Samwell I

"Corn," called a dust-covered child. His left eye was blue, his right a rotting hole. The candle's flicker caused an illusion of movement within the socket. Something writhed just beneath the darkness, but Sam could not bring himself to see if it was a worm or something worse. Best to assume the light was playing tricks. The maesters would say it was a twitch, some subcranial movement of muscle, unintended and unstoppable.

The child had appeared out of nowhere, as though placed by the taunting acolytes.

"Snow," he cried. His voice was a dull blade caught in its sheath, metallic and burdensome.

He ran out of the small chamber that had become home after the successful acquisition of two links. Sam followed. There wasn't time to grab the tallow candle on the grainy sill, so he stumbled through darkness. The child's footsteps sounded peculiar, like rats scurrying through a musty cellar.

Oldtown was often damp, but the Citadel stayed dry through meticulous design. One could not risk damaging millenia worth of knowledge. Instead, shingles were coated in wax and angled downwards; a nearly innumerable number of gutters directed any trace of liquid from the towers towards the channels carved into the hills. Nearly innumerable because three maesters had counted while acolytes. Maester Kidwell had done it first, some eight hundred and twenty six years ago, finding 8,925 gutters in total. Then Maester Vypren had determined him wrong. He had erroneously counted three gutters that combined as separate, resulting in a count of 8,922. Of course, Maester Hull had calculated Vypren's findings inexact, and declared that the three gutters that combined were still indeed separate for their most substantial parts, thus reestablishing the original count.

Pattering steps faded into the empty, black corridor. The walls began to swell, shrinking the hall with each slowed step. The air grew thick, too thick to inhale. His feet halted, but his body was too heavy for the sudden stop. He crashed down face first into the limestone.

Sam awoke with a rattled breath.

He was not in the Citadel, but in the bowels of Castle Black, where he had been for a quarter of a year.

The raven that had once belonged to Lord Commander Mormont pecked at him. Sam brought a gloved hand to protect his face from its rapacious beak.

"Corn!"

He shook his heavy head before handing it a palmful of crumbs leftover from his supper the night before. Or had it been lunch? Three stubs of candles stood scattered around him; a fourth was half-melted as it cast its light upon the tattered page under his arm. Had they begun with his latest bout of research? One for every year wasted in Oldtown.

He'd have preferred to work in the warm light of an oil lamp, but glass was hard to come by at the wall. Worse yet, lamps got hot and heat endangered old texts. Instead he read in the flickering glow of broad beeswax candles.

He donned his two cloaks - one of thickspun wool and one of fur, both as black as the raven that roused him.

"Snow," it croaked.

"Alright, alright." Even after earning his black iron link, Sam felt uneasy when the creature blinked its massive eyes. It fluttered along the dark halls as he ascended the litany of stairs. On the sixth turn, it swooped down for the grease left in the empty wooden bowl he clutched with his left hand.

Getting to the Lord Commander's Tower would mean a walk through the snow. That was more dreadful than the nightmare child's haunted eye socket. Sam had known cold in his first year at the Wall. Or at least, he thought he had. This made that feel like Summer in the Reach. Beyond the Wall was worse, he knew. How Gilly and the other wildlings had lived like this for so long seemed a mystery even the citadel could not solve. Out there, massive drifts swallowed men and horses alike, gulping them up as soon as they strayed from the ploughed path. Dark skies denied the sun any warmth but for a few hours in the middle of the day. Biting winds stole noses, ears, or any fingers that strayed from the safety of gloves. It was almost always snowing - thick grey skies pierced by twisted black trees in the day and so heavy with clouds in the night that even the moon could not shine through them.

The thought of Gilly twinged his heart and scoured his throat. She was in Molestown now, close yet oh so far. Sam had originally intended her to stay indefinitely with his lady mother in Horn Hill, but the wildling woman would have no part of it. When he'd written of his upcoming journey north, she convinced Lady Tarly to get him to come home for one last supper. He had, and in the morn child and mother hid in the covered wagon that took him to the port. Jon allowed her to see her true son in secret once per moon, but he had little sympathy for Sam's lovesickness.

The heavy door barely moved against the bellowing gusts begging him to return to his reading. Sam shoved a shoulder into it, but it barely budged. The snow had piled up in front of it again. New recruits shoveled and swept the training yards hourly, but nearly a foot of heavy, wet white had fallen since whenever they had last done their rounds. He kicked his boot out to clear some room, but the layers of stockings and leather were too broad to fit. His foot was wedged. By the time he wriggled it free, metal scraped stone beyond the oaken frame.

"Sorry, Maester," called a recruit whose voice had not yet dropped.

I'm not a maester. He pulled his cloaks around him as the door swung open. The boy who cleared the way could not yet be fifteen. Sam didn't know this one's name yet, but his olive skin suggested he may hail from Dorne. He stuttered a rebuttal before wandering off in the snow. Sam's lungs were a chimney, breaths puffing out in massive clouds before him. Any other Lord Commander would have let them use the damn tunnels, but not Jon. Flakes fell softly, patternless white spots dancing upon cold grey winds.

The wooden stairs creaked beneath his weight as he neared the Lord Commander's Tower.

Jon opened before he knocked.

He had changed while Sam was away, or perhaps the Citadel had simply taught better observational skills. The sullen boy who questioned his place in the world was no more. In his absence stood a man who struggled to keep bitterness from taking root, a skeptic who stared off into the snowy forest to the north and calculated the days until their defenses would be challenged by death itself. Grief was only an early battle in the war of loss.

"Another night in the vaults." It wasn't a question. "Anything new?"

Sam shook his head. The room was cold enough to chill his face and numb his nose. Only embers remained in the fireplace behind the Lord Commander's back, glittering red in the cold black ashes.

"There must be something . What are we missing?" It was rhetorical, Sam knew, though he had half a mind to repeat the points he had made near daily since returning to the Wall.

Jon parted the heavy grey curtain to eye the training. Two recent recruits, both dispatched by Stannis after their houses refused to acknowledge his kingship, swung slow strikes at one another. Edwyn Stout, the secondborn son of Goldgrass, shouted at them to move their swords faster. Sam wondered how long they had been out this morning to be so encumbered.

"Have you eaten yet?" Sam asked, helpfully. "Everything is clearer with a full stomach." He wondered what time it was. Might there be an egg and some beans with which he could break his fast? Jon sighed and palmed Longclaw with his left hand. The blade had worked as well as dragonglass on a dozen wights a week prior while on a trip to the weirwood grove. That news ought to count as something , Sam thought. It supported the descriptions of dragonsteel's effects during the Long Night. That might have given him hope if they had any concept of how Valyrian steel was smithed in the first place, but they did not. Sam had learned much in his brief time in the Citadel but nothing regarding reanimated corpses or their destruction. Castle Black's library seemed the best hope. Maesters, lord commanders, and even many brothers had described their time at the Wall; some had to have written something useful. Wherever those accounts were, Sam had not yet found them.

He had even gotten Cotter Pyke to send the tomes kept at Eastwatch By the Sea on the off chance a clue somehow dwelled there. A third of the dozen he sent were destroyed in the journey and the other eight were useless. Two were just lists of provisions brought though the Bay of Seals and most of the rest were full of irrelevant information regarding the design of their ships or copies of unanswered letters sent to the king. One had been a recipe book. Sam gave that one to Trynt Mallard, the stout, hoary man who ordered brothers to chop onions and peel potatoes in the kitchens. He hadn't appreciated that, and Sam was fairly certain it wound up in a particularly gritty stew soon after.

The thought of the kitchens caused his stomach to growl. Jon almost laughed as he clasped Sam's shoulder through bulky layers of fabric. "No sense in putting off your meal any longer." His dark grey eyes seemed hollow in the cold white light that filtered through the windows above. "I need you to write to Stannis again. I can draft it, but something from you might be of more value. Stannis is a reasonable man, it is my hope that a learned man like you might connect with him."

Sam didn't think Stannis to be reasonable at all. His love for the Lord of Light had rattled much of the North, and his acquisition of Winterfell after the ousting of the Boltons had been done with little respect for the old houses. There were even rumors that his young, sickly daughter, who lived at Eastwatch by the Sea with her mother, would be his ultimate sacrifice to his foreign god. The sorceress who used to guide his hand had not left the Wall in over a year, but it was said she corresponded with him through messages decoded in flame.

He realized he had not answered and awkwardly asked what he ought to include.

"The same things as every other letter. We desperately need more men, and not just as punishment for his opposers. The dead will be here soon, in their hundreds and in their thousands. In truth I do not think he will care until they claw their way through his gut and turn his hands as black as their own." The image roiled Sam's stomach… just in time for breakfast.

"I'll write him after I eat. Want me to bring you anything? Even a Lord Commander's got to eat." Jon's mouth formed a straight line in response - better than a frown, but still not an agreement. "I will tell you when I find something." He tried to sound reassuring, choosing his words carefully with 'will' and 'when' rather than 'would' and 'if.' Jon nodded and followed him out into the courtyard.

The snow and its glare stabbed Sam's eyes like a needle upon a seam. He sucked in a breath but the cold air hurt his teeth. After a moment, it faded to calm white and he could again differentiate up from down. Fat flakes fell fast, forming a layer of cold fur on everything in their path. Sworn brothers young and old were about, some repairing gaps in the wainscotting, others thumping their dulled swords upon padded rears and bare faces. At least maesters don't need to fight.

The shieldhall was mostly empty when Sam arrived. He shuffled to the hearth and warmed his plump hands upon its bounty, slowly peeling off the doeskin gloves when he finally felt assured that his fingers would not freeze and shatter.

"Will you be eating, maester?" asked a dark haired youth nearly a full head taller than Sam. Upon his nod, he scuttered back to the kitchens and returned a moment later with a horn of mulled wine and a stale bowl of bread filled with white beans, bacon, and thin-sliced garlic. The shields above called out, engulfing his attention before he could thank him.

What had happened to the men of the Night's Watch? Gone were the days of powerful houses sending their younger sons - now they sent them off to die for whichever latest king promised them titles and lands. Even with Stannis Baratheon's unyielding sentencing of the defiant, the Wall had barely 1,000 men. There were some wildlings who had joined their ranks, but that brought the number up by fewer than two hundred. The Crown had sent a small batch in the months after Sam, Maester Aemon, and Gilly sailed south, but half had died in the weeks following. Now that Winter had come, it seemed unlikely that anyone but the most traditional Northern houses would brave blizzards and ice to die for the realm.

Mudd, Burley, Teague, Uffering, Poole, Crowl, Trant. Those were the first he recognized. Others were harder to tell, paint too close to woodtone that had faded into splotches of brown on brown. The direwolf of house Stark appeared the most, or at least the most that Sam could see in this lighting. A white moon on a black field over green trees - House Fell. Checkered silver and gold… Underhill? No. Underton? No. Overton. That's it . When had last anyone from House Overton stood upon the Wall? Surely a century had gone by. Sam had gazed upon these shields for years, yet he found new sigils with each glance. Done are the days of glory through selflessness , he thought bitterly as he shook the crumbs off his hands and placed the drained horn upon the table.

The air was just as cold outside as it had been when he'd left the Lord Commander. The courtyard was much the same: the latest batch of men Stannis had sent were muttering as they scooped snow into massive barrels to be melted for bathing, young and old recruits sparred with dulled blades, and everyone seemed chilled to the bone. Everyone but the Red Woman.

Something about her sat uneasy in Sam's plentiful gut. Her face was pleasant - a high forehead, sharp cheekbones, full lips, and a pointed chin, all well-positioned and well-suited for one another. Despite the freezing weather, she never wore more than a light dress with a deeply cut bodice. Faultless, buoyant breasts pressed against the fabric and strained the seams. Long, flared sleeves ought to suck in icy winds, yet she wore neither gloves nor scarf. Her blood red hair fluttered in the breeze but never blocked her view or tangled itself. If something appears perfect, it is anything but, Marwyn the Mage had told him. And so it must be with this paragon of lust and beauty.

She turned slowly to meet his gaze, eyes of flame pouring into him. A shudder sounded through his body before he shuffled off to the bowels of Castle Black to return to his studies. Jon had commanded him to return to the Wall before the battle with the dead, an event he seemed sure would fall upon their doorstep each following day for nearly a year. And so Sam had given up his dream and left the one place he found any real meaning, the one place he belonged. The promise of returning to finish his studies warmed him more than any horn of mulled wine ever could. The answer lay somewhere, doubtless in the hundreds of books remaining below the winding stairs.

The table was exactly as he had left it, scattered with candle stubs, texts (some useless and some more interesting), parchment, and a few crumbs. Breakfast evinced the alchemy of turning food into vigor as he returned the two unnecessary books to their shelves and dumped an armful of new chances onto the bench. Stannis' letter would wait an hour or two. Perhaps Maester Osgrey's records from 98 AC housed their missing piece.

A/N: So, so, so sorry for the delay! Sam was harder to write than I expected and I ended up spending a lot of time changing the future story details to make it make a bit more sense. I have another (much longer) chapter almost ready to go; I'm hoping to edit and post it this week. Hopefully after that, my writing pace will be a little more reliable. I appreciate your patience and am excited to keep this going.