Wights are the dead (men and beasts alike) raised again through the necromancy of the Others, seemingly when touched by the killing cold that walks at their side. Their aspect depends upon the corpse from which they rise, some near lifelike and others grievously rotted, though all are marked by eyes turned bright blue as twin stars and by hands and feet blackened and swollen with congealed blood. Slow and clumsy where their masters are quick, they carry a queer cold scent that sets living animals to panic, and they feel neither pain nor fear; struck down, their severed limbs crawl on, and only total dismemberment or fire halts them, for they are readily consumed by flame. Anyone slain by the Others must therefore be burned lest he rise again as a thrall, and so the free folk beyond the Wall give their dead to the pyre. In the legends of the Long Night the Others led such hosts of the slain against the last hero, and in this present age the corpses of the dead have once more begun to walk the lands north of the Wall.
