Répondre à : ADWD 59 – Jon XII

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Jon, bientôt la fin

Cela commence par un rêve fort étrange

They are all gone. They have abandoned me

/

like spiders. Jon was armored in black ice, but his blade burned red in his fist

Il se réveille et le corbeau est bien disert (pourquoi il oublie « king » ?)

He rose and dressed in darkness, as Mormont’s raven muttered across the room. “Corn,” the bird said, and, “King,” and, “Snow, Jon Snow, Jon Snow.” That was queer. The bird had never said his full name before, as best Jon could recall.

Au petit-dej, Bowen lui dit que tout va bien. Est-ce que cela veut dire qu’il a déjà décidé de son action future et n’espère plus que son opposition verbale suffira ?

Heureusement, il y a Edd

“How goes the restoration work?” he asked his old steward.

“Ten more years should do it,” Tollett replied in his usual gloomy tone. “Place was overrun with rats when we moved in. The spearwives killed the nasty buggers. Now the place is overrun with spearwives. There’s days I want the rats back.”

Ce snow qui se balade dans le texte…

“The Wall will weep. And winter almost on us. It’s unnatural, m’lord. A bad sign, you ask me.”

Jon smiled. “And if it were to snow?”

“A worse sign.”

Jon va accueillir les sauvageons en faisant bien attention à son image.

Tormund called. “Guards, is it? Now where’s the trust in that, crow?”

“You brought more men than I did.”

“So I did. Come here by me, lad. I want my folk to see you. I got thousands ne’er saw a lord commander, grown men who were told as boys that your rangers would eat them if they didn’t behave. They need to see you plain, a long-faced lad in an old black cloak. They need to learn that the Night’s Watch is naught t’be feared.”

That is a lesson I would sooner they never learned.

Les cent otages passent en premier. L’auteur insiste bien sur la diversité des apparences

Elsewise they came in every shape and size and color. He saw tall boys and short boys, brown-haired boys and black-haired boys, honey blonds and strawberry blonds and redheads kissed by fire, like Ygritte. He saw boys with scars, boys with limps, boys with pockmarked faces. Many of the older boys had downy cheeks or wispy little mustachios, but there was one fellow with a beard as thick as Tormund’s. Some dressed in fine soft furs, some in boiled leather and oddments of armor, more in wool and seal-skins, a few in rags. One was naked. Many had weapons: sharpened spears, stone-headed mauls, knives made of bone or stone or dragonglass, spiked clubs, tanglenets, even here and there a rust-eaten old sword. The Hornfoot boys walked blithe and barefoot through the snowdrifts. Other lads had bear-paws on their boots and walked on top of the same drifts, never sinking through the crust. Six boys arrived on horses, two on mules. A pair of brothers turned up with a goat. The biggest hostage was six-and-a-half feet tall but had a baby’s face; the smallest was a runty boy who claimed nine years but looked no more than six.

Oh tiens, une tête connue

 “That one’s a whelp of Varamyr Sixskins. You remember Varamyr, Lord Crow?”

He did. “The skinchanger.”

“Aye, he was that. A vicious little runt besides. Dead now, like as not. No one’s seen him since the battle.”

On a aussi deux filles qui tentent de s’infiltrer. Jon raconte très brièvement l’histoire de Danny Flint puis les envoie chez Edd

Ensuite passent 500 guerriers

“You might have sent the women first,” he said to Tormund. “The mothers and the maids.”

The wildling gave him a shrewd look. “Aye, I might have. And you crows might decide to close that gate. A few fighters on t’other side, well, that way the gate stays open, don’t it?” He grinned. “I bought your bloody horse, Jon Snow. Don’t mean that we can’t count his teeth. Now don’t you go thinking me and mine don’t trust you. We trust you just as much as you trust us.”

Et cette phrase lourde de sens (cf article sur les sauvageons)

 None knelt, but many gave him their oaths.

Ce serment est aussi bien particulier

The warrior witch Morna removed her weirwood mask just long enough to kiss his gloved hand and swear to be his man or his woman, whichever he preferred.

Les trésors récoltés sont parfois standards, parfois particuliers

One man surrendered a shirt of silver scales that had surely been made for some great lord. Another produced a broken sword with three sapphires in the hilt.

And there were queerer things: a toy mammoth made of actual mammoth hair, an ivory phallus, a helm made from a unicorn’s head, complete with horn.

Un peu de vérité pour Tormund ?

“You’re a good man, Tormund Giantsbabe. For a wildling.”

“Better than most, might be. Not so good as some.”

Les moments de confidence approchent, déjà pour le Cor

“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.”

Jon turned in his saddle, frowning. And Joramun blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. That huge horn with its bands of old gold, incised with ancient runes … had Mance Rayder lied to him, or was Tormund lying now? If Mance’s horn was just a feint, where is the true horn?

Puis, les Autres

“Not here,” he mumbled, “not this side o’ your Wall.” The old man glanced uneasily toward the trees in their white mantles. “They’re never far, you know. They won’t come out by day, not when that old sun’s shining, but don’t think that means they went away. Shadows never go away. Might be you don’t see them, but they’re always clinging to your heels.”

En chemin, ils ont été harcelés par les Autres et se sentent impuissants

 A man can fight the dead, but when their masters come, when the white mists rise up … how do you fight a mist, crow? Shadows with teeth … air so cold it hurts to breathe, like a knife inside your chest … you do not know, you cannot know … can your sword cut cold?

Le reste des gens passe, ça prend toute la journée. Il y a même un gigantesque sanglier

Bowen Marsh was waiting for him south of the Wall, with a tablet full of numbers. “Three thousand one hundred and nineteen wildlings passed through the gate today,” the Lord Steward told him. “Sixty of your hostages were sent off to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower after they’d been fed. Edd Tollett took six wagons of women back to Long Barrow. The rest remain with us.”

“Not for long,” Jon promised him. “Tormund means to lead his own folk to Oakenshield within a day or two. The rest will follow, as soon as we sort where to put them.”

“As you say, Lord Snow.” The words were stiff. The tone suggested that Bowen Marsh knew where he would put them.

Châteaunoir est rempli de vie, avec tous ces gens, ça change

Mais le chapitre se termine sur la fameuse lettre de Cotter Pyke

At Hardhome, with six ships. Wild seas. Blackbird lost with all hands, two Lyseni ships driven aground on Skane, Talon taking water. Very bad here. Wildlings eating their own dead. Dead things in the woods. Braavosi captains will only take women, children on their ships. Witch women call us slavers. Attempt to take Storm Crow defeated, six crew dead, many wildlings. Eight ravens left. Dead things in the water. Send help by land, seas wracked by storms. From Talon, by hand of Maester Harmune.

Cotter Pyke had made his angry mark below. “Is it grievous, my lord?” asked Clydas. “Grievous enough.” Dead things in the wood. Dead things in the water. Six ships left, of the eleven that set sail. Jon Snow rolled up the parchment, frowning. Night falls, he thought, and now my war begins.

Un chapitre qui se focalise quasi exclusivement sur le passage des sauvageons (et beaucoup d’infos dispersées), pour finir sur un suspense et des perspectives bien sombres.

Je sers la Garde et c'est ma joie. For this night, and all the nights to come
MJ de Chanson d'Encre et de Sang (2013-2020) et de parties en ligne de jeu de rôle
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DOH : #TeamLoyalistsForeverUntilNow. L’élu des 7, le Conseiller-Pyat Pree qui ne le Fut Jamais