Chapter 126 – Seeking a Bit of Peace and Quiet
An unbroken stream of people filed through the narrow passage beneath the Wall, countless boots crunching against packed snow with sharp, grating sounds.
Elders, women, children, warriors…
One by one, the wildlings wrapped in animal hides and dressed in crude garb passed through, drawing hostile stares from those lining both sides of the road.
Marko was no exception.
Standing beneath the eaves of a nearby building, he glared wide-eyed at the seemingly endless procession, his thoughts drifting to the black-cloaked brothers who had once died horribly beyond the Wall—slain by these very savages.
"Bastard wildlings. Every last one of them should die," someone snarled beside him.
Marko turned his head. It was Tollett, a fellow ranger. He had lost an eye to a wildling arrow during a patrol, and his hatred for them was legendary within Castle Black.
In the past, Tollett would have killed wildlings without hesitation—old, young, it didn't matter. Yet now, he could only watch as his enemies stepped onto their land, even lowering his voice unconsciously as he cursed.
What was he afraid of?
Marko knew the answer all too well.
He feared the northern soldiers escorting them.
He feared the commanders who had made this decision.
And most of all, he feared that man—the one with terrifying methods: Lord Cranston.
On the day of the duel with the wildlings, many had watched from atop the Wall.
They had seen Sardin beheaded.
And they had seen Sardin grow a new head afterward.
Now, nicknames like Two-Headed Sardin, Undying Sardin, and Headless Sardin were circulating everywhere. His name was known to everyone in Castle Black.
It was said that even when Sardin went whoring in Mole's Town, he didn't have to pay a single copper.
Everyone flocked to him.
And all of it—every last bit—had been created by that man who seemed no different from a god.
So even though the Night's Watch despised the wildlings, and even though they were furious at the high command's concessions, none of them dared say much in front of such a figure.
Some brothers, under the pressure of his overwhelming presence, had even begun to change their thinking.
If the "Divine Envoy" approved of the wildlings' submission, then surely there was a reason.
After all, a divine envoy could commune with the gods—far wiser than mere mortals.
Or perhaps… he was a god walking among them.
Either way, any decision made by such a being had to be the right one.
Marko neither agreed nor disagreed.
Logically speaking, the White Walkers were indeed far more terrifying than the wildlings—terrifying beyond comparison.
But to him, they existed only in legends.
In all his years, he had never seen even a strand of a White Walker's hair.
If the Lord Commander's party hadn't sworn so vehemently that they were real, Marko wouldn't have believed it at all.
"And yet… the truth seems to be exactly that," he murmured.
Absentmindedly, he watched as the wildling column continued along the muddy road through the wooden fortress, then—under the Watch's guidance—filed out again, heading south of the Wall toward land that had long lain abandoned.
A strange sense of loss welled up in his chest.
That land was the Night's Watch's inheritance—thousands of years old.
Even if it had stood empty for centuries, to hand it over just like that…
It felt as though their treasure had been stripped away before his very eyes.
To suppress those thoughts, Marko decided on a simple solution—out of sight, out of mind.
He headed for the training yard to "relax."
Now that the wildlings had officially become "their own people," the next enemy was inevitably the White Walkers. On that front, the commanders had largely agreed to rely on the Wall's natural defenses and wait for the enemy to come to them.
Which meant archery practice had become a top priority.
Marko had always favored the morningstar and mounted combat. He'd never been particularly fond of bows—out of ten shots, two or three hitting the mark was already decent by his standards. So he planned to spend some time practicing, lest he become a liability when the fighting started.
Unfortunately, even the training yard was anything but peaceful.
Before he even reached it, he heard several black-cloaked brothers shooting arrows while loudly arguing.
"Handing the New Gift over to the wildlings is the stupidest thing imaginable. What was the Lord Commander thinking? Letting old grudges go is one thing—giving them land is another!"
"So what else should we do?" a skinny man beside him snorted. "Leave all that land empty forever?"
"It's empty because of the wildlings! If not for them, that rich soil wouldn't have been abandoned in the first place!"
"True enough—but without the wildlings, we don't have the manpower to farm it either."
"But that land belongs to the Night's Watch!"
"It still does! We won the duel—every wildling has to join the Watch and fight the White Walkers!"
"Wildlings in the Night's Watch? Ha! That's the funniest joke I've heard in my life."
...
"Well, joke or not, we won. Haven't you heard? The wildlings have to pay taxes now. Taxes! Listen to that—I blinked and suddenly I'm a noble lord."
"I heard the Stark of Winterfell nearly lost his front teeth when he heard."
"Don't talk nonsense. If Lord Stark hadn't agreed, Commander Mormont never would've accepted the duel."
"Why would Stark's approval matter? The Night's Watch is the Night's Watch. The North is the North."
...
Wildlings.
Wildlings.
Wildlings.
That was all anyone talked about now.
The moment he heard the word, Marko's thoughts filled with memories from his decade-plus as a ranger—dead brothers, butchered patrols, savage customs, and the many wildling faces that had died by his own hand.
He cursed under his breath, the urge to train evaporating without him even noticing.
Turning on his heel, he walked away.
...
He wandered aimlessly through the wooden fortress—once intimately familiar, now increasingly strange.
Familiar faces. Unfamiliar faces. Endless chatter.
And no matter how the conversations twisted and turned, they always circled back to the same topics:
Wildlings.
Two-Headed Sardin.
Undying Sardin.
And the Divine Envoy— Lord Cranston.
Seeing was believing.
No matter how many legendary deeds the Divine Envoy had accomplished elsewhere, nothing shook Castle Black like that moment.
Rumor had it that after losing the duel, the wildlings had planned to back out—right up until Sardin rose from the dead with a new head. That sight had scared them witless. When the Watch demanded submission, they hadn't dared let out so much as a fart.
Lost in thought, Marko suddenly heard a commotion outside the castle gates.
Looking over, he saw a group of Bolton men-at-arms escorting a wagon inside.
Or perhaps he should call them the envoy's private soldiers now.
Their leader—Steelshanks—was someone Marko recognized. Born in a Bolton-held village, he'd started as a common soldier but earned notice through sheer brutality and cold-blooded efficiency. Eventually, Lord Bolton had handed him over to Lord Cranston.
Now Steelshanks was driving the wagon straight through the stream of departing wildlings, pushing against the flow without the slightest concern for order.
Incoming and outgoing traffic tangled into chaos. In the end, it took Marko—an experienced local—to step in and help clear the way before the wagon could finally squeeze through.
Wiping sweat from his brow, Marko casually lifted the linen tarp and picked up a twisted black root.
"What's this?" he asked curiously.
"Don't touch that," Steelshanks snapped, glaring at him. "That's for our lord."
There wasn't the slightest trace of gratitude in his voice.
Ever since someone had tried to steal books from the King's Tower, these private soldiers had treated every man of the Watch with suspicion—as if everyone were another thief waiting to happen.
To be fair, the feeling was mutual.
It had only been two books, yet the result was one dead and one crippled. The survivor had merely gone blind—but after offending Cranston, he'd been sent to Mole's Town to scrape out a miserable existence.
The dead one was far worse.
His body had rotted into a stinking horror. Marko and several brothers had buried him themselves—the smell had been unforgettable, like a corpse soaked in a latrine for months.
So when he heard the items belonged to Cranston, Marko quickly withdrew his hand and looked away, a hint of panic creeping in.
A man who could give someone a second head could just as easily remove their first—silently.
The unspoken rule among veteran brothers was simple:
Avoid him. Avoid his things. And above all—don't offend him or his people.
Putting distance between himself and the wagon, Marko returned to the barracks, hoping to hide away in some quiet corner.
Even that small wish went unfulfilled.
"If I had the Divine Envoy's power, the first thing I'd do is go to King's Landing and bed Cersei. Fuck it—she's supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms."
A snickering, conspiratorial laugh drifted through the room.
Marko glanced over. One of his bunkmates was sitting on his bed, waggling his eyebrows at another.
Marko could only sigh helplessly.