"His father, Lord Eddard Stark—every man who ever met him never doubted his honor. Jon Snow was the only stain Eddard ever let the world see."
Mance took a slow sip of mead.
"Eddard's sense of honor ran so deep he couldn't bring himself to mistreat the boy. He gave Jon everything a bastard could get—raised him in the castle, taught him honor and straight talk, let him eat and train and play with his trueborn siblings. The only thing he couldn't give him was a name."
"Some things look close enough to touch, but you know in your bones they'll never be yours. You understand that kind of ache?"
Lynn nodded. He got it.
"So the Stark lord's love ended up being a burden?"
"Exactly. If Jon had been a sly little shit it would've been easy—most highborn bastards turn out that way. No insult; the world teaches them to be. But Eddard went and raised this one on honor and honesty… and down south those two things are usually at each other's throats."
A walking contradiction, Lynn thought.
"That's why the boy has something in him most people miss. Feels a little embarrassing to say it, but he reminds me of myself. I'd call it a hunger for freedom."
Mance winked at Lynn. "So I want to give him a chance. Might surprise us. Like you said when you ordered him taken alive—just a harmless side bet."
Lynn snorted. "Fine. He's yours."
They sat in silence for a while.
After a minute Mance spoke again. "The boy said… wights got inside the Wall."
"Yeah. He didn't sound like he was lying. So the old stories about ancient magic keeping the Others out were bullshit."
Mance shook his head.
"The stories talk about the Others, not wights. There's a difference. The Wall does have magic. Every black brother knows the tale of Queen Alysanne visiting the North. She was King Jaehaerys the Conciliator's wife—Jaehaerys they called the Old King because he ruled for decades. When he was young he liked to travel the realm. He brought the queen, six dragons, and half the court to Winterfell to talk business with the Warden of the North. Alysanne got bored, so she mounted her dragon Silverwing and flew north to see the Wall.
But Silverwing refused to cross it. Three times she tried. The dragon screamed and turned south every time. It left the queen badly shaken."
Mance glanced at Weeping Blood.
"Everyone knows dragons are creatures of magic."
Lynn scratched the dragon's horny chin. When Weeping Blood first hatched he'd hated the cold, but he seemed to be adjusting. If Alysanne's story was true, then the dragon's calm suggested the problem wasn't beyond the Wall—it was the Wall itself.
If the Wall really did reject magical creatures, that could become a serious headache.
"Either way, wights being able to cross is good news for us," Lynn said, stretching. He pushed the dragon-and-Wall problem aside. They were still a long way from it; they'd find out when they got there.
Then something clicked. "One more thing. I suggest we stop burning every corpse right away. Leave a few intact so we can watch how they turn. Figure out how to bind them so they don't attack. I wasn't joking earlier about dragging a couple wights south to show the southern lords."
"Jon Snow's news makes that even more important."
Mance agreed it was smart, but right now it wasn't practical.
"Can't do it yet. We still find frozen bodies in camp sometimes—people who died of cold. They don't rise. Probably because the Others are too far away. To catch fresh wights we'd have to push north. The new crews say the farther you get from the Wall, the fewer corpses turn."
Lynn frowned. He still didn't fully understand the mechanics between Others and wights. Best guess: only people killed directly by an Other or a wight came back. If it wasn't a direct kill, the body needed to be close enough for whatever power they used.
The two that got inside Castle Black sounded like the Others' handiwork.
"Never mind. We'll deal with it when we reach the Wall. They'll come to us soon enough. Wights won't be in short supply."
Lynn gave a wry smile. Mance sighed.
For now the priority was still hunting for the Horn of Winter and whipping the Free Folk into something that could actually take the Wall.
Kassa's Thenn warriors were already drilling with grappling hooks, scaling ladders, shield walls, and massed charges. Harma Dogshead had picked her best hundred and twenty horsemen, given them remounts, and started teaching them lance charges and mounted archery. Their gear was nothing like southern knights, but they'd stopped being mounted infantry and had become something closer to real cavalry.
The riders who didn't make the cut were turned into scouts—no waste.
The clan fighters had their own jobs: some dug barrows, some hunted, some made and repaired gear. Every grave they opened got stripped of anything valuable—gold, gems, amber, jade, ivory—everything that could be traded south for supplies.
Good corpses got dragged out and burned so the Others couldn't use them. Usable weapons and armor went straight to the fighters.
Looting graves like a Westerosi tomb robber—why the hell not?
The Free Folk had never been completely cut off. They'd always done quiet trade with the Night's Watch. At Eastwatch the bolder smugglers ran steel weapons and other contraband north in exchange for furs and northern goods.
A Tyroshi named Lhoro Uhoris once captained the Cobblecat on that route, slipping past the Wall into the wildling-controlled northern bay. On the return trip the Night's Watch fleet caught him. They beheaded him on the deck at Eastwatch and seized the cargo.
Young Davos Seaworth had been a crewman on that voyage. The memory of that fat, easy profit had stayed with him.
But the Watch was shrinking and Eastwatch was understrength. The smuggling hadn't stopped.
Once they held the Wall, Lynn planned to use those same channels to buy every scrap of winter grain he could find. That was why they were hoarding every valuable thing they dug up.