Shockingly(?) the prologue chapter-by-chapter is what prompted the question. Can you really blame royce for not having a fire if as far as Anyone in the party know they’re up against wildlings up to something suspicious (playing dead then vanishing – Mance is gathering people, maybe this is a trap to lure rangers etc), no one has reason to believe Others are what they’re facing (and how well did Grenn’s torch do again?).

My beef with Royce is that he spends a lot of time needlessly mocking his own men, which is just not good leadership. And while Gared doesn’t know for sure that it’s the Others, we know from ACOK that more experienced rangers know more about the magical plot than most people would guess, so his intuition is informed by experience. 

And while the Others don’t react to fire in the same way that wights do, they don’t like fire and as Tormund tells Jon, a ring of fire did balk them somewhat during the southward march of the Free Folk, so it might have kept Will and Waymar alive.