Even when they were apart, Jon sensed his nearness. Ghost was not always with them, but he was never far either. After that, every night seemed colder than the night before, and more lonely. Tell him that the trees have eyes again." He has no chance, Jon thought when he watched Stonesnake vanish over a snow-covered ridge, a tiny black bug crawling across a rippling expanse of white. Tell him that the old powers are waking, that he faces giants and wargs and worse. You can go over mountains that a horse must go around. "If any man in the Night's Watch can make it through the Frostfangs alone and afoot, it is you, brother. Perhaps he could take a few of them with him down to hell. Stonesnake offered to lay in wait for the pursuit and surprise them when they came. They each cut a dozen strips of raw stringy meat from the carcass to chew on as they rode, and left the rest for the shadowcats. The taste of that foul porridge almost choked Jon, but he forced it down. Ghost ate well that day, and Qhorin insisted that the rangers mix some of the garron's blood with their oats, to give them strength. The beast was gaunt and half-starved, but the sight of it sent Stonesnake's mare into a panic she reared and ran, and before the ranger could get her back under control she had stumbled on the steep slope and broken a leg. They were scaling a low ridge between two snowcapped peaks when a shadowcat came snarling from its lair, not ten yards away. At every dawn and every dusk they saw the eagle soaring between the peaks, no more than a speck in the vastness of the sky. Sometimes Qhorin or Stonesnake would loop back to sweep away their tracks, but it was a futile gesture. Over bare rock they rode, through gloomy pine forests and drifts of old snow, over icy ridges and across shallow rivers that had no names. They slept in their saddles and stopped only long enough to feed and water the garrons, then mounted up again. After that the days and nights blurred one into the other. Stonesnake went east with him a short way, then doubled back to obscure their tracks, and the three who remained set off toward the southwest. "He can ride as fast as me." "Jon has a different part to play." "He is half a boy still." "No," said Qhorin, "he is a man of the Night's Watch." When the moon rose, Ebben parted from them. The rest of them would draw off the pursuit. When night fell, the Halfhand told Ebben to take the squire's garron as well as his own, and ride east for Mormont with all haste, back the way they had come. Each time it seemed a little louder, a little closer. They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Ebben spat and muttered darkly of wargs and skinchangers. 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. But when they'd heard the call of a far-off horn every man of them knew the squire had fallen. At first Jon had nursed the hope that Squire Dalbridge would keep the wildlings bottled up in the pass.
Only the two of them remained of the five rangers who had fled the Skirling Pass, back into the blue-grey wilderness of the Frostfangs. 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. The warmth spread through his fingers like melting butter. 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. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could not ask. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life in the Watch. 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. "As shy as a maid on her wedding night," the big ranger said in a soft voice, "and near as fair.
Qhorin came and stood over him as the first flame rose up flickering from the shavings of bark and dead dry pine needles. 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 dagger, until finally a wisp of smoke appeared. Will he howl for me when I'm dead, as Bran's wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare branches from the trunk of a dead tree. JON When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon knew their end was near.