The Wall loomed before them, glimmering pale blue in the light of the half-moon. It was three hundred miles long and seven hundred feet high, a vast curtain of ice that rang with the cold in the darkness. The greatest structure ever built by the hands of men, it was taller than the highest tower, thicker than a castle wall, and so ancient it had been forgotten by most of the world. Built to defend the realm from the Others, it was all that separated the Seven Kingdoms from the terrors of the far north.