A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Jon IV
Jon opens the Wall's empty castles to the free folk and its stores to winter; he sends Val beyond the Wall to find Tormund, and the officers' silence gets louder.
The chapter retold
Jon commits to the policy that will define ÔÇö and eventually doom ÔÇö his command: he opens the WallÔÇÖs long-abandoned castles to the wildlings and shares the NightÔÇÖs WatchÔÇÖs dwindling stores with people his own brothers were raised to hate. He sends Val, Mance RayderÔÇÖs sister-by-marriage and a woman of real authority among the free folk, back out beyond the Wall to find Tormund Giantsbane and bring whatÔÇÖs left of the wildling nation in on JonÔÇÖs terms rather than StannisÔÇÖs. Every choice is defensible, even necessary, and every choice deepens the silence settling over the officers who serve him.
The chapter is where the reader can start counting the cost of JonÔÇÖs mercy in a currency other than gratitude ÔÇö resentment, the kind that doesnÔÇÖt announce itself, the kind Bowen Marsh and men like him nurse quietly while nodding along in meetings. Jon knows the arithmetic of winter better than anyone at the Wall: dead wildlings become an army for the enemy, living ones become spearwives and rangers. What he doesnÔÇÖt yet weigh properly is how many of his own brothers will never accept that math, whatever proof he offers them.
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.