Samwell
After the last of the rubble had been cleared, stock had to be taken. The dragonglass, helpfully stockpiled in one of the New Castle's cellars where it was needed least, was brought out and inventoried down to the last twinkling bead. The Manderlys' maester with his head of curly blonde hair could barely be counted on to put ink to paper so shaken was he, let alone bind wounds or perform triage. Sam himself did what he could, popping fingers and noses back into place, staunching bleeding and even taking bits lost to frostbite. Gilly too, he thought. She recognizes the plants White Harbor has laid by, sure as any woods witch. He'd spotted her smacking a Blackwood knight on the back of his helm gesturing to his fallen companion she'd been assessing with a grim look on her face. Death is no stranger to her. Not like it is to the southern ladies, far from every battle of the War of Five Kings. Sam let his hands fall to his sides when the lad he was trying to keep conscious simply went slack. Many and more where he came from, I fear.
"Samwell." He looked up from the body to spot old Lady Olenna coming toward him, for once forgoing her fine black mourning clothes for simple common garb. More able to handle a little mud. Or blood. Olenna might have been dressed to blend into the crowd but her twin guardsmen, seven-footers and not an inch less, could hardly be disguised. She could be common born as they come. Hulking shadows at her sides would make lordly men get out of the way all the same. "A noble effort, but you've been at this for hours. I think some food and rest would do you good. Dinner will be served soon up in the castle, you and Gilly ought get a decent meal if only for the baby's sake. Little Sam is with my mother and sister just now, if only because Gilly couldn't find you once the raid ended. He was so tired that only then did he realize Olenna was not talking about Little Sam at all. Oh, right. How had he forgotten? Maybe I have been down here too long. He looked around. The street was filled with wounded, each laid out on a bit of banner or cloth or nothing at all, in the case of the unfortunate. The only mercy afforded them was that a tent of sorts had been erected overhead, a great expanse of sail that kept the snow off them. Still more in the castle, no doubt. "Come, Samwell. A bath for you and your Gilly, and perhaps the quacking ducks will shut their bills long enough to plot out just what to do next." Sam let her lead him off to where Gilly poked and prodded those still coming in, more than once fighting to keep his eyes open.
"It was more the panic that did for the wounded, that or getting hit by rubble. If anyone ended up in a giant's way, they died. The same for the wights and the toothy nosy things." Gilly said as they made their way up. Istrollen, the giant called them. Sam had not been atop the ramparts when the giant tore the gate down, but he could have been clear on the other side of the city and still hear his every word. Egir vergir. Egir vergrir. Whatever the words meant, they were burned into Sam's mind as deeply as the face of the Other he had slain. They had the weather, too. Gusts and gales and sweeping curtains of freezing rain. Perhaps it was not so much a mystery why they were missing as many as they were. We're still waiting on the bulk of Daenerys' army and Jon besides. Not to mention this princeling claiming to be her nephew. It was no business of Sam's, he could not care any less about the restoration of House Targaryen one way or the other. Daenerys told us she was Ser Bonifer's natural daughter in the throne room before the dragon burned the throne. No more Targaryens. No more Iron Throne. It is time now to survive, to see tomorrow, to make sure Gilly and Little Sam do too.
"I'd call for hot water but I'm not sure now's the best time." Olenna said uneasily.
"Cold water cleans good as hot. After we get some rest, we'll join you on your way to the food." Gilly replied, already getting to pulling off Sam's jerkin. The inside stank of blood and sweat and while Olenna gave a polite cough that quickly turned into a hoarse barking wheeze, Gilly did not flinch.
"I say, this was my first time left in battle's wake and I could well have done to see the honor pass me by."
"There are words that exist for what White Harbor just went through, my lady. Battle is not one of them." Sam said grimly as he pulled off his cloth shirt, just as hopeless as the jerkin. Gilly tossed both in the hearth without a second thought.
"The fire could do with it, anyway." she said. Once a serving maid had shown up, coughing likewise at the stench, Sam called for water himself.
"No need for a tub. Just rags and full buckets, we'll work the rest out. Lady Olenna, if you'll excuse us." he added.
"Of course. I'll see your son is brought up forthwith." She left immediately, no doubt eager to be quit of the smell while Sam pondered her words. My son. I'm a man of the Night's Watch and by rights should still be copying books at the Citadel. Besides, there's no 'interpreting' whether Gilly's coming babe is mine.
"It's not so bad now we've got the soiled clothes off you." Gilly opined, opening a window all the same. "Did you save anyone?"
"As many as I could. Mostly I fixed up those who could still walk. Anyone at death's door was like to die regardless of what I did. Maesters can set broken bones and free a person of frostbite, but they can't fix a leg crushed under rubble or put a man's insides back in for him, at least out in a freezing dark street surrounded by hundreds of other people. Bit distracting."
"Still. People will appreciate meeting Samwell Tarly at White Harbor when they're old and their noses still point straight and their fingers haven't healed bent up."
"Bugger me. How do you feel?"
"Bit like last time. Different, though. Lighter and not so shaken. Might be this one's a girl." She bit her lip.
"Or, you've been out from under Craster long enough to be able to take it on your terms. Could be a girl, and why not? She'll be smarter than any maester and start her own Citadel somewhere, only for women." Sam was trying to cheer Gilly up, but her face remained crestfallen.
"He was a kneeler in a gray dress. He won't do in all his days what you have in the last hour." Sam, you blind fat fool, he cursed himself.
"Well, if it is a girl, what ought we name her?" That seemed to pull Gilly out of her melancholy a bit.
"Well, at first I thought maybe a flower like me, but I'm not at my father's keep anymore. And I've been south of the Wall a good while, so maybe a southerner name."
"There will be a hundred ladies huddled in the New Castle's hall trying to keep warm alongside the survivors of the raid, so we won't want for inspiration."
"Well, I was thinking about the Reach, mostly. With its fruit and flowers. Horn Hill was not so bad, your father aside, and I was thinking maybe Melessa…then old Olenna told us about her granddaughter before we left that King's Landing." Margaery.
"I think it's a grand name."
"You don't think she'll mind?"
"Just the opposite. She'll be overjoyed, in her prickly thorny way."
A bit of cold-soaked cloth later and the pair of them were ready to go. A rapt knock at the door advertised the Queen of Thorns' return, Little Sam's burbling echoing queerly in the corridor. As if a dozen Little Sams were chasing each other all about. Sam opened the door dressed in a fresh hunter green doublet, a big smile on his face. Immediately the little boy pointed at him from huge Erryk's shoulders.
"HA!" came his signature cry.
"What are you doing up there? You're taller than me now!" Sam said, the babe roaring with laughter as he leaned down for Sam to take. He pointed again when Gilly came into view, mother kissing son on the cheek. Olenna kept up the chatter all the way to the hall, Sam wondering if the old woman wouldn't simply will herself though the war. Inside was a shambles as Sam suspected, a notion of decorum quite forgotten in the face of shock and terror. Despite the noise Little Sam seemed only more overjoyed, laughing at the chaos and pointing at anyone he half-recognized. At least one person is having fun. Lord Wylis' table was laden with food, but simpler fare by far than Sam knew the lord enjoyed. Perhaps I don't look so fat next to him, Sam thought. Lord Wylis or no, I'm not near so fat as I was when I rode for the Wall. Lord Manderly himself sat in his father's seat, talking almost without stopping for breath to his knights. Fat, yes. Feeble, no.
"That ice-ship still floats at the mouth of the Bite. Anyone still sailing north will have it between them and port." said one of the worthies, a man with three white blocks on his surcoat. A Woolfield man. Sam squeezed Gilly's hand before going over, clearing his throat to announce his presence.
"Samwell Tarly." Manderly said, nodding. His face was pale, his many chins dancing tirelessly, but he had yet to lose his nerve.
"My lord, I know you must not be in much a mood to bestir yourself, but the plan outlined on Dragonstone was to converge on Winterfell."
"That's all well and good, Samwell, but His Grace and the dragon queen have yet to show themselves. He went south to procure her aid and since then we've not heard a word, to say nothing of three dragons."
"The Dothraki are real enough. The Unsullied, too. Surely if brought into the fold, they could be put to use." Sam replied.
"I'm sure the dragons exist as well, wherever they are. After seeing what a few giants can do, my lord, do you really want a dragon brooding atop the New Castle anyway?" Lord Wylis gulped.
"I suppose not. Still, a dragon might have stopped the situation from growing any worse-"
"Who cares where the fire comes from? Fire is fire, and fire slays wights." The faintly-accented voice of Lady Catelyn's Volantene shadow asked, rising from the bricks of the floor. People nearby gave startled murmurs, but more in a hurry to give her room than get away.
"Ah. Uh, of course…do you perchance know where Lady Catelyn and…our new guest have gone?"
"They're out in the yard. I think they want to make sure she can move about without leaving a trail of embers in her wake."
"That was a grand trick she pulled, whoever she is. Cut the dead men down to the last, and not so much as a bony finger left to wiggle after us." Ser Rolland Storm, the imposing Bastard of Nightsong, intoned as he joined them. Another seasoned campaigner.
"A trick that worked the first time. Behind White Harbor's walls, where wind and rain could not stymie her efforts. The open ground of the north will be another tale." Sam said. That, and the giants did not so much run from the flames as toward the thunder.
"We're not going anywhere. Winterfell could have the cure to all the ails of the world, it makes no matter. We'll not make it three leagues before the winds do for us, or the snows bury us, and Seven alone know what else is out there." Ser Rolland said. The Seven mean little and less here, ser. The Snowy Sept might have gotten the same treatment as the walls but for the thunder calling the giants back.
Sam found himself turning back toward the table where he spotted Desmera Redwyne gingerly opening a bottle of Arbor red. Just as he heard the pop of the cork, the Volantene's words hit his ear.
"Lady Stark told me what she saw atop the city walls. Giants, yes, but a mammoth, too. One that could throw cold volleys, like the ice-ship." In Sam's mind he could see it all. The mammoth, with its long trunk coiled. The white walls of White Harbor, standing in civilized defiance. Cold breath instead of hot, loosed with devastating force and precision, the walls crumbling before the giants could even bring themselves to bear. It tickled at him like a sweet scent without an apparent source. Back and forth, between the bottle and the mammoth. The cork and the projectile. They had no mammoths on hand so it was the bottle Sam focused on, growing until it was big enough for a pretty girl to straddle. Glass wouldn't work, or even wood. The force would tear it apart from within rather than discharge properly. The voices around him blended and faded, Sam deaf to everything but his own thoughts. Iron, he decided. Heavy enough to withstand the force, but how to control the recoil? A crossbow was no good if it broke the shoulder of the man who tried to fire it… Unless there's give. Wheels on the bottom by which it might roll from the force required to discharge its projectile. Iron was heavy, though. Wooden wheels would not do. Iron wheels as well. The practicality of such a weapon steadily sunk in Sam's estimation. Even if it worked, it would be too bloody heavy to move, wheels and all. Besides the fact thatsuch an object, in his extensive knowledge, had never existed before. I'm no smithy either. It couldn't be made piece by piece, with room for every sort of error and imperfection. I'd need a bloody mold. And then there was just what it would loose. Stone, he mused, but how to shape it? More iron, he amended. In the end Sam had something like a great iron Myrish eye on wheels. Having an idea was one thing, though. Realizing it was quite another.
"Sam!" Gilly's voice broke the spell, perhaps the only thing that could.
"Still too heavy…" he muttered without realizing it.
"Huh? What is? You're not too heavy, Sam." Gilly said, confused.
"I remember you. You're Jon's friend from the Night's Watch. I saw you herding people on the docks when we came into port." Sam turned to see Jon's half-sister sitting primly next to him, her towering bull having forgone a cleaning-up.
"Princess Arya." he nodded to her. "Lord Baratheon." When he got no reply, Arya elbowed the man in the ribs.
"That's you, dolt."
"Hands of a blacksmith. Hands of a silk doll, more like." The northern princess' face went red. Just as she opened her mouth to reply, Baratheon kissed the end of her nose and went right on filling his plate while she spluttered on. What stormlanders were near laughed aloud while Sam realized just who had sat down. A smith. His foolishness bloomed backed into sight, just beyond reach like fruit in a tree too high to reach. It could really be something.
"My lord-"
"Ship!" Oh, hell. Now what?
"Everyone stay put. No need to trample one another like crabs in a bucket." Lord Wylis called, while the soldierly types made their way toward the doors. Sam found himself following the bull and Ser Rolland, despite his utter lack of skill at arms. As soon as they made it outside, they were greeted with the North's customary greeting, a biting slap of freezing wind that numbed even as it gnawed. And people think frostbite a matter of ill luck. Sam could see movement on the ice-ship's deck even from afar, tiny white slivers darting about the top deck while Ser Rolland gave his impression of the situation.
"They're getting closer." Even his grim observation couldn't shake Sam, mind still three-quarters on iron foolery.
"Why have they stopped the volleys?" Jonos Bracken asked, half-ready to duck behind a rampart. As if a foot of stone would save him.
"Maybe they're out of projectiles. Maybe they're not keen on loosing as they advance." Sam said, shrugging. Closer and closer, and nothing for us to answer with.
A sudden plume of heat had Sam turning to stare into open flame, the barest outline of a face visible within it.
"What is that?" the blaze asked, even pointing. I know of you, was Sam's first thought, but his mind seemed to be unable to reconcile what he was seeing with itself. The face was sometimes more there than not, the outline of it anyway, and he could just glimpse a little pair of gentle hands clasped in one another as she quickly brought her arm back to her side. "Oh, I should be more careful…" it muttered. She muttered. Too much wine, Slayer, he was telling himself when another though crossed his mind. I know you. You taught Gilly how to read. More than queer, it was eerie how even as she was, the sound of her voice had not changed. Only her being, he thought shakily. He remembered the day Stannis left the Wall, with only one soggy onion left alive to bob along on the waves of fate as he always had. Why fire? He could not help but ask himself. Among the browns and greys and blacks, there was the red silk of Melisandre of Asshai at the head of the called-king's army. They got caught in the snow, or at least that was what Sam had heard. The only reason Davos had survived was because Stannis had sent him back to the wall before the sudden snows. And the Boltons did the rest. A shiver went up his spine.
"A ship, it seems worked from an iceberg." he found himself spluttering, quite without need. Our mothers were cousins, he thought unhelpfully, and you are the bull's. Thinking on the smith made Sam's thoughts freeze yet again, the weapon real enough in his mind's eye to reach out and touch. "My lady, how might you fare in the forge?"
"That's the second time someone's asked me that." she replied, crossing her arms in what might have been a huff. "I can do other things. I can read." I know you can.
"Reading isn't going to sink that ship. Smithery might." He heard the other men turn from her to him. Without looking at the man, Sam reached up and put his hand on Lord Baratheon's shoulder. "If you'll accompany me my lord, my lady. I think, if you'll allow me a moment, I know just what to do." He ran back to the castle as fast as he could manage, the girl keeping up without a hint of effort while the tall lord took long heavy breaths. The smithy, he thought. Ink and paper. Parchment was too small though, so Sam laid out a spare white sail on a table outside the hot confines of the smithy. The first time he put point to it, his hand shook so badly he had to wait to let it pass. Then he was off, clear dark lines spanning the length of the sail while Lord Baratheon's confused murmurings fell suddenly silent. A bell stretched long, Sam thought. A Myrish eye with an open end. A mammoth trunk. A wine bottle. When the body was done, Sam drew the wheels, making them big and heavy on purpose. So that they might bear the load without breaking but also keep steady even in recoil. By the time he was finished his sweat dotted the sail as well, falling freely from his brow. He straightened up, back aching. Lord Baratheon was not looking at him. His blue eyes roved over the image on the table, from one end to the other and back again.
"Is it a spitfire?" he asked at last.
"No." Sam could think of nothing more to say. "Ten spitfires could not do what one of these could, if one existed." At last Baratheon's gaze left the sail, finding Sam's own.
"And you think I can make that happen?"
"You can make anything." Arya Stark's voice called from up the street, her wolf with her as always.
"You ought be back up in the castle!" Baratheon exclaimed. She stuck her tongue out at him.
"Not until you say you can do it."
"You don't even know what we're-"
"What you're talking about doesn't matter. You're standing outside a smithy, so obviously hot metal and a lot of hammer blows are involved. Well, I know well you're born to hold a hammer, so what's the problem?" When the fireling appeared from inside the smithy the northern princess' grey eyes went wide.
"Hello!" she said, oohing at the sight of the direwolf.
"I know how to make swords. Armor. Spear and lanceheads. This is something as has never been done before, by anyone."
"Then do it yourself and be the first. It's everyone else's fault for not doing it before you, anyway." Arya said.
"I wouldn't even know how to hit it-"
"Well, if you want the metal to hold a shape, I suppose I could help. Heat this bit, not that bit, let you do it that way?" the flames suggested.
"A mold would be better. One solid piece of iron, so as to not allow for flaws in the making. Otherwise, it may well just fall apart." Sam guessed.
"Iron is too heavy," Lord Baratheon interjected, "much, much too heavy. Bronze would work better. It's lighter and easier to shape as well." He went back into the smithy, coming out with bags of sand.
"What are you going to do with those?" Sam asked, mystified even as Arya smirked at the sight of her betrothed lugging the heavy bags, one under each arm.
"I think I'm going to make your toy, Tarly." he replied.
Sam watched as Gendry had the fireling scorch two rectangles in the broken street. Then he filled both with sand, having her scour the two halves of the 'toy' into each pit, one the mirror of the other.
"They must be exact, as Tarly says." he told her.
"They are." she replied. "Now we just need to find a load of bronze."
"I'm sure a bell or three came down in the raid, plus whatever we happen to pinch out of a few wealthy houses." Arya said bracingly, cracking her knuckles.
"Princess! There you are!" An older woman's much-relieved voice cried. While Arya rolled her eyes much to Gendry's amusement, Nymeria sniffed at the sand curiously- though, Sam noticed, she was very careful not to disturb it. "Whatever are you doing out of the safety of the castle?"
"Indeed, what are you doing out of the safety of the castle?" Arya asked of her betrothed, adopting the septa's affect.
"Meh." Gendry replied, scooping her up in an arm and sporting her on his shoulder as if she weighed nothing while she screamed with mirth. The septa could not keep her coddling pout, lips trembling into the ghost of a smile for just a moment. She studiously avoided looking at the fireling.
"Septa, if you could bring a request before Lord Manderly, we're in dire need of bronze. Anything the New Castle can provide would be appreciated." Sam asked.
"Bronze?" she asked, baffled.
"Or the Sept of the Snows, with its great bells."
"How are we supposed to get bloody heavy bells down here?" Arya asked from atop her to-be lord's shoulder.
"Maybe your mother and her friend can help with that. Surely the bells would be too heavy to move for men, but not-"
"For us." A lilting Volantene accent joined the conversation. Sam looked to see the younger of the two whatever-they-weres peering into the sand while Lady Catelyn had her eyes on Arya. Sam felt rather foolish.
"Is that within your ability?"
"I don't see why it wouldn't be. Getting the bells down for us to move is another matter." Lady Maegyr answered, not looking up from the molds.
"I could just…singe through the ropes that hold them in the steeples. It won't be pretty, but everyone is in the castle or off the street anyway so the falling bells aren't like to hurt anybody." As apt as you were at the Wall.
"Sounds like everyone's got something to do. Come, septa. We'll go back up together, we're only in the way down here." Arya said, nimbly vaulting off Baratheon's shoulder. He neither groaned nor buckled. The son found the peace that ever eluded the father. If what I hear of Robert Baratheon is true, somewhere he's laughing himself breathless.
While the others went off to mind their own tasks, Sam busied himself with refining the drawing as best he could. Lighter, he told himself over and over. Baratheon is right, I was daft to ever think iron would work. I mean, it would, but not just now.
"What the fuck are you doing?" someone called.
"I'll let you know in a bit." Sam replied absently, barely aware of an advancing presence in the wake of several distant echoing crashes. When the person got too close to ignore, he looked up to see a knight in a white surcoat and a gobsmacked look on his face standing before him. On the surcoat was a deer on a pole, as befit the man's house. Hyle Hunt. Sam recalled the man from when he was a boy in the Reach, Ser Hyle scarce a man himself. Lord Randyll had tossed Sam into a pond so that he might learn to swim. Instead, Ser Hyle had the sense to pull me out before I drowned.
"Is it a spitfire?" he asked, markedly less careful around the sand than Nymeria had been.
"Careful, ser. Or if you like, we'll see just how well you manage to sink the Others' ship." Hunt took an automatic, almost reflexive step back. The clanging of bronze on stone alerted Sam to the first bell's approach. It bobbed along bizarrely, carried by a rushing rapid that pushed it up even as it pushed it along. Still, every so often the bell would scrape along the street, until it stood upright a neat few feet from the mold. Out from under the bottom oozed a steadily growing puddle, Lady Maegyr's fluid face pursed in uncertainty.
"That was very strange." she finally said, only then realizing Ser Hyle had joined them.
"Did you steal that from the sept?"
"It was doing no good up there. The septons were less than pleased, but the Seven are no more venerated in Volantis than the north, this city aside."
"How did you beat the fireling here?" Sam asked.
"She stopped to wreak some havoc on the beach, push the dead back into the Bite a bit. She'll be along in no time." It was Lady Catelyn though who returned next, swearing under her breath as she pushed, dragged, carried the bell near. "Never mind, my lady. This sort of thing should come easier once we've had practice at it." Maegyr said, ignoring Ser Hyle's gawking stare. At last the little flame rejoined them, jumping down from the roof of a two-story inn. Though her rough shape gave from the fall and the impact, she was none the worse for wear.
"Hello!" she said cheerfully to Ser Hyle.
"No, thank you." the knight replied, looking as though he'd quite had enough. Turning on his heel he stared walking back to the castle, leaving the girl a bit uncertain. Ass, Sam thought. Lastly, Lord Baratheon emerged from the confines of the smithy, having committed the drawing to memory just in case.
"Are we ready, then?" he asked.
"As ready as we're like to be." Sam answered. He turned to the girl. "I suppose it's just a matter of taking a bit at a time." The bells stood tall as grown men so the matter at hand concerned action rather than amount.
"So…I should try and carve off bit by bit? Like a wheel of cheese?"
"If you can manage, my lady." The barely-there face in the flames pressed her lips together, turning toward the nearer bell.
"Bronze gives long before iron does-" Baratheon began, interrupted by the water on the bell turning to steam instantly as it went from gleaming bronze to sun-yellow, melting faster than any candle. Sam turned away, hand over his eyes and actually staggering away from the stunning heat, the sound of yet more steam drowning the bell even as it boiled. The heat died instantly, the girl backing up and apologizing profusely even as Sam blinked stars out of his eyes. As if I'd looked directly into the sun. He put his hand over his eyes and waited for the spots to dull and fade. "Fuck me." Baratheon groaned, emerging out from behind the barrel he'd fallen over.
"I'm sorry! I didn't know how much to do-"
"There's no harm done, my lady. At least we've found you can shape metal with little effort." If by 'shape' you mean 'boil', Lady Stark. The bell had been reduced to little more than a still disc seared into the street with only the base still intact and even that a smoldering red. Just as the dragon had done to the Iron Throne.
"You could get it done with half the muster, my lady. With half of half." Lord Baratheon advised shakily.
"Indeed." She sounded if anything still more shaken. She reached down with cupped hands just as an ordinary girl might have to a cool stream for a drink. Instead she came away with a handful of bubbling bronze, glowing and glowering even as she held it. "Oh, I can hold things." she said in a small, surprised voice.
"If they're metal, yes. You just have to make sure not to hold them too hot." Baratheon replied as she slowly, carefully, made her way to the waiting molds. In went the bronze, the metal pooling at the bottom of the mold. It took her a dozen trips to fill the molds, splitting between the two halves of Sam's toy. "Uhh, how are we going to put them together?" the fireling asked.
"Can you take the heat from them as easily as you give it? I suppose we could have Lady Catelyn douse the metal but that would get steam everywhere and I'm not sure what that would do to the bronze." Sam suggested. The girl mumbled under her breath, peering at the glowing metal.
"Let's see…" she said, putting her hands to one of the halves. At once it began to dim, the molten bronze going solid before Sam's eyes. "Oh, look at that! It does work!" She sounded just as excitable at the thought of learning as she had at Castle Black.
"Lovely. Now we just need a few lads to pull them up and press them together for you to do the tying-up. Like the layers of a cake, perhaps."
"No need for lads, my lord." Lady Maegyr said, as if she found the idea distasteful. She merely pushed her fists into the sand, water passing through it without a second thought, only to lift the half up and out without the need for a second pair of arms. Lady Catelyn caught her gist, though the act of sliding the halves together to fit completely seemed to tax their fine movements a bit. More than once Sam heard the Starks' widows swear colorfully, the fireling biting her lip and looking off in another direction. "How's this?" Maegyr asked finally. Sam could find no fault with how they'd done, though he had Lord Baratheon provide a second pair of eyes. Besides, I'm not about to know more about his own craft than he. The huge storm lord turned to his cousin.
"Seems good as it's like to get. Now, if you overdo it you'll send the bronze running about like butter in the sun. Less than half a breath, less than half a half a breath." She nodded, using a fingertip's lightest touch to close the seam between the halves, leaving a single piece, a single length of bronze. "Pretty. If you want it to actually loose something other than a torch's reflection, though, you'll need something to push the projectile out." Maegyr said.
"A spitfire uses niter, charcoal and sulfur to kick up its fiery belch. This will use a similar mechanism, though to propel a solid object will require, obviously, a larger ignition agent." Flesh or flame or flowing water, they gaped at him. "We need more to make this work than to work a spitfire of similar size." Sam amended.
"Charcoal and sulfur shouldn't be so dear in a city like White Harbor. I'm not sure about niter, though." Baratheon said. Right. The ice-ship bloody destroyed Seal Rock and with it the city's spitfires.
"Maybe the Manderlys keep a few barrels at least in the castle, just in case. Perhaps you could impose on their hospitality once more, Lady Stark? I seem to recall you're passing familiar with them."
"You don't need any more help?"
"Oh, I may. But that's what our Volantene friend is for." While Lady Maegyr looked around mockingly, looking for the phantom friend, Sam got to working out what sort of wheels would be needed to move the toy. Not just wheels, he discovered early on. It needs a wooden crossbar at least to steady on, if not a little cart of sorts. Perhaps four wheels are fitter than two, but for now two will do. "After the bell, I can't imagine moving this will be much a challenge for you. We didn't even use all the bronze."
"Hardly a challenge. Where I'm moving it to, now that's a question worth answering. Do you intend to find out if it works only when the dead men bear down on us again?" Maegyr asked.
"No. I'm going to sink the ice-ship with it." Sam replied briskly.
While Talisa Maegyr cradled the bronze tube like it was a bundle of straw, Sam kept an eye out for any cart sturdy enough to hold the thing in place and not go to pieces at first discharge. They got plenty of incredulous stares from the other defenders of the city, be they southron, Harborer or even scattered Essosi.
"Let's find a vantage point facing the docks. We can just…poke it out a window or something and aim as best we can." Sam said.
"Won't they see it, if their eyes are so good?"
"I have no doubt. They'll have no idea what it means though, at least until they're well within range." Maegyr gave the tube a doubtful look.
"Are you so confident?"
"A cork loosed from a wine bottle can end up on the other side of the room. This has rather more loosing power than a bottle." Sam replied.
"We still need a cork to take the loosing, though."
"That won't be near so hard. A ball of iron, solid through, to punch through the ice." Maegyr's fluid eyebrows went up.
"Hold on. In Volantis, when the bounty hunters came back to the city with escaped slaves, sometimes they had queer knots tied around their ankles. Not really knots, actually, more like…heavy round weights on either end of a rope." Again, it was not hard for Sam to extrapolate her point.
"Two, then? A length of chain connecting them, perhaps? Swinging each other through the air?"
"Even if it doesn't work on the ice-ship, it would cut down dead men in their swaths." Not bad, Sam thought. Not bad at all. Not for the first time, the Volantene girl's insight surprised Sam. Thinking as no Westerosi ever would. Then again, were she a typical Volantene she'd still be in Volantis with the rest of House Maegyr. Making the ordinance and the priming proved much simpler than the means by which it might be loosed at the ice-ship, the other smiths of White Harbor picking up where Sam and Lord Baratheon left off with the aid of the fireling. It's not worth waiting to see if it works. They should keep busy instead of waiting with their knees knocking together for the cold armies to make another run at us. At last, the Volantene waters pushed the iron spheres into the mouth of the weapon one carefully after the other, three feet of chain in between. Perhaps a bit too much, Sam reasoned, but even if they break off each other they'll cause holy havoc. There was only waiting to do after that, Sam whiling away the time overseeing the making of several more toys in the image of the first. By then a small crowd had gathered, equal parts mystified and intrigued at the prospect of giving the Others a nasty surprise. Those of more esteemed birth were not so engaged, though Sam hardly suspected a different reaction. Men who have spent their lives fighting with sword and lance and mace can scarcely be expected to embrace another way. Sword and lance and mace wouldn't remove the ice-ship as an obstacle to any of their own ships yet to make port in White Harbor, though. Tarly tricks it is, then.
The ice-ship's advance came both silently and agonizingly slowly. If it was a ploy to stew fear in the city's defenders though, Sam was pleased to see it had not worked. The goings-on and bustle of White Harbor, even battered as it was, kept peoples' minds off the Others and their allies if for the moment. In the time it took for the ship to come within the suspected range of Sam's toy, three more had been built, placed and armed. Trails of the priming mixture ran like little lines of soot from the back end of each toy to the thresholds of whatever room they were aimed from.
"Why not close the distance?" Lord Tully asked when his turn came of the lords to see what Sam was up to. "Surely it would make them loose faster."
"It would indeed, my lord. If the weapons prove to be ill-proportionate, though, they could also just explode where they sit. With their crew in the corridor lighting off the primer, they should be safe from any...mishaps." Tully looked back at the toy with new interest.
"Even if it just explodes…that's not the worst thing a man's spent an evening working on." Sam could not be bothered to puzzle out his meaning, if indeed he had one in the first place. In the last minutes before the ship came into reach of the toys, those unable to fight took refuge to the last in the New Castle or the Wolf's Den while the city's defenders massed behind the sea-facing gate. Sam could hear men above on scorpions and heating hot oil while the spitfires were brought to the lower levels where they might dissuade any Others on foot from much defacing the hastily supported gate.
"I hope this works, Tarly." Ser Hyle said, Sam's black luck that he managed to end up next to the man.
"No less than I do, ser." Sam replied. He opened his hand and Hunt's squire filled it with a lit torch. Somewhere, three others have just got their own torches. With the distance so closed between himself and the ice-ship, Sam could hear them. Ice cracking 'neath a lake. He found himself wondering what an Other's scream might sound like. I suppose if all goes well, I'll find out shortly. He touched the torch to the priming, watching the sparks titter off the fine black powder even as they raced toward the weapon. Sam found himself remembering his Night's Watch vows. The watcher on the walls, he thought. More like the watcher in the walls. Gods only know I've utterly failed at being anything else. Then again, what had been the Wall's purpose? To guard the realms of men, I told Maester Aemon. But here the Others are, coming right at us while the Wall proves spectacularly unhelpful. What purpose does the Night's Watch now serve when the Others can without effort go around it? The flame met bronze, the sparks cascading off in a green shower.
A clap of thunder from ten feet off deafened Sam to the three that followed almost in tandem, though he felt the stones beneath his feet shake just fine. Well, at least it didn't expl- A sound like a trebuchet-launched stone through a sept window told Sam the toy's aim was true. Three times more did the sound crack out into the air quick as a breath, quick as a blink, though those near the bronze tubes were in no shape to hear. A maddening needle-whine broke through the senseless din that had deafened Sam, piercing his skull until he put his hands to his ears. So that's what they sound like when they scream.
"Again." was all he got out before he was dashing up the spiral stair faster than he thought himself able. The front of the ice-ship brought Sam back to boyhood, when he saw a bunch of wasps build a nest just outside his window. Their movements were inscrutable, their methods unknowable, the bottom of the nest honeycombed with holes. Except it isn't paper full of holes just now, Sam thought. Quite alarmingly, only a few moments after the toys had had their say the Others simply began jumping off the top deck. What are they doing? Then he saw the greenish light flicker in the ice of the ship's battered bow. Intermittent at first, then more rapidly, until it seemed the light would never go out. Sam shut his eyes, a purely instinctive reaction. There was another sound, one utterly unlike anything Sam had heard before. It made the toys' thunder-clap seem hushed, it made the Others' wails seem muted. A wind that near to knocked him off the ramparts caught him across his body, frost forming in his hair and on his cheeks instantaneously even as he collapsed, his breath taken away. The night sky unfolded out to forever, the stars sashaying maddeningly as his eyes rocketed around in his skull. Then it was over. The cold wind vanished as quick as it had come, he forced breath back into his lungs and without such a force as he'd just been subjected to ready to blow him back to the bloody Wall, he was back at the reins of his own eyeballs again. He heard people screaming, vomiting, sobbing, laughing madly. Sam the Slayer. It was the first thought he could remember having. I wonder what they'll call me now. Then someone was looming over him, a foot prodding him in the side. He heard something warbling in his ear.
"Tarly! Up you get, my lord! Take a look at this!" Sam found himself being helped to his feet by a man in a faded purple surcoat, Woolfield's three woolsacks running across it. Sam turned to the Bite, where a few nimble white slivers were picking themselves up from the sand of shore looking singularly unlikely to pose a threat. Now, anyway. A different song once their fellows in the Haunted Forest arrive. He took a full quarter hour to make it down the stairs, legs shaking so badly he wondered if he might fall and crack his head open then and there. Even half-coherent though, Samwell Tarly could not stop his mind from working. That wasn't us. That wasn't me, he knew. That was the ice-ship. Somehow, some way, we hit it right where it didn't want to be hit.
He staggered back into the feast hall, arms stiff as steel rods and limp as sodden rope all at once. The place was full of women, children, men who wished they were still in their grey hairs. He spotted Gilly, pale as a full moon, her big brown eyes locked on his face. Say something, he told himself. His mind, busy as it was, did not yet seem to have found his tongue.
"The lad's had it." he heard Olenna Redwyne say.
"Samwell! What happened? Are the Others coming?" Wylis Manderly asked, his bulk greater even than Sam's had been before he first left Horn Hill.
"No." Sam finally forced out.
"What about the ice-ship?"
"Gone." Sam uttered, before the shock took hold of him. Weeping through howling laughter, snickering through graceless sobbing, Sam let Gilly lead him from the hall. In a storeroom she embraced him, content to wait until the fit had passed. Slowly at first and then more rapidly the heedless typhoon within calmed, then stilled. With a final long gasp, Sam composed himself, wiping tears and melted frost from his cheeks.
"Sam, are you alright?" was all Gilly asked.
"If not now, I will be, Gilly." he replied, kissing her cheek, then her nose, then her perfect mouth. I needed no Valyrian steel to do what needed doing, he thought. Bronze and charcoal, sulfur and niter. And I did it better than anyone who's ever swung a sword. Gilly helped him stand, took him to their room among the tumult of people running about the castle. Men had women in their arms, people were hugging each other, so they went unnoticed. Once in their room, Sam got Heartsbane from where it lay. He found his father where he knew he would, in the midst of all the other lords of the Reach. Sam set the sword on the table in front of Lord Randyll without a second's delay. "I don't need your sword." he said. "No more than I need your sigil or your castle or your lands. I've walked where the First Men fought the Dawn War, slain an Other, sent an ice-ship to the bottom of the Bite. Dickon is free to claim your title and your name. One day his children will chase each other about, playing at heroes. Symeon Star-Eyes, Aemon the Dragonknight, Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Among their number your grandsons will count Sam the Slayer, too. The country over will wonder at me as they do at all the other heroes. They'll wonder, too, at the man who thought me not worthy to be his heir. Pray tell, my lord, what makes you worthy to be my sire?"
