SAMWELL
Was it strange that here, at the end of the world, he found his thoughts drifting back to Horn Hill? And not to his mother, or his sisters, or to Gilly, or even to Dickon, but to his lord father: to Lord Randyll, who had said he would never be a man, who had called him a woman and a craven and every other like insult under the sun. Well, he thought. Here I am, Father. I may not have been "First In Battle", but you can damn well be certain I will be here to the very last.
He only thought that for a moment, though. There were a thousand things he deemed more important, all contending for space in his head in these precious moments. He decided, in the end, to fixate on one: Gilly. She was all that was good in the world: sweet Gilly and her babe. I should have told you, Gilly. I should have sent another letter, even if it was going to be brought down by the storm. It would only have had three words. I would only have needed three. That was strange, too. All the words and all the books in the world, all the poems men had written and the promises they had made and the heroic deeds they had done. And you only needed three words.
Then Val was at his side. "Lord Commander," she said. "Shall we?"
The fog was fading, and dawn light was streaming in among the fires of the burning Grey Keep. The fire had come from some interior room; he knew not which, and was spreading through the wormways, ungodly fast and hot. Very soon it would consume all of Castle Black. By the time the flames died down, though, it would be over. The Night's Watch would all be long dead, to the last man.
Sam did not turn back to talk to the others. He knew, for the first time since they had made him Lord Commander, that they would follow him: Dolorous Edd, Mully, Val, little Lyanna Mormont, all of them. And so they climbed over the rubble of the wall, and went out into the yard.
The wights were there waiting for them. Hundreds had been burned to ash in the tunnels, and others were staggering round ablaze or missing limbs. But Euron Greyjoy had brought tens of thousands to the battlefield, hundreds of thousands, and now, as he walked through the gate, they came with him. And with Euron came another figure. Sam knew at first glance that she was the Night's Queen that Theon Greyjoy had mentioned. Her flesh was pearly-blue; her armour was made of links of black ice, and around her head rested a bright circlet of blue ice. He knew, rather than saw, that she was beautiful.
But he had seen a thousand things more beautiful. One of them was this sunrise. Another of them was Val, with blood on her face and smoke in her hair, and her eyes still intent and powerful. A third was the sacrifice of Tormund, of the Greatjon, of Maege Mormont, of everyone who had fought with them in the tunnels. A fourth was the immortality of this moment, as he, Val, and three hundred others marched out of the Grey Keep entrance, bent but not broken, and stared down the entirety of the army of the dead.
"Brave Sworn Brothers of the Night's Watch," said Euron. "Brave, mortal Sworn Brothers of the Night's Watch. And your leader, Ser Piggy. I've got a new hand now, Piggy!" He waved the appendage. "Better than the one you cut off, I must say. The Horn sits much more nicely in it. Yet another thing I have to thank you for."
Sam did not respond. Euron seemed to recognise his silence; he even respected it. In a calm, measured voice, he said, "When this is over, and the world is founded anew, you can count on me to honour your last wish. I will remember you."
Eternity seemed to pass between his last word and Sam's next. He spoke quietly, but the words were not just his, and all the others who spoke them spoke with him, united. "Night gathers," they said, "and now my watch begins." They stepped out into the snow; it was crisp under their feet, and bright as light. "It shall not end until my death. 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." They walked through the oncoming wights, and their swords walked before them. "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 the nights to come."
And then he was approaching Euron, and he knew that this was the last minute of his life. The wights parted around him, recognising, at their master's order, that this was a battle for the two of them. Sam brought his sword back to his shoulder and put all his force into the swing, a heavy, two-handed slash. Euron's blade danced up lazily to block it. When it met Sam's sword it shattered it into a thousand shards of glass, and he was left with nothing but the hilt.
Sorcery, he faintly recalled Aemon saying, is like a sword without a hilt. He wondered what the maester would say about a hilt without a sword.
It took an age as Euron swung the sword for the kill. When it came down there was a long silent moment before he realised that his soul had not, after all, left his body. He was still here, still hurting, still living. But how?
He turned back, towards where Euron had been, and he saw her. Melisandre of Asshai, the Red Woman, Shadowbinder of Asshai, Priestess of the Lord of Light, in all her splendour. She came down wreathed in fire, and in her hands were ten thousand whips of pure red flame, and each whip split and became another ten thousand whips, and she gathered them all around her, and the whips threw his men out of the way of the enemy swords, and turned the enemy wights to burning corpses, to flesh and ash and dust. Their blades melted from the sheer sight of it, and piles of ash built up in the snow, and everywhere the red woman walked caught fire, and a blazing ring rose in the courtyard, and became a serpent, and burned. The timbers of Castle Black were ablaze hotter than ever before, not so much wood burning now as fire burning. Fire seemed to come from the air itself, birthing itself out of atoms, burning everything that could be burned.
As Melisandre turned to look to her right, Sam saw Euron swing at her. He shouted a warning, but the blade was already coming down. And then there was a rush of flame and somehow the Red Woman had hold of Euron's magic sword, and it was – by the Lord above – it was melting. The black glass blade became sand in his hands. Then Melisandre grabbed Euron by the neck. And the impossible happened. Euron Greyjoy, who had haunted them for so long, who had seemed undefeatable, offered up a confused glance, and then disintegrated. Just like that. His dust rose in a wide halo, and abruptly, burned out into nothing.
Sam somehow made it back to his feet, and staggered through the flames; they retreated in his path, and then he was at Melisandre. She had fallen on her knees in the snow, entirely drained. And the hair that fell around her temples was no longer its brilliant scarlet, but white. When she rose, ponderously slow, he saw that her eyes were the same, but nothing else was. She looked a hundred years old – older than Aemon, far older. Her ancient lips moved. "Well, Master Samwell," she said, very quietly, "I believe your prayers are answered."
Sam gaped at her, dizzy. "Was that – did you—?"
"Not me," she said. "I merely harnessed the fire. I did not make it."
Only then did Sam realise she was not looking at him. Instead her eyes were across the yard, looking into the mist. When it cleared, Sam saw that the Night's Queen and her men had disappeared entirely. Instead, a massive figure loomed, a strange, unnatural shape. With wings. And scales.
"It is fortunate, really, that she and I had the same idea at the same time," Melisandre said. "Unless, of course, it was more than mere coincidence." When he looked at the red woman again, her usual appearance was returning; the colour was coming back to her hair, her wrinkles were fading again. "Though I would ask you to keep the fact that I cannot birth fire out of air a secret."
Val appeared beside him. "What happened—?" she began.
Wordlessly, Sam pointed into the mist and the smoke. "A dragon," he said. "A real, living dragon." And beside it, a young woman. A queen, he knew at once. The queen. Daenerys. She has come. She has come. Dear gods—
"I am looking for Lord Commander Snow," said Daenerys Targaryen, stepping towards them. She wore a tunic of bright wool, patterned with snow-bright flames. "He and I have urgent business." Through the mist around her came other figures: a red priest, a knight in plate armour, and – was that Marwyn the Mage? What in seven hells was he doing here?
"Lord Snow is dead," said Sam. It felt strange – speaking to her. He had been sure that he would never speak to anyone again, after leaving the Grey Keep, much less Daenerys Targaryen. "He died some weeks ago, actually. He asked you to help him."
Queen Daenerys nodded. "And here we are, Lord…"
"Tarly. Samwell Tarly. Lord Commander Samwell Tarly."
Marwyn the Mage frowned at him. "Dear gods, Tarly. You were supposed to remain in Oldtown—"
"My Unsullied are on their way from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, Lord Commander," said the queen. "Along with soldiers of the Golden Company and the Second Sons and Windblown mercenary companies. My fleet, two hundred ships or thereabouts, is moored at Eastwatch also. My Dothraki following are ill-suited to such a weather, though. I have left them on the Sisters, in the Bite." She spoke, Sam thought, as a blind woman would. As if she could not see the destruction around her, as if she had noticed that Castle Black was currently burning to ashes, or that the Wall was in ruins and barely standing. "Together," she said, "we will defeat this enemy."
"You came too late," Sam said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You came too late. Thousands of men and women have died in this battle. Tens of thousands have died in this war. Men and women whose names you will never bother to remember. The Greatjon Umber, his uncles, his sons. Maege Mormont and her daughter Alysanne. Tormund Giantsbane, whom men called Thunderfist. Morna of the White Mask. Mance Rayder. Lord Commander Jeor Mormont. Ser Thoren Smallwood. Mully and Emmett and Pyp and Grenn. Lord Commander Jon Snow."
"Our friends," said Dolorous Edd, who had appeared at Sam's elbow, bringing with him Theon Greyjoy. "All dead. We asked you. We asked you so many times but you never came."
"I am here now," said the queen.
"And they are not," said Sam. "Ask yourself: how many have died because you would not save them? How many will die in the future, because they do not have the men you let die to guard their backs?" The Night's Queen was not dead, he had no doubt of that. And even if she was, the Night's King, this terrible husband of hers, this Great Other, still lived. "And here you come down among us, with your dragon, claiming to be our bloody saviour, claiming to be Azor Ahai—"
"—reborn," said Melisandre, very loudly.
Sam turned, impossibly slow, to look where she was looking. And it hit him, hard, in the stomach, and it was all he could do to stay standing. For there, in the blazing, smoking doorway of the Shieldhall, entirely naked yet unburnt, a bright silhouette against the fire around him and the ice ahead of him, stood Jon Snow. His dark eyes stared back at them, and they were afraid, and angry, and very much alive.
Author's Attempt at Explaining His Long-Term Lie:
Surprise.
Well, the short version...
Not dead.
Though I suppose un-dead would be more accurate.
I can see I have a lot of explaining to do.
But first, I'll start with the easy stuff.
Melisandre is not capable of reducing thousands of wights to ash, but she can manipulate fire to some degree, as we've seen here. And here, as shown by her abrupt aging, she has expended the majority of her strength in this act. Maybe she thought it was a sort of glorious suicide, but we can reasonably assume that ever since the Lord contacted her, Melisandre has managed some sort of contact with Benerro and Moqorro. As for why she didn't bother telling Sam any / all of this, I'll explain later.
But SGH, you say, Melisandre doesn't have the power to dissolve Euron into dust. He's got superpowers and things.
But, of course, Euron, like all slightly-hackneyed villains, is flawed in his arrogance. Specifically, he has forgotten where he gets his superpowers from. So basically the Night's King and the Night's Queen have been using him as little more than an expensive taxi service to bring them back together at the Wall.
But this isn't what you came here for.
Yesterday, I had this comment from commenter Trentrouls:
I check in this story from time to time, see the progress and I'm fairly sure your one of the only major story's that outright killed Jon, most story's do it at the end or near enough, not you he's dead and burned, gone... His story's over, which is odd considering what got has shown us, which honestly makes your story unique...
Ordinarily, I would bring out my old "Jon Snow is dead" lie, but I felt a little guilty doing this so close to my "grand reveal". At the risk of killing the uniqueness of the story, I will explain:
Why kill Jon and bring him back?
And here you come down among us, with your dragon, claiming to be our bloody saviour, claiming to be Azor Ahai—"
"—reborn," said Melisandre, very loudly.
Why bother with all this?
Unfortunately, there is an issue with killing Jon and bringing him back, which is that everyone has done it. The show did it, and a lot of other fics have done it - so much so that killing Jon Snow and bringing him back is almost a rite of passage for any longfic. So you could say I was being subversive by leaving him dead for so long, but subversion for subversion's sake alone is inevitably a bad idea.
The problem stems from the fact that we as an audience for these stories always know that Jon is coming back. So my big, dramatic "the world is hopeless" thing falls pretty flat for as long as the reader can assume that Jon is coming back. So I had to not just kill Jon, but bury him, for 37 chapters. This actually led to some interesting character dynamics in my opinion; it was quite enjoyable to see Sam, Tormund and Val working together without their immediate common ally.
How did Jon survive?
I'm actually quite surprised no one figured this out (or at least commented to that effect), so I'd be interested to hear your theories. You have to read the Melisandre chapters quite carefully to piece it together. My only clue for now is "smoke and salt".
This is, in my view, the end of the first of three parts of KNIGHTS OF THE NIGHTINGALE. As such, if you're looking to review only a few times, this would be a very good place to put one. Let me know how you found the Battle of Castle Black, its resolution, and everything else. Once again, thank you all very much for reading, commenting and supporting this story. I hope you are enjoying it.
Next chapter: Probably Brienne, up sometime next week. We will get back to the Wall soon, through the eyes of Daenerys, who will relate some more of the details leading up to her slightly ex machina arrival.
