Massacre at Hardhome

Jon Snow travels with Tormund to Hardhome to offer the surviving wildling chiefs an alliance: join the Night's Watch against an enemy that flies no one's banner. The meeting is tense, with centuries of mistrust sitting between both sides.

As the first boats load survivors, the woods around the settlement start to move. The army of the dead falls on the beach and on the caves where the wildlings had sheltered; among the fallen is Karsi, one of the chiefs who had accepted Jon's offer.

In the chaos, Jon manages to kill a White Walker with a Valyrian steel sword, the first proof the blade works against them. But the Night King, standing on the cliff above, raises the dead — wildlings and Watch men alike — and sets them back on their feet as wights. Those left escape by sea; thousands stay behind, no longer corpses but part of the army they had been fighting.

After the battle at Castle Black, thousands of surviving wildlings follow Mother Mole to Hardhome, trusting in a vision of hers: a fleet crossing the narrow sea to carry them somewhere safe.

The promise only half comes true. In Braavos, Arya Stark learns why the Sealord has seized a galley, the Buenamor: it was carrying women and children from Hardhome, trapped by two Lysene pirate ships that had offered to rescue them and, once at sea, chained them up to sell as slaves.

Eleven ships sail out of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea — Braavosi, Lysene, and Watch vessels — under Cotter Pyke aboard the Garra, to get out those still waiting. Storms tear the fleet apart along the way: one ship is lost with its whole crew, two run aground at Skane, the Garra itself starts taking on water. In the woods and in the water around Hardhome, things that shouldn't move start to.

With the sea closed off by the storm, Jon Snow decides to send a second expedition overland, led by Tormund Giantsbane, to reach the wildlings the fleet can't.