A Clash of Kings — Jon VI
In the Skirling Pass Jon takes a wildling captive and cannot open her throat; her name is Ygritte, and letting her go will cost him everything.
The chapter retold
In the Skirling Pass, Jon’s small scouting party takes a wildling captive — a young spearwife with fire-colored hair who talks faster and more fearlessly than anyone he’s had at knifepoint before. Ordered to kill her rather than risk her raising an alarm, Jon finds he cannot open her throat, not out of weakness exactly, but out of something he doesn’t yet have words for.
Her name is Ygritte, and the mercy Jon shows her here — small, hesitant, against every instruction he’s been given — is the first thread of an entanglement that will cost him nearly everything before the book is done. It’s a quietly enormous character turn dressed up as a small tactical decision: the disciplined ranger who has spent the whole book proving his loyalty to the Watch just chose a stranger’s life over an order, and the story is already building the bill for it.
This movement: The March on the City
- Stannis's fleet and host converge on King's Landing; Tyrion counts chain links and wildfire pots.
- Robb wins the Crag in the west while his cause rots behind him; Catelyn frees the Kingslayer for two girls' lives.
- Arya spends her third death to buy Harrenhal's gate — the man offers more, and Jaqen gives her a coin and a phrase.
- Jon, taken in the Frostfangs, kills the Halfhand at his order and kneels to Mance Rayder with clean hands and a black heart.