I hoped to have this chapter up a little sooner, but halfway through it my Muse decided to ditch me and go out to play beach football with the fairies and unicorns, under the first glimpses of what promises to be a wonderfully warm Italian summer… while I, on the other side, was pulling my hair out, trying to write something worthy in the semi-darkness of my Fortress of Solitude.
So, if you find something you don't like, blame my lazy prankster of a Muse: I disclaim all responsibility for it, lol!
Jokes aside, for some reason, this was a difficult chapter to write and I sooo wanted it to be good, being the first Jon chapter and all, but try as I might, I just couldn't find the right rhythm to it, especially in the last part. Although my perfectionist self is far from satisfied, after much editing I've decided to post it anyway and see how it goes: I hope you won't be too much severe in the comments section!
On a more positive note, we're past the 100k words mark and A Wreath of Thorns, with all its flaws, has officially become the longest story I've ever written, so allow me a moment to gloat and to thank you for your support and reviews!
I do hope you're still having as much fun reading it as I have writing it!
JON
Looming mercilessly against the clear sky, the Wall seemed to stare the six travellers down, beautiful and fearsome and weeping, as a single, long horn blast alerted the brothers of the Night's Watch of their presence at their doors.
The party had reached Castle Black on a bright and cloudless day, one of those rare winter mornings where, from up the Wall, one could see as far as the highest peaks of the mountains surrounding the Thenn lands and Storrhold's Point and the black sea beyond it. Jon would know; he had spent endless hours patrolling the Wall's wide, gravelled top, holding his own breath in almost religious wonder while, all around him, the whole world seemed to be coated and sheltered in a pristine purity from miles and miles on.
More than a fortnight had come and gone since he left Winterfell to his sister's cares. As they travelled across pine and hemlock forests, rugged hills and mountains, with snow-clad edges as sharp as dragonglass, hamlets, abandoned inns and stone holdfasts barely standing up and weathered by wind and age, Jon recognised with a twisted pang of disquiet and wistfulness all the places he rode through on his first journey to the Wall with his uncle Benjen and Tyrion Lannister.
A lifetime ago. Quite literally.
They hadn't encountered any sign of human life until Last Hearth.
The Umbers' ancient seat was a pile of rubble and charred woods, a last, oafish retaliation against a once illustrious, heroic house whose reputation, in the eye of the other northern men, had been tarnished beyond repair, after Smalljon had declared for the Boltons and had delivered Rickon in Ramsay's hands. The North remembered, and didn't forgive treason lightly, but Jon hadn't been impressed, nor grateful to the ones who burned the old castle to the ground. The Roaring Giants were all dead, now, but Last Hearth still had resources in terms of men, weapons, lands and provisions that Jon could use: he couldn't let the lesser houses on Skagos and the mountain clans in the north-east to fight over the spoils like cats and dogs, while, in Karhold, Alys Karstark was slyly following her own hidden plans, getting ready to make a decisive move.
If the Wall crumbled down, Last Heart would be the first line of defence against wights and White Walkers: the castle had to be rebuilt and garrisoned with trusted, competent men who wouldn't shrink back when the Long Night would be upon them.
When they had taken cover for a night inside the castle's inner walls, they had found the stronghold almost deserted, except for a small family of farmers and a drunken septon turned swineherd who had no idea of who Jon was; they all adamantly refused his request to come to the Wall with them so that they could have protection, shelter and food for when the nights would grow even colder. 'Respectfully speaking, my lord,' the septon had turned him down, 'I would rather die from the cold and let my pigs eat my body than ride to that thrice-damned block of ice forsaken by Gods and men. Mark my words: the Wall will soon be dripping blood, instead of ice, and I'm going to keep myself well away from it.'
During the last portion of their journey, the weather had been getting warmer, slowly but steadily, but, as thankful to the Old Gods as he was for the improvement, strangely enough, Jon couldn't find much comfort in the thought; now, as he watched concernedly the crystal-white tears sliding down from the top of the iced structure in slick rivulets which glittered blue and golden under the winter sun, he couldn't shake off the almost palpable feeling of putrescent doom brewing in the wind.
The Wall looks weakened, Jon reflected, wrapping himself tighter in his furs as he waited for the gates to be opened.
Snap out of it, you bloody fool. You're feeling this way only because you died here, he tried to reason with himself. But he couldn't fail to notice that even Ghost and Nymeria had become more and more unnerved and spooked as the group trod closer to the Wall and now they were meandering restlessly around the snowdrifts clumped to the gates' sides, snarling as they sniffed the frosty air, the fur on their back bristling, as though the Wall were an enemy in disguise, instead of the last bastion against the darkness tasting of death that swept from the north.
"It truly is as immense and stunning as Tyrion described it," murmured reverently the man next to him, still as stone, his golden hand raised to shield his eyes from the sunbeams, as he stared up in a speechless stupor. Daylight bounced off the amazed lines of his face and refracted against the hoarfrost caught in his beard.
"Immense, stunning and thrice as cold and unforgiving," Jon agreed wholeheartedly, not bothering to hide the little prideful smile tugging at his lips. The Kingslayer might be used to the grand comforts of royal halls and to the harsh, glorious life spent in muddy trenches, giving orders to armies of thousands, but this wild, frozen, wasted land was Jon's world, his second home, and he savoured with wicked smugness his travelling companion's uneasy astonishment: the Wall was in his veins, in his lungs, in his mind, constantly, and, even though he had forsaken his vows, Jon could still feel the pull of its magic calling out to him time and again like an insistent lover, regardless of the many miles he had tried to put between himself and his past life. I still belong here, somehow.
Grudgingly, Jon had to admit that Jaime Lannister had been of great help, during the journey. He had expressed a genuine, concerned interest in the fates of the Night's Watch and had eagerly shared information about the military forces stationed in the Westerlands and the Crownlands: their numbers and disposition, their activities on land and sea and the orders he left regarding the Riverlands. When Jon asked what were Cersei's plans for the North, he shrugged and bitterly muttered that his sweet sister had stopped sharing her secrets with him a long time ago.
It came oddly easier, after that, to reveal to this despicable man, a former enemy, what truly happened in Hardhome: how he, Tormund and Edd had sailed to the promontory with Stannis' ships and tried to persuade as many free folks as they could to come back to the Wall with them, and then… the dogs barking… the wall of frozen, white mist crashing down on them… the people crying and yelling beyond the closed palisade and chaos erupting on the pier as thousands of wights fell into them tearing up wood, stone, flesh and everything else that was in their way…
'We got off by the skin of our teeth,' he had said, shivering despite the campfire merrily crackling in front of him. 'There was nothing we could do for the ones we left behind, except watching them from the boats as they were exterminated by the hundreds. And then, the Night King lifted up his arms, and the dead rose again.'
The yellow flames had seemed to shiver, too, shrinking with a flicker as they licked the cold air around them. The white wolf's garnet eyes on the bastard sword's pommel sparkled in the dark and Jon had absentmindedly rubbed a thumb on it.
'Fire doesn't stop the White Walkers. Common steel blows up in shards against them. I managed to kill one just because I had Longclaw with me,' he had whispered, waiting for a reaction.
But Lannister hadn't jested, in the silence that followed; he hadn't doubted his words, but had wordlessly unsheathed his own sword – Widow's Wail, he had called it – and offered its hilt to Jon. His father's sword.
Well, a part of it, anyway.
When it was still whole, Ice had very distinctive dark grey veining, like wisps of smoke. This sword, though, had red and black ripples, almost identical to the ones Jon had often spotted with mesmerised admiration on its sister, currently secured about Brienne's waist.
They've become Lannister swords, now, with Targaryen colours, he had found himself thinking ruefully.
'We have three Valyrian steels with us, now,' Lannister had said, hard and steadfast, with eyes of wildfire burning just as bright as the velvety crimson ripples on the side of the blade. Jon had brushed a hand over it, feeling a mysterious warmth spreading from the hilt to his arm, and had nodded in gratitude.
After that, for a few hours at least, even Tormund had been courteous enough with the knight, to the extent of splitting with him his smelly blue cheese and his skin of fermented goat milk.
However, despite their unlikely truce, Jon still didn't trust him and gave only vague answers to his own pointed questions about the Northern Army's deployment and conditions. Mutual understanding or not, he simply couldn't forget who this man was, what he did and who was his sister, and more than once he wondered what Lady Brienne saw in him.
'She's in love with him,' Sansa had warily whispered in his ear, shortly before leaving home. Jon didn't understand; ever since they hit the road, those two did nothing but quarrel about the most inconsequential things, from the species of the trees they spotted on the way to the lyrics of The Maids that Bloom in Spring.
And when, one morning, Lannister started to sing the refrain of The Bear and the Maiden Fair at the top of his lungs, Brienne had cantered next to Tormund, her cheeks burning scarlet like a bunch of frostfires, and refused to speak to her golden lion for the whole afternoon.
If that was love, Jon was truly at loss.
You know nothing, Jon Snow. We bickered too, a lot, from the very first time we met, Ygritte's husky voice rasped in his mind, barbed as an arrowhead, and he was pulled back inside the cave, naked, surrounded by darkness, the sobbing of Gendel's children and the sweet smell of her.
No, my love, he replied as he often did; you teased me and I was just pretending to ignore the stirring in my breeches at the sight of your crooked smile.
The cave's walls abruptly dissolved around him when he heard the bolts and iron bars of Castle Black's south gate slide back with a screech on their hinges; the doors ground and slowly opened, half obstructed by snowbanks sparkling in the light like diamonds with the colours of the rainbow.
On the other side, flanked by his men, Eddison Tollett, 999th elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch stood in the courtyard, just as uncomfortable as he had left him, with the same black cloak which had belonged to Jon weighing on his shoulders as though made of lead.
It's the weight of the Wall. I remember the feeling very well.
Ghost and Nymeria anxiously padded inside and he followed them, sensing their same foreboding apprehension. Dolorous Edd stepped up with a small smile and welcomed him with a warm hug and a brotherly pat on his back.
"Do I have to take a knee, now, Your Grace?"
Jon snorted.
"I don't think your old, rattling bones could take such arduous strain that easily. And then who would they pick as their Lord Commander, if you croaked like the mangy crow you are? Three-Finger Hobb?"
"It's Two-Finger Hobb, now," Edd grievously replied, deadpan. "I believe I found half of his pinkie in my bowl, at supper last night."
But the laughter in his brown eyes died when he caught sight of the man beyond Jon's shoulders.
"He's who I think he is?"
Jon turned around; the Kingslayer marched to them, tall and proud, a cocksure grin defying the unwelcoming glares of the men assembled in the courtyard. The bear and seal pelts hid the gold and red of his Lannister armour well enough, to the point that he could almost pass for a wildling himself, but that golden hand of his was a dead giveaway.
Even the Crows at Castle Black knew about it.
"Ser Jaime Lannister, at your service, Lord Commander Tollett," he bowed gallantly, but the mockery in his voice was unmistakable.
Dolorous Edd balled his fists and threw Jon a dirty look, his lips livid and tight.
"He's here to help," he held out both his hands, in a placatory gesture.
Edd gritted his teeth. "Or, he's come to spy on us at the behest of that crazy sister of his."
Lannister annoyingly raised an eyebrow.
Oh, I do hope he will write to the Queen, sparing no details to describe exactly the situation. This way, maybe, the Iron Throne would understand, Jon wished to say, but that would be asking for trouble, so he bit his tongue and said instead, with a pat on Edd's shoulder and a congenial smile on his lips: "Play nice."
But for all his smiles and good intentions, he noticed with a twinge of worry how the Brothers who had gathered at the gate, perhaps curious to see the King's arrival, were now openly staring at the Kingslayer with a mix of awe and loathing.
Jon reflexively rested his hand on Longclaw's pommel.
Law stops at the Wall, he had to remind himself. But how many of these men had taken the black after they deserted during the War of the Five Kings, how many had suffered their kin's death, and famine and torture at Tywin Lannister's hands? Some things aren't that easily forgotten, even with a black cloak. I should know.
His heart had filled with wrath and vengeance too, after news of his father's death had reached Castle Black, and if it weren't for his friends... Grenn, Pyp and Sam's faces were vivid, sharp memories in his mind, Sam's most of all. He missed him. He missed him just as he missed Robb. Even more so, perhaps, as odd as it might sound. Are you still unearthing mysteries at the Citadel, brother? Are you finding the answers we so desperately need? His eyes searched anxiously the place, almost expecting to see him and his rotund belly bouncing down the steps of the rookery, his arms full of books and parchments, but the yard was emptying; the Brothers resumed their tasks, while only a few new recruits stayed behind, putting their heads together as they confabulated in hushed tones.
As Edd went to greet Brienne, Podrick and Tormund, Jon spotted Thoros of Myr and Beric Dondarrion, standing around a fire just next to the stables.
The flames seemed to burn brighter and as he got closer.
"My lords."
The Lord of Blackhaven bowed.
"Your Grace."
The Red Wizard ignored him altogether. A frown of deep concentration made the lines etched into his forehead stood out even more, as his bloodshot eyes never left the flames.
"I take it the long journey from Winterfell has been as uneventful as ours?" Jon addressed the Lightning Lord.
"Mercifully so, Your Grace. Trouble started when we got here. We went beyond the Wall, three days ago. Just a few miles east into the haunted forest…" a short, quivering laugh escaped him. "No name has ever been more appropriate."
"White Walkers?" he asked with urgency; if the enemy was already crawling so close to the borders, that meant they were running out of time. And we're not ready.
"Wights. Four of them, all wearing black cloaks. Rangers, by the look of it."
Jon's heart missed a beat. Was his uncle among them? They never found a body, and by now he had lost any hope of ever finding him alive.
"They seemed recently dead. Commander Tollett confirmed he has sent on patrol a party of ten, a fortnight ago. Only six have returned."
Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand and took a cursory glance around the place: under the stern look of Denner Frostfinger, Castle Black's new master-at-arms, Anguy the Archer was showing to a group of young recruits how to trim raven's feathers on an arrow's fletching, but the other two remaining members of the Brotherhood Without Banners who had left Winterfell with Dondarrion and Thoros a moon's turn past were nowhere to be seen.
"Any losses?"
The ugly, black bruise on Lord Beric's neck stretched as he silently shook his head.
"They were vicious and damn tough to strike down, though. We burned them in a hurry and then we retreated back, before something else more difficult to kill could catch us unawares."
His indigo eye drifted to the seven-hundred-feet tall barrier that seemed to fill up the blue sky.
"The Wall has been weeping ever since."
And it's also the last thing standing between the living and the dead, Jon pondered, following his gaze. But when he returned his attention to Beric, his eye was firmly trained on him, flashing audaciously like the purple thunderbolt which adorned Blackhaven's coat of arms.
The curious, unfathomable expression perturbed him.
I may have been resurrected once, but this man was brought back six times. He had shown him the scars, back at Winterfell: the gaping hole in his chest, the slash which went from shoulder to navel when the Hound had cloven him, the puckered flesh in the eye socket where a dirk had been plunged to the hilt… Jon couldn't look away.
Sansa told him that Dondarrion had been a handsome knight, once, but Jon thought he looked more like a frayed, broken scarecrow. Beric had cracked a sullen joke, then, calling him 'brother in death', but no facetious laughter had lightened up his face.
Will it become my destiny, too?, Jo wondered now, brushing a gloved hand over his heart, where the wound Olly had inflicted on him sometimes still seemed to sting. Brought back, again and again, until the Long Night would end and I could finally rest?
His eyes shifted to the Red Priest on Beric's left: Thoros too must have changed from the intrepid warrior who first charged the Ironborns through the breach in the walls of Pyke, his magic sword ablaze, as his father often portrayed him, sparing no praise.
Now the Myrish wizard was hunched over the flames, his eyes lost in the fire, glazed and unfocused.
"What are you seeing in those flames of yours?"
"Dragons. Black dragons. Golden dragons," he looked up at him. "Dragons made of ice."
The pudgy tip of his nose glowed a copper red as he cocked his head to exhort him to search for the answer by himself, but try as he might, Jon couldn't see anything, except embers and charred wood.
He's drunk. A drunken, raving fool.
Jon pitied him.
"There are no dragons at the Wall, my friend." Or nowhere else. He was starting to believe that the rumours of that silver-haired Targaryen Queen landing in Dragonstone with three living winged beasts were just that: empty gossip spread around by some bored, old sailors from White Arbor and the Vale. Words are wind.
"I might have to ask you to leave again Castle Black's safe haven, to join me on a search-and-rescue mission beyond the Wall," he said back to Beric.
"Our swords are yours. That's why we came here."
Jon curtly nodded.
"Warm yourself up with a cup of mulled wine in the common hall, my lord. We'll meet at supper."
Despite his hidden wish to retire in the cold solitude of his old cells in Hardin's Tower, Edd had the King's Tower made ready for him; the same lodgings Stannis had slept in, when he had been the Watch's honoured guest. The rooms were just as austere and grim as he remembered, but fitted his current, darkening mood to perfection.
"Come in," he answered the knock at the oak door without raising his eyes from the ragged piece of hide on which a map of the known trails of the lands north of the Wall was painted.
Edd stepped in, stomping his feet to shake off patches of frozen snow from the tips of his boots.
"Is it true what Brienne tells me?" he cut to the chase. "That you want to ride north in search of your little brother?"
Drops of condensation and melted snow dripped from the hem of his black cloak and collected in a small puddle on the wooden floor. Jon silently nodded and placed one of the candles on the map's right corner to keep it from rolling up.
"They've crossed the Wall here," he pointed to the Nightfort. "I mean to go through the Black Gate and then trek toward Whitetree, across the ruins of Craster's Keep, retrace backwards the path on which they presumably have travelled too."
Edd flattened a hand over the Skirling Pass and stared at the map, frowning unconvinced.
"How do you know they've headed toward the mountains and not, let's say, east, to Hardhome?"
Jon let out a frustrated sigh. He had no sure answer. It was pretty much like flipping a coin in the air, praying it would land on the right side. If Bran chose to go toward Hardhome... His mouth twisted in an anguished grimace; he didn't like to think about that possibility.
"You won't find any trace of them, not with the amount of snow fallen during the last few weeks."
"Our direwolves will help," he stated, sounding more confident than he felt.
Ghost had survived alone beyond the Wall for weeks and knew every inch of that big expanse of frozen land even better than Jon himself; as for Nymeria, she and Summer had always had a strong bond. Jon remembered her savagely scuffling with Grey Wind in Winterfell's yard, each time their bigger brother felt entitled to bully his yellow-eyed sibling. If Bran's wolf was still around, she would find him. Jon had to believe that.
"How many men do you need?"
Give me twenty, he wanted to say, half a hundred, for my brother's sake. So that I can bring him back home.
But the words died in his throat.
I am King, but I can't order him around. I'm not Stannis.
"How many you're willing to grant me. Volunteers only."
"Don't expect a lot of them, then. Even seasoned rangers go beyond the Wall reluctantly, nowadays, and only because they're ordered to," Edd admitted sombrely, then added with a ghost of a smile: "You'll still have me, tough. It will be just like old times."
"You're not coming!" Jon objected right away. "You're the Lord Commander, your place is at Castle Black."
The smile on the Crow's face froze. "This didn't stop you, when you led us to Craster to get rid of Karl, Rast and the others."
"That was completely different. We couldn't risk Mance to know the real number of men garrisoned at Castle Black, back then. Killing the mutineers was for the Watch's own protection. This, however, is a personal matter. The Watch takes no part. It mustn't and it won't."
Edd pursed his lips, clearly upset by his exclusion, but, beyond the disappointment, Jon saw genuine concern in his eyes.
Loyal eyes.
He knew that Edd would follow him to the end of the world and back. He came with me to Hardhome, despite our disagreement on the policy concerning the wildlings.
"I'd trust you with my life," he admitted, clasping his shoulders, "and there's no one I'd rather have watching my back. But you leaving your post to follow me would tear the Watch apart, and I need you to stick together and hold the front line."
"'The shield that guards the realms of men' and all that shitty rubbish, aye?"
"And all that shitty rubbish," he nodded with some reluctance.
"Alright," Dolorous Edd exhaled loudly. "I may have a handful of names willing to go. I'll make inquiries."
Jon dropped his head in agreement and leaned again over the map.
"We're having supper in the common hall. Will His Grace grant me the honour to dine with us mere mortals?"
The gentle tease had him crack up a tentative smile.
"Go ahead. I shall join you shortly."
"Jon," the Lord Commander paused at the door. "I wouldn't get my hopes up, if I were you."
In the Watch's recent history, rarely had Jon witnessed the timbered common hall so much packed with people; the number of the brothers had grown in those last months, he noticed with satisfaction; the new men came from Winterfell, Karhold, Last Hearth. Many of them were the survivors of the Battle of the Bastards, who had pleaded for their lives and had put their destinies into the hands of the newly-crowned king, but there were also a few wildlings who, while still living in the New Gift with their families and not officially wearing the black, were actively helping anyway, now. After Hardhome, they had committed themselves to the Watch, convinced by now of the unavoidable urgency to have capable men manning the Wall, and Edd had been only too happy to oblige, despite the grumblings of some of the other men; the Watch needed fresh blood and the Lord Commander couldn't be prickly about his new recruits.
Jon curtly nodded in greeting to the table in the east corner, where the scant remains of the Brotherhood without Banners were sitting with the group of the rangers. While under the table Ghost and Nymeria were fighting over a bone, Thoros was ravenously eating anything he could reach, sputtering ale and crumbs all over his beard each time he opened his mouth to talk. Lord Beric, on the other side, had tucked himself deeper into his cloak and wasn't touching any food or drink. Jon couldn't really blame him. The stew looked disgusting.
The Lord Commander's table was nearer to the hearth and was also the noisier.
Above the sounds of fire crackling, cutlery and plates clinking together, men chatting with their mouths half full, Tormund's boisterous voice rose and rumbled like a thunder.
Squeezed between Lady Brienne and Podrick Payne, the redheaded fellow was in the middle of one of his stories and even the Kingslayer, who was sharing the bench with his sellsword friend and no one else, seemed to be mildly interested. At least they're not trying to kill each other.
Jon pulled off his gloves and moved closer to the wildling's back, careful not to interrupt.
"You hit him on its flank, you hit him on the head," Tormund was mimicking each blow, using Podrick as an unwilling sparring partner. "Ya must be clever 'bout it, use your agility to dodge claws and teeth, and then when you got him tired good an' proper, you jump onto his back, put your arm around his neck and squeeze until you have him on his knees and he don't move no more."
He then proceeded to do exactly that with poor Pod's neck. Lady Brienne was quietly chuckling behind her hand.
Jaime Lannister raised a sceptical brow, considered the approach to the matter and wiggled his fork in front of the wildling's eyes. "And then next thing you know, you'll have to shove your own guts back inside your belly! You can't kill a bear like that, it's impossible! It would rip you to shreds before you lost consciousness."
"Aye," Tormund flashed a lopsided, wolfish grin, as the squire was dramatically kicking and pulling at the wildling's thick arms, "I'm not sayin' I would get away without a scratch, where's the fun in that?, but it can be done, even with bare hands. I did it plenty o' times, with both bears and giants. Even though why you would want to kill bears instead of fuckin' 'em is beyond me."
At this point, Pod's face was starting to turn red for lack of air.
"Cut it off, you overblown bag of wind," Jon intervened, tapping Tormund's arm until he loosened his grip, "you were so much drunk, that one time, that I doubt you could tell the difference between a bear and a particularly hairy spearwife!"
The whole table roared up in guffaws and sniggers.
Jon ignored the empty spot left for him next to Edd and Frostfinger, and purposefully went around the table to sit with the lions.
Tormund's thick, red eyebrows narrowed. "You know nothing, lad. Why d'you think they call me Husband to Bears?"
"They should've called you Tormund Blabbermouth instead," Brienne murmured, raising the tankard of mulled wine to her lips to muffle her own laughter. Over the brim of the mug, her astonishing eyes found Jaime Lannister and shone, vibrant with undisguised hilarity. His green eyes seemed to drink from her own delight, crinkling in return, and mixed with mirth there was an open, unmistakable fondness Jon was sure he never witnessed on his face before.
I'll be damned; you were right, Sansa. He took his own cup of wine, shaking his head in amused consternation, and for a little while, at least, he forgot about the weeping Wall and the night descending upon them.
"How are you faring with food supply?" Jon finally asked, once everyone's stomachs were full of Two Finger Hobb's vile slop, a beef stew – or was it goat? Jon couldn't really tell – thick with barley, onions and carrots.
"We have enough for two hard winters, maybe three, if we don't get other mouths to feed," Edd said, pulling a particularly obstinate lump of gristle from his teeth. "I've ordered greenhouses to be built both here and in the Gift, so we could grow a supply of fresh vegetables, but we'll be soon out of glass and Myrish glass-makers are awfully expensive. Sailors and fishermen in the Bay of Seals have been reporting to Cotter Pyke an increasing shortage of fish in the waters around Skagos, and with the weather changing for worse, it's only a matter of time before trade will stop altogether. White Arbor still has a great supply of smoked salmon, salted cod, herrings and blubber, though, but you know the old Lamprey: he's a tough nut to crack. He'd rather die than give away some of their stocks for free. I'd feel more comfortable if you could send us a share of the provisions currently at the Dreadfort. No one is eating them, anyway."
"What about deserters and pilferers?"
"Just yesterday morning, in the wormways, two lads have been caught while they were ransacking the ham vault," Denner Frostfinger replied. "They denied they were trying to sneak out and desert, but there were reindeer and pork sausages popping out from their pockets. They were locked up in the ice cellars, so they could mull over what it is to be truly hungry."
Jon nodded in silent accord. Under normal conditions punishment for pilferage would have been stricter, but with the Watch in such precarious balance, Edd couldn't afford to lose any man…. Although, Jon knew, if they really wanted to flee, they would try again, next week or the week after, until they succeeded, or they died in the attempt.
"How many men do you currently have?" Brienne asked Edd.
"In total? A little under 1100, but only a third is fit for fighting. The rest can do other things, of course: work in the kitchen, in the stables, in the forge. Some of them are masons and crofters, so they've been assigned to the builders and stewards."
"Stonedoor, Rimegate and Oakenshield are garrisoned now, but it's not enough. Not even remotely," added the master-at-arms.
Jon set his jaw. A thousand men, and at least twice that number scattered in the Gift, among the elderly, women and green lads.
A wall is only as strong as the men who defend it, and when the Long Night falls, they'll be the first to drop.
His sword hand closed in a tight fist.
"If the Watch is in such a dreadful state," Jaime Lannister's voice rose, impatient and angered, "why haven't you sent a request for more men?"
The question was aimed at Edd, but it was Jon who answered.
"I have, many times. And Commander Mormont before me. Maester Aemon has sent dozens of letters with pleas for help to all the high Lords and Ladies of the Seven Kingdoms, as far as Sunspear and the Arbor, and after he died, the task has been entrusted to Samwell Tarly, to no avail."
"All of us sent letters south, describing the situation in great detail," Edd pressed on. "The Iron Throne turned a deaf ear to us. The only one willing to help was Stannis Baratheon, but he is dead too, now."
"Take a careful look around, m'lord," Frostfinger resumed. "We're a tattered army of thieves, murderers, rapists, bastards, wildlings, men who have nothing to lose except their own lives, and even that is not worth very much, is it? Who would ever trust our words? Each time we send rangers out there, fewer and fewer come back, alive at least. But there isn't anyone else listening to their stories, except us. There's no one believing them, except us."
"Tyrion Lannister did," Bronn knitted his brows. "Back in King's Landing, when he was Hand of the King, he ordered men to be sent here."
"Aye," admitted Edd tersely. "Janos Slynt."
"Janos Slynt!" Lannister snorted with a disgusted grimace and pushed away the cup of wine he had been drinking as though it was vinegar. "And they say I've brought dishonour to the Kingsguard."
"That is all we have, for now," the Lord Commander said with finality.
A heavy silence fell. Edd clasped his hands in front of him and bowed his head as though in prayer. Although none of them was broken nor had completely given themselves over to despair yet, a cold, deceitful resignation was slowly creeping in their ranks. And resignation was harbinger to downfall. Jon met Brienne's gaze from the opposite side of the table and read in it his same anger. We can't declare ourselves already defeated, without even giving them a good fight, he thought, his blood boiling.
Jaime Lannister tensely grabbed his glove and sprung to his feet.
"Pray excuse me, Your Grace, Lord Commander. My lady. I need some fresh air."
Brienne made a move to stand and follow him outside, but Jon held out a hand to stop her and trailed after him instead.
He found him on the covered bridge which overlooked the training yard, pacing up and down in extreme agitation, like a lion in a cage. He exhaled loudly when he saw him approaching.
"I'm wondering if perhaps we might have made an unforgivable mistake in ignoring your calls," he said, turning to face him, eyes blazing with fury and hot indignation colouring both his cheeks and his voice.
"Assuming we survive the following few days, once we return to Winterfell I'll dispatch some of my men here, and I'll write to my cousin Daven. He's castellan at the Rock and the ruling Warden of the West. We have plenty of granite and limestone you could use to restore the Castle and the other forts to full functionality."
Jon's jaw slacked in surprise. That was a more than generous offer and it would be to the Watch's advantage to take it. But he still wasn't sure what kind of game Jaime Lannister was playing: was he moved by an honest, albeit quite strange, wish to help, or did he have an ulterior, still unfathomable, motive?
"You have my personal thanks, my lord; I'm sure Commander Tollett will take you up to that offer. But only the Iron Throne could give the Watch the kind of support it truly needs, I'm afraid."
Lannister ground his teeth, his good hand gripping the splintered handrail, and confessed in a whisper: "Cersei won't listen."
Jon didn't expect anything different, but still, having Jaime Lannister confirm the pointlessness of their attempts bit him like a slap in the face. He felt his own powerlessness like a burden weighing darkly over his heart.
The knight clutched his cloak closer to his body: "I don't even know how you've managed to keep your wits about you in the years you've spent here. I wouldn't stand a week in this cold: I can't even think straight."
He smirked bleakly.
"You get used to everything, after a while. If you can face Hobb's disgusting cooking without throwing up your own bowels, you would learn to stand the cold too."
This was nothing compared to the numbing feeling his mind still conjured up every time he remembered the knives' blades plunging through him, again and again, slashing, twisting, driving the warmth out of him… and the hard feel of the frozen ground, when they left him to die in the snow…a slow agony… The whiteness drank my blood and I could feel life sweeping through me, out of me… and then nothing at all.
"Maybe it's true what they say: you northerners are made of a thicker skin than the rest of us."
"I'm not a northerner," he japed, then clarified with a grin when he saw the confused look in the Kingslayer's eyes. "I was born in Dorne. Or so my father told me."
It was the only thing he told me.
Lannister leaned out of the railing to inspect the yard below: some brothers were shovelling out the paths, some others were gathering around the braziers, kindling their torches and getting ready for the nightly patrol on top of the Wall. All of them seemed, every now and then, to throw charged looks full of contempt and condemnation in their direction.
"These Crows look like they want to gut me and fling my body on the other side of the Wall with a trebuchet. Should I sleep with one eye open and my sword at the ready, do you reckon?"
Jon frowned, something coiling in his chest. "Don't worry, they're more likely to stab me."
In fact, he couldn't really say if such unfriendly attitude was aimed at the Kingslayer or at himself. He knew that some of the men were thinking about him as a sort of divinity, who had walked through the shadows and resurfaced again on the other side, after having defeated death itself; some others, however, judged him a godless abomination, a monstrous freak, for that same exact reason.
But on one thing everyone concurred: he was a bastard boy, a wildling lover and a deserter who got away with it and whose head was rewarded with a crown instead of the sharp edge of a sword.
Why should they keep their own oaths, if I, for one, couldn't keep mine?
How am I any different from Mance, who ran north and crowned himself King Beyond the Wall?
He stole a fleeting glance to his left.
How am I any different from this man?
Lannister's jade eyes followed closely the guards as they headed to the winch.
"It must have stung. The betrayal…" he uttered.
"They didn't betray me. They murdered me. In cold blood. Stabbed me to death, seven times."
He let that sink in, then added: "Do you know what Ser Davos told me, after I came back? That only one of those wounds was really mortal…I mean…I would have bled out to death anyway, eventually… but this…" he put a hand over his heart. "And it was a boy who did it, a boy not older than Arya… my own steward."
The thought would always leave a sour taste in his mouth. He killed Ygritte and I took him in; I had loved him like a little brother, I've taught him how to fight in the same way Lord Eddard did with me, and he plunged a dagger in my heart.
Of course it stung. Quite literally. But a small part of him felt like he deserved it; wouldn't Jon have done the same thing, given the chance, had the roles been reversed?
After all, Olly stood in the common hall while he made a bargain with the very people who butchered both his parents right in front of him… Tormund himself had led the raid on his village, and had been rewarded with his life and his freedom. Jon couldn't really blame Olly for wanting to take his revenge, but his duty as Lord Commander dictated to punish the mutineers. All of them.
Kill the boy, Maester Aemon had said. Kill the boy and let the man be born. And that had been his final act as Lord Commander.
"I put him to the gallows with the others, afterwards, and there hasn't been a single night ever since that I haven't dreamt his face," he blurted out, his voice cracking.
Why am I telling this wretched man?
Lannister was studying him with the most peculiar, mystified expression, as though he was looking at something remarkable he hadn't quite expected to find.
Jon stubbornly held his gaze with pursed lips and his fists stiff along his sides, feeling exposed and harrowed by the reluctant respect he could see into those green eyes.
But the look was gone before he could fully figure it out, and in its place there was a disillusioned, harsh cynicism.
"Sometimes we don't have a choice between what's right and what's wrong," he said coldly, his stare fixed on the Wall. "Sometimes our only choice is between 'bad' and 'worse'. There isn't always a clean, bloodless way to fix things. We want to be Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, or the Sword of the Morning, and we end up hated by the very people we have struggled to save. Don't delude yourself, Jon Snow; we're not the heroes of this story. The best we can do is try, hoping it will be enough."
His words had rung blunt and bold in Winterfell's Great Hall, too, and Jon was just as startled and piqued in his pride. This didn't mean they weren't true.
"Lady Brienne warned me. You can't really hold your tongue, can you?"
He likes the sound of his own voice a bit too much, were the Maid of Tarth's exact words.
Lannister faced him again. "You'd rather have everyone lie to you, now that you're styling yourself King? That would make you feel better?"
Jon shut his eyes, the Old Bear's voice clear in his head: the hard truths are the ones to hold tight.
"I'm well-known for not mincing my words. This is how I lost my hand, after all; hasn't Lady Brienne told you the heroic tale of my maiming?" he asked lightly and waggled the golden hand in front of him. "I believe that Locke had meant to teach me a lesson in humility, when he chopped it off. Can't say it worked."
"Locke?" Jon's brows furrowed. "Tall, gaunt fellow, with a goatee and two deep scars on both cheeks?"
By the light of the braziers and torches, he saw the Kingslayer's face turning the colour of sour milk.
"How do you – "
"I've met him! He joined the Watch, shortly before I became Lord Commander, said he was a game hunter from the Stormlands."
"A game hunter?" Lannister gasped incredulously, his eyes wide and hardened by resentment and hatred. "The bastard was on the Boltons payroll! He was the leader of the Bloody Mummers!"
Jon grabbed the handrail and felt every muscle of his body freeze in fear. He knew. He knew! He overheard me and Sam talking! Air left his lungs all at once.
Lannister's voice was faraway when he spoke again.
"What happened?"
He drew in a breath, tasting bile in his mouth. "Locke knew that Bran went beyond the Wall. He befriended me, followed me as a volunteer when I've lead a mission to Craster's Keep."
If he truly served Roose Bolton, there was no doubt that he had infiltrated the Watch to find and kill his brothers. For, as long as Bran and Rickon lived, the Boltons' power over the North would have been weak and delegitimised.
Lannister grasped his arm in a vice and made him turn. His grip was firm and harsh, but the rest of him was shaking. "He's still here?" he asked stiffly, his green eyes wild and haunted.
Jon shook his head. "He's dead."
He still remembered very well Grenn's comment, when they found the body, the collarbone sticking out horribly from his broken neck.
'What seven hells could do that to a man?'
Jon hadn't given much thought about it, back then, but now Hodor appeared vividly in his mind. The gentle half-giant, with his innocent eyes, strong hands and feeble wit. Could it really be? Could he have killed a man to save Bran's life? And if it were so, why wouldn't he have warned him of their presence?
There was no use in asking those questions now.
He rubbed a weary hand across his face, trying to overcome his qualms, and looked up, to the faint lights dancing on top of the Wall, like ghosts glowing blue and violet and orange in the dark. The night patrols had begun.
"Do you want to see the world from up there?"
Next to him, the Kingslayer let out a deep breath: "It might well be my only chance."
Ten minutes later, Jaime Lannister was peering over the edge into the blackness threatening to swallow them all, with a mix of deep discomfort and awe.
"Your brother pissed over the edge," Jon reminisced somewhat fondly.
"Yes." Regret seemed to colour his voice, as the shadow of a smile crept over his face. "Tyrion would do that."
The wind blew stronger up there, and the hems of their cloaks flapped sharply all around their bodies.
Every now and then, faceless men armed with spears, longbows and horns crossed their path, stopped for a few minutes to scan the area below, then resumed their patrol.
"There's a sort of mysterious beauty to it," Lannister said, full of wonder, his breath frosting in the cruel air.
Jon stared off into the dark distance, shivering, wondering how long this semblance of peace would hold up.
Yes, mysterious. And deathly.
The Nightfort's ragged ruins stood scattered along the ridge of the hill, silent, forlorn and dormant under a thick layer of fresh snow and ice, like a horrific beast fallen in a state of hibernation, saving its energy for a spring which seemed to never come.
After two hundred years of abandonment and dereliction, the forest had claimed back the spaces once inhabited by man: weeds and thorny vines strangled the few walls and supporting columns still standing and, despite the cold, moss still thrived, tenaciously clinging like a pale green-brown dress to the rough, dented, naked stones.
The architectural elements made of wood had collapsed centuries ago and rust and ice had eaten everything else. A part of the keep had seemingly sunk back into the ground, succumbing to the snow, and black holes cracked open were once stood door frames and double-arched windows; gaping mouths forever trapped in a soundless scream still smelling of blood and vengeance and meat pies.
All that was left was only the spectral structure of pillars supporting abraded architraves, damaged buttresses pushing their weights against the void where once there were walls and ramparts, and heaps of splintered rocks where once stood tall watchtowers and turrets.
The castle had now become the dominion of rats, dust and shadows.
"The perfect location for ghost stories," Bronn said, leaning over the deep stone well concealing the entrance of the Black Gate, and moved his burning torch left and right. From the bottom came the faint echo of pebbles rippling down against frozen ground and the rustling of mice.
Nymeria growled at the darkness.
"I wouldn't joke about it, if I were you, m'lord," Frostfinger admonished. "This is a cursed place for the Night's Watch."
Edd's prediction had proven all too true: no Crow had agreed to take part voluntarily to the mission, except Denner. Jon could not complain: Frostfinger was a skilled ranger, an experienced fighter, and knew the western borders of the forest fairly well.
"What are you keeping down there? Ice spiders?" Podrick asked, his eyes darting apprehensively from the torch he was trying to light up to the well's black ring.
"Have you ever heard of the Rat Cook, young Payne?"
Pod shook his head.
"Then remind me to tell you all about it, once we're safe back to Castle Black," the recruit trainer winked at him and flung his legs across the well's edge.
The torches' fire was just enough to light up the way under their feet as they descended the dank, slippery steps half-hidden in the dark stones of the inner wall.
Cold darkness pressed on their eyes.
Frostfinger led them down, until they reached a huge white weirwood door built into the stone, with a face carved in it.
It wasn't at all like Sam had described it to him, and for a moment Jon feared they were in the wrong place. In front of them there wasn't an old, wrinkled man, but rather the face of a boy, sad and wise, frowning in his heavy sleep, his features suspended in precarious balance between the innocence of childhood and the heavy burden of adulthood. It was a young face, and old at the same time.
It looks a bit like Bran. Or what Bran would look like, had he survived all along.
Under the closed eyes, there were deep grooves, like patterns of centuries-old tears. Brienne stepped up and put a naked hand over the wood; when she retracted it, her fingertips were stained with sap, sticky and red as blood.
The door screeched as though it were shaking on its invisible hinges and the face woke up from its slumber. Jon moved closer.
"Who are you?" it asked in a voice that belonged neither to man nor to child.
Frostfinger turned to him and tipped the point of his torch to the weirwood.
He wants me to say the words.
Jon took two steps back and swallowed hard.
"You will have to do it," he said to the black brother. "I can't."
The realisation hurt him; the Watch had been the only place where he felt like he truly belonged. Until he didn't. The loss would always feel like a hole in his chest.
Ghost padded next to him and pressed his muzzle into his hand. A gentle, silent comfort. Jon could do nothing but watch Frostfinger move forward and speak the words in his stead.
"I am the sword in the darkness," the ranger recited with a steady, strong voice; Jon closed his eyes and said the oath in his head anyway. "I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men."
"Then pass," the voice said and the face's mouth stretched out, wider and wider, until the hollow cavity was broad enough for them to pass through.
The tunnel twisted and curved into the inky darkness, running for more than five hundred feet beneath the ice.
Every now and then, frozen tears dropped over their heads from the tips of icicles as large as Valyrian greatswords and just as sharp.
They were halfway through the passage when it happened: his heart started to race as though he had run for miles into the deep snow. With each step, his chest hurt more, the biting pain spreading from the spot where the blunt handle of the White Walker's spear had hit him in Hardhome.
He gasped for air like he was drowning.
Something was horribly wrong.
Ahead of him, Frostfinger's torch swayed before his eyes, as a strange dizziness clouded his vision. The ground spun from under his wobbly legs: he staggered and slammed his shoulder hard into the ice wall.
"Your Grace?"
Spots of light danced before him, a sound like a high-pitched scream of a dying animal filling his head. Sickness overcame him.
"Jon?"
He felt more than heard Brienne's unwavering presence beside him, her strong hands grabbing him before he could fall. A warm wetness was trickling over his upper lips. He raised a hand to his face: his nose was bleeding.
"'m fine," he panted, shaking his head, and struggled to his feet.
"Perhaps we should turn back," the warrior lady said.
"No! We go ahead."
He ignored the alarmed looks Brienne and Tormund were exchanging and reeled to the head of the group, but couldn't help but notice Beric Dondarrion staring at him, his eyes piercing and gleaming in the dark with growing awareness.
Beyond the Wall, the landscape was completely changed into a monotone, white plate which smoothed over the ground's irregular harshness and its natural contours and shapes. A thick layer of fresh, deep snow covered all the known hiking trails and slowed them down, despite the triangular-shaped snowshoes made of hardwood tied on their feet, which efficiently avoided sinking in it.
On the edge of the woods, where sentinel and weirwood trees mutely bowed under the weight of ice, the direwolves raised their muzzles to sniff at the air, their bodies stiff and taut, and went in opposite directions, Nymeria north, Ghost east.
The party carried on, treading with caution under a light sleet, hoods raised against the wind, breeches already half-soaked and their breaths dampening the scarves wrapped around their faces.
The uneasy weakness Jon had felt going through the Gate hadn't abated once they reached the haunted forest, but grew stronger and more overwhelming as they ventured deeper north.
He remembered the hearth stories Old Nan used to tell him and Robb: there was powerful magic woven into the Wall… the long-forgotten magic of the Children which kept the monsters at bay. The dead could not pass, as long as the Wall stood strong, that's what she always said. That's what this was about? Was the Wall trying to keep him from crossing over?
It knows, he realised as cold panic crept in his lungs and cut off his breath. It sensed what happened to me. What if I can't get back?
He constantly felt Beric's eye on him, following his every step as though he expected him to break down and crumble into dust at any moment, like the walking corpse he was.
The sun was already setting when they reached Whitetree: the village was just as empty and shattered as he recalled. The shadows cast by the branches of the enormous weirwood tree stretched across the sheepfold and blended with theirs, as they moved around the tumbledown houses to set up a perimeter for the camp.
"You feel it too, don't you?" Beric muttered, when they were out of earshot. Jon stole a rapid glance at the others, sharing strips of dried meat and hot, boiled water as they warmed themselves up by the fire, the mishap in the tunnel seemingly forgotten.
He shut his eyes, trying to clear his head: "I don't know what you're talking about."
Beric grasped his arm, wrenching it so hard Jon almost cried out in pain.
"The pull!" he snarled. Rage and frustration strained and twisted beyond recognition the already splintered lines of his face in a distorted grimace of agony. Jon recoiled. "That loud swarming in your head, like hundreds of angry wasps smothering everything else, even your thoughts. And the further north we go, the louder it becomes…the voice… It's getting harder and harder to ignore it." His fevered eye burned mad as it darted to the rest of their company. "They don't understand. They only see what they want to see. We walk among them, we talk to them, but we're not like them. Not anymore."
His heart turned to stone. It wasn't a simple fleeting illness, a premonition of impending doom suppurating only in his mind. This was affecting Dondarrion too. He clenched his jaw and glanced at the group gathered around the fire: was their mere presence unwittingly putting everyone else in danger?
Tormund's coarse laughter rose above the crackling flames in answer to one of Bronn's japes, but Jon couldn't partake in their unity. He felt cold and sickened. Melisandre, what did you do to me? What am I turning into?
Resolving to take first watch, he stood up, but he had not taken but a few steps in the direction of the forest when he stopped abruptly. A shadow shifted through the trees.
Instinctively his hand reached for Longclaw.
"Quiet!" Frostfinger hissed, shooting to his feet, and moved beside him, swift as a cat, sword at the ready. Lannister mirrored him and sped to Jon's right, Widow's Wail gleaming in the darkness as though it was coated in fresh blood.
Heavy snowbanks fell from the weirwood's white branches; Jon noticed ravens perched on the tree… five, then a dozen, then hundreds of them, a cloud of wings blacker than the night.
And they all started to shriek at once.
Brienne gaped at him appalled, Oathkeeper raised firmly in front of her.
"Lord of Light, defend us," Thoros of Myr invoked.
Next to him, Beric drew the edge of his sword over his left palm and the blade blazed with fire from point to crossguard.
The leather wrapped around Longclaw's hilt grated under Jon's tightening grip.
Then, as mysteriously as it started, the shrieking stopped.
Beyond the trees' dark line some twigs snapped with a loud crack: Anguy drew the string of his bow to his ear and waited, holding his breath, until from the snowy bushes Nymeria blithely padded into the camp's light.
Bronn snorted loudly: "The fuckin' wolf."
But the fucking wolf wasn't alone: a tall man clad in the black of the Watch trailed after her, his face and head completely covered by hood and scarf.
A ranger, this far from Castle Black? Was it possible?
"Not a step further, brother!" called Frostfinger. "State your name!"
The stranger ignored him and knelt in front of Arya's direwolf. He wasn't wearing gloves.
"Nymeria," he said, his voice scraping for lack of use, and gently scratched the direwolf's ear. "You were but a pup, the last time I saw you."
Jon's sword suddenly became very heavy.
The man raised his eyes to him, stood up and lowered his scarf. His face was thin and gaunt, and his aquiline nose stuck out even more prominently against the paleness. But Jon would recognise his eyes everywhere. Stark eyes. His father's eyes.
"And so were you," Benjen said with a small, sad smile.
Longclaw slipped from his grip as Jon took three long strides and hugged the long-lost man in dark furs.
"Uncle Benjen!"
A million questions were buzzing in his mind: what happened? Where did he go? How did he survive this long alone beyond the Wall? Why did he never come back?
"I thought you were dead!" he only said instead, his heart hammering madly.
"He is," Thoros confirmed behind him.
Jon pulled out of the embrace wordlessly, letting his arms fall to his sides and took a step back, for the first time noticing the things he had overlooked in his surprise and joy.
Benjen's skin was too unnaturally pale, his lips too much blue, his naked hands bloated and blackened almost like rotten flesh; there was no misty puffs of air coming from his mouth, no warmth from his body. No sign of life whatsoever.
But he was still his uncle; he recognised him, he could talk. His eyes were still the bright, laughing grey Jon had always loved.
"I might be dead, but I still fight for the living," Benjen said and his intense stare shifted to look over Jon's shoulders. "Same as you, Beric Dondarrion."
The Lighting Lord put his flaming sword back into its scabbard and the world grew a little bit darker.
"What happened to you?" Jon asked shocked, the prickle in his eyes betraying a deep emotion.
"There will be time to explain later. But now, you must come with me. The Three-Eyed Raven awaits."
"Three-Eyed Raven?" Tormund narrowed his blue eyes. "That's children's tale. The last greenseer died a long time ago."
"Not dead, only asleep. Observing everything, waiting for his time. His magic, the same magic of the Children, has awakened again and now flows in the blood of a crippled Stark boy."
"Uncle…" he breathed out, bewildered, his hope rekindling.
Benjen Stark nodded and Jon felt like coming back to life again.
"We're not far," he said, laying a fatherly hand on his shoulder. "Come. I'll take you to him."
When I decided I wanted to get Jon beyond the Wall to rescue Bran, the most troubling question I found myself asking was: how his resurrection will impact on the Wall's magic?
And this raised a lot more doubts: is there any substantial difference between Jon and Beric, apart from the fact that Dondarrion has been brought back for a considerably larger number of times? Would the Wall "block them" just as it does with Benjen, although the circumstances of their resurrections are obviously very different?
And more importantly: would the Night King be able to control them to some degree?
I'd like to hear what you think!
As you might know, Denner Frostfinger is a character from the Telltale Game Series: I know next to nothing about the video game's storyline and I don't think I will include other elements from it (is it even considered canon?), but I was searching for an authority figure in the Night's Watch other than Dolorous Edd and since all the other strong characters are either dead or lost in the Land of Always Winter, I thought that Frostfinger could be perfect for my evil schemes!
