mance had spent years assembling this vast plodding host , talking to this clan mother and that magnar , winning one village with sweet words and another with a song and a third with the edge of his sword , making peace between harma dogshead and the lord o ' bones , between the hornfoots and the nightrunners , between the walrus men of the frozen shore and the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers , hammering a hundred different daggers into one great spear , aimed at the heart of the seven kingdoms .