A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Prologue ┬À Chett

On the Fist of the First Men, Chett's mutiny needs only a quiet night ÔÇö instead the horn blows once for rangers, twice for wildlings, and then a third time.

The chapter retold

Chett keeps picket on the Fist of the First Men rehearsing a smaller war than the one about to arrive. He has spent the ranging planning a mutiny ÔÇö Sam Tarly's throat, the Old Bear's orders overruled with a knife, dogs strangled so they cannot bark a warning, then south to a poacher's hut and the woman who once laughed at his boils. He has men, he has a night picked out, and none of it accounts for what the dark beyond the firelight is about to do to his schedule. The horn sounds once, and the camp assumes rangers returning. It sounds twice, which means wildlings, and hands go to sword hilts. The third blast has not been heard by any man living, and every dog in camp starts howling before it even finishes.

The third horn means the dead, and Chett's private grievance ÔÇö nursed since a bastard's letters cost him the life he thought he deserved ÔÇö becomes irrelevant in the space of a paragraph, which is the chapter's whole joke, cold as the wind that carries it. The opening scene sets the book's clock running: this is no longer a rumor the Watch is scouting north of the Wall, and whatever the Fist of the First Men glimpsed the previous autumn is now coming down out of the dark with the wind at its back and no further patience for waiting.

This movement: Wolves at the Crossing

• Brienne rows the Kingslayer downriver under a flag of lies; the banter starts sharpening into respect.
• Robb returns to Riverrun with a Westerling bride and a broken treaty; the Freys go home cold.
• Beyond the Wall, the survivors of the Fist stagger to Craster's; Sam earns the name Slayer with a dragonglass dagger.
• Dany sails for Astapor, where an army that feels nothing is sold by men who feel less.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Chett ÔÇö His plot and his dogs availed him nothing when the third horn blast came.