Chapter 258 - Tyrion's Ghost-Catching Squad

Snow and wind swallowed the skyline. The gray-white sky and the gray-white earth blurred into each other, no boundary between them.

Wind poured in from the north, carrying fine shards of ice that scraped across exposed skin like sandpaper.

Tyrion Lannister huddled inside a thick fur cloak, half his face buried in the collar. His nose had gone red. A few small chilblains had formed on its tip.

He walked very slowly.

The snow reached his upper thighs. Every step meant wrenching his leg free, then plunging it down into the next soft layer. The footprints behind him formed a crooked, wavering trench, already half-swallowed by fresh snowfall.

"How do you people actually live here?" He gasped the words toward the front of the column.

Tormund walked at the head of the party, a two-handed axe resting across his shoulder, its blade rimed with frost. He glanced back at Tyrion.

"You keep moving. That's the secret. Walking works. Fighting is better. Fucking a woman is best."

Tyrion took another step. His boot sank.

"There isn't a single living woman within a hundred miles."

"Then maybe the female wight the big one's carrying could do you some good." Tormund looked at the Mountain and roared laughing.

"Maybe your arsehole would suit me better." Tyrion never gave quarter with his tongue.

Jon Snow wore a black Night's Watch cloak.

"When we ranged beyond the Wall before, we'd occasionally run into free folk. That's rare now."

"We moved most of them inside the Wall. The ones who couldn't make it — the Night King turned them into wights, or they froze, or they starved."

Tormund slowed and turned around to face Tyrion.

"Ever since the Others started moving, it's been colder out here than any winter before. When they come, they bring darkness and heavy snow. That cold isn't the same as a normal northern winter."

"Northern cold is dry. Thick furs can hold it off. The cold the Others bring is wet."

"Like a magic attack. It cuts through the fur and drives straight into your bones."

"Even us, those of us who've lived here for generations, the 'wildlings' your lordly kind call us — can't endure it."

Jon Snow said, "I saw it at Hardhome. The Night King raised his hand, and over a thousand freshly dead corpses stood up all at once. All of them wights."

Tyrion pulled his cloak tighter and drew his neck in. "Then the situation really is as bad as all that."

Jon walked past him and glanced down.

"Otherwise I wouldn't have brought a Lannister along to capture a wight."

Tyrion looked up at him.

Snow settled on Jon's hair and shoulders, building a thin layer of white on the black fabric of his cloak.

"You're right," Tyrion said. "I'm glad you set your prejudice aside."

Jon didn't respond. He kept walking.

Tyrion watched his back, opened his mouth, then closed it.

He knew the Stark hatred. Robb Stark's death. That didn't dissolve over a single conversation.

Cersei was his sister. Joffrey was his nephew. No matter what he said, the blood ran between them.

The Mountain, Gregor Clegane, had a still-struggling wight lashed to his back. Hemp rope crossed the wight's chest, looped twice, tied into a dead knot.

The wight's head lolled to one side. Its eyes were a murky blue. Half its teeth had fallen out, and the few jagged fangs that remained clicked against each other in a rapid, fine chatter.

Its fingers, what was left of them, mostly bare bone, kept scratching and clawing without pause.

"Everything you've said about them is fear-mongering," Gregor said. "Aside from not tiring, their fighting strength is nowhere near what you claim."

"One swing and I can scatter their bones."

"The ones you fought had been dead for years," Jon's voice came back through the wind. "Bare bones with a scrap of rotted flesh. If it were an Other, it could catch your steel sword with its bare hand and crush it."

Tormund added, "Those ice spears they carry punch straight through knightly armor. All that steel you're so proud of."

Gregor snorted, a muffled grunt from deep in his chest.

He didn't argue. He didn't speak again either.

The wight on his back bucked. He reached back with his left hand, pressed the wight's head down, and twisted hard. A dull crack.

The head tilted to an even more unnatural angle. The struggling eased a little.

Tyrion had finally had enough of the cold.

"Would some kind soul carry me for a stretch? My balls are about to freeze off. I have a beauty waiting for me back south."

Tormund laughed. "Doesn't seem like all that moving is helping you much."

"Because the snow is up to my waist. My balls might as well be buried in a snowdrift."

Jon stopped and turned around. He looked at Tyrion sunken to the thighs in white.

"I told you. You didn't have to come."

"You've slowed us down completely." Gregor's voice carried open contempt. "If you hadn't come, we'd already be back at the Wall instead of standing here eating snow."

Tyrion lifted his head and looked around. White in every direction. Then he looked at the Lannister soldiers still standing in the column.

18 when they set out. 7 now.

The other 11 were stiff in the snow somewhere behind them.

Probably wights by now. There had been no time to burn them.

The faces of those 7 soldiers were blank. Empty.

They had grown up in southern castles, trained in warm camps. None of them had ever seen a place where the air itself froze in your lungs.

10 days of marching. They were running on nothing.

A Lannister knight stepped over, bent down, and lifted Tyrion onto his back.

Tyrion pressed close to the soldier's ear and exhaled. The breath turned to white mist instantly, then scattered in the wind.

"I had to come in person. When I urge Joffrey, urge Cersei, urge Tywin to lay down their arms — the words have to mean something. They have to come from someone who was there."

"We are fighting for survival now. Not for power. I have to make Joffrey understand that."

"I have to make everyone understand."

The road stretched on. The snow fell harder.

Jon walked at the front, torch held up against the dark. The wind tore at the flame and reduced it to a smeared orange halo, more blur than fire.

Tyrion lay against the soldier's back and watched Jon's silhouette flicker and vanish in the storm.

He could feel the man's breathing changing. Heavier. Slower. Carrying him this long, the soldier was at his limit.

He patted the shoulder. The soldier set him down.

His feet touched the snow again. He couldn't feel them at all.

The snow was deeper than before. In the short time he'd been carried, it had risen another notch. Past his upper thighs now, swallowing him to the waist.

He turned his head.

In the distance, somewhere in that smear of gray-white where sky met earth, a dark shape moved slowly toward them.

Tyrion stopped. "Do you see that?"

Jon stopped.

He followed Tyrion's sightline and raised the torch.

"Something's there," Tormund said quietly. "Wights, or something else."

Jon held the torch out to Tyrion. "Hold this."

He drew his sword and walked toward it.

Tormund fell in behind him, axe already in hand.

The Mountain cut the wight loose from his back, dropped it in the snow, drew his greatsword, and followed.

Tyrion stood where he was. Torch in hand. He watched the 3 of them shrink into the storm until they were shapes, and then smaller than shapes.

The shadow drew closer.

And then he saw them, cutting through the blizzard, 2 points of ice-blue light.

Tyrion tightened his grip on the torch. The smoke bent sideways in the wind and scattered.

➤ Next: One More Trip