The dead man was found at the base of the inner wall, with his neck broken and only his left leg showing above the snow that had buried him during the night.

If Ramsay’s bitches had not dug him up, he might have stayed buried till spring. By the time Ben Bones pulled them off, Grey Jeyne had eaten so much of the dead man’s face that half the day was gone before they knew for certain who he’d been: a man-at-arms of four-and-forty years who had marched north with Roger Ryswell. “A drunk,” Ryswell declared. “Pissing off the wall, I’ll wager¹. He slipped and fell.” No one disagreed. But Theon Greyjoy found himself wondering why any man would climb the snow-slick steps to the battlements in the black of night just to take a piss.

As the garrison² broke its fast that morning on stale bread fried in bacon grease (the lords and knights³ ate the bacon), the talk along the benches was of little but the corpse⁴.

“Stannis has friends inside the castle,” Theon heard one serjeant mutter. He was an old Tallhart man, three trees sewn on his ragged⁵ surcoat. The watch had just changed. Men were coming in from the cold, stomping⁶ their feet to knock the snow off their boots and breeches as the midday meal was served—blood sausage, leeks⁷, and brown bread still warm from the ovens.

“Stannis?” laughed one of Roose Ryswell’s riders. “Stannis is snowed to death by now. Else he’s run back to the Wall with his tail froze between his legs.”

“He could be camped five feet from our walls with a hundred thousand men,” said an archer⁸ wearing Cerwyn colors. “We’d never see a one o’ them through this storm.”

Endless, ceaseless, merciless, the snow had fallen day and night. Drifts climbed the walls and filled the crenels along the battlements, white blankets covered every roof, tents

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