunset-in-her-hair saves the day.
+.+.+
Satin pissed himself when the horns blew, but Jon pretended not to notice.
Sam?
+.+.+
Jon hung a quiver from his belt and pulled an arrow. The shaft was black, the fletching grey. As he notched it to his string, he remembered something that Theon Greyjoy had once said after a hunt. "The boar can keep his tusks and the bear his claws," he had declared, smiling that way he did. "There's nothing half so mortal as a grey goose feather."
Jon had never been half the hunter that Theon was, but he was no stranger to the longbow either.
I am no closer to figuring out who is shooting arrows, or what the target is, but Theon Greyjoy just became another strong contender.
+.+.+
The arrow made a soft hiss as it left his string.
I have a feeling we're in for some more interesting language/imagery during this attack.
+.+.+
Not ten feet from Deaf Dick's body, he glimpsed a leather shield, a ragged cloak, a mop of thick red hair. Kissed by fire, he thought, lucky. He brought his bow up, but his fingers would not part, and she was gone as suddenly as she'd appeared.
Jon spots Ygritte during the attack, but doesn't shoot. We wouldn't want him to.
What's interesting is that after this moment, he will never once contemplate her position or whether she's okay. Only after they've won.
+.+.+
By then the east stables were afire too, black smoke and wisps of burning hay pouring from the stalls. When the roof collapsed, flames rose up roaring, so loud they almost drowned out the warhorns of the Thenns.
x
The dance has moved on, he thought.
x
The dance has moved on, and we're watching from the gallery, he thought as he hobbled back.
Yeah.
Sounds like Jon is observing a dance, as opposed to participating in one.
+.+.+
The heat of the fires was making the Wall weep, and the flames danced and shimmered against the ice. The steps shook to the footsteps of men running for their lives.
Yes.
+.+.+
His father had always said that in battle a captain's lungs were as important as his sword arm. "It does not matter how brave or brilliant a man is, if his commands cannot be heard," Lord Eddard told his sons, so Robb and he used to climb the towers of Winterfell to shout at each other across the yard.
x
"A man is never so vulnerable in battle as when he flees," Lord Eddard had told Jon once. "A running man is like a wounded animal to a soldier. It gets his bloodlust up."
He may not be thinking of Ygritte, but his father is certainly present.
+.+.+
When he [Styr] saw the gate, he pointed the spear at it and barked something in the Old Tongue to the half-dozen Thenns around him. Too late, Jon thought. You should have led your men over the barricade, you might have been able to save a few.
Jon's not a big fan of people who command from the rear.
+.+.+
Jon notched a fire arrow to his bowstring, and Satin lit it from the torch. He stepped to the parapet, drew, aimed, loosed. Ribbons of flame trailed behind as the shaft sped downward and thudded into its target, crackling.
Not Styr. The steps. Or more precisely, the casks and kegs and sacks that Donal Noye had piled up beneath the steps, as high as the first landing; the barrels of lard and lamp oil, the bags of leaves and oily rags, the split logs, bark, and wood shavings.
Donal Noye, the true hero of the day!
I guarantee someone read that and convinced themselves burning people alive is allowed.
+.+.+
Wind and fire did the rest. All Jon had to do was watch. With flames below and flames above, the wildlings had nowhere to go. Some continued upward, and died. Some went downward, and died. Some stayed where they were. They died as well. Many leapt from the steps before they burned, and died from the fall. Twenty-odd Thenns were still huddled together between the fires when the ice cracked from the heat, and the whole lower third of the stair broke off, along with several tons of ice. That was the last that Jon Snow saw of Styr, the Magnar of Thenn. The Wall defends itself, he thought.
It sure does.
+.+.+
He found Ygritte sprawled across a patch of old snow beneath the Lord Commander's Tower, with an arrow between her breasts.
+.+.+
The ice crystals had settled over her face, and in the moonlight it looked as though she wore a glittering silver mask.
Do you have any idea how dumb you have to be to use dying Ygritte as foreshadowing for your ship?
+.+.+
The arrow was black, Jon saw, but it was fletched with white duck feathers. Not mine, he told himself, not one of mine. But he felt as if it were.
I kind of love that this is his first thought.
No agony, no despair, no sadness. Only relief, and some misplaced guilt.
+.+.+
When he knelt in the snow beside her, her eyes opened. "Jon Snow," she said, very softly. It sounded as though the arrow had found a lung. "Is this a proper castle now? Not just a tower?"
Do you feel the emotional detachment right now?
+.+.+
"You'll see a hundred castles," he promised her. "The battle's done. Maester Aemon will see to you." He touched her hair. "You're kissed by fire, remember? Lucky. It will take more than an arrow to kill you. Aemon will draw it out and patch you up, and we'll get you some milk of the poppy for the pain."
She just smiled at that. "D'you remember that cave? We should have stayed in that cave. I told you so."
"We'll go back to the cave," he said. "You're not going to die, Ygritte. You're not."
This is how we comfort a child, not the love of our life.
+.+.+
"Oh." Ygritte cupped his cheek with her hand. "You know nothing, Jon Snow," she sighed, dying.
He knew you'd die.
What, no kiss? No tears? No last embrace? No I love you? Weird!
Anyway,
Some instinct made her lift her hand and cup his cheek with her fingers. The room was too dark for her to see him, but she could feel the stickiness of the blood, and a wetness that was not blood. - Sansa VII, ACOK
When we were first introduced to Ygritte, the Hound/Sansa parallels were unmistakable. We're now ending on the exact same note.
Only a fool would think that's positive for either ship. This also serves as a strong indicator you'll never see the Hound near Sansa again. Ygritte and the Hound are done.
Final thoughts:
Not even a full page. Shot in the leg, then a handful of sentences. This is how the author chose to end this epic love story.
Do you realize Arya and the Hound will be given more space?
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Operation Stumpy Re-Read
ACOK: Jon V (Chapter 43)
The call came drifting through the black of night. Jon pushed himself onto an elbow, his hand reaching for Longclaw by force of habit as the camp began to stir. The horn that wakes the sleepers, he thought.
We’re starting with horns! Where might this be going?
+.+
Jon knew Qhorin Halfhand the instant he saw him, though they had never met. The big ranger was half a legend in the Watch; a man of slow words and swift action, tall and straight as a spear, long-limbed and solemn. Unlike his men, he was clean-shaven. His hair fell from beneath his helm in a heavy braid touched with hoarfrost, and the blacks he wore were so faded they might have been greys.
Jon thought Jaime looked more like a king than Robert, he knew Qhorin the instant he saw him, and later he’ll mistake Styr for Mance based on his appearance. I don’t know, it just reminds me of someone.
Anyway, Qhorin Halfhand’s blacks were so faded they might have been greys...
Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black. - Jon IV, ACOK
Not those blacks though.
+.+
The ranger gave his horse into the care of one of his men and followed. "You are Jon Snow. You have your father's look."
(...)
Qhorin glanced behind. "It is said that a direwolf runs with you."
I bet he knows Jon is a warg.
+.+
Only last night, he was coming back through the dark from a piss when he heard five or six men talking in low voices around the embers of a fire. When he heard Chett muttering that it was past time they turned back, Jon stopped to listen. "It's an old man's folly, this ranging," he heard. "We'll find nothing but our graves in them mountains."
"There's giants in the Frostfangs, and wargs, and worse things," said Lark the Sisterman.
"I'll not be going there, I promise you."
"The Old Bear's not like to give you a choice."
"Might be we won't give him one," said Chett.
(...)
He considered taking the tale to Mormont, but he could not bring himself to inform on his brothers, even brothers such as Chett and the Sisterman. It was just empty talk, he told himself.
Jon dismissing discontentment felt by his brothers. Please don’t make a habit of this.
+.+
The warhorn he had given to Sam. On closer examination the horn had proved cracked, and even after he had cleaned all the dirt out, Jon had been unable to get any sound from it. The rim was chipped as well, but Sam liked old things, even worthless old things. "Make a drinking horn out of it," Jon told him, "and every time you take a drink you'll remember how you ranged beyond the Wall, all the way to the Fist of the First Men."
Speaking of horns, here’s a very long description of an insignificant one.
+.+
The Halfhand helped himself to an egg and cracked it on the edge of the bowl. "These kings will do what they will," he said, peeling away the shell. "Likely it will be little enough. The best hope is Winterfell. The Starks must rally the north."
The Starks will rally the north.
+.+
"Patrols, aye. Twice a day, if we can. The Wall itself is a formidable obstacle. Undefended, it cannot stop them, yet it will delay them. The larger the host, the longer they'll require. From the emptiness they've left behind, they must mean to bring their women with them. Their young as well, and beasts . . . have you ever seen a goat climb a ladder? A rope? They will need to build a stair, or a great ramp . . . it will take a moon's turn at the least, perhaps longer. Mance will know his best chance is to pass beneath the Wall. Through a gate, or . . ."
I think it’s a bit strange we’re discussing the prospect of traveling underneath the big magic Wall immediately after that Davos chapter.
"He was unprotected. But here . . . this Storm's End is an old place. There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass—ancient, forgotten, yet still in place."
(...)
The tunnel opened on a cavern under the castle, where the storm lords of old had built their landing. - Davos II, ACOK
+.+
"They do not plan to climb the Wall nor to burrow beneath it, my lord. They plan to break it."
"The Wall is seven hundred feet high, and so thick at the base that it would take a hundred men a year to cut through it with picks and axes."
"Even so."
"How else? Sorcery." Qhorin bit the egg in half. "Why else would Mance choose to gather his strength in the Frostfangs? Bleak and hard they are, and a long weary march from the Wall."
(...)
"Perhaps," said Qhorin, finishing the egg, "but there is more, I think. He is seeking something in the high cold places. He is searching for something he needs."
Mance Rayder is looking for something, but what could it be?? Where could we find the answer??
+.+
But at last he said, "May the gods forgive me. Choose your men."
Qhorin Halfhand turned his head. His eyes met Jon's, and held them for a long moment. "Very well. I choose Jon Snow."
(...)
"We ride at noon," the ranger told him. "Best find that wolf of yours."
See, he wants the wolf!
Final thoughts:
It’s undoubtedly significant, but I’m not sure I buy that horn can take down the wall.
Also I’m just going to say it, Qhorin Halfhand was super lame on the show.
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