Mance listened to the rest of Melisandre's speech with a smile on his face, his courage unfailing, but when he turned and saw the woodwork his bravery faltered. It was a cage that hung from the scaffold, made from the twisted and gnarled branches of a weirwood tree all woven together. He balked for a brief moment, and then turned away and recoiled at the sight of the cage, his features marked with horror.
...
"No," he said, shaking his head and trying to back away. "This is not right. I'm not a king, they made me..." His words were cut off when two men grabbed him by the armpits and hauled him forwards towards the frame. "Mercy!" he cried. "Mercy!"
One of Stannis's men pulled on the noose around his neck and choked off his next words, and silently the men holding him tried to stuff him into the cage. They had to beat him to overcome his resistance when he tried to stop himself, and before long the snow on the ground was speckled with blood. With some of his limbs broken, Mance Rayder was half-dragged and half-carried to the cage, and unceremoniously thrown in.
The door shut, a dozen of Stannis's men made short work of gathering around the rope and heaving, the scaffold shaking from their efforts as the cage was lifted off the ground above the pit, which was filled with wood and leaves and kindling. Lady Melisandre watched him rise with icy eyes, not a hint of guilt in her entire body. You could have beheaded him, Jon wanted to say, but instead he bit his tongue to keep the peace.
"FREE FOLK!" she called out. "Here hangs your kings of lies! Your coward king!" She waved her hand and two men came forwards carrying something. "And here is the horn he promised would bring down the Wall!" A lie, Jon thought, or at least that was what Tommen had told him. Jon remembered Ygritte had agreed before she'd died, telling him that Mance had never managed to find the true horn. Looking at it, Jon saw black wood banded with old gold engraved with runes, eight feet long from end to end.
Whatever it was, Jon knew better than to abandon his caution. He'd keep an eye open either way.
Through the stockades, a thousand captive wildling men watched as the horn was hefted high, and then unceremoniously thrown into the pile of kindling below the cage from which Mance still hung. "The Horn of Darkness, I call it," Melisandre continued. "For if the Wall falls then the long night - that night that never ends - will surely come as well! And then we will all freeze. No, the Lord of Light cannot let this happen! And so he has gifted us Azor Ahai reborn!"
Melisandre gestured to Stannis, clad in pale grey plate, his sunken eyes stern and unyielding rather than unfeeling. You can surely still put a stop to this, Jon thought, but knew it would not be so.
"FREE FOLK!" Melisandre cried again. "Behold the fate of those who choose the darkness!" And just like that, the Horn of Joramun burst into flames, and the fire slowly grew to the surrounding kindling. It was a queer fire, green and yellow and purple and red, leaping and spitting and crackling as it slowly grew hot. The stockades shook as some grew angry at seeing their hopes aflame.
Inside his cage, despite his broken limbs and bloodied body, Mance screamed incoherently as he clawed first at the noose around his neck and then at the cage with bound hands. He screamed of treachery and witchery and then he screamed denial after denial after denial.
And then he stopped.
For a moment Jon thought his heart had burst, but just as he was about to send a silent prayer of thanks to the old gods a crazed laughter began emanating from the cage, becoming louder and louder as the fire underneath crackled and grew. Jon watched unblinking as the fire caught the weirwood, forcing himself not to react. A display of squeamishness now would be seen as weakness, something he could ill afford. Instead he affixed his eyes and watched, his stomach slowly roiling as burning wood became burning flesh.
All around him, two hundred black brothers watched with Jon, hoods pulled over their heads to hide who they really were. Greybeards and green boys would not strike fear into the wildlings, and if they were not sufficiently afraid then Jon knew that all they would do once south of the Wall was wreak havoc.
As the horn split in the pit with an almighty crack, Mance clutched at the bars of his cage and did a little dance, lifting one foot away from the flames, and then the other, and then back again. But he could delay the inevitable only for so long, and his laughs became screams again, so loud and raw that Jon feared he would tear his throat and fall silent before he died instead of after.
Jon could not watch any longer. "Now!" he hissed, and three brothers in the crowd set down their spears, strung their bows, and launched three headless arrows into the heart of the cage. Fluttering and jumping, the cage swinging, Mance was no easy target, but the arrows found their mark nonetheless. One took him in the chest, the other in the neck, and the last in the eye. The shafts caught fire in the heat fast enough, but at least the man in the cage was dead.
He slid down to the bottom of his cage, the screams silenced as his body was slowly engulfed in fire. The wood of the cage soon began crumbling, but by then all evidence of their deed would be burned away. Stannis was scowling, but Jon did not meet his gaze. Mance Rayder had once been a brother of the Night's Watch. For all he had gone on to do afterwards, he was still a black brother, and that much alone entitled him to a decent death.
He who passes the sentence should swing the sword...
"FREE FOLK!" Melisandre started, meeting Jon's eyes for an instant before she turned to the crowd. "Your false gods cannot help you! Your false horn is burned! Your false king brought you only death, despair, defeat... yet here stands your one true king! BEHOLD HIS GLORY!"
A false king in more ways than one, Jon thought as he watched the fire.
Stannis Baratheon drew Lightbringer. The blade radiated with light, shifting between red, yellow and white. The colours of the ritual flame, shining as though a second sun. When Stannis raised the blade above his head, men had to avert their eyes for the light was too bright. The still raging blaze of the execution fire seemed to shy away, dimming and diminishing before the light of Stannis's sword. The rivulets rolling down the sides of the Wall seemed to glow in the distance, suddenly sparkling as they had the day before. Is this the power of king's blood? Jon asked himself. Or is this the power of the Red Witch's tricks?
Tommen had been frustratingly vague about that in his letters thus far. It was clear to Jon that suspicion laced every word and caution lined every statement. He wrote in riddles, and rarely revealed anything of substance save warnings and instructions to burn after reading. Yet if what he said was true - and that was still no sure thing - then there was a chance that this man had not been Mance at all...
Yet how could Tommen know the Red Witch's plans? Jon asked himself. He can hardly see into our minds. So if that Mance was a mummer's trick, then how could he know?
Regardless, it was another reason to keep one eye open.
"Westeros has only one king," Stannis said calmly, though his voice carried across the entire way as he eyed the thousand wildlings behind their stockades. "With this sword I defend my subjects and destroy those who might menace them. Bend the knee and I promise you food, land and safety." The Watch's food and the Watch's land, Jon thought sourly. "Kneel and live," Stannis continued, "or go and die. The choice is yours."
He slipped his sword back into it's scabbard, and the world was dark again.
This would be the test. If it was successful, then perhaps peace was possible. If not, then Jon would have to find another way. Stannis's men went to open up the gates to the stockades, ripping up the stakes from the frozen ground. Jon played his part, raising his hand and lowering it, silently instructing his men to part and form a path.
"Come," Melisandre urged, like a mother speaking to a small child. "Come to the light, or else run to the dark. If you choose life, come to me."
And then they came. Slowly, at first, some limping out from their pen. There was an air of uncertainty about them, as though thinking this a trick. One man met Jon's eyes, and Jon offered him a silent nod. Submit and you will not starve, he said with his gaze. More followed soon after, when they saw that no harm had befallen those who had gone before. A few turned for the forest and wandered into the icy shadows however, ever untrusting. Southrons called these men wildlings. It was telling that they did not agree, and preferred themselves the free folk.
But it was not many who rejected the offer of safety for freedom. No more than one in ten went into the woods, away from Melisandre. More wights for the Others, Jon reflected sadly. Much as he misliked Melisandre, she was still by far the lesser of two evils.
Soon enough, they were even kneeling. The Lord of Bones knelt first, and then the rest followed. Jon shivered at the sight. It is too cold for this mummer's show. The free folk despised kneelers. Jon had advised against this particular requirement, but again he went ignored. Now getting the rest of the chiefs to agree to peace would become just that little bit harder. The majority of them were still behind the Wall, and they would hear of this from those who had chosen to wander north. Even among those who chose to stay, much as he looked, Jon found no true loyalty in the free folk as they were herded to warmth and food. Only hunger.
It was Mance they chose, he thought. Offer them food and plenty and you may make them kneel, but they will never make you king. And it would be his men who would bear the brunt of that. The Watch may be able to make the free folk bleed, and we may be slowly growing, but in the end we are still too small to stop them. It was an impossible circumstance, and that was without accounting for the possibility that both Mance and the Horn of Joramun could be hiding somewhere, unburned and unharmed.
And so in the end all we can do is wait, Jon thought resignedly, and make use of this peace as best we can whilst it still persists.
...
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