“The Old Bear’s no fool,” Dareon observed. “You’re certain to be a builder, and Jon’s certain to be a ranger. He’s the best sword and the best rider among us, and his uncle was the First before he …” His voice trailed off awkwardly as he realized what he had almost said.
“Benjen Stark is still First Ranger,” Jon Snow told him, toying with his bowl of blueberries. The rest might have given up all hope of his uncle’s safe return, but not him. He pushed away the berries, scarcely touched, and rose from the bench.
“Aren’t you going to eat those?” Toad asked.
“They’re yours.” Jon had hardly tasted Hobb’s great feast. “I could not eat another bite.” He took his cloak from its hook near the door and shouldered his way out.
Pyp followed him. “Jon, what is it?”
“Sam,” he admitted. “He was not at table tonight.”
“It’s not like him to miss a meal,” Pyp said thoughtfully. “Do you suppose he’s taken ill?”
“He’s frightened. We’re leaving him.” He remembered the day he had left Winterfell, all the bittersweet farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow in his hair, Arya raining kisses on him after he’d given her Needle. “Once we say our words, we’ll all have duties to attend to. Some of us may be sent away, to Eastwatch or the Shadow Tower. Sam will remain in training, with the likes of Rast and Cuger and these new boys who are coming up the kingsroad. Gods only know what they’ll be like, but you can bet Ser Alliser will send them against him, first chance he gets.”
Pyp made a grimace. “You did all you could.”
“All we could wasn’t enough,” Jon said.
A deep restlessness was on him as he went back to Hardin’s Tower for Ghost. The direwolf walked beside him to the stables. Some of the more skittish horses kicked at their stalls and laid back their ears as they entered. Jon saddled his mare, mounted, and rode out from Castle Black, south across the moonlit night. Ghost raced ahead of him, flying over the ground, gone in the blink of an eye. Jon let him go. A wolf needed to hunt.
He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to ride. He followed the creek for a time, listening to the icy trickle of water over rock, then cut across the fields to the kingsroad. It stretched out before him, narrow and stony and pocked with weeds, a road of no particular promise, yet the sight of it filled Jon Snow with a vast longing. Winterfell was down that road, and beyond it Riverrun and King’s Landing and the Eyrie and so many other places; Casterly Rock, the Isles of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the hundred islands of Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria. All the places that Jon would never see. The world was down that road … and he was here.
Once he swore his vow, the Wall would be his home until he was old as Maester Aemon. “I have not sworn yet,” he muttered. He was no outlaw, bound to take the black or pay the penalty for his crimes. He had come here freely, and he might leave freely … until he said the words. He need only ride on, and he could leave it all behind. By the time the moon was full again, he would be back in Winterfell with his brothers.
Your half-brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not welcome you. There was no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King’s Landing either. Even his own mother had not had a place for him. The thought of her made him sad. He wondered who she had been, what she had looked like, why his father had left her. Because she was a whore or an adulteress, fool. Something dark and dishonorable, or else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to speak of her?
Jon Snow turned away from the kingsroad to look behind him. The fires of Castle Black were hidden behind a hill, but the Wall was there, pale beneath the moon, vast and cold, running from horizon to horizon.
He wheeled his horse around and started for home.
Ghost returned as he crested a rise and saw the distant glow of lamplight from the Lord Commander’s Tower. The direwolf’s muzzle was red with blood as he trotted beside the horse. Jon found himself thinking of Samwell Tarly again on the ride back. By the time he reached the stables, he knew what he must do.
Maester Aemon’s apartments were in a stout wooden keep below the rookery. Aged and frail, the maester shared his chambers with two of the younger stewards, who tended to his needs and helped him in his duties. The brothers joked that he had been given the two ugliest men in the Night’s Watch; being blind, he was spared having to look at them. Clydas was short, bald, and chinless, with small pink eyes like a mole. Chett had a wen on his neck the size of a pigeon’s egg, and a face red with boils and pimples. Perhaps that was why he always seemed so angry.
It was Chett who answered Jon’s knock. “I need to speak to Maester Aemon,” Jon told him.
“The maester is abed, as you should be. Come back on the morrow and maybe he’ll see you.” He began to shut the door.
Jon jammed it open with his boot. “I need to speak to him now. The morning will be too late.”
Chett scowled. “The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do you know how old he is?”
“Old enough to treat visitors with more courtesy than you,” Jon said. “Give him my pardons. I would not disturb his rest if it were not important.”
“And if I refuse?”
Jon had his boot wedged solidly in the door. “I can stand here all night if I must.”
The black brother made a disgusted noise and opened the door to admit him. “Wait in the library. There’s wood. Start a fire. I won’t have the maester catching a chill on account of you.”
Jon had the logs crackling merrily by the time Chett led in Maester Aemon. The old man was clad in his bed robe, but around his throat was the chain collar of his order. A maester did not remove it even to sleep. “The chair beside the fire would be pleasant,” he said when he felt the warmth on his face. When he was settled comfortably, Chett covered his legs with a fur and went to stand by the door.
“I am sorry to have woken you, Maester,” Jon Snow said.
“You did not wake me,” Maester Aemon replied. “I find I need less sleep as I grow older, and I am grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts, remembering times fifty years past as if they were yesterday. The mystery of a midnight visitor is a welcome diversion. So tell me, Jon Snow, why have you come calling at this strange hour?”
“To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of the Night’s Watch.”
“This is no concern of Maester Aemon,” Chett complained.
“Our Lord Commander has given the training of recruits into the hands of Ser Alliser Thorne,” the maester said gently. “Only he may say when a boy is ready to swear his vow, as you surely know. Why then come to me?”
“The Lord Commander listens to you,” Jon told him. “And the wounded and the sick of the Night’s Watch are in your charge.”
“And is your friend Samwell wounded or sick?”
“He will be,” Jon promised, “unless you help.”
He told them all of it, even the part where he’d set Ghost at Rast’s throat. Maester Aemon listened silently, blind eyes fixed on the fire, but Chett’s face darkened with each word. “Without us to keep him safe, Sam will have no chance,” Jon finished. “He’s hopeless with a sword. My sister Arya could tear him apart, and she’s not yet ten. If Ser Alliser makes him fight, it’s only a matter of time before he’s hurt or killed.”
Chett could stand no more. “I’ve seen this fat boy in the common hall,” he said. “He is a pig, and a hopeless craven as well, if what you say is true.”
“Maybe it is so,” Maester Aemon said. “Tell me, Chett, what would you have us do with such a boy?”
“Leave