Some three thousand years past, in the reckoning of song, Gendel ruled as King-Beyond-the-Wall alongside his brother Gorne, and the two are bound together in every telling of their fate. The History of the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall of Maester Herryk preserves a wildling song wherein the brothers were called to settle a quarrel between a clan of the children of the forest and a family of giants over a cavern, and discovering that the cave opened upon a vast system of passages running beneath the Wall, they used cunning to coax both parties to abandon it. Through these caverns—Gorne's Way—the brother kings gathered the free folk and marched them south, slipping past the Night's Watch, only to find the King in the North awaiting them on the far side. In the battle that followed Gorne slew the Stark king, yet the king's son took up the fallen crown and slew Gorne in turn, while the black brothers sallied from their castles to take the wildlings in the rear. By the traditions of the northmen, Gendel too was cut down between the Starks, the Umbers, and the Watch; but the free folk hold otherwise, saying he hewed his way free and fled back toward the Wall, only to lose himself in the deep ways his brother had known better. From this springs the legend that the descendants of Gendel's people, "Gendel's children," dwell yet within those black caverns, forever seeking the way back to the sky, and devouring any who venture too deep.
