Up in the loft a woman was giving birth noisily, while below a
man lay dying by the fire. Samwell Tarly could not say which
frightened him more.
They’d covered poor Bannen with a pile of furs and stoked
the fire high, yet all he could say was, “I’m cold.
Please. I’m so cold.” Sam was trying to feed him onion
broth, but he could not swallow. The broth dribbled over his lips
and down his chin as fast as Sam could spoon it in.
“That one’s dead.” Craster eyed the man with
indifference as he worried at a sausage. “Be kinder to stick
a knife in his chest than that spoon down his throat, you ask
me.”
“I don’t recall as we did.” Giant was no more
than five feet tall—his true name was Bedwyck—but a fierce
little man for all that. “Slayer, did you ask Craster for his
counsel?”
Sam cringed at the name, but shook his head. He filled another
spoon, brought it to Bannen’s mouth, and tried to ease it
between his lips.
“Food and fire,” Giant was saying, “that was
all we asked of you. And you grudge us the food.”
“Be glad I didn’t grudge you fire too.”
Craster was a thick man made thicker by the ragged smelly
sheepskins he wore day and night. He had a broad flat nose, a mouth
that drooped to one side, and a missing ear. And though his matted
hair and tangled beard might be grey going white, his hard knuckly
hands still looked strong enough to hurt. “I fed you what I
could, but you crows are always hungry. I’m a godly man, else
I would have chased you off. You think I need the likes of him,
dying on my floor? You think I need all your mouths, little
man?” The wildling spat. “Crows. When did a black bird
ever bring good to a man’s hall, I ask you? Never.
Never.”
More broth ran from the corner of Bannen’s mouth. Sam
dabbed it away with a corner of his sleeve. The ranger’s eyes
were open but unseeing. “I’m cold,” he said
again, so faintly. A maester might have known how to save him, but
they had no maester. Kedge Whiteye had taken Bannen’s mangled
foot off nine days past, in a gout of pus and blood that made Sam
sick, but it was too little, too late. “I’m so
cold,” the pale lips repeated.
About the hall, a ragged score of black brothers squatted on the
floor or sat on rough-hewn benches, drinking cups of the same thin
onion broth and gnawing on chunks of hardbread. A couple were
wounded worse than Bannen, to look at them. Fornio had been
delirious for days, and Ser Byam’s shoulder was oozing a foul
yellow pus. When they’d left Castle Black, Brown Bernarr had
been carrying bags of Myrish fire, mustard salve, ground garlic,
tansy, poppy, kingscopper, and other healing herbs. Even
sweetsleep, which gave the gift of painless death. But Brown
Bernarr had died on the Fist and no one had thought to search for
Maester Aemon’s medicines. Hake had known some herblore as
well, being a cook, but Hake was also lost. So it was left to the
surviving stewards to do what they could for the wounded, which was
little enough. At least they are dry here, with a fire to warm
them. They need more food, though.
They all needed more food. The men had been grumbling for days.
Clubfoot Karl kept saying how Craster had to have a hidden larder,
and Garth of Oldtown had begun to echo him, when he was out of the
Lord Commander’s hearing. Sam had thought of begging for
something more nourishing for the wounded men at least, but he did
not have the courage. Craster’s eyes were cold and mean, and
whenever the wildling looked his way his hands twitched a little,
as if they wanted to curl up into fists. Does he know I spoke to
Gilly, the last time we were here? he wondered. Did she tell him I
said we’d take her? Did he beat it out of her?
“I’m cold,” said Bannen. “Please.
I’m cold.”
For all the heat and smoke in Craster’s hall, Sam felt
cold himself. And tired, so tired. He needed sleep, but whenever he
closed his eyes he dreamed of blowing snow and dead men shambling
toward him with black hands and bright blue eyes.
Up in the loft, Gilly let out a shuddering sob that echoed down
the long low windowless hall. “Push,” he heard one of
Craster’s older wives tell her. “Harder. Harder. Scream
if it helps.” She did, so loud it made Sam wince.
Craster turned his head to glare. “I’ve had a
bellyful o’ that shrieking,” he shouted up. “Give
her a rag to bite down on, or I’ll come up there and give her
a taste o’ my hand.”
He would too, Sam knew. Craster had nineteen wives, but none
who’d dare interfere once he started up that ladder. No more
than the black brothers had two nights past, when he was beating
one of the younger girls. There had been mutterings, to be sure.
“He’s killing her,” Garth of Greenaway had said,
and Clubfoot Karl laughed and said, “If he don’t want
the little sweetmeat he could give her to me.” Black Bernarr
cursed in a low angry voice, and Alan of Rosby got up and went
outside so he wouldn’t have to hear. “His roof, his
rule,” the ranger Ronnel Harclay had reminded them.
“Craster’s a friend to the Watch.” A friend, thought Sam, as he listened to Gilly’s muffled
shrieks. Craster was a brutal man who ruled his wives and daughters
with an iron hand, but his keep was a refuge all the same.
“Frozen crows,” Craster sneered when they straggled in,
those few who had survived the snow, the wights, and the bitter
cold. “And not so big a flock as went north, neither.”
Yet he had given them space on his floor, a roof to keep the snow
off, a fire to dry them out, and his wives had brought them cups of
hot wine to put some warmth in their bellies. “Bloody
crows,” he called them, but he’d fed them too, meager
though the fare might be. We are guests, Sam reminded himself. Gilly is his. His daughter,
his wife. His roof, his rule.
The first time he’d seen Craster’s Keep, Gilly had
come begging for help, and Sam had lent her his black cloak to
conceal her belly when she went to find Jon Snow. Knights are
supposed to defend women and children. Only a few of the black
brothers were knights, but even so . . . We all
say the words, Sam thought. I am the shield that guards the realms
of men. A woman was a woman, even a wildling woman. We should help
her. We should. It was her child Gilly feared for; she was
frightened that it might be a boy. Craster raised up his daughters
to be his wives, but there were neither men nor boys to be seen
about his compound. Gilly had told Jon that Craster gave his sons
to the gods. If the gods are good, they will send her a daughter,
Sam prayed.
Up in the loft, Gilly choked back a scream. “That’s
it,” a woman said. “Another push, now. Oh, I see his
head.” Hers, Sam thought miserably. Her head, hers.
“Cold,” said Bannen, weakly. “Please.
I’m so cold.” Sam put the bowl and spoon aside, tossed
another fur across the dying man, put another stick on the fire.
Gilly gave a shriek, and began to pant. Craster gnawed on his hard
black sausage. He had sausages for himself and his wives, he said,
but none for the Watch. “Women,” he complained.
“The way they wail . . . I had me a fat
sow once birthed a litter of eight with no more’n a
grunt.” Chewing, he turned his head to squint contemptuously
at Sam. “She was near as fat as you, boy. Slayer.” He
laughed.
It was more than Sam could stand. He stumbled away from the
firepit, stepping awkwardly over and around the men sleeping and
squatting and dying upon the hard-packed earthen floor. The smoke
and screams and moans were making him feel faint. Bending his head,
he pushed through the hanging deerhide flaps that served Craster
for a door and stepped out into the afternoon.
The day was cloudy, but still bright enough to blind him after
the gloom of the hall. Some patches of snow weighed down the limbs
of surrounding trees and blanketed the gold and russet hills, but
fewer than there had been. The storm had passed on, and the days at
Craster’s Keep had been . . . well, not
warm perhaps, but not so bitter cold. Sam could hear the soft
drip-drip-drip of water melting off the icicles that bearded the
edge of the thick sod roof. He took a deep shuddering breath and
looked around.
To the west Ollo Lophand and Tim Stone were moving through the
horselines, feeding and watering the remaining garrons.
Downwind, other brothers were skinning and butchering the
animals deemed too weak to go on. Spearmen and archers walked
sentry behind the earthen dikes that were Craster’s only
defense against whatever hid in the wood beyond, while a dozen
firepits sent up thick fingers of blue-grey smoke. Sam could hear
the distant echoes of axes at work in the forest, where a work
detail was harvesting enough wood to keep the blazes burning all
through the night. Nights were the bad time. When it got dark. And
cold.
There had been no attacks while they had been at
Craster’s, neither wights nor Others. Nor would there be,
Craster said. “A godly man got no cause to fear such. I said
as much to that Mance Rayder once, when he come sniffing round. He
never listened, no more’n you crows with your swords and your
bloody fires. That won’t help you none when the white cold
comes. Only the gods will help you then. You best get right with
the gods.”
Gilly had spoken of the white cold as well, and she’d told
them what sort of offerings Craster made to his gods. Sam had
wanted to kill him when he heard. There are no laws beyond the
Wall, he reminded himself, and Craster’s a friend to the
Watch.
A ragged shout went up from behind the daub-and-wattle hall. Sam
went to take a look. The ground beneath his feet was a slush of
melting snow and soft mud that Dolorous Edd insisted was made of
Craster’s shit. It was thicker than shit, though; it sucked
at Sam’s boots so hard he felt one pull loose.
Back of a vegetable garden and empty sheepfold, a dozen black
brothers were loosing arrows at a butt they’d built of hay
and straw. The slender blond steward they called Sweet Donnel had
laid a shaft just off the bull’s eye at fifty yards.
“Best that, old man,” he said.
“Aye. I will.” Ulmer, stooped and grey-bearded and
loose of skin and limb, stepped to the mark and pulled an arrow
from the quiver at his waist. In his youth he had been an outlaw, a
member of the infamous Kingswood Brotherhood. He claimed he’d
once put an arrow through the hand of the White Bull of the
Kingsguard to steal a kiss from the lips of a Dornish princess. He
had stolen her jewels too, and a chest of golden dragons, but it
was the kiss he liked to boast of in his cups.
He notched and drew, all smooth as summer silk, then let fly.
His shaft struck the butt an inch inside of Donnel Hill’s.
“Will that do, lad?” he asked, stepping back.
“Well enough,” said the younger man, grudgingly.
“The crosswind helped you. It blew more strongly when I
loosed.”
“You ought to have allowed for it, then. You have a good
eye and a steady hand, but you’ll need a deal more to best a
man of the kingswood. Fletcher Dick it was who showed me how to
bend the bow, and no finer archer ever lived. Have I told you about
old Dick, now?”
“Only three hundred times.” Every man at Castle
Black had heard Ulmer’s tales of the great outlaw band of
yore; of Simon Toyne and the Smiling Knight, Oswyn Longneck the
Thrice-Hanged, Wenda the White Fawn, Fletcher Dick, Big Belly Ben,
and all the rest. Searching for escape, Sweet Donnel looked about
and spied Sam standing in the muck. “Slayer,” he
called. “Come, show us how you slew the Other.” He held
out the tall yew longbow.
Sam turned red. “It wasn’t an arrow, it was a
dagger, dragonglass . . . ” He knew what would happen if he took the bow. He would miss the
butt and send the arrow sailing over the dike off into the trees.
Then he’d hear the laughter.
“No matter,” said Alan of Rosby, another fine
bowman. “We’re all keen to see the Slayer shoot.
Aren’t we, lads?”
He could not face them; the mocking smiles, the mean little
jests, the contempt in their eyes. Sam turned to go back the way
he’d come, but his right foot sank deep in the muck, and when
he tried to pull it out his boot came off. He had to kneel to
wrench it free, laughter ringing in his ears. Despite all his
socks, the snowmelt had soaked through to his toes by the time he
made his escape. Useless, he thought miserably. My father saw me
true. I have no right to be alive when so many brave men are
dead.
Grenn was tending the firepit south of the compound gate,
stripped to the waist as he split logs. His face was red with
exertion, the sweat steaming off his skin. But he grinned as Sam
came chuffing up. “The Others get your boot,
Slayer?” Him too? “It was the mud. Please don’t call me
that.”
“Why not?” Grenn sounded honestly puzzled.
“It’s a good name, and you came by it
fairly.”
Pyp always teased Grenn about being thick as a castle wall, so
Sam explained patiently. “It’s just a different way of
calling me a coward,” he said, standing on his left leg and
wriggling back into his muddy boot. “They’re mocking
me, the same way they mock Bedwyck by calling him
‘Giant’.”
“He’s not a giant, though,” said Grenn,
“and Paul was never small. Well, maybe when he was a babe at
the breast, but not after. You did slay the Other, though, so
it’s not the same.”
“I just . . . I
never . . . I was scared!”
“No more than me. It’s only Pyp who says I’m
too dumb to be frightened. I get as frightened as anyone.”
Grenn bent to scoop up a split log, and tossed it into the fire.
“I used to be scared of Jon, whenever I had to fight him. He
was so quick, and he fought like he meant to kill me.” The
green damp wood sat in the flames, smoking before it took fire.
“I never said, though. Sometimes I think everyone is just
pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending
is how you get brave, I don’t know. Let them call you Slayer,
who cares?”
“You never liked Ser Alliser to call you
Aurochs.”
“He was saying I was big and stupid.” Grenn
scratched at his beard. “If Pyp wanted to call me Aurochs,
though, he could. Or you, or Jon. An aurochs is a fierce strong
beast, so that’s not so bad, and I am big, and getting
bigger. Wouldn’t you rather be Sam the Slayer than Ser
Piggy?”
“Why can’t I just be Samwell Tarly?” He sat
down heavily on a wet log that Grenn had yet to split. “It
was the dragonglass that slew it. Not me, the
dragonglass.”
He had told them. He had told them all. Some of them
didn’t believe him, he knew. Dirk had shown Sam his dirk and
said, “I got iron, what do I want with glass?” Black
Bernarr and the three Garths made it plain that they doubted his
whole story, and Rolley of Sisterton came right out and said,
“More like you stabbed some rustling bushes and it turned out
to be Small Paul taking a shit, so you came up with a
lie.”
But Dywen listened, and Dolorous Edd, and they made Sam and
Grenn tell the Lord Commander. Mormont frowned all through the tale
and asked pointed questions, but he was too cautious a man to shun
any possible advantage. He asked Sam for all the dragonglass in his
pack, though that was little enough. Whenever Sam thought of the
cache Jon had found buried beneath the Fist, it made him want to
cry. There’d been dagger blades and spearheads, and two or
three hundred arrowheads at least. Jon had made daggers for
himself, Sam, and Lord Commander Mormont, and he’d given Sam a spearhead, an old broken
horn, and some arrowheads. Grenn had taken a handful of arrowheads
as well, but that was all.
So now all they had was Mormont’s dagger and the one Sam
had given Grenn, plus nineteen arrows and a tall hardwood spear
with a black dragonglass head. The sentries passed the spear along
from watch to watch, while Mormont had divided the arrows among his
best bowmen. Muttering Bill, Garth Greyfeather, Ronnel Harclay,
Sweet Donnel Hill, and Alan of Rosby had three apiece, and Ulmer
had four. But even if they made every shaft tell, they’d soon
be down to fire arrows like all the rest. They had loosed hundreds
of fire arrows on the Fist, yet still the wights kept coming. It will not be enough, Sam thought. Craster’s sloping
palisades of mud and melting snow would hardly slow the wights,
who’d climbed the much steeper slopes of the Fist to swarm
over the ringwall. And instead of three hundred brothers drawn up
in disciplined ranks to meet them, the wights would find forty-one
ragged survivors, nine too badly hurt to fight. Forty-four had come
straggling into Craster’s out of the storm, out of the
sixty-odd who’d cut their way free of the Fist, but three of
those had died of their wounds, and Bannen would soon make
four.
“Do you think the wights are gone?” Sam asked Grenn.
“Why don’t they come finish us?”
“They only come when it’s cold.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “but is it the cold that
brings the wights, or the wights that bring the cold?”
“Who cares?” Grenn’s axe sent wood chips
flying. “They come together, that’s what matters. Hey,
now that we know that dragonglass kills them, maybe they
won’t come at all. Maybe they’re frightened of us
now!”
Sam wished he could believe that, but it seemed to him that when
you were dead, fear had no more meaning than pain or love or duty.
He wrapped his hands around his legs, sweating under his layers of
wool and leather and fur. The dragonglass dagger had melted the
pale thing in the woods, true . . . but Grenn
was talking like it would do the same to the wights. We don’t
know that, he thought. We don’t know anything, really. I wish
Jon was here. He liked Grenn, but he couldn’t talk to him the
same way. Jon wouldn’t call me Slayer, I know. And I could
talk to him about Gilly’s baby. Jon had ridden off with
Qhorin Halfhand, though, and they’d had no word of him since.
He had a dragonglass dagger too, but did he think to use it? Is he
lying dead and frozen in some ravine . . . or
worse, is he dead and walking?
He could not understand why the gods would want to take Jon Snow
and Bannen and leave him, craven and clumsy as he was. He should
have died on the Fist, where he’d pissed himself three times
and lost his sword besides. And he would have died in the woods if
Small Paul had not come along to carry him. I wish it was all a
dream. Then I could wake up. How flne that would be, to wake back
on the Fist of the First Men with all his brothers still around
him, even Jon and Ghost. Or even better, to wake in Castle Black
behind the Wall and go to the common room for a bowl of
Three-Finger Hobb’s thick cream of wheat, with a big spoon of
butter melting in the middle and a dollop of honey besides. Just
the thought of it made his empty stomach rumble.
“Snow.”
Sam glanced up at the sound. Lord Commander Mormont’s
raven was circling the fire, beating the air with wide black
wings.
“Snow,” the bird cawed. “Snow, snow.”
Wherever the raven went, Mormont soon followed. The Lord
Commander emerged from beneath the trees, mounted on his garron
between old Dywen and the fox-faced ranger Ronnel Harclay,
who’d been raised to Thoren Smallwood’s place. The
spearmen at the gate shouted a challenge, and the Old Bear returned
a gruff, “Who in seven hells do you think goes there? Did the
Others take your eyes?” He rode between the gateposts, one
bearing a ram’s skull and the other the skull of a bear, then
reined up, raised a fist, and whistled. The raven came flapping
down at his call.
“My lord,” Sam heard Ronnel Harclay say, “we
have only twenty-two mounts, and I doubt half will reach the
Wall.”
“I know that,” Mormont grumbled. “We must go
all the same. Craster’s made that plain.” He glanced to
the west, where a bank of dark clouds hid the sun. “The gods
gave us a respite, but for how long?” Mormont swung down from
the saddle, jolting his raven back into the air. He saw Sam then,
and bellowed, “Tarly!”
“Me?” Sam got awkwardly to his feet.
“Me?” The raven landed on the old man’s head.
“Me?”
“Is your name Tarly? Do you have a brother hereabouts?
Yes, you. Close your mouth and come with me.”
“With you?” The words tumbled out in a squeak.
Lord Commander Mormont gave him a withering look. “You are
a man of the Night’s Watch. Try not to soil your smallclothes
every time I look at you. Come, I said.” His boots made
squishing sounds in the mud, and Sam had to hurry to keep up.
“I’ve been thinking about this dragonglass of
yours.”
“It’s not mine,” Sam said.
“Jon Snow’s dragonglass, then. If dragonglass
daggers are what we need, why do we have only two of them? Every
man on the Wall should be armed with one the day he says his
words.”
“We never knew . . . ”
“We never knew! But we must have known once. The
Night’s Watch has forgotten its true purpose, Tarly. You
don’t build a wall seven hundred feet high to keep savages in
skins from stealing women. The Wall was made to guard the realms of
men . . . and not against other men, which is
all the wildlings are when you come right down to it. Too many
years, Tarly, too many hundreds and thousands of years. We lost
sight of the true enemy. And now he’s here, but we
don’t know how to fight him. Is dragonglass made by dragons,
as the smallfolk like to say?”
“The m-maesters think not,” Sam stammered.
“The maesters say it comes from the fires of the earth. They
call it obsidian.”
Mormont snorted. “They can call it lemon pie for all I
care. If it kills as you claim, I want more of it.”
Sam stumbled. “Jon found more, on the Fist. Hundreds of
arrowheads, spearheads as
well . . . ”
“So you said. Small good it does us there. To reach the
Fist again we’d need to be armed with the weapons we
won’t have until we reach the bloody Fist. And there are
still the wildlings to deal with. We need to find dragonglass
someplace else.”
Sam had almost forgotten about the wildlings, so much had
happened since. “The children of the forest used dragonglass
blades,” he said. “They’d know where to find
obsidian.”
“The children of the forest are all dead,” said
Mormont. “The First Men killed half of them with bronze
blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron. Why a glass
dagger should—”
The Old Bear broke off as Craster emerged from between the
deerhide flaps of his door. The wildling smiled, revealing a mouth
of brown rotten teeth. “I have a son.”
“Son,” cawed Mormont’s raven. “Son, son,
son.”
The Lord Commander’s face was stiff. “I’m glad
for you.”
“Are you, now? Me, I’ll be glad when you and yours
are gone. Past time, I’m thinking.”
“As soon as our wounded are strong
enough . . . ”
“They’re strong as they’re like to get, old
crow, and both of us know it. Them that’s dying, you know
them too, cut their bloody throats and be done with it. Or leave
them, if you don’t have the stomach, and I’ll sort them
out myself.”
Lord Commander Mormont bristled. “Thoren Smallwood claimed
you were a friend to the Watch—”
“Aye,” said Craster. “I gave you all I could
spare, but winter’s coming on, and now the girl’s stuck
me with another squalling mouth to feed.”
“We could take him,” someone squeaked.
Craster’s head turned. His eyes narrowed. He spat on
Sam’s foot. “What did you say, Slayer?”
Sam opened and closed his mouth.
“I . . . I . . . I
only meant . . . if you didn’t want
him . . . his mouth to
feed . . . with winter coming on,
we . . . we could take him,
and . . . ”
“My son. My blood. You think I’d give him to you
crows?”
“I only thought . . . ” You have
no sons, you expose them, Gilly said as much, you leave them in the
woods, that’s why you have only wives here, and daughters who
grow up to be wives.
“Be quiet, Sam,” said Lord Commander Mormont.
“You’ve said enough. Too much. Inside.”
“M-my lord—”
“Inside!”
Red-faced, Sam pushed through the deerhides, back into the gloom
of the hall. Mormont followed. “How great a fool are
you?” the old man said within, his voice choked and angry.
“Even if Craster gave us the child, he’d be dead before
we reached the Wall. We need a newborn babe to care for near as
much as we need more snow. Do you have milk to feed him in those
big teats of yours? Or did you mean to take the mother
too?”
“She wants to come,” Sam said. “She begged
me . . . ”
Mormont raised a hand. “I will hear no more of this,
Tarly. You’ve been told and told to stay well away from
Craster’s wives.”
“She’s his daughter,” Sam said feebly.
“Go see to Bannen. Now. Before you make me
wroth.”
“Yes, my lord.” Sam hurried off quivering.
But when he reached the fire, it was only to find Giant pulling
a fur cloak up over Bannen’s head. “He said he was
cold,” the small man said. “I hope he’s gone
someplace warm, I do.”
“His wound . . . ” said Sam.
“Bugger his wound.” Dirk prodded the corpse with his
foot. “His foot was hurt. I knew a man back in my village
lost a foot. He lived to nine-and-forty.”
“The cold,” said Sam. “He was never
warm.”
“He was never fed,” said Dirk. “Not proper.
That bastard Craster starved him dead.”
Sam looked around anxiously, but Craster had not returned to the
hall. If he had, things might have grown ugly. The wildling hated
bastards, though the rangers said he was baseborn himself, fathered
on a wildling woman by some long-dead crow.
“Craster’s got his own to feed,” said Giant.
“All these women. He’s given us what he can.”
“Don’t you bloody believe it. The day we leave,
he’ll tap a keg o’ mead and sit down to feast on ham
and honey. And laugh at us, out starving in the snow. He’s a
bloody wildling, is all he is. There’s none o’ them
friends of the Watch.” He kicked at Bannen’s corpse.
“Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
They burned the ranger’s corpse at sunset, in the fire
that Grenn had been feeding earlier that day. Tim Stone and Garth
of Oldtown carried out the naked corpse and swung him twice between
them before heaving him into the flames. The surviving brothers
divided up his clothes, his weapons, his armor, and everything else
he owned. At Castle Black, the Night’s Watch buried its dead
with all due ceremony. They were not at Castle Black, though. And
bones do not come back as wights.
“His name was Bannen,” Lord Commander Mormont said,
as the flames took him. “He was a brave man, a good ranger.
He came to us from . . . where did he come
from?”
“Down White Harbor way,” someone called out.
Mormont nodded. “He came to us from White Harbor, and
never failed in his duty. He kept his vows as best he could, rode
far, fought fiercely. We shall never see his like again.”
“And now his watch is ended,” the black brothers
said, in solemn chant.
“And now his watch is ended,” Mormont echoed.
“Ended,” cried his raven. “Ended.”
Sam was red-eyed and sick from the smoke. When he looked at the
fire, he thought he saw Bannen sitting up, his hands coiling into
fists as if to fight off the flames that were consuming him, but it
was only for an instant, before the swirling smoke hid all. The
worst thing was the smell, though. If it had been a foul unpleasant
smell he might have stood it, but his burning brother smelled so
much like roast pork that Sam’s mouth began to water, and
that was so horrible that as soon as the bird squawked
“Ended” he ran behind the hall to throw up in the
ditch.
He was there on his knees in the mud when Dolorous Edd came up.
“Digging for worms, Sam? Or are you just sick?”
“Sick,” said Sam weakly, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand. “The
smell . . . ”
“Never knew Bannen could smell so good.” Edd’s
tone was as morose as ever. “I had half a mind to carve a
slice off him. If we had some applesauce, I might have done it.
Pork’s always best with applesauce, I find.” Edd undid
his laces and pulled out his cock. “You best not die, Sam, or
I fear I might succumb. There’s bound to be more crackling on
you than Bannen ever had, and I never could resist a bit of
crackling.” He sighed as his piss arced out, yellow and
steaming. “We ride at first light, did you hear? Sun or snow,
the Old Bear tells me.” Sun or snow. Sam glanced up anxiously at the sky.
“Snow?” he squeaked.
“We . . . ride? All of us?”
“Well, no, some will need to walk.” He shook
himself. “Dywen now, he says we need to learn to ride dead
horses, like the Others do. He claims it would save on feed. How
much could a dead horse eat?” Edd laced himself back up.
“Can’t say I fancy the notion. Once they figure a way
to work a dead horse, we’ll be next. Likely I’ll be the
first too. ‘Edd’ they’ll say,
‘dying’s no excuse for lying down no more, so get on up
and take this spear, you’ve got the watch tonight.’
Well, I shouldn’t be so gloomy. Might be I’ll die
before they work it out.” Might be we’ll all die, and sooner than we’d like,
Sam thought, as he climbed awkwardly to his feet.
When Craster learned that his unwanted guests would be departing
on the morrow, the wildling became almost amiable, or as close to
amiable as Craster ever got. “Past time,” he said,
“you don’t belong here, I told you that. All the same,
I’ll see you off proper, with a feast. Well, a feed. My wives
can roast them horses you slaughtered, and I’ll find some
beer and bread.” He smiled his brown smile. “Nothing
better than beer and horsemeat. If you can’t ride ’em,
eat ’em, that’s what I say.”
His wives and daughters dragged out the benches and the long log
tables, and cooked and served as well. Except for Gilly, Sam could
hardly tell the women apart. Some were old and some were young and
some were only girls, but a lot of them were Craster’s
daughters as well as his wives, and they all looked sort of alike.
As they went about their work, they spoke in soft voices to each
other, but never to the men in black.
Craster owned but one chair. He sat in it, clad in a sleeveless
sheepskin jerkin. His thick arms were covered with white hair, and
about one wrist was a twisted ring of gold. Lord Commander Mormont
took the place at the top of the bench to his right, while the
brothers crowded in knee to knee; a dozen remained outside to guard
the gate and tend the fires.
Sam found a place between Grenn and Orphan Oss, his stomach
rumbling. The charred horsemeat dripped with grease as
Craster’s wives turned the spits above the firepit, and the
smell of it set his mouth to watering again, but that reminded him
of Bannen. Hungry as he was, Sam knew he would retch if he so much
as tried a bite. How could they eat the poor faithful garrons who
had carried them so far? When Craster’s wives brought onions,
he seized one eagerly. One side was black with rot, but he cut that
part off with his dagger and ate the good half raw. There was bread
as well, but only two loaves. When Ulmer asked for more, the woman
only shook her head. That was when the trouble started.
“Two loaves?” Clubfoot Karl complained from down the
bench. “How stupid are you women? We need more bread than
this!”
Lord Commander Mormont gave him a hard look. “Take what
you’re given, and be thankful. Would you sooner be out in the
storm eating snow?”
“We’ll be there soon enough.” Clubfoot Karl
did not flinch from the Old Bear’s wrath. “I’d
sooner eat what Craster’s hiding, my lord.”
Craster narrowed his eyes. “I gave you crows enough. I got
me women to feed.”
Dirk speared a chunk of horsemeat. “Aye. So you admit you
got a secret larder. How else to make it through a
winter?”
“I’m a godly man . . . ”
Craster started.
“You’re a niggardly man,” said Karl,
“and a liar.”
“Hams,” Garth of Oldtown said, in a reverent voice.
“There were pigs, last time we come. I bet he’s got
hams hid someplace. Smoked and salted hams, and bacon
too.”
“Sausage,” said Dirk. “Them long black ones,
they’re like rocks, they keep for years. I bet he’s got
a hundred hanging in some cellar.”
“Oats,” suggested Ollo Lophand. “Corn.
Barley.”
“Corn,” said Mormont’s raven, with a flap of
the wings. “Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn.”
“Enough,” said Lord Commander Mormont over the
bird’s raucous calls. “Be quiet, all of you. This is
folly.”
“Apples,” said Garth of Greenaway. “Barrels
and barrels of crisp autumn apples. There are apple trees out
there, I saw ’em.”
“Dried berries. Cabbages. Pine nuts.”
“Corn. Corn. Corn.”
“Salt mutton. There’s a sheepfold. He’s got
casks and casks of mutton laid by, you know he does.”
Craster looked fit to spit them all by then. Lord Commander
Mormont rose. “Silence. I’ll hear no more such
talk.”
“Then stuff bread in your cars, old man.” Clubfoot
Karl pushed back from the table. “Or did you swallow your
bloody crumb already?”
Sam saw the Old Bear’s face go red. “Have you
forgotten who I am? Sit, eat, and be silent. That is a
command.”
No one spoke. No one moved. All eyes were on the Lord Commander
and the big clubfooted ranger, as the two of them stared at each
other across the table. It seemed to Sam that Karl broke first, and
was about to sit, though sullenly . . .
. . . but Craster stood, and his axe was in
his hand. The big black steel axe that Mormont had given him as a
guest gift. “No,” he growled. “You’ll not
sit. No one who calls me niggard will sleep beneath my roof nor eat
at my board. Out with you, cripple. And you and you and you.”
He jabbed the head of the axe toward Dirk and Garth and Garth in
turn. “Go sleep in the cold with empty bellies, the lot
o’ you, or . . . ”
“Bloody bastard!” Sam heard one of the Garths curse.
He never saw which one.
“Who calls me bastard?” Craster roared, sweeping
platter and meat and wine cups from the table with his left hand
while lifting the axe with his right.
“It’s no more than all men know,” Karl
answered.
Craster moved quicker than Sam would have believed possible,
vaulting across the table with axe in hand. A woman screamed, Garth
Greenaway and Orphan Oss drew knives, Karl stumbled back and
tripped over Ser Byam lying wounded on the floor. One instant
Craster was coming after him spitting curses. The next he was
spitting blood. Dirk had grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head
back, and opened his throat ear to ear with one long slash. Then he
gave him a rough shove, and the wildling fell forward, crashing
face first across Ser Byam. Byam screamed in agony as Craster
drowned in his own blood, the axe slipping from his fingers. Two of
Craster’s wives were wailing, a third cursed, a fourth flew
at Sweet Donnel and tried to scratch his eyes out. He knocked her
to the floor. The Lord Commander stood over Craster’s corpse,
dark with anger. “The gods will curse us,” he cried.
“There is no crime so foul as for a guest to bring murder
into a man’s hall. By all the laws of the hearth, we—”
“There are no laws beyond the Wall, old man.
Remember?” Dirk grabbed one of Craster’s wives by the
arm, and shoved the point of his bloody dirk up under her chin.
“Show us where he keeps the food, or you’ll get the
same as he did, woman.”
“Unhand her.” Mormont took a step. “I’ll
have your head for this, you—” Garth of Greenaway
blocked his path, and Ollo Lophand yanked him back. They both had
blades in hand. “Hold your tongue,” Ollo warned.
Instead the Lord Commander grabbed for his dagger. Ollo had only
one hand, but that was quick. He twisted free of the old
man’s grasp, shoved the knife into Mormont’s belly, and
yanked it out again, all red. And then the world went mad.
Later, much later, Sam found himself sitting crosslegged on the
floor, with Mormont’s head in his lap. He did not remember
how they’d gotten there, or much of anything else that had
happened after the Old Bear was stabbed. Garth of Greenaway had
killed Garth of Oldtown, he recalled, but not why. Rolley of
Sisterton had fallen from the loft and broken his neck after
climbing the ladder to have a taste of Craster’s wives.
Grenn . . .
Grenn had shouted and slapped him, and then he’d run away
with Giant and Dolorous Edd and some others. Craster still sprawled
across Ser Byam, but the wounded knight no longer moaned. Four men
in black sat on the bench eating chunks of burned horsemeat while
Ollo coupled with a weeping woman on the table.
“Tarly.” When he tried to speak, the blood dribbled
from the Old Bear’s mouth down into his beard. “Tarly,
go. Go.”
“Where, my lord?” His voice was flat and lifeless. I
am not afraid. It was a queer feeling. “There’s no
place to go.”
“The Wall. Make for the Wall. Now.”
“Now,” squawked the raven. “Now. Now.” The
bird walked up the old man’s arm to his chest, and plucked a
hair from his beard.
“You must. Must tell them.”
“Tell them what, my lord?” Sam asked politely.
“All. The Fist. The wildlings. Dragonglass. This.
All.” His breathing was very shallow now, his voice a
whisper. “Tell my son. Jorah. Tell him, take the black. My
wish. Dying wish.”
“Wish?” The raven cocked its head, beady black
eyes shining. “Corn?” the bird asked.
“No corn,” said Mormont feebly. “Tell Jorah.
Forgive him. My son. Please. Go.”
“It’s too far,” said Sam. “I’ll
never reach the Wall, my lord.” He was so very tired. All he
wanted was to sleep, to sleep and sleep and never wake, and he knew
that if he just stayed here soon enough Dirk or Ollo Lophand or
Clubfoot Karl would get angry with him and grant his wish, just to
see him die. “I’d sooner stay with you. See, I’m
not frightened anymore. Of you, or . . . of
anything.”
“You should be,” said a woman’s voice.
Three of Craster’s wives were standing over them. Two were
haggard old women he did not know, but Gilly was between them, all
bundled up in skins and cradling a bundle of brown and white fur
that must have held her baby. “We’re not supposed to
talk to Craster’s wives,” Sam told them. “We have
orders.”
“That’s done now,” said the old woman on the
right.
“The blackest crows are down in the cellar,
gorging,” said the old woman on the left, “or up in the
loft with the young ones. They’ll be back soon, though. Best
you be gone when they do. The horses run off, but Dyah’s
caught two.”
“You said you’d help me,” Gilly reminded
him.
“I said Jon would help you. Jon’s brave, and
he’s a good fighter, but I think he’s dead now.
I’m a craven. And fat. Look how fat I am. Besides, Lord
Mormont’s hurt. Can’t you see? I couldn’t leave
the Lord Commander.”
“Child,” said the other old woman, “that old
crow’s gone before you. Look.”
Mormont’s head was still in his lap, but his eyes were
open and staring and his lips no longer moved. The raven cocked its
head and squawked, then looked up at Sam. “Corn?”
“No corn. He has no corn.” Sam closed the Old
Bear’s eyes and tried to think of a prayer, but all that came
to mind was, “Mother have mercy. Mother have mercy. Mother
have mercy.”
“Your mother can’t help you none,” said the
old woman on the left. “That dead old man can’t
neither. You take his sword and you take that big warm far cloak
o’ his and you take his horse if you can find him. And you
go.”
“The girl don’t lie,” the old woman on the
right said. “She’s my girl, and I beat the lying out of
her early on. You said you’d help her. Do what Ferny says,
boy. Take the girl and be quick about it.”
“Quick,” the raven said. “Quick quick
quick.”
“Where?” asked Sam, puzzled. “Where should I
take her?”
“Someplace warm,” the two old women said as one.
Gilly was crying. “Me and the babe. Please. I’ll be
your wife, like I was Craster’s. Please, ser crow. He’s
a boy, just like Nella said he’d be. If you don’t take
him, they will.”
“They?” said Sam, and the raven cocked its black
head and echoed, “They. They. They.”
“The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on
the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s
rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old
bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the
sons.”
Up in the loft a woman was giving birth noisily, while below a
man lay dying by the fire. Samwell Tarly could not say which
frightened him more.
They’d covered poor Bannen with a pile of furs and stoked
the fire high, yet all he could say was, “I’m cold.
Please. I’m so cold.” Sam was trying to feed him onion
broth, but he could not swallow. The broth dribbled over his lips
and down his chin as fast as Sam could spoon it in.
“That one’s dead.” Craster eyed the man with
indifference as he worried at a sausage. “Be kinder to stick
a knife in his chest than that spoon down his throat, you ask
me.”
“I don’t recall as we did.” Giant was no more
than five feet tall—his true name was Bedwyck—but a fierce
little man for all that. “Slayer, did you ask Craster for his
counsel?”
Sam cringed at the name, but shook his head. He filled another
spoon, brought it to Bannen’s mouth, and tried to ease it
between his lips.
“Food and fire,” Giant was saying, “that was
all we asked of you. And you grudge us the food.”
“Be glad I didn’t grudge you fire too.”
Craster was a thick man made thicker by the ragged smelly
sheepskins he wore day and night. He had a broad flat nose, a mouth
that drooped to one side, and a missing ear. And though his matted
hair and tangled beard might be grey going white, his hard knuckly
hands still looked strong enough to hurt. “I fed you what I
could, but you crows are always hungry. I’m a godly man, else
I would have chased you off. You think I need the likes of him,
dying on my floor? You think I need all your mouths, little
man?” The wildling spat. “Crows. When did a black bird
ever bring good to a man’s hall, I ask you? Never.
Never.”
More broth ran from the corner of Bannen’s mouth. Sam
dabbed it away with a corner of his sleeve. The ranger’s eyes
were open but unseeing. “I’m cold,” he said
again, so faintly. A maester might have known how to save him, but
they had no maester. Kedge Whiteye had taken Bannen’s mangled
foot off nine days past, in a gout of pus and blood that made Sam
sick, but it was too little, too late. “I’m so
cold,” the pale lips repeated.
About the hall, a ragged score of black brothers squatted on the
floor or sat on rough-hewn benches, drinking cups of the same thin
onion broth and gnawing on chunks of hardbread. A couple were
wounded worse than Bannen, to look at them. Fornio had been
delirious for days, and Ser Byam’s shoulder was oozing a foul
yellow pus. When they’d left Castle Black, Brown Bernarr had
been carrying bags of Myrish fire, mustard salve, ground garlic,
tansy, poppy, kingscopper, and other healing herbs. Even
sweetsleep, which gave the gift of painless death. But Brown
Bernarr had died on the Fist and no one had thought to search for
Maester Aemon’s medicines. Hake had known some herblore as
well, being a cook, but Hake was also lost. So it was left to the
surviving stewards to do what they could for the wounded, which was
little enough. At least they are dry here, with a fire to warm
them. They need more food, though.
They all needed more food. The men had been grumbling for days.
Clubfoot Karl kept saying how Craster had to have a hidden larder,
and Garth of Oldtown had begun to echo him, when he was out of the
Lord Commander’s hearing. Sam had thought of begging for
something more nourishing for the wounded men at least, but he did
not have the courage. Craster’s eyes were cold and mean, and
whenever the wildling looked his way his hands twitched a little,
as if they wanted to curl up into fists. Does he know I spoke to
Gilly, the last time we were here? he wondered. Did she tell him I
said we’d take her? Did he beat it out of her?
“I’m cold,” said Bannen. “Please.
I’m cold.”
For all the heat and smoke in Craster’s hall, Sam felt
cold himself. And tired, so tired. He needed sleep, but whenever he
closed his eyes he dreamed of blowing snow and dead men shambling
toward him with black hands and bright blue eyes.
Up in the loft, Gilly let out a shuddering sob that echoed down
the long low windowless hall. “Push,” he heard one of
Craster’s older wives tell her. “Harder. Harder. Scream
if it helps.” She did, so loud it made Sam wince.
Craster turned his head to glare. “I’ve had a
bellyful o’ that shrieking,” he shouted up. “Give
her a rag to bite down on, or I’ll come up there and give her
a taste o’ my hand.”
He would too, Sam knew. Craster had nineteen wives, but none
who’d dare interfere once he started up that ladder. No more
than the black brothers had two nights past, when he was beating
one of the younger girls. There had been mutterings, to be sure.
“He’s killing her,” Garth of Greenaway had said,
and Clubfoot Karl laughed and said, “If he don’t want
the little sweetmeat he could give her to me.” Black Bernarr
cursed in a low angry voice, and Alan of Rosby got up and went
outside so he wouldn’t have to hear. “His roof, his
rule,” the ranger Ronnel Harclay had reminded them.
“Craster’s a friend to the Watch.” A friend, thought Sam, as he listened to Gilly’s muffled
shrieks. Craster was a brutal man who ruled his wives and daughters
with an iron hand, but his keep was a refuge all the same.
“Frozen crows,” Craster sneered when they straggled in,
those few who had survived the snow, the wights, and the bitter
cold. “And not so big a flock as went north, neither.”
Yet he had given them space on his floor, a roof to keep the snow
off, a fire to dry them out, and his wives had brought them cups of
hot wine to put some warmth in their bellies. “Bloody
crows,” he called them, but he’d fed them too, meager
though the fare might be. We are guests, Sam reminded himself. Gilly is his. His daughter,
his wife. His roof, his rule.
The first time he’d seen Craster’s Keep, Gilly had
come begging for help, and Sam had lent her his black cloak to
conceal her belly when she went to find Jon Snow. Knights are
supposed to defend women and children. Only a few of the black
brothers were knights, but even so . . . We all
say the words, Sam thought. I am the shield that guards the realms
of men. A woman was a woman, even a wildling woman. We should help
her. We should. It was her child Gilly feared for; she was
frightened that it might be a boy. Craster raised up his daughters
to be his wives, but there were neither men nor boys to be seen
about his compound. Gilly had told Jon that Craster gave his sons
to the gods. If the gods are good, they will send her a daughter,
Sam prayed.
Up in the loft, Gilly choked back a scream. “That’s
it,” a woman said. “Another push, now. Oh, I see his
head.” Hers, Sam thought miserably. Her head, hers.
“Cold,” said Bannen, weakly. “Please.
I’m so cold.” Sam put the bowl and spoon aside, tossed
another fur across the dying man, put another stick on the fire.
Gilly gave a shriek, and began to pant. Craster gnawed on his hard
black sausage. He had sausages for himself and his wives, he said,
but none for the Watch. “Women,” he complained.
“The way they wail . . . I had me a fat
sow once birthed a litter of eight with no more’n a
grunt.” Chewing, he turned his head to squint contemptuously
at Sam. “She was near as fat as you, boy. Slayer.” He
laughed.
It was more than Sam could stand. He stumbled away from the
firepit, stepping awkwardly over and around the men sleeping and
squatting and dying upon the hard-packed earthen floor. The smoke
and screams and moans were making him feel faint. Bending his head,
he pushed through the hanging deerhide flaps that served Craster
for a door and stepped out into the afternoon.
The day was cloudy, but still bright enough to blind him after
the gloom of the hall. Some patches of snow weighed down the limbs
of surrounding trees and blanketed the gold and russet hills, but
fewer than there had been. The storm had passed on, and the days at
Craster’s Keep had been . . . well, not
warm perhaps, but not so bitter cold. Sam could hear the soft
drip-drip-drip of water melting off the icicles that bearded the
edge of the thick sod roof. He took a deep shuddering breath and
looked around.
To the west Ollo Lophand and Tim Stone were moving through the
horselines, feeding and watering the remaining garrons.
Downwind, other brothers were skinning and butchering the
animals deemed too weak to go on. Spearmen and archers walked
sentry behind the earthen dikes that were Craster’s only
defense against whatever hid in the wood beyond, while a dozen
firepits sent up thick fingers of blue-grey smoke. Sam could hear
the distant echoes of axes at work in the forest, where a work
detail was harvesting enough wood to keep the blazes burning all
through the night. Nights were the bad time. When it got dark. And
cold.
There had been no attacks while they had been at
Craster’s, neither wights nor Others. Nor would there be,
Craster said. “A godly man got no cause to fear such. I said
as much to that Mance Rayder once, when he come sniffing round. He
never listened, no more’n you crows with your swords and your
bloody fires. That won’t help you none when the white cold
comes. Only the gods will help you then. You best get right with
the gods.”
Gilly had spoken of the white cold as well, and she’d told
them what sort of offerings Craster made to his gods. Sam had
wanted to kill him when he heard. There are no laws beyond the
Wall, he reminded himself, and Craster’s a friend to the
Watch.
A ragged shout went up from behind the daub-and-wattle hall. Sam
went to take a look. The ground beneath his feet was a slush of
melting snow and soft mud that Dolorous Edd insisted was made of
Craster’s shit. It was thicker than shit, though; it sucked
at Sam’s boots so hard he felt one pull loose.
Back of a vegetable garden and empty sheepfold, a dozen black
brothers were loosing arrows at a butt they’d built of hay
and straw. The slender blond steward they called Sweet Donnel had
laid a shaft just off the bull’s eye at fifty yards.
“Best that, old man,” he said.
“Aye. I will.” Ulmer, stooped and grey-bearded and
loose of skin and limb, stepped to the mark and pulled an arrow
from the quiver at his waist. In his youth he had been an outlaw, a
member of the infamous Kingswood Brotherhood. He claimed he’d
once put an arrow through the hand of the White Bull of the
Kingsguard to steal a kiss from the lips of a Dornish princess. He
had stolen her jewels too, and a chest of golden dragons, but it
was the kiss he liked to boast of in his cups.
He notched and drew, all smooth as summer silk, then let fly.
His shaft struck the butt an inch inside of Donnel Hill’s.
“Will that do, lad?” he asked, stepping back.
“Well enough,” said the younger man, grudgingly.
“The crosswind helped you. It blew more strongly when I
loosed.”
“You ought to have allowed for it, then. You have a good
eye and a steady hand, but you’ll need a deal more to best a
man of the kingswood. Fletcher Dick it was who showed me how to
bend the bow, and no finer archer ever lived. Have I told you about
old Dick, now?”
“Only three hundred times.” Every man at Castle
Black had heard Ulmer’s tales of the great outlaw band of
yore; of Simon Toyne and the Smiling Knight, Oswyn Longneck the
Thrice-Hanged, Wenda the White Fawn, Fletcher Dick, Big Belly Ben,
and all the rest. Searching for escape, Sweet Donnel looked about
and spied Sam standing in the muck. “Slayer,” he
called. “Come, show us how you slew the Other.” He held
out the tall yew longbow.
Sam turned red. “It wasn’t an arrow, it was a
dagger, dragonglass . . . ” He knew what would happen if he took the bow. He would miss the
butt and send the arrow sailing over the dike off into the trees.
Then he’d hear the laughter.
“No matter,” said Alan of Rosby, another fine
bowman. “We’re all keen to see the Slayer shoot.
Aren’t we, lads?”
He could not face them; the mocking smiles, the mean little
jests, the contempt in their eyes. Sam turned to go back the way
he’d come, but his right foot sank deep in the muck, and when
he tried to pull it out his boot came off. He had to kneel to
wrench it free, laughter ringing in his ears. Despite all his
socks, the snowmelt had soaked through to his toes by the time he
made his escape. Useless, he thought miserably. My father saw me
true. I have no right to be alive when so many brave men are
dead.
Grenn was tending the firepit south of the compound gate,
stripped to the waist as he split logs. His face was red with
exertion, the sweat steaming off his skin. But he grinned as Sam
came chuffing up. “The Others get your boot,
Slayer?” Him too? “It was the mud. Please don’t call me
that.”
“Why not?” Grenn sounded honestly puzzled.
“It’s a good name, and you came by it
fairly.”
Pyp always teased Grenn about being thick as a castle wall, so
Sam explained patiently. “It’s just a different way of
calling me a coward,” he said, standing on his left leg and
wriggling back into his muddy boot. “They’re mocking
me, the same way they mock Bedwyck by calling him
‘Giant’.”
“He’s not a giant, though,” said Grenn,
“and Paul was never small. Well, maybe when he was a babe at
the breast, but not after. You did slay the Other, though, so
it’s not the same.”
“I just . . . I
never . . . I was scared!”
“No more than me. It’s only Pyp who says I’m
too dumb to be frightened. I get as frightened as anyone.”
Grenn bent to scoop up a split log, and tossed it into the fire.
“I used to be scared of Jon, whenever I had to fight him. He
was so quick, and he fought like he meant to kill me.” The
green damp wood sat in the flames, smoking before it took fire.
“I never said, though. Sometimes I think everyone is just
pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending
is how you get brave, I don’t know. Let them call you Slayer,
who cares?”
“You never liked Ser Alliser to call you
Aurochs.”
“He was saying I was big and stupid.” Grenn
scratched at his beard. “If Pyp wanted to call me Aurochs,
though, he could. Or you, or Jon. An aurochs is a fierce strong
beast, so that’s not so bad, and I am big, and getting
bigger. Wouldn’t you rather be Sam the Slayer than Ser
Piggy?”
“Why can’t I just be Samwell Tarly?” He sat
down heavily on a wet log that Grenn had yet to split. “It
was the dragonglass that slew it. Not me, the
dragonglass.”
He had told them. He had told them all. Some of them
didn’t believe him, he knew. Dirk had shown Sam his dirk and
said, “I got iron, what do I want with glass?” Black
Bernarr and the three Garths made it plain that they doubted his
whole story, and Rolley of Sisterton came right out and said,
“More like you stabbed some rustling bushes and it turned out
to be Small Paul taking a shit, so you came up with a
lie.”
But Dywen listened, and Dolorous Edd, and they made Sam and
Grenn tell the Lord Commander. Mormont frowned all through the tale
and asked pointed questions, but he was too cautious a man to shun
any possible advantage. He asked Sam for all the dragonglass in his
pack, though that was little enough. Whenever Sam thought of the
cache Jon had found buried beneath the Fist, it made him want to
cry. There’d been dagger blades and spearheads, and two or
three hundred arrowheads at least. Jon had made daggers for
himself, Sam, and Lord Commander Mormont, and he’d given Sam a spearhead, an old broken
horn, and some arrowheads. Grenn had taken a handful of arrowheads
as well, but that was all.
So now all they had was Mormont’s dagger and the one Sam
had given Grenn, plus nineteen arrows and a tall hardwood spear
with a black dragonglass head. The sentries passed the spear along
from watch to watch, while Mormont had divided the arrows among his
best bowmen. Muttering Bill, Garth Greyfeather, Ronnel Harclay,
Sweet Donnel Hill, and Alan of Rosby had three apiece, and Ulmer
had four. But even if they made every shaft tell, they’d soon
be down to fire arrows like all the rest. They had loosed hundreds
of fire arrows on the Fist, yet still the wights kept coming. It will not be enough, Sam thought. Craster’s sloping
palisades of mud and melting snow would hardly slow the wights,
who’d climbed the much steeper slopes of the Fist to swarm
over the ringwall. And instead of three hundred brothers drawn up
in disciplined ranks to meet them, the wights would find forty-one
ragged survivors, nine too badly hurt to fight. Forty-four had come
straggling into Craster’s out of the storm, out of the
sixty-odd who’d cut their way free of the Fist, but three of
those had died of their wounds, and Bannen would soon make
four.
“Do you think the wights are gone?” Sam asked Grenn.
“Why don’t they come finish us?”
“They only come when it’s cold.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “but is it the cold that
brings the wights, or the wights that bring the cold?”
“Who cares?” Grenn’s axe sent wood chips
flying. “They come together, that’s what matters. Hey,
now that we know that dragonglass kills them, maybe they
won’t come at all. Maybe they’re frightened of us
now!”
Sam wished he could believe that, but it seemed to him that when
you were dead, fear had no more meaning than pain or love or duty.
He wrapped his hands around his legs, sweating under his layers of
wool and leather and fur. The dragonglass dagger had melted the
pale thing in the woods, true . . . but Grenn
was talking like it would do the same to the wights. We don’t
know that, he thought. We don’t know anything, really. I wish
Jon was here. He liked Grenn, but he couldn’t talk to him the
same way. Jon wouldn’t call me Slayer, I know. And I could
talk to him about Gilly’s baby. Jon had ridden off with
Qhorin Halfhand, though, and they’d had no word of him since.
He had a dragonglass dagger too, but did he think to use it? Is he
lying dead and frozen in some ravine . . . or
worse, is he dead and walking?
He could not understand why the gods would want to take Jon Snow
and Bannen and leave him, craven and clumsy as he was. He should
have died on the Fist, where he’d pissed himself three times
and lost his sword besides. And he would have died in the woods if
Small Paul had not come along to carry him. I wish it was all a
dream. Then I could wake up. How flne that would be, to wake back
on the Fist of the First Men with all his brothers still around
him, even Jon and Ghost. Or even better, to wake in Castle Black
behind the Wall and go to the common room for a bowl of
Three-Finger Hobb’s thick cream of wheat, with a big spoon of
butter melting in the middle and a dollop of honey besides. Just
the thought of it made his empty stomach rumble.
“Snow.”
Sam glanced up at the sound. Lord Commander Mormont’s
raven was circling the fire, beating the air with wide black
wings.
“Snow,” the bird cawed. “Snow, snow.”
Wherever the raven went, Mormont soon followed. The Lord
Commander emerged from beneath the trees, mounted on his garron
between old Dywen and the fox-faced ranger Ronnel Harclay,
who’d been raised to Thoren Smallwood’s place. The
spearmen at the gate shouted a challenge, and the Old Bear returned
a gruff, “Who in seven hells do you think goes there? Did the
Others take your eyes?” He rode between the gateposts, one
bearing a ram’s skull and the other the skull of a bear, then
reined up, raised a fist, and whistled. The raven came flapping
down at his call.
“My lord,” Sam heard Ronnel Harclay say, “we
have only twenty-two mounts, and I doubt half will reach the
Wall.”
“I know that,” Mormont grumbled. “We must go
all the same. Craster’s made that plain.” He glanced to
the west, where a bank of dark clouds hid the sun. “The gods
gave us a respite, but for how long?” Mormont swung down from
the saddle, jolting his raven back into the air. He saw Sam then,
and bellowed, “Tarly!”
“Me?” Sam got awkwardly to his feet.
“Me?” The raven landed on the old man’s head.
“Me?”
“Is your name Tarly? Do you have a brother hereabouts?
Yes, you. Close your mouth and come with me.”
“With you?” The words tumbled out in a squeak.
Lord Commander Mormont gave him a withering look. “You are
a man of the Night’s Watch. Try not to soil your smallclothes
every time I look at you. Come, I said.” His boots made
squishing sounds in the mud, and Sam had to hurry to keep up.
“I’ve been thinking about this dragonglass of
yours.”
“It’s not mine,” Sam said.
“Jon Snow’s dragonglass, then. If dragonglass
daggers are what we need, why do we have only two of them? Every
man on the Wall should be armed with one the day he says his
words.”
“We never knew . . . ”
“We never knew! But we must have known once. The
Night’s Watch has forgotten its true purpose, Tarly. You
don’t build a wall seven hundred feet high to keep savages in
skins from stealing women. The Wall was made to guard the realms of
men . . . and not against other men, which is
all the wildlings are when you come right down to it. Too many
years, Tarly, too many hundreds and thousands of years. We lost
sight of the true enemy. And now he’s here, but we
don’t know how to fight him. Is dragonglass made by dragons,
as the smallfolk like to say?”
“The m-maesters think not,” Sam stammered.
“The maesters say it comes from the fires of the earth. They
call it obsidian.”
Mormont snorted. “They can call it lemon pie for all I
care. If it kills as you claim, I want more of it.”
Sam stumbled. “Jon found more, on the Fist. Hundreds of
arrowheads, spearheads as
well . . . ”
“So you said. Small good it does us there. To reach the
Fist again we’d need to be armed with the weapons we
won’t have until we reach the bloody Fist. And there are
still the wildlings to deal with. We need to find dragonglass
someplace else.”
Sam had almost forgotten about the wildlings, so much had
happened since. “The children of the forest used dragonglass
blades,” he said. “They’d know where to find
obsidian.”
“The children of the forest are all dead,” said
Mormont. “The First Men killed half of them with bronze
blades, and the Andals finished the job with iron. Why a glass
dagger should—”
The Old Bear broke off as Craster emerged from between the
deerhide flaps of his door. The wildling smiled, revealing a mouth
of brown rotten teeth. “I have a son.”
“Son,” cawed Mormont’s raven. “Son, son,
son.”
The Lord Commander’s face was stiff. “I’m glad
for you.”
“Are you, now? Me, I’ll be glad when you and yours
are gone. Past time, I’m thinking.”
“As soon as our wounded are strong
enough . . . ”
“They’re strong as they’re like to get, old
crow, and both of us know it. Them that’s dying, you know
them too, cut their bloody throats and be done with it. Or leave
them, if you don’t have the stomach, and I’ll sort them
out myself.”
Lord Commander Mormont bristled. “Thoren Smallwood claimed
you were a friend to the Watch—”
“Aye,” said Craster. “I gave you all I could
spare, but winter’s coming on, and now the girl’s stuck
me with another squalling mouth to feed.”
“We could take him,” someone squeaked.
Craster’s head turned. His eyes narrowed. He spat on
Sam’s foot. “What did you say, Slayer?”
Sam opened and closed his mouth.
“I . . . I . . . I
only meant . . . if you didn’t want
him . . . his mouth to
feed . . . with winter coming on,
we . . . we could take him,
and . . . ”
“My son. My blood. You think I’d give him to you
crows?”
“I only thought . . . ” You have
no sons, you expose them, Gilly said as much, you leave them in the
woods, that’s why you have only wives here, and daughters who
grow up to be wives.
“Be quiet, Sam,” said Lord Commander Mormont.
“You’ve said enough. Too much. Inside.”
“M-my lord—”
“Inside!”
Red-faced, Sam pushed through the deerhides, back into the gloom
of the hall. Mormont followed. “How great a fool are
you?” the old man said within, his voice choked and angry.
“Even if Craster gave us the child, he’d be dead before
we reached the Wall. We need a newborn babe to care for near as
much as we need more snow. Do you have milk to feed him in those
big teats of yours? Or did you mean to take the mother
too?”
“She wants to come,” Sam said. “She begged
me . . . ”
Mormont raised a hand. “I will hear no more of this,
Tarly. You’ve been told and told to stay well away from
Craster’s wives.”
“She’s his daughter,” Sam said feebly.
“Go see to Bannen. Now. Before you make me
wroth.”
“Yes, my lord.” Sam hurried off quivering.
But when he reached the fire, it was only to find Giant pulling
a fur cloak up over Bannen’s head. “He said he was
cold,” the small man said. “I hope he’s gone
someplace warm, I do.”
“His wound . . . ” said Sam.
“Bugger his wound.” Dirk prodded the corpse with his
foot. “His foot was hurt. I knew a man back in my village
lost a foot. He lived to nine-and-forty.”
“The cold,” said Sam. “He was never
warm.”
“He was never fed,” said Dirk. “Not proper.
That bastard Craster starved him dead.”
Sam looked around anxiously, but Craster had not returned to the
hall. If he had, things might have grown ugly. The wildling hated
bastards, though the rangers said he was baseborn himself, fathered
on a wildling woman by some long-dead crow.
“Craster’s got his own to feed,” said Giant.
“All these women. He’s given us what he can.”
“Don’t you bloody believe it. The day we leave,
he’ll tap a keg o’ mead and sit down to feast on ham
and honey. And laugh at us, out starving in the snow. He’s a
bloody wildling, is all he is. There’s none o’ them
friends of the Watch.” He kicked at Bannen’s corpse.
“Ask him if you don’t believe me.”
They burned the ranger’s corpse at sunset, in the fire
that Grenn had been feeding earlier that day. Tim Stone and Garth
of Oldtown carried out the naked corpse and swung him twice between
them before heaving him into the flames. The surviving brothers
divided up his clothes, his weapons, his armor, and everything else
he owned. At Castle Black, the Night’s Watch buried its dead
with all due ceremony. They were not at Castle Black, though. And
bones do not come back as wights.
“His name was Bannen,” Lord Commander Mormont said,
as the flames took him. “He was a brave man, a good ranger.
He came to us from . . . where did he come
from?”
“Down White Harbor way,” someone called out.
Mormont nodded. “He came to us from White Harbor, and
never failed in his duty. He kept his vows as best he could, rode
far, fought fiercely. We shall never see his like again.”
“And now his watch is ended,” the black brothers
said, in solemn chant.
“And now his watch is ended,” Mormont echoed.
“Ended,” cried his raven. “Ended.”
Sam was red-eyed and sick from the smoke. When he looked at the
fire, he thought he saw Bannen sitting up, his hands coiling into
fists as if to fight off the flames that were consuming him, but it
was only for an instant, before the swirling smoke hid all. The
worst thing was the smell, though. If it had been a foul unpleasant
smell he might have stood it, but his burning brother smelled so
much like roast pork that Sam’s mouth began to water, and
that was so horrible that as soon as the bird squawked
“Ended” he ran behind the hall to throw up in the
ditch.
He was there on his knees in the mud when Dolorous Edd came up.
“Digging for worms, Sam? Or are you just sick?”
“Sick,” said Sam weakly, wiping his mouth with the
back of his hand. “The
smell . . . ”
“Never knew Bannen could smell so good.” Edd’s
tone was as morose as ever. “I had half a mind to carve a
slice off him. If we had some applesauce, I might have done it.
Pork’s always best with applesauce, I find.” Edd undid
his laces and pulled out his cock. “You best not die, Sam, or
I fear I might succumb. There’s bound to be more crackling on
you than Bannen ever had, and I never could resist a bit of
crackling.” He sighed as his piss arced out, yellow and
steaming. “We ride at first light, did you hear? Sun or snow,
the Old Bear tells me.” Sun or snow. Sam glanced up anxiously at the sky.
“Snow?” he squeaked.
“We . . . ride? All of us?”
“Well, no, some will need to walk.” He shook
himself. “Dywen now, he says we need to learn to ride dead
horses, like the Others do. He claims it would save on feed. How
much could a dead horse eat?” Edd laced himself back up.
“Can’t say I fancy the notion. Once they figure a way
to work a dead horse, we’ll be next. Likely I’ll be the
first too. ‘Edd’ they’ll say,
‘dying’s no excuse for lying down no more, so get on up
and take this spear, you’ve got the watch tonight.’
Well, I shouldn’t be so gloomy. Might be I’ll die
before they work it out.” Might be we’ll all die, and sooner than we’d like,
Sam thought, as he climbed awkwardly to his feet.
When Craster learned that his unwanted guests would be departing
on the morrow, the wildling became almost amiable, or as close to
amiable as Craster ever got. “Past time,” he said,
“you don’t belong here, I told you that. All the same,
I’ll see you off proper, with a feast. Well, a feed. My wives
can roast them horses you slaughtered, and I’ll find some
beer and bread.” He smiled his brown smile. “Nothing
better than beer and horsemeat. If you can’t ride ’em,
eat ’em, that’s what I say.”
His wives and daughters dragged out the benches and the long log
tables, and cooked and served as well. Except for Gilly, Sam could
hardly tell the women apart. Some were old and some were young and
some were only girls, but a lot of them were Craster’s
daughters as well as his wives, and they all looked sort of alike.
As they went about their work, they spoke in soft voices to each
other, but never to the men in black.
Craster owned but one chair. He sat in it, clad in a sleeveless
sheepskin jerkin. His thick arms were covered with white hair, and
about one wrist was a twisted ring of gold. Lord Commander Mormont
took the place at the top of the bench to his right, while the
brothers crowded in knee to knee; a dozen remained outside to guard
the gate and tend the fires.
Sam found a place between Grenn and Orphan Oss, his stomach
rumbling. The charred horsemeat dripped with grease as
Craster’s wives turned the spits above the firepit, and the
smell of it set his mouth to watering again, but that reminded him
of Bannen. Hungry as he was, Sam knew he would retch if he so much
as tried a bite. How could they eat the poor faithful garrons who
had carried them so far? When Craster’s wives brought onions,
he seized one eagerly. One side was black with rot, but he cut that
part off with his dagger and ate the good half raw. There was bread
as well, but only two loaves. When Ulmer asked for more, the woman
only shook her head. That was when the trouble started.
“Two loaves?” Clubfoot Karl complained from down the
bench. “How stupid are you women? We need more bread than
this!”
Lord Commander Mormont gave him a hard look. “Take what
you’re given, and be thankful. Would you sooner be out in the
storm eating snow?”
“We’ll be there soon enough.” Clubfoot Karl
did not flinch from the Old Bear’s wrath. “I’d
sooner eat what Craster’s hiding, my lord.”
Craster narrowed his eyes. “I gave you crows enough. I got
me women to feed.”
Dirk speared a chunk of horsemeat. “Aye. So you admit you
got a secret larder. How else to make it through a
winter?”
“I’m a godly man . . . ”
Craster started.
“You’re a niggardly man,” said Karl,
“and a liar.”
“Hams,” Garth of Oldtown said, in a reverent voice.
“There were pigs, last time we come. I bet he’s got
hams hid someplace. Smoked and salted hams, and bacon
too.”
“Sausage,” said Dirk. “Them long black ones,
they’re like rocks, they keep for years. I bet he’s got
a hundred hanging in some cellar.”
“Oats,” suggested Ollo Lophand. “Corn.
Barley.”
“Corn,” said Mormont’s raven, with a flap of
the wings. “Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn.”
“Enough,” said Lord Commander Mormont over the
bird’s raucous calls. “Be quiet, all of you. This is
folly.”
“Apples,” said Garth of Greenaway. “Barrels
and barrels of crisp autumn apples. There are apple trees out
there, I saw ’em.”
“Dried berries. Cabbages. Pine nuts.”
“Corn. Corn. Corn.”
“Salt mutton. There’s a sheepfold. He’s got
casks and casks of mutton laid by, you know he does.”
Craster looked fit to spit them all by then. Lord Commander
Mormont rose. “Silence. I’ll hear no more such
talk.”
“Then stuff bread in your cars, old man.” Clubfoot
Karl pushed back from the table. “Or did you swallow your
bloody crumb already?”
Sam saw the Old Bear’s face go red. “Have you
forgotten who I am? Sit, eat, and be silent. That is a
command.”
No one spoke. No one moved. All eyes were on the Lord Commander
and the big clubfooted ranger, as the two of them stared at each
other across the table. It seemed to Sam that Karl broke first, and
was about to sit, though sullenly . . .
. . . but Craster stood, and his axe was in
his hand. The big black steel axe that Mormont had given him as a
guest gift. “No,” he growled. “You’ll not
sit. No one who calls me niggard will sleep beneath my roof nor eat
at my board. Out with you, cripple. And you and you and you.”
He jabbed the head of the axe toward Dirk and Garth and Garth in
turn. “Go sleep in the cold with empty bellies, the lot
o’ you, or . . . ”
“Bloody bastard!” Sam heard one of the Garths curse.
He never saw which one.
“Who calls me bastard?” Craster roared, sweeping
platter and meat and wine cups from the table with his left hand
while lifting the axe with his right.
“It’s no more than all men know,” Karl
answered.
Craster moved quicker than Sam would have believed possible,
vaulting across the table with axe in hand. A woman screamed, Garth
Greenaway and Orphan Oss drew knives, Karl stumbled back and
tripped over Ser Byam lying wounded on the floor. One instant
Craster was coming after him spitting curses. The next he was
spitting blood. Dirk had grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head
back, and opened his throat ear to ear with one long slash. Then he
gave him a rough shove, and the wildling fell forward, crashing
face first across Ser Byam. Byam screamed in agony as Craster
drowned in his own blood, the axe slipping from his fingers. Two of
Craster’s wives were wailing, a third cursed, a fourth flew
at Sweet Donnel and tried to scratch his eyes out. He knocked her
to the floor. The Lord Commander stood over Craster’s corpse,
dark with anger. “The gods will curse us,” he cried.
“There is no crime so foul as for a guest to bring murder
into a man’s hall. By all the laws of the hearth, we—”
“There are no laws beyond the Wall, old man.
Remember?” Dirk grabbed one of Craster’s wives by the
arm, and shoved the point of his bloody dirk up under her chin.
“Show us where he keeps the food, or you’ll get the
same as he did, woman.”
“Unhand her.” Mormont took a step. “I’ll
have your head for this, you—” Garth of Greenaway
blocked his path, and Ollo Lophand yanked him back. They both had
blades in hand. “Hold your tongue,” Ollo warned.
Instead the Lord Commander grabbed for his dagger. Ollo had only
one hand, but that was quick. He twisted free of the old
man’s grasp, shoved the knife into Mormont’s belly, and
yanked it out again, all red. And then the world went mad.
Later, much later, Sam found himself sitting crosslegged on the
floor, with Mormont’s head in his lap. He did not remember
how they’d gotten there, or much of anything else that had
happened after the Old Bear was stabbed. Garth of Greenaway had
killed Garth of Oldtown, he recalled, but not why. Rolley of
Sisterton had fallen from the loft and broken his neck after
climbing the ladder to have a taste of Craster’s wives.
Grenn . . .
Grenn had shouted and slapped him, and then he’d run away
with Giant and Dolorous Edd and some others. Craster still sprawled
across Ser Byam, but the wounded knight no longer moaned. Four men
in black sat on the bench eating chunks of burned horsemeat while
Ollo coupled with a weeping woman on the table.
“Tarly.” When he tried to speak, the blood dribbled
from the Old Bear’s mouth down into his beard. “Tarly,
go. Go.”
“Where, my lord?” His voice was flat and lifeless. I
am not afraid. It was a queer feeling. “There’s no
place to go.”
“The Wall. Make for the Wall. Now.”
“Now,” squawked the raven. “Now. Now.” The
bird walked up the old man’s arm to his chest, and plucked a
hair from his beard.
“You must. Must tell them.”
“Tell them what, my lord?” Sam asked politely.
“All. The Fist. The wildlings. Dragonglass. This.
All.” His breathing was very shallow now, his voice a
whisper. “Tell my son. Jorah. Tell him, take the black. My
wish. Dying wish.”
“Wish?” The raven cocked its head, beady black
eyes shining. “Corn?” the bird asked.
“No corn,” said Mormont feebly. “Tell Jorah.
Forgive him. My son. Please. Go.”
“It’s too far,” said Sam. “I’ll
never reach the Wall, my lord.” He was so very tired. All he
wanted was to sleep, to sleep and sleep and never wake, and he knew
that if he just stayed here soon enough Dirk or Ollo Lophand or
Clubfoot Karl would get angry with him and grant his wish, just to
see him die. “I’d sooner stay with you. See, I’m
not frightened anymore. Of you, or . . . of
anything.”
“You should be,” said a woman’s voice.
Three of Craster’s wives were standing over them. Two were
haggard old women he did not know, but Gilly was between them, all
bundled up in skins and cradling a bundle of brown and white fur
that must have held her baby. “We’re not supposed to
talk to Craster’s wives,” Sam told them. “We have
orders.”
“That’s done now,” said the old woman on the
right.
“The blackest crows are down in the cellar,
gorging,” said the old woman on the left, “or up in the
loft with the young ones. They’ll be back soon, though. Best
you be gone when they do. The horses run off, but Dyah’s
caught two.”
“You said you’d help me,” Gilly reminded
him.
“I said Jon would help you. Jon’s brave, and
he’s a good fighter, but I think he’s dead now.
I’m a craven. And fat. Look how fat I am. Besides, Lord
Mormont’s hurt. Can’t you see? I couldn’t leave
the Lord Commander.”
“Child,” said the other old woman, “that old
crow’s gone before you. Look.”
Mormont’s head was still in his lap, but his eyes were
open and staring and his lips no longer moved. The raven cocked its
head and squawked, then looked up at Sam. “Corn?”
“No corn. He has no corn.” Sam closed the Old
Bear’s eyes and tried to think of a prayer, but all that came
to mind was, “Mother have mercy. Mother have mercy. Mother
have mercy.”
“Your mother can’t help you none,” said the
old woman on the left. “That dead old man can’t
neither. You take his sword and you take that big warm far cloak
o’ his and you take his horse if you can find him. And you
go.”
“The girl don’t lie,” the old woman on the
right said. “She’s my girl, and I beat the lying out of
her early on. You said you’d help her. Do what Ferny says,
boy. Take the girl and be quick about it.”
“Quick,” the raven said. “Quick quick
quick.”
“Where?” asked Sam, puzzled. “Where should I
take her?”
“Someplace warm,” the two old women said as one.
Gilly was crying. “Me and the babe. Please. I’ll be
your wife, like I was Craster’s. Please, ser crow. He’s
a boy, just like Nella said he’d be. If you don’t take
him, they will.”
“They?” said Sam, and the raven cocked its black
head and echoed, “They. They. They.”
“The boy’s brothers,” said the old woman on
the left. “Craster’s sons. The white cold’s
rising out there, crow. I can feel it in my bones. These poor old
bones don’t lie. They’ll be here soon, the
sons.”