The ground was littered with pine needles and blown leaves, a carpet of green and brown still damp from the recent rains. It squished beneath their feet. Huge bare oaks, tall sentinels, and hosts of soldier pines stood all around them. On a hill above them was another roundtower, ancient and empty, thick green moss¹ crawling up its side almost to the summit. “Who built that, all of stone like that?” Ygritte asked him. “Some king?”  “No. just the men who used to live here.”  “What happened to them?”  “They died or went away.” Brandon’s Gift had been farmed for thousands of years, but as the Watch dwindled² there were fewer hands to plow³ the fields, tend the bees, and plant the orchards⁴, so the wild had reclaimed⁵ many a field and hall. In the New Gift there had been villages and holdfasts whose taxes, rendered in goods and labor⁶, helped feed and clothe the black brothers. But those were largely gone as well.  “They were fools to leave such a castle,” said Ygritte.  “It’s only a towerhouse. Some little lordling lived there once, with his family and a few sworn men. When raiders came he would light a beacon⁷ from the roof. Winterfell has towers three times the size of that.”  She looked as if she thought he was making that up. “How could men build so high, with no giants to lift the stones?”  In legend, Brandon the Builder had used giants to help raise Winterfell, but Jon did not want to confuse the issue. “Men can build a lot higher than this. In Oldtown there’s a tower taller than the Wall.” He could tell she did not believe him. If I could show her Winterfell... give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.  The dream was sweet... but Winterfell would never be his to show. It belonged to his brother, the King in the North. He was a Snow, not a

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