When Dondarrion had slayed the White Walker, with him had shattered all the other wights, bringing an abrupt end to the battle. Jon Snow had killed the other at the gates, before being forced to flee with his men. Their interventions, as well as Rhaegal’s, had come just in time. The battle had cost them half their men, and if it had lasted an hour longer, they would all have perished. All that with only a fraction of the Night King’s army.
He thought his friends had survived, but that was before they found Beric. “He might still be alive,” Jon Snow said urgently. “We need Sam,” he asked, before he saw the body beside.
Jon always imagined that if someone he cared for was a victim of the war, passivity and silence would pervade his senses, preventing words from his mouth, arresting his limbs. He did not anticipate the surge of rage that made him punch Sam’s broken body. “Get up,” he kept saying. “You told me there would be enough time.”
Dolorous Edd had taken charge. He was doing the best he could. He had ordered the tunnel filled with ice. Rangers went around collecting shards of obsidian in the bloody snow. Stewards tended to those wounded at the top, of which there were few, and the courtyard, of which there were several.
He even heard Edd speak with Thoros. “The Night King will attack us soon, but we don’t know if the men from Barrowton will be here yet,” he was saying. “I know it sounds silly, but instead of burning the dead, can you… work your Lord of Light magic on these corpses, see if anyone’s destiny can be changed?”
But it was worth nothing, Jon knew. The fall of man was near. Rhaegal was perched atop the Wall, a potential weapon against the Night King, but he would not be enough. The White Walkers had a dragon too, and many more men. The war where ice will freeze fire, Jon mused in his mind. Would have been a tale worthy of telling were the bards not like to die.
Apart from Dolorous Edd, there was another who tried appearing cheery. “At least we know the Wall has magic,” Thoros of Myr said bravely. “And who knows, maybe the Lord of Light will permit me to raise some of these poor souls. Starting with this man,” he pointed at Beric. “This will, what, be the eighth time I rise him from the dead?” He chuckled at the skeptical faces beside him.
While Thoros muttered his incantations, Jon looked at him feeling contempt. Fie this fool, he thought, looking to poison our souls with hope. He was not sobbing like Gilly, but felt a greater loss in him, the loss of hope in humanity, the loss of life. He thought the last shreds of belief had detached from his self, mingling into the mist, never to return. But he was wrong.
The last shreds parted when he saw the pale, stricken face of the red priest, when he realized that his one-eyed friend had gone for good, never to wake.
*
End of episode – S08E05 will be published on Sunday, 4th November 2018, 8:30 am GMT
Comments