When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon knew their end was near.  It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked¹ bare branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead, as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be?  The moon was rising behind one mountain and the sun sinking behind another as Jon struck sparks from flint and dagger², until finally a wisp of smoke appeared. Qhorin came and stood over him as the first flame rose up flickering³ from the shavings of bark and dead dry pine needles. “As shy as a maid on her wedding night,” the big ranger⁴ said in a soft voice, “and near as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can be.”  He was not a man you’d expect to speak of maids and wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could not ask. Instead he fanned the fire. When the blaze was all acrackle, he peeled off his stiff gloves to warm his hands, and sighed, wondering if ever a kiss had felt as good. The warmth spread through his fingers like melting butter.  The Halfhand eased himself to the ground and sat cross-legged by the fire, the flickering light playing across the hard planes of his face. Only the two of them remained of the five rangers⁵ who had fled the Skirling Pass, back into the blue-grey wilderness⁶ of the Frostfangs.  At first Jon had nursed the hope that Squire⁷ Dalbridge would keep the wildlings bottled up in the pass. But when they’d heard the call of a far off horn every man of them knew the squire had fallen. Later they spied the eagle soaring through the dusk on great blue-grey wings and Stonesnake unslung his bow, but the bird flew out of range before he could so much as string it. Ebben

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