They could see the fire in the night, glimmering¹ against the side of the mountain like a fallen star. It burned redder than the other stars, and did not twinkle, though sometimes it flared² up bright and sometimes dwindled³ down to no more than a distant spark, dull and faint.  Half a mile ahead and two thousand feet up, Jon judged, and perfectly⁴ placed to see anything moving in the pass below  “Watchers in the Skirling Pass,” wondered the oldest among them. In the spring of his youth, he had been squire⁵ to a king, so the black brothers still called him Squire Dalbridge. “What is it Mance Rayder fears, I wonder? “  “If he knew they’d lit a fire, he’d flay⁶ the poor bastards,” said Ebben, a squat⁸ bald man muscled like a bag of rocks.  “Fire is life up here,” said Qhorin Halfhand, “but it can be death as well.” By his command, they’d risked no open flames since entering the mountains. They ate cold salt beef, hard bread, and harder cheese, and slept clothed and huddled⁹ beneath a pile of cloaks and furs, grateful for each other’s warmth. It made Jon remember cold nights long ago at Winterfell, when he’d shared a bed with his brothers. These men were brothers too, though the bed they shared was stone and earth.  “They’ll have a horn,” said Stonesnake.  The Halfhand said, “A horn they must not blow.”  “That’s a long cruel climb by night,” Ebben said as he eyed the distant spark through a cleft¹⁰ in the rocks that sheltered them. The sky was cloudless, the jagged mountains rising black on black until the very top, where their cold crowns of snow and ice shone palely in the moonlight.  “And a longer fall,” said Qhorin Halfhand. “Two men, I think. There are like to be two up there, sharing the watch.”  “Me.” The

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