SAMWELL

Sam's pen scratched faintly across the parchment, tracing a futile pattern. He ought to save the paper for messages, he knew, but who was there to send a message to, now? They were all alone out here. Would messages really be any less of a waste than what he was doing now?

It was folly, he knew. If Gilly was not dead, if the Others had not somehow managed to march past the Wall while they were not looking, then she was a thousand leagues away in the South, hidden behind a dozen blizzards. She might as well be on a different continent. Part of him hoped that she was: at least there, she might be safe. But he was not thinking of Gilly a thousand miles away; he wanted her here, at his side, leaning on his shoulder, her woolly hair falling down, matted through with snow – or maybe, just maybe, Talla and his mother would have dressed her up, and she would be in silk instead, yellow or maybe pale pea-green, with a foxfur collar. That would go nicely on her, he thought. And, though it shamed him and his own Night's Watch colours, he thought of her breasts too, spilling mother's milk onto his tongue, tasting of rum as she had on the boat to Oldtown. And her breasts were only a little larger than they normally were.

Don't think of her like that, Sam warned himself. Gilly was not a whore. He loved Gilly. It was simple as that. Gilly was a thousand miles away. She would never read his letter. It was simple as that, too.

He had not sent a letter to Horn Hill in over a year, not since leaving Volantis for Asshai. There was no way of knowing if they had received his letter, or if they had sent back a reply, and it was lying somewhere in an archive in Asshai with Gilly's scrawl and Talla's neat cursive merging into the parchment. Maybe that was how they'd find his letter, here in Castle Black, in a thousand years, hidden among tall candles of ice and ledgers frozen stiff with ice: And these here are the writings of Samwell Tarly, Sam the Slayer, to his lady love. It was, of course, Samwell Tarly who was the 999th (and last) Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, he who lost Castle Black to the invading forces of Euron Greyjoy, from the south, and the advancing Long Night, from the north.

But of course, they would never say that. Because if they lost this coming battle, there would be no men around to discover his writings. He would be forgotten entirely, as would all the frozen annals of human history.

A knock sounded at the door. "Come in," said Sam, and Tormund Giantsbane did so. Frost on his shoulder-plates, the big wildling stood in front of the fire, warming his charcoal-dusted hands. "Thank the gods you've got a fire in here, Tarly. Freezing up there."

"Have you finished with the snow?" Sam asked.

"About three-quarters done. No thanks to your builders. Alone we might have done it much faster." He turned back to Sam and smiled. "Not to say we're not entirely grateful for you, though. We're clearing more snow than we would have done. Just not in the right places."

"We need to clear it all," said Sam. "If we're to fight Euron up there—"

"We're damned to hell if we try to fight them up there. Nay, we'll be hiding down here like rats. But you're right. We need the main yard free. To get to the towers. For scouting."

"For scouting," Sam agreed flatly. "And for other things."

"Other things?" Tormund paused a moment. "Ah. You mean the body."

"The bodies," he emphasized. "We'll be giving them all proper funerals. Not just Jon."

Tormund grunted. "All the ones we can find, you mean."

"When will you have it done?"

A frown. "By tonight, I hope." The wildling gave a big shrug. "I'd best get back up there. Though you wouldn't happen to have any wine lying round, would you?"

There was a skin of sour Dornish on Sam's desk. "Be my guest," he said. Tormund took the skin, and drank most of it in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, muttered "Swill" under his breath, then went out. Sam listened to his footsteps receding down the wormway tunnel.

Once the wildling was gone, he tried turning his attention back to the letter, but it was no use. His worries were too many, his answers too few. In a matter of weeks, or even days if the Others breached from the North, they could all be dead. What good would a letter do then?

Sam felt a queer heat on the back of his neck, as though he was being watched, but with eyes that burned his skin. He turned to look… and his eyes found the glass candle.

The candle had been his and Melisandre's great discovery. They had found it in a secret space behind Maester Aemon's fireplace, using the instructions uncovered from the Jade Compendium. Unfortunately, they had only found the candle moments before the Wall fell, and whatever enchantments had been created or destroyed in those fatal moments had rendered the candle useless, at least for Sam alone. Melisandre might have more luck, but since his chastisement of her she had retreated to her old chambers in the Grey Keep and had resorted to prayer in solitude.

Sam carefully picked up the glass candle. Its obsidian edges were sharp enough to pierce flesh even through the leather of his gloves, so he held it gingerly, though he took care not to crack or smash it. A thin sliver of candlelight drifted through the dark heart of the prism, promising something, but never making good on that promise.

Marwyn the Mage had possessed a glass candle, back in Oldtown, though he had left it behind when he departed for Meereen, and no one else had been able to understand its signs. It was not unreasonable to assume that Marwyn had acquired another, but he had never deigned to reply to Sam's letters. It was too much to hope that the glass candle might yield different results, even if he could get it to work.

Sam was busy staring into that dark void when another noise made him turn. The flapping of wings, loud beside his face. Mormont's raven, he realised, with a start of surprise. Where had the bird come from? He had assumed the bird had flown away when the Wall came down, and was trapped behind the great wall of snow. And yet here it was. It alighted on his desk, flapped its big black wings, and cawed out a word, thrice in quick succession: "Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!"

Sam frowned. "Ghost?"

The bird squawked back, insistent. "Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!"

Ghost… perchance it meant the direwolf? But what did it mean by that? As far as Sam was aware, Ghost's relationship with the bird was limited to that of a predator and its prey. Or perhaps it was referring to Sam, a ghost in Castle Black, stranded and alone when everyone else was dead and gone. Or maybe it referred to itself—

The only way to find out, Sam decided, was to ask. The bird might change its tune. "Ghost?" he said. "What are you talking about?"

"Master Tarly?"

Sam whirled round so quickly he nearly dropped the glass candle to the rushes. Val stood in the doorway, looking ill at ease. Despite his best efforts, Sam felt his cheeks go red. Val was really very pretty, and no doubt she had enough reasons to think him strange without this evidence that he spoke with birds—

"Yes."

"Master Tarly… Lord Tarly, I suppose—"

Sam held up a hand. "My father is Lord Tarly. And I am certainly not my father." It was easy to say what you weren't, though. It was far harder to say what you were. "Do you want something, Val?"

"To talk."

He did not understand. "We are talking."

"No," she said. "Not about that. About… about…"

"About Jon."

Val took a long, deep breath. "When will you burn him?" she asked, very cautiously.

"As soon as we get above the surface. Which will be tonight, if Tormund has the right of it. He deserves to be properly remembered. As do all the others who died."

Val nodded. But that was not all she was here for. "There's something else," she said, more nervously than Sam had ever known her. "Gilly's boy… it will be his second nameday soon… I had thought we might… name the boy after him."

Sam was admittedly hesitant. Jon's decision to keep Gilly's son at Castle Black was the only thing he had been unable to forgive his friend for. True, Gilly had grown to love Dalla's son on the long journey to Oldtown, but that was no substitute for your own flesh and blood. Instead Jon had doomed Gilly's boy to die up here with the rest of them. But… Jon had been courageous too, and dutiful, and honourable to the point of folly… and kind, as far as he could be. "It's a good name," he said in the end. "I think Gilly would agree."

"I hope the boy grows up to be like him," said Val quietly.

If he grows up at all.

"He was a good man," Sam said.

"A good man," Val repeated. She seemed trapped between Sam and the doorway, unable to depart without saying her final part. "I know you'll do what you can," she said, "and so will Tormund, and everyone. But it was Jon who brought us together. Him and Mance. Without them…"

Without them, we are doomed. "I know." And it was the truth.

"Do you know who did it?" she asked suddenly.

"No," Sam had to say. "Once the snow's been cleared, I'll have a think. But for now… for now we should focus on other things. We have to."

"If only we'd been there." Val seemed frail, and more frightened than he'd ever known her. For once the warrior princess was gone; in her place was a girl as scared as Gilly. "If only we'd been there to stop it. If only he was still here." She bit her lip. "If only there was a way of bringing him back… some magic… some spell…"

There she stood. Begging him. As though this were entirely her idea. As though he hadn't shared the same thoughts a hundred times in the past few days. As though he hadn't heard stories on his way to Asshai, or read such tales of resurrections in his childhood storybooks. As though he hadn't dreamed of it.

"And I thought," said Val. "That the red woman might—"

"It might be impossible," he told her.

"Yes. But we have to try."

"Maybe you're right. But maybe you're not."

"If I'm not," Val said softly. "What do we have to lose? He cannot be any more dead."

She was inevitably right, but there was still an inescapable sour taste in Sam's mouth, the same taste that had held him back all these days. "We should let him rest," he found himself saying. "It's only right."

"You don't really think that."

She was right again; he didn't. "I… he died. The rules of living and dying… in the Book of the Stranger, it says that death is final. That death must be kept sacred. That any man or woman who returns from the land of the dead is an abomination."

"It might say all of those things," said Val. "But Jon Snow was not named in the light of the Seven. He belongs to the North. To the old gods. If there is nothing Melisandre can do for him, it is to those gods that he will return. And the old gods do not judge us for who we were in our old lives, or how we died, or whether or not anyone tried to bring us back."

"He is gone, Val. It would be mad to try—"

"It would be mad, yes. But do you know what else is mad? The bloody Others. All this darkness the gods are forcing upon us. So, tell me, Samwell Tarly, you great philosopher: don't you think we deserve a little light?"

"I don't know." But he did. The gods were never fair, but maybe, just maybe…

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. And so was he.

"I will talk to Melisandre," Samwell Tarly said. Then he reconsidered. If I wait, I will not be able to do it. "We will talk to Melisandre," he said. "We will talk to her now."

He left Gilly's letter lying on his desk like a dead butterfly. He left the glass candle, rolling gently onto its side like a tired old man. He left Mormont's raven, too, screaming "Ghost! Ghost! Ghost!" as he and Val went out.

The tunnels were eerily quiet. Briefly he passed Lyanna Mormont, Talia Forrester and Larence Hornwood on their way up to the surface, but they shared no more than a glance. Any one of them could have murdered Jon, he thought, for half a second, but he immediately realised that was mad. He had no idea who had killed Jon. And part of him was afraid of what would happen if he ever found out.

When they reached Melisandre's door, a momentary chill came over him, and his bones froze in place. This is wrong, he could not help thinking. But then he broke out of the trance and rapped on the door, once, twice—

It was Melisandre's squire who opened up, the red-headed Northern boy named Beren. "Lord Commander," the boy said, drawing himself up to his full, not-entirely-impressive height. "How may I help you?"

"Is Lady Melisandre within?" asked Sam.

"She is. Should I give her a message."

"No. We'd like to see her in person. Will that be possible?"

"You and… oh." On seeing Val, the boy blushed head to toe. "I'll go and ask her, my lord."

He need not have bothered. The door opened wider, and Melisandre revealed herself to them. Though the red priestess did not seem visibly older, her eyes were gaunter and more distant than usual, more like embers than red hot coals. She was wrapped up in a heavy red shawl, as if she felt the cold for once. "What is it, Master Tarly?" she said. Her voice was without its usual melodiousness.

"It's about Jon."

"It has been done before," said Melisandre.

"What?"

"The thing you ask has been done before."

"But we haven't asked you yet."

"There is no need. I know what you want. And I am telling you that it is possible." She turned and walked back into her room. Sam was wary about following, but Val pushed ahead of him, and after that he had no choice.

Melisandre went to the window and glanced out. Sam could not see anything through it because of the snow, but she must have, for she turned back to him and said, "We have two weeks at best."

"Two weeks?" Sam inquired.

"Two weeks until the first of them arrive."

"Did the flames tell you that?"

"The flames have told me nothing."

"The glass candle—"

"—will tell us nothing either. Nothing worth knowing."

Sam did not know what that meant. But they were moving on to other things now. "You said you could bring Lord Snow back," said Val.

Melisandre shrugged. "It is possible. I never said I could do it."

"But you know how?"

"I know a man who brought a man back from the other side, and I know how he did it. That does not mean I will have the same success. But… I will try. If it is what you want."

"It is," said Val, before Sam could voice any of his doubts.

Melisandre stood up, and stretched her arms. "I will need the body."

"That can be fetched from the cellars." They had been keeping the body in the ice under the Wall (accessed through a door from the wormways) so it did not rot.

"I warn you," Melisandre said. "I met a man who returned from the other side. He was… changed. Very much so." She saw their nods, and went on. "I make no promises. I will say the prayers, and carry out the sacraments, but beyond that, it is the will of R'hllor."

"Maybe this is what R'hllor intended," said Sam, suddenly renewed. "If he told you to let Jon die... the books speak of Azor Ahai reborn. If you were right about Jon... maybe he needs to be reborn, too."

"Maybe you are right, Samwell," said Melisandre. "Just maybe." There was a long pause, broken only by Beren coughing. Then the red woman stared straight at him and said, "There is one other thing. Only death can pay for life, Master Tarly."

Everything went quiet. The candles on Melisandre's table seemed to stop flickering altogether. It was some time before Sam realised that the world had not stopped. Only he had. Because this was his moment, he knew. This was his destined fate. His birth at Horn Hill, his journey to the Wall, Gilly, the Other, the Citadel, Euron Greyjoy, Asshai, his return here, everything had been building to this, his sacrifice, his unselfish decision to give up his life for Jon's—

"I'll do it," said Sam and Val at the same time.

Sam stared at the wildling princess. "No, you can't—"

"No, you can't. You're the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and even if Jon comes back, you're still our maester. We need you."

"But Jon needs you. If he comes back and hears that you sacrificed yourself for him, he'll be a broken man. You know that. You have to stay, Val—"

"It will not be either of you," said Melisandre. "Neither of you can die for him. You are his… his loved companions, and no doubt your sacrifices would be true, but we need more than that. We need someone with his blood. No, more than that. We need someone who was a part of him. You loved Jon Snow, both of you, but neither of you was Jon Snow."

That didn't make sense, and Sam was about tell her as much, but then he realised what she meant, and in that moment, everything fell into the place. Mormont's raven, he thought. And then, just outside the door, he heard the softest of howls.

Ghost.

So...

You probably knew what was coming, to be honest. Happens every time, I suppose. Anyway, next chapter will lead directly on from this one (once I get round to finishing it). Since this is really only half of the story, I don't have much more to say about this, other than thank you all for your support in Ch. 10, which was a really big boost.

Thanks,

SGH.