Tormund leads the wildlings through the Wall.

After days of negotiation and a lifetime of enmity, the free folk began to stream through the Wall at Castle Black on a bright, cold morning. Tormund Giantsbane, the legendary wildling chief known as Tall-Talker, Horn-Blower, and Breaker of Ice, had accepted Jon Snow’s terms: the free folk would be allowed to pass south of the Wall, receive food and shelter, and be settled in the Watch’s abandoned castles, but they would surrender their valuables, give up a hundred boys as hostages, and swear to fight beside the Night’s Watch against the Others. The gate opened at dawn, and for the first time in eight thousand years, wildlings crossed the Wall not as raiders but as refugees seeking protection.

The Hostages and the Toll

The first to pass were the hostages: one hundred boys between the ages of eight and sixteen, chosen by lot or by their fathers’ rank. Tormund himself gave his youngest son, Dryn, to serve as Jon’s page. “You’ll see he’s well taken care of, crow, or I’ll cook your black liver up and eat it,” the wildling chief warned. The boys were thin, gaunt, and weary, but none balked. Two were discovered to be girls in disguise; Jon sent them to Long Barrow, where he trusted the commanders, rather than risk them among brothers who might not honor their vows. As each warrior passed, he stripped off his treasures—amber pendants, golden torques, jeweled daggers, silver brooches, even a shirt of silver scales—and tossed them into carts for Bowen Marsh to count. The wealth of the free folk, meager as it was, would be shipped across the narrow sea to buy food for the winter.

The Warriors and the Women

After the hostages came the warriors: five hundred, perhaps a thousand, armed with spears, bows, axes, and shields painted with severed heads, spiders, and demons. Some wore stolen steel, others armor of bone. Spearwives with long streaming hair followed, and Jon could not look at them without remembering Ygritte. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,” she had told him a hundred times. “It is as true now as it was then,” he thought. Tormund had sent the fighters first, not the women and children, to ensure the gate stayed open. “I bought your bloody horse, Jon Snow,” he said. “Don’t mean that we can’t count his teeth.” The warriors swore their oaths one by one: Soren Shieldbreaker bowed his head and growled, “Soren’s axe is yours, Jon Snow, if ever you have need of such”; the warrior witch Morna removed her weirwood mask to kiss his gloved hand and swear to be his man or his woman, whichever he preferred; Gerrick Kingsblood, who claimed descent from Raymun Redbeard, brought his three red-haired daughters, offering them as brides for southron lords.

The Giants and the Mammoths

Among the last to pass were the men of the Frozen Shore, with their bone chariots and fearsome dogs as big as direwolves, and the giants. Almost two hundred giants came through, with more than eighty mammoths. The mammoths were too big to pass through the gate, so they were sent the long way around, to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun, the giant who had already been living at Castle Black, watched his kin arrive with fascination. The giants spoke the Old Tongue, and Leathers, the new master-at-arms, served as interpreter. Jon had hoped the giants would help with the work of restoring the abandoned castles, but Othell Yarwyck refused to have them, fearing they would eat human flesh. “They eat no meat at all,” Jon said, “though he is a holy terror when served a basket of roots.”

The Skinchanger and the Boar

One of the last to arrive was Borroq, a skinchanger who commanded a monstrous boar as large as a bull, with tusks as long as a man’s arm. Ghost, Jon’s direwolf, bristled and bared his teeth at the scent of the boar. “Boars and wolves,” said Tormund. “Best keep that beast o’ yours locked up tonight.” Jon had to wrestle Ghost back inside the armory to keep him from attacking. Borroq smiled an ugly smile and said, “They’re coming, crow,” before making his way through the gate. The skinchanger’s presence unsettled the black brothers, but Jon had no choice but to accept him; the free folk came as they were, with their gods and their beasts and their grudges.

The Closing of the Gate

By late afternoon, the stream of wildlings had dwindled to a trickle. The day had turned grey and gusty, and snow began to fall. Tormund’s son Toregg burned the dead in the camp beyond the Wall, and the rear guard—a dozen mounted warriors, each of whom had killed a crow—rode through last. Jon Snow was the last man through the gate. “That’s done, then,” Rory said. “No,” Jon replied. “It has only just begun.” Bowen Marsh presented the count: three thousand one hundred and nineteen wildlings had passed through the Wall that day. Sixty hostages were sent off to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. The rest remained at Castle Black, to be sorted and settled in the abandoned forts. Jon knew the hard part still awaited: convincing his own brothers to accept what he had done. “None of them are going to like the taste, I fear,” he told Val. But the gate was open, and there was no turning back.