Chapter 15: Jon Faces the Dead at Hardhome Garrison

The first indication that something was wrong at Hardhome Garrison arrived not through any of the conventional channels — no rider, no raven, no breathless dispatch from a junior officer with the particular pallor that distinguished genuine alarm from the ordinary misery of northern posting — but through the dogs.

Jon Snow-Stark noticed it three miles out from the garrison perimeter, when the two wolfhounds that Ser Donnis Rall had insisted on bringing from Castle Greenwatch for reasons of morale and companionship stopped simultaneously, planted their feet in the frozen road, and refused, by any persuasion known to man or officer, to take another step northward.

Jon observed this for a moment from horseback. Ser Donnis swore at the dogs in a comprehensive northern dialect. The dogs were unmoved.