Prologue

Location: The Haunted Forest south of the Wall

Main Characters: Gared, Will, Ser Waymer Royce, The Others

Referenced Characters: Old Bear Mormont, Mallisters, Maester Aemon, Robert, Wildlings

About the characters:

Gared was an old man past fifty. He had spend forty years in the Night's Watch

What is Night's Watch?

Will had been four years on the Wall. He had been a poacher before he joined the Night's Watch. Mallister freeriders caught him poaching on their bucks and it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand.

Looks like Will joined the Night's Watch as a punishment. Why is Night's Watch a punishment? What is putting on the black mean?

No one could move through the woods as silent as Will and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.

Black Brothers - Are they other members of the Night's Watch?

Ser Waymer Royce was their commander. He was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. He had been a sworn brother of the Night's Watch for less than half a year.

All three of them are part of Night's Watch which looks like an organisation at this moment. They are on a ranging to track a band of Wildling raiders.

Who are these Wildlings?

Will saw a camp of eight men and women which he believed were dead. Their bodies lay fallen on the ground, some against the rocks. None moving. There was a firepit but no fire was burning in the camp. He did not see any blood. There were some weapons - some swords, few bows, a double bladed heavy iron axe.

Gared wanted to leave as the Wildlings were dead. He believed what Will saw. Their commander, Royce, however was not convinced and wanted proof.

Looks like Wildlings are just normal men and women.

He felt that Gared lacked courage. He even mocked him by saying "Do the dead frighten you?" with the hint of a smile.

Gared was not accustomed to being mocked but he swallowed his pride as he was nervous about something. Something was different tonight. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and impacable. Gared had felt it too.

Is this some bad omen?

When Royce asked, how those Wildlings died, Gared said that it was the cold. Nothing burns like the cold. Gared had lost 2 ears, 3 toes and the little finger on his left hand to cold. Royce doesn't believe that the cold killed those Wildlings as the wall was weeping (melting snow?), so it was not that cold to kill eight grown men, that too when they had means of making fire. This shows that Royce is a man of logic. Royce asked Will to lead him there to see those men himself.

They reached near the camp. Gared stayed with the horses and Will and Royce went ahead on foot. Will climbed a sentinel tree to look for the bodies but they were gone.

Where did the bodies go?

But the double edged sword was there, which makes Will realise that something was indeed wrong.

The Others appeared.

They are described as "Pale shapes", "white shadow in the darkness", "tall, gaunt and hard as old bones with flesh pale as milk". Their eyes were blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes , a blue that burned like ice.

It suddenly became very cold and both Royce and Will could feel their presence.

The Others' voice was like cracking of ice on a winter lake.

The Others seem like they are not human, they are some supernatural beings one should be scared of. They are constantly compared to cold and icy.

The Other had his sword - "No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing,  a ghost light that played around its edges and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.". It shows that the sword was supernatural and lethal, invincible.

Gared and Will both share the uneasy feeling of something being wrong. They were afraid and felt the chill. Were the Others following them?

While Will was perched on the tree, the Others surrounded Royce and they duel with their swords until they killed Royce. Will saw this from the tree and couldn't dare coming down. He came down when the Others left. Royce's body lay facedown in the snow. Will tried to collect the shards of Royce's sword as a proof of what happened. He thought of Gared, who was still waiting near the horses.

Ser Waymer Royce stood over him, with tattered clothes and ruined face. His eyes burned like blue. He strangled Will with his icy cold hands.

How did Royce become alive again?

How his eyes changed from grey to blue?

Why is he described as icy? How are the Others related to Ice/cold.

What happened to Gared?

This is the prologue for The Song of Ice and Fire and has elements of both Ice and Fire.