Three-Finger Hobb had promised the brothers roast haunch of mammoth that night, maybe in hopes of cadging a few more votes. If that was his notion, he should have found a younger mammoth, Sam thought, as he pul ed a string of gristle out from between his teeth. Sighing, he pushed the food away.
There would be another vote shortly, and the tensions in the air were thicker than the smoke.
Cotter Pyke sat by the fire, surrounded by rangers from Eastwatch. Ser Denys Mallister was near the door with a smaller group of Shadow Tower men. Janos Slynt has the best place, Sam realized, halfway between the flames and the drafts. He was alarmed to see Bowen Marsh beside him, wan-faced and haggard, his head still wrapped in linen, but listening to al that Lord Janos had to say. When he pointed that out to his friends, Pyp said, “And look down there, that’s Ser Alliser whispering with Othell Yarwyck.”
After the meal Maester Aemon rose to ask if any of the brothers wished to speak before they cast their tokens. Dolorous Edd got up, stone-faced and glum as ever. “I just want to say to whoever is voting for me that I would certainly make an awful Lord Commander. But so would al these others.” He was fol owed by Bowen Marsh, who stood with one hand on Lord Slynt’s shoulder. “Brothers and friends, I am asking that my name be withdrawn from this choosing. My wound still troubles me, and the task is too large for me, I fear... but not for Lord Janos here, who commanded the gold cloaks of King’s Landing for many years. Let us al give him our support.” Sam heard angry mutters from Cotter Pyke’s end of the room, and Ser Denys looked at one of his companions and shook his head. It is too late, the damage is done. He wondered where Jon was, and why he had stayed away.
Most of the brothers were unlettered, so by tradition the choosing was done by dropping tokens into a big potbel ied iron kettle that Three-Finger Hobb and Owen the Oaf had dragged over from the kitchens. The barrels of tokens were off in a comer behind a heavy drape, so the voters could make their choice unseen. You were allowed to have a friend cast your token if you had duty, so some men took two tokens, three, or four, and Ser Denys and Cotter Pyke voted for the garrisons they had left behind.
When the hal was finally empty, save for them, Sam and Clydas upended the kettle in front of Maester Aemon. A cascade of seashells, stones, and copper pennies covered the table. Aemon’s wrinkled hands sorted with surprising speed, moving the shel s here, the stones there, the pennies to one side, the occasional arrowhead, nail, and acom off to themselves. Sam and Clydas counted the piles, each of them keeping his own tally.
Tonight it was Sam’s turn to give his results first. “Two hundred and three for Ser Denys Mallister,” he said. “One hundred and sixty-nine for Cotter Pyke. One hundred and thirty-seven for Lord Janos Slynt, seventy-two for Othel Yarwyck, five for Three-Finger Hobb, and two for Dolorous Edd.”
“I had one hundred and sixty-eight for Pyke,” Clydas said. “We are two votes short by my count, and one by Sam’s.”
“Sam’s count is correct,” said Maester Aemon. “Jon Snow did not cast a token. It makes no matter. No one is close.”
Sam was more relieved than disappointed. Even with Bowen Marsh’s support, Lord Janos was still only third. “Who are these five who keep voting for Three-Finger Hobb?” he wondered.
“Brothers who want him out of the kitchens?” said Clydas.
“Ser Denys is down ten votes since yesterday,” Sam pointed out. “And Cotter Pyke is down almost twenty. That’s not good.”
“Not good for their hopes of becoming Lord Commander, certainly,” said Maester Aemon.
“Yet it may be good for the Night’s Watch, in the end. That is not for us to say. Ten days is not unduly long. There was once a choosing that lasted near two years, some seven hundred votes.
The brothers wil come to a decision in their own time.”
Yes, Sam thought, but what decision?
Later, over cups of watered wine in the privacy of Pyp’s cell, Sam’s tongue loosened and he found himself thinking aloud. “Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister have been losing ground, but between them they stil have almost two-thirds,” he told Pyp and Grenn. “Either one would be fine as Lord Commander. Someone needs to convince one of them to withdraw and support the other.”
“Someone?” said Grenn, doubtful y. “What someone?”
“Grenn is so dumb he thinks someone might be him,” said Pyp. “Maybe when someone is done with Pyke and Mallister, he should convince King Stannis to marry Queen Cersei too.”
“King Stannis is married,” Grenn objected.
“What am I going to do with him, Sam?” sighed Pyp.
“Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys don’t like each other much,” Grenn argued stubbornly. “They fight about everything.”
“Yes, but only because they have different ideas about what’s best for the Watch,” said Sam.
“If we explained -”
“We?” said Pyp. “How did someone change to we? I’m the mummer’s monkey, remember?
And Grenn is, wel , Grenn.” He smiled at Sam, and wiggled his ears. “You, now... you’re a lord’s son, and the maester’s steward...”
“And Sam the Slayer,” said Grenn. “You slew an Other.”
“It was the dragonglass that killed it,” Sam told him for the hundredth time.
“A lord’s son, the maester’s steward, and Sam the Slayer,” Pyp mused. “You could talk to them, might be. .”
“I could,” said Sam, sounding as gloomy as Dolorous Edd, “if I wasn’t too craven to face them.”
JON
Jon prowled around Satin in a slow circle, sword in hand, forcing him to turn. “Get your shield up,” he said.
“It’s too heavy,” the Oldtown boy complained. “It’s as heavy as it needs to be to stop a sword,” Jon said. “Now get it up.” He stepped forward, slashing. Satin jerked the shield up in time to catch the sword on its rim, and swung his own blade at Jon’s ribs. “Good,” Jon said, when he felt the impact on his own shield. “That was good. But you need to put your body into it. Get your weight behind the steel and you’ll do more damage than with arm strength alone. Come, try it again, drive at me, but keep the shield up or I’ll ring your head like a bell. .” Instead Satin took a step backward and raised his visor. “Jon,” he said, in an anxious voice.
When he turned, she was standing behind him, with half a dozen queen’s men around her.
Small wonder the yard grew so quiet. He had glimpsed Melisandre at her nightfires, and coming and going about the castle, but never so close. She’s beautiful, he thought... but there was something more than a little unsettling about red eyes. “my lady.”
“The king would speak with you, Jon Snow.”
Jon thrust the practice sword into the earth. “Might I be al owed to change? I am in no fit state to stand before a king.”
“We shal await you atop the Wall,” said Melisandre. We, Jon heard, not he. It’s as they say.
This is his true queen, not the one he left at Eastwatch.
He hung his mail and plate inside the armory, returned to his own cel , discarded his sweat-stained clothes, and donned a fresh set of blacks. It would be cold and windy in the cage, he knew, and colder and windier still on top of the ice, so he chose a heavy hooded cloak. Last of al he col ected Longclaw, and slung the bastard sword across his back.
Melisandre was waiting for him at the base of the Wall. She had sent her queen’s men away.
“What does His Grace want of me?” Jon asked her as they entered the cage.
“All you have to give, Jon Snow. He is a king.”
He shut the door and pul ed the bell cord. The winch began to turn. They rose. The day was bright and the Wal was weeping, long fingers of water trickling down its face and glinting in the sun. In the close confines of the iron cage, he was acutely aware of the red woman’s presence.
She even smells red. The scent reminded him of Mikken’s forge, of the way iron smelled when red-hot; the scent was smoke and blood. Kissed by fire, he thought, remembering Ygritte. The wind got in amongst Melisandre’s long red robes and sent them flapping against Jon’s legs as he stood beside her. “You are not cold, my lady?” he asked her.
She laughed. “Never.” The ruby at her throat seemed to pulse, in time with the beating of her heart. “The Lord’s fire lives within me, Jon Snow. Feel.” She put her hand on his cheek, and held it there while he felt how warm she was. “That is how life should feel,” she told him. “Only death is cold.”
They found Stannis Baratheon standing alone at the edge of the Wal , brooding over the field where he had won his battle, and the great green forest beyond. He was dressed in the same black breeches, tunic, and boots that a brother of the Night’s Watch might wear. Only his cloak set him apart; a heavy golden cloak trimmed in black fur, and pinned with a brooch in the shape of a flaming heart. “I have brought you the Bastard of Winterfel , Your Grace,” said Melisandre.
Stannis turned to study him. Beneath his heavy brow were eyes like bottomless blue pools. His hol ow cheeks and strong jaw were covered with a short-cropped blue-black beard that did little to conceal the gauntness of his face, and his teeth were clenched. His neck and shoulders were clenched as wel , and his right hand. Jon found himself remembering something Donal Noye once said about the Baratheon brothers. Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the way iron gets. He’l break before he bends. Uneasily, he knelt, wondering why this brittle king had need of him.
“Rise. I have heard much and more of you, Lord Snow.”
“I am no lord, sire.” Jon rose. “I know what you have heard. That I am a turncloak, and craven.
That I slew my brother Qhorin Halfhand so the wildlings would spare my life. That I rode with Mance Rayder, and took a wildling wife.”
“Aye. Al that, and more. You are a warg too, they say, a skinchanger who walks at night as a wolf.” King Stannis had a hard smile. “How much of it is true?”
“I had a direwolf, Ghost. I left him when I climbed the Wall near Greyguard, and have not seen him since. Qhorin Halfhand commanded me to join the wildlings. He knew they would make me kill him to prove myself, and told me to do whatever they asked of me. The woman was named Ygritte. I broke my vows with her, but I swear to you on my father’s name that I never turned my cloak.”
“I believe you,” the king said.
That startled him. “Why?”
Stannis snorted. “I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark as wel . Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would doubt his honor or his honesty. You have his look.” A big man, Stannis Baratheon towered over Jon, but he was so gaunt that he looked ten years older than he was. “I know more than you might think, Jon Snow. I know it was you who found the dragonglass dagger that Randyll Tarly’s son used to slay the Other.”
“Ghost found it. The blade was wrapped in a ranger’s cloak and buried beneath the Fist of the First Men. There were other blades as wel ... spearheads, arrowheads, al dragonglass.”
“I know you held the gate here,” King Stannis said. “If not, I would have come too late.”
“Donal Noye held the gate. He died below in the tunnel, fighting the king of the giants.” Stannis grimaced. “Noye made my first sword for me, and Robert’s warhammer as well. Had the god seen fit to spare him, he would have made a better Lord Commander for your order than any of these fools who are squabbling over it now.”
“Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister are no fools, sire,” Jon said. “They’re good men, and capable. Othel Yarwyck as well, in his own way. Lord Mormont trusted each of them.”
“Your Lord Mormont trusted too easily. Else he would not have died as he did. But we were speaking of you. I have not forgotten that it was you who brought us this magic horn, and captured Mance Rayder’s wife and son.”