Sandor Clegane at the Wall... This is the longest chapter so far, by quite a lot!

CHAPTER 38

SANDOR

The Wall. Of all the places Sandor had imagined himself ending up in life, the Wall was not one of them. It rose as an enormous sheet of ice above the treeline, barely distinguishable from the gray clouds around it. Behind Sandor was the empty road that led back to Winterfell; in front of him were fifty men in chains.

Sandor was not chained. He and five other cooperative men who could be trusted dutifully herded the rest. Three were volunteers—sensing a shifting political climate, or seeking a new adventure, a man each from the Lonely Hills, the Barrowlands, and the Rills heeded Sansa's call to bring honor to their House through service at the Wall. The final was Arnolf Karstark, who openly admitted that he had conspired with the Boltons and accepted responsibility for his crimes by leading the remaining men to their mutual fate.

But Sandor could not say why he did it. He put one foot in front of the other and beat the men who refused to walk. They had a horse with a supply wagon, and a smaller cart pulled by a donkey for the weak to ride in, but it was cold and slow-going. Traveling with Sansa and the dogs had been much faster. He pushed thoughts of her from his mind, angrily remembering her words at the feast.

"All men have a duty to the realm. Their past transgressions may be forgotten through service at the Wall." Words were wind. There was no great honor in being sent to serve on the frozen ice sheet; it was a punishment. A merciful one for the Boltons' men, to be sure, but Sansa had seen fit to include Sandor among them. He cursed the loyal part of his nature that was being used against him. What had he done, that he deserved to take the Black?

I killed my first man at twelve, in the sack of King's Landing, and I kept on killing. Men, women, children. It didn't matter. I killed peasants that thought they were helping me. I rode down that butcher's boy her sister wouldn't shut up about and I killed that nobleman's squire that helped Sansa in the Vale. I stood by and let Joffrey's knights beat her. I ran from battle. I ran from my brother. I let him kill our sister and our father. I knew they were afraid of him, but I did nothing. I was afraid of him, too.

Lying awake at night and thinking thus, it seemed he deserved to be sent to the Wall. But in the morning he looked at the sorry faces of the pathetic men around him and cursed Sansa under his breath. He thought about running away, but there was nowhere to go. The Wall loomed ever closer.

Jon Snow rode to meet them fifty miles out, at the edge of the region known as the Gift. Sandor had met Jon Snow many years ago, the first time he had been to Winterfell. Snow had been a boy then, but he was a man now—a strong man with a lean and muscled look, straight black hair chopped short, and keen, dark purple eyes. His garb was black, from shining oiled leather gloves and greaves to his stiff doublet and fur-lined cape. At his hip swung the Valyrian steel sword Longclaw, its pommel carved into the shape of a wolf's head. Behind him trailed his enormous, red-eyed, white-furred direwolf, Ghost. Sandor was oddly comforted by the beast's presence; no matter that it was a strange breed, it seemed to him that all men liked to keep dogs.

Snow called out to the unchained leaders of the group from the back of his shaggy gray pony. "Well met, men! You've traveled far and the Wall in winter is no sought-after mistress. But you will soon find a new life there." He motioned to the two Night's Watch brothers riding with him. "Gerrick and Ed will bring up the rear. Castle Black is two days north of here at most, and we can make it to a ranging cabin by nightfall. That will give you all some shelter for the night."

And so the Wall would be fifty men stronger as promised. Castle Black appeared dark and dingy through the forest pines, and men and boys tending their chores in somber silence stopped to watch the procession of newcomers as they made their way through the rusted gate and into the plain and empty courtyard. There were no women, but Sandor noticed some Wildlings. The Black Brothers congregated around as Jon Snow took a stand in the center and explained their duty to the realm to the newcomers. Sandor was too distracted to pay attention to the details of what the bastard was saying—a man he never thought he would see again was staring at him openly from among the members of the Night's Watch.

It was Jorah Mormont. Sandor had met him in Gulltown before he traveled to the Eyrie. It was Jorah Mormont who had started him on this quest—because it was Mormont who gave him the dragon's skull to bring to Littlefinger. Drunk at the inn, Mormont had ranted about spying against the Dragon Queen, killing the smallest of her children in secret, but being suspected and exiled. He was a spy for the Lannisters, but he loved his Queen, and he entrusted Sandor with his last, bitter delivery to the man who had hired him. Sandor knew that Littlefinger had long since left King's Landing, so he took Jorah's sin to the Eyrie, where he reunited with Sansa.

The men approached each other as Jon Snow took the northerners through the gate and into the Haunted Forest to say their oath in the godswood above the Wall. Sandor clapped Mormont warmly on the back, surprised in his last hours of freedom. "The Bear! I never thought I'd see you again. What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Paying for my crimes," Jorah answered stiffly. "And I never thought I'd see you again, either."

"You were right. Littlefinger gave me a pretty penny as promised. Tell me, why? Was it a real dragon skull you gave me?"

"It was. And I deserve to be here, at the Wall, for betraying my Queen."

"Eh. Fuck it. She would have banished you for something else anyway." Our Queens.

"Maybe so. I made other crimes, but none so grave as that."

"Trust me. She would have done you in, in the end." The cold blew ominously around them and Sandor's mood grew dark again.

"Maybe so. Maybe Daenerys will do us all in, as Robert feared. Or maybe she and her dragons will save us—from something unfathomably terrible, something from which no one alive can escape. The apex and the origin of the world's horror, as you are about to witness."

Sandor sighed. The one guy I know up here, and he's fucking mad. The north gate opened, and Jon Snow returned with the newly-made brothers of the Night's Watch. Many of them looked oddly peaceful, as though turning their cloaks a final time had brought renewal and redemption. Maybe they believed that, in the eyes of the Gods who had so recently killed their lord in favor of the Stark woman. Maybe for these Northerners, joining the Watch wasn't such a terrible fate.

Sandor did not believe in Gods, and it would not be the same for him.

"Now to deal with the lonely Southron," Jon Snow addressed him, surrounded by six of his closest brothers. "I'd say it's a miracle those animals didn't tear you apart as well."

"I had no quarrel with them," Sandor bristled.

"You've done plenty to start a quarrel with me. Serving the Lannisters, kidnapping my sisters, and who knows what part you played in my father's death. It's no matter now. Your Watch won't end until your death. Come—you'll say your oath in the godswood."

"I won't say vows."

"I can't have a man around here who isn't our brother. How would that look?" Snow answered, feigning shock to the snickering laughter of his men. "You will—or I'll have your head like I would any other."

Sandor gritted his teeth. "I'll stay and serve you, Bastard. But I won't say vows. I served in the Kingsguard—they're an order, same as you—and I stood with them, but I never said any vows."

"And how'd that go? Joff is dead, isn't he? No, you'll say them."

They pushed him along, walking as a group through the north gate. Sandor was upset, feeling trapped. Snow had a reputation as a renowned swordsman—and Sandor longed for one in his hand to settle the differences between them.

Crunching over the well-traveled snow path into the forest, Snow turned to his man Gerrick. "The oath. Let's remind our Southron how it starts."

"'Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death,'" the brother answered.

"Appropriate, since the sun is setting. The days are shorter and shorter for us in this long winter. Hound, do you know what's next?"

Sandor didn't answer.

"'I shall take no wife."" Jon answered, and the men snickered again. "Well, I guess that's it for you and my sister. A pity for you, but Sansa was always going to marry a lord. I wonder who it'll be? Maybe that chap from the Eyrie? Wouldn't that be ironic! What comes next, Ed?"

"'I shall hold no lands, father no children."

"You have land, don't you Clegane? In the Westerlands, I'm sure. Too bad—if those prisoners could have brought themselves up here, maybe Sansa could have sent you back home quietly. You could have married a pretty red-headed girl or had a few bastards. Not anymore!"

The men laughed again, and Sandor felt anger boiling inside him. "I told you, Snow. I won't say vows."

"No. The next part is, 'I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.' Tell me, did you dream that you could be the Lord of Winterfell? That you could wear the crown of the North? Not an uncommon lust, I must admit. But now, impossible."

They had arrived at the godswood. Eerie and ethereal, this one seemed uncanny and unwelcoming compared to the one at Winterfell, as though an evil energy permeated the dry and leafless trees. Crows congregated on the high branches and the heart tree stared down at them with a mean-spirited expression. The brothers made a circle around Sandor and Jon Snow drew his longsword.

He was said to be the best swordsman in the North, and Sandor wondered which one of them would win in a fight. He prided himself on being more technical than any except for Jaime Lannister, but when it came down to it, you were chopping men down. Strength was the best element to fall back on, and he knew he was stronger than Jon Snow.

"Give me a sword! You said you'd take my head, so make it a fair fight. I won't say vows!"

"An entertaining proposal," Snow admitted, the shining gray steel reflecting orange and red the last rays of sunlight. "But I am a man of duty, above even such pleasures as fighting a man to the death."

Sandor debated whether he should make a charge, but as if on cue, the rest of the men drew their swords and pointed the sharp points of steel at him. He bowed his head—enraged, but helpless. The sound of his own breathing and the cawing ravens was drowned out by the synchronized voices of the Night's Watch.

"Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. 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. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all nights to come."

The sun went down. The group was enveloped in darkness. Even the birds quieted as the twilight cold came on. What would they do to him? No one said anything. Something under the snow was moving. The snow was punch, punch, punching near him, and he expected a mouse or rat or mink to burst through at any moment, as it had when he was traveling with Sansa, not so long ago. The thing came out—like a trout leaping from beneath the surface of a river, but it was no animal. It was a blackened, dead human hand.

Startled, Sandor fell back. His eyes fixated on the skeleton, he expected at any moment his brain would unmuddle and the hand would take the shape of some animal, a stick, or something, anything, recognizable. His mind was playing tricks on him in the dim light. But it continued to flop and flex, a self-animated human limb, pulling with it a forearm, an elbow.

Corpses rose up around him. Not one looked like a living man or even freshly dead—they were decaying, rotting, decomposing skeletons pulling themselves up from beneath the snow. All had unnatural, bright blue eyes that shone with the intensity of evening stars. Panic seized him, his heart thudded in his chest.

The Night's Watch members who had encircled Sandor with their swords pointing inward now swung outward as the dead drew closer, making a tight ring around him with their sharp steel teeth. They drove back the dead that had raised closest—one of the brothers hacked a creature clean from shoulder to breastbone. It stumbled, fell—and stood tall again. More were coming, rising, and even being beaten back didn't stop them. Snow held off two handily, but some of the brothers seemed to be struggling.

"Give me a sword!" Sandor begged. He could fight better than any man here. The six brothers surrounding him held their ground, but Sandor ached to defend himself. His heart sank as he saw it might not have any effect. Even after being slashed, stabbed, and cleaved nearly in two, the dead still came after them. What good was fighting creatures that couldn't be killed? He was filled with the same need he knew from Blackwater—the urge to run.

Someone grabbed his leg—Sandor looked down and it was the blackened, dead hand gripping his thigh. The skeleton creature managed to pull itself up so that its whole torso was above the snow. Its bone-arms grasped for him and, finding purchase, it yowled in triumph. The unnatural sound rattled through its throat and Sandor mirrored it with a human yell, twisting away and kicking out with a boot that connected firmly with the skull's forehead. The neck snapped and the head rolled back, but the hands kept reaching for him. Sandor yelled again and attacked with his own gloved hand, ripping it off by the wrist and tossing it away from him. It flopped in the snow while the body struggled towards him like a spider.

"Back to the Wall!" Snow yelled. Sandor scrambled to his feet and rued that he didn't have an axe, a blade—anything to hold in his hands. He formed the point of the formation of men heading back to the safety of the Wall. They were not excellent swordsmen, but Sandor saw them all deal what would have been killing blows against any living man—blows the creatures took that merely slowed them down as they stumbled and rose again.

Except for Jon Snow's sword—his was different, and cut the creatures down permanently. He stabbed into one of the bloated dead things and it gurgled, going down, the light leaving its eyes. Another took its place without pause but Snow decapitated it cleanly, a moment of flourish as he slashed in a wide arc. Sandor's attention turned to one of the Black Brothers who had failed to parry, and a dead skeleton was on him, grabbing his face. Sandor watched in horror as the man screamed—

A silent white shadow, a white gust of wind, blew over the man and the wight—and then the man was free of it, shaking himself off, while the great white wolf was shaking the thing back and forth in its jaws. Their bodies had turned over and over in the snow together before the wolf pinned it and ripped off its head. The body parts jerked, disabled in the snow, and the wolf leapt away, vanishing.

"Run!" At Snow's word the men abandoned their skirmish and turned tail towards the north gate. There were too many wights—they were coming out the ground—moving closer. They didn't die. Sandor's heart sank as he came within sight of the Wall and the iron and oak gate failed to rise. He reached it first and shook it violently, seeking to tear it out of its frame, but it wouldn't budge. The dead were slow and running had bought the group some time, but there was no point to it if they died so close to safety. Sandor sank down as the men ran up after him. "A sword," he panted. "Gods damn you, if nothing else, give me one of yours!"

The brothers ignored him, two running through the sallyport Sandor saw was illuminated by a torch on an outer sconce. But it curved to a dead end—where the brothers scrambled to turn a winch that rose the gate. "Stand back!" Jon Snow hit him with the flat of his sword as he cleared a path. The dead would be on them before it rose high enough to let any of them under.

The fear that gripped Sandor had made it hard to breathe, and running as fast as he could has left a stitch in his side. "Snow!" he roared. "A weapon!" Three wights had broken apart from the rest and were almost on them.

Snow hesitated—Sandor saw it in his eyes. The weakest brothers were crowded at the bottom of the gate, which had risen only inches. "The torch!" Snow yelled. "Fire kills them. Wield it like a sword!"

As his hand pointed towards it, Sandor's eyes were drawn to the flames. It grew in his vision, becoming as large as a bonfire. He was gripped with fear, a fear that grew with the flames, until it was a fear he had not known since—

Sandor felt his brother's strong arms, a tight grip around him. He was floating; his feet were off the ground and the flames grew bigger, brighter, hotter. He was not in control of his body. Every fiber's instinct sought to move away from the searing heat, but still he moved closer towards it. The flaming ball engulfed his vision. And still he moved closer. The searing pain consumed his eye, burning off his eyelid as he tried to shut it out. He smelled his own burning flesh, the flames licking and dancing around his head, scarring him forever.

Sandor heard his own boyish scream—the same scream he had cried out as a boy—reaching his ears as the sound of himself as a man, and time seemed to plunge him forward into this moment—the torch tumbling on the ground lamely. Snow had thrust it at him and he must have batted it away. But the younger man didn't pause—he dashed ahead and leapt down a wight with a sweeping slash. The next was taken down from behind—the white wolf attacked and leapt over it in its haste to get to the gate, where it pawed and whined until the gate was high enough for the great beast to wiggle under, pushing one of the brothers out of its way. Snow clasped Sandor by the shoulder and urged him under after his own men. "What's wrong with you, man! Come on, go!"

Snow was the last to come through. He cut down the third nearby wight, giving the two brothers who had turned the gate time to get under before men on the other side lowered it again. The first men through the gate had prepared a volley of fire arrows and shot them at the dead, giving Snow time to roll safely under as the iron and oak gate dropped behind him.

The inhuman things were shut out—but Sandor could still hear them. He sat back on his heels as the brothers hooted and hollered in jubilation. It had been nothing more than a training run for them.

"We're getting stronger!"

"We were out longer than ever that time!"

"Did you see how I took down the first?"

Sandor had his face in his hands and could feel wetness on them. He had been helpless against the dead—as helpless as he had been as a six-year-old against his brother. He was far removed from the Night's Watch excitement after the battle—he'd had no weapon, and his helplessness was worse for the fact that the only way to kill them was with Jon Snow's special sword, or with fire.

The world had too much magic, and it was too real. Snow—who seemed emblematic of this strange new world, with his sword, direwolf, and dark-eyed countenance—approached him with plain disappointment. "For a fighter of such renown, you utterly failed at our basic practice. It was a basic skirmish against wights. What does my sister see in you?"

Sandor knew that Jon Snow was teasing him about Sansa, but it remained true that he had broke again from fear. Necromancy was no parlor trick, and Snow did not know what fire was to him. He dropped his hands, feeling the ugly burned scars on his face. "What Hell is this above the Wall, that dead men rise but can't be killed again, except by fire?" His voice sounded hoarse and stressed even to his own ears.

Snow gave a quick, understanding nod, but he had little sympathy. "Now you see what we are up against. We, who guard the realms of men." The brothers were already strolling back to the main keep, reliving and embellishing their exploits in the battle. Snow offered him a hand up and they headed back the same way. The men headed to the hall for dinner, but Snow offered to have his steward bring Sandor's to the room he would stay in for the night.

Sandor slept badly, and in the morning the same steward called him to the Lord Commander's office. Snow sat at a desk writing letters. "Sit down," he told Sandor, who slumped down into the small wooden chair opposite from Jon.

He sealed up the letter he was writing. "Don't begrude me for taking you beyond the Wall yesterday. I don't want to hear any complaints from my sister about it—a mean sport, as you knew. I wanted to show you what's going on up here. As you saw, the Wall is not just some penal colony like your old Lannister masters liked to insult us by saying. We are all that stands between the Seven Kingdoms and this necromancy." Jon Snow stood up and crossed the desk to him. "They are getting stronger. This letter says as much," and he held it out. "No one is helping. Aside from the men you brought, and some supplies from Stannis, none of the Kings have aided us. You saw what we're up against! Castle Black will not stand against them if the rest of Westeros does not help us. You have a reputation for honesty—you must let what you saw be known. And Sandor—don't think on it—your fear, the fire—my father said; that there is no shame in fear, what matters is how we face it. Now take my seal back to Sansa, that she can give my plea to the northern lords."

Sandor's hand took the letter. Finally, his speech caught up with him. "You want me to go back to Winterfell?"

"Of course. I don't care about you—I'd rather have the northerners anyway, and it's more than a fair trade. Did she not tell you?" Sandor didn't answer, and Jon Snow ended the silence with a laugh that sounded like a bark. "Cold! Good, I'm glad to see more Stark finally showing on her. Now you won't be going back alone; I'm sending a few good men to take a deserved break at Winterfell. They'll be glad for some time at home. Give Sansa the letter, and make sure they head back in one month."

And so by midday he was on Snow's shabby garron, heading south.