A Game of Thrones (90 page)

“As you say, Mother,” Robb answered, gazing at the ranks of pikemen. “Perhaps… Ser Helman Tallhart, do you think?”

“A fine choice.”

“What… what did he want of us?”

“If you can spare a few of your swords, I need some men to escort two of Lord Frey’s grandsons north to Winterfell,” she told him. “I have agreed to take them as wards. They are young boys, aged eight years and seven. It would seem they are both named Walder. Your brother Bran will welcome the companionship of lads near his own age, I should think.”

“Is that all? Two fosterlings? That’s a small enough price to—”

“Lord Frey’s son Olyvar will be coming with us,” she went on. “He is to serve as your personal squire. His father would like to see him knighted, in good time.”

“A squire.” He shrugged. “Fine, that’s fine, if he’s—”

“Also, if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord Walder’s youngest son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age.”

Robb looked nonplussed. “Arya won’t like that one bit.”

“And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done,” she finished. “His lordship has graciously consented to allow you to choose whichever girl you prefer. He has a number he thinks might be suitable.”

To his credit, Robb did not flinch. “I see.”

“Do you consent?”

“Can I refuse?”

“Not if you wish to cross.”

“I consent,” Robb said solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he did in that moment. Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact, knowing what it meant.

They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double column wound its way through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel snake, slithering across the courtyard, into the keep and over the bridge, to issue forth once more from the second castle on the west bank.

Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser Brynden and Ser Stevron Frey. Behind followed nine tenths of their horse; knights, lancers, freeriders, and mounted bowmen. It took hours for them all to cross. Afterward, Catelyn would remember the clatter of countless hooves on the drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder Frey in his litter watching them pass, the glitter of eyes peering down through the slats of the murder holes in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower.

The larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men-at-arms on foot, remained upon the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton. Robb had commanded him to continue the march south, to confront the huge Lannister army coming north under Lord Tywin.

For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice.

“Are you well, Snow?” Lord Mormont asked, scowling.

“
Well
,” his raven squawked. “
Well
.”

“I am, my lord,” Jon lied… loudly, as if that could make it true. “And you?”

Mormont frowned. “A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?” He scratched under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire, and he’d hacked it off. The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy. “You do not look well. How is your hand?”

“Healing.” Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as roaches. “The maester says I’ll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before.”

“A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you’ll be wearing gloves often as not.”

“As you say, my lord.” It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it was the rest of it. Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the gods that no one but Ghost saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain. And when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse. In the dream, the corpse he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his father’s face, but he dared not tell Mormont
that
.

“Dywen and Hake returned last night,” the Old Bear said. “They found no sign of your uncle, no more than the others did.”

“I know.” Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends, and the failure of the rangers’ search had been all the men had been talking of.

“You know,” Mormont grumbled. “How is it that everyone knows everything around here?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “It would seem there were only the two of… of those
creatures
, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and… well, that doesn’t bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen.”

Winter is coming
. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as they did now. “My lord,” he asked hesitantly, “it’s said there was a bird last night…”

“There was. What of it?”

“I had hoped for some word of my father.”

“
Father
,” taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across Mormont’s shoulders. “
Father
.”

The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a window. “Grief and noise,” Mormont grumbled. “That’s all they’re good for, ravens. Why I put up with that pestilential bird… if there was news of Lord Eddard, don’t you think I would have sent for you? Bastard or no, you’re still his blood. The message concerned Ser Barristan Selmy. It seems he’s been removed from the Kingsguard. They gave his place to that black dog Clegane, and now Selmy’s wanted for treason. The fools sent some watchmen to seize him, but he slew two of them and escaped.” Mormont snorted, leaving no doubt of his view of men who’d send gold cloaks against a knight as renowed as Barristan the Bold. “We have white shadows in the woods and unquiet dead stalking our halls, and a boy sits the Iron Throne,” he said in disgust.

The raven laughed shrilly. “
Boy, boy, boy, boy
.”

Ser Barristan had been the Old Bear’s best hope, Jon remembered; if he had fallen, what chance was there that Mormont’s letter would be heeded? He curled his hand into a fist. Pain shot through his burned fingers. “What of my sisters?”

“The message made no mention of Lord Eddard or the girls.” He gave an irritated shrug. “Perhaps they never got my letter. Aemon sent two copies, with his best birds, but who can say? More like, Pycelle did not deign to reply. It would not be the first time, nor the last. I fear we count for less than nothing in King’s Landing. They tell us what they want us to know, and that’s little enough.”

And you tell
me
what you want
me
to know, and that’s less
, Jon thought resentfully. His brother Robb had called the banners and ridden south to war, yet no word of that had been breathed to him… save by Samwell Tarly, who’d read the letter to Maester Aemon and whispered its contents to Jon that night in secret, all the time saying how he shouldn’t. Doubtless they thought his brother’s war was none of his concern. It troubled him more than he could say. Robb was marching and he was not. No matter how often Jon told himself that his place was here now, with his new brothers on the Wall, he still felt craven.

“
Corn
,” the raven was crying. “
Corn, corn
.”

“Oh, be quiet,” the Old Bear told it. “Snow, how soon does Maester Aemon say you’ll have use of that hand back?”

“Soon,” Jon replied.

“Good.” On the table between them, Lord Mormont laid a large sword in a black metal scabbard banded with silver. “Here. You’ll be ready for this, then.”

The raven flapped down and landed on the table, strutting toward the sword, head cocked curiously. Jon hesitated. He had no inkling what this meant. “My lord?”

“The fire melted the silver off the pommel and burnt the crossguard and grip. Well, dry leather and old wood, what could you expect? The blade, now… you’d need a fire a hundred times as hot to harm the blade.” Mormont shoved the scabbard across the rough oak planks. “I had the rest made anew. Take it.”

“
Take it
,” echoed his raven, preening. “
Take it, take it
.”

Awkwardly, Jon took the sword in hand. His
left
hand; his bandaged right was still too raw and clumsy. Carefully he pulled it from its scabbard and raised it level with his eyes.

The pommel was a hunk of pale stone weighted with lead to balance the long blade. It had been carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf’s head, with chips of garnet set into the eyes. The grip was virgin leather, soft and black, as yet unstained by sweat or blood. The blade itself was a good half foot longer than those Jon was used to, tapered to thrust as well as slash, with three fullers deeply incised in the metal. Where Ice was a true two-handed greatsword, this was a hand-and-a-halfer, sometimes named a “bastard sword.” Yet the wolf sword actually seemed lighter than the blades he had wielded before. When Jon turned it sideways, he could see the ripples in the dark steel where the metal had been folded back on itself again and again. “This is Valyrian steel, my lord,” he said wonderingly. His father had let him handle Ice often enough; he knew the look, the feel.

“It is,” the Old Bear told him. “It was my father’s sword, and his father’s before him. The Mormonts have carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in my day and passed it on to my son when I took the black.”

He is giving me his son’s sword
. Jon could scarcely believe it. The blade was exquisitely balanced. The edges glimmered faintly as they kissed the light. “Your son—”

“My son brought dishonor to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to leave the sword behind when he fled. My sister returned it to my keeping, but the very sight of it reminded me of Jorah’s shame, so I put it aside and thought no more of it until we found it in the ashes of my bedchamber. The original pommel was a bear’s head, silver, yet so worn its features were all but indistinguishable. For you, I thought a white wolf more apt. One of our builders is a fair stonecarver.”

When Jon had been Bran’s age, he had dreamed of doing great deeds, as boys always did. The details of his feats changed with every dreaming, but quite often he imagined saving his father’s life. Afterward Lord Eddard would declare that Jon had proved himself a true Stark, and place Ice in his hand. Even then he had known it was only a child’s folly; no bastard could ever hope to wield a father’s sword. Even the memory shamed him. What kind of man stole his own brother’s birthright?
I have no right to this, he thought
,
no more than to Ice
. He twitched his burned fingers, feeling a throb of pain deep under the skin. “My lord, you honor me, but—”

“Spare me your
but’s
, boy,” Lord Mormont interrupted. “I would not be sitting here were it not for you and that beast of yours. You fought bravely… and more to the point, you thought quickly.
Fire!
Yes, damn it. We ought to have known. We ought to have
remembered
. The Long Night has come before. Oh, eight thousand years is a good while, to be sure… yet if the Night’s Watch does not remember, who will?”

“
Who will
,” chimed the talkative raven. “
Who will
.”

Truly, the gods had heard Jon’s prayer that night; the fire had caught in the dead man’s clothing and consumed him as if his flesh were candle wax and his bones old dry wood. Jon had only to close his eyes to see the thing staggering across the solar, crashing against the furniture and flailing at the flames. It was the face that haunted him most; surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh melting away and sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath.

Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the twisted thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again… and this time the burning corpse wore Lord Eddard’s features. It was his father’s skin that burst and blackened, his father’s eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like jellied tears. Jon did not understand why that should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say.

“A sword’s small payment for a life,” Mormont concluded. “Take it, I’ll hear no more of it, is that understood?”

“Yes, my lord.” The soft leather gave beneath Jon’s fingers, as if the sword were molding itself to his grip already. He knew he should be honored, and he was, and yet…

He is not my father
. The thought leapt unbidden to Jon’s mind.
Lord Eddard Stark is my father. I will not forget him, no matter how many swords they give me
. Yet he could scarcely tell Lord Mormont that it was another man’s sword he dreamt of…

“I want no courtesies either,” Mormont said, “so thank me no thanks. Honor the steel with deeds, not words.”

Jon nodded. “Does it have a name, my lord?”

“It did, once. Longclaw, it was called.”

“
Claw
,” the raven cried. “
Claw
.”

“Longclaw is an apt name.” Jon tried a practice cut. He was clumsy and uncomfortable with his left hand, yet even so the steel seemed to flow through the air, as if it had a will of its own. “Wolves have claws, as much as bears.”

The Old Bear seemed pleased by that. “I suppose they do. You’ll want to wear that over the shoulder, I imagine. It’s too long for the hip, at least until you’ve put on a few inches. And you’ll need to work at your two-handed strikes as well. Ser Endrew can show you some moves, when your burns have healed.”

“Ser Endrew?” Jon did not know the name.