SAMWELL

No word had come from Cotter Pyke at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea in two weeks. From Ser Denys Mallister at the Shadow Tower, there came no indication that he or his fellow defenders had survived their ordeal. From the Nightfort there was nothing; from Long Barrow there was nothing; from Greyguard and Queenslake and Sable Hall, nothing, and nothing, and nothing. The brave defenders of the Night's Watch had, it seemed, become the brave defenders of Castle Black, and nothing more. And even if they were not alone, it would have not mattered. There was no way of getting any help now. They were all that remained. Three thousand men.

Othell Yarwyck, the Greatjon Umber, Lady Maege Mormont, Tormund Giantsbane and the Norrey stood before him in the Lord Commander's chambers in Castle Black. Sam was at the head of the table, despite having little to say. But he did not think it would be right to step aside; the Northern lords and the wildlings were still prone to arguments, and he was, unwittingly, the arbiter of peace between them. He had no real clue what they were saying, but he made sure to weigh their ideas in equal measure – or pretend to.

Personally, he did not see why this brokered such argument, why matters of who defended where, or who manned the wall next to who mattered so much. We are all defending the same castle. We are all fighting the same enemy. But it was like that: wildlings did not want to defend next to Northmen and vice versa. Northmen would sooner fight on the snow-drowned ramparts, wildlings in the snow-caked yards. The Northmen were good swordsmen but poor archers, the wildlings were more versatile, but their weapons were poorer. Both shunned each other's choice of swords, shields, axes. And no one wanted to fight alongside Ramsay Bolton.

Sam thought it might be best to leave them to it. After all, as many of Westeros's Targaryen kings had proved, there was such a thing as ruling too much. Daeron the Young Dragon had been undone by his insistence on personally leading an army to Dorne; Baelor the Blessed's inability to let the Faith be the Faith meant he neglected more important things. There was no harm in deferring to wiser men, surely.

Eventually, after what seemed like many hours, they decided that it was enough for the day, and departed in their different directions. Tormund Giantsbane remained when the others have gone. "You're out of your depth, Tarly," he said, without anything to cushion the blow. "Don't think I haven't noticed."

"I know," said Sam miserably.

"Well." Tormund shrugged. "At least you have the sense to recognise your shortcomings. That's more than I could say for a lot of the others."

Was this supposed to make him feel better. "They should have chosen another man," said Sam. "Emmett, or Mully, or even Dolorous Edd would have been better."

"And better yet would have been if Lord Snow still lived," replied the big wildling. "But there's no use thinking about what might have been, Tarly, you know that. And aye, it's true that you're not him, and truer that you're ill-suited to what needs to be done. But there are things you could do that Lord Snow couldn't."

"Like reading," Sam said sourly. "Which will no doubt help us greatly against the Others. I am a steward, Tormund. Yes, Jon was a steward, too, but he was a different sort of steward; his service was a different service to mine."

"Perhaps." The Giantsbane had reached the door now. He lingered, and looked about to say something, then he changed his mind, and departed.

When he had gone Sam sat down at his desk with the masses of letters he had never sent because it was now impossible to get ravens off from Castle Black. We are truly alone now, he thought. As if he did not know that already. And then, resigning himself to the truth that nothing more could be done, he left his desk and walked down the wormway corridor to the Shieldhall.

The snow had been cleared away beneath the top level of the windows, so you could look out and see the blizzard going, and over the hour of supper it would surely build up. The wildling wives brought out tureens of stewed rabbit and beans, and loaves of rock-hard bread. At the high table they ate the same as anyone else. It had been different in Lord Commander Mormont's day, but now the one thing Sam could not afford was the ordinary rank and file turning against their commanders.

There were too many lords and lordlings in Castle Black to seat all of them on the dais, so he kept a rotating schedule. Today he had the Greatjon Umber, the young Lord Larence Hornwood and his wife Lady Talia, and Morna o'the White Mask, the wildling, among others. They made a strange coupling around him. Sam thought they would not co-operate, but it transpired that the Greatjon was strangely impressed by Morna. "I have women not unlike you on my lands."

"Perhaps my ancestors were there, once," said Morna, "before you drove us north of the Wall."

Lord Hornwood said, "I thought your people chose to live north of the Wall."

"And what sane man or woman would choose that?" Morna bit back. "No, we went north of the Wall because we had to, not because we wanted to."

Just then, Sam saw Dolorous Edd entering the hall, and his expression was nothing good. Sam felt oddly sick. "Lord Commander," said Edd: those unfamiliar words again. "There's someone here to see you. With a message."

"Who?"

Edd lowered his voice so no else would heard. "Theon Greyjoy," he said. "And you'd best come quick, before any of the Northmen find out. 'Cause if they do, they're like to kill him."

Sam did not need to be told twice. Putting down his bowl, he rose and followed Edd out of the hall, through the wormway that ran beneath the snowy bailey, and into the Lord Steward's chamber, tucked at the bottom of one of the wormways.

There, in a small wooden chair by the fire, a pitiful figure sat hunched, staring with haunted eyes into the flames. "You are Theon Greyjoy?" said Sam.

"I am," said the figure. His eye sockets seemed hollow, his face was fearful and sallow, grey skin stretched too thin across it. A strange smile came over his features. "I know my name."

"My name is Samwell Tarly," said Sam. "I am the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch."

Theon flinched. "Jon… Jon Snow, he was the Lord Commander."

Sam was not sure if that was a question or a statement. "He was. But Lord Snow is dead. And now I…" He cleared his throat. "And now I command here. Do you have news of your uncle Euron?"

Theon's whole body shook. "Euron," he said quietly. "He is coming. Closer now."

"How long do we have?"

"A day. Less." Theon shrugged.

"That's impossible," said Edd. "Our scouts would have—"

"He has his ways," said Theon. "He has – a horn. It lets him take control… your scouts would only have seen what he wanted you to see."

A horn. Sam's blood ran cold. The Horn. From the Citadel. "The Horn of Winter?" he asked.

"Y-yes," said Theon. "It was broken. But now it is fixed. He blew it at Winterfell, and—"

"The Wall," said Sam, understanding at once.

"If he wants, he could bring down what remains of it. All he has to do is blow the Horn once."

"So why doesn't he?"

Theon shivered. "I don't know. B-but he sent me to tell you that. He said that if you come out and fight him, you might be able to win back the Horn."

"He's trying to trick us," said Sam. "He wants us to come out and fight, so he can cut us down in the field."

"Really?" said Dolorous Edd. "How nefarious of him. I never would have guessed."

"—Which suggests that there is something stopping him from blowing the Horn again. Something that means we should stay here. But I don't know what." He looked at Theon. "Have you see the Horn?"

"Not since Winterfell. But yes, I have. "

"Was it intact? Not broken?"

"It was, yes."

Sam felt a pit in his stomach. In Oldtown the Horn had been chipped and impossible to blow. But here, now…

"Well," he said, "Whether the Horn is intact or no, it makes no matter. We must fight against Euron no matter what he brings our way."

"He will bring everything," said Theon. "His army is an army of thousands. Tens of thousands. Maybe more. I think he has enslaved the entirety of the Iron Islands to his cause."

"How would he do that?"

"Some sort of curse." Theon shivered, though it was not cold. "A spell or a binding of some sort. He had my uncle Victarion as his thrall, though Victarion died in Oldtown, and by rights should be no more than a rotting corpse."

"He can raise the dead, then? Like the Others." Sam felt fear creeping up his spine but he dared not give into it. "But he is still one man, he can be killed."

"He is no man," said Theon. "He is something else. If you want to kill him, you would have to find some way to pierce armour of Valyrian steel. And that… that is just him. There is the woman too."

"The woman?"

Greyjoy swallowed convulsively. "The Night's Queen. She was… there was something buried in the crypts. And it took her appearance. Lady Lyanna, I mean. It became her – she should have been bones and long rotted, but it took her form from her statue. She is flesh and blood, but cold to the touch. It is her as much as Euron who controls this army."

Sam's mouth was dry. "And what does she want?" he heard Dolorous Edd ask.

"To go North, I think," said Theon. "To… to… I don't know why…"

And at once Sam knew. "To meet the rest of them. The ones marching south."

For a long time there was silence in the room. Then Dolorous Edd spoke. "So: enemies to the north. And enemies to the south. All much more powerful and more numerous than we are. And what do we have? You and me, Sam. Well, we're fucked."

Sam could hardly disagree. He let Edd handle Theon Greyjoy after that, sent Clydas to help the shivering man, and walked down the wormway, with only a single thought in his mind. They are pitting everything they have against us. We cannot afford to put anything less than everything we have against them. And that means all of us.

Melisandre had moved to small and dark chambers on the lowest level of the Grey Keep, behind the spearwives' habitations and the nursery. "Tell her ladyship I have come to speak with her," he told the squire on the door. "If she is busy, I can return later. But we must speak."

The boy went in for a few moments, then returned to deliver a shy nod of assent: Lady Melisandre would see him, and she would see him now.

Sam ventured into the darkness. And darkness it was, for there was only a single candle in the room, and the rest was given to shadows. The red priestess hunched over that sorry, lonely light in the blackness, and her eyes – now dimmed – stared blankly out at him. She wore a thick wool shawl over her thin shoulders, and her once-graceful fingers now splayed out before her seemed alike to the twitching legs of a spider. Her face had no colour in it, and its lines were entirely mysterious.

Sam cleared his throat. "I apologise if I have interrupted anything, my lady, but—"

"You interrupt nothing."

"I assume you know why I'm here."

"I will after you tell me."

"Well," said Sam. "It's about Euron Greyjoy. I just met with his nephew, Theon. He was travelling with Euron. He says he's… close. A matter of days. The siege will start soon. If it is a siege at all." And not a massacre.

Melisandre gave him a blank look. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I thought… I thought there might be something you could do."

"Such as?"

Sam felt closed in by her abruptness, out of things to say. "I-I don't know exactly. But your magic—"

"My magic is all lies, Samwell. You are clever enough to know that. Powders and potions and pretty smoke. Any half-rate street performer could manage what I do. And all it takes to make prophecies is the ability to twist words. You could do it if you wanted to. If you bothered to."

"I don't believe that."

She offered up a strange smile. "You have seen my failures, and yet here you are."

"When Jon was on that table, I saw sparks from the fire, and smoke. It was unnatural; it shouldn't have done that. Something happened, even if it wasn't what you wanted. And the glass candle didn't just explode on its own."

"That may be so," said Melisandre. "But I asked the Lord to bring back Jon Snow. And yet Jon Snow is still dead. Dead and cold. And the great victory I saw in the flames, Samwell, the great battle in the snow… all of it was a lie."

"And what about the other prophecies? From Qarth, and Asshai. Quaithe… we are the knights of the nightingale, Lady Melisandre. Even if Azor Ahai does not stand among us, we are still his people. We will fight his battles for him, until he reveals himself to us."

"Then we will be fighting for a very long time, Samwell," she said tiredly. "Or rather, not long at all, once the Others swarm over us."

"So your plan is to just stay here and let them kill you?"

Melisandre stared blankly past him. "I have no plan. My plan was R'hllor's, and R'hllor is dead, if He ever lived at all."

This is not working. "Maybe he is," Sam said, changing tone. "Maybe the Lord of Light is dead. Maybe his miracles are all lies. I have no evidence for him, after all. But I do have evidence for Melisandre of Asshai. I have seen her with my own eyes. And I have seen the things she can do. I have seen—"

"Melisandre is dead too," said the red woman. "She was never real either. My name is Melony, Samwell. And I am just an old woman, old and afraid, with a blind faith in a dead god."

And Sam thought of Aemon, crying, his arms spread to the night. He thought of Quaithe too, and Kinvara, and then, more mundanely, and yet more real, of his mother, kneeling on her knees in the castle sept and praying to gods that were surely too ludicrous and celestial to exist, yet believing that they had to be, they must be. They were all blind, too. He thought of Gilly praying to gods with no names that she and her child would last one more night in darkness, and of Xhondo the Summer Islander and his gods of hope and love across a veil of obscure sea, and then back to Aemon Targaryen again, that old blind beautiful man, that learned man of science who could uncloud all mystical nonsense. Aemon, with his eyes in another world that surely could not be scientifically real and yet he so transfixed in the vivid belief of its certainty that it must have seemed more real than all the years that had come since, now relegated to a colourless dream as the old man raised his arms and felt world and time in the rain and said, Egg, I dreamed that I was old.

"My lady," Sam said, and the words came without thinking. "I do not think there is anything more powerful in this world than the faith of the blind."

Melisandre looked up at him. She had been about to say something, her carefully made reply, but now she stopped. Her fingers knitted nervously together. Then, in a very soft voice she said, "Well. I suppose trying is better than nothing."

Sam did not think he would win any victories beyond that. He left Melisandre, and, quite on an impulse, he ascended the steps from the wormways, and made it out to Castle Black's courtyard. There was almost no one out here, just a few soldiers milling about on the ramparts. In a few nights, it will be all of us.

He walked forward to the centre of the courtyard. This was the place where they had burned the bodies of Jon Snow and Ghost. The ashes were gone, all of it was gone, even the scorch-marks on the snow, buried by new drifts.

"Master Tarly?" he heard.

Sam turned and saw Val, standing behind him. "My lady. I did not think anyone else would be out here."

"I needed some air. A respite from the mon– from Jon, I mean. Little Jon."

"Gilly's boy."

"Yes." Val regarded him mysteriously. "Do you miss her? Gilly, I mean."

He had no answer but the truth. "I do. But at the same time, it's good that she's not here. I… I mean…" If she was here, she would die with the rest of us.

"I understand," she said. "Fight for her, Tarly. You fight for her."

"As if the survival of the entire world wasn't enough."

Val laughed, and so did he, though it wasn't particularly funny to him, and he reckoned she thought the same. And as they did, Sam thought, the Others have a thousand advantages over us, and a thousand ways to beat us. But we have a thousand things worth dying for, and we would die a thousand times for each and every one of them.

And we will.