Days passed into weeks. Life tried hard to become normal.
The Long Night was over, but Samwell Tarly spent longer nights tending to the injured or nearly dead. It had taken a day for all the fallen bodies to be moved to Mole’s Town, where he treated them. Riders kept riding from the Wall to the village to ask him of the health of their mates.
It took a week for Ser Davos Seaworth to rise from his sleep, although all he saw was black. “Don’t worry,” Samwell recalled telling Davos the day he gained consciousness, “you’ve lost your eyesight, not your life.” It had still taken him an hour to calm him.
Samwell’s only company, apart from sickly, dying men was Gilly. They made love almost every night now, under moons crescent and full. If my vows allowed me to marry her, I would have done it many moons ago, Sam thought, whenever he saw the moonlight shine on her supple skin. The vows never allowed you to make love with her either, a nasty voice reminded him, which Sam ignored.
Until Maesters Harmune from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and Mullin from the Shadow Tower arrived to help, Samwell felt the most important man in Westeros. As news of the battle spread and fictions became fact, even Oldtown sent Maester Roone, which gave Sam the time to ride for Queensgate.
With Castle Black a ruin, Queensgate became their temporary home. They had planned for this moment, shifting food and resources before the White Walkers had attacked, but it was still too cramped and small for shelter. To add to the confined spaces, to their surprise, were voluntary recruits, men now proud to stake their swords for the Night’s Watch.
Samwell had expected the mood to be celebratory, but there were yet remnants from the battle. Huge crossbows had been crafted at Jon’s insistence, raised to the skies for fear of the ice dragon’s return. The Night’s Watch held stricter patrols than ever. There were no feasts yet, only constant vigilance. Nobody wanted to voice the possibility that the dead were dead.
Some days after he returned, they had burned all the slain men, along with Dolorous Edd and Thoros of Myr. “And now their watch has ended,” a chorus of somber voices spoke, before Rhaegal lit the funeral pyre.
Tormund Giantsbane was voted the thousandth Lord Commander of the Wall, and first of Queensgate. “You’ll hate it more than I did,” Jon Snow told him, smiling, “but if we had a wildling Lord Commander in the past, maybe Castle Black would still be standing.”
“Har, I’ll see to that now,” Tormund said. His first decisions as Lord Commander were to rebuild the fallen chunks of the Wall and Castle Black. “That will take months!” an aghast builder said, to which the red-bearded wildling incredulously replied, “Decades! And it’s Lord Commander to you, you twat!”
As the days passed, Samwell noted Jon’s mood improve steadily. Even though he watched from the top of the Wall every night, and sent ravens that found no reply, he became gradually cheerier, soon japing with him and Davos. “You should fly for Winterfell soon,” Samwell told him once, while they were on their nightly patrols. “You have not seen Bran since he returned, and the war seems over.”
Jon was still skeptical. “Maybe,” he said. “The nights do seem warmer.” He paused. “What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, even though he had a pretty good idea. “I think I will go back to Oldtown. I only have one chain of silver, and Gilly and me miss little Sam.” He paused.
“Maybe, if I find the time, I could write a book.”
“A book?” Jon asked, curious. “About what?”
“About… this. The war for the dawn. The White Walkers. So that, even in the thousands of years to follow, an Archmaester may read it and not think it myth or fancy.” He hesitated. “It may not only be about this-”
The hurried steps interrupted him. “My lord,” said Elron, a member of the Night’s Watch, to Jon, “riders come from the capital. They arrive with… news.”
Samwell had accompanied Jon at every step. He read the scrolls the riders bore. He read the news of the deaths of Petyr Baelish, Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen. There was not enough time to overcome the shock… making them completely unprepared for the riders’ next words. Jon Snow? Summoned to King’s Landing?
With most of the royalty dead, Sam realized there could only be one reason he was called to the city. Jon, when he realized it too, looked like he wanted to hide in a crevice of the Wall.
But the decision had been made, the court awaited him, and so did Jon’s sister. When Jon asked for time, all the rider did, with as much deference as possible, was insist. “This is a very precarious time, Your Grace,” he said. “Lady Sansa sits the Iron Throne as Queen Regent, but the people clamor for you. She merely keeps the seat warm.”
And that was that. Jon had packed his belongings, said his farewells and prepared to fly to a place he had never been. The look in his eyes when he heard of Daenerys’ death had only become duller. “I can come with you,” Samwell said earnestly. “You’ll need your mates there, won’t you?”
Jon smiled sadly. “Be with Gilly,” he told him. “Go to Oldtown. Meet little Sam, read your books, claim your chains and take Maester Aemon’s place someday. You must do your duty, as I go to do mine.”
“But who will you go with?”
“Davos speaks of wanting to return to his wife at Cape Wrath,” Jon said, as Samwell caught sight of the Onion Knight waiting next to the huge dragon, cautiously feeling his surroundings with his cane. “He can help me for a while before he goes home. It is the least I can do for him, after the ordeals he has been through.”
The rider from the capital rushed Jon as politely as he could, and Samwell Tarly knew it was time to say goodbye. “Well… until we meet again,” he said, extending an awkward hand.
Jon hugged him. “When we meet again.”
*
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