Jon was breaking his fast on applecakes and
blood sausage when Samwell Tarly plopped himself down on the bench.
“I’ve been summoned to the sept,” Sam said in an
excited whisper. “They’re passing me out of training.
I’m to be made a brother with the rest of you. Can you
believe it?”
“No, truly?”
“Truly. I’m to assist Maester Aemon with the library
and the birds. He needs someone who can read and write
letters.”
“You’ll do well at that,” Jon said,
smiling.
Sam glanced about anxiously. “Is it time to go? I
shouldn’t be late, they might change their minds.” He
was fairly bouncing as they crossed the weed-strewn courtyard. The
day was warm and sunny. Rivulets of water trickled down the sides
of the Wall, so the ice seemed to sparkle and shine.
Inside the sept, the great crystal caught the morning light as
it streamed through the south-facing window and spread it in a
rainbow on the altar. Pyp’s mouth dropped open when he caught
sight of Sam, and Toad poked Grenn in the ribs, but no one dared
say a word. Septon Celladar was swinging a censer, filling the air
with fragrant incense that reminded Jon of Lady Stark’s
little sept in Winterfell. For once the septon seemed sober.
The high officers arrived in a body; Maester Aemon leaning
on Clydas, Ser Alliser cold-eyed and grim, Lord Commander Mormont
resplendent in a black wool doublet with silvered bearclaw
fastenings. Behind them came the senior members of the three
orders: red-faced Bowen Marsh the Lord Steward, First Builder
Othell Yarwyck, and Ser Jaremy Rykker, who commanded the rangers in
the absence of Benjen Stark.
Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad
bald head. “You came to us outlaws,” he began,
“poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to
us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends
nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of
you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only
bastards’ names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All
that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house.
“At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering
night, you shall take your vows. From that moment, you will be a
Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch. Your crimes will be
washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your
former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old
loves alike. Here you begin anew.
“A man of the Night’s Watch lives his life for the
realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or
that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman’s love,
but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the
Night’s Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is
duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall
ever know.
“You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully
before you say them, for once you have taken the black, there is no
turning back. The penalty for desertion is death.” The Old
Bear paused for a moment before he said, “Are there any among
you who wish to leave our company? If so, go now, and no one shall
think the less of you.”
No one moved.
“Well and good,” said Mormont. “You may take
your vows here at evenfall, before Septon Celladar and the first of
your order. Do any of you keep to the old gods?”
Jon stood. “I do, my lord.”
“I expect you will want to say your words before a heart
tree, as your uncle did,” Mormont said.
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. The gods of the sept had
nothing to do with him; the blood of the First Men flowed in the
veins of the Starks.
He heard Grenn whispering behind him. “There’s no
godswood here. Is there? I never saw a godswood.”
“You wouldn’t see a herd of aurochs until they
trampled you into the snow,” Pyp whispered back.
“I would so,” Grenn insisted. “I’d see
them a long way off.”
Mormont himself confirmed Grenn’s doubts. “Castle
Black has no need of a godswood. Beyond the Wall the haunted forest
stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the Andals brought
the Seven across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods
half a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods as
well.”
“My lord.” The voice made Jon glance back in
surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet. The fat boy wiped his
sweaty palms against his tunic. “Might I . . . might I go as
well? To say my words at this heart tree?”
“Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?” Mormont
asked.
“No, my lord,” Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice.
The high officers frightened him, Jon knew, the Old Bear most of
all. “I was named in the light of the Seven at the sept on
Horn Hill, as my father was, and his father, and all the Tarlys for
a thousand years.”
“Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your
House?” wondered Ser Jaremy Rykker.
“The Night’s Watch is my House now,” Sam said.
“The Seven have never answered my prayers. Perhaps the old
gods will.”
“As you wish, boy,” Mormont said. Sam took his seat
again, as did Jon. “We have placed each of you in an order,
as befits our need and your own strengths and skills.” Bowen
Marsh stepped forward and handed him a paper. The Lord Commander
unrolled it and began to read. “Haider, to the
builders,” he began. Haider gave a stiff nod of approval.
“Grenn, to the rangers. Albett, to the builders. Pypar, to
the rangers.” Pyp looked over at Jon and wiggled his ears.
“Samwell, to the stewards.” Sam sagged with relief,
mopping at his brow with,a scrap of silk. “Matthar, to the
rangers. Dareon, to the stewards. Todder, to the rangers. Jon, to
the stewards.”
The stewards? For a moment Jon could not believe what he had
heard. Mormont must have read it wrong. He started to rise, to open
his mouth, to tell them there had been a mistake . . . and then he
saw Ser Alliser studying him, eyes shiny as two flakes of obsidian,
and he knew.
The Old Bear rolled up the paper. “Your firsts will
instruct you in your duties. May all the gods preserve you,
brothers.” The Lord Commander favored them with a half bow,
and took his leave. Ser Alliser went with him, a thin smile on his
face. Jon had never seen the master-at-arms took quite so happy.
“Rangers with me,” Ser Jaremy Rykker called when
they were gone. Pyp was staring at Jon as he got slowly to his feet. His ears
were red. Grenn, grinning broadly, did not seem to realize that
anything was amiss. Matt and Toad fell in beside them, and they
followed Ser Jaremy from the sept.
“Builders,” announced lantern-jawed Othell Yarwyck.
Haider and Albett trailed out after him.
Jon looked around him in sick disbelief. Maester Aemon’s
blind eyes were raised toward the light he could not see. The
septon was arranging crystals on the altar. Only Sam and Darcon
remained on the benches; a fat boy, a singer . . . and him.
Lord Steward Bowen Marsh rubbed his plump hands together.
“Samwell, you will assist Maester Aemon in the rookery and
library. Chett is going to the kennels, to help with the hounds.
You shall have his cell, so as to be close to the maester night and
day. I trust you will take good care of him. He is very old and
very precious to us.
“Dareon, I am told that you sang at many a high
lord’s table and shared their meat and mead. We are sending
you to Eastwatch. It may be your palate will be some help to Cotter
Pyke when merchant galleys come trading. We are paying too dear for
salt beef and pickled fish, and the quality of the olive oil
we’re getting has been frightful, Present yourself to Borcas
when you arrive, he will keep you busy between ships.”
Marsh turned his smile on Jon. “Lord Commander Mormont has
requested you for his personal steward, Jon. You’ll sleep in
a cell beneath his chambers, in the Lord Commander’s
tower.”
“And what will my duties be?” Jon asked sharply.
“Will I serve the Lord Commander’s meals, help him
fasten his clothes, fetch hot water for his bath?”
“Certainly.” Marsh frowned at Jon’s tone.
“And you will run his messages, keep a fire burning in his
chambers, change his sheets and blankets daily, and do all else
that the Lord Commander might require of you.”
“Do you take me for a servant?”
“No,” Maester Aemon said, from the back of the sept.
Clydas helped him stand. “We took you for a man of the
Night’s Watch . . . but perhaps we were wrong in
that.”
It was all Jon could do to stop himself from walking out. Was he
supposed to churn butter and sew doublets like a girl for the rest
of his days? “May I go?” he asked stiffly.
“As you wish,” Bowen Marsh responded.
Dareon and Sam left with him. They descended to the yard in
silence. Outside, Jon looked up at the Wall shining in the sun, the
melting ice creeping down its side in a hundred thin fingers.
Jon’s rage was such that he would have smashed it all in an
instant, and the world be damned.
“Jon,” Samwell Tarly said excitedly. “Wait.
Don’t you see what they’re doing?”
Jon turned on him in a fury. “I see Ser Alliser’s
bloody hand, that’s all I see. He wanted to shame me, and he
has.”
Dareon gave him a look. “The stewards are fine for the
likes of you and me, Sam, but not for Lord Snow.”
“I’m a better swordsman and a better rider than any
of you,” Jon blazed back. “It’s
not fair!”
“Fair?” Dareon sneered. “The girl was waiting
for me, naked as the day she was born. She pulled me through the
window, and you talk to me of fair?” He walked off.
“There is no shame in being a steward,” Sam
said.
“Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life washing
an old man’s smallclothes?”
“The old man is Lord Commander of the Night’s
Watch,” Sam reminded him. “You’ll be with him day
and night. Yes, you’ll pour his wine and see that his bed
linen is fresh, but you’ll also take his letters, attend him
at meetings, squire for him in battle. You’ll be as close to
him as his shadow. You’ll know everything, be a part of
everything . . . and the Lord Steward said Mormont asked for you
himself!
“When I was little, my father used to insist that I attend
him in the audience chamber whenever he held court. When he rode to
Highgarden to bend his knee to Lord Tyrell, he made me come. Later,
though, he started to take Dickon and leave me at home, and he no
longer cared whether I sat through his audiences, so long as Dickon
was there. He wanted his heir at his side, don’t you see? To
watch and listen and learn from all he did. I’ll wager
that’s why Lord Mormont requested you, Jon. What else could
it be? He wants to groom you for command!”
Jon was taken aback. It was true, Lord Eddard had often made
Robb part of his councils back at Winterfell. Could Sam be right?
Even a bastard could rise high in the Night’s Watch, they
said. “I never asked for this,” he said stubbornly.
“None of us are here for asking,” Sam reminded
him.
And suddenly Jon Snow was ashamed.
Craven or not, Samwell Tarly had found the courage to accept his
fate like a man. On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns, Benjen
Stark had said the last night Jon had seen him alive. You’re
no ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on
you. He’d heard it said that bastards grow up faster than
other children; on the Wall, you grew up or you died.
Jon let out a deep sigh. “You have the right of it. I was
acting the boy.”
“Then you’ll stay and say your words with
me?”
“The old gods will be expecting us.” He made himself
smile.
They set out late that afternoon. The Wall had no gates as such,
neither here at Castle Black nor anywhere along its three hundred
miles. They led their horses down a narrow tunnel cut through the
ice, cold dark walls pressing in around them as the passage twisted
and turned. Three times their way was blocked by iron bars, and
they had to stop while Bowen Marsh drew out his keys and unlocked
the massive chains that secured them. Jon could sense the vast
weight pressing down on him as he waited behind the Lord Steward.
The air was colder than a tomb, and more still. He felt a strange
relief when they reemerged into the afternoon light on the north
side of the Wall.
Sam blinked at the sudden glare and looked around
apprehensively. “The wildlings . . . they wouldn’t . . . they’d never dare come this close to the Wall. Would
they?”
“They never have.” Jon climbed into his saddle. When
Bowen Marsh and their ranger escort had mounted, Jon put two
fingers in his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping out of the
tunnel.
The Lord Steward’s garron whickered and backed away from
the direwolf. “Do you mean to take that beast?”
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. Ghost’s head lifted.
He seemed to taste the air. In the blink of an eye he was off,
racing across the broad, weed-choked field to vanish in the
trees.
Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different
world. Jon had often hunted with his father and Jory and his
brother Robb. He knew the wolfswood around Winterfell as well as
any man. The haunted forest was much the same, and yet the feel of
it was very different.
Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end
of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed
darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut
out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked
beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking
bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a
chilly finger tracing a path up Jon’s spine. The Wall was at
their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.
The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their
destination, a small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine
weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and he saw
Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than
two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine
was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves,
bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were
bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted
in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to
leave their horses outside the circle. “This is a sacred
place, we will not defile it.”
When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking
at each face in turn. No two were quite alike. “They’re
watching us,” he whispered. “The old gods.”
“Yes.” Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him.
They said the words together, as the last light faded in the
west and grey day became black night.
“Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow,” they
recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. “Night
gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall
wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I
am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am
the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the
dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the
realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s
Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”
The woods fell silent. “You knelt as boys,” Bowen
Marsh intoned solemnly. “Rise now as men of the Night’s
Watch.”
Jon held out a hand to pull Sam back to his feet. The rangers
gathered round to offer smiles and congratulations, all but the
gnarled old forester Dywen. “Best we be starting back,
m’lord,” he said to Bowen Marsh. “Dark’s
falling, and there’s something in the smell o’ the
night that I mislike.”
And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two
weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like
the trees . . .
The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black.
“What’s he got there?” asked Bowen Marsh,
frowning.
“To me, Ghost.” Jon knelt. “Bring it
here.”
The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly’s
sharp intake of breath.
“Gods be good,” Dywen muttered. “That’s
a hand.”
Jon was breaking his fast on applecakes and
blood sausage when Samwell Tarly plopped himself down on the bench.
“I’ve been summoned to the sept,” Sam said in an
excited whisper. “They’re passing me out of training.
I’m to be made a brother with the rest of you. Can you
believe it?”
“No, truly?”
“Truly. I’m to assist Maester Aemon with the library
and the birds. He needs someone who can read and write
letters.”
“You’ll do well at that,” Jon said,
smiling.
Sam glanced about anxiously. “Is it time to go? I
shouldn’t be late, they might change their minds.” He
was fairly bouncing as they crossed the weed-strewn courtyard. The
day was warm and sunny. Rivulets of water trickled down the sides
of the Wall, so the ice seemed to sparkle and shine.
Inside the sept, the great crystal caught the morning light as
it streamed through the south-facing window and spread it in a
rainbow on the altar. Pyp’s mouth dropped open when he caught
sight of Sam, and Toad poked Grenn in the ribs, but no one dared
say a word. Septon Celladar was swinging a censer, filling the air
with fragrant incense that reminded Jon of Lady Stark’s
little sept in Winterfell. For once the septon seemed sober.
The high officers arrived in a body; Maester Aemon leaning
on Clydas, Ser Alliser cold-eyed and grim, Lord Commander Mormont
resplendent in a black wool doublet with silvered bearclaw
fastenings. Behind them came the senior members of the three
orders: red-faced Bowen Marsh the Lord Steward, First Builder
Othell Yarwyck, and Ser Jaremy Rykker, who commanded the rangers in
the absence of Benjen Stark.
Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad
bald head. “You came to us outlaws,” he began,
“poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to
us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends
nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of
you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only
bastards’ names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All
that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house.
“At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering
night, you shall take your vows. From that moment, you will be a
Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch. Your crimes will be
washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your
former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old
loves alike. Here you begin anew.
“A man of the Night’s Watch lives his life for the
realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or
that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman’s love,
but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the
Night’s Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is
duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall
ever know.
“You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully
before you say them, for once you have taken the black, there is no
turning back. The penalty for desertion is death.” The Old
Bear paused for a moment before he said, “Are there any among
you who wish to leave our company? If so, go now, and no one shall
think the less of you.”
No one moved.
“Well and good,” said Mormont. “You may take
your vows here at evenfall, before Septon Celladar and the first of
your order. Do any of you keep to the old gods?”
Jon stood. “I do, my lord.”
“I expect you will want to say your words before a heart
tree, as your uncle did,” Mormont said.
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. The gods of the sept had
nothing to do with him; the blood of the First Men flowed in the
veins of the Starks.
He heard Grenn whispering behind him. “There’s no
godswood here. Is there? I never saw a godswood.”
“You wouldn’t see a herd of aurochs until they
trampled you into the snow,” Pyp whispered back.
“I would so,” Grenn insisted. “I’d see
them a long way off.”
Mormont himself confirmed Grenn’s doubts. “Castle
Black has no need of a godswood. Beyond the Wall the haunted forest
stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the Andals brought
the Seven across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods
half a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods as
well.”
“My lord.” The voice made Jon glance back in
surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet. The fat boy wiped his
sweaty palms against his tunic. “Might I . . . might I go as
well? To say my words at this heart tree?”
“Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?” Mormont
asked.
“No, my lord,” Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice.
The high officers frightened him, Jon knew, the Old Bear most of
all. “I was named in the light of the Seven at the sept on
Horn Hill, as my father was, and his father, and all the Tarlys for
a thousand years.”
“Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your
House?” wondered Ser Jaremy Rykker.
“The Night’s Watch is my House now,” Sam said.
“The Seven have never answered my prayers. Perhaps the old
gods will.”
“As you wish, boy,” Mormont said. Sam took his seat
again, as did Jon. “We have placed each of you in an order,
as befits our need and your own strengths and skills.” Bowen
Marsh stepped forward and handed him a paper. The Lord Commander
unrolled it and began to read. “Haider, to the
builders,” he began. Haider gave a stiff nod of approval.
“Grenn, to the rangers. Albett, to the builders. Pypar, to
the rangers.” Pyp looked over at Jon and wiggled his ears.
“Samwell, to the stewards.” Sam sagged with relief,
mopping at his brow with,a scrap of silk. “Matthar, to the
rangers. Dareon, to the stewards. Todder, to the rangers. Jon, to
the stewards.”
The stewards? For a moment Jon could not believe what he had
heard. Mormont must have read it wrong. He started to rise, to open
his mouth, to tell them there had been a mistake . . . and then he
saw Ser Alliser studying him, eyes shiny as two flakes of obsidian,
and he knew.
The Old Bear rolled up the paper. “Your firsts will
instruct you in your duties. May all the gods preserve you,
brothers.” The Lord Commander favored them with a half bow,
and took his leave. Ser Alliser went with him, a thin smile on his
face. Jon had never seen the master-at-arms took quite so happy.
“Rangers with me,” Ser Jaremy Rykker called when
they were gone. Pyp was staring at Jon as he got slowly to his feet. His ears
were red. Grenn, grinning broadly, did not seem to realize that
anything was amiss. Matt and Toad fell in beside them, and they
followed Ser Jaremy from the sept.
“Builders,” announced lantern-jawed Othell Yarwyck.
Haider and Albett trailed out after him.
Jon looked around him in sick disbelief. Maester Aemon’s
blind eyes were raised toward the light he could not see. The
septon was arranging crystals on the altar. Only Sam and Darcon
remained on the benches; a fat boy, a singer . . . and him.
Lord Steward Bowen Marsh rubbed his plump hands together.
“Samwell, you will assist Maester Aemon in the rookery and
library. Chett is going to the kennels, to help with the hounds.
You shall have his cell, so as to be close to the maester night and
day. I trust you will take good care of him. He is very old and
very precious to us.
“Dareon, I am told that you sang at many a high
lord’s table and shared their meat and mead. We are sending
you to Eastwatch. It may be your palate will be some help to Cotter
Pyke when merchant galleys come trading. We are paying too dear for
salt beef and pickled fish, and the quality of the olive oil
we’re getting has been frightful, Present yourself to Borcas
when you arrive, he will keep you busy between ships.”
Marsh turned his smile on Jon. “Lord Commander Mormont has
requested you for his personal steward, Jon. You’ll sleep in
a cell beneath his chambers, in the Lord Commander’s
tower.”
“And what will my duties be?” Jon asked sharply.
“Will I serve the Lord Commander’s meals, help him
fasten his clothes, fetch hot water for his bath?”
“Certainly.” Marsh frowned at Jon’s tone.
“And you will run his messages, keep a fire burning in his
chambers, change his sheets and blankets daily, and do all else
that the Lord Commander might require of you.”
“Do you take me for a servant?”
“No,” Maester Aemon said, from the back of the sept.
Clydas helped him stand. “We took you for a man of the
Night’s Watch . . . but perhaps we were wrong in
that.”
It was all Jon could do to stop himself from walking out. Was he
supposed to churn butter and sew doublets like a girl for the rest
of his days? “May I go?” he asked stiffly.
“As you wish,” Bowen Marsh responded.
Dareon and Sam left with him. They descended to the yard in
silence. Outside, Jon looked up at the Wall shining in the sun, the
melting ice creeping down its side in a hundred thin fingers.
Jon’s rage was such that he would have smashed it all in an
instant, and the world be damned.
“Jon,” Samwell Tarly said excitedly. “Wait.
Don’t you see what they’re doing?”
Jon turned on him in a fury. “I see Ser Alliser’s
bloody hand, that’s all I see. He wanted to shame me, and he
has.”
Dareon gave him a look. “The stewards are fine for the
likes of you and me, Sam, but not for Lord Snow.”
“I’m a better swordsman and a better rider than any
of you,” Jon blazed back. “It’s
not fair!”
“Fair?” Dareon sneered. “The girl was waiting
for me, naked as the day she was born. She pulled me through the
window, and you talk to me of fair?” He walked off.
“There is no shame in being a steward,” Sam
said.
“Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life washing
an old man’s smallclothes?”
“The old man is Lord Commander of the Night’s
Watch,” Sam reminded him. “You’ll be with him day
and night. Yes, you’ll pour his wine and see that his bed
linen is fresh, but you’ll also take his letters, attend him
at meetings, squire for him in battle. You’ll be as close to
him as his shadow. You’ll know everything, be a part of
everything . . . and the Lord Steward said Mormont asked for you
himself!
“When I was little, my father used to insist that I attend
him in the audience chamber whenever he held court. When he rode to
Highgarden to bend his knee to Lord Tyrell, he made me come. Later,
though, he started to take Dickon and leave me at home, and he no
longer cared whether I sat through his audiences, so long as Dickon
was there. He wanted his heir at his side, don’t you see? To
watch and listen and learn from all he did. I’ll wager
that’s why Lord Mormont requested you, Jon. What else could
it be? He wants to groom you for command!”
Jon was taken aback. It was true, Lord Eddard had often made
Robb part of his councils back at Winterfell. Could Sam be right?
Even a bastard could rise high in the Night’s Watch, they
said. “I never asked for this,” he said stubbornly.
“None of us are here for asking,” Sam reminded
him.
And suddenly Jon Snow was ashamed.
Craven or not, Samwell Tarly had found the courage to accept his
fate like a man. On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns, Benjen
Stark had said the last night Jon had seen him alive. You’re
no ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on
you. He’d heard it said that bastards grow up faster than
other children; on the Wall, you grew up or you died.
Jon let out a deep sigh. “You have the right of it. I was
acting the boy.”
“Then you’ll stay and say your words with
me?”
“The old gods will be expecting us.” He made himself
smile.
They set out late that afternoon. The Wall had no gates as such,
neither here at Castle Black nor anywhere along its three hundred
miles. They led their horses down a narrow tunnel cut through the
ice, cold dark walls pressing in around them as the passage twisted
and turned. Three times their way was blocked by iron bars, and
they had to stop while Bowen Marsh drew out his keys and unlocked
the massive chains that secured them. Jon could sense the vast
weight pressing down on him as he waited behind the Lord Steward.
The air was colder than a tomb, and more still. He felt a strange
relief when they reemerged into the afternoon light on the north
side of the Wall.
Sam blinked at the sudden glare and looked around
apprehensively. “The wildlings . . . they wouldn’t . . . they’d never dare come this close to the Wall. Would
they?”
“They never have.” Jon climbed into his saddle. When
Bowen Marsh and their ranger escort had mounted, Jon put two
fingers in his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping out of the
tunnel.
The Lord Steward’s garron whickered and backed away from
the direwolf. “Do you mean to take that beast?”
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. Ghost’s head lifted.
He seemed to taste the air. In the blink of an eye he was off,
racing across the broad, weed-choked field to vanish in the
trees.
Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different
world. Jon had often hunted with his father and Jory and his
brother Robb. He knew the wolfswood around Winterfell as well as
any man. The haunted forest was much the same, and yet the feel of
it was very different.
Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end
of the world; somehow that changed everything. Every shadow seemed
darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut
out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked
beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking
bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a
chilly finger tracing a path up Jon’s spine. The Wall was at
their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.
The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their
destination, a small clearing in the deep of the wood where nine
weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and he saw
Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more than
two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine
was unheard of. The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves,
bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth trunks were
bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted
in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to
leave their horses outside the circle. “This is a sacred
place, we will not defile it.”
When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking
at each face in turn. No two were quite alike. “They’re
watching us,” he whispered. “The old gods.”
“Yes.” Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him.
They said the words together, as the last light faded in the
west and grey day became black night.
“Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow,” they
recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. “Night
gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death.
I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall
wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I
am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am
the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the
dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the
realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s
Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”
The woods fell silent. “You knelt as boys,” Bowen
Marsh intoned solemnly. “Rise now as men of the Night’s
Watch.”
Jon held out a hand to pull Sam back to his feet. The rangers
gathered round to offer smiles and congratulations, all but the
gnarled old forester Dywen. “Best we be starting back,
m’lord,” he said to Bowen Marsh. “Dark’s
falling, and there’s something in the smell o’ the
night that I mislike.”
And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two
weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like
the trees . . .
The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black.
“What’s he got there?” asked Bowen Marsh,
frowning.
“To me, Ghost.” Jon knelt. “Bring it
here.”
The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly’s
sharp intake of breath.
“Gods be good,” Dywen muttered. “That’s
a hand.”