He tried to learn quickly. He needed to. His world fell into a blizzard and he trudged through, head bent down as though bracing against oncoming snow.
When the wildlings came and his father was pierced by a girl with blood-red hair, he abandonded his sister. He heard a shriek as his feet moved against his every better instinct. Fleeing like a pathetic child; he had been a pathetic child, but that was no excuse.
The man with a voice like a wolf hissed in his ear. He tried to forget the words, but couldn't. The man with a scarred and beast like face. The man, smiling. The man going to eat his parents.
Danger in his world didn't come in black. It was white and red.
So the boy lived with the crows and joined their murder. He lived feasting on anger like raw meat. He avenged his father. A shot in the heart of a wildling woman, and a bastard who stared at like you had murdered his wife.
He pushed forward and cried and pushed forward harder, trying to ready himself against an oncoming white storm and bastards in black. He felt his arms get bigger and face get tighter, until one day he felt much older than his young years.
The funeral for some of his brothers in black was a hard one, but he pushed forward, because that was the only thing he knew how to do.
And then the clan with wide smiles and grinding teeth that had eaten his father were going to fight alongside him against the coming winter.
Tears and a stab through the heart.
The bastard lying dead in the blood, body broken and baned. Olly felt sick with shame. His stomach churned and food didn't stay down anymore. He woke gasping in the night, stomach tight and head screeching, irritating the others and embarassing himself.
Winter was drawing near, after all. They needed to be ready.
Then the impossible happened, and the bastard, who had looked so disappointed as he died, rose from the dead.
Olly charged the wilings, was brave in a way he never could have been the day his parents died, was the only crow willing to raise his wings and claw against those from beyond the wall.
He was sent to the Ice Cells.
The bastard rises again.
There is a noose around Olly's neck and loathing pulsing through his veins.
The world turned black, not white.