The Wall was truly one of the wonders of the world. Over seven hundred feet tall at the highest point its uncountable fused blocks of ice represented a marvel of human engineering and persistence. At the royal welcoming feast in Winterfell only a moon past Robb had silently disparaged King Robert for his ignorance about this manmade divide between Westeros and the winter lands beyond. He had felt then that he knew better: As if reading Maester Wyllis' description of the Wall was a good substitute for laying eyes on the real thing. Not so, he now realized. One look at the hundred-league long fortification from distance had sent the Stark boy's mouth agape with wonder for the remainder of the party's long ride to Castle Black.
The Night's Watch welcomed the party with traditional offerings of bread and salt under the laws of the hearth. Jeor Mormont himself officiated the reception, which became Robb's first clue that his little sightseeing excursion had rather different connotations to his hosts than it had to him. That suspicion was only reinforced when the Lord Commander offered them the rickety, but auspicious King's Tower for their quarters. When he aired his thoughts to Tyrion the smaller man only laughed.
"A hungry man will ask for food," was the answer, cryptic on the surface, but its meaning was as clear as the needs of the Watch were. Even if had he not done his own reading, Robb's lord father had received many a bleak missive from Castle Black over the years asking for more men, more supplies, and more gold. More, more, more. Even that dullard Hodor could have deduced what promise the Old Bear saw in his lordling guests, and the man made moves behind the scenes to expedite this request for aid that started out, at least, as unspoken. In the days the group was hosted at the crumbling castle their highborn members were thus accommodated in their own way, likely an attempt to soften them up for the inevitable blow, as Tyrion warned Robb on their first night there.
To the Lannister the Watch gave of their hearths' warmth, the company of their few jolly members, and the most scrumptious feasts they could manage to scrounge together. To Greyjoy they were not quite so gracious, but they had sent for one of their few Ironborn officers – a brawny man by the name of Cotter Pyke who commanded Eastwatch – and he took a surprising liking to Theon, distracting the younger Ironman from his abhorrence of the cold weather.
For the Stark scion they had mostly words and lots of them, something that Robb relished at first as the officers spoke to him like they would any man grown. Soon, however, he came to dread the lessons of First Steward Bowen Marsh, as minutes spent on the state of the turnip stores and the pig iron deposits and a hundred other things dragged on into long hours of the same. Othell the First Builder was nearly as bad, able to turn otherwise riveting walks along the length of the Wall at the edge of the known world into dour inspections of rickety battlements and pulley systems. Both men knew their craft well, but the never-ending stream of requests and incessant platitudes for this, that and the other thing that spewed from their mouths wore on Robb's patience. He did recognize it as one of his first practical lessons in dealing with toady petitioners, however. A valuable experience, all things considered.
To make matters worse for Robb the high officer he most wanted to hear from had departed on a ranging shortly after the party's arrival. Benjen Stark had transformed from a warm wolf into a cold Crow the moment he rejoined his black brothers, much to the chagrin of both of his nephews. No kind words had he had for Jon, whose still smoldering desire to join the Night's Watch he was aware of. Nor did he have any sage advice for Robb, whose favor his own Lord Commander was so desperately trying to curry. None of that. Benjen Stark had taken just one afternoon to restock and reequip himself for what he said was a routine ranging. Then he had bid his companions a curt farewell and promised only to return before the group set off southwards once more.
That had been nearly a week ago. Now, at the closing feast of their visit, an uneasy feeling had begun to settle in the pit of Robb's stomach. Seated with his party and most of the Night's Watch's officers beneath the thatched roof of the timbered common hall the Stark scion felt pressure pulsating behind his temples and rubbed his head gingerly.
"Looking for something?" Domeric, seated beside Robb at the longtable that had been set for them all, raised a questioning eyebrow at his friend, though there was genuine concern in his eyes. Around them men drank and spoke and laughed heartily, sharing plentiful cups of mead and caskets of ale. They ate freely of steamed crabs from the Bay of Seals served with roasted corn, fresh barley bread and crabapple pie. The crabs had arrived from Eastwatch only that morning, packed in a barrel of snow, and whilst everyone was eating more than their fill, Tyrion especially was making good on a jest he had made about eating his weight's worth of the tender crustaceans.
"A bucket to retch in, perhaps," Robb replied dourly, but lightened the mood with a playful elbow to his compatriot's side. "No, but I've been mulling what to say to the Old Bear. My gut tells me he sees me as a living piece of vellum to petition my father with, and I don't know that I have the strength to suffer another wistful monologue to that effect."
"The Crows do a lot of crowing, don't they?" Domeric agreed, reaching for another crab leg. The Dreadfort heir had been treated to his own bribes, being the only one of the party's members who had been taken northwards through the twisting tunnel beneath Castle Black. He had gone riding with a ranger by the name of Qhorin in the half mile of cleared open plain between the Shivering Forest's edge and the north face of the Wall.
"You know what he wants," The Bolton continued with a nod towards the wizened Mormont man. The Lord Commander was feeding his pecky pet kennels of corn to the crowing bird's great delight. "But what do you want?"
"I…" Robb began hesitantly, tapping his fingers against the tabletop. "Don't know."
"How good of you to invite me along, then." Domeric remarked dryly. "T'was but a hundred and twenty some leagues ride here, and you know how thrilled my father gets when I go on long trips on my own."
Lord Bolton had sent a couple of retainers galloping after his only son that they might watch over him, but the young man's Ryswell half was so strongly pronounced in the saddle that the guardsmen only caught up with him a whole day after he had united with Robb's party well north of Last Hearth. The duo had stayed mostly in the background since then, sharing words only with the Lannister guardsmen that had followed Tyrion. Undoubtedly, they were taking advantage of that peace and privacy to decry their highborn charge's lack of regard for their comfort.
"I wanted to speak more with Tyrion, which I've done." He ignored his friend's teasing words and shot a glance across the table at the smaller blond man nearly ten years his senior. Their animated discussions had continued, but Robb had gotten the distinct impression that his counterpart was merely humoring him towards the end. Most of their abstract talks ended when Tyrion dismissed his ideas as thought-provoking fantasies, but things were better when they stuck to history. For all their differences they made a good pairing and Robb had come to appreciate the Imp's sharp wit and companionship, even if the man did drink and whore too much for his liking.
"But," he continued. "Mostly it was for Jon's sake. The Gods are good to have made him see sense."
His half-brother had taken a beginner's course in watchery, which included a lot of sparring with green boys who had never held steel in their lives. He learned the fundamentals of the work of the Builders and the Stewards, the former of which consisted mostly of hewing and lugging blocks of ice, while the latter offered painstakingly detailed lessons in mucking out stables and cooking the thinnest barley stew that ingredients allowed. Recruits were free to leave before they made their vows, so Jon was treated to the authentic experience of a new Crow. He slept in the drafty barracks, ate with the other recruits, and earned the irreverent moniker of 'Lord Snow' as he suffered daily chewing-outs by the Watch's master-at-arms Alliser Thorne during their training sessions. The experiences had not left a good impression, though Robb had had to hear that from Theon's mouth as Jon refused to whinge in his brother's company.
The subject of their discussion was busy entertaining the officers with that same game of wolfish scrap-feeding that had gone over so well at the King's welcoming feast in Winterfell. Both Ghost and You participated this time around. The animals had grown too big to fit on any table made for men, so the direwolf duo entertained from the floor instead, jumping up and down over each other to snatch scraps of food out of the air, much to the jubilance of their audience.
"The other recruits mislike him, but that's no great surprise," Domeric observed as Robb's attention shifted back to him. "Bastardry cuts at highborn and lowborn sensibilities both. It's a shame." Seeing his friend's confused look, the Bolton elaborated while picking his teeth. "You're not wrong about the Watch, Robb, but where else could Jon go to make his own way?"
'Even a company of sellswords would be better,' he thought to himself, but outwardly only shrugged noncommittedly. The trouble was that Domeric raised a good point, and he was not alone in this. Theon had made much the same observation and while Robb suspected that the Ironman let his own circumstances color his judgment there was no denying the truth of his words. Opportunities for bastards were few and far between and even these often depended on the patronage and goodwill of their dynasts. Still, with a benevolent sire or paterfamilias a gifted bastard could go far, though always in spite of their origins. This was altogether more choices than most mortal men got to make about their lot in life, however.
But then again, Robb was self-aware enough to recognize how droll a sermon about acceptance could seem coming from someone whose own inborn lot was a high lordship and dominion over nearly half of Westeros.
Robb watched his half-brother and thought about the future as logs crackled merrily in the fireplaces and the hum of a dozen background conversation droned on. The two friends sat in silence for a spell until Domeric broke their reverie with a voice so near a whisper that, for a moment, Robb mistook the son for the father. "Do you remember when I told you about Ramsay? About brotherhood and belonging?"
"I do," was his simple reply that masked the surprise he felt. Of his own half-brother Domeric spoke very little. It was only from snippets whispered at the Dreadfort that Robb had made out a recount of the misery that was Ramsay Snow's existence. Many lessons could be drawn from that tale and all of them were poignant, bordering on dismal.
"Just remember then," Domeric advised him so softly that his seatmate had to lean in closer to hear him. "You can't give a man happiness if he wants to take it." He snapped a crab leg with a wet crack and dug in, letting the sounds of others' merriment fill the void of his unfinished sentence.
'From you,' Domeric had finished once, not three years ago, over the sounds of snarling dogs beneath the shadow of a swaying body. 'If he wants to take it from you.'
8
To be a boy of fifteen did not serve one well in conversations with older men of power. Thus, Robb was quietly suffering another one-on-one wistful monologue as Jeor Mormont lamented the woes of his beloved Night's Watch. The Lord Commander spoke seriously, but from the look in his eyes Robb half-expected the man to offer him swaddling clothes and a wet nurse for the trip back to Winterfell. Although Theon and Tyrion would undoubtedly enjoy the latter's company that image did not fit with Robb's own vision of his triumphant return home. As he absentmindedly stroked You's smoke grey fur under the table his thoughts drifted back to the welcoming feast and the modest debate he had started there about wildlings and the Wall. King Robert had looked at him with the same eyes then. This time, however, Robb had more skin in the game than pride alone.
"I sent Ben Stark to search after Ser Waymar Royce, lost on his first ranging." Mormont's voice was like gravel, but appropriately somber as he recounted the events that had led to the disappearance of his First Ranger. "The Royce boy was green as summer grass, yet he insisted on the honor of his own command. I did not wish to offend his lord father, so I sent him out with two men I deemed as good as any in the Watch."
As the Gods would have it the fallen Crow that Ned Stark had plucked a head shorter near the Wolfswood was one of those very two men. Gared, his name had been: A man as grizzled as the Old Bear and longer still on the Wall. That a veteran of so many years had forsworn himself was almost beyond belief for the greybeard and would have been, had not Ned Stark himself signed the missive that accompanied Gared's severed head from Winterfell.
"Of Royce, there is no word," the Lord Commander continued with a sigh. "One deserter and two men lost, and now Ben Stark too has gone missing. Who am I to send searching after him? In two years, I will be seventy. Too old and too weary for the burden I bear, yet if I set it down, who will pick it up?" There was a quavering note to his soliloquy that made Robb straighten himself in his seat, mindful of the pregnant pause that settled as the Old Bear silently frowned, seemingly deep in thought, searching for the answer to his own question.
"The Night's Watch has become an army of sullen boys and tired old men," he begrudgingly declared, more resigned than displeased by the admission. "Apart from the men at my table tonight, I have perhaps twenty who can read, and even fewer who can think, or plan, or lead. Once the Watch spent its summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it. Now it is all we can do to stay alive."
Robb sipped his goblet of mulled spirits gingerly as he listened and occasionally offered a nod of understanding. The urge to share the notion of diminishing returns with his counterpart weighed on him, as perhaps more stacked blocks of ice was not the fix that Mormont thought it to be. He absentmindedly dangled his feet from his chair by the fire and felt a touch of embarrassment for the Old Bear, forced to bow and scrape to keep his life's work from dying of metaphorical exposure. The sad truth of it was that uncle Benjen's disappearance was only the latest in a centuries-spanning series of ignominious and deadly blunders that had seen the Night's Watch's members of highborn stock decline to their lowest rate in recorded history, matched only by the accompanying drop in enrollment quality overall. This development was underscored by the sardonic quip Ser Jaremy Rykker had made at the feast earlier about the Watch having more stableboys than even the grandest holdfast in Westeros. That it also boasted more sneak thieves and rapers than the continent's meanest city was a point he had left unmade.
"The Starks have ever been friends of the Watch, my lord," Robb began gently in a diplomatic tone of voice. "You have my word, of course, that I shall relay everything you've said to my father." A nod underscored this commitment. "But I must ask what you intend to do about all these disappearing rangers. My uncle may have taken the black, but there are few enough Starks left alive that we would be loath to lose him, no matter his colors."
The older man gave a hum of understanding, one that was quickly followed by a couple of hacking coughs that the Old Bear washed down with a swig of his stiff drink. There was a haunted look in his eyes; a promise of a coming darkness that Robb imagined every Lord Commander inherited upon their ascension.
"A show of strength," was Mormont's simple response. "Ser Denys Mallister writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping past the Shadow Tower in numbers greater than ever before." He stared out of a small window into the black night beyond. "We have reports of Mance Rayder amassing all of his people in some new, secret stronghold, so why do so many flee south now? We must find out." His tense posture slackened as he gave a shake of his head. "My old bones have never felt a chill like this, but the Night's Watch is all that stands between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. Gods help us all if we are not ready."
That was the segue Robb had been waiting for.
"Your requests have gone unheard for decades, my lord," he noted pragmatically, mindful to keep his tone light but respectful. "Perhaps now is the time to change tactics?"
"Change tactics?" Mormont seemed to taste the idea, finding it to be a bitter treat. Decades of wringing every resource for all its worth had made him too politically deft to dismiss the notion out of hand, however.
"I will do as you ask, and my father may deign to offer another handful of gold or a gaggle of condemned from the dungeons of Winterfell, but if my lord truly is truly of a mind to stem this century-long decline then I would respectfully suggest a… pivot."
"Ben kept me informed as to his discussions with your father, but-…"
"You misunderstand," Robb hurriedly corrected him, which served expediency if perhaps not propriety. "Settling new lords in old holdfasts would be decisive but, in my view, merely a stopgap until a more comprehensive solution is found."
Those discussions with his lord father had devolved into little more than frosty exchanges. Eddard Stark seemed convinced that highborn sons of a region already brimming with undeveloped lands would line up to squat in ruined halls without farmland to speak of and few smallfolk to tend it. Rob disagreed. He could think of more than a few noble northmen who would raise motte-and-baileys with borrowed gold and then roost idly in meager halls while their tax farmers squeezed what few villages subsisted nearby for every copper.
"A comprehensive solution?" The Lord Commander sampled the phrase and, from the look of it, found its taste as disagreeable as 'changing tactics.' "With what time, Lord Robb? The end of summer stares us in the face. Already the days grow shorter. Darkness is coming, and for all the wild things in the woods I have seen still darker shapes in my dreams." The urgency in Mormont's voice reached a fever pitch as he reached out and clutched Robb's hand tightly. His wrinkled face was contorted in a mask of raw unsettlement so visceral that he could feel it in the vice grip of the old man's cold hands. "You must tell them of our urgent need here, my lord. You must make them understand."
Robb half-expected the Lord Commander to warn him that winter was coming so heartfelt was his impassioned plea, but by the grace of the Gods he did not do so. The greybeard seemed to be waiting for his turn to speak more so than he was listening so Robb leaned forward and tried to match the intensity of the man's stare, though the cold of it felt undercut by the baby blue of his own eyes.
"Jeor," he intoned as if confiding in a close friend while carefully slipping his fingers from the offending grip. "The North remembers, but it also forgets. It is an honor to serve the Watch, but there is no doubt that generations of sullen and lice-ridden wandering Crows have conferred quite a different image on the Lords of the North." Mormont grimaced, but to Robb's relief made no audible protest and so he continued.
"Young men want for honor and glory, but they see this darkness of yours North of the wall as a spinster's tall tale told to frighten children, and the wildlings to them are little more than a nuisance for the Umbers and the hill clans to fret over."
Robb arose from his chair and with a flick of his wrist emptied the dregs of his goblet into the fire, which surged in intensity for a moment as it hungrily lapped up the alcohol. He stared at the dancing flames with his back turned to the Lord Commander.
"I have but fifteen namedays and few winters behind me, but for all my inexperience I bring none of the prejudices of my more venerable peers. I may not be the Lord Stark but barring any cruel japes by the Gods I will be one day." There was a pause as he ran a hand through his short auburn curls and turned to face the Lord Commander once more, giving his best imitation of Ned Stark's patented look of stoic authority.
"I came here on a mission of the heart, my lord. To convince my beloved brother that a life on the Wall was not the life for him." He hesitated but added then with some zeal. "By the Gods, to tell the truth I wished to show him that it was no life at all, no matter how my good uncle tells it otherwise."
"So Alliser had the right of it. You do mock us and our noble purpose here-" the Lord Commander interrupted him, red-faced, standing up so quickly that his chair was nearly knocked over. His pet bird flapped its wings and squawked with indignation as its seat fell away, but it quickly found another perch from which to crow for corn.
"I will be the most devoted friend of the Watch since William Stark," Robb riposted immediately, ignoring the avian menace while drawing himself up to his full height. "Gold, men, and whatever else. I will dedicate years to our northern border, my lord. Enough that a comprehensive solution could become reality, unlike my forebears. But equally unlike them I will expect the Night's Watch to make changes in return."
"Changes?" The heat had drained from Mormont's face and he appeared suddenly ancient, withered. Like too little butter scraped over too much bread. Robb again felt sympathy tug at his heartstrings, but the greybeard's look of resignation was much preferred to anger. "Such as what? Our order must remain neutral and our mission binds us for as long as there are wildlings." His tone was schooled, but the slight curl of his lip betrayed the mounting skepticism simmering beneath the surface.
"I'll make no demands of your order on the spot," Robb assured the Lord Commander, bowing his head ever so slightly in a deliberate show of respectful deference. "I expect you will confer with your officers and I hope that we will speak more in the future. For now, all I offer is a gift and a humble request."
Fifty golden dragons in a leather pouch was the gift. More of a hedge knight's ransom than a king's, but certainly no paltry sum. Much of it came from gifts over the years, some from the sale of black destrier that Robb had grown to hate and the rest of it from the vaults of Winterfell whose funds Robb had managed to discretely dip into. Origins aside it was a time-honored gift for a welcome host and the weight of it bled some tension from the Old Bear's visage. A comforting appetizer that belied a more unorthodox request to follow.
"See, your man Qhorin has been so accommodating with my friend Domeric that I can't help but feel some envy, so I had a thought…"