JON

Things had been a bit grim and doom-n-gloom and "fuck this" and "fuck that" around the Night's Watch ever since the Old Bear's big ranging adventure had ended with the Old Bear getting murdered by a brother of the Watch and most of the rangers falling to the wildlings or the undead. Ole "Turncloak" Jonny Snow was mostly back in everyone's good graces, but there was still the matter of choosing a new Lord Commander for the Night's Watch.

"It should be me," boomed Grenn from atop one of the great oaken tables where the men of the Watch took their meals together. Someone immediately hit him with a glass of wine, but he barely flinched.

"I'm awesome," Grenn explained. "I'll make the Watch great again."

"Shut up, Grenn, you're an anti-vaxxer," someone shouted from a few tables away.

A turkey leg hit Grenn on the shoulder, but he repelled that attack too. He picked up a candlestick in each hand and clacked them together like swords.

"Grenn! Grenn!" he yelled, trying to get the chant going. "Grenn! Grenn! Grenn. Grenn… Grenn…."

"Get down, you idiot," Janos Slynt bellowed. "You're making a fool of yourself. I am the Crown's obvious preferred choice for Lord Commander."

"Be silent, Janos, you candy corn little bitch," came Maester Aemon's reedy old man's voice from the end of the hall. "We have to do that crazy voting thing. That's the way it's always been."

The men broke off into murmurs and huddles of suspicion. The crazy voting thing of which Aemon spoke was an archaic system the Night's Watch had always used to elect their new Lords Commander. The process was notorious for its multiple voting currencies, elimination rounds, and the inevitable required recounts. No one ever completely remembered how to do it. They had to get out the rule book every time.

"Okay, it says here you have to… to line up the holes," said Ser Alliser, unrolling and spreading a withered parchment across a ceremonial election table. He pressed the parchment more or less flat and arranged it so the various holes lined up. The process was apparently to be quite thorough: there were several strange golden artifacts on a nearby table that were obviously to be used in some way, and buckets on the floor held enormous collections of beads, counters, and other small riff raff. It looked like they were about to play some type of excrutiating board game.

"You can all go fuck yourselves," Maester Aemon wailed four hours later, after the end of yet another voting round that had failed to produce anything like a clear winner. "I'm going to go smoke a joint and go to bed. Don't give a damn who gets to be the new Lord Commander—job probably sucks anyway."

"He's right," said Janos Slynt, trying to muffle a yawn. "I can't follow this whole thing with the scales at all. I just don't get why we have to be weighing anything to pick a Lord Commander."

"For the ninth fucking time," Ser Alliser thundered, "the scales are for—"

"Enough!" someone roared. "Let's adjourn." No one replied verbally, but general agreement was obvious. The men shuffled off to their various nightly destinations, their bunks or to bowls of hot spiced wine in the kitchens. It was plain as day that the selection of a new Lord Commander would be no small task.

"Has anyone seen Sam?" Jon asked Pyp and Satin, who he found kissing on one of the bunkbeds.

"Nah," Pyp said.

"I don't think he was even at the voting," Jon said, feeling increasingly worried. Sam had seemed really scared by that story he'd laid on him the other night about Night's King. Campfire tales were supposed to be all in good fun, but Jon knew Sam was a little more sensitive to fear than most. He decided to go out and look for his friend.

"We'll come, too," said Satin. The three boys made their way through the barracks looking for other willing members of an impromptu search party. Grenn was antsy from all the boring voting and couldn't wait to stretch his legs, so he agreed to go along. Maester Aemon met the boys in a hallway of the keep and ended up joining in the effort too, even though he was an old man, and completely blind. Before long nearly half the Night's Watch was hunting for Sam.

Jon didn't fear that Sam had deserted—the chunky boy was simply too craven to go through with it. His fear was that Sam may have gone to the Godswood for some reason and run afoul of a wight.

They took the tunnel beneath the Wall. They got as far as the second gate before they began to hear something.

"Is that—" said Pyp.

"That kinda sounds like—"

Before they'd reached the third gate, the men were all certain of what they were hearing. It was, as they say, the sounds of two hearts beating as one.

Jon came to a breathless stop before the final gate, gathered himself, and then set to opening it. The black brothers gathered behind him stood waiting eagerly. The sounds coming from the Godswood were very loud now. A rhythmic female moan. An impassioned male grunt. A soft cry. Sharp intakes of breath. Dead leaves crackling in a fist.

Their footsteps pounded through the woods, then drew to a quick stop as they reached the Godswood.

"Oh my… sweet, sweet Seven," said Dareon the singer. He wiped a hand down his face. He looked in utter disbelief at what he was seeing. Several sounds of assent came from the gathered men.

"Sam?" Jon cried, holding forth a torch to light the lurid scene unfolding beneath the solemn gaze of the Weirwood.

The enormous nude bulk of Samwell Tarly was propped against the holy white tree. His legs were parted, and bobbing between them was a crown of chestnut black hair. Attached to that hair was the head of a beautiful dead woman. She was on her knees with her big beautiful butt thrust into the air, wiggling from side to side as she serviced her new king. Through her rotted cheek they could all behold Sam's colossal member throbbing.

Jon stumbled forward through the litter of crumbling red leaves. "Sam, what are you doing?"

The dead girl missed not a beat. She kept hard at work while Samwell, very slowly, clearly annoyed, lifted a pair of dark sunglasses from the ground beside him and slipped them carefully onto his round face. He turned blankly to Jon Snow, then to the rest of the Watch.

"Slaying," he said.

The brothers were struck utterly silent. Moments passed. Suddenly Maester Aemon pushed his way through to the front of the crowd. He stood and gawked sightlessly. At last he lifted his withered hands and began, slowly, to clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Clap.

Some others picked it up. Soon five were clapping, then ten, then twenty. The applause picked up steam. It became a roar. The roar turned into a fevered chant of victory.

"SLAY-ER! SLAY-ER! SLAY-ER!"

The Night's Watch had found its new Lord Commander.