Gorne was a King-Beyond-the-Wall who reigned some three thousand years ago, sharing that title with his brother Gendel, with whom his memory is forever entwined. As the History of the Kings-Beyond-the-Wall of Maester Herryk records, the brothers were once asked to mediate between a clan of the children of the forest and a family of giants who disputed the ownership of a cavern, and through trickery they made both parties forswear it—having learned that the cave belonged to a chain of passages reaching beneath the Wall. That passage came to be called Gorne's Way, and through it, in search of conquest, Gorne and Gendel led the free folk south, evading the Night's Watch in the dark. When they emerged they gave battle to the King in the North, and Gorne struck the Stark king down with his own hand; yet the slain king's son lifted up his father's fallen crown and slew Gorne in his turn. Of Gendel's fate the tellings diverge, the northmen holding that he too perished while maesters and wildlings alike insist he survived to lead the survivors back beneath the Wall, there to be lost forever in caverns he knew less well than his brother. So ended the brother kings, remembered in the songs of the free folk and in the name of the buried road that swallowed them.
