A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Jon VI
Jon says his words before the weirwoods beyond the Wall; on the way back, Ghost brings a gift ÔÇö a dead man's hand.
The chapter retold
Beyond the Wall on a ranging with Mormont's men, Jon finally speaks his vows before a weirwood grove ÔÇö the old gods' witnesses, since a bastard raised in his father's faith has never much cared for the Seven ÔÇö swearing the words that bind him to the Night's Watch for life. On the return journey, his direwolf Ghost turns up something that has no business being where it is: a dead man's severed hand, found in the snow far from any obvious source, cold and strange in a way that unsettles even hardened rangers.
The vow scene lands with real weight precisely because Jon has spent the whole book uncertain where he belongs, and swearing himself, freely and completely, to an order that doesn't care whose son he is offers him something Winterfell's love could never quite give him: a place earned rather than inherited. Ghost's grim discovery, arriving in the same breath as the vows, is the book's way of reminding the reader that whatever oath Jon has just sworn, the thing it was written to guard against has already started stirring in earnest.
This movement: The Wine and the Boar
- Ned tells Cersei what he knows and gives her time to run ÔÇö mercy with a body count.
- A boar opens the king; Robert dictates a will naming Ned Protector; Ned edits one word: heir.
- A wineseller's poison misses Daenerys; Drogo promises his son the iron chair across the poison water.
- Renly flees south; Littlefinger promises the gold cloaks; the trap in the throne room closes.