Prologue

I'm going off memory here, so bare with me ...

Prologue

We're given a little insight as to what occurs beyond the Wall in the far north of Westeros.  And through the short-live experiences of three men, Gared, Will, and Ser Waymar Royce, we learn a little bit about The Night Watch, The Others and wildlings.  (And if we didn't really learn that, and I'm spouting nonsense, I'm going from memory.  So STFU.)

The men are out on a "ranging", which I can only assume is to wrangle wildlings and kill The Others as they crop up since the intent of a ranging wasn't exactly described.  Will is confident that a band of wildlings he saw ahead were dead, but upon returning at the behest of Ser Waymar Royce, the bodies are gone.

Will attempts to climb a tree to find where they went; meanwhile the cocky and egotistical Ser Waymar Royce is attacked by what we can only assume to be The Others.  Through Martin's descriptions, my immediate thoughts turned to Undeworld vampires.  Able to hide in the shadows, hunting at night, with piercing blue eyes.  So are they vampries?  Do they turn their prey?  I can't tell yet, but Royce gets his ass handed to him by the crystalline swords these baddies carry, and then they leave his corpse in the snow.  Will shimmies out of the tree and attempts to take Royce's gem encrusted hilt (to prove he didn't kill Royce?) but Gared shows up and throttles the boy.

Afterthoughts

We're immediately introduced to three characters, two of which are now dead.  When people told me not to get attached to these characters, I was prepared for some pretty heart-wrenching character deaths.  I'm worried that, with how easily Martin killed off two characters in a single chapter, the same chapter in which they were introduced, I will never even get a chance to become attached to a character because everyone's going to die before that.