A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jon VII

The Thenns storm Castle Black from the south: Donal Noye holds the gate against a giant and dies for it, and Ygritte dies in Jon's arms with a kissed curse.

The chapter retold

The wildling army throws itself at Castle Black's gate, and the Watch's threadbare garrison ÔÇö old men, boys, and Donal Noye holding the actual gate ÔÇö meets it with everything they have left. Mag the Mighty, last of the giant kings, comes through the tunnel first, and Donal Noye, one-armed smith who once forged a king's warhammer, meets him with a battleaxe and dies killing him, the two of them crushed together in the passage they both refuse to yield.

Styr, Magnar of Thenn, breaks himself against Castle Black's defenses in the same assault, his elite raiders unable to translate their reputation into a foothold against defenders with nothing left to lose. Somewhere in the chaos an arrow finds Ygritte ÔÇö fired by one of her own, in the confusion of a battle neither side is fighting cleanly ÔÇö and she dies in Jon Snow's arms reciting the words that have followed him through the whole of their time together: you know nothing, Jon Snow, said now with none of the old mockery left in it, only love and an ending.

The chapter is the book's second great catastrophe, arriving barely four chapters after the Red Wedding and asking the reader to grieve on two fronts at once. It closes the wildling storyline's most personal thread ÔÇö Jon's education among Mance's people, his love for Ygritte, his divided loyalty ÔÇö with total finality, and it does so by making clear that even a battle the Watch survives extracts a price measured in the people readers have spent the whole book learning to love.

This movement: The Wall Holds

• Mance's host hits Castle Black from both sides; Donal Noye trades his life for a giant's in the gate.
• Jon commands the Wall with quips and a crossbow ÔÇö until the Watch arrests him for oath-breaking.
• Stannis lands at the Wall with the fury of the one king who answered the letters.
• In King's Landing, the realm dresses for a royal wedding no god intends to bless.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Donal Noye ÔÇö The one-armed smith who forged Robert's hammer, dead in the gate with Mag the Mighty.
• Mag the Mighty ÔÇö Last of the giant kings, dead in a tunnel of ice killing Donal Noye.
• Styr, Magnar of Thenn ÔÇö Broke on Castle Black's defenses.
• Ygritte ÔÇö An arrow found her in the fight; she died in Jon Snow's arms. You know nothing, Jon Snow.