THE HORN OF WINTER  

Then he heard the horn.
A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it. All along the castle walls, sentries turned toward the sound, their hands tightening around the shafts of their spears. In the ruined halls and keeps of Winterfell, lords hushed other lords, horses nickered, and sleepers stirred in their dark corners. No sooner had the sound of the warhorn died away than a drum began to beat: BOOM doom BOOM doom BOOM doom. And a name passed from the lips of each man to the next, written in small white puffs of breath. Stannis, they whispered, Stannis is here, Stannis is come, Stannis, Stannis, Stannis.

To conclude, it is worthwile to recapitulate the mentions of triple hornblowings.

• The first one occurs at the Fist of the First Men.
• The second one happens at the Kingsmoot on Old Wyk, and we saw the arrival of Euron's Silence and the mute sailors.
• The third one is the Horn of Kerrock at Harrenhal. I believe it is significant, even if it is only a literary allusion: Harrenhal is a cursed place.
• The fourth instance occurs in Winterfell on the morning of the escape as a an approaching sound.

By the time the sky began to lighten the sound of drums had faded away, though warhorns were heard thrice more, each time a little closer.

I understand it as a dark omen. Note that the sound is different from the sound of the horn heard in the night, and those warhorns seem to be approaching. The danger will inevitably arrive but is not yet here.

It is important to differentiate those warhorns from the horns heard at the hour of the wolf. The indefinite plural is used here: warhorns were heard thrice more. But, the definite singular had been used before: the warhorn sounded again. One has the feeling that that it is not the same horn in the morning. It seems that the morning horns are heard once more.

When Theon and "Arya" are on the battlement, Theon is hesitating until.

Far off to the north he heard a warhorn sound.

Again, an indefinite article, which seems to imply a common sound.

In the final chapter at the Wall, we have a prophecy of Patchface.

Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.”

Patchface often concludes his pronouncements by oh, oh, oh. More precisely he ends them by the formula: I know, I know. oh, oh, oh (I counted nine times), except in this specific instance, where it's merely oh, oh, oh. In any case, I can't help noticing the triple repetition just next to the hornblowing.

Finally, there is another ominous triple sound. It's Wun Wun's triple roaring, just before Jon's assassination.

Horse and Rory fell in beside Jon as he left the Shieldhall. I should talk with Melisandre after I see the queen, he thought. If she could see a raven in a storm, she can find Ramsay Snow for me. Then he heard the shouting ... and a roar so loud it seemed to shake the Wall. “That come from Hardin’s Tower, m’lord,” Horse reported. He might have said more, but the scream cut him off.
Val, was Jon’s first thought. But that was no woman’s scream. That is a man in mortal agony. He broke into a run. Horse and Rory raced after him. “Is it wights?” asked Rory. Jon wondered. Could his corpses have escaped their chains?
The screaming had stopped by the time they came to Hardin’s Tower, but Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun was still roaring. The giant was dangling a bloody corpse by one leg, the same way Arya used to dangle her doll when she was small, swinging it like a morningstar when menaced by vegetables. Arya never tore her dolls to pieces, though. The dead man’s sword arm was yards away, the snow beneath it turning red.
“Let him go,” Jon shouted. “Wun Wun, let him go.”
Wun Wun did not hear or did not understand. The giant was bleeding himself, with sword cuts on his belly and his arm. He swung the dead knight against the grey stone of the tower, again and again and again, until the man’s head was red and pulpy as a summer melon. The knight’s cloak flapped in the cold air. Of white wool it had been, bordered in cloth-of-silver and patterned with blue stars. Blood and bone were flying everywhere.
Men poured from the surrounding keeps and towers. Northmen, free folk, queen’s men ... “Form a line,” Jon Snow commanded them. “Keep them back. Everyone, but especially the queen’s men.” The dead man was Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain; his head was largely gone, but his heraldry was as distinctive as his face. Jon did not want to risk Ser Malegorn or Ser Brus or any of the queen’s other knights trying to avenge him.
Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun howled again and gave Ser Patrek’s other arm a twist and pull. It tore loose from his shoulder with a spray of bright red blood. Like a child pulling petals off a daisy, thought Jon. “Leathers, talk to him, calm him. The Old Tongue, he understands the Old Tongue. Keep back, the rest of you. Put away your steel, we’re scaring him.” Couldn’t they see the giant had been cut? Jon had to put an end to this or more men would die. They had no idea of Wun Wun’s strength. A horn, I need a horn. He saw the glint of steel, turned toward it. “No blades!” he screamed. “Wick, put that knife ...”

A roar so loud that it seemed to shake the Wall.

Let's leave aside the literary decorum and enter the analysis the spectacular horns of the story.

3. The Horn in the Pyre

Here is the "Horn of Joramun" in Mance's tent.

A warhorn, a bloody great warhorn.
“Yes,” Mance said. “The Horn of Winter, that Joramun once blew to wake giants from the earth.”
The horn was huge, eight feet along the curve and so wide at the mouth that he could have put his arm inside up to the elbow. If this came from an aurochs, it was the biggest that ever lived. At first he thought the bands around it were bronze, but when he moved closer he realized they were gold. Old gold, more brown than yellow, and graven with runes.

We see it again before it is burned.

Lady Melisandre watched him rise. “FREE FOLK! Here stands your king of lies. And here is the horn he promised would bring down the Wall.” Two queen's men brought forth the Horn of Joramun, black and banded with old gold, eight feet long from end to end. Runes were carved into the golden bands, the writing of the First Men. Joramun had died thousands of years ago, but Mance had found his grave beneath a glacier, high up in the Frostfangs. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth. Ygritte had told Jon that Mance never found the horn. She lied, or else Mance kept it secret even from his own.

And a bit later.

It went up with a whoosh as swirling tongues of green and yellow fire leapt up crackling all along its length. Jon's garron shied nervously, and up and down the ranks others fought to still their mounts as well. A moan came from the stockade as the free folk saw their hope afire. A few began to shout and curse, but most lapsed into silence. For half a heartbeat the runes graven on the gold bands seemed to shimmer in the air. The queen's men gave a heave and sent the horn tumbling down into the fire pit.

Tormund seems to regret the destruction of the horn.

“Melisandre burned the Horn of Joramun.”
“Did she?” Tormund slapped his thigh and hooted. “She burned that fine big horn, aye. A bloody sin, I call it. A thousand years old, that was. We found it in a giant's grave, and no man o' us had ever seen a horn so big. That must have been why Mance got the notion to tell you it were Joramun's. He wanted you crows to think he had it in his power to blow your bloody Wall down about your knees. But we never found the true horn, not for all our digging. If we had, every kneeler in your Seven Kingdoms would have chunks o' ice to cool his wine all summer.”

The whoosh of the horn in flames with its runes makes me think of the red priest in Volantis.
It recalls also the burning of the book by Roose Bolton in Harrenhal.

Roose Bolton was seated by the hearth reading from a thick leatherbound book when she entered. “Light some candles,” he commanded her as he turned a page. “It grows gloomy in here.”
She placed the food at his elbow and did as he bid her, filling the room with flickering light and the scent of cloves. Bolton turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it, pale eyes shining with reflected light. The old dry leather went up with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if some ghost were reading them.

It recalls also the burning of the Tower of the Hand by the alchemists in service of Cersei.

The tower went up with a whoosh. In half a heartbeat its interior was alive with light, red, yellow, orange... and green, an ominous dark green, the color of bile and jade and pyromancer's piss. “The substance,” the alchemists named it, but common folk called it wildfire. Fifty pots had been placed inside the Tower of the Hand, along with logs and casks of pitch and the greater part of the worldly possessions of a dwarf named Tyrion Lannister.

Note the color of the flame: green. If ADwD and AFfC are read in parallel, Cersei's burning of the Tower occurs at about the same time than Melisandre's burning of the horn. It seems the substance has been put in the pyre to burn the horn. It's possible that there was wildfire inside Melisandre's chest.

There is a little doubt that the horn has been truly burned, since Mance's burning is a hoax. However, I see no sign of another swindle. The sentence For half a heartbeat the runes graven on the gold bands seemed to shimmer in the air gives the impression that something magical has happened and that the burning is real.

Melisandre proclaims her reasons for burning the horn.

“The Horn of Joramun?” Melisandre said. “No. Call it the Horn of Darkness. If the Wall falls, night falls as well, the long night that never ends. It must not happen, will not happen! The Lord of Light has seen his children in their peril and sent a champion to them, Azor Ahai reborn.”

So the horn has been destroyed to save the Wall. But it is likely that Stannis and Melisandre knew the truth. Indeed Stannis had talked at length to Mance, Mance has been switched and concluded an agreement with Melisandre. Furthermore, Mance was willing to give away the horn to the Watch in exchange for the right of passage. At least Melisandre knows that the horn is not truly the horn of Joramun. She burned it purely in order to impress the wildling population. But we have to keep in mind that Melisandre might just be an agent, sometimes unaware of the reasons of her actions.

I would be curious to see what remained of the horn on the pyre afterward. I presume it has been completely consumed, otherwise we would know through Jon Snow.

It seems likely that the horn was magical in some sense. It's even possible that the burning triggered a magical effect, whose consequences are yet to be seen.

Clearly the horn does not come from the head of an auroch, or any other common animal.  It might have come from the head of a dragon or a giant turtle.

Tormund said the horn came from the grave of a giant in the Frostfangs. So it was designed to be blown by a creature with extraordinary lungs. Indeed, Mance had threatened that Tormund would blow the horn.

“If you refuse,” Mance Rayder said, “Tormund Giantsbane will sound the Horn of Winter three days hence, at dawn.”

Indeed, Tormund does not hold the title of hornblower for nothing.

He was not a tall man, Tormund Giantsbane, but the gods had given him a broad chest and massive belly. Mance Rayder had named him Tormund Horn-Blower for the power of his lungs, and was wont to say that Tormund could laugh the snow off mountaintops. In his wroth, his bellows reminded Jon of a mammoth trumpeting.

Whether he could rival a giant remains to be seen. Moreover, it's interesting that he has a certain pair of armbands.

The wildling pulled off the band from his left arm and tossed it at Jon, then did the same with its twin upon his right. “Your first payment. Had those from my father and him from his. Now they're yours, you thieving black bastard.”
The armbands were old gold, solid and heavy, engraved with the ancient runes of the First Men. Tormund Giantsbane had worn them as long as Jon had known him; they had seemed as much a part of him as his beard.

We will return to the importance of these armbands.

4. Euron and the archetype of Night's King

As odd as it might seem, it might be worthwile to discuss Night's King. The story is short and ancient, but makes an impression on every reader of the book. Some expect the motif to be repeated. I rather believe that the story of Night's King will resonate in many different ways in the current story: we see Stannis under the spell of Melisandre, intending to take the Nightfort as his seat and making sacrifices at the Wall. Somehow the apparition of Val, all in white with blue eyes, at Castle Black makes an impression of Jon Snow which is not unlike the creature glimpsed by Night's King from the Wall. One could argue that the story of Roose Bolton and Ramsay's mother contains some resonance as well.

But our subject now is Euron. Arguably, the Kingsmoot of the Iron Islands recalls the election of the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. And indeed Euron bound the ironmen to his will. The part of Night's King story of interest to us is the following:

...and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will.

We don't know what the sorceries are. Since Night's King's contemporary and rival Joramun had a magical horn, it's tempting to think that Night's King proceeded like Euron did. Note that Euron blew his horn thrice. It would make sense that Night's King blew a horn and summoned the Others at the same time, since the triple blowing of a horn is the sign of the coming of the Others, or at least summoned the corpse queen.

Whatever truth there is in such a speculation, let's turn to Euron's horn.

Sharp as a swordthrust, the sound of a horn split the air.
Bright and baneful was its voice, a shivering hot scream that made a man's bones seem to thrum within him. The cry lingered in the damp sea air: aaaaRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
All eyes turned toward the sound. It was one of Euron's mongrels winding the call, a monstrous man with a shaved head. Rings of gold and jade and jet glistened on his arms, and on his broad chest was tattooed some bird of prey, talons dripping blood.
aaaaRRREEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
The horn he blew was shiny black and twisted, and taller than a man as he held it with both hands. It was bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled.
aaaaaaaRRREEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
It was a terrible sound, a wail of pain and fury that seemed to burn the ears. Aeron Damphair covered his, and prayed for the Drowned God to raise a mighty wave and smash the horn to silence, yet still the shriek went on and on. It is the horn of hell, he wanted to scream, though no man would have heard him. The cheeks of the tattooed man were so puffed out they looked about to burst, and the muscles in his chest twitched in a way that it made it seem as if the bird were about to rip free of his flesh and take wing. And now the glyphs were burning brightly, every line and letter shimmering with white fire. On and on and on the sound went, echoing amongst the howling hills behind them and across the waters of Nagga's Cradle to ring against the mountains of Great Wyk, on and on and on until it filled the whole wet world.
And when it seemed the sound would never end, it did.

It's explained by Euron.

“That horn you heard I found amongst the smoking ruins that were Valyria, where no man has dared to walk but me. You heard its call, and felt its power. It is a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments. The dragonlords of old sounded such horns, before the Doom devoured them. With this horn, ironmen, I can bind dragons to my will.”

The red gold and black steel recall the Targaryen colors, for what it is worth. The sigil of the Goodbrothers, a family of Great Wyck, is a black horn banded in gold, precisely the colors of House Greyjoy.

Another description of Euron's horn.

That night, for the first time, he brought forth the dragon horn that the Crow's Eye had found amongst the smoking wastes of great Valyria. A twisted thing it was, six feet long from end to end, gleaming black and banded with red gold and dark Valyrian steel. Euron's hellhorn. Victarion ran his hand along it. The horn was as warm and smooth as the dusky woman's thighs, and so shiny that he could see a twisted likeness of his own features in its depths. Strange sorcerous writings had been cut into the bands that girded it. “Valyrian glyphs,” Moqorro called them.
That much Victarion had known. “What do they say?”
“Much and more.” The black priest pointed to one golden band. “Here the horn is named. 'I am Dragonbinder,' it says. Have you ever heard it sound?”
“Once.” One of his brother's mongrels had sounded the hellhorn at the kingsmoot on Old Wyk. A monster of a man he had been, huge and shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest. “The sound it made ... it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one.”
“And the man who blew the horn, what of him?”
“He died. There were blisters on his lips, after. His bird was bleeding too.” The captain thumped his chest. “The hawk, just here. Every feather dripping blood. I heard the man was all burned up inside, but that might just have been some tale.”

A true tale.” Moqorro turned the hellhorn, examining the queer letters that crawled across a second of the golden bands. “Here it says, 'No mortal man shall sound me and live.' ”
Bitterly Victarion brooded on the treachery of brothers. Euron's gifts are always poisoned. “The Crow's Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?”
“Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you.” Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. “Here. 'Blood for fire, fire for blood.' Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood.”

We don't know what truth there is in Euron's story. In particular, one wonders whether the qartheen wizards are Euron's masters rather than his servants. Indeed, Euron might have fallen into the trap avoided by Daenerys in the House of the Undying.

Apparently there are at least three bands on the horn: at least two are made of gold, and a single one of Valyrian steel. I tend to believe that there are more than two bands of gold, since Moqorro examined a second of the golden bands (indefinite article). That seems to imply that unread glyphs are on other bands.

Let's make a quick comparison between the "horn of Joramun" and Euron's horn. They seem about as large, but the first is curved as the other is twisted. Both are black. But Euron's horn is banded in red gold and Valyrian steel, while the "Horn of Joramun" is banded in old gold (which is more brown than yellow). Finally the inscriptions are glyphs and runes respectively. The glyph are recognized as such by Moqorro, but nobody seems to be able to read runes. Both types of inscription seem to be magical.

Perhaps, Euron's and Joramun's horns were once dragon's horns. However, since the horns are not mirror images of each other, they wouldn't come from the same beast. The only other creatures endowed with such large horns seem to be the larger turtles who swim the Rhoyne. In any case, I tend to believe Tormund's version, which asserts that giants' graves are to be found in the Frostfangs. Did the giant in the grave die when he attempted to blow the horn, just like Euron's mongrel?

If the "horn of Joramun" was made of dragon horn, it should be fire resistant.

Two red priests, Melisandre and Moqorro, came into contact with two similar horns. Both recognized the importance of the horns but acted very differently. Another sign that Melisandre is not a standard red priest.

Euron's mongrel is described thus. A monster of a man he had been, huge and shaven-headed, with rings of gold and jet and jade around arms thick with muscle, and a great hawk tattooed across his chest. He had golden rings around his arms like Tormund.

Both Moqorro and Euron assert that the horn can be used to bind dragons to the cause of the man who claims the horn.

5. Runes and Glyphs

To understand the magical nature of horns, let's make a little detour and examine the occurences of glyphs and runes throughout the story. Indeed magical inscriptions seem to go with magic horns. The Horn of Herrock does not seem magical and does not carry any scripture. The presence of runes and glyphs on magical horns seems to imply a sort of equivalence between them as magical ingredients.

Glyphs appear on the torc Illyrio gave to Daenerys.

They dressed her in the wisps that Magister Illyrio had sent up, and then the gown, a deep plum silk to bring out the violet in her eyes. The girl slid the gilded sandals onto her feet, while the old woman fixed the tiara in her hair, and slid golden bracelets crusted with amethysts around her wrists. Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden tore emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs.

And on Mirri Maz Duur's sacrificial knife.

Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs.

We see them on the belts of the Unsullied.

Kraznys stopped in front of a Ghiscari who might have been his taller fitter brother, and flicked his lash at a small bronze disk on the swordbelt at his feet. “There is his name. Ask the whore of Westeros whether she can read Ghiscari glyphs.” When Dany admitted that she could not, the slaver turned to the Unsullied. “What is your name?” he demanded.
“This one’s name is Red Flea, your worship.”

The high priest of R'hllor traces glyphs with a fiery finger.

Benerro jabbed a finger at the moon, made a fist, spread his hands wide. When his voice rose in a crescendo, flames leapt from his fingers with a sudden whoosh and made the crowd gasp. The priest could trace fiery letters in the air as well. Valyrian glyphs. Tyrion recognized perhaps two in ten; one was Doom, the other Darkness.

We see the sound whoosh that accompanied the burning of the horn at the Wall. Yezzan's slave collars carry glyphs as well and recall Daenerys' torq.

The collars were made of iron, lightly gilded to make them glitter in the light. Yezzan’s name was incised into the metal in Valyrian glyphs, and a pair of tiny bells were affixed below the ears, so the wearer’s every step produced a merry little tinkling sound.

So there is the notion of binding by the use of a glyph. Glyphs are always written on metal (gold and bronze) or in the air. It's possible that there were runes on Mirri's knife, since Daenerys can't read glyphs.

Let's turn to runes now. The first we see appear on Bronze Yohn's armor.

“His armor is bronze, thousands and thousands of years old, engraved with magic runes that ward him against harm,” she whispered to Jeyne.

Then we see runes on the crown of the king of the north.

Lord Hoster’s smith had done his work well, and Robb’s crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.

There are runes on Tormund's armbands.

Thick gold bands graven with runes bound his massive arms, and he wore a heavy shirt of black ringmail that could only have come from a dead ranger.

At Oldstones, Catelyn Stark informs us that sepulchers would included weapons engraved with runes.

Once the warhammer would have been carved with runes that told its name and history, but all that the centuries had worn away.

There are runes on a mysterious sword Ilyn Payne offers Joffrey.

Ser Ilyn bowed before the king and queen, reached back over his shoulder, and drew forth six feet of ornate silver bright with runes. He knelt to offer the huge blade to Joffrey, hilt first; points of red fire winked from ruby eyes on the pommel, a chunk of dragonglass carved in the shape of a grinning skull.

We are told that the First Men engraved runes on rocks.

The First Men only left us runes on rocks, so everything we think we know about the Age of Heroes and the Dawn Age and the Long Night comes from accounts set down by septons thousands of years later.

There is another bronze dagger engraved with runes among the presents given to Vogarro's whore.

Ser Jorah produced his pair of gloves, and slapped them down on the table beside the other gifts the widow had received this morning: a silver goblet, an ornate fan carved of jade leaves so thin they were translucent, and an ancient bronze dagger marked with runes. Beside such treasures the gloves looked cheap and tawdry.

The dagger recalls (and could be) Mirri's dagger, except that Mirri's dagger had, according to Daenerys who is not an expert, glyphs.

So we saw runes on various metals : primarily bronze, but also gold and silver. There are no instances of runes on rock yet, but it seems likely that some could be found in Runestone. Runes might have the function of protecting, since they appear on an armor and on Robb's crown.

6. The Legend of the Horn of Joramun

Mormont mentions a report and formulates a mystery about Mance.
The question has been partially answered by Craster.
However, the Halfhand adds his own report.


I suppose the mention of "shades" is pure superstition. Ygritte does not say what warded these graves. Iron swords? Jon would tell maester Aemon.



To return to the Horn of Joramun. Jon Snow remembers what he learned about it.
Joramun was a wildling King-beyong-the-Wall, the oldest we hear about.

Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. Each man of them broke his strength on the Wall, or was broken by the power of Winterfell on the far side . . .

There is an interplay between Joramun's story and the story of Night's King.

The gathering gloom put Bran in mind of another of Old Nan's stories, the tale of Night's King. He had been the thirteenth man to lead the Night's Watch, she said; a warrior who knew no fear. “And that was the fault in him,” she would add, “for all men must know fear.” A woman was his downfall; a woman glimpsed from atop the Wall, with skin as white as the moon and eyes like blue stars. Fearing nothing, he chased her and caught her and loved her, though her skin was cold as ice, and when he gave his seed to her he gave his soul as well.
He brought her back to the Nightfort and proclaimed her a queen and himself her king, and with strange sorceries he bound his Sworn Brothers to his will. For thirteen years they had ruled, Night's King and his corpse queen, till finally the Stark of Winterfell and Joramun of the wildlings had joined to free the Watch from bondage. After his fall, when it was found he had been sacrificing to the Others, all records of Night's King had been destroyed, his very name forbidden.

That must have been an interesting time. Since the record on Night's King has been destroyed, and his name forbidden, much has been forgotten about Joramun as well. Our knowledge of Joramun's biography consists in three chapters:

• he blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth,
  
• he joined with the Stark in Winterfell to defeat Night's King,
  
• he tried to invade the South and was defeated either by the Watch or by the Stark.

And there is the notion that his Horn would bring down the Wall. Why is it called the Horn of Winter? An interesting notion is that waking giants is a metaphor for an earthquake, which would be an appropriate way to break the Wall.

Old Nan takes for a certainty that Night's King was a Stark. Furthermore, Night's King was the thirteenth commander of the Night's Watch, if the tales are to be believed. If we accept that his "reign" might have come a century after the creation of the Night's Watch. The end of the Long Night came at about the same time than the building of the Wall and of Winterfell, I presume. So all this happened when the Starks and the Wall were young institutions, and when the wildlings had not been isolated by the Wall for long. But such speculations are based on a very uncertain chronology.

When the Halfhand and the Old Bear wonder what Mance is looking for in the Frostfangs, they never consider the Horn of Joramun, even when Qhorin mentions sorcery. But Lord Mormont mentions Joramun as one of the former kings-beyond-the-Wall. We hear for the first time the idea that the Horn would bring down the Wall from Ygritte.

So I am not sure what to think. The idea that the Horn could destroy the Wall does not seem to be known in the Watch. Did Mance and co invent it? In that case, that raises serious questions about the Flints in Winterfell. Indeed, here is one of them when Crowfood blows his horn:

“Do they mean to try and blow our walls down?” japed a Flint when the warhorn sounded once again. “Mayhaps he thinks he's found the Horn of Joramun.”

Recall that Old Nan takes for a certainty that Night's King was a Stark, the brother of the Stark of Winterfell. Furthermore, Night's King was the thirteenth commander of the Night's Watch, if the tales are to be believed. If we accept that His "reign" might have come a century after the end of the Long Night. The end of the Long Night came at about the same time than the building of the Wall and of Winterfell. So Joramun is closely related to the Starks, as he was in the middle of a fratricide struggle. If Joramun was ultimately defeated by the Stark in Winterfell, it is possible that the Starks took the horn and buried it under Winterfell with their dead. We have no indication that the Starks put anything of value in the tombs, though. In any case, the First Men had the habit of engraving runes on the tombs of their kings, as we see in Oldstones.

The lid of the sepulcher had been carved into a likeness of the man whose bones lay beneath, but the rain and the wind had done their work. The king had worn a beard, they could see, but otherwise his face was smooth and featureless, with only vague suggestions of a mouth, a nose, eyes, and the crown about the temples. His hands folded over the shaft of a stone warhammer that lay upon his chest. Once the warhammer would have been carved with runes that told its name and history, but all that the centuries had worn away. The stone itself was cracked and crumbling at the comers, discolored here and there by spreading white splotches of lichen, while wild roses crept up over the king's feet almost to his chest.

So something on the story of the Stark that defeated Joramun and Night's King has to be written somewhere in the deepest level of the crypts. That might be what Mance is thinking as he comes to Winterfell. And Mance might continue his failed quest of the Frostfangs in the crypts of Winterfell. We do not know whether Mance, or any other character, can read runes.

Here is what we know in addition from Old Nan.

“Some say he was a Bolton,” Old Nan would always end. “Some say a Magnar out of Skagos, some say Umber, Flint, or Norrey. Some would have you think he was a Woodfoot, from them who ruled Bear island before the ironmen came. He never was. He was a Stark, the brother of the man who brought him down.” She always pinched Bran on the nose then, he would never forget it. “He was a Stark of Winterfell, and who can say? Mayhaps his name was Brandon. Mayhaps he slept in this very bed in this very room.”

Why is Old Nan convinced that Night's King was a Stark? Sometimes she tells several versions of the same story (like the story of the Brandon Stark she came to Winterfell for). In the case of Night's King she explictly says the subject is controversial, but she is certain that her version is correct.

The answer is simple: Night's King is buried in Winterfell, like every Stark should be. It's probably deep in the crypts, and Night's King name might have been erased on the tomb, since all records of his reign have been destroyed. Old Nan might have seen the tomb with her own eyes. As we will see, it's likely that Night's King was involved in the story of the Horn of Joramun.

A final and important remark. Since Joramun sounded the horn once, the sound of the horn doesn't necessarily destroy the Wall. A point to which we will return.

After learning that the horn burned at the Wall was not the genuine Horn of Winter. Jon asks himself.

If Mance’s horn was just a feint, where is the true horn?

Jon should perhaps have paid more attention to his dreams.

7. Two dreams of Jon Snow

After having returned at the Wall, Jon Snow is cut off from Ghost enters a period when he dreams only about the crypts of Winterfell. Ygritte had told him about Mance's failure to recover the Horn of Jormarun.

He would say later to Sam.

“I don’t even dream of Ghost anymore. All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones. Sometimes I hear Robb’s voice, and my father’s, as if they were at a feast. But there’s a wall between us, and I know that no place has been set for me.”

Let's examine the dreams of this period.

He dreamt he was back in Winterfell, limping past the stone kings on their thrones. Their grey granite eyes turned to follow him as he passed, and their grey granite fingers tightened on the hilts of the rusted swords upon their laps. You are no Stark, he could hear them mutter, in heavy granite voices. There is no place for you here. Go away. He walked deeper into the darkness. “Father?” he called. “Bran? Rickon?” No one answered. A chill wind was blowing on his neck. “Uncle?” he called. “Uncle Benjen? Father? Please, Father, help me.” Up above he heard drums. They are feasting in the Great Hall, but I am not welcome there. I am no Stark, and this is not my place. His crutch slipped and he fell to his knees. The crypts were growing darker. A light has gone out somewhere. “Ygritte?” he whispered. “Forgive me. Please.” But it was only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark...
The cell was dark, the bed hard beneath him. His own bed, he remembered, his own bed in his steward’s cell beneath the Old Bear’s chambers. By rights it should have brought him sweeter dreams. Even beneath the furs, he was cold. Ghost had shared his cell before the ranging, warming it against the chill of night. And in the wild, Ygritte had slept beside him. Both gone now. He had burned Ygritte himself, as he knew she would have wanted, and Ghost... Where are you? Was he dead as well, was that what his dream had meant, the bloody wolf in the crypts? But the wolf in the dream had been grey, not white. Grey, like Bran’s wolf. Had the Thenns hunted him down and killed him after Queenscrown? If so, Bran was lost to him for good and all. Jon was trying to make sense of that when the horn blew.

(Jon VIII, ASoS)

The dream seems to follow the Red Wedding. There seems to be a special connection of Jon Snow to the crypt of Winterfell, since no other Stark child has the same recurrent dreams.The important part lies in the conclusion.

The Horn of Winter, he thought, still confused from sleep. But Mance never found Joramun’s horn, so that couldn’t be. A second blast followed, as long and deep as the first. Jon had to get up and go to the Wall, he knew, but it was so hard...

(Jon VIII, ASoS)

After a dream in the crypt, Jon thinks spontaneously of the Horn of Winter. We all try to match the contents of our dreams to the events that awaken us. Was the Horn of Joramun implicitly present in the crypts during the dreams?

Somewhat later, Jon has another dream which he recalls only vaguely. It's just before Mance arrived at the Wall, transporting the horn that had been found in the Frostfangs.

A cup of dreamwine did help, as it happened. No sooner had he stretched out on the narrow bed in his cell than sleep took him. His dreams were strange and formless, full of strange voices, shouts and cries, and the sound of a warhorn, blowing low and loud, a single deep booming note that lingered in the air.

So, given the dream about the horn happens during the period Jon dreams exclusively about the crypts, one wonders whether the dream does not refer to the crypts as well, and if the sound of a warhorn, blowing low and loud, a single deep booming note that lingered in the air does not prefigure the Horn in Winterfell. The sounds of the horn of Jon's dream and the horn of Winterfell seem to match: sound of a warhorn, blowing low and loud, a single deep booming note that lingered in the air and long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it.

8. Mance in Winterfell

The story of Joramun let us believe that the horn of Joramun can have been buried in a grave in Winterfell, perhaps the grave of the Stark who defeated Joramun or, more likely, the grave of Night's King himself. And Mance might have gone through the same reasoning.

Note that Mance never told Jon and (apparenly) Melisandre that the horn burned at the Wall was not genuine. That might indicate that he still nurture the hope to find the real horn. Indeed, by contrast, both Ygritte and Tormund confessed that Mance never found the Horn of Joramun and Tormund even gave an account of Mance's reasoning.

“She burned that fine big horn, aye. A bloody sin, I call it. A thousand years old, that was. We found it in a giant’s grave, and no man o’ us had ever seen a horn so big. That must have been why Mance got the notion to tell you it were Joramun’s. He wanted you crows to think he had it in his power to blow your bloody Wall down about your knees. But we never found the true horn, not for all our digging. If we had, every kneeler in your Seven Kingdoms would have chunks o’ ice to cool his wine all summer.

So Tormund is not entirely sure of the workings of Mance's mind. But the revelation comes as a surprise to Jon.

However, there is a considerable hole in Mance's story. Indeed he couldn't know he would end up in Winterfell when he left Castle Black, since he was instructed by Melisandre to expect the grey girl on a dying horse at Long Lake. There is an apparent solution to this problem. But it is examined elsewhere.

Mance had come twice before in Winterfell, but never got the chance to see the crypts, or perhaps has thought nothing of their importance yet, in spite of his interest for the story of Bael the bard (to the point that Mance has chosen an anagram of Bael as pseudonym). Indeed, the search in the Frostfangs happened after Mance's return beyond the Wall.

We know that  Mance is interested in the crypts, and that he hasn't found them yet three days before the escape. Indeed Holly came to Theon and has been asked.

So, it meant that Abel was not aware of the location of the crypts. Hence Mance hadn't visited them yet.

The entrance of the the crypts are near the First Keep.

So it was easy at this point to show Mance the entrance.  However, Theon never recalls having told Mance how to find the crypts. I understand that GRRM has not let us hear the conversation of Mance and Theon for the obvious storytelling reasons, since the escape plan had to unfold under our eyes. But it's certain that Mance could have known where to find the crypts the night before the escape. If he made Holly ask Theon three days before, why did he not ask the night before?

The obvious answer is that Mance had learnt how to find the crypts through someone else than Theon. Since the decision to escape is taken on the morning of the escape, and Mance intended to leave the castle with "Arya" and Theon, he must have done what he intended to do before the escape.

Few people in Winterfell knew the location of the crypt. Lady Dustin said she searched for them and was unlucky until she asked Theon. There is no sign that either Bolton has any interest in them (they both had the castle for themselves at some point and never tried to find the crypts, apparently). So the people in the know are: Theon, Barbrey Dustin, both Walders, and "Arya". "Arya" was confined to her bedroom. Only Barbrey and the Walders remain. It's true that Little Walder has been found dead near the entrance of the crypts. But I am more inclined to believe Barbrey Dustin showed Mance the entrance. The hypothesis is discussed elsewhere, and is not important for our present discussion.

Could Mance have visited the crypts the night before the escape? Then it would have to be after dinner, when he was playing in the Great Hall, and before the hornblowing at the hour of the Wolf, which happened a bit before he met Theon in the Burned Tower. It's possible, but Mance must have had a sleepless night then. Otherwise, it's possible that Mance visited the crypts a night or two before.

9. Two long low Moans

Now we return to the hornblowing in Winterfell. Let's recall the description of the sound.

The hour of the wolf found him still awake, wrapped in layers of heavy wool and greasy fur, walking yet another circuit of the inner walls, hoping to exhaust himself enough to sleep. His legs were caked with snow to the knee, his head and shoulders shrouded in white. On this stretch of the wall the wind was in his face, and melting snow ran down his cheeks like icy tears.
Then he heard the horn.
A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it. All along the castle walls, sentries turned toward the sound, their hands tightening around the shafts of their spears. In the ruined halls and keeps of Winterfell, lords hushed other lords, horses nickered, and sleepers stirred in their dark corners. No sooner had the sound of the warhorn died away than a drum began to beat: BOOM doom BOOM doom BOOM doom. And a name passed from the lips of each man to the next, written in small white puffs of breath. Stannis, they whispered, Stannis is here, Stannis is come, Stannis, Stannis, Stannis.

And a moment later.

The drumming seemed to be coming from the wolfswood beyond the Hunter's Gate. They are just outside the walls. Theon made his way along the wallwalk, one more man amongst a score doing the same. But even when they reached the towers that flanked the gate itself, there was nothing to be seen beyond the veil of white.
“Do they mean to try and blow our walls down?” japed a Flint when the warhorn sounded once again. “Mayhaps he thinks he's found the Horn of Joramun.”

It happens at the hour of the wolf, which is when the part of the night  just before dawn, the time for covert operations.

The day had come. It was the hour of the wolf. Soon enough the sun would rise, and four thousand wildlings would come pouring through the Wall.

It's explained again by Barristan.

“The hour of the wolf. The blackest part of night, when all the world’s asleep.” He had first heard those words from Tywin Lannister outside the walls of Duskendale.

First, we are led to believe that the horn has been blown outside Winterfell, by Crowfood himself. We need to discuss that possibility first. We heard the Umber horn at the Harvest Feast in Winterfell. Here is the passage again.

The music grew wilder, the drummers joined in, and Hother Umber brought forth a huge curved warhorn banded in silver. When the singer reached the part in “The Night That Ended” where the Night's Watch rode forth to meet the Others in the Battle for the Dawn, he blew a blast that set all the dogs to barking.

One would think that Crowfood would have used this very horn to impress everybody in Winterfell. We have no sign that Whoresbane has the huge silver-banded horn with him. But the sound of the horn in Winterfell did not set all the dogs to barking. Indeed only the horses reacted (horses nickered). The sound of the Umber's horn is a blast, while the sound of the horn of Winterfell was a long low moan.

So if Crowfood used a horn, it's not the huge, silver-banded horn that seemed a favorite of Whoresbane at the Harvest Feast. But Crowfood had a horn with him and blew it.

So Crowfood set his boys to digging pits outside the castle gates, then blew his horn to lure Lord Bolton out.

Crowfood's hornblowing might correspond to the warhorns heard three times more, and again just before Theon and "Arya" jumped from the battlements.

The origin of the drumming is clear: outside the castle, on the side of the Wolfswood. But the hornblowing itself might have taken place inside. Even if the sentries turned toward the sound, it was a diffuse sound. It is well known that low-pitched sounds are difficult to locate (exactly the reason why stereo systems need only one subwoofer).

Moreover, the snowfall was heavy and visibility was severely limited. The snowfall itself might have perturbed the sound, and made more difficult it's localisation.

If the horn has been blown inside, it has been arranged that the drums would be heard immediately afterwards to confuse everyone about the origin of the sound. Otherwise, what good reason would there be to sound the drums immediately after the horn? There are good reasons to think that Crowfood has ordered the drums sounded. Indeed Crowfood's men were digging pits outside the castle, and were ideally placed to make mischief behind the Walls. So the hornblower and Crowfood are complicit. We already knew from the study of the escape that Crowfood, Mance, the washerwomen and the hooded man are complicit.

I have considered the possibility that the washerwomen themselves have produced the drumming. Indeed, we know they came to Winterfell with drums.

“Two sisters, two daughters, one wife, and my old mother,” the singer claimed, though not one looked like him. “Some dance, some sing, one plays the pipe and one the drums. Good washerwomen too.”

We heard them play drums in the Great Hall in several occasions. A single drum is heard after the hornblowing.

No sooner had the sound of the warhorn died away than a drum began to beat: BOOM doom BOOM doom BOOM doom.

But the sound comes outside the castle.

The drumming seemed to be coming from the wolfswood beyond the Hunter’s Gate. They are just outside the walls.

The drumming persisted during the night.

By the time the sky began to lighten the sound of drums had faded away, though warhorns were heard thrice more, each time a little closer.

Since the drumming was heard outside, a washerwoman needed to leave the castle somehow. It's not impossible, since the hooded man apparently managed to get in. Moreover, Squirrel told Theon she could easily climb a castle wall. Moreover, the washerwomen do have drums.

Such a solution would eliminate the need to involve Crowfood to cover the hornblowing, and consequently the need of communication between the conspirators outside and inside the castle. However such communications had to exist to account for Crowfood's expectation to see "Arya" and Theon escape.

Of course, Mors Umber does have drums as well, as testified by Tycho Nestoris.

 “We looked for you at Winterfell, but found only Crowfood Umber beating drums and blowing horns. It took some time to find you.”

Let's leave aside the drumming and return to the horn.

Mance himself had taken residence in the burned tower, the highest tower in Winterfell. If he sounded the horn, it might have happened there.

Let's examine the sound itself. A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it. Several horns produced sounds which lingered in the air. But only one other horn made a sound that was felt in the bones: Bright and baneful was its voice, a shivering hot scream that made a man's bones seem to thrum within him. It's Euron's hellhorn. The sound is clearly different though, much stranger than the sound we heard in Winterfell. Other horns are penetrating enough to affect the blood: And Hagen's horn sounded again from on high, ringing out across the bailey. AHooooooooooooooooooooooo, the warhorn cried, long and low, a sound to curdle blood. Euron's horn became infernal on the third time. The horn in Winterfell has been heard only twice.

The horn heard in Winterfell might be as important as Euron's horn.

There is another instance of a sound that affect listeners in their bones. Here again the sounds form a trilogy.

As he honed the axe, Hotah thought of Norvos, the high city on the hill and the low beside the river. He could still recall the sounds of the three bells, the way that Noom’s deep peals set his very bones to shuddering, the proud strong voice of Narrah, sweet Nyel’s silvery laughter.

The importance of bones in Martin's world doesn't need to be stressed, I believe. In this world, the bones are the essence of being, as it is testified by the insistence to recover the bones of the deceased to accomplish the appropriate funeral. Melisandre tells us that the bone remembers. The wights cease all movement when their bones are broken.

So the story that Mance found the horn of Joramun (or what he believed to be the horn of Joramun) in the crypts seems to fit well with the evidence we have, and is coherent with the logic of Mance's story.

Who has blown the horn? Certainly an accomplice of Mance, if not Mance himself. Whoresbane blew a horn at the Harvest Feast, and could be the hornblower. It is hinted that Whoresbane is not loyal to the Bolton cause, but it is not confirmed that Whoresbane is an accomplice of Mance. Euron's hornblower seemed a man of a special nature (huge, fearsome). Mance wanted Tormund to blow the "horn of Joramun" at the Wall. So it seems that a proper hornblowing can not be accomplished by feeble lungs. There is no real sign that Whoresbane is such a man. He is described as cadaverous, and never as physically impressive like other Umbers (Crowfood, the Greatjon, the Smalljon) are. Nevertheless, when he visited Winterfell with Crowfood, he was the one who blew the horn to spectacular effect.

The music grew wilder, the drummers joined in, and Hother Umber brought forth a huge curved warhorn banded in silver. When the singer reached the part in “The Night That Ended” where the Night's Watch rode forth to meet the Others in the Battle for the Dawn, he blew a blast that set all the dogs to barking.

Moreover, before the horn has been blown, Whoresbane was not part of Roose's council in Ned Stark's solar: only Lady Dustin, Aenys Frey and Roger Ryswell were there. Previously, Whoresbane had been part of Roose's council on the evening of the wedding. The morning after the hornblowing, Whoresbane is in company of Roger Ryswell and Aenys Frey. So the absence of Whoresbane from Roose's little assembly is noticeable.

Why was the horn blown? And why twice, and only twice? We are led to believe that something momentous would have happened with the third hornblowing.

10. Meanwhile, at the Wall

We need to make sense of the blowing of the horn in Winterfell. I believe that the sounding of the horn of Winter is nothing else than the natural continuation of the story of Mance Rayder, who has been, for as long as we have heard of him, a man of extraordinary resources, and the champion of the Free Folk.

Let's recapitulate what we have already noted on the Horn of Joramun.

It began when Jeor Mormont reported that Mance was looking for something in the Frostfangs. Later, the Halfhand would insist on the mystery, and would mention sorcery. Ygritte revealed that the object of Mance's quest was the Horn of Joramun, and that the search had been unfruitful. During the assault on the Wall, Mance threatened to use the false horn he had found to destroy the Wall.

From this, we can infer that Mance hoped that the real horn would have helped the Free Folk get across, but wouldn't have used it to destroy the Wall, since Dalla reminded him that the Wall is a protection against the Others. Nevertheless, the horn is reputed to have the power to destroy the Wall, a notion well entrenched among the Free Folk.

We need now to combine a few observations.

• Since Joramun once sounded his horn, and the Wall has never been brought down, it is possible to use the horn without destroying the Wall.
  
• What we see of Euron's Horn tells us that the full power of a magic horn is unleashed at the third blast.
• By the traditions of the Night's Watch, the coming of wildlings is announced with two blasts of a common horn while the arrival of the Others requires three blasts.
• Since the Horn of Winter seems to have been present at the beginning of the Wall (Joramun was contemporaneous to the thirteen Lord Commander), the tradition of the Watch might be derived from the properties of the Horn of Winter.

We can infer that two blasts of the horn of Winter let pass the wildlings, and three blasts let pass the Others (and in effect destroys the Wall).

Following this logic, two blasts of the genuine horn of Winter would have helped Mance lead his wildlings across the Wall, and three blasts would have destroyed the Wall.

It might be that Joramun used the horn for his own invasion. This king-beyond-the-Wall was defeated by the Stark in Winterfell, we are told. So it would stand to reason that the Starks took the horn as a war trophy, and buried it to prevent another wildling invasion. Perhaps they did not dare destroy it and buried the horn in the grave of the Stark that defeated Joramun, or, better, they put it in the grave of Night's King, a Stark himself destined to be buried in his ancestral graveyard.

This might be what Mance thought after having opened numerous tombs in the Frostfangs without success. Unless Mance learned about the horn of Winter in Winterfell through another mean. That other mean could be the following.

The relationship between Lord Brynden and Mance has yet to be clarified. Certainly, Brynden has watched the events north of the Wall, and Mance's conquest. We have noted already the coincidence between Mance, as King-beyond-the-Wall, and Coldhands: a black cloak, an elk, raven wings. When Bran sitted his weirwood throne in the cave, he has been asked to enter the weirwood and to tell whatever vision came to him. It seemed that Brynden couldn't enter the Winterfell weirwood – otherwise, why ask Bran what he saw? It seems Bran had access then to the whole of the history of Winterfell seen from the eyes of the heart tree. The ancient episode with the Horn of Winter might have been of interest for Lord Brynden, who might have learnt the truth with the help of Bran's visions. How would he communicate with Mance? Via dreams? By sending the very same dream that Jon Snow had (a horn in the middle of crypt dreams)? Or via the trees that the wildling of Mole Town (including the washerwomen) have marked with faces? However, the last Bran chapter happens after Mance is sent to save Arya.

In any case it is not clear how Mance came to know that the horn was in Winterfell. We have no sign that a vision from Melisandre helped Mance.

The blowing of a horn in Winterfell occurs at the end of the chapter A Ghost in Winterfell. The chapter Theon picked up on the morning that follows. In between, Tormund and Val arrived at the Wall, announced by two suspenseful horn blasts.

His head turned. “That was a horn.”
Others had heard it too. The music and the laughter died at once. Dancers froze in place, listening. Even Ghost pricked up his ears. “Did you hear that?” Queen Selyse asked her knights.
“A warhorn, Your Grace,” said Ser Narbert.
The queen's hand went fluttering to her throat. “Are we under attack?”
“No, Your Grace,” said Ulmer of the Kingswood. “It's the watchers on the Wall, is all.” One blast, thought Jon Snow. Rangers returning.
Then it came again. The sound seemed to fill the cellar. “Two blasts,” said Mully.
Black brothers, northmen, free folk, Thenns, queen's men, all of them fell quiet, listening. Five heartbeats passed. Ten. Twenty. Then Owen the Oaf tittered, and Jon Snow could breathe again. “Two blasts,” he announced. “Wildlings.” Val.
Tormund Giantsbane had come at last.

The tension after the second blowing is stressed. No third blowing is heard, of course.

The hornblowings in Winterfell and at the Wall seem to answer each other.

Later we would hear Tormund blow his horn twice two more times, each time shy of blowing the fateful third time.

The chapter order indicates a simultaneity between Tormund's arrival at the Wall and the hornblowing. It is difficult to synchronize the timelines at the Wall and in Winterfell, and say exactly how many days separate the two events. According to my uncertain count, Tormund arrived at the Wall about two weeks after the hornblowing. I am tempted to believe the chapter order rather than my reconstitution of the chronology.

Was Mance's ploy devised to save the Free Folk beyond the Wall?

We learn two things about Mance's intentions before he left Castle Black. Here is Melisandre thinking about him.

None of his free folk mattered. They were a lost people, a doomed people, destined to vanish from the earth, as the children of the forest had vanished. Those were not words he would wish to hear, though, and she could not risk losing him, not now.

According to Melisandre, Mance still wants to save the free folk – as Rattleshirt he once said the opposite. He makes an allusion to his plans in Melisandre's and Jon Snow's hearing.

“I will need horses. Half a dozen good ones. And this is nothing I can do alone. Some of the spearwives penned up at Mole’s Town should serve. Women would be best for this. The girl’s more like to trust them, and they will help me carry off a certain ploy I have in mind.”

The ploy has never been spelled out. But we can suppose it is simply the continuation of the failed plan to conquer the Wall, with the added realization that the horn of Winter is in Winterfell.

It seems that Melisandre did not control Mance as well as she thought.

So the notion that Mance went to Winterfell to sound the Horn of Winter (he might not have done the deed himself, though) is in the perfect continuation of everything he has done previously. Finding the horn was the object of the quest in the Frostfangs, it was the mean to make the wildling host pass the Wall, the double blast is compatible with the culture of the Wall, and finally the blowing of the horn precedes immediately the coming of Tormund's host to the Wall.

It seems we have a perfect explanation. But two points bother me.

How did Mance know that the wedding would take place in Winterfell? According to the most logical explanation, Crowfood informed him when they devised their plan for the escape of "Arya". But in any case, I don't see how Mance could have conceived the ploy while he was still in Castle Black.

How is it that Tormund's host would need the horn to be sounded to come across the Wall? It seems that the Wall wards against the wights and the Others. We are led to believe that the Horn of Winter would dispel that magic, perhaps following a triple blowing. However, the wildling are not magical creatures, and we see raiders coming across the Wall. There is no reason to believe that the Wall is a magical barrier for them. It might be that certain wildlings have a special nature. Tormund said he had never come south of the Wall before the agreement with Jon Snow. Perhaps some part of the wildling culture is kept north by the Wall.

Magic played no role in the acceptance of wildlings south of the Wall, under all appearances. Jon Snow's reasoning was to save the wildlings in order to deny the Others more dead soldiers. His policy seemed supported by Stannis. And it was also driven by largely unspoken humanitarian concerns. So it doesn't seem that Jon Snow was bewitched in any way by the horn.

In the large scheme of the story, the notion that Mance went to Winterfell to blow the horn and Winter to allow the Free Folk to come to the realm makes perfect sense.

Here is the most compelling explanation I could find. We have already looked at the following problem.

Before, Jon Snow and Lord Mormont had discussed the question.
The story the last of the King-beyond-the-Wall, Raymun Redbeard, is told in more detail.

In effect, a host of wildlings is to be defeated by any disciplined army, like the one brought by Stannis beyond the Wall. After the Wall, the natural defenders of the Realm are the Starks (and the lords of the northernmost lands: the Umbers and the mountain clans). Mance knew all these stories better than anyone. Certainly he had planned for his people beyond the Wall. 

Nevertheless, Mance had no plan to integrate the Free Folk to the Seven Kingdoms and said so to Jon.

The point is repetitively made that even in the case the Free Folk conquered the Wall, the wildlings would never be tolerated as free folk south of the Wall, as historical precedents have shown. It is a mystery that Mance was well aware of this, never seemed worried and never spelled out his plan.

At this point Mance has no real horn of Winter, but he still intended to invade the realm without integrating the feudal system. If what I am suggesting is right, Mance was perhaps already thinking of finding the horn in Winterfell. At the time, Winterfell was a deserted ruin. Who could have stopped him?

So it seems that Mance hoped that the real horn of Winter would be the solution to all his problems. But in what sense? There is no good explanation of the power of the horn. Even if the blowing of the horn and the arrival of Tormund seems put in parallel in the story, the theory is incomplete, at best.

So we need to look more closely at the characters at the Wall.

11. Della and Val

Val and Tormund led the Free Folk to the Wall. Val seems to have changed at her return. She seemed wilder, and took an interest in Craster's son that didn't seem to exist when she left. And the colors of her eyes has changed from grey to blue. Has the sounding of the horn changed Val somehow? (The magical transformation into blue eye is part the nature of the Others and their creatures, the wights.) I don't think Val's eye color change is meaningless or a mistake. There is much attention given to eye color in the story: Jeyne Poole' brown eyes, Young Griff's varying eye colors etc. Something has happened to Val.

If two horn blowings changed her eye color to an apparently natural blue, would a third blast make of her a creature like the queen of Night's King?

Before she left the Wall, Val made the following recommendation to Jon Snow.

“Do you remember what my sister told you?”
“Yes.” A sword without a hilt, with no safe way to hold it. But Melisandre had the right of it. Even a sword without a hilt is better than an empty hand when foes are all around you.
“Good.”

It is not clear that Jon Snow remembered the right sentence. Here is the totality of what Dalla told Jon (five sentences in two parts).

“We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.”

Who was the Horned Lord? We know that he came after Joramun as King-beyong-the-Wall. Is his Horned nature related to the Horn of Winter? But a moment later, when Mance speaks of blowing the Horn, Dalla said her fifth sentence.

“But once the Wall is fallen,” Dalla said, “what will stop the Others?”

Dalla seems to be saying that the Horn of Joramun is the sword without a hilt, and that using it would risk breaking the Wall, and perhaps would unleash another undesirable effect. How is it that she knows so much about it? She seems more knowledgeable than Mance under all appearances.

In any case,

Melisandre confirmed Dalla's opinion.

“The Horn of Joramun?” Melisandre said. “No. Call it the Horn of Darkness. If the Wall falls, night falls as well, the long night that never ends. It must not happen, will not happen! The Lord of Light has seen his children in their peril and sent a champion to them, Azor Ahai reborn.”

When she came back to the Wall, Val seems to have inherited Dalla's status among the Free Folk.

They look as though they belong together. Val was clad all in white; white woolen breeches tucked into high boots of bleached white leather, white bearskin cloak pinned at the shoulder with a carved weirwood face, white tunic with bone fastenings. Her breath was white as well ... but her eyes were blue, her long braid the color of dark honey, her cheeks flushed red from the cold. It had been a long while since Jon Snow had seen a sight so lovely.

Indeed, she said a moment later.

These clothes were given to me by Dalla, I would sooner not get bloodstains all over them.

Dalla's status was undoubtable. She was welcome to every council of Mance, even to those from which Tormund was excluded. Val confirmed her importance indirectly.

“A giant as protector? Even Dalla could not boast of that.”

Of course that might simply refer to Dalla as Mance's queen. Recall that Stannis has crowned Val at the Wall. It seems that Stannis had understood or learned something about Val's nature that has escaped Jon Snow.

A most interesting piece of Val's equipment is the piece of carved weirwood that clasps her cloak. According to the social conventions of the Seven Kingdoms, it is a heraldic sign (there are dozens of examples of highborn people carrying their sigil as a brooch). The weirwood face appears as a heraldic sign in only one other occasion: when the Knight of the Laughing Tree (probably Lyanna Stark) came to the jousting field during the Harrenhal tourney. Then the knight was an envoy of the old gods, as her appearance was an answer to a prayer of Howland Reed.

“Then, as now,” she agreed. “The wolf maid saw them too, and pointed them out to her brothers. ‘I could find you a horse, and some armor that might fit’, the pup offered. The little crannogman thanked him, but gave no answer. His heart was torn. Crannogmen are smaller than most, but just as proud. The lad was no knight, no more than any of his people. We sit a boat more often than a horse, and our hands are made for oars, not lances. Much as he wished to have his vengeance, he feared he would only make a fool of himself and shame his people. The quiet wolf had offered the little crannogman a place in his tent that night, but before he slept he knelt on the lakeshore, looking across the water to where the Isle of Faces would be, and said a prayer to the old gods of north and Neck...”

And here is the knight.

“No one knew,” said Meera, “but the mystery knight was short of stature, and clad in ill-fitting armor made up of bits and pieces. The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face.”
“Maybe he came from the Isle of Faces,” said Bran. “Was he green?” In Old Nan’s stories, the guardians had dark green skin and leaves instead of hair. Sometimes they had antlers too, but Bran didn’t see how the mystery knight could have worn a helm if he had antlers. “I bet the old gods sent him.”

Did Val come with the benediction of the old gods?

In any case, Val promised to return to the Wall at the full moon. The full moon is also the moment of the arrival of Winter in King's Landing (white raven). Melisandre claims a few days later that Winter is almost upon us, referring maybe to the arrival of the white raven from Oldtown. Hence, the arrival of Winter could coincide with Val's arrival at the Wall, which, in turn, seems to coincide with the sounding of the Horn at Winterfell. Take or leave a couple of days.

12. Giants awoken from the Earth

Here are the occurences of the sentence that characterizes the Horn of Joramun. The first comes from Lord Mormont.

Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth.

The second occurs in Jon's head when he joins Mance's coalition.

And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth.

The third occurs when Jon realizes that Tormund is called "Hornblower" by Mance.

And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter, and woke giants from the earth. Is that where they had come from, them and their mammoths? Had Mance Rayder found the Horn of Joramun, and given it to Tormund Thunderfist to blow?

Mance introduces the horn found in the Frostfangs to Jon.

“The Horn of Winter, that Joramun once blew to wake giants from the earth.”

Jon recalls the sentence when he attends Melisandre's burning at the Wall.
Lastly, Jon recalls again the sentence when Tormund says that the horn burnt at the Wall was not authentic.

And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth.

Evidently, it is meaningful. Who are the giants in question? We do not see any sleeping giant, except the giantess who hosted Tormund in her belly for a winter. Perhaps an hint resides in the song Jon heard among Mance's host: The Last of the Giants.

Jon needs an explanation that might have come had Ygrid not been distracted. The giants of the song are not the hundreds of giants that Jon has under his eyes. It's reasonable to conjecture that Joramun's giants are none other than the giants of the song. In any case, it would strange to call "giant" two different type of creatures.

The song is about the loneliness of the last of the giants. In Brynden's cave, the extinction of various sort of creatures is mentioned: lions, direwolves, giants, unicorns. Only one of them is the last of its kind: the greenseer himself.

The last greenseer, the singers called him, but in Bran’s dreams he was still a three-eyed crow.

Does the loneliness of the giant evoke the loneliness of the last greenseer? The wildlings do not seem to be aware of greenseers and we never saw any mention of greenseers in Old Nan's tales or any wildling song. But Osha does mention the children of the forest to Bran in Winterfell.

“The giants I’ve seen, the children I’ve heard tell of, and the white walkers... why do you want to know?”
“Did you ever see a three-eyed crow?”
“No.” She laughed. “And I can’t say I’d want to.”

Could it be that once, greenseers manifested themselves to human beings by skinchanging into giants? We have the example of Bran who takes possession of Hodor's mind. Hodor has been recognized has having giant's blood by Osha. We find in him the great size, the placidity and a certain a weakness of mind that all seem to be the hallmarks of the genuine giants. It would seem that it is easier for Bran to inhabit Hodor's mind than to take possession of another human being.

However, Varamyr makes no mention of skinchanging into giants. So it might be a privilege of the greenseer, and denied to the warg.

So could the giants awaken from the earth be dormant greenseers? Some parts of the song do recall could allude to greenseer. The phrase “The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth” would fit well with the likely notion that the greenseers ruled Westeros before the First Men, and perhaps until the Andal came. The sentence In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears seems to echo Maester Luwin's telling of the war of the children and the First Men.

They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire.

No greenseer then, and no giant is mentioned in the tale, though. But the notion that Men brought fire and metal weapons is there. The giants in the tale do not use metal, and do not seem to have use for fire. They are naturally equipped to wishtand the cold, and we see Wun Wun eat raw vegetables. The giant folk belong to a pre-human world. However it is curious that they speak the Old Tongue and not the True Tongue of the singers. Indeed the Old Tongue was the language the First Men brought to Westeros (unless the First Men adopted the language of the giants, but we have no sign of that). We see two allusions that the giants have a history and a culture worth learning.

The first is in Leaf's mouth.

The giants are almost gone as well, they who were our bane and our brothers.

The second occurs in Jon Snow's head after he had brought Wun Wun to the Wall.

You know nothing, Jon Snow, Ygritte might say, but Jon spoke with the giant whenever he could, through Leathers or one of the free folk they had brought back from the grove, and was learning much and more about his people and their history. He only wished that Sam were here to write the stories down.

Unfortunately, Jon doesn't tell us more. The men of the Watch have a less benevolent views on giant folk. Here Othell Yarwick the first builder.

“I ... my lord, the men would never ... giants eat human flesh, I think ... no, my lord, I thank you, but I do not have the men to watch over such a creature, he ...”

The notion that giants are bloodthirsty occurs regularly in Old Nan's tale. It occurs indirectly early in the books.

He remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns.

Wun Wun was very little like the giants in Old Nan’s tales, those huge savage creatures who mixed blood into their morning porridge and devoured whole bulls, hair and hide and horns.

Once again the giants of the legend do not match the giants of the story. Wun Wun is a dedicated vegetarian.

“Eat now, Wun Wun?” asked the giant. “Eat now,” Jon agreed. To Leathers he said, “I’ll send out a bushel of vegetables for him and meat for you. Start a fire.”

The discrepancy goes further, in the following tale.

In Old Nan’s stories, giants were outsized men who lived in colossal castles, fought with huge swords, and walked about in boots a boy could hide in.

We are far from the giants of the song who seem stranger to castles and metal weapons. I tend to believe there is truth in both views. Most interestingly, Old Nan says that a function of the Wall is to prevent giants from coming to the realm. Bran recalls it twice in identical terms at the Nightfort.

It was the end of the world, Old Nan always said. On the other side were monsters and giants and ghouls, but they could not pass so long as the Wall stood strong.

Beyond the gates the monsters live, and the giants and the ghouls, he remembered Old Nan saying, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong.

The thought occurs again to Bran beyond the Wall.

Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk, she would say, tucking him in beneath his scratchy woolen blanket, but they cannot pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch are true.

Why are the giants considered so dangerous by Old Nan? Wun Wun seems to be a harmless vegetarian.

We don't know what the ghouls stand for. The wights? The white walkers? They seem on equal footing with the giants in Old Nan's tales. The meanings of ghoul (an arabic word) in the real world, and in GRRM's universe are not clear. In principle, the ghouls are creature of the macabre, dwelling in a graveyard.

Here are the other occurences of the creatures. Tyrion is dismissive.

This wide world is full of such mad tales. Grumkins and snarks, ghosts and ghouls, mermaids, rock goblins, winged horses, winged pigs ... winged lions.

For Jaime Lannister, ghouls are compared to rotting corpses.

Jaime knew the look in his sister’s eyes. He had seen it before, most recently on the night of Tommen’s wedding, when she burned the Tower of the Hand. The green light of the wildfire had bathed the face of the watchers, so they looked like nothing so much as rotting corpses, a pack of gleeful ghouls, but some of the corpses were prettier than others.

Ghouls seem to be in Hardhome, according to the tale.

Six centuries had come and gone since that night, but Hardhome was still shunned. The wild had reclaimed the site, Jon had been told, but rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins were haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood.

It's not clear whether ghouls and demons and burning ghosts have all a taste for blood. In any case, Lord Brynden is a rotting corpse that seems to match Jaime's views on what ghouls are. But the wights we see beyond the Wall seem to fit just as well. In Jon's description, there is a distinction between ghouls, demons and ghosts. Three categories alluded to several times, but undefined for the nonce.

Old Nan told Bran that ghouls, giants, stalking shadows and the dead that walk reside beyond the Wall. Here again, that might mean that ghouls are distinct from giants, stalking shadows (the Others, apparently) and the dead that walk (the wights).

In any case, the association of ghouls and giants seems to point to some connection between the giants and the dead.

A few more episodes involving giants deserve some attention. The first involves Tormund's giantess.

“Is it true you killed a giant once?” he asked Tormund as they rode. Ghost loped silently beside them, leaving paw prints in the new- fallen snow.
“Now why would you doubt a mighty man like me? It was winter and I was half a boy, and stupid the way boys are. I went too far and my horse died and then a storm caught me. A true storm, not no little dusting such as this. Har! I knew I’d freeze to death before it broke. So I found me a sleeping giant, cut open her belly, and crawled up right inside her. Kept me warm enough, she did, but the stink near did for me. The worst thing was, she woke up when the spring come and took me for her babe. Suckled me for three whole moons before I could get away. Har! There’s times I miss the taste o’ giant’s milk, though.”
“If she nursed you, you couldn’t have killed her.”
“I never did, but see you don’t go spreading that about. Tormund Giantsbane has a better ring to it than Tormund Giantsbabe, and that’s the honest truth o’ it.”

Tormund insists that the story is true. It has certainly a kernel of truth. I wonder if Tormund did not find refuge in a cave of the children of the forest during a winter. Is the giant milk a form of weirwood paste, indeed Lord Brynden is described as a baby attached to his mother the first time Bran saw him. But these are uncertain guesses and the story leaves me perplex.

The second story is an oblique allusion by Littlefinger at the Eyrie just after Sweetrobin has destroyed Sansa's snow castle.

The servants looked aghast, but when Littlefinger saw what she’d done he laughed. “If the tales be true, that’s not the first giant to end up with his head on Winterfell’s walls.”
“Those are only stories,” she said, and left him there.

Unfortunately we are never given the details. The Great Barrow near Barrowton seems interesting.

As he climbed a wide flight of wooden steps to the hall, Reek’s legs began to shake. He had to stop to steady them, staring up at the grassy slopes of the Great Barrow. Some claimed it was the grave of the First King, who had led the First Men to Westeros. Others argued that it must be some King of the Giants who was buried there, to account for its size. A few had even been known to say it was no barrow, just a hill, but if so it was a lonely hill, for most of the barrowlands were flat and windswept.

 
The King of the Giants is a notion that contradict what Jon has been told by the Free Folk: the giants have no king. Once again the legend contradicts the reality.

The Thenn seem to be the people closest to the giant folk.

“Free folk is what they call themselves. Most, at least. The Thenns are a people apart, though. Very old.” Ygritte had told him that. You know nothing, Jon Snow. “They come from a hidden vale at the north end of the Frostfangs, surrounded by high peaks, and for thousands of years they’ve had more truck with the giants than with other men. It made them different.”

Beside Bran's skinchanging into Hodor, there could be another hint the that giants can be inhabited by greenseers. Consider Clarence Crabb's tale.

“The Whispers. You heard o’ Clarence Crabb, o’ course.”
“No.”
That seemed to surprise him. “Ser Clarence Crabb, I said. I got his blood in me. He was eight foot tall, and so strong he could uproot pine trees with one hand and chuck them half a mile. No horse could bear his weight, so he rode an aurochs.”
“What does he have to do with this smugglers’ cove?”
“His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.”

One could easily understood the folk tale being about greenseers taking possession of a giant. We see a weirwood growing at the Whispers, presumably from the roots of ancient weirwoods that were cut down. We are left to believe that a greenseer was once under the Whispers.

Let's go to Brynden's cave. There are indeed giant's bones in the cave and apparently skulls which once belonged to greenseers.

But there were other bones as well, big ones that must have come from giants and small ones that could have been from children. On either side of them, in niches carved from the stone, skulls looked down on them. Bran saw a bear skull and a wolf skull, half a dozen human skulls and near as many giants. All the rest were small, queerly formed. Children of the forest. The roots had grown in and around and through them, every one. A few had ravens perched atop them, watching them pass with bright black eyes.

The place seems to be a cemetary. The skulls in the niches have been given special care, and have visibly joined the weirwoods. We are tempted to recognize the line of predecessors of Bloodraven. Before we conclude that giants can be greenseers, note that it is curious that some of the bones in the niches belong to a wolf and a bear. It seems more likely to me that those belong to a greenseer in his second life. Were the giant skulls once inhabited by greenseers before they joined the weirwood?

We conclude with the notion that there is a possibility that greenseers would be the subject of the awakening. There are indeed greenseers asleep in Brynden's cave. They are to be found on the other side of the underground river.

As Hodor he explored the caves. He found chambers full of bones, shafts that plunged deep into the earth, a place where the skeletons of gigantic bats hung upside down from the ceiling. He even crossed the slender stone bridge that arched over the abyss and discovered more passages and chambers on the far side. One was full of singers, enthroned like Brynden in nests of weirwood roots that wove under and through and around their bodies. Most of them looked dead to him, but as he crossed in front of them their eyes would open and follow the light of his torch, and one of them opened and closed a wrinkled mouth as if he were trying to speak. “Hodor,” Bran said to him, and he felt the real Hodor stir down in his pit.

Could it be that the horn would wake the dormant greenseers underground and that those very greenseers would take control of the two hundred giants that came at the Wall with Tormund, and went to Eastwatch?