Chapter 10 — Ashes in the Snow
The scream of the steward still echoes through the hall.
Dylen, what used to be Dylen, is already on his feet, staggering with jerking, unnatural movement, limbs twitching like a marionette cut loose from its strings. His eyes glow like twin shards of ice. There's no soul behind them. No pain. No mercy. Only hunger.
The room erupts into chaos.
Benches overturn. Men scramble back, shouting over one another. The air grows colder with every breath, each exhale turns to mist. Frost flowers bloom on the flagstones. Ghost lets out a savage growl, his white fur bristling, hackles high.
I don't hesitate.
My sword is already in my hand, drawn in one clean motion. I plant myself between the wight and the others. "Clear the hall!" I shout. "Get them out—"
The thing lunges.
I meet it head-on, slashing low at its knees. The steel bites deep into bone, severs muscle, but Dylen doesn't scream. Doesn't fall. The momentum alone should've dropped him, but he just keeps coming, dragging the leg behind him like it weighs nothing.
The sword does nothing.
Ghost hurls himself at the wight again, jaws snapping. Teeth sink into the dead man's forearm and yank. Bone cracks, but the wight doesn't falter. Its other hand claws at me, nails like shards of frozen glass. I stagger back, parry high, swing low. The arm hangs by a single tendon. Still, it strikes.
"Burn it!" I roar. "Fire—get fire!"
But the hearth's too far, and the coals scattered. The brands are half-burnt or out. The cold's creeping too fast, one breath, two, and my fingers are already stiff. I see my own breath in clouds, and for a mad instant, it reminds me of dragon smoke. Would that I had fire.
A flash of movement, Lord Commander Mormont storms through the room, armor half-buckled, white hair wild around his shoulders. "Stand fast!" he bellows. "Hold the line, drive it back!"
But even he pauses when he sees its eyes.
For one heartbeat, he just stares. And I know the thought in his head is the same in mine: This should not be.
Then his voice returns. "Flames! Oil! Anything that burns!"
A steward, a lad named Tolland, slips on the stones and drops the torch he carried. It skitters across the floor, sputters, nearly dies.
The wight's head turns toward him with eerie precision.
It moves faster than any corpse should. One stride, then two, then it's on the boy. On its way there a Black Brother takes one of its arms with his sword and another punches a knife into its back. But the thing just doesn't stop.
Tolland screams as it bites his throat. I'm moving before I think, shoulder slamming into the wight's flank, my sword hacking into its back. I hear ribs shatter. Still, it turns toward me.
Then Ghost barrels into it again, and this time, the wight's off-balance. It crashes into the overturned bench, tangled in splinters.
"Jon!" Mormont shouts, tossing something through the air.
A heavy clay lantern, pine oil.
I catch it. Just barely.
Without thinking, I smash it across the wight's chest. The oil splashes out in great, sticky arcs.
A spark from the torch.
Then flame.
The thing shrieks in defiance. In rage. It thrashes, ignited, the blue fire turning gold and red. The cold begins to lift, slowly, as the stench of burning flesh fills the air.
By the time it stops moving, there's little left but scorched bone and blackened cloth.
Silence returns to the hall. Heavy. Dreadful.
The smell lingers.
Mormont breathes heavily beside me. "That..." He just couldn't find the words.
I glanced at Tolland in the ground, his throat open, he was already dead.
The smell of burnt flesh still clings to the air, acrid and foul, but there's no time to gag. Before the fire even gutters, the door bursts open behind us, four more brothers storm into the hall, weapons drawn, responding to the screams.
And then the unexpected happens, poor Tolland, no more than ten and seven years old opens his eyes, a cold blue in them.
I thought that they couldn't raise more south of the wall... fuck!
"Another one!" someone shouts.
"Hold!" Mormont bellows, but panic wins.
Three men rush it. One, a veteran called Torm, swings with a heavy axe, sharp and well-forged. The blade crunches into the wight's shoulder and drives deep into the collarbone. Any man would fall screaming. But Tolland doesn't scream. He doesn't even slow.
His other hand flashes out, inhumanly fast. It grabs Torm by the face and tears.
Blood sprays like mist. Torm's scream is short, wet, and then he's on the ground, twitching, the right side of his face a ruin of torn flesh.
I move again, faster than thought, driven by something deeper than instinct. My longsword slashes downward, taking off the wight's arm at the elbow.
It doesn't stop.
The severed arm keeps moving, fingers clawing along the stone floor like a spider made of ice and rage. One of the younger recruits recoils, screaming, stomping on it with his boot. The hand claws through the leather.
"Fall back!" I shout. "It's going for the Old Bear—!"
And it is. That dead, frostbitten face turns toward Lord Commander Mormont, the thing that used to be Hareth, shambling straight for him, ignoring everyone else. The glow in its eyes flares brighter, fueled by something older than hate.
Mormont stands his ground, jaw clenched, short sword held steady. But he's not fast. Not anymore. He won't survive if it reaches him.
There's no time.
I seize a lamp from the wall, a thick, brass-bellied thing full of whale oil, heavy in my hand. My fingers are trembling, frost-stung and still raw from before, but they obey. I rip the stopper off with my teeth.
"Get clear!" I scream.
I don't wait to see if they do.
I hurl the lamp straight into the creature's chest.
The oil soaks it, dark, viscous, sticky. The impact drives the wight back a step. I grab the torch one of the brothers holds, push past him, and slam the fire straight into the spreading oil.
The world explodes in orange.
The wight ignites in a roar of flame.
It doesn't flinch. It screams. The sound is worse than pain. It's rage, a howl that echoes in bone, that curdles the air. It flails violently, striking walls, knocking over tables, trailing fire. The room fills with choking smoke.
"Back! Back, damn you!" Mormont yells, shielding his face from the heat. Men pull away, shielding their eyes. Someone is praying, loud and fast. Another is sobbing.
The burning thing slams into a pillar and collapses, still screaming.
It takes too long to die.
When it finally stops moving, it's little more than blackened bone and wet ash, a shape smoldering on the stones. The air is still cold, but the chill has receded. Slowly. Reluctantly.
Silence descends. Except for the crackle of fire and the moan of wind beyond the walls.
I stand in the center of it all, bruised, panting, hands scorched where the fire licked me. My forearms are red, the skin raw, but the pain feels distant. Familiar. Controlled.
Fire has never hurt me quite the way it should.
As a child, I used to play too close to the hearth in Winterfell. My hand would hover too near the flames. Maester Luwin once said I lacked fear of heat. But even now, with oil-burns turning my fingers red and raw, I know this: the fire hurt less than it should. I should be in the ground screaming; this won't even leave a scar.
I clench my hand. The pain comes. Belated. Manageable.
I remember the visions in the weirwood grove. The shadow of wings… the hiss of burning blood… a scream, and a dragon hatching in the snow.
Mormont speaks beside me, his voice hoarse. "Jon. That was… what in the Seven Hells was that?"
I look at the corpse, if it still counts as one.
"The dead," I murmur, "don't stay dead anymore."
The others stare at the charred remains in silence. One man kneels. Another mutters a prayer to the Father. Samwell stands near the edge of the group, eyes wide, hands shaking. Maester Aemon is in the other side of the room locking at me with sightless eyes that can see too much.
The weight of what just happened settles over them like snowfall.
… this was only the beginning.
The stench of burned flesh hung in the air long after the flames died. Smoke coiled up through the rafters of the hall like a serpent seeking escape, but there was no wind tonight, no cleansing chill. Just the acrid memory of what had happened.
I stood over the blackened bones. My sword was still in my hand, but it felt heavier now. The grip slick with sweat, knuckles white. Ghost pressed against my thigh, silent and tense, his red eyes never leaving the scorch mark on the stone.
The corpse, or what had been one, was gone now, reduced to ash and fragments. But it didn't feel gone. Not really. A piece of it still clung to us. To me.
Across the room, Bowen Marsh stood over the severed arm. The damn thing was still twitching. Fingers curling and uncurling as if clawing through some nightmare. When Marsh dropped it into the brazier, it bucked once, reflex or rage, I didn't know, and then cracked apart in the fire with a sound like wet wood bursting.
No one spoke. No one could.
I heard the whispers anyway.
"It wouldn't die…"
"What in the Seven Hells was that?"
"Blue eyes. I swear, they glowed—glowed."
"Stark burned it. Fire did it. Only fire..."
I said nothing. I didn't look at them.
I stared down at my hands instead, slight burns, blistered where I'd gripped the lamp too long. Maester Aemon had wrapped them, but they still ached, dull and hot. Yet even through the pain, I remembered how slow it had been to come. Like fire, reluctant to burn me.
I saw Sam leaning against the wall by the stairs, his face pale and soaked with sweat. His hands shook. He was clutching a leather-bound book like a shield. Like he didn't know what else to hold on to.
I crossed to him.
"You all right?" I asked.
He flinched. "I… I think so."
But I could see the lie in his eyes. He wasn't all right. None of us were.
"That thing," he whispered. "It wasn't natural."
"No," I said. "It wasn't."
Sam didn't reply. His mouth opened once, then closed. He just stared at the ashes.
I felt Ghost lean against me, fur bristling. The flames might've lit up again, but the air hadn't warmed up. If anything, it was colder now.
Gods, its one thing seeing it on a screen… what would thousands of them do to an army?
They summoned me late. After the hall was emptied and the bones scattered to ash. After the whispers gave way to silence again, and only the wind moved outside the Wall.
Lord Commander Mormont stood beside the hearth in his solar, firelight dancing across the dark wool of his cloak. He didn't look at me when I entered.
"Close the door, Stark," he said. "Sit."
I sat. The silence stretched out long and taut, like a drawn bowstring.
Then he said, without turning, "You saved my life."
I blinked. I didn't expect thanks. Least of all from him.
"I didn't have time to think," I said. "Just acted."
"You acted right," he said, and finally turned. His eyes were rimmed red, from smoke, from weariness, from too many winters and not enough hope, this man had seen the watch go to the dogs for decades. "You saw what none of us were ready to see. And you moved."
"I got lucky."
"No," he said. "You knew."
His gaze bored into me.
"You have fire in you, Stark. I've known boys break at the first arrow. You faced a walking corpse and burned it down. That's more than instinct... I won't ask, you have earned that much from me, but tell me what this is."
"Corn!"
I looked down at my bandaged hand.
"I've… heard of things like that before. In old books. Tales of the Long Night. The Others."
Mormont let out a grunt. "Stories. Ghost tales."
"Not anymore," I said. "That thing wasn't a man. It wasn't even a beast. It didn't feel pain. Didn't bleed. Didn't stop."
Mormont stared into the fire for a moment. "So we burn our dead now."
I nodded. "Everyone brought from north of the Wall. If they fall, you burn them. Immediately." The Others weren't supposed to be able to raise the dead on this side. But we clearly saw that. Was it because he was killed by a wight? Some kind of zombie method? "And everyone that falls on this side, too. They can clearly bypass the wall..."
The Lord Commander gave a slow nod. "I'll send word to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. No more burials. Only ashes. I will call back Benjen, I need him here more than out there."
Uncle Benjen had left a few days after I had arrived, we didn't talk much. I think when he saw me, he saw his sister, and that killed him a little bit inside.
I wasn't finished.
"That won't be enough," I said. "We need proof. And this shows the necessity of the reforms; if the enemy is coming, the Wall must be protected. I will do what I can south."
"Yes, I will start immediately." He raised an eyebrow. "What sort of proof?"
I met his gaze.
"You haveto capture one."
If it would even work, in the books the severed hand of the wight just decomposed and stopped moving when it was brought to Kings Landing, the Others were smart enough to know that humanity didn't belive in them anymore and to keep it that way.
His expression darkened.
"Have you gone mad?"
"No one will believe us, Lord Commander. Not the South. Not even the rest of the Watch. They'll say we've drunk too much whiskey. Seen shadows in the wind."
"So we bring a monster to their doorstep?"
"We bring truth," I said. "If the Wall really stands to guard the realms of men, then men need to know what we guard against."
"...We will do what we can."
Hopefully, they will be able to capture a live one, and find a way to keep it alive. Mormont didn't speak for a long time. He grabbed his sword and it looked like he was thinking of giving it to me, but in the end he didn't say anything.
Good, as much as I want Valyrian steel in my hands, it is needed here more.
Then he turned away, poured two cups of whiskey, and handed me one.
He raised his to the fire and muttered, "To truth, then. And to fire."
We drank.
It was bitter and cold. Like blood in snow.
The rookery was quiet in the hours before dawn. Snow whispered against the stone, and the wind clawed at the windows like an old, hungry thing. The ravens had gone still—perhaps out of respect. Or perhaps they simply knew.
I found him hunched beside the brazier, hands outstretched toward a flame that gave more light than heat. The fire painted his skin in soft gold, but it did nothing to drive the cold from his bones.
"You always come when the wind is worst," Aemon rasped without turning. "Or when your thoughts are loud."
I didn't answer at first. I just sat beside him on the worn bench, letting the silence sit between us like an old friend neither of us trusted fully. The fire crackled. Somewhere far below, a horn called a single, distant note.
"I'm leaving," I said at last.
"I know," he murmured. "Your step has grown sharp. Restless. You walk like a man whose path is pulling him forward faster than his heart can follow."
I looked at him. The pale cloud of his eyes, the tremble in his fingers. The deep, brittle weariness of a man who had outlived not only his kin but the purpose he once swore to.
"You don't have to die here," I said quietly. "You're Aemon Targaryen. I have land, ships. Men. Gold. A place for you, at Moat Cailin, at Winterfell, wherever you want. Let me take you away from this place."
A shadow of a smile touched his lips. "My place is here. Among crows and ghosts and old stones, Daemon."
"You deserve more than this frozen tomb."
"So do you," he said, turning his face toward me, "but that hasn't stopped you, has it? You have felt it too child, the magic of this place, it feeds us…"
I wanted to argue. To plead. But I could see it, feel it, in the way his shoulders sagged and his breath fluttered against the cold. He was already half a memory. The Wall was the last thing tethering him to this world. If he left it, the fire in him would go out.
"I won't let them forget you," I said.
"They already have," Aemon replied, gently. "That's the way of things. But if you remember me... that is enough."
He reached out then, blind fingers fumbling until they found my wrist.
"You have the blood of the dragon and the heart of the wolf. You were always meant to walk the knife's edge between ice and fire. Be careful, child. One will always want to devour the other."
I stared at the fire.
"My grandfather killed my other grandfather."
Aemon said nothing.
"My father, Rhaegar, his choices sparked a war that broke the realm. Thousands died for it. My grandfather was a madman who deserved death. I… I don't think much of my own ancestors. What kind of a man does that make me?"
I turned to him. "You're the only one I can ask. You're a Targaryen. Do you feel it too? That… tangle inside. That sense that your ancestors are always watching, urging you toward fire, toward glory… toward madness?"
Aemon folded his hands slowly, thoughtfully.
"I know that tangle well," he said. "My brothers bathed in fire. My cousins sang of dragons and danced through blood. I chose to lay down the crown before it could choose me. But the fire never leaves us, Daemon—"
He said the name softly.
"—What matters is how we contain it." He said slowly. Looking at my soul. "You are not the sum of your father's crimes. It doesn't matter what you think of them. You must choose, every day, to be better than they were. That is the weight of our blood. Not power. Not prophecy. Choice. They will call you a bastard, they will call you rapespawn. It does not matter, what matters is that you know who you are."
I held his hand a little longer than I should have. And then embraced him. This might be the last time I see him. I may not agree with all that he thought or said, but Aemon Targaryen was undeniably a wise man, and it was a shame that he had to rot here.
Then I rose.
"When the ravens bring word, it'll be from me."
"I'll wait for your wings, nephew." he said, and then turned back to the fire. His fingers opened slightly, as if reaching for something only he could see.
I left him there, as the snow fell harder, and the Wall groaned under the weight of eternal winter.
A sennight had passed since fire took the dead man, and Castle Black no longer felt like a half-buried ruin clinging to survival.
It breathed again.
The scent of fresh-cut pine and tarred beams still lingered in the air, stronger than the stink of sweat or the soot of the kitchens. The crooked, half-collapsed buildings that once littered the courtyard were gone, torn down and burned or rebuilt with new timber, cut in the foothills below the Wall and dragged up by sleds and horse teams from the Gift. The yard itself had been leveled and packed hard with gravel, stone, and concrete, bordered now by a waist-high stone wall laid by Old Stonesmen from Karhold who had come north with the last supply trains.
The great hall had changed most of all. It had a proper roof now, sloped steep and sharp to shed snow and ice, tiled with black slate. Two chimneys puffed faint trails of smoke into the air, one from the hearth inside the hall and one from the new kitchens that had been built adjoining the mess.
The old cracked timbers had been replaced by stout beams of heartwood, dark and red, polished and sealed against the cold. Above the entrance, someone, likely Pyp or Toad, had carved a rough image of a direwolf's head into the lintel, its eyes fierce, its snout turned toward the gate.
The lift was finally finished.
The old cage, held together with rust and frozen rope, had been discarded. In its place stood a reinforced platform of ironwood planks bolted to a heavy oak frame. It moved with a system of pulleys, gear winches, and iron weights, sturdy enough to carry forty men at once, and faster than the old winch by half.
The counterweight system allowed just one man or a mule to move me mechanism. Sam had overseen its final construction phase, watching it rise now, smooth, deliberate, like a ship's sail hoisting skyward, made me feel something close to pride.
The armory had been doubled in size. No longer a damp lean-to full of rusted blades and bent mail, it had been cleaned out, re-roofed, and fitted with racks of spears, swords, shields, bows, and quivers of fresh-fletched arrows, all steel. It had blacksmiths now who worked in shifts, mending links and shaping steel. A row of new mail hauberks gleamed like dull water in the firelight when the forge's door opened.
Inside the new storerooms, cool, dry, and roofed with sod, were kept barrels of salt pork, dried fish, beans, oats, hard bread, pickled onions, and even small casks of spiced wine. The place was warmer now, and the black brother wouldn't freeze at night. The watch couldn't stop singing my praises.
The castle felt a bit empty now that the laborers were leaving slowly, it could hold many times more men than it had, but with time and the reforms the Lord Commander had started implementing it would start growing.
By the time the wilding horde came, the castle might hold three times as many men as it did now. And the war to come south would see many men being sent here. I would love to see the wildings meeting the new steel doors of the wall, the scorpions and towers on top of the wall, the steel-tipped arrows and crossbow bolts, and twenty-five hundred men manning the castle.
At least if Mance Rayder decides to attack and not heed my word of diplomacy.
Reports from the Shadow Tower were promising, if slow. Ser Denys Mallister had sent word that they'd repaired the south-facing walls and roofed over the old rookery. They'd uncovered a ruined forge buried under ice near the outer yard, usable, with time. More importantly, settlers from nearby villages had begun drifting closer to the Gift again. A dozen families had accepted Mallister's offer of land and protection, building homes and small herds just beyond the old watchposts.
Eastwatch was in worse shape, weather-wracked, sea-scoured, but Cotter Pyke had written that the docks had been reinforced with stone and tarred pine. Fishing boats now made regular trips down the coast toward Last Hearth and Skagos, trading salt fish and crab for lumber and sheep. The outer curtain wall had partially collapsed during the last storm, but Pyke had drafted the smugglers in his garrison into helping with reconstruction—"They're used to working in the dark," he'd written, "and they know how to hold a line, if you give them a whip."
Some of the men I'd brought north with the caravan had chosen not to return. They'd listened closely when Lord Commander Mormont made his offer, land in the Gift, a cottage and a share of the fields for those willing to help rebuild the Watch's holdings. Not all were sellswords or vagabonds; a few were farmers' sons with nothing left to return to, men weary of war and ready for soil and stone over sword and shield.
Now they were raising fences along the tree line and helping restore the holdfasts east of Queenscrown. Encouraged by their choice, Mormont had begun drafting letters, some bound for White Harbor, others for Barrowton and even Torrhen's Square, offering opportunity to any man with strong arms and honest hunger.
He meant to repopulate the Gift not just with brothers, but with free men. It was a vision both bold and fragile, and for the first time in a century, the land around Castle Black had begun to breathe again.
The drills were done for the morning. Most of the brothers were dragging their aching limbs to the kitchens or limping off to sharpen blades dulled by the frozen ground. I sat on a stacked barrel near the edge of the yard, watching them go.
Sam was still standing there. Alone.
Sweat soaked through the back of his tunic, dark against the grey wool. His helm was too large for him, slightly tilted to one side. He held a wooden practice sword like it might bite him at any moment, blade dipped, stance crooked.
The training yard was quiet in the afternoon light. Most of the men had gone to the hall for stew and black bread, but Sam was still there, red-faced and panting, fumbling with a wooden sword far too heavy for him. He'd barely managed to lift it, let alone swing it, and now he stood hunched over in the cold, sweat steaming off his brow.
I crossed the yard slowly, Ghost padding at my side.
"Your stance has improved," I said, just loud enough for him to hear. "You didn't trip over your own feet this time."
Sam gave me a weak smile and slumped onto a bench with a groan. "That's only because Grenn stood behind me and shoved me forward."
I sat beside him, unstrapping my gloves. "You've had worse days."
"I've had nothing but worse days," he muttered. "I still can't swing the damned thing without wanting to vomit. I'm not a fighter, Jon."
"No," I said. "You're not. And thank the gods for that."
He blinked at me. "What?"
I turned to face him fully, elbows on my knees. "Sam. You've done more in the last few weeks than half the Watch has in the last five years. Those builders would still be arguing over rafters if you hadn't sorted the supply ledgers. The Eastwatch grain shipments were mislabeled until you rewrote the inventory. The lift's counterweights? Your idea. You saved us weeks."
Sam fidgeted, looking down at his boots. "I just… it's what I know. Books. Numbers. Writing things down."
"And it matters," I said. "It's mattered more than blades or brute strength. You accelerated the entire thing by weeks. Maybe months."
He looked up at me slowly, eyes uncertain.
"You're wasted here," I said. "On the Wall. In the Watch."
He swallowed hard. "That's not a small thing to say."
"I know it isn't. And I've thought long about it."
The words came more easily now. I'd rehearsed them in my mind a dozen times over the last two days. "I want you to come south with me, Sam, to Moat Cailin. I'll need men I trust, men with sharp minds who know how to plan and build. I've got land, walls to finish, and people to feed. I have many plans I want to implement, and I need men like you to do it."
"You want me to… what? Leave the Watch? Serve you?"
"Yes," I said plainly. "As my steward. My advisor. My friend."
He stared at me, stunned. "But I—the vows. Even if I haven't said them yet, I'm bound by them in spirit. And Lord Mormont—"
"I've already spoken to Mormont," I said. "He understands. You've done your part for the Watch, and more. The vows are sacred, but you have yet to say them. You were never meant to die in black. You were meant to do something."
Sam hesitated. "And my father…?"
I gave him a hard look. "Your father sent you here to break you. He'll never see what I see. But I do. I see the man who kept this place from freezing to death. Who solved five dozen problems with ink and logic by my side. I don't care what Randyll fucking Tarly thinks. He wasted his best man by sending him here; he could have had the greatest future Lord Tarly by his side, and he squandered it. I care what you decide to become."
He looked away, face twisting. "I don't know if I'm brave enough."
"You're more than brave, Sam. Bravery isn't always in the blade. Sometimes it's in staying when you want to run. Sometimes it's in choosing the path no one else dares. You've already done that."
The wind whistled through the yard. A raven cawed overhead. Sam sat silent for a long moment, then finally nodded.
"I'll go," he whispered. "If you'll have me."
And now I have my Seren number two.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Then we leave at first light. Pack light," I said. "We ride soon."
"err— Yes!, I don't have many things anyway..." He ran off to collect his things, tripping all the way.
That man is hopeless...
For the first time in days, I felt a weight lift.
Not all battles would be won with swords.
Some would be won with books.
Some with friends.
And some with both.