Sobbing, Steve took another step. "This is the last one, the very last, I can't go on, I can't." But his feet moved again. One and then the other. They took a step, and then another, and he thought, "They're not my feet, they're someone else's, someone else is walking, it can't be me."
When he looked down, he could see them stumbling through the snow; shapeless things, and clumsy. His boots had been black, he seemed to remember, but the snow had caked around them, and now they were misshapen white balls. Like two clubfeet made of ice.
It would not stop, the snow. The drifts were up past his knees, and a crust covered his lower legs like a pair of white greaves. His steps were dragging, lurching. The heavy pack he carried made him look like some monstrous hunchback. And he was tired, so tired. "I can't go on. Mother have mercy, I can't."
It felt more like he was falling down than walking, falling endlessly but never hitting the ground, just falling forward and forward. "I have to stop. It hurts too much. I'm so cold and tired, I need to sleep, just a little sleep beside a fire, and a bite to eat that isn't frozen."
"Come on, Steve," said Snot. "We have to keep going. If we stop, we die, you know that."
They all knew that, the few who were left. They had been fifty when they fled the Fist, but some had wandered off in the snow, a few wounded had bled to death… and sometimes Steve heard shouts behind him, from the rear guard, and once an awful scream. When he heard that he had run, twenty yards or thirty, as fast and as far as he could, his half-frozen feet kicking up the snow. He would be running still if his legs were stronger.
Sobbing, Steve took another step. "I've been cold so long, I'm forgetting what it's like to feel warm," he said to Snot. "Maybe I've already turned into a White Walker and don't know it."
"I don't think so, because you can still talk," said Snot.
"Zan'nen'nagara," Toshi added. ("Unfortunately.")
"If I had a torch like Mormont has, I wouldn't be cold," Steve said.
"He gave you a torch and you dropped it in the snow!" Snot reminded him.
Steve had wrapped his scarf over his nose and mouth. It was so stiff he feared it must be frozen to his face. Even breathing was hard, and the air was so cold it hurt to swallow it. "Mother have mercy," he muttered in a hushed husky voice beneath the frozen mask. "Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy." With each prayer he took another step, dragging his legs through the snow. "Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy." His own mother, Lady Francine, was a thousand leagues south, safe in the keep at Horn Hill. He wished he was with her.
"Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy." Cartman had screamed for mercy. Why had he suddenly remembered that? It was nothing he wanted to remember. The fat boy had stumbled backward, dropping his sword, pleading, yielding, even yanking off his thick black glove and thrusting it up before him as if it were a gauntlet. He was still shrieking for quarter as a wight with the face of his former friend Kyle had lifted him in the air by the throat and near ripped the head off him. The dead had no mercy left in them.
Sobbing, Steve took another step.
A root beneath the crust caught his toe, and Steve tripped and fell heavily to one knee, so hard he bit his tongue. He could taste the blood in his mouth, warmer than anything he had tasted since the Fist. Now that he had fallen, he could not seem to find the strength to rise again. He groped for a tree branch and clutched it tight, trying to pull himself back to his feet, but his stiff legs would not support him. The mail was too heavy, and he was too weak, and too tired. He muttered, "I know it'll be all right if I…" but he couldn't think how to finish that sentence.
"Back on your feet, four eyes," a mean guy named Scott Tenorman growled as he went past, but Steve paid him no mind.
"Get up," Snot said. "Steve, you can't go to sleep here. Get up and keep walking."
"Go away," Steve said, his words frosting in the cold air. "I want to rest."
"Get up." Snot's voice was harsh and husky. He loomed over Steve his clothes crusty with snow. "There's no resting, the Old Bear said. You'll die."
"Snot." Steve smiled. "No, really, I'm good here. You just go on. I'll catch you after I've rested a bit longer."
"You won't," said Snot. "You'll freeze, or the White Walkers will get you. Steve, get up!"
A boy named Bertram stopped beside them. "Leave him," Bertram said to Snot. "If they can't walk, they're done. Save your strength for yourself."
"He'll get up," Snot replied. "He only needs a hand."
"If you plan on dying with him, go right ahead." Bertram moved on.
Snot tried to pull Steve to his feet. "That hurts," Steve complained. "Stop it. Snot, you're hurting my arm. Stop it."
Snot managed to haul him upright, but the moment he let go Steve sat back down in the snow. Snot kicked him, a solid thump that cracked the crust of snow around his boot and sent it flying everywhere. "Get up!" He kicked him again. "Get up and walk. You have to walk."
Steve fell over sideways, curling up into a tight ball to protect himself from the kicks. He hardly felt them through all his wool and leather and mail, but even so, they hurt. He thought Snot was his friend. You shouldn't kick your friends. Why wouldn't Snot let him be? He just needed to rest, that's all, to rest and sleep some, and maybe die a little.
Barry suddenly appeared at Snot's side. "I can carry Steve," he said.
"Are you sure?" Snot asked.
"I carried a calf once was heavier than him. I carried him down to his mother so he could get a drink of milk." He bent down and picked Steve up.
Barry carried Steve in his arms, with Snot and Toshi walking beside them. They couldn't see any of the other guys anywhere.
Steve's head bobbed up and down with every step that Barry took. "Stop it," he muttered, "put me down, I'm not a baby. I'm a man of the Night's Watch." He sobbed. "Just let me die."
"Be quiet, Steve," said Snot. "Save your strength. Think about your sister Hayley who you told me about. Think about Maester Aemon. Think about your favorite foods. Think about your favorite smells. Sing a song if you like?"
"Out loud?"
"In your head."
Steve knew a hundred songs, but when he tried to think of one, he couldn't. The words had all gone from his head. He sobbed again and said, "I don't know any songs, Snot. I did know some, but now I don't."
"Yes, you do," said Snot. "How about 'The Bear and the Maiden Fair,' everybody knows that one. A bear there was, a bear, a bear! All black and brown and covered with hair!"
"No, not that one," Steve pleaded. "I don't want to think about bears. One of the wights that came with the White Walkers was a bear." He shuddered, remembering its hairless rotted flesh. "No songs. Please, Snot."
"Think about your ravens, then."
"They were never mine. They belonged to Castle Black and the Shadow Tower."
Barry frowned. "Chet promised I could have a bird. I want me a bird that talks, and eats corn from my hand."
"Wait, when did he promise that?" Snot asked.
Barry was saved from having to answer by the sound of a White Walker going "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
He was so scared that he pissed his pants and also dropped Steve.
Next thing Steve knew, he was lying on the ground with the White Walker looming over him. "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA," it said again.
Eyes closed, Steve fumbled at his side, hardly knowing what he was doing. His hand found the dagger tucked into his belt. Brian had given it to him before leaving. He shoved the dagger blindly upward with both hands. He heard a crack, like the sound ice makes when it breaks beneath your foot, and then a screech.
When he opened his eyes, the White Walker's icy armor was running down its legs in rivulets as pale blue blood hissed and steamed around the black dragonglass dagger in its throat. It reached down with two bone white hands to pull out the knife, but where its fingers touched the obsidian they smoked.
Steve rolled onto his side, eyes wide as the Walker shrank and puddled, dissolving away. In twenty heartbeats its flesh was gone, swirling away in a fine white mist. Beneath were bones like milkglass, pale and shiny, and they were melting too. Finally, only the dragonglass dagger remained, wreathed in steam as if it were alive and sweating. Snot bent to scoop it up and flung it down again at once. "Mother, that's cold."
"What's that thing made of if it can kill a White Walker?" Barry asked.
"Obsidian," Steve struggled to his knees. "Dragonglass, they call it." He giggled, and cried, and doubled over to heave his courage out onto the snow.
"We should call you Steve the Slayer!" said Snot.
Toshi pointed. "Mite! Pinku raito!" ("Look! Pink light!")
Snot couldn't understand his words, but the meaning was all too clear. "Dawn. That must be east. If we head that way, we should catch Mormont."
Steve stood up. "Somehow, I don't feel so tired anymore. Or so cold."
