How It All Goes Down
Jon III
- The rangers travel through the haunted forest and Jon rides down the ranks telling everyone they'll be staying at a place called Craster's Keep.
- The keep turns out to be less keep and more wattle-and-daub dump.
- Craster informs Mormont he hasn't seen Benjen Stark in three years, although he does remember Waymar Royce swinging by.
- He claims the empty villages are Mance Rayder's work.
- Mormont gifts Craster a battle axe and wine, and Craster agrees to tell the commander what he knows. He also offers to let the crows stay on his land under the condition that no man touches any of his nineteen wives.
- Jon leaves the keep to tell Sam to attend Mormont, and on his way, he finds that Ghost has scared one of the women by killing two caged rabbits.
- Jon asks if she is one of Craster's daughters, and she tells him she once was, but now she is his wife. So that's a bummer.
- Realizing she should not talk to the crows, the girl/wife runs off.
- Jon and Sam eat one of the rabbits before Sam attends Mormont. They notice there are no sheep in the sheep pen, and oddly enough, no boys running about either.
- The next morning, the same girl/wife, named Gilly, asks Jon if he'll take her away when the crows leave.
- Gilly fears for her unborn child—if it is a boy, Craster will give him to the cold gods.
- Jon refuses her request and later scolds Sam for giving her the idea.
- On the road, though, Jon tells Mormont about the boys at which point he learns Mormont already knows
- Mormont replies that although Craster is an awful man he has his uses for them.
- Thanks to that depraved man, Mormont knows Mance Rayder is gathering the wildlings at the Frostfangs and aims to invade the Seven Kingdoms.
- And Mormont plans to stop him.