Qhorin POV
They watched from atop a small rocky hill as the group of wildlings crossed a stream in the valley below them. Had the water ran deeper or wider, it would've been a good spot to make their stand. But the wildlings simply vaulted over it and kept on coming.
It would be on high ground instead, an advantage that could buy them a few precious minutes more.
Qhorin felt a chill spread across his body at that. It had nothing to do with the biting wind that cut at his exposed nose and threw up flurries of snow that gathered on his cheeks.
It was a different kind of cold than the one he always felt when he ranged beyond the Wall. Is it you, Stranger, coming to take me? Qhorin smiled at the thought, though it felt like a brittle thing on his face.
He hadn't prayed to the Seven in many years. After coming to the Watch as just a child, he felt more at home in front of a carved face on a Weirwood than inside the small sept in Castle Black.
The northerners called the old gods the gods of stream and forest and stone. Qhorin had drunk from countless streams, slept beneath the canopy of forests more than under any roof, and had felt stone beneath his hand from the Frostfangs to the Antlers.
Even then, he wouldn't call himself a believer.
His hand snaked down to the sword at his side. This he believed. Truth in cold steel. His other hand went up to his black-feathered coat, feeling the coarse wool inside. Another certainty in his life.
He believed in the Watch more than anything. Believed even that they served the realms of men—all men, even the ones left behind in the hamlet to flee for a chance of survival.
Looking to one side, he counted the wildling's from Belk's clan who had chosen to fight. Ten of them. Eight men and two spearwives. Uchiha and himself made twelve. Not great odds against nearly forty warriors coming their way.
Some of the wildlings were talking themselves up into a rage, smacking their own faces and hollering with abandon. Others were quieter, speaking prayers with closed eyes, fingers curled around the shaft of axes and spears.
Closer to him, a boy who couldn't be older than sixteen had pissed himself earlier. They could all smell it wafting off of him, and he saw the boy crying tears of both shame and fear. Still, none raised their voice to shame the boy.
Uchiha himself seemed nonplussed at their dire situation. His sharp black eyes were scanning the terrain around them, no doubt checking for any scouts looking to thin their numbers with bow and arrow. And he did so with the same care one would take to watch a piece of meat cooking over a spit.
Qhorin would be wiser, perhaps, to pray to whatever gods the Uchiha man followed. They couldn't be so bad if they made men so fearless in the face of death.
"Never thought I'd die fighting beside a damn crow," one of the spearwives said.
A wildling by the name of Pek spat on the snow. "Aye, leaves a bad taste in the mouth, eh?"
Another bellowed a laughter. This one was older, white covering most of his beard. "Men are all men in the face of death, Pek. Free folk or crow. Men or women. Better to die on your feet with an axe in hand than freezing and starving, I say. A good death, this is." The old man grinned
One wildling put a hand over the boy's shoulder. By their coloring and steep nose, Qhorin guessed it was the boy's own father. "Steady now, lad. Keep your wits about you and might be they only disarm you and let you live."
"Bah," the old man said. "Don't expect that from Ygon, boy. He's a right bastard, he is. Let the boy die a good death. Dying a craven will see him in a worse hell than this life."
After a moment, Qhorin let the chattering wildlings become background noise and his mind snapped into focus. They could hear the coming wildlings clearer now.
They shouted and beat their weapons on wooden shields wrapped in leather hide as they gathered at the bottom of the hill. The forty or so warriors made a loud racket, taunting and calling out obscenities toward them.
He couldn't spot anyone holding a bow, not even in the trees surrounding the hill where the fighting would take place. It would be a straight up brawl, then, Qhorin thought. They hadn't bothered sending scouts to harass them. Likely because they already knew how few in numbers they were.
"Qhorin," Uchiha said in a low voice beside him. "It is their custom to burn their dead, no?"
He frowned. "Aye, it is. Why?"
"Wanted to confirm," he said. "I do not wish to grant them the honor."
"Honor of what?"
"Death by fire." The man tilted his head as if contemplating choices. "I will try something else, then. Something new." His hand went to his other arm then, as if to confirm it was there.
Giving Uchiha a confused look, Qhorin simply sighed. Better to forget it and let strange men be strange. He didn't want to die contemplating the queer words of a man he met not a day past.
The wildlings at the bottom of the hill broke into a run uphill. On their end, the men and women stood in a line across a gorge that cut the hill in half at the top.
Jagged rocks covered in snow and lichen rose on both sides of them. The wildlings would have to come at them head on if they wanted to go through. Qhorin closed his eyes for a brief second, sending prayers to all the gods he'd ever heard.
Then someone shouted, "Fool!"
His eyes snapped open, only to widen in shock. "Uchiha!" he yelled.
Strolling down from the hilltop, the strange man seemed unconcerned about the wave of hooting warriors closing in on him. Did he wish to die this much? Qhorin should've known a man who walked across the lands beyond the Wall in sandals had a death wish.
He cursed. One less body on their line would weaken them, and it gave him no pleasure to watch a man be butchered in front of him. But instead of waiting to be cut down, or pulling out his own sword, Uchiha knelt on the snow and put both hands to the ground.
And somehow, above the screaming of the wildlings and the howling wind, Qhorin heard the man quietly utter three words. "Deep Forest Emergence."
Then the world changed.
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