[He hesitates, then opens his hands in a relatively expansive shrug, palms open over his lap: what he is about to tell her makes him feel so helpless. He is doing all that he can — or was, until ten days past — but it doesn’t feel like enough. It can never feel like enough.]

I mean that all those stories Old Nan used to tell us, the White Walkers, how they make the Dead walk and fight for them — they’re real. They’re real and true. They have — perhaps one hundred thousand, last I saw them, up at Hardhome north of Eastwatch. I saw the dead rise.

We have perhaps five thousand. That includes the Free Folk. More, if women and children fight, but —

[A shake of his head, to accompany his grim, overwhelmed expression.]