“I yield.” Her words steamed in the cold air.
“You’re our captive, then.” He pulled the dirk away from the soft skin of her throat.
“Qhorin said nothing of taking captives,” said Stonesnake.
“He never said not to.” Jon let go his grip on the girl’s hair, and she scuttled backward, away from them.
“She’s a spearwife.” Stonesnake gestured at the long-hafted axe that lay beside her sleeping furs. “She was reaching for that when you grabbed her. Give her half a chance and she’ll bury it between your eyes.”
“I won’t give her half a chance.” Jon kicked the axe well out of the girl’s reach. “Do you have a name?”
“Ygritte.” Her hand rubbed at her throat and came away bloody. She stared at the wetness.
Sheathing his dirk, he wrenched Longclaw free from the body of the man he’d killed. “You are my captive, Ygritte.”
“I gave you my name.”
“I’m Jon Snow.”
She flinched. “An evil name.”
“A bastard name,” he said. “My father was Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell.”
The girl watched him warily, but Stonesnake gave a mordant chuckle. “It’s the captive supposed to tell things, remember?” The ranger thrust a long branch into the fire. “Not that she will. I’ve known wildlings to bite off their own tongues before they’d answer a question.” When the end of the branch was blazing merrily, he took two steps and flung it out over the pass. It fell through the night spinning until it was lost to sight.
“You ought to burn them you killed,” said Ygritte.
“Need a bigger fire for that, and big fires burn bright.” Stonesnake turned, his eyes scanning the black distance for any spark of light. “Are there more wildlings close by, is that it?”
“Burn them,” the girl repeated stubbornly, “or it might be you’ll need them swords again.”
Jon remembered dead Othor and his cold black hands. “Maybe we should do as she says.”
“There are other ways.” Stonesnake knelt beside the man he’d slain, stripped him of cloak and boots and belt and vest, then hoisted the body over one thin shoulder and carried it to the edge. He grunted as he tossed it over. A moment later they heard a wet, heavy smack well below them. By then the ranger had the second body down to the skin and was dragging it by the arms. Jon took the feet and together they flung the dead man out in the blackness of the night.
Ygritte watched and said nothing. She was older than he’d thought at first, Jon realized; maybe as old as twenty, but short for her age, bandy-legged, with a round face, small hands, and a pug nose. Her shaggy mop of red hair stuck out in all directions. She looked plump as she crouched there, but most of that was layers of fur and wool and leather. Underneath all that she could be as skinny as Arya.
“Were you sent to watch for us?” Jon asked her.
“You, and others.”
Stonesnake warmed his hands over the fire. “What waits beyond the pass?”
“The free folk.”
“How many?”
“Hundreds and thousands. More than you ever saw, crow.” She smiled. Her teeth were crooked, but very white.
Ygritte fell silent.
“What’s in the Frostfangs that your king could want? You can’t stay here, there’s no food.”
She turned her face away from him.
“Do you mean to march on the Wall? When?”
She stared at the flames as if she could not hear him.
“Do you know anything of my uncle, Benjen Stark?”
Ygritte ignored him. Stonesnake laughed. “If she spits out her tongue, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A low rumbling growl echoed off the rock.
“They won’t trouble us,” Ygritte said. “It’s the dead they’ve come for. Cats can smell blood six miles off. They’ll stay near the bodies till they’ve eaten every last stringy shred o’ meat, and cracked the bones for the marrow.”
Jon could hear the sounds of their feeding echoing off the rocks. It gave him an uneasy feeling. The warmth of the fire made him realize how bone-tired he was, but he dared not sleep. He had taken a captive, and it was on him to guard her. “Were they your kin?” he asked her quietly. “The two we killed?”
“No more than you are.”
“Me?” He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You said you were the Bastard o’ Winterfell.”
“I am.”
“Who was your mother?”
“Some woman. Most of them are.” Someone had said that to him once. He did not remember who.
She smiled again, a flash of white teeth. “And she never sung you the song o’ the winter rose?”
“I never knew my mother. Or any such song.”
“Bael the Bard made it,” said Ygritte. “He was King-beyond-the-Wall a long time back. All the free folk know his songs, but might be you don’t sing them in the south.”
“Winterfell’s not in the south,” Jon objected.
“Yes it is. Everything below the Wall’s south to us.”
He had never thought of it that way. “I suppose it’s all in where you’re standing.”
“Aye,” Ygritte agreed. “It always is.”
“Tell me,” Jon urged her. It would be hours before Qhorin came up, and a story would help keep him awake. “I want to hear this tale of yours.”
“Might be you won’t like it much.”
“I’ll hear it all the same.”
“Brave black crow,” she mocked. “Well, long before he was king over the free folk, Bael was a great raider.”
Stonesnake gave a snort. “A murderer, robber, and raper, is what you mean.”
“That’s all in where you’re standing too,” Ygritte said. “The Stark in Winterfell wanted Bael’s head, but never could take him, and the taste o’ failure galled him. One day in his bitterness he called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak. When word o’ that got back, Bael vowed to teach the lord a lesson. So he scaled the Wall, skipped down the kingsroad, and walked into Winterfell one winter’s night with harp in hand, naming himself Sygerrik of Skagos.
“North or south, singers always find a ready welcome, so Bael ate at Lord Stark’s own table, and played for the lord in his high seat until half the night was gone. The old songs he played, and new ones he’d made himself, and he played and sang so well that when he was done, the lord offered to let him name his own reward. ‘All I ask is a flower,’ Bael answered, ‘the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o’ Winterfell.’”
“Now as it happened the winter roses had only then come into bloom, and no flower is so rare nor precious. So the Stark sent to his glass gardens and commanded that the most beautiful o’ the winter roses be plucked for the singer’s payment. And so it was done. But when morning come, the singer had vanished… and so had Lord Brandon’s maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain.”
Jon had never heard this tale before. “Which Brandon was this supposed to be? Brandon the Builder lived in the Age of Heroes, thousands of years before Bael. There was Brandon the Burner and his father Brandon the Shipwright, but—”
“This was Brandon the Daughterless,” Ygritte said sharply. “Would you hear the tale, or no?”
He scowled. “Go on.”
“Lord Brandon had no other children. At his behest, the black crows flew forth from their castles in the hundreds, but nowhere could they find any sign o’ Bael or this maid. For most a year they searched, till the lord lost heart and took to his bed, and it seemed as though the line o’ Starks was at its end. But one night as he lay waiting
