Nadden

On 3/5/2023 at 10:29 AM, Craving Peaches said:

and once when describing men's breath mingling with a horses' during Gared's execution. So the only other time where two people's breath is mingling it is related to marriage. So I think it is quite significant.

In Bran I, Gared is indirectly compared with the length of the sword “Ice” and the width of “Ice” is as wide across as a man’s hand. Horses and time are also measured with hands.

So “Ice”, a symbolic time piece is associated with the oathbreaker and a horse.

Gared also seems to symbolize the lower casting mold for “Ice”. A casting mold is made of greasy sand in a box frame with an imprint of the sword. 

Ragged, like the right margin of this post, can be used to describe the imprint in the sand.

And the negative imprint in the sand is like the opposite of the sword.

Thus, oathbreaker could be considered a negative impression of Oathkeeper.

And recall Oathkeeper is one of the two swords that “Ice” is split into.

So Gared, ragged and greasy, bound to a wall and a height the same length as “Ice” sounds like the drag component of an “Ice” casting mold. Gared in reverse (deraG) is also a homophone for “drag”. 
 

Cope is the top half of the casting mold. And “cope” goes nicely with a horse. Horse “cope” or horscope. Horoscope is a time diagram of the heavens, showing the relative position of planets and the signs of the zodiac, for use in calculating births, foretelling events in a person's life, etc.

Horse =  honor     = Oathkeeper  = cope

Time?

Gared = dishonor= Oathbreaker = drag

Sand?

8 minutes ago, Sandy Clegg said:

How does it work with Kevan’s final scene? The children symbolising the Others? I’ve always wondered about that - the two scenes have a lot of parallels. Kevan even ‘recognises’ some of the children before they stab him. Do we think that George may be implying that the Others are more than they appear to be? Maybe they have been ‘among us’ all the time - us being the Nights Watch/wildlings.

The children in Kevan’s final scene parallel the watchers in Waymar’s dueling scene. 
 

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They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five … Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.

There are a total of six known children of the forest (Ash, Black Knife, Coals, Leaf, Scales, Snowylocks). The “first” that Will is thinkingly identifying is the far-eyes half- hid in branches of the ironwood from earlier. 
 

The pale shapes and the white shadow and the watchers ( All purposely vague terms) are all different from each other.

Remember in the show how they depicted the creation of the first Other? ( A shard of frozen fire in a man)

In the prologue we see the full cycling—— part of a man in frozen fire then a shard of frozen fire in a man.

The Other symbolizes our internal counterparts of hate and desire or love and hate.

I’d love to share more….

What other parallels were you seeing?

Do you see the symbolism in Waymar’s eyes
 

4 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

these ideas are intriguing, do you have any more details?

Specifically about the Cotf or the mother direwolf or the Waymar dueling scene?

7 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

Thanks, but no. That's a little too far off the deep end, even for me.

C’mon John. I asked somebody what they saw when they looked into Waymar’s eyes and they said…

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Blue?

Thanks for asking:)

If definitely appears like it. But that’s the intent. 

When looking at Ser Waymar Royce, the lead protagonist in the prologue, it’s important to keep in mind the point of view. Everything we see, hear, and know about Waymar comes from Will. Even our feelings toward Waymar begins with Will. For example, notice how Will addresses Waymar all throughout the prologue. He refers to him using the diminutive term “lordling”, something less than or younger than a lord. Eight times the term is used; but only once out loud and it’s Gared that uses it then. Will only ever thinks it. He mostly says, “m’lord” out loud. And once, he uses both syllables and says “my lord”; but he’s feeling insolent and being sarcastic. It’s obvious that Will doesn’t respect Waymar and thinks he’s too inexperienced to be in command. The point I’m making is we’re seeing what Will thinks he sees. And he thinks he’s seeing Waymar reanimated.

It’s similar to how people believe in ghosts. It’s the easiest explanation for something they don’t understand and they don’t have to think. It’s the lazy answer. Martin seemingly gives a hat tip to Vic Tandy, a British engineer, by placing a shivering sword in the chapter. Vic Tandy gives a plausible reason for ghost sightings. Check him out in Wikipedia. Here

In similar fashion to Vic Tandy, we find the answers for what Will thinks he’s seeing by taking a look at the sword that was shivering just moments before.

In (ADWD, a Jon XII chapter) when Jon, watching the wildlings pass through the Wall at Castle Black, sees a man produce a broken hilt with three sapphires. Can this broken hilt be proof? Proof that Waymar is still alive, possibly. Did the man have an injured right eye? At this point we can still only speculate.  But the hilt certainly brings to mind the hilt Will snatched up.

Waymar’s longsword is described having more than one, quite likely 3, jewels in its hilt.

Now consider the “Blue” that you mention. It describes the pupil burning blue. This matches what appears to be the other (pun intended) set of blue eyes in the chapter. They were “a blue that burned like ice”. Three burning blue eyes. And in both cases Waymar’s sword hilt is in close proximity.

Taking a closer look:

On Waymar’s hilt the jewels, described as glittering in the moonlight, are quite likely the cause of the pale shapes that Will sees from up in the sentinel. His gems are catching and throwing light.  Certainly “a blue that burned like ice” would be a good way to describe sapphires in the moonlight.

Now consider some of the wordplay Martin uses to hint at these thoughts.

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The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.

The eyes were “fixed” on the longsword that had moonlight running cold along the metal. So literally Martin has Will think that the burning blue eyes, that we suspect are gems, fixed on the longsword with jewels in the hilt that we suspect are sapphires. Seems like a good hint, thanks George.
 

And like the horses at the ironwood tree, these eyes were guarded (guarded: fixed on the guard of the hilt) and the third, bigger gem, was tied or fixed well away from the others, on the pommel or lower limb. And like Waymar’s horse, it was the wrong mount for a ranging. This comparison of the hilt and the jewels to a tree and horses isn’t just my idea. Martin does it also when he describes the hilt “like a tree struck by lightning”. Not coincidentally the pale sword, partly responsible for breaking Waymar’s sword, in the duel, is described as dancing with pale blue light. The main point here is the arrangement of the jewels on Waymar’s hilt.

The two on the guard line up with the eyes of the gaunt, pale, milky white flesh of the shadow’s face in front of Waymar. If you’ll recall, Waymar paused sword, trembling on high, at the same time the Other halts. From Will’s point of view in the sentinel, the glittering jewels and the burning blue eyes line up perfectly. In perfect contrast, Will went up the tree to look for fire and found something that burned like Ice. This obviously burns into his memory. Because the next time he sees a jewel he thinks the same thing.

Note the sequence of the actions when Will finds the hilt a few feet away. He is looking around warily when he picks it up, not looking at it. And then Waymar shows up just as he is starting to consider the broken hilt. Will doesn’t realize it but he is holding the hilt, pommel up, between him and Waymar’s face. Will then closed his eyes to pray as the broken hilt fell fell from nerveless fingers.

The blue eye is a sapphire gem in the pommel of Waymar’s broken sword hilt.

This gemstone fixed into Waymar’s sword contrasts the shard transfixing Waymar’s  left eye from the other sword.

What do you see when you look into the left eye?

The End

I won’t push this anymore. But I think I make a good starting point here.

On 2/15/2022 at 8:29 AM, Corvo the Crow said:

Waymar's sword was drawn before he even laid eyes on the Other. Other walked with his weapon drawn, yes, but he was walking towards a man who was brandishing a sword. So the authority you are talking about would be the Other and not Waymar.

They both drew their sword at the exact same time:)

On 2/17/2022 at 12:39 PM, Castellan said:

My take is the Other emerges to size him up. When Waymar raises and thus displays his sword the Other 'watches the moonlight running coldly along the metal" and  for a minute Will dares to hope because he sees the Other is considering his sword - he hopes with fear. But the Other, and his 'twins' see that this is not a flaming sword and proceed to kill him. They are not showing honour but the caution that an animal or a human would show before attacking a new foe. 

 

The prologue is a prologue to the whole series and shows the Others emerging and the failure of Waymar because he is not the last hero or Azor Ahai - his sword is made of plain cold steel. The Other's sword is made of some unearthly icy substance.

The Other does emerge; but at the same time Waymar emerges from the white of the new-fallen snow from the ridge behind him. Waymar steps in front of an obsidian black mirror. He sees a white shadow of himself and challenges himself. The challenge appears to be excepted, thus the pause, and he dances with his shadow. 
 

The watcher are the children of the forest who had been; not dead; not sleeping; but meditating near the black mirror. One was scrying. 
 

Neither Waymar nor Will actually die.

On 1/19/2023 at 9:33 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Of course, GRRM needs readers to understand that supernatural powers really do exist in ASOIAF, and so we get an early glimpse of the Others and the animated corpse of Waymar Royce right at the start of the series. Yet afterwards, such moments are few and far between. And even that AGOT Prologue is structured around Waymar’s certainty about naturalistic explanations for what Will reported, a stance that we soon see pervades Westeros, largely thanks to the maesters.

To your point, reality is based on perception. And in the scene with Waymar left eye bleeding with blood red as fire and the other eye burning blue like ice we are lead to believe that he has been transformed into some other worldly being. In truth, Will forgets he is holding the broken hilt of Waymar’s bejeweled hilt in his nerveless fingers pommel side up. There’s a sapphire that matches the other two sapphires he saw fixed on the guard of the hilt when Waymar held it on high to begin a duel with his own shadow. 
 

The white shadow he fought was his own in an obsidian black mirror, “the great rock”. The children of the forest laugh at him when a piece or shard of frozen fire breaks away and lands in his eye. The children had been meditating, not dead, not sleeping, scrying.

But this is the beauty of Martin’s writing. We to start believing in ghostly beings.

In fact, it was Vic Tandy’s shivering sword, just like here, that helped debunk the myth.

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A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. (AGOT, Prologue)

Foreshadowing 

On 3/23/2023 at 8:00 AM, John Suburbs said:

What happened to the wildlings that Will saw initially? Most people jump quickly to, the Others killed them. But if so, how? There were no signs of a battle, no blood, nothing disturbed, weapons casually set aside, even the far-eyes was just dead in her tree. If the Others can kill without violence, why did they use violence against Waymar? And why would they kill the wildlings, march them off as wights, then return to the camp?

Will thought the were frozen to death; Waymar thought they were asleep but they were meditating. They weren’t wildlings; they were the children of the forest.

There were no Others in the Prologue.

There was no violence committed against Waymar. Waymar was in a sword fight with his own reflection.

On 3/23/2023 at 8:00 AM, John Suburbs said:

Who raised Waymar, and why? Again, the quick answer is the Others. But did they? After killing Waymar, the Others just melt away into the forest and Waymar lays there dead for hours, "while the moon crept slowly across the black sky." The Others are long gone by the time Will climbs down and only then does Waymar rise. So why would they wait there all this time, just out of sight, only to make their new wight kill Will? And why wouldn't they use their wildling wights to kill all three of them?

Waymar never died. He was simply injured. 

These are simple answers that certainly need more explanation. However, it requires a deep dive into the text. If you’re interested let me know. Here’s a start.

Here’s the beginning to a piece that begins to o explain it all.:

“Fire and Ice”, the very antithesis of the entire series, is literally starring us, directly, in the eyes and most can’t see it. And when you do finally see it you’ll realize it’s just the beginning. But if you hope to see it your’re going to have to first get out of your own head and start seeing everything from another perspective. For some that’s difficult.

Today I got into great discussion about several parallel scenes. The primary scene I was interested in was the Prologue of AGOT. 
 

In Ned’s fever dream it’s seven vs. three. The obvious parallel with those scenes are the 3 NW men(Gared, Waymar, and Will) and (Ser Gerold Hightower, Ser Authur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent).

But what about the seven?

Today I think I’ve figured it out. The seven are a Greenseer and 6 Cotf. 
 

The seer, the couple sitting up against a rock, staring at his reflection in “the great rock”.

The Cotf, are the watchers. The ones that emerged from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them… four…five… The twin however is the one in the ironwood. 

The one in the ironwood, is the far-eyes also a watcher.

When Will first saw them they were all meditating, not fallen or sleeping.

The Kevan Lannister death scene help to confirm the Cotf in the Waymar dueling scene. 
 

The mother direwolf scene also help to identify the Cotf in Waymar’s scene.

Ghost would be the white haired Cotf

On 2/19/2023 at 5:47 PM, Seams said:

(His first wife was a Royce, and we see Ser Waymar Royce in the opening scene of AGoT at a moment when a long-closed door has been opened.) 

Are you seeing the “great rock” as the long closed door?

On 2/5/2023 at 4:51 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

For reasons still unclear, GRRM has peppered in his story relating to Red-Green-Blue color trios.

The photoreceptor cells in the eyes each absorbs light according to its spectral sensitivity, which is determined by the photo receptor proteins expressed in the cell. Humans have three classes of cones that absorb different wavelengths of light. 
 

Visible light is usually defined as having wave lengths in the range of  400–700 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terahertz, between the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. Red, Blue and Green are the wavelengths perceived by the human eye.

People who are colorblind, such as albinos, will have some differences.

For many of the readers of ASOIAF, the ones  that have spent countless hours exploring and rereading the books, the ones that have spent time on discussion boards and watching YouTube videos, the ones that like to analyze the text, I think I’ve found an interesting parallel.

Comparing the second scene in AGOT, Prologue and the second scene in AGOT, Bran 1:

In the first scene of the Prologue, the young ranger Will has already reported back to his green commander, Ser Waymar Royce. Waymar, deciding to press on, is quarreling with the older ranger. Dragging Will into the quarrel, he orders Will to tell him again what he saw. All the details. Will, tracking a band of wildling raiders, came upon a camp two miles farther on, over a ridge. He tells the young lordling,

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It’s “…hard beside a stream," Will said. "I got close as I dared. There's eight of them, men and women both. No children I could see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow's pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still."(AGOT, Prologue)

The lean-to here, a temporary shelter, is likely made of animal hide and branches. Both dead. The hide of a stag is commonly used as the cover for many lean-tos. And  broken tree branches with the small twigs snapped off are placed sloping against, in this case, the rock to support the cover. In this scene the snow has pretty well covered the lean-to. It’s not hard to imagine it as a snowdrift up against a rock. Later, in his head Will describes the rock hard beside a stream as, “the great rock”. There’s a couple sitting up against it.

Here’s the quote about the couple,

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"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"

 

Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like."(AGOT, Prologue)

 

With good chapter symmetry, the imagery here I believe parallels the second scene in the next chapter.

There too, we have a huge dark shape hard beside a stream with a snowdrift up against it. And it’s later revealed, when Ned holds it up for all to see, that there’s a foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off in the dark shape. The antler, too me, symbolizes a broken branch with the twigs snapped off. And it’s likely from a stag. A stag with the same hide as the lean-to. With this logic, the dead stag should be under the snowdrift. Were Robb and Bran standing in the waist-high draft right next to the stag? The dark shape is, of course, the dead mother direwolf.

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"A freak," Greyjoy said. "Look at the size of it."

 

Bran's heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift to his brothers' side.

 

Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's kennel.

(AGOT, Prologue)

 

The idea of stone direwolves comes up again later. And the antler and branches have both been figuratively associated with swords in both these scenes.

So what if, the rock and the direwolf, and the lean-to and the stag, are parallel elements….? Then we can begin to infer Other things…

TL:DR This post attempts to add perspective to the events of the Prologue of AGOT using Martins language and the clues he provides.

His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. They were all gone. All the bodies were gone.

On a ridge, outlined nobly against the stars stood a vaulting grey-green sentinel. A cold wind rose up billowing through the branches of the great tree causing them to stir like something half-alive.

Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago, including the huge double-bladed battle-axe. Waymar, spotting it, thinks... A valuable weapon to go with his fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail. It would be his. He could see himself with his moleskin gloves holding the reins of his big black destrier, his fancy new castle-forged sword at his side and this cruel heavy-looking iron axe on his back. He would have to remove his thick sable black cloak when he rode through the gates of Castle Black.

Listening to the darkness, Will could tell that there was something wrong. He couldn’t explain it. Though he could feel it. And it made his hackles rise. The uneasy nervous tension brought a bitter taste to his mouth. A taste that only the tang of his cold iron dirk comforted. Old stories of ghostly spirits had long ago given this forest it’s name. And now they filled his gut with fear. A fear like one feels after hearing the roar of a lion; except without the roar. Mother Nature was speaking.

Whispering, Will says a prayer to the nameless gods of this wood. And, as he always did, unsheathes his dirk and places it between his teeth.

Then, damp and muddy, Will quickly begins to ascend the great evergreen as Ser Waymar Royce had commanded. His hands are soon sticky with sap and the cold wind was cutting through him. In his haste, he becomes disoriented and lost among the needles. The strange indigestible fear was growing worse and more intense. He continues to climb, looking for the light of a fire.

Moonlight, from a half-moon now full risen, shone down on an empty clearing.

Down below, cavalier with his sword in hand, Waymar enters the abandoned campsite. He heads toward the huge double-bladed battle-axe, still lying on the ground baiting him. His splendid looking sword seized the light and led the way.  There were three sapphires fixed on the hilt. The gems captured the moon’s light. They burned deep with a icy blue fire. They cast pale lights in the shape of its many facets.

Out of the corner of his eye, pale shapes dapple and glided through the darkness. Unable to discern the source of it, Will attempts to call down a warning. But the words froze in his throat. However, when he opens his mouth the dirk he was biting on, unknowingly falls. The blade in his mouth, keeping his hands free for climbing; the one giving him comfort is lost. “Better a knife”, he had warned Waymar. “A longsword will tangle you up.” The irony here is rich. The longsword that might have tangled a person up, because of the trees pressing so close, is instead a knife which falls, threading its way through the thicket to the lower branches of the great green sentinel where Waymar had gained the ridge, where he had slashed at the branches. The Old Gods of this wood will now have revenge. The lower branches of the great green sentinel shed their burden of snow with a soft thud.

Plop! Waymar spun. Will, turning his head searches. His eyes sweep back-and-forth. Will glimpses a shadow. He saw white in the darkness. And then nothing. Waymar calls out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Time halts.

Uncovered with no whiskers, Waymar’s face is unshadowed and awash with moonlight. His image is briefly caught in a reflection on the smooth black surface of a huge naturally occurring black stone mirror of obsidian. A clear sheet of ice had formed over the great stone. Soot from a near by fire pit had covered its’ surface before the frost. For a moment, the image of Waymar’s face appears gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh as pale as milk in the stone. And then it was gone. The longsword’s reflection glows with a ghostly light at it’s edges and vanishes when seen edge-on. But at the right angle it becomes alive with moonlight. The sword, bathed in the moon’s light, appears to be a shimmering blue, thin, translucent, shard of crystal.  Will thinks to himself, “It’s sharper than any razor”.

Like his sword, Waymar’, at the right angle vanishes. His cloak, hair and gloves conceal him. They absorb the moon’s light making him invisible in the stone.

His reflection makes no sound. All at once tge dirk hits the ground and Waymar hears a sound directly behind him.

Suddenly wary he calls up, “Will, Where are you? Can you see anything?”. Turning in a slow circle he sees nothing. But Will felt the presence of CotF watching. Yet he too saw nothing. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”, Waymar demanded. Still turning, Waymar throws his long sable cloak back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. He feels cold.

Intensely, they listen all around. The woods give answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, the distant hoot of an owl.

Will recognizes the hoot, a snow owl. Then while perched in a tree, thinks he sees a bird. Is this a coincidence? Or is he simply seeing just another reflection? Perhaps he’s becoming a lunatic as he starts to suspect that the moonlight is playing tricks on him. Perhaps it’s all of the above. It doesn’t seem to matter now. The wheels of this scene have been put into motion by an ambitious, materialistic, inexperienced, fool. And a tired and cold, young ranger with his lucky dagger(unlucky) wait.

Royce spots his reflection, tall it was. He exhales in a long steady breath. He is readying himself. Eagerly looking for battle,  he doesn’t realize that he’s seeing his own reflection. Embarrassingly, his voice cracks as he warns the image, "Come no farther.”

His armor now visible in the stone is changing colors as he moves; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees so it seemed. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step he took.

The wind stops. Both Waymar and his reflection halting, the young knight thinks that this is his moment. Looking like a man of the Night’s Watch, a boy no longer, he stands with his sword lifted high overhead, defiant.

It’s the stance of a Warrior. The position is a challenge. The pose is an invite. It signals to one’s opponent that he is ready to do battle, ready to dance. His reflection appears to be ready also. The style of this fight is known to be called the “Warrior’s Dance”. The pose lasts for serval moments.

Waymar is thinking, he would not let fear paralyze him. His fear will inform him. It doesn’t. The gaunt figure appears to accept his challenge. Next Waymar thinks, fear will quicken him.

Will, still looking down, mistakes the two sapphires in the guard of Waymar’s hilt for the eyes of the Other Waymar. He mistakes Waymar’s challenge for hesitation. He sees hesitation in the Other Waymar. It is in that moment, for a heart beat, that he dares to hope. Waymar would weaponize his fear and accomplish the mission.

And now it begins. “Dance with me then!”, says Waymar bravely.

The watchers emerged from the shadows. Three of them…four…five…Waymar may have felt them, but he never saw them, never heard them. All around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. They were the Children of the Forest. One of them had been watching the rangers all day. She was implacable and loved them not. They had set a trap to scare away any would be intruders. They made no move to interfere.

Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He didn’t.

Will sees, the sword in the stone, pale as milkglass, alive with moonlight come shivering through the air.

The blades came together in a rush of steel and shadow. There was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like nails on a chalkboard or an animal screaming in pain. Royce, like his shadow, checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again. His reflection matches his every timely move.

Again and again the swords meet, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade  was white with frost. The tip of his sword had dipped into the little half-frozen stream as he began to break form and tire. With each flurry the their swords danced with pale blue light.

Then Royce’s parry seemingly comes a beat too late. Royce, blind with exhaustion, doesn’t see the piercing blow. Will’s eyes go to Waymar as he cries out. Royce had not given notice to the snow-covered lean-to. The stab beneath his arm had come not from his reflection but from an arrow, tipped with dragonglass.  The lean-to had been put up against the great rock and a bow had been lying in wait. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red.

Will thinks, “Now it ends.” and presses his face hard against the trunk of the sentinel.

Lifting his frost-covered longsword Waymar snarls and finds his fury. "For Robert!" he shouts. With both hands he swings his sword around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it.

Will, watching the reaction of Waymar’s reflection doesn’t see fatigue. He sees a playful laziness as the blades meet again. And when the blades touch the ice cracks. Will, hearing the ice crack like that on a winter lake, believes he’s listening to a language unknown to him. He believes it to be mocking Waymar’s last words, “For Robert!”, still echoing in his head.

Waymar’s sword shatters. The pieces of volcanic glass and metal mix to form a rain of needles. And a scream echoes through the forest. A shard of glass transfixed Royce’s left eye. Royce goes to his knees, shrieking, he covers his eyes, as blood wells between his fingers.

The Children of the Forest, the watchers, move in. Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm out-flung. They see that the shards had slashed through Waymar’s soft sable cloak in a dozen places. Ironically, he lies there, not in a warrior’s pose, but in child’s pose. A boy. The high-pitched sharp emotionless chatter of their voices was something akin to laughter in Will’s head. They had not butchered Waymar but tried to help him. Will had missed it. He had closed his eyes soon after they had moved in. His fear had misinformed him. When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, they were gone.

Will had stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down.

Now Waymar, regaining consciousness and hearing Will approach, lies in wait. He would have his revenge on the brother that abandoned him.

Will found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched up by the blade end or what was left of it.. The broken sword would be his proof of the prophecy. But Will didn’t know that. Gared knew. And so did that old bear Mormont and Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry.

Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce, his fine clothes a tatter, stood over him,. The pommel of the hilt between their faces. It never came into Will’s focus. His focus went to Waymar’s left eye. The shard pierced the pupil and reflected the moon’s light making it look like Waymar had a white pupil. It was blind and blood ran like tears down his face. The right eye was uninjured and it saw. Will mistakes the icy blue fiery gem in the pommel for Waymar’s  right eye. In his arrogance and need to feel important he had not considered what the sapphires would do in the moonlight. The blood on his gloves was evidence of the tricks that moonlight can play on one’s mind. The blood was black and not red from an effect he didn’t understand.

Waymar didn’t know it but the Children of the Forest only intended to scare him away with their little trap; but he ignored his fear. But none of this would excuse Will.

Waymar was a failure on his first ranging and there would be no witness.

Will, thoughts frozen in fear, closed his eyes to pray. The broken sword fell from his nerveless fingers. At one point, Waymar had thought Will handsome. Now his fingers brushed Will’s cheek, like soft silk. And then closed around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold. It was cold butchery.

On 1/24/2023 at 4:28 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

The Others made no sound.

>The Others made no sound.

Here the word “Others” is given to us as a proper noun, in its’ plural form, for the first time in our series though the other two times in this chapter I believe Martin is figuratively alluding to them. At this moment they are presented as a single stand alone thought from Will immediately after hearing the woods give answer to Waymar in the previous paragraph, after he suddenly calls out. Simultaneously, Will sees “Pale shapes” and then a white shadow appear and disappear and reemerge from the dark of the wood to stand in front of Waymar.

“Others” as a proper noun is defined in my dictionary app. as:
>a person or thing that is the counterpart of someone or something else: the role of the Other in the development of self.

This idea will feed into an over arching theme of Yin and Yang being figuratively illustrated in the Prologue.

And it’s noteworthy that Will notices thinks he can’t hear the “Others” make a sound. When, in truth, it’s sound that creates the “Others”. Read Vic Tandy and his shivering sword.

On 1/30/2023 at 8:44 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I've been thinking for some time now that antler imagery in the story relates to tree branches. So the tales about the green men having antlers is a corruption of their being walking tree men, male guardians of the weirwood.

In the Prologue of AGOT, Waymar slashes at the branches that were reaching and grabbing at his longsword. And later his sword shatters when it meets a sword symbolically described as lighting. Here’s the description of Waymar’s longsword from Will. “…the end was splintered and twisted like a trees struck by lightning.” And here’s the Other longsword’s description:

”In its hand was a long sword, like none that will have ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

”The pale sword came shivering through the air.”

”…there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing.”

“danced with pale blue light”

Now I believe that the broken sword, hilt, described as a splintered and twisted tree can be more accurately thought of as a tree stump; of which we get in the next scene. In the center of the square is a hard, black, ironwood stump (Iron, hard and black, like Waymar’s sword). In fact, we get some similar action when it meets an “Ice” sword (Ned’s greatsword). We get Gared’s blood spraying out across the snow.

Note: Ned’s greatsword “Ice” is black/red like the ironwood and the redwood(sentinel).

Now I also believe that Waymar’s sword, described as having needles, before it shattered was symbolic of the sentinel tree in the prologue. The thing to understand is that the needles were still all together and had not yet shattered when Will was lost amongst them.

So the two trees (ironwood and sentinel)  in the Prologue are symbolic of Waymar’s longsword before/after it is destroyed. The ironwood stump in the Bran 1 chapter symbolizes the longsword’s hilt; but the difference in this chapter is that the needles or shards come together. They make up the ironwood bridge at the end of the chapter. And the sentinel, symbolic of Waymar’s sword before it shatters, also does the opposite in this Bran 1 chapter. The needles or shards scatter. The thing symbolizing the the sentinel in this chapter is the dead mother direwolf, who pups are the scattering shards.

I believe the dead mother direwolf’s is analogous to both Cerberus, guardian of the underworld, and Garmr, who kills Thor (God of lightning) in Ragnarok. A sentinel by definition can also be: a person or thing that watches or stands as if watching. And, obviously, Thor is associated with lightning.

I said all that to arrive at the antler in the mother direwolf. The “shattered” one that Ned held up, seemingly like a sword, for all to see. The one that was already “Shattered” and like Waymar’s sword, figuratively the ironwood tree (though we didn’t see it shatter. We just know they made a bridge out of it). These all seem to be symbolic parallels. The mother direwolf and the sentinel tree seem to be the other parallel elements. And just like the ironwood tree and the sentinel tree are symbolic of Waymar’s sword before and after it is broken so is the mother direwolf and the stag symbolic of the pup later named Ghost I believe.
 

 The stag and the mother direwolf were rustling, like living trees.

Anyways, I hope I’ve given you some good thoughts. But I think you need to include swords.

Martin is so creative. He literally and literarily creates his own literary tools. In this case he crafts a foil. I mean he doesn’t just create a contrasting character; he literally takes a fencing foil, a weapon, and turns it into a literary foil. In the real world there was an engineer named Vic Tandy that made the first association between ghostly apparitions and the fear frequency. Likely, Martin knowing this, creates a little bilateral conundrum using Tandy’s foil and a literary tool. Tandy’s foil, a narrow flexible weapon, used in fencing for thrusting was shivering when Tandy found it still in it’s vice from the night before. He had been polishing it when he began to feel sweaty, cold and noticeable depressed. He seemingly felt as though something was watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. He then, seeing movement from the corner of his eye, glimpses a white shadow similar to the one Will, from AGOT Prologue, sees with it’s pale sword shivering through the air. Thus we have a shivering sword associated with a white shadow in both stories. Vic Tandy’s ghostly shape was created by the low frequency of a newly installed extractor fan while Will’s pale shapes were created by…

Then Martin, using a literary device called a foil, creates a white shadow and contrasts it in a duel with Ser Waymar Royce highlighting his traits. I believe also that this will serve as a subplot and be used as a foil to the main plot, a sort of "story within a story" motif. This Other’s character is showing the opposite traits of Waymar’s character. Just as aluminum foil reflects light on its surface, the Other is shining light on Ser Waymar Royce to showcase his traits. Foil as a literary term is named after an old jewelry trick of setting a gem on a foil base to enhance its shine. The Other’s eye’s, like the gems, blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice are fixed on the longsword, like the foil base. 

The pale sword, the one shivering in the air like Vic Tandy’s foil, is a foil to Waymar’s longsword. And like Tandy’s foil, Waymar’s longsword will be Will’s proof that infrasound is associated with ghost-light like Waymar’s longsword’s foil, the Other’s longsword. Confusing right? Think of the Other’s pale sword and Waymar‘s sword as two aspects of a whole. They are both shivering and prove that Intrasound is associated with a ghost-light or a white shadow.

And it’s likely no coincidence that Waymar’s longsword that ”shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles” uses the plural of the word “needle” to describe the pieces. It’s the same name as Arya’s sword. Arya’s sword, like Vic Tandy’s sword, is a foil. It would seem, unlike the show, that Arya’s sword needle will be important when it comes to the Others.

On 8/6/2022 at 9:58 PM, Walda said:

On Ser Waymar's interaction with the Others, the Other approached Ser Waymar with a drawn longsword, at front guard or short guard. It is unclear if the blade was out before Ser Waymar warned "Come no farther". 

Martin purposely leaves it unclear about the blade being out for good reason.

On 8/6/2022 at 9:58 PM, Walda said:

Waymar's own stance is an extraordinary choice: holding his sword in both hands, high over his head. As if he was preparing to be a ritual sacrifice.

I believe his stance is called the Warriors pose and it’s similar the Luke Skywalker stance in the  1977 original Star War promotional poster. And it’s not obvious but Waymar and the Other do the exact same stance.

On 8/6/2022 at 9:58 PM, Walda said:

We know from various comments about 'drawn steel' that in Westeros, that is a signal that you are intending to fight. Robb displayed a bare sword on his lap when Tyrion asked an audience with him, to show him the enmity between their families. In Braavos simply carrying a sword was a sign you were prepared to fight any bravo you came across.

I believe that it’s Waymar’s understanding of ”drawn steel” that becomes his downfall. Note: Waymar has already drawn his steel.

On 8/6/2022 at 9:58 PM, Walda said:

The Others understood Waymar was issuing a challenge, and did him the courtesy of having only one of them answer his challenge. The shattering of Royce's sword seems to signal that the sport is over, and all the Others gather around to stab him with their longswords, rather than leave his dispatch to the one who fought him. Stabbing seems an odd way to use a longsword, and the frenzied way they do it, shredding his cloak, seems an inefficient as well as inelegant way of killing him. But that is how they do it.

I believe The Other was actually the Other Waymar. Waymar was fighting his own reflection in the “Great Rock”. The rock was made of obsidian and would have seemed like a black mirror. Waymar was figuratively scrying. Waymar’s sword shatters because he is beating it against a rock. The ones surrounding him, the “pale shapes” or “watcher” are reflections of the glittering jewels in the moonlight. They close in only when the hilt of Waymar’s sword falls. The dozen slashes are from the shards of obsidian and pieces of his own sword. The cracking of ice on the rock is what Will interprets as the mocking voices.

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Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. (Prologue, AGOT)

A new bit of wordplay that I discovered today…The “pale shapes” that Will sees when the Other first dawns the pages of our series are “twins to the first”.

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They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five …(Prologue, AGOT)

”The first” refers to ”a white shadow in the darkness” that Will glimpses in the first quote.

This association of the “pale shapes” and “a white shadow” allows literary analysts to exchange the two descriptions. It allows “a white shadow in the darkness” to be a “pale shape” in the darkness.

Now here comes the wordplay, “pale” is a homophone for the word pail, a bucket. The play here is that a pail shape is round.

So Waymar is looking at a figuratively, white round shape emerging from the dark of the wood.

Symbolically (literarily), we are seeing the Yin half of the taijitu symbol. A white dot superimposed on black.
 

Proof of this comes when we look at the Yang half in our narrative.

Seeing Waymar from the perspective of the Other because of its’ armor, we are seeing Waymar standing in front of a ridge of new-fallen snow in the all black wardrobe of the Night’s Watchmen. He’s turning in a slow circle with his black steel sword in hand.

A black circle superimposed on white.

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Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.(Prologue, AGOT)

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“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”

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“Aye, those three I recall. The lordling no older than one of these pups. Too proud to sleep under my roof, him in his sable cloak and black steel. My wives give him big cow eyes all the same.” He turned his squint on the nearest of the women. “Gared says they were chasing raiders. I told him, with a commander that green, best not catch ’em. Gared wasn’t half-bad, for a crow. Had less ears than me, that one. The ’bite took ’em, same as mine.” Craster laughed. “Now I hear he got no head neither. The ’bite do that too?”(Jon, chapter 23, ACOK)

The sinuous line in the taijitu symbol   likely represents the “Dance” we are about to see.

This obviously reveals an underlying theme that persists throughout the series but that’s beyond the scope of this post.

4 hours ago, Sandy Clegg said:

Will feels the sticky sap on his cheek when he’s in the tree, and fails to shout a warning. It’s very akin to him being ‘subtly controlled’ by an external force. And we know that trees are connected to Bloodraven/Bran so it’s possible they can use the trees to access nearby people’s minds. 

In this scene Will is surprised when he no longer sees wildling raiders that he saw before from “the great sentinel right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had known it would be,” Do you think it likely that he had been skinned before? The far-eyes in the ironwood , a homophone for fairies, could be a tree spirit. Also, Will tells Waymar that the tree will tangle his sword up, Waymar’s sword is seemingly a objectification of him. 
 

“It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in anger.”

On 10/26/2022 at 8:26 AM, Sandy Clegg said:

feet and boots are very symbolic in ASOIAF as metaphors for skin-changing and 'slipping out of one's skin', so I wouldn't be surprised if that had been a suggestion from GRRM. In the ADWD prologue he makes the analogy clearer than it was in previous books:

 

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As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human eye could see.

- ADWD, Prologue

So, feet slipping into shoes/boots are analogous to collars being slipped onto dogs. A form of taking control, or: skin-changing. So it's no surprise we see a plethora of feet/boot symbolism throughout the books, especially in characters like Bran, Jon and Arya who have something of this power.

In the Prologue of AGOT there’s this quote,

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The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had known it would be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on the empty clearing below.

In this quote the lowest branches of the great sentinel has Will sliding beneath them. Is Will the boot? 

Coppice- an area of woodland in which the trees are, or formerly were, periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth and provide firewood or timber. 
 

I mentioned before that Gared, who’s name is not mentioned in Bran 1, AGOT, is a figurative drag half (derag is Gared spelled backwards) of a sand and oil cast mold for “Ice”(metallurgy). A cope is the top half. Cope or similarly Copp combines with “Ice” in Gared’s beheading scene. Coppice(Ironwood stump), as defined above, combines “Ice” and copp( like cope).
 

Gared’s head was forced down onto the hard black wood. Bran’s father, Lord Stark, took off the Gared’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as summerwine.
 

1375–1425; late Middle English copies<Middle French copeis,Old French copeiz<Vulgar Latin *colpātīcium cutover area, equivalent to *colpāt(us) past participle of *colpāre to cut (see coup 1) + -īcium-ice.

On 4/26/2022 at 4:36 PM, Evolett said:

Perhaps one last thought to this wandering / travelling theme regarding Ser Waymar. Like @Nadden above I've been thinking of Waymar in terms of way mar, ruining the path or going the wrong way perhaps. I like the idea of the "watches" above but have a different take on Waymar's position in death, related to his going the wrong way - his position could be meant to depict a compass. He circles with his sword in hand, more likely stretched out in front of him also reminiscent of a compass needle moving in accordance with his turning:

He was turning in a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand.

The chapter begins with the words "We should start back" and there are many references to direction, also to Will's skill as a tracker which involves following clues to a particular object or destination. Perhaps the Others are like E.T. All they want is to go home .

Waymar is probably an anagram of Ramsay as well, not a full one but almost, w replacing the s in Ramsay. I wasn't sure of this until I discovered that Ramsay also owned a sable cloak early in the story. There's more wordplay surrounding Waymar though - but enough for now. 

Love the compass idea.

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”Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry was almost lazy.” Prologue, AGOT

Snarling iron is a metallurgy technique.

A snarl is a metal worker's tool used to drive the walls of metal vessels.

A snarler... is a worker.

I think this may go with the runes on a clock or compass. Later in the chapter we find Waymar’s face ,

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”His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of his left eye.” Prologue, AGOT

Tatters emboss skin and a snarler(Waymar) emboss metal. Clocks and compasses have runes on the faces and Waymar’s face is a ruin.

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“Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.”

“

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Branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers.”

Branches like fingers(of the Old Gods) grabbing out at a needle and cloth or a cloak and longsword (metaphor for Waymar). Waymar is a chememorphism for his sword. So Waymar threads, with the sound of a soft metallic slither, through a thicket.

After reading a post by Evolett on Lady Forlorn I think I made a connection I wanted to share. In the Prologue of AGOT during the duel between Waymar and the Other we read,

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Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar’s fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red.

In the first dueling scene, Waymar’s blood “seemed red as fire”. But because of the lack of light and the Purkinje effect the blood, that “steamed in the cold” would actually appear black. So the color of the blood, and figuratively fire, on the pale sword, wielded by the Other, that bit through Waymar’s ringmail would appear to be black and smoking.

Are we figuratively looking at the Valyrian steel sword Blackfyre once belonging to Aegon the Conqueror. What about the sword that was a beat too late, the one belonging to Waymar? What would the name of that sword figuratively be?

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“When the blades touched, the steel shattered.”

Blackfyre once dueled with Lady Forlorn during the First Blackfyre Rebellion, Lady Forlorn was wielded by Ser Gwayne Corbray, a knight of the Kingsguard for Daeron Targaryen during the Battle of the Redgrass Field. Gwayne fought Daemon I Blackfyre, once Daemon Waters, who wielded Blackfyre.

Side note: The name “Daemon” seems like a bit of wordplay for Mon dae or Moon day, the day after Sunday or Sun day. Monday, often is seen as a day of depression, anxiety, hysteria, or melancholy And the bastard name “Waters” maybe hinting at with the figurative description of the Other’s armor with its patterns of moonlight on water.

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“Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.”

Continued side note: The name “Corbray” seems like a bit of wordplay for bray Cor or breaker. Here it’s Waymar’s sword that breaks.

In the prologue chapter, Martin objectifies or  dehumanizes all his characters. They are chremamorphisms. I mean they are figuratively their swords. Awhile back I had this thought about the figurative Blackfyre blade when it touched Waymar’s black steel blade. The blades touched, the steel shattered. I think they both shatter. There was rain and needles…water and steel, like Ice and Fire.

Waymar’s sword shivers into a hundred brittle pieces, and the shards scatter like a rain of needles when the two blades touch. One of the shards from Waymar’s sword ends up  transfixed into the blind white pupil of his left eye.

The phrase “like a rain of needles”, a simile, directly compares the scattering shards to a rain of needles.

One of the shards, figuratively one of the needles from Waymar’s sword transfixed in Waymar’s eye, is a figurative needle in the eye. Ouch!

There’s a saying that, at a time when a truth is being questioned, one might be asked to say. It’s to ensure he/she is telling the truth, “Cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

Sticking a needle in the eye of a corpse was once a custom to make sure that someone wasn’t still alive before they were buried.

I think it’s then reasonable to assume that because Ser Waymar Royce took a figurative needle in the eye to ensure that he was dead is because he lied or broke his vow or went back on his promise or word. From this I looked for a crossing of his heart moment. I started by thinking of the swords crossing.

Crossing seems to be a motif Martin is using. For example, fingers can be crossed. In the Prologue, Gared, like a broken or missing sword, is missing a little finger of his left hand. The trees branches, like the swords dueling , seem to be crossing their fingers also,

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“branches stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers” Prologue, AGOT

And Martin oddly mentions Waymar’s bloody fingers. Waymar’s fingers are soaked in red, blood, like fire while Will’s fingers are cold, numb and nerveless.

Waymar also seems to have a cross to bear, such as the words of House Royce, “We remember”.

And a skull and crossbones are a sigil of pirates or raiders. They are a symbol of poison and death. Raiders were what Waymar and company set out to find.

Swords, words apparently have a close relationship. A Knight will swear an oath on a sword or give their word. Men of the Night’s Watch take their vows in front of a heart tree. Oathbreakers, like deserters, and rangers who fail in their duties, to call out, face death by the sword. And notice too how the literal terms have a close similarity….swords word, word sword. The Houses have swords and words. It’s said that the pen(a word crafting tool) is mightier than the sword.

The point I’m making is swords crossing might make sense in the scene as a broken promise. And I also pointed to Waymar as a figurative “Prince that was promised”. He’s both a Sworn sword or Promised brother of the Night’s Watch and a Son(Sun) or Prince of the Bronze Yohn. There’s a real dichotomy to the scene.

What sword is Waymar figuratively wielding. I believed it to be a “cross your heart” sword.

In the quote at the beginning of this post Waymar’s “parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm”, where his heart would be.

Lady Forlorn is said to have a heart-shaped ruby in its’ pommel. It currently belongs to House Corbray whose coat-of-arms, similar to this prologue with three blackbirds, is three black ravens in flight, holding three red hearts, on a white field (Argent, three ravens volant sable, each clutching in their claws a heart gules). The three red hearts would parallel the sapphires in Waymar’s sword hilt nicely. Waymar’s hilt is believed by the fandom and myself to be the same hilt found   by a member of the free folk and turned in at the Wall.

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“One man surrendered a shirt of silver scales that had surely been made for some great lord. Another produced a broken sword with three sapphires in the hilt.”  A Jon XII chapter 58 ADWD

This is the chapter that begins with Jon dreaming,

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“That night he dreamt of wildlings howling from the woods, advancing to the moan of warhorns and the roll of drums. Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM came the sound, a thousand hearts with a single beat.”

Sapphires and rubies scientifically are the same corundum minerals. The only difference between sapphires and ruby in color.

The seat of House Corbray is Heart’s Home where Sansa Stark using the name Alayne Stone stops while traveling with Lord Petyr Baelish and Lady Lysa Arryn from the Fingers to the Eyrie. Sansa with the bastard name Stone and a dead mother named Stone heart. Catelyn would definitely fit the description of a forlorn lady. She’s: desolate or dreary; unhappy or miserable, as in feeling, condition, or appearance., lonely and sad; forsaken, expressive of hopelessness; despairing, bereft; destitute

Is this figuratively Blackfyre vs. Lady Forlorn in the Prologue.

Between both swords landing their mark becoming covered in frost and blood and the shattering we get this,

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“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.”

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Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry was almost lazy.”

Throughout the whole Prologue we can identify many palindromes. A palindrome can be a word, sentence that’s read the same way backwards and forwards and in some cases, like mom, upside down and right side up. It’s a mirror word. The Other, who is mirroring Waymar (recall Waymar’s voice also cracking), is mimicking his words with his mocking. Except, it’s in the form of a palindrome. I think Martin sometimes enjoys entertaining himself with the constraints of palindromes. But this is why “Will did not know”.

In Other words, while mocking Waymar after Waymar says, “For Robert” the Other says “treboR roF”.

Trebor Jordayne is Lord of the Tor and head of House Jordayne in Dorne.

The fandom has noted that Trebor Jordayne is a homage by George R. R. Martin to author Robert Jordan, who was one of Martin's friends. "Trebor" is "Robert" backwards, "Jordayne" is similar to "Jordan", and "Tor" is Jordan's publisher. Harriet McDougal Jordan’s spouse also was closely related to Tor. She, a forlorn lady, would personify the sword. Lady Forlorn or “For” “lorn”  lorn - forsaken, desolate, bereft, or lost, ruined, or undone 

The “roF” in “treboR roF” may have several layers of meaning. “roF” I think is likely a acronym for Ring of Fire. This would make sense since Waymar’s blood welled between the rings. Waymar’s blood, like fire, would create rings of fire. This would bring together Waymar’s words (“For Robert”) and sword (Lady Forlorn) as a relationship between Robert Jordan and his spouse.

There’s also a geological phenomenon called the “ring of fire” where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur. But I haven’t given much thought to that yet.

Last thought, If Daemon Blackfyre  (moon day) + (Targaryen bastard) and Gwayne Corbray (breaker + ?). Than what is ?