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He was finishing the last of the pork pie the cooks had served up for supper when Jon sat down across froht of Ghost "Is that a wolf?"
"A direwolf," Jon said "His nail ofhuntsman," Samwell Tarly said
"Do you like to hunt?"
The fat boy shuddered "I hate it" He looked as though he was going to cry again
"What’s wrong now?" Jon asked hihtened?"
Saave a feeble shake of his head, too scared even to talk A burst of laughter filled the hall Jon heard Pyp squeaking in a high voice He stood "Let’s go outside"
The round fat face looked up at him, suspicious "Why? What e do outside?"
"Talk," Jon said "Have you seen the Wall?"
"I’m fat, not blind," Samwell Tarly said "Of course I saw it, it’s seven hundred feet high" Yet he stood up all the same, wrapped a fur-lined cloak over his shoulders, and followed Jon from the common hall, still wary, as if he suspected soht Ghost padded along beside theht it would be like this," Sa in the cold air Already he was huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up "All the buildings are falling down, and it’s soso"
"Cold?" A hard frost was settling over the castle, and Jon could hear the soft crunch of grey weeds beneath his boots
Saht I woke up in the dark and the fire had gone out and I was certain I was going to freeze to death by "
"It must have been warmer where you come from"
"I never sa until lastthe barrowlands, me and the an to fall, like a soft rain At first I thought it was so beautiful, like feathers drifting from the sky, but it kept on and on, until I was frozen to the bone The men had crusts of snow in their beards andI was afraid it would never end"
Jon s palely in the light of the half moon In the sky above, the stars burned clear and sharp "Are they going to o up there?" Sareat wooden stairs "I’ll die if I have to climb that"
"There’s a winch," Jon said, pointing "They can draw you up in a cage"
Sah places"
It was too ?" he asked "I don’t understand If you are truly so craven, why are you here? Why would a coant to join the Night’s Watch?"
Sa moment, and his round face seeround and began to cry, huge choking sobs that made his whole body shake Jon Snow could only stand and watch Like the snowfall on the barrowlands, it seemed the tears would never end
It was Ghost who knehat to do Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf an to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly’s face The fat boy cried out, startledand sohter
Jon Snow laughed with hiround, huddled in their cloaks with Ghost between them Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the pups newborn in the late su he found hi of Winterfell
"So down this long empty hall My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting nahts it’s my father, but sometimes it’s Robb instead, or ht of Benjen Stark saddened hiers in search of him Ser Jareone forth fro aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had left to hlands to the northwest, the marks stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished
"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked
Jon shook his head "No one The castle is always empty" He had never told anyone of the drea Saood to talk of it "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones That always scaresthe tower three steps at a ti for someone, for anyone And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts It’s black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down Soo down there, but I don’t want to I’s of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it’s not them I’m afraid of I scream that I’ood, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way It gets darker and darker, until I want to screa, embarrassed "That’s when I alake" His skin cold and cla in the darkness of his cell Ghost would leap up beside hio back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf s shaggy white fur "Do you dream of Horn Hill?" Jon asked
"No" Saht and hard "I hated it there" He scratched Ghost behind the ear, brooding, and Jon let the silence breathe After a long while Saan to talk, and Jon Snow listened quietly, and learned hoas that a self-confessed coward found himself on the Wall
The Tarlys were a faarden and Warden of the South The eldest son of Lord Randyll Tarly, Sa keep, and a storied two-handed greatsword naed of Valyrian steel and passed down from father to son near five hundred years
Whatever pride his lord father rew up plump, soft, and aard Sas, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts His passions were books and kittens and dancing, cluht of blood, and wept to see even a chicken slaughtered A dozento turn Saht his father wanted The boy was cursed and caned, slapped and starved One man had him sleep in his chainmail to make himand paraded hirew fatter and htened, until Lord Randyll’s disappoint "One ti from a whisper, "two men came to the castle, warlocks frohtered a bull aurochs and made me bathe in the hot blood, but it didn’t ot sick and retched Father had theirls in as ave her lord husband a second son Fro all his tier boy, a fierce, robust childSamwell had known several years of sweet peace with his music and his books
Until the dawn of his fifteenth name day, when he had been awakened to find his horse saddled and ready Three men-at-arms had escorted hi a deer "You are alro, andknife laying bare the carcass as he spoke "You have given me no cause to disown you, but neither will I allow you to inherit the land and title that should be Dickon’s Heartsbane h to wield her, and you are not worthy to touch her hilt So I have decided that you shall this day announce that you wish to take the black You will forsake all claim to your brother’s inheritance and start north before evenfall
"If you do not, then on the morroe shall have a hunt, and somewhere in these woods your horse will stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to dieor so I will tell your mother She has a woman’s heart and finds it in her to cherish even you, and I have no wish to cause her pain Please do not iine that it will truly be that easy, should you think to defywould pleaseyou are" His ar knife aside "So There is your choice The Night’s Watch"--he reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and held it in his fist, red and dripping--"or this"
Sa that had happened to soht, he did not weep, not even once When he was done, they sat together and listened to the wind for a time There was no other sound in all the world
Finally Jon said, "We should go back to the common hall"
"Why?" Saed "There’s hot cider to drink, or s for us, if the er, beforewell, not truly, but aler"
"How did he corove found hiirl o years older, and Dareon swears she helped hih her , but under her father’s eye she na, he said his voice was honey poured over thunder" Jon s Drinking songs he learned in his father’s winesink Pyp says his voice is piss poured over a fart" They laughed at that together
"I should like to hear them both," Sam admitted, "but they would not wantto ain on the morrow, isn’t he?"
"He is," Jon was forced to say
Saot aardly to his feet "I had better try to sleep" He huddled down in his cloak and plodded off
The others were still in the common room when Jon returned, alone but for Ghost "Where have you been?" Pyp asked
"Talking with Sam," he said
"He truly is craven," said Grenn "At supper, there were still places on the bench when he got his pie, but he was too scared to come sit with us"
"The Lord of Haested Jeren
"I saw hi "Do you think it was a brother?" He began to rily
The other boys fell silent, taken aback by his sudden fury "Listen to oing to be Pyp backed him, as he’d known he would, but when Halder spoke up, it was a pleasant surprise Grenn was anxious at the first, but Jon knew the words to move him One by one the rest fell in line Jon persuaded some, cajoled some, shamed the others, made threats where threats were required At the end they had all agreedall but Rast
"You girls do as you please," Rast said, "but if Thorne sendsto slice hed in Jon’s face and left them there
Hours later, as the castle slept, three of them paid a call on his cell Grenn held his ars Jon could hear Rast’s rapid breathing as Ghost leapt onto his chest The direwolf’s eyes burned red as ehtly at the soft skin of the boy’s throat, just enough to draw blood "Remember, we knohere you sleep," Jon said softly
The nextJon heard Rast tell Albett and Toad how his razor had slipped while he shaved
From that day forth, neither Rast nor any of the others would hurt Saainst hiround and swat aside his slow, clumsy strokes If the master-at-arhtly on breastplate or heled and threatened and called them all cravens and wohts later, at Jon’s urging, he joined the a place on the bench beside Halder It was another fortnight before he found the nerve to join their talk, but in ti Grenn with the best of theht be, but Saht he visited Jon in his cell "I don’t knohat you did," he said, "but I know you did it" He looked away shyly "I’ve never had a friend before"
"We’re not friends," Jon said He put a hand on Sam’s broad shoulder "We’re brothers"
And so they were, he thought to himself after Sam had taken his leave Robb and Bran and Rickon were his father’s sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of therey walls of Winterfell ht still haunt his dreams, but Castle Black was his life now, and his brothers were Sam and Grenn and Halder and Pyp and the other cast-outs ore the black of the Night’s Watch
"My uncle spoke truly," he whispered to Ghost He wondered if he would ever see Benjen Stark again, to tell him