Chapter 259 - One More Trip
"Were the bear's eyes blue?" Tyrion Lannister asked.
No one answered.
The blizzard had pushed the shape right to their doorstep. It was massive, forelimbs planted on the ground, shoulder blades humping beneath its fur.
The fur was gray-white, the same color as the snow. You couldn't make out its outline until it moved.
Jon stepped forward two paces. His Valyrian steel sword traced a dim arc through the blizzard, the blade cutting diagonally for the bear's shoulder and neck.
Steel met fur and thick muscle with a crisp crack.
The bear shook its head. Its massive forepaw swung at him, trailing snow and shattered ice.
Jon dodged sideways, but the edge of the paw caught his shoulder and sent him staggering two steps, his boots punching deep holes into the snow.
He steadied himself and went back in.
Tormund flanked from the other side, two-handed axe swinging hard, chopping into the bear's hind leg.
The blade sank into bone and flesh and stuck.
He yanked. It didn't come free. The bear spun and lunged at him. He let go of the handle and stumbled backward, landing hard in the snow.
the Mountain charged in from the side, his greatsword sweeping horizontal, hacking into the bear's flank.
The blade tore through fur and opened dark flesh beneath.
The bear swayed. Its forelimbs braced against the ground. Its ice-blue eyes fixed on the Mountain, and a low, muffled roar crawled out of its throat.
Tyrion Lannister stood well back, clutching the torch Jon had handed him. The flame was blown nearly flat by the wind.
Back home, a mean dog was enough to put his life in danger. This was not his fight.
The bear had taken three hits. The thick flesh across its back had absorbed most of it.
One soldier got bitten, torn apart in a spray of blood and meat. Another took a paw straight to the chest. His sternum caved. He went down and didn't get up.
Jon closed on the bear's head, Valyrian steel gripped tight. The bear was still locked in a standoff with the Mountain. He took the opening, drove the sword tip in from the side, and punched it straight into the eye socket.
The blade sank home with a short sharp crack, like ice breaking underfoot. The ice-blue light drained from the bear's pupils. The whole massive body collapsed as if every bone had been pulled out at once, crashing into the snow and throwing up a burst of white.
The fight was over. Everyone was breathing hard.
Tormund walked over and wrenched his axe free from the bear's hind leg.
Jon sheathed his sword. The shoulder wound slowed him down.
5 people left in the party.
Jon, Tormund, the Mountain, Tyrion Lannister, and one Lannister soldier.
They stopped to rest.
The Mountain drew his sword and walked to the two bodies.
He bent down, swung, and hacked off the first soldier's arm at the shoulder joint. Then the other arm. Then the head. Then the thighs.
He worked through the corpse the way a butcher works through a frozen carcass, cutting it into pieces.
Jon got to his feet and walked over. "What are you doing?"
"Blizzard's bad, march is slow." The Mountain didn't look up. He kept working. "And we've got dead weight."
"My fingers are too frozen to hold a sword properly. Every swing costs me twice the strength. I'm not fighting my own former men again out here."
He straightened up and jabbed his sword tip into the snow to scrape off the blood.
"Chop them up. Otherwise they turn into wights and come after us."
"We should burn them," Jon said. "That's the least they deserve."
"You can't start a fire in this weather." Tormund said it plainly. "He's handling it right."
Jon looked at the pile of dismembered limbs.
The wind and snow had already buried most of the blood. The flesh at the cuts was pale. No color left in it.
Tyrion Lannister watched the Mountain work and said nothing.
They marched for 2 more days.
On the morning of the 3rd day, Tyrion Lannister pushed his head out of the makeshift tent. All 5 of them had been packed inside it for warmth.
He took one look at the snow outside and said, "I always thought only people could turn into wights."
"The Night King can turn any animal into a fighter," Tormund said.
"Even rats?"
"Even dragons."
Tyrion Lannister went still for a moment.
He pulled his fur cloak tighter and was quiet for a while.
"I've spoken with Khal Drogo a few times. The horse lord from Essos. He is deeply afraid of coming beyond the Wall. I've always had the sense that he understands what's out here better than any of us."
Jon stopped rubbing his shoulder.
"He once sent mercenaries to the Wall to retrieve Ygritte after she turned into a wight."
"When every lord in the realm refused to supply the Night's Watch, he loaded 5 full ships with grain and sent them to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea."
Jon stood up. "If we make it back to the Wall alive, I'd like to meet this horse lord."
They walked for another day.
By dusk on the 4th day, the Wall appeared.
A black line cutting across a gray-white world. Unbroken. Endless.
Tyrion Lannister saw it and let out a long breath, white in the cold air.
"I used to be fascinated by the lands beyond the Wall." He paused. "I don't think I'll ever come back."
Everyone exhaled.
Their pace picked up. They walked toward the great gate tunnel cut into the base of the Wall.
The closer they got, the higher it rose, until it felt like the whole sky was resting on top of it.
They went through.
The tunnel was dark. Only a thin slice of light at the far end.
The wight strapped to the Mountain's back had been struggling the whole way. Inside the tunnel, the struggling slowed. Then stopped.
When they came out the other side, they untied it and set it on the ground. It came apart like a pile of old bones someone had forgotten to hold together. Bone fragments and dried skin scattered across the snow.
Jon crouched and looked at what was left.
"There is magic in the Wall. It's real."
Tormund walked over and pressed a hand to the stone.
"The First Men put protective spells here. Wights can't pass through."
The Mountain's face was sour. "Don't even think about sending me back into that frozen wasteland."
Tyrion Lannister looked at the scattered bones, then raised his head and stared out at the sky where snow was still falling.
"We need more evidence. Proof of what we encountered."
"If we go back to King's Landing and they decide we made the whole thing up, this trip meant nothing."
"Without a wight that's still moving," Tyrion Lannister said, looking at the Mountain, "we can't convince Joffrey. We can't convince Cersei."
He let that sit for a moment. "We have to go back out. Maybe this time we won't need to go far. Something near the Wall might be enough."
The Mountain drove his greatsword into the snow. His heavy breathing came out as thick white clouds in the cold air. He fixed Tyrion Lannister with a glare.
"For god's sake. At least let me sleep first."
"Naturally," Tyrion Lannister said. "I'm not going back out there before I can feel my toes again either. Tomorrow, after first light. 2 hours out. We find something, we find it. We don't, we come back."
The next morning, all 5 of them walked back through the gate tunnel and into the blizzard beyond the Wall.
They didn't go far.
Less than an hour out, the blizzard still blowing, visibility passable.
Tyrion Lannister was in the middle of the column when he heard the Mountain, out at the front, stop.
"What is that?" the Mountain said.
Everyone stopped.
Tyrion Lannister moved 2 steps to the side, following the Mountain's line of sight. A shape pushed through the curtain of snow.
It swayed. Its steps were slow and dragging, its posture wrong in a way that was hard to look at directly. It leaned forward as it moved, like it was about to pitch face-first into the snow at any moment.
As it got closer, Tyrion Lannister squinted, trying to make it out.
The moment he did, a chill poured from his scalp to the soles of his feet.
It was a monster built from the dismembered limbs of the 2 Lannister soldiers the Mountain had hacked apart.
One corpse's lower half had been joined to another corpse's upper half, standing crooked. Four arms jutted out in different directions. One of the shoulders had a foot growing from it, toes spread wide.
It moved through the snow in a slow, lurching shuffle.
Every step unsteady. Like something that had only just learned how legs worked.
Jon Snow's hand tightened on his sword hilt. Even the 2 small steps he took backward came out stiff.
Tormund looked at Tyrion Lannister. "You've got your evidence now. Enough to convince the boy on the Iron Throne."
Tyrion Lannister tried to smile. His lips got halfway there.
That was as far as they went.
➤ Next: News from King's Landing