Prompt: write about an unlikely ruler of Westeros. Things sort of snowballed from there.
How had it come to this?
Sam sat in the empty throne room, staring unseeing at the far wall. The room was completely bare, the furniture and hangings stripped for fuel, the great throne long since melted down for the metal.
The call would come soon. They would make one final attempt to stop the oncoming tide, and then...
He sighed. When Jon had sent him from the Wall, he had been reluctant to go. He wanted to stay with his brothers, the only true family he'd ever had, and he had been terrified of the Maesters and the Citadel. Chains, always chains, choking him.
The Maesters were all long gone now, of course, along with anyone who had the coin to buy passage on a ship. The final message from the North had been terse and to the point: "The Wall has fallen. We cannot hold. Gods grant us mercy."
Panic had ensued. As the cold advanced, the strongholds of the north falling silent or sending one final plea for help, chaos had reigned in the south. Those who could leave, had, hoping that the sea would protect them from the oncoming tide. Those who couldn't had been hopelessly disorganised, uncertain, terrified.
He had been part of the delegation from the Citadel, summoned to King's Landing by the crown for their counsel. On their arrival in the city, they had been summoned to the palace, to discover that the entire royal family had left in the night, secretly absconding via ship to the Free Cities. Westeros was without a ruler, and something had to be done before the people realised they had been abandoned.
Amidst the hubbub the news had produced, one of the other acolytes piped up: "Sam killed an Other once!"
"It was the dragonglass that did it," he had said automatically, but by then it was far too late. He was crowned that afternoon: Samwell I, the Slayer.
At first his role had been largely symbolic. He had been paraded before the public at every opportunity, lauded as the man who could stop the cold. Soon, though, as the councillors and the Maesters and anyone who could manage it made their escape, he found himself in charge of a city, and indeed a country, facing the end.
And somehow he was supposed to make sure that end never came.
He had stockpiled food and burnables for the city, and sent traders across the sea in search of any fragments of dragonglass he could find. He sent ravens north to anyone who might be able to hold off the onslaught, and as much dragonglass as the city could spare. He appointed new captains of the city guard as the old ones fled, put curfews in place to keep the people under control, organised training for men to use catapults and flaming arrows and dragonglass spears. He rode around the city every morning to give the people hope. And it had all been for naught.
A steady stream of ravens had arrived, day by day: 'need supplies', 'send reinforcements', 'gods save us, they have come'. In the last few days, the stream had dried to a trickle. This morning, a light snow had begun to fall over the city, and he knew the end was near. He hadn't been a very good king, he knew, but he had done his best. He could still try to get away - go back to Horn Hill, to his father and Gilly, go south in search of a ship - but he wouldn't. He was the only thing these people had.
Soon he would ride out, lead the remnants of the gold cloaks and a ragtag groups of citizens in one final attempt at defending the walls. He wasn't scared, he realised suddenly. It was as if he had used up all his fear. All he felt now was a numbness, as if the approaching ice already had him in its grasp.
He looked up as the doors banged open, and the captain of the gold cloaks entered. "It's time."