TYRION

“Are you certain that you must leave us so soon?” the Lordxy Commanderxy asked him.

“Past certain, Lordxy Mormontxy,” Tyrionxy replied. “My brother Jaimexy will be wondering what has become of me. He may decide that you have convinced me to take the black.”

“Would that I could.” Mormontxy picked up a crab claw and cracked it in his fist. Old as he was, the Lordxy Commanderxy still had the strength of a bear. “You’re a cunning man, Tyrionxy. We have need of men of your sort on the Wallxy.”

Tyrionxy grinned. “Then I shall scour the Seven Kingdomsxy for dwarfs and ship them all to you, Lordxy Mormontxy.” As they laughed, he sucked the meat from a crab leg and reached for another. The crabs had arrived from Eastwatchxy only this morning, packed in a barrel of snow, and they were succulent.

Ser Alliserxy Thornexyxy was the only man at table who did not so much as crack a smile. “Lannisterxy mocks us.”

“Only you, Ser Alliserxy,” Tyrionxy said. This time the laughter round the table had a nervous, uncertain quality to it.

Thornexy’s black eyes fixed on Tyrionxy with loathing. “You have a bold tongue for someone who is less than half a man. Perhaps you and I should visit the yard together.”

“Why?” asked Tyrionxy. “The crabs are here.”

The remark brought more guffaws from the others. Ser Alliserxy stood up, his mouth a tight line. “Come and make your japes with steel in your hand.”

Tyrionxy looked pointedly at his right hand. “Why, I have steel in my hand, Ser Alliserxy, although it appears to be a crab fork. Shall we duel?” He hopped up on his chair and began poking at Thornexy’s chest with the tiny fork. Roars of laughter filled the tower room. Bits of crab flew from the Lordxy Commanderxy’s mouth as he began to gasp and choke. Even his raven joined in, cawing loudly from above the window. “Duel! Duel! Duel!”

Ser Alliserxy Thornexyxy walked from the room so stiffly it looked as though he had a dagger up his butt.

Mormontxy was still gasping for breath. Tyrionxy pounded him on the back. “To the victor goes the spoils,” he called out. “I claim Thornexy’s share of the crabs.”

Finally the Lordxy Commanderxy recovered himself. “You are a wicked man, to provoke our Ser Alliserxy so,” he scolded.

Tyrionxy seated himself and took a sip of wine. “If a man paints a target on his chest, he should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow at him. I have seen dead men with more humor than your Ser Alliserxy.”

“Not so,” objected the Lordxy Stewardxyxy, Bowen Marshxy, a man as round and red as a pomegranate. “You ought to hear the droll names he gives the lads he trains.”

Tyrionxy had heard a few of those droll names. “I’ll wager the lads have a few names for him as well,” he said. “Chip the ice off your eyes, my good lords. Ser Alliserxy Thornexyxy should be mucking out your stables, not drilling your young warriors.”

“The Watch has no shortage of stableboys,” Lordxy Mormontxy grumbled. “That seems to be all they send us these days. Stableboys and sneak thieves and rapers. Ser Alliserxy is an anointed knight, one of the few to take the black since I have been Lordxy Commanderxy. He fought bravely at Kingxy’s Landingxy.”

“On the wrong side,” Ser Jaremy Rykkerxyxy commented dryly. “I ought to know, I was there on the battlements beside him. Tywinxy Lannisterxyxy gave us a splendid choice. Take the blackxy, or see our heads on spikes before evenfall. No offense intended, Tyrionxy.”

“None taken, Ser Jaremy. My father is very fond of spiked heads, especially those of people who have annoyed him in some fashion. And a face as noble as yours, well, no doubt he saw you decorating the city wall above the Kingxy’s Gatexyxy. I think you would have looked very striking up there.”

“Thank you,” Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile.

Lordxy Commanderxy Mormontxy cleared his throat. “Sometimes I fear Ser Alliserxy saw you true, Tyrionxy. You do mock us and our noble purpose here.”

Tyrionxy shrugged. “We all need to be mocked from time to time, Lordxy Mormontxy, lest we start to take ourselves too seriously. More wine, please.” He held out his cup.

As Rykkerxy filled it for him, Bowen Marshxy said, “You have a great thirst for a small man.”

“Oh, I think that Lordxy Tyrionxy is quite a large man,” Maesterxy Aemonxyxy said from the far end of the table. He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the Night’s Watchxy all fell quiet, the better to hear what the ancient had to say. “I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world.”

Tyrionxy answered gently, “I’ve been called many things, my lord, but giant is seldom one of them.”

“Nonetheless,” Maesterxy Aemonxyxy said as his clouded, milk-white eyes moved to Tyrionxy’s face, “I think it is true.”

For once, Tyrionxy Lannisterxyxy found himself at a loss for words. He could only bow his head politely and say, “You are too kind, Maesterxy Aemonxyxy.”

The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken beneath the weight of a hundred years so his maester’s collar with its links of many metals hung loose about his throat. “I have been called many things, my lord,” he said, “but kind is seldom one of them.” This time Tyrionxy himself led the laughter.

Much later, when the serious business of eating was done and the others had left, Mormontxy offered Tyrionxy a chair beside the fire and a cup of mulled spirits so strong they brought tears to his eyes. “The kingsroad can be perilous this far north,” the Lordxy Commanderxy told him as they drank.

“I have Jyckxy and Morrecxy,” Tyrionxy said, “and Yorenxy is riding south again.”

“Yorenxy is only one man. The Watch shall escort you as far as Winterfellxy,” Mormontxy announced in a tone that brooked no argument. “Three men should be sufficient.”

“If you insist, my lord,” Tyrionxy said. “You might send young Snowxy. He would be glad for a chance to see his brothers.”

Mormontxy frowned through his thick grey beard. “Snowxy? Oh, the Starkxy bastard. I think not. The young ones need to forget the lives they left behind them, the brothers and mothers and all that. A visit home would only stir up feelings best left alone. I know these things. My own blood kin … my sister Maege rules Bear Islandxy now, since my son’s dishonor. I have nieces I have never seen.” He took a swallow. “Besides, Jon Snowxyxy is only a boy. You shall have three strong swords, to keep you safe.”

“I am touched by your concern, Lordxy Mormontxy.” The strong drink was making Tyrionxy light-headed, but not so drunk that he did not realize that the Old Bear wanted something from him. “I hope I can repay your kindness.”

“You can,” Mormontxy said bluntly. “Your sister sits beside the king. Your brother is a great knight, and your father the most powerful lord in the Seven Kingdomsxy. Speak to them for us. Tell them of our need here. You have seen for yourself, my lord. The Night’s Watchxy is dying. Our strength is less than a thousand now. Six hundred here, two hundred in the Shadow Towerxy, even fewer at Eastwatchxy, and a scant third of those fighting men. The Wallxy is a hundred leagues long. Think on that. Should an attack come, I have three men to defend each mile of wall.”

“Three and a third,” Tyrionxy said with a yawn.

Mormontxy scarcely seemed to hear him. The old man warmed his hands before the fire. “I sent Benjenxy Starkxyxy to search after Yohn Roycexyxy’s son, lost on his first ranging. The Roycexy boy was green as summer grass, yet he insisted on the honor of his own command, saying it was his due as a knight. I did not wish to offend his lord father, so I yielded. I sent him out with two men I deemed as good as any in the Watch. More fool I.”

“Foolxy,” the raven agreed. Tyrionxy glanced up. The bird peered down at him with those beady black eyes, ruffling its wings. “Foolxy,” it called again. Doubtless old Mormontxy would take it amiss if he throttled the creature. A pity.

The Lordxy Commanderxy took no notice of the irritating bird. “Garedxy was near as old as I am and longer on the Wallxy,” he went on, “yet it would seem he forswore himself and fled. I should never have believed it, not of him, but Lordxy Eddardxy sent me his head from Winterfellxy. Of Roycexy, there is no word. One deserter and two men lost, and now Benxy Starkxy too has gone missing.” He sighed deeply. “Who am I to send searching after him? In two years I will be seventy. Too old and too weary for the burden I bear, yet if I set it down, who will pick it up? Alliserxy Thornexyxy? Bowen Marshxy? I would have to be as blind as Maesterxy Aemonxyxy not to see what they are. The Night’s Watchxy has become an army of sullen boys and tired old men. Apart from the men at my table tonight, I have perhaps twenty who can read, and even fewer who can think, or plan, or lead. Once the Watch spent its summers building, and each Lordxy Commanderxy raised the Wallxy higher than he found it. Now it is all we can do to stay alive.”

He was in deadly earnest, Tyrionxy realized. He felt faintly embarrassed for the old man. Lordxy Mormontxy had spent a good part of his life on the Wallxy, and he needed to believe if those years were to have any meaning. “I promise, the king will hear of your need,” Tyrionxy said gravely, “and I will speak to my father and my brother Jaimexy as well.” And he would. Tyrionxy Lannisterxyxy was as good as his word. He left the rest unsaid; that Kingxy Robertxyxy would ignore him, Lordxy Tywinxyxy would ask if he had taken leave of his senses, and Jaimexy would only laugh.

“You are a young man, Tyrionxy,” Mormontxy said. “How many winters have you seen?”

He shrugged. “Eight, nine. I misremember.”

“And all of them short.”

“As you say, my lord.” He had been born in the dead of winter, a terrible cruel one that the maesters said had lasted near three years, but Tyrionxy’s earliest memories were of spring.

“When I was a boy, it was said that a long summer always meant a long winter to come. This summer has lasted nine years, Tyrionxy, and a tenth will soon be upon us. Think on that.”

“When I was a boy,” Tyrionxy replied, “my wet nurse told me that one day, if men were good, the gods would give the world a summer without ending. Perhaps we’ve been better than we thought, and the Great Summerxyxy is finally at hand.” He grinned.

The Lordxy Commanderxy did not seem amused. “You are not fool enough to believe that, my lord. Already the days grow shorter. There can be no mistake, Aemonxy has had letters from the Citadelxy, findings in accord with his own. The end of summer stares us in the face.” Mormontxy reached out and clutched Tyrionxy tightly by the hand. “You must make them understand. I tell you, my lord, the darkness is coming. There are wild things in the woods, direwolves and mammoths and snow bears the size of aurochs, and I have seen darker shapes in my dreams.”

“In your dreams,” Tyrionxy echoed, thinking how badly he needed another strong drink.

Mormontxy was deaf to the edge in his voice. “The fisherfolk near Eastwatchxy have glimpsed white walkers on the shore.”

This time Tyrionxy could not hold his tongue. “The fisherfolk of Lannisportxy often glimpse merlings.”

“Denys Mallisterxyxy writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping past the Shadow Towerxy in numbers greater than ever before. They are running, my lord … but running from what?” Lordxy Mormontxy moved to the window and stared out into the night. “These are old bones, Lannisterxy, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Nightxy falls, only the Night’s Watchxy will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. The gods help us all if we are not ready.”

“The gods help me if I do not get some sleep tonight. Yorenxy is determined to ride at first light.” Tyrionxy got to his feet, sleepy from wine and tired of doom. “I thank you for all the courtesies you have done me, Lordxy Mormontxy.”

“Tell them, Tyrionxy. Tell them and make them believe. That is all the thanks I need.” He whistled, and his raven flew to him and perched on his shoulder. Mormontxy smiled and gave the bird some corn from his pocket, and that was how Tyrionxy left him.

It was bitter cold outside. Bundled thickly in his furs, Tyrionxy Lannisterxyxy pulled on his gloves and nodded to the poor frozen wretches standing sentry outside the Commander’s Keepxy. He set off across the yard for his own chambers in the Kingxy’s Tower, walking as briskly as his legs could manage. Patchesxy of snow crunched beneath his feet as his boots broke the night’s crust, and his breath steamed before him like a banner. He shoved his hands into his armpits and walked faster, praying that Morrecxy had remembered to warm his bed with hot bricks from the fire.

Behind the Kingxy’s Tower, the Wallxy glimmered in the light of the moon, immense and mysterious. Tyrionxy stopped for a moment to look up at it. His legs ached of cold and haste.

Suddenly a strange madness took hold of him, a yearning to look once more off the end of the world. It would be his last chance, he thought; tomorrow he would ride south, and he could not imagine why he would ever want to return to this frozen desolation. The Kingxy’s Tower was before him, with its promise of warmth and a soft bed, yet Tyrionxy found himself walking past it, toward the vast pale palisade of the Wallxy.

A wooden stair ascended the south face, anchored on huge rough-hewn beams sunk deep into the ice and frozen in place. Back and forth it switched, clawing its way upward as crooked as a bolt of lightning. The black brothers assured him that it was much stronger than it looked, but Tyrionxy’s legs were cramping too badly for him to even contemplate the ascent. He went instead to the iron cage beside the well, clambered inside, and yanked hard on the bell rope, three quick pulls.

He had to wait what seemed an eternity, standing there inside the bars with the Wallxy to his back. Long enough for Tyrionxy to begin to wonder why he was doing this. He had just about decided to forget his sudden whim and go to bed when the cage gave a jerk and began to ascend.

He moved upward slowly, by fits and starts at first, then more smoothly. The ground fell away beneath him, the cage swung, and Tyrionxy wrapped his hands around the iron bars. He could feel the cold of the metal even through his gloves. Morrecxy had a fire burning in his room, he noted with approval, but the Lordxy Commanderxy’s tower was dark. The Old Bearxy had more sense than he did, it seemed.

Then he was above the towers, still inching his way upward. Castle Blackxy lay below him, etched in moonlight. You could see how stark and empty it was from up here; windowless keeps, crumbling walls, courtyards choked with broken stone. Farther off, he could see the lights of Mole’s Town, the little village half a league south along the kingsroad, and here and there the bright glitter of moonlight on water where icy streams descended from the mountain heights to cut across the plains. The rest of the world was a bleak emptiness of windswept hills and rocky fields spotted with snow.

Finally a thick voice behind him said, “Seven hells, it’s the dwarf,” and the cage jerked to a sudden stop and hung there, swinging slowly back and forth, the ropes creaking.

“Bring him in, damn it.” There was a grunt and a loud groaning of wood as the cage slid sideways and then the Wallxy was beneath him. Tyrionxy waited until the swinging had stopped before he pushed open the cage door and hopped down onto the ice. A heavy figure in black was leaning on the winch, while a second held the cage with a gloved hand. Their faces were muffled in woolen scarves so only their eyes showed, and they were plump with layers of wool and leather, black on black. “And what will you be wanting, this time of night?” the one by the winch asked.

“A last look.”

The men exchanged sour glances. “Look all you want,” the other one said. “Just have a care you don’t fall off, little man. The Old Bearxy would have our hides.” A small wooden shack stood under the great crane, and Tyrionxy saw the dull glow of a brazier and felt a brief gust of warmth when the winch men opened the door and went back inside. And then he was alone.

It was bitingly cold up here, and the wind pulled at his clothes like an insistent lover. The top of the Wallxy was wider than the kingsroad often was, so Tyrionxy had no fear of falling, although the footing was slicker than he would have liked. The brothers spread crushed stone across the walkways, but the weight of countless footsteps would melt the Wallxy beneath, so the ice would seem to grow around the gravel, swallowing it, until the path was bare again and it was time to crush more stone.

Still, it was nothing that Tyrionxy could not manage. He looked off to the east and west, at the Wallxy stretching before him, a vast white road with no beginning and no end and a dark abyss on either side. West, he decided, for no special reason, and he began to walk that way, following the pathway nearest the north edge, where the gravel looked freshest.

His bare cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and his legs complained more loudly with every step, but Tyrionxy ignored them. The wind swirled around him, gravel crunched beneath his boots, while ahead the white ribbon followed the lines of the hills, rising higher and higher, until it was lost beyond the western horizon. He passed a massive catapult, as tall as a city wall, its base sunk deep into the Wallxy. The throwing arm had been taken off for repairs and then forgotten; it lay there like a broken toy, half-embedded in the ice.

On the far side of the catapult, a muffled voice called out a challenge. “Who goes there? Halt!”

Tyrionxy stopped. “If I halt too long I’ll freeze in place, Jon,” he said as a shaggy pale shape slid toward him silently and sniffed at his furs. “Hello, Ghostxy.”

Jon Snowxyxy moved closer. He looked bigger and heavier in his layers of fur and leather, the hood of his cloak pulled down over his face. “Lannisterxy,” he said, yanking loose the scarf to uncover his mouth. “This is the last place I would have expected to see you.” He carried a heavy spear tipped in iron, taller than he was, and a sword hung at his side in a leather sheath. Across his chest was a gleaming black warhorn, banded with silver.

“This is the last place I would have expected to be seen,” Tyrionxy admitted. “I was captured by a whim. If I touch Ghostxy, will he chew my hand off?”

“Not with me here,” Jon promised.

Tyrionxy scratched the white wolf behind the ears. The red eyes watched him impassively. The beast came up as high as his chest now. Another year, and Tyrionxy had the gloomy feeling he’d be looking up at him. “What are you doing up here tonight?” he asked. “Besides freezing your manhood off …”

“I have drawn night guard,” Jon said. “Again. Ser Alliserxy has kindly arranged for the watch commander to take a special interest in me. He seems to think that if they keep me awake half the night, I’ll fall asleep during morning drill. So far I have disappointed him.”

Tyrionxy grinned. “And has Ghostxy learned to juggle yet?”

“No,” said Jon, smiling, “but Grennxy held his own against Halderxy this morning, and Pyp is no longer dropping his sword quite so often as he did.”

“Pyp?”

“Pyparxy is his real name. The small boy with the large ears. He saw me working with Grennxy and asked for help. Thornexy had never even shown him the proper way to grip a sword.” He turned to look north. “I have a mile of Wallxy to guard. Willxy you walk with me?”

“If you walk slowly,” Tyrionxy said.

“The watch commander tells me I must walk, to keep my blood from freezing, but he never said how fast.”

They walked, with Ghostxy pacing along beside Jon like a white shadow. “I leave on the morrow,” Tyrionxy said.

“I know.” Jon sounded strangely sad.

“I plan to stop at Winterfellxy on the way south. If there is any message that you would like me to deliver …”

“Tell Robbxy that I’m going to command the Night’s Watchxy and keep him safe, so he might as well take up needlework with the girls and have Mikkenxy melt down his sword for horseshoes.”

“Your brother is bigger than me,” Tyrionxy said with a laugh. “I decline to deliver any message that might get me killed.”

“Rickonxy will ask when I’m coming home. Try to explain where I’ve gone, if you can. Tell him he can have all my things while I’m away, he’ll like that.”

People seemed to be asking a great deal of him today, Tyrionxy Lannisterxyxy thought. “You could put all this in a letter, you know.”

“Rickonxy can’t read yet. Branxy …” He stopped suddenly. “I don’t know what message to send to Branxy. Help him, Tyrionxy.”

“What help could I give him? I am no maester, to ease his pain. I have no spells to give him back his legs.”

“You gave me help when I needed it,” Jon Snowxyxy said.

“I gave you nothing,” Tyrionxy said. “Words.”

“Then give your words to Branxy too.”

“You’re asking a lame man to teach a cripple how to dance,” Tyrionxy said. “However sincere the lesson, the result is likely to be grotesque. Still, I know what it is to love a brother, Lordxy Snowxyxy. I will give Branxy whatever small help is in my power.”

“Thank you, my lord of Lannisterxy.” He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand. “Friend.”

Tyrionxy found himself oddly touched. “Most of my kin are bastards,” he said with a wry smile, “but you’re the first I’ve had to friend.” He pulled a glove off with his teeth and clasped Snowxy by the hand, flesh against flesh. The boy’s grip was firm and strong.

When he had donned his glove again, Jon Snowxyxy turned abruptly and walked to the low, icy northern parapet. Beyond him the Wallxy fell away sharply; beyond him there was only the darkness and the wild. Tyrionxy followed him, and side by side they stood upon the edge of the world.

The Night’s Watchxy permitted the forest to come no closer than half a mile of the north face of the Wallxy. The thickets of ironwood and sentinel and oak that had once grown there had been harvested centuries ago, to create a broad swath of open ground through which no enemy could hope to pass unseen. Tyrionxy had heard that elsewhere along the Wallxy, between the three fortresses, the wildwood had come creeping back over the decades, that there were places where grey-green sentinels and pale white weirwoods had taken root in the shadow of the Wallxy itself, but Castle Blackxy had a prodigious appetite for firewood, and here the forest was still kept at bay by the axes of the black brothers.

It was never far, though. From up here Tyrionxy could see it, the dark trees looming beyond the stretch of open ground, like a second wall built parallel to the first, a wall of night. Few axes had ever swung in that black wood, where even the moonlight could not penetrate the ancient tangle of root and thorn and grasping limb. Out there the trees grew huge, and the rangers said they seemed to brood and knew not men. It was small wonder the Night’s Watchxy named it the haunted forest.

As he stood there and looked at all that darkness with no fires burning anywhere, with the wind blowing and the cold like a spear in his guts, Tyrionxy Lannisterxyxy felt as though he could almost believe the talk of the Othersxy, the enemy in the night. His jokes of grumkins and snarks no longer seemed quite so droll.

“My uncle is out there,” Jon Snowxyxy said softly, leaning on his spear as he stared off into the darkness. “The first night they sent me up here, I thought, Uncle Benjenxy will ride back tonight, and I’ll see him first and blow the horn. He never came, though. Not that night and not any night.”

“Give him time,” Tyrionxy said.

Far off to the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up the call, then another. Ghostxy cocked his head and listened. “If he doesn’t come back,” Jon Snowxyxy promised, “Ghostxy and I will go find him.” He put his hand on the direwolf’s head.

“I believe you,” Tyrionxy said, but what he thought was, And who will go find you? He shivered.