Unlike the soaring temperatures near the Sunset Sea, it was growing colder and colder beyond the Wall in Westeros. Even the Milkwater, fed by countless hot springs, had begun to freeze.
The Thenns, who had originally lived in the Thenn valley among the mountains in the far northern Frostfangs beyond the Wall, and their neighbors, the Wildlings of the Hardfoot Tribe, had safely endured more than a decade of winter thanks to the facilities and equipment the Kingdom of Cisland had left at the Fist of the First Men.
The Thenns were descendants of First Men nobles. They spoke the Old Tongue, and most knew a few words of the Common Tongue. The Magnar was their leader, and the Thenns revered their Magnar as a god.
They had well-established laws and a system of governance of their own, making the Thenns more civilized and enlightened than the other Free Folk, much like the people south of the Wall.
Although fierce and skilled in battle, the Thenns were exceptionally united. Above all, they obeyed their Magnar absolutely, making them seem far more disciplined than the other Free Folk.
They were also usually better equipped than the other Free Folk, with bronze helmets, bronze or stone axes, short spears with leaf-shaped points, clothes sewn with bronze plates, and crude leather shields edged with copper. Thus, the Thenns were the only people beyond the Wall to have established an independent kingdom.
Yet during the long winter, they had still lost more than half their population. The elderly, the weak, the sick, and the children had almost all died. Fortunately, they had discovered that performing the Funeral Rite for their people in the Cremation Tower at the Fist of the First Men significantly raised the temperature inside the rune-covered Dragonstone Fortress.
The deaths of