It was an old horn, that much Samwell could be sure of, but the bronze was not forged in the Thennic style, nor did the much-faded symbols match any heraldry of any Northern house Samwell had ever heard of. Just a simple aurochs' horn, nothing more or less. Chipped and worn. But he could not put it out of his mind since Jon had brought it back from that great ranging so many nights ago.
Perhaps he only cared because it had been a gift from Jon, along with the obsidian arrowheads. Perhaps he thought he might get his friend back for a moment if he could solve the riddle that was the old warhorn. Foolish thought. Jon was not dead, not that he knew, anyway. Jon might be King in the North, or Prince, or something else entirely, but most likely he was not dead. Samwell wished there was more he could do. Well, he had always wished he could do more. This was no different from back when he had been Tarly's heir.
Samwell sighed and closed the book in disgust. He had already gone through every relevant tome at the Shadow Tower. There were more at Castle Black, and he dearly wished he could have remained there. The books were one thing, but the news that came through Castle Black was always fresher, and the Brotherhood lived or died based on what news came through.
As the nights grew longer and the days grew colder, Samwell often found himself without task to keep him busy, and he was left to worry. There was word of Ironborn moving to the south of here, and Samwell wondered if they should appear at the Shadow Tower tomorrow, with dozens of longships full of thousands of monsters. A ridiculous idea. The idea of a coward. He grimaced. Enough thought. He had kept himself up late with this meaningless pursuit, and now with any luck, he could fall asleep without trouble.
He blew out the candle, stumbled down the stairs to his quarters, and in a few short minutes was finally curled on his hard cot, trying not to think of all the many terrors that lay out in the darkness.
His dreams were some reprieve. He dreamed he was atop a high tower, overlooking a great frozen shore. He thought it must be the Shadow Tower, though nothing about the tower or the shore looked like the home he had come to know. He could hear the cawing of the gulls down by the water, crying, crying because all was frozen and there was nowhere to fish.
Ice ran down his spine, for reasons he could not understand.
Something was behind him. Something was watching him. A thing with a thousand eyes, each more terrible and watchful than the last, paralyzing him, hexing him to stillness even as every impulse of his told him to run.
Run. Run!
But he could not. Even if he had possessed the will, he could not have run. He was atop a great tower, and there was no stairwell. He could not turn, and he could not run.
"Ah….." The voice that intruded on his dream was dry and had a hint of a rasp, like a man in need of water. "Ah, there you are."
"T-there am I? W-where am I?" He could not run, he could not turn around, but his lips moved as if of their own accord. "What are you?"
"One of many," the voice replied. "One who watches."
Samwell wanted to throw up. But he could not. This was a dream. This was a dream and yet he would not wake up. The voice was real but he was not, not at this moment.
"What do you want with me?" He managed, his voice barely a squeak.
"Nothing," the voice replied. "Nothing at all. But you have something..." the voice trailed off."Another one of many will be coming to you."
"Sam?" A voice called up from the base of the tower, impossibly distant. "Sam? Sam?"
Samwell trembled with fear. The tower shook and quaked. "Sam?" The voice was like thunder now.
Awake, he was awake, in his own cot. A dark shadow was standing over him. He squeaked in fear.
"Sam! Wake up you fool, we're under attack!"
Sam swallowed, his wits refusing to clear. He struggled to a sitting position and wiped the cold sweat off his forehead. The man in the room with him was Heg, Heg the Boneman. A rough man of the stewards, a gaunt black brother who had come into the Watch a boy but was now an old man, thin and hard as a whip. Sam admired him and feared him, but he did not fear him half so much as the sounds that came from outside, sounds of steel and death.
"A-attack?" Sam squeaked, "Who? How? T-the others?" He felt the gaze of the shapeless thing with a thousand eyes.
"Worse," Heg said, "Fecking Ironborn. Get up Sam, and get a quill between your fat fingers. We need to write Castle Black."
Of course. Of course. If the Tower fell, Castle Black would need to know about it. What they could do about it, Sam did not know, for they hardly had the men to repel the ironborn if the Iron Princess had come this far North. That was who it must be, Sam thought. He followed Heg through the narrow corridors, sick with fear. The sounds of men dying were louder in the halls. Closer. Those were men he knew that were dying, brothers of many months, men who had been decent enough to him under the circumstances. Vek, Joryn, maybe even old Denys Mallister.
Sam knew better than to hope it was the ironborn who were screaming. His brothers would die bravely, or at least some of them would, but there were too few of them to stand against a real assault, and many of them were builders and stewards and men who had never held or sword.
Sam tripped on a step and crushed his knee against a flagstone. The pain shocked him, riveted him to the floor. He almost collapsed, but he kept pushing on. If you stop now you won't start again, he told himself.
An eternity later the short walk to the ravenry was over, and Sam wrote the letter very ill and tied it to a raven's leg. "Ironborn attacking, send help," he wrote, or something like that, he could not remember the words. He spent more time on the knot to the raven's leg than on writing the letter, the twine constantly falling apart between his fat fingers. Eventually, Heg came away from the door and tied it for him with a snarl.
"Come on, let's get out of here," He urged. Sam paused a second. Where would they go? What would they bring? Should they stand and fight?
Heg scowled again, picked up a sack, and shoved everything atop Sam's desk into the bag. Paper, half a cheese wheel, quills, sealed inkpot, cold meat, books, the warhorn, a loaf of bread… "I said come on," the man urged, and when he hustled away with the sack Sam followed.
The screams of death had faded now, but the silence was worse. They could hear armored boots clanking on the stairs of the tower, cheers of victory from the yard, and not from voices he knew. Gods, Sam thought. Not again. But he hurried on. Heg swore and swore and swore at him, always under his breath, but he helped him keep up too.
"They're searching the barracks," he said. "Heh. Feckers don't know we haven't used that old dustbin in ages. If they waste a bit more time there… we can make it to the lift… Get down the Wall, get a few ponies..."
The door in front of them opened, and a figure in steel charged toward them. Sam shrieked and the man seized him by the throat.
"Quiet, Slayer, it's me, Emmet." It was him, Sam realized. Bleeding from a dozen small cuts and a sword covered in blood, but Sam would recognize that mad smile anywhere. "It's a fine night for ranging, don't you think?"
Heg chuckled darkly, and Sam closed his eyes. Why had he gotten stuck with the two maddest fools in the Shadow Tower? Why couldn't he have been stabbed in his sleep? His feet ached and his heart raced and his eyes leaked. Emmet and Heg moved like cats, quiet and careful, but Sam wheezed and rasped, his breath never catching up. Why wouldn't they just leave him to die?
"Ho there!" a voice called from behind, and Sam nearly fell face first. A man was behind them, just around the corner, and he tried to hurry ahead but he could hear the man coming up behind them, and the man was coming fast. His aching feet pounded against the stone and he gasped and heaved and fell. Death was going to come at last, and he put his hands over his head.
…and then the man who had been chasing him fell beside him, headless.
"Sam the Slayer," Emmet laughed, cleaning his bloody blade. "Smart to bring him, Heg. If we're hunting the hounds, what better to bring than a rabbit?"
Heg laughed. Sam did not.
That one man was found soon enough and he could hear the cries of more ironborn coming up behind them. They were almost to the lift, almost, but they would not make it there in time. "Go on without me," Sam insisted. "I'm a dead man on the run anyway, I won't make it."
"You think any of us have a chance of running?" Emmet said, that damned mad grin on his face again. Sam had seen it enough times in the training yard to know what it meant. Emmet knew he was about to lose.
"Isn't that… Heg said..." Sam struggled for air.
"Thought we had a chance," Heg said, shrugging. "Not now. Don't you have ears? They've already taken the stables."
Sam's mouth was dry and his heart was empty, but all he really felt was relief. Thank the gods, he thought, I thought they were going to make me run further.
Emmet turned a corner and stepped up a flight of stairs lighting, his oiled mail making not a sound. "We'll give a good account of ourselves at least." He handed a knife to Heg and a hatchet to Sam. "In the dark they'll come stumbling right into my blade, and I'll knock them back on top of each other, kill ten in one blow, like that old tale."
"No tales of us," Heg said darkly. "We're the last. No tales, no songs."
Emmet laughed, drawing his sword and relishing the sound of it. "Just the one song, Heg. Just my favorite song." The song of steel.
It did not work out quite as Emmet intended it. The Ironborn came up the steps quickly and he had stabbed the first man before he knew what hit him, but the second stepped over his fallen ally and met Emmet's steel with his own. Perhaps Emmet liked that better. Two, three, four times, their steel clashed in the flickering light, and then the second man fell down atop his brother. But there was a third, a fourth, a fifth. Sam's fingers clutched the handle of the hatchet, licking his lips. What was he doing here? What would he do when Emmet fell at last, and Heg fell after him? Would he try to swing his tiny hatchet at them? Perhaps if he threw himself down the stairs he could crush a man before he died.
Emmet's sword bounced off the Ironborn's mail and Emmet cursed, grabbing at his foe's wrist to stop the death blow. All pretense of technique abandoned them, and they just stood there, locked in fierce contest like time itself had ceased.
Sam suddenly felt something watching him from behind.
Against his will, his head turned, and he looked behind, up the stairwell, and into the eyes of a laughing raider, club upraised. The man's smile was the last thing he saw before the club came down, and then he saw nothing but blackness.
Some time later, he came to himself. His breath came short and hot but the rest of him was cold. His wrists and ankles burned from where they had been tied, and his head had been filled with wool. Thoughts refused to collect themselves into anything real. There were sounds about him, sounds of laughing and feasting, but sounds of weeping too. He could smell something burning, it smelled like meat and he felt sick inside. He could not see, not really. Someone had put a bag over his head.
I've been taken captive, Sam realized with horror. He was standing in the yard now, probably just a bit in front of the tower itself, and they had tied him to a stake and put a sack over his head. That was the only explanation for what was happening.
Why did they take me alive? A thousand awful answers presented themselves.
Mercifully, he was not left alone with these thoughts for too long. A rough hand pulled the bag off, blinding him with early morning light. He blinked once, blinked twice, and then he could see. A tall man of Ghis or Tyrosh stood in front of him, Sam could not tell which. The man wordlessly inspected Sam's head and jaw, moving it back and forth and checking for missing teeth. After a moment he seemed satisfied and moved on. They were in a great circle, Sam and all the other prisoners. Old Ser Denys was tied up just a few spots to Sam's right, with a broken jaw and a purple eye. Slowly his eyes worked around the circle. Hewett, Fasht, Daglin… Sam could find no logic to why they had spared who they had spared.
And then Sam saw him. A man too pale, too-young, too-handsome, with one eye missing and pale blue lips. He sat atop a pile of rusted-out helms, old steel from the armory and fresh steel from the heads of the black brothers. The man's one bright eye stared back at Sam, and he smiled.
"Do you know who I am?" the man asked.
Sam's brain raced. The names of the Ironborn captains had plagued his dreams since the days of the rebellion, but at that moment he could not remember any of them. Was this Dagman? Or perhaps Androk? "N-no," he said. He felt he should know, but his mind was empty.
The man's smile disappeared, and his face became hard indeed. "Well, you will have chance to learn it yet. I am Euron Greyjoy, and I will be your end."
Sam's eyes widened. Euron had been the worst of them all, the greatest and the most terrible. For him to be here, for him to be here now… He spied what the man held, and his heart all but stopped.
Euron had the old warhorn in his left hand.
The dream from last night came to Sam, and he quaked. "O-one of many," he said with a stutter.
Now Euron smiled again. "Yes. Good boy. I knew that what I sought lay near to here, but I did not know exactly where until last night. So I am grateful to you, Sam the Slayer, for bringing me my heart's desire. There are many wonderful and powerful things moving in the world these days, and you should count yourself fortunate to have come so near to real greatness."
He held the horn aloft, as though it were a jewel that would sparkle in the morning sun. His lips half-opened, and for a moment Sam thought he would blow the horn, but he held himself back. He lowered the horn and looked back to Sam.
"Tell me, Sam, what do you know of sorcery?"
"The maesters say it is a force gone from this world, gone with the children and the giants." Euron laughed and Sam winced. "I-I know it is not so, however. I have seen the Others, I've seen them myself." He had killed one, too, but he did not like to mention that. "Older tales call it a sword without a hilt, say that it cannot be used without sacrifice."
"Sacrifice. What is that, do you think."
Sam swallowed. He had never studied the higher mysteries before, and what little he knew was constrained to the fight against the Others. The cords dug into his wrists and he almost screamed in pain. "Sacrifice is giving up yourself," he said. "Giving up yourself and asking nothing in return. Like the Night's Watch Oath. Well, like it's supposed to be." That was a stupid answer. That kind of oath had nothing to do with sorcery, of power, that laid in the blood.
"So you would say it is a hard thing, then?" Sam did not answer, but Euron Greyjoy did not seem to mind. Sam thought of Jon and his wolf, and what the men said about that. A part of his mind had become that of a beast, or so the story went. Had that been the sacrifice Jon had made?
"If you could bring back your friends from the stairway right this instant, would you pay the price?"
Sam blanched. The question caught him completely off guard. Would he pay the price? What price could raise the dead? Did this devil from the sea mean his own soul? Euron waited for an answer. "I-I don't know," he managed. "I-I think. I think that would be a hard thing." he cursed himself for dumbly aping what Euron had already said like some kind of parrot.
But Euron seemed pleased with this answer. "Ha. Everyone always says sacrifice is hard. They always think it's them who's going to be paying the sacrifice." He shook his head as if laughing at some private joke, then he pulled a silver knife from his hip. "Well, in a way they are right.
The man advanced on Samwell, grabbed him by the hair, and pushed his head back against the stake. Samwell struggled, but it was no use. The silver knife swept across his neck before Samwell could even scream. When he did scream, no sound came out, only a strange burbling noise. His eyes bulged as he looked around the circle. All around him the captives had been executed, all at once, all bleeding from their necks into the snow.
Last of all he looked back to Euron, the man standing before him, smiling as ever. "That is what people never understand, you see. Sacrifice is not hard. Sacrifice is easy."
And as he blew the horn and the earth shook beneath Sam's feet and the Wall began to fall, the blackness finally took Samwell.
