A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Jon III

Before the Wall, Mance Rayder burns in a cage while the free folk file through the gate past his pyre; Jon ends the screaming with arrows and doubts.

The chapter retold

Before the Wall, in front of the assembled Watch and the free folk who once followed him, Mance Rayder ÔÇö the King-Beyond-the-Wall ÔÇö burns. Jon watches the fire take him, orders the screaming ended with arrows out of what mercy the moment allows, and does not enjoy a moment of it; the wildlings filing past the pyre through the gate are watching their king die as the price of JonÔÇÖs mercy toward the rest of them, a trade Jon has to hope was worth making. Every witness present would swear on their life it was Mance in those flames.

The execution closes one political problem ÔÇö Stannis wanted the wildling king dead, and dead publicly, as proof the Wall answers to him ÔÇö and opens a much larger one, because fire hides more than it reveals, and the book plants its doubt about who really burned without spending a word confirming or denying it. For Jon it is another entry in an account he is keeping without meaning to: how many deaths he has ordered, watched, or ended out of mercy since taking the black, and how little any of it feels like the songs promised command would feel like.

This movement: Kings at the Wall

• Stannis takes the mountain clans and Deepwood Motte, gathering the North that hates the Boltons.
• Davos is sent to White Harbor to win fat Lord Manderly ÔÇö and is reported executed, head and hands tarred.
• In the crypts of Winterfell, the Boltons stage a wedding: 'Arya Stark' ÔÇö Jeyne Poole in a stolen name ÔÇö given to Ramsay.
• Melisandre reads her fires at the Wall: snow, a wooden face, a girl on a dying horse. Jon listens with half an ear.

The fallen ÔÇö spoilers

• Mance Rayder ÔÇö Burned before the Wall for deserting the Watch ÔÇö or so every witness swore. Fire hides many things.