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The ferryboat gave one last lonesome toll of its great bronze bell to bid them safe travels and vanished back down the lake, to the White Knife, back toward White Harbor. 

To Satin, it sounded like a death knell, Gone! it seemed to say, Gone. It’s all gone, and you’re gone too. No way out now, nowhere to run. 

Long Lake stretched far to the north and east, and the Kingsroad ran beside it. They had hours of sunlight left, and Conwy wanted to make good time before dark. 

Satin looked north, and north, and north. There was no end to it, meadows and moors as far as the eye could see. The North was big, and empty, and brown. When Satin had imagined it before, he’d always pictured white and green, a world of ice and snow-clad pines. But it seemed that the North, like almost everywhere else he'd seen, was mostly made of dirt and rocks and scrubby brush by the roadside. No great pine forests, no icy mountains, and no snow to speak of. Purple heather graced the tops of the brown hills with a sunset blush, and the only trees were solitary and skinny, roots clutching at the stony soil.

The wind blew in insistant gusts, whipping his hair into his face. He shivered and pulled the thin wool cloak Conwy the black brother had given him close around himself. It’s cold. That much was true at least. It was cold, colder than anywhere he’d ever been.

Around him, the rest of the company gathered their things and prepared to get a move on. Hop-Robin tightened the straps on the pack mule’s saddlebags and mumbled sweet nothings in it’s velvet ear, as he often did. The little limping beggar had taken a liking to the beast and Conwy had been glad to turn its care over to him. In return, Hop-Robin could let it carry his own meager belongings –a hurdy-gurdy in an oilskin sack, and whatever small treasures a traveling beggar had– while everyone else carried all they owned. He spoke to the mule more than to any of the other prisoners. “Hush now, not to fear, no snow on the ground my love, we’ll make it there unfrozen yet, we will.” Satin could hear the shiver in his voice though. Hop-Robin had less meat on his bones than Satin did, and his rags were no better suited to the cold than the dirty silks from Oldtown that Satin still wore. 

One of the Fair Isle boys murmured a quiet jest to the other while tying his bedroll up, too softly for anyone else to hear. Nothing either of the twins said was for anyone else to hear. That was how they survived, as everyone found ways to survive. The twins became one unfriendly suspicious beast with two faces and four fists, Hop-Robin took care of the mule, the old man kept to himself and clutched his walking stick like a club if anyone got too close, the madman grinned and japed and threatened, and Satin survived. 

Conwy herded them all onto the road, clucking and scolding if any lagged behind. He was a gentle enough gaoler, but they all feared him, with his hard eyes and his long black sword, none had yet been bold or stupid enough to make him draw it. 

“Right. There’s warm clothes at the Wall, you lot quit whining and get walking and we’ll be there a’fore the frost so much as nips yer toes.” He caught the old man looking longingly after the boat and clucked his tongue again. “Don’t wish yerselves back south. There’s war behind us now.” 

And so there was. News of the war had come to the Vale just before they left Gulltown. Robb Stark had cut his teeth on Tywin Lannister at the Green Fork, then sunk them into the Kingslayer at the Whispering Wood, taken Riverrun, and crowned himself King in the North, all in one bold stroke. They were bringing the news with them. Every Northman they met heard it first from their party. Strange times, when strangers, criminals and whores brought men the first word of their own new-crowned king. Lords had ravens to bring them news, it seemed the common folk only had crows.

“The Wall’s the safest place to be in war,” Conwy said, “the Watch takes no sides and the fighting’s all south of the Neck. Now get moving. You’ll see plenty ice and snow once yer there, so savor the fair weather while it lasts. Lord Manderly got himself a white raven just this moon’s turn past. Summer’s over, lads.” 

Winter, Satin thought when he noticed he could see his breath for the first time, that night, curled up on the hard ground by the fire, well away from the other prisoners. The thought alone was chilling. Satin had been only a child when winter had last come to Oldtown, he remembered the white birds flying from the Citadel. This winter would not be like that barely recollected one, where the snow only fell in fat wet flakes that vanished when they hit the ground, and the warm Dornish wind came up the coast to keep the frost at bay. He held his knees tight to his chest and shivered, and looked north into the dark, toward where he knew the ice never truly melted and the winds were always cold. Above, the red star blazed, growing brighter by the night. 

His mother hummed while she combed sweet almond oil through his wet hair, like she always did after wrestling him into a bath. He watched the Mother instead of his reflection in the looking glass, the little wooden figure that she kept on her vanity. It looked like a septa, Satin thought, as she worked the comb gently through a tangle, like a plump happy septa that might pinch his cheek and give him a copper if he smiled sweetly and looked hungry enough while passing the sept.

“Remember love, she always watches over you,” she said, though her humming continued, even as she spoke.

“I know,” he said in a child’s voice, “she protected me in your belly.” He reached for the wooden figure to run his thumb over the Mother’s friendly little smile, he knew just how it would feel in his hand, but as he grasped it, his child’s fingers grew into a man’s hands, he looked down at them and found they were clasping a cup, not a statuette. The humming never stopped, she was humming the Mother’s Hymn, but there was no one behind him anymore. He was alone. 

He looked up into the mirror and saw only himself there, the cup grew and grew until it was a bitter ocean, and he tipped forward and fell into it, into the dark. 

He woke, the fire had burned down to coals, and all he could smell were the bitter herbs in the cup. 

Trudging through the mud of the Kingsroad as the rain fell frigid and listless on their heads, Satin did not feel beloved of the Mother, as his own mother had always told him that he was, born under her protection. He felt beloved of no one and nothing but the fleas he’d gotten from sleeping in the hold of the ferryboat.

The fair weather had given way to rain as the moorland had given way to pine forests after all. Satin walked at the very rear of the party, behind even Hop-Robin’s pack mule. No one would suffer him to walk beside them except for Hop-Robin, but when he did walk with the clubfooted beggar, Satin found himself accidentally falling into the same limping gait and making his hip sore. Besides, Hop-Robin preferred the company of the mule, even if he was too kind to refuse to speak to Satin as the others did.

They had no tents to raise against the rain, so they propped cloaks up on sticks or draped them over branches for makeshift shelters. 

“I thought it snowed in the North!” Arron, or perhaps it was Emrick, moaned the third sodden morning in a row, for once loud enough for the whole party to hear as he struggled to wring out his drenched and dripping lean-to before putting it back on, “what’s the bloody point if we get to the Wall and it’s melted to a puddle?” 

When they’d first arrived in the dungeon at Gulltown, the two brothers had been easy to tell apart, one wore his blond hair loose about his shoulders, and the other kept it short and had a paltry attempt at a mustache. But when they’d agreed to come with Conwy rather than lose a hand each to Lord Shett’s justice, the one had cut his hair, the other shaved his lip, and the two closed ranks. Indistinguishable and inseparable, they let nobody get close. Even the terrifying madman who always smiled never tried to bother either of them. They were only sixteen, but they were a formidable force when protecting each other. 

Satin had no one to close ranks with. When the madman came to bother him with his japes, his poking and prodding and his unfriendly smile, not even Hop-Robin stood in his way. 

One night Satin woke to rough hands pawing at him, hot breath on his ear. He froze and lay as still as stone. “Don’t make a sound,” the madman murmured, soft as silk. A cold hand slipped under his tunic. Mother protect me, he thought, “Help!” he shouted, and got a hard blow across the face for his trouble, but from around the fire came the sounds of the others stirring. The man vanished back to his own shabby shelter before anyone came, but he took Satin’s cloak with him as he did, leaving him sore-faced, wet, and shivering. 

When Conwy, naked sword in hand, demanded to know what had happened, Satin looked at the ground and gave no answer. He could live without a cloak, but he’d not survive another night if the black brother made the madman give it back to him. 

The Mother protected innocents and children and women in the birthing bed. But he was not a child anymore, nor innocent. Who protects whores from harm? Stupid boy. Wylan had always told him that he’d never last a day on his own, out in the world beyond the brothel he’d been born in. If I ever had her favor, I’ve surely lost it now. He had angered the Mother, he was sure, she would not protect him, not after what he’d done. Satin nursed his bruised cheek, and slept shallower after that. The madman wore a wider grin, and two wool cloaks about his shoulders. Satin didn’t speak to anyone, and no one spoke to him. 

The rain eased and the days rolled on. They passed other travelers on the road. This far north, the Kingsroad was little more than a wagon track. Sometimes it led right through the square of some small town, other times no signs of people could be seen for days at a time. The people they did encounter were friendly enough to a brother in black. Some even knew Conwy by name as he passed this way often, but they were few and far between. “Most are gone to war, or to their crofts ‘n farmsteads, to bring a harvest or two in a’fore winter,” the crow said by way of explanation. Soon there were no villages nor travelers to speak of, and he told them they had passed into the Gift, Night’s Watch land. The red star grew brighter, and could be seen by day. 

They were a fortnight north of Long Lake, deep in the thick of the wood when one of the twins suddenly gasped “It’s snowing…”

The party halted all at once, as if they had decided as one to stop and marvel at it. Satin stood in the middle of the Kingsroad and looked up at the sky. It was so pale he couldn’t see the snowflakes until they were nearly on top of him. Unthinking, he stuck out his tongue and caught one. It melted, a dot of cold that sent a shiver of pleasure straight down to his toes. Then he remembered himself, and looked around. Next to him one of the twins was doing just the same, mouth open and eyes turned wondering toward the sky. He must have felt Satin looking because his teeth clacked shut and he flushed, pink cheeked and sheepish. 

Satin gave him his own sheepish smile, and was met with a grin, behind him, his brother laughed. For a moment they were all boys again, and Satin and the Fair Isle twins laughed and caught snowflakes on their tongues until Conwy came over, and scolded them all to get moving again. 

That night, though Arron and Emrick still shot unfriendly looks his way when he sat too close at campfire, they never tried to chase him off, not even when he fell asleep not five feet from where they sat. 

The yard at Castle Black was nearly empty but for their ragged band of prisoners, now recruits, and for Ser Endrew Tarth. The big knight looked at Satin expectantly, and jerked the tip of his sword as if to say, come on then. He had no choice but to move forward and attack. The blunted practice sword was heavy in his hands, lighter than he’d thought a sword would be, but far longer and heavier than he knew what to do with. His thin shoes gave poor purchase in the gravel of the yard, but he came at Ser Endrew as quickly as he dared. Tarth barely spared a glance at his attack before swatting him aside as easily as a cat swatted a mouse. Satin promptly dropped the sword and scrambled back, panting.

Tarth raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, and kicked the sword back over to him without a word before turning his gaze on the madman and gesturing him forward. The madman’s name was Merryl, as they had learned when the lord steward, Bowen Marsh, plump, red faced and distracted the night before had scribbled down their accounts of themselves after Conwy had deposited them into his care. Merryl was more than eager to take his turn at attacking Ser Endrew. A flurry of blows, he hacked at the master-at-arms with lunatic glee, but Tarth flicked each strike away with practiced grace. 

While the real warriors dueled, Satin stooped to pick his sword back up, feeling blisters already forming on his palms. Soft as satin, he thought bitterly, that would not last long.

Straightening, he looked north, and up, and up again, he had to crane his neck to see all the way to the top of the Wall. It was the biggest thing he’d ever seen. Not so tall as the Hightower, he reminded himself, watching the morning sun glint off the ice, only seven hundred feet. But the Hightower was but one building, seen at a distance rising up from out in the middle of Oldtown Bay, no boats ferried ordinary folk out to Battle Isle to stand at its base. The Wall was right there looming over them, stretching east and west forever. It seemed to lean out, as though it might tip over and crush them beneath it. Here was the end of the world, it said. No way out, it said. The wind howled off its face and Satin shivered, still clad in his soiled silks. He felt half a fool in them now, but the previous night, no one had had a moment to spare to get the new recruits their blacks, so they were still in their traveling clothes.

Satin felt eyes on him. Past where Merryl and Ser Endrew sparred, beyond where Emrick and Arron tensely awaited their own turns, three figures hovered in the doorway to the armory. Satin looked hard at them, the big man with one arm in the blacksmith’s apron, the fat boy, and the thin one, and the wolf.

It was the wolf that caught and held his gaze, its red eyes were unnerving, even from all the way across the yard, and it was Satin who flinched, and looked away first. The next time he worked up the nerve to glance over at the armory, the boys and the wolf were gone.

By the next day they were far and away, beyond the Wall, and Satin wore the wool and leather blacks of a proper Night’s Watch recruit. The red star blazed night and day. Here they called it Mormont’s Torch, to guide his way through the haunted forest. Satin thought it didn’t look much like a torch. A comet was a comet. The Seven didn’t send signs to guide your way, and he was sure the old gods didn’t either. 

He did his duties as best he could, took his beatings in the yard, and ate alone. He bathed alone too, for fear of the other men, sneaking down to the bathhouse in the Wormways late at night to scrub his hair with hard lye soap until there wasn’t a trace of a flea left, and what had once been lush black curls turned to a frizzy tangle.

Life at the Wall fell into a rhythm. Often times, new recruits were paired with sworn brothers for duties, the better to learn how to perform them, and perhaps to form bonds of brotherhood before their vows made them brothers for true. But Satin dreaded time alone with the other men. Gossip spread quicker at Castle Black than in any whorehouse, and soon they all knew who he was, what he’d been, what he was now and would always be. A man could change his silks for boiled leather and black wool, but there were some things he could never shed.

His first time beyond the Wall proved a humiliating disaster. Satin had been all pounding heart and breathless anticipation as the gate went up, and riding out through the tunnel, but once on the patrol it became quite clear that he did not know how to handle a horse. A bird startled out of the brush before him and the horse balked, and bucked Satin clear out of the saddle before dashing away. The ranger he was with, who was some Ironborn knight that had not deigned to ride fewer than five horselengths ahead, had only laughed and gone after the horse. Leaving Satin to walk all the way back to the gate by himself. 

His first time atop the wall he was paired with a frog faced boy of a ranger. He’d spat on the ground when Satin had told him they’d been assigned to walk the ice together, and not spoken a single word to him the whole time.

A steward with greasy long black hair showed him the hilt of his dagger when he presumed to stand too close by the brazier in the warming shed, and the recruit called Rast cornered him on the switchback stair and asked if it was true what Merryl said, about having had him half a dozen times on the way north. 

Satin grew sullen and silent and avoided everyone’s eyes. He survived. The men around him seemed more a group of ill-humored black birds than men in truth. All gabble and chatter behind black-gloved hands, whispers behind black-cloaked shoulders. He felt more alone than ever he had on the way north. Then at least he’d known the men he was afraid of. Here they all looked the same in their blacks, and he could count on both hands the number of names he’d been told. 

The life of a sworn brother seemed a long and lonely one, with only one end for all of them, great and small alike. He’d heard the friendly red haired steward say it best, to Hop-Robin, “There’s two ways a man can get off o’ the Wall. He deserts or he dies, and desertion’s death, so really there’s only one way off.” He’d laughed at that. Hop-Robin had not.

A moon’s turn after the ranging left, he found himself in the empty armory with Matthar, scouring rust off of bits of plate. The brothers most often wore black mail for armor, but there were odds and ends of beaten steel in the armory as well, and those too needed to be blacked in a foul smelling bath, but first they had to be scoured of rust.

The pair of them sat in silence, the only sound the rasping of their rough cloths as they worked. Satin looked at the breastplate he was working on, and felt Matthar’s eyes on him. The other boy held his breath as he watched, his gaze heavy and impossible to ignore. Satin could almost hear his thoughts, the whispers of a thousand rumors, what he heard whenever he was near enough to other men in the hall or the barracks to hear what they muttered to each other about him. Is he..? Was he…? I heard… The plate clinked, the scouring cloths rasped, and Matthar held his breath, peeked, then let it out and stared studiously down at his own hands when Satin glanced up at him. 

Satin scrubbed fiercely at the breastplate, the metal clanked against the bench and the scouring cloth made scraping whispering sounds, but not loud enough to drown out the sharp intake of breath Matthar made, as if he’d finally worked up the nerve to speak. But he did not, he only held the breath again, and said nothing. Is it true he…? For a handfull of coppers he’ll… In Oldtown… Satin looked up at Matthar and caught the flicker of his eyes as he looked away hurriedly.

“Just ask me.” Satin blurted suddenly, surprising even himself.

“Wh- what?’ Matthar stammered. 

“You’ve been wanting to for the past hour, so just ask and have done with it.” Some part of him cringed and cowered inside to hear himself. He had not spoken so sharply to anyone. Younger than Satin by at least a year and several inches shorter, Matthar might not be the most frightening of them, but he was a sworn brother and a ranger all the same.

Matthar did not get angry though, he went pink out to his ears and shot to his feet, never meeting Satin’s eyes. The greave he’d been cleaning clattered to the floor. Mumbling something about praying, he retreated from the armory at a run, leaving Satin alone to finish the remaining plate himself. He was angry then, angry at Matthar, at himself, at the whole of the Wall and the world that brought him there to scrub plate alone in an empty armory in the cold. 

After a while, Donal Noye wandered out from his rooms behind the forge, looking around curiously. “I thought Matt was here with you?”

Satin glared at his work, scrubbing all the harder. “Jeren needed help in the sept.” Matt and Jeren were always helping in the sept, it was as good a lie as any. 

Noye looked at him for a long moment. Satin didn’t look up, he didn’t trust himself to meet a senior watchman’s eyes, not in the black humor he was in, not a man as large and terrifying as Donal Noye. He was like to get himself killed that way. That was, until the big blacksmith sat on the bench Matthar had left and picked up the greave he’d dropped. Satin looked up at him then, but Donal Noye said nothing, only laid it across his knees, then took up the cloth and started polishing it with his one hand.

Uneasy, Satin went back to his work, but he kept the blacksmith in the corner of his eye. Long minutes of silence stretched, but this time it was Satin who peeked and held his breaths. 

It was Noye who broke the silence, as he finished with the greave and picked up a bracer, “What do you think the Wall is?”

Satin stopped his scrubbing, the breastplate had been clean for a while, “The Wall?” he had no idea what he could have meant by asking that. “It’s a wall.”

The blacksmith bobbed his head from side to side. “Well, you’re not wrong, I’ll give you that. Aye, there’s some that might say that. A wall’s a wall, a castle a castle. But others might say different. I’ve heard men call the Wall a shield, like in the vows, to guard the realms of men, a sword in the darkness. Some call it a home, three hot meals a day and someplace to sleep, or mayhaps it’s just a dungeon for all the men who fit nowhere else.” He spoke carelessly, as if he had such a conversation with every odd recruit he happened to catch alone. “The Wall is something more than just a great big block of ice. What do you think it is?” 

Satin thought. The one armed man looked at him mildly as he did, the question earnest on his big square face. “I think…” Satin bit his lip, studying Donal Noye. Something about the man’s honest face made him feel safe, like he could say anything and not be counted impertinent, or a fool. “I think it’s a hell.” 

Donal Noye raised a thick black eyebrow. “A hell?’

“One of the seven maybe. There’s cold ones as well as hot I think.” The septon he’d known in Oldtown had said there were burning hells and freezing hells, and had told Satin, at some volume, that he would surely end up in one or the other if he kept nicking coins from the bowl by the door of his sept.

“You think you’re dead, boy?”

“No! No I don’t believe that,” he almost smiled, “but, I think the gods can send you to a hell before you die. If you do something bad enough, that is, and you deserve it.”

The blacksmith gave him another long measuring look, and set aside his bracer. “I don’t know what brought you here. But there's a fair few find themselves on the Wall that deserve it. And a fairer few that don’t. Some come of their own free will. Make no mistake, it’s men that send men to this hell, boy, not gods. And its men who live here in it.”

Satin thought on that, and they spent the rest of the hour in companionable silence, until all the plate was clean.

That night he dreamed of the cup again, and Wylan. He looked the old man in the eye and put it to his own lips. He drank it all, but somehow the bitter drink never reached his tongue. When he woke, he reached beneath the rolled up cloak he used for a pillow, searching for the figurine, the Mother, but found only the dagger he’d stolen from the armory to sleep with for protection. The Mother was long gone, he’d thrown her in the fire the night he left the brothel, unable to bear looking at her. But she’d never protected him anyway, no more than she protected silly sweet girls from the marches that thought he was their friend. 

The weeks bled into moons. Ravens came from all directions, Kings were battling each other in the South, and the ranging was moving north looking for Mance Rayder and Benjen Stark, it all seemed very far away, hardly real. The only real things were the blisters that were slowly turning to callouses on his hands, the bruises from training that seemed to breed and multiply as he slept, the Wall, the long years stretching ahead of him. When he thought of it he felt dizzy. This was his life, the life of a brother of the Night’s Watch, all lived in the shadow of the Wall, in this one small cold castle with its burned up crumbling towers and its flock of melancholy crows. 

They were not crows though, not for true. They were men, like men everywhere else. Some of them were kind enough. Dannel had seen how neatly Satin stitched up the loose sleeve on a few of Donal Noye’s shirts, and asked quietly if he might mend some trousers, and soon half a dozen men had come to ask for the toe of their hose darned or the hem of a cloak re-sewn. Some stopped sneering when they saw him, some started doing it all the more. Donal Noye’s lesson was never far from his mind. He learned their names as best he could, even the ones that hated him.

Septon Cellador curled his lip over his wine cup when Satin passed him in the Common Hall.

Black Jack Bulwer shoved him away, hard against a wall and nearly drew a dagger when he chanced to brush against him in the wormways. 

Rast gave him a black eye and a bloody lip in the old flint barracks for looking at him wrong. 

Toad and Albett let him trip when he was forced to squeeze between them on the stair up from the laundry and chuckled to each other as he scrambled away.

Even big towheaded Owen the Oaf, who had not a hint of malice in him, asked Satin if he was really a whore, when they were fletching arrows together, and he was far from the first or the last to ask as much. 

Satin sat by himself in the Common Hall and pushed salt fish from Eastwatch around his pewter plate. There were late summer blackberries stewed with honey and wine too. Even the sweets here were simple and hardy. “Food made to keep a man going, and going, and keep going until he finds a castle with a better cook,” he heard Pyp say once, that had got laughs all around. Pyp was the little brother with the sharp tongue that some of the others called Monkey. 

Everyone always laughed when Pyp talked, and it made Satin uneasy. He put on other men’s voices and mocked them to their faces, and they laughed. Laughter could be a sharper weapon than any blade, when directed cleverly enough. Still, he was not wrong about the food. Satin always cleaned his plate anyway. The cold made him hungry, and the food, however it tasted, kept him warm. He’d never eaten half so much in Oldtown, but he never seemed to get bigger, all his limbs just grew hard and lean where once they had been willowy. 

Tonight though, he could not muster an appetite. His ribs hurt from that morning’s training in the yard. It had been moons, but he was not improving with a sword, and Ser Endrew seemed at a loss as to what to do with him besides put him up against the stronger more skilled recruits until he did. Rast and Merryl were all too happy to dole out sharp lessons. Emrick was improving so fast he was nearly a match for any of the young brothers that practiced with them sometimes, and much as he never meant to hurt Satin, his blows left bruises all the same. Satin was sore, and gloomy, and he simply did not like salt fish. So he sat alone and brooded on his half full plate.

From other tables came idle chatter and the sound of dice and quiet laughter. He watched Emrick chuckle at something Toad said, then Pyp said something else and the whole table erupted in giggles. The twins fit neatly in with the young stewards and builders and new-made rangers that had not gone on the ranging. Arron sat well away from his brother, between Halder and Matt on the other side of the table, calm and easy, his new scruff of beard clearly marking him apart from Emrick, who’s flaxen hair had begun to grow shaggy again. Life at Castle Black, for them at least, did not seem to require closed ranks.

Satin focused on his food, but the hairs on the back of his neck prickled, he felt the weight of someone’s gaze. Peering from the corner of his eye, he saw that the laughing table had gone quiet, and half the boys were looking over at him. 

Perhaps it was a trick of the way the hall was shaped that carried the sound, or that they were used to there being more men to drown them out, or maybe they simply didn’t care if he heard them, but whatever the case, they spoke loud enough that he could just make out their words.

Halder said, “I don’t see why-“

“Why not!” cut in Pyp, he spoke the loudest of them, “it’s just like with Sam. If Jon was here, he’d– ”

“Lord Snow isn’t here,” Toad said, Satin didn’t hear what he said next, but he knew just the way a man looked when he said the word whore.

He felt his face grow hot and glowered down at his food. I’m not ashamed, he told himself, they cannot make me ashamed. He forced himself to sit there and finish his fish. They could mock him all they wanted, but he would not let them chase him out with words alone, no matter what the half heard jape had been. Later, as he passed on the way out, he heard Pyp exclaiming, “just because I haven’t got a big white wolf!” but didn’t stay long enough to hear him finish the sentence. 

He didn’t want to know what the little ranger was saying with his sharp clever tongue, nor who Sam was, or what Lord Snow and his wolf had to do with it. He didn’t trust Pyp, and was sure whatever it was had not been kind. Satin knew what sort of japes young men made of whores, elbowing each other and exchanging covert winks. 

Outside the Common Hall, there had been rain, the empty yard was mud and gravel. The Wall loomed, slick and dark and inevitable. The red comet had gone, but the moon still shone as bright as ever, a waxing half-moon, still low above the trees to the south-east. The burned ruins of the lord commander’s tower cast a shadow across to the armory, That was Lord Snow’s handiwork as well. Lord Snow, Lord Snow, his name was on every tongue. The only man it seemed that was gossiped about more than Satin was, and Satin barely knew who they were talking about. Lord Eddard Stark, the late Hand of the king’s byblow, A thin boy with a wolf, Robb Stark’s bastard brother. What would he do if he were here? What jest had Pyp meant to make of the Lord Commander’s steward? The light of the forge spilled from the open door of the armory, painting a wide yellow arc into the tower’s shadow. He considered for a moment finding refuge there, sitting in the corner and listening to the clank of Donal Noye’s hammer as he worked, Rast would never bother him in there, nor any of the other recruits or young brothers from the Common Hall. But he turned instead to the switchback stair. He needed the quiet and the cold clear air at the top of the wall.

It was a long climb, a turn ago he would have been wheezing by the time he reached the top, but now he breathed hard, but deep and evenly as he mounted the ice. One of the few men around the brazier by the winch raised a hand in greeting, before seeing whom it was that he was waving to. Even amid the howling gusts at the top of the wall, Satin could hear the private mocking laughter between the brothers. 

They were rangers, he knew. Two Northmen, the Ironborn knight Ser Aladale, Rory, and Fulk the Flea. Satin ignored them and turned to walk the ice by himself. 

He walked west, the moon at his back. It was not long before the winch and warming shed were out of sight and it was as though Satin was the only man in the world, alone up in the dark. The night guards would come by soon enough on their patrols, but for the moment, he had the Wall to himself. To his right lay the end of the world, and all that lay beyond it, the whispering dark of the haunted forest. 

It was strange to think most of the watch was out there somewhere. He could hardly imagine the castle bustling with hundreds of brothers. The life he knew here was a lonesome quiet one, and that was the only one he could imagine. 

After a while he stopped and looked south, over the pines of the nameless wood of the Gift, down the Kingsroad, south and south. Somewhere out there, south and away lay a city by the sea called Oldtown, somewhere in that city lay a brothel where he no longer had a place. He supposed he had no place here either, on this great horrible block of ice they called a wall. But it was to be his life all the same, the long and lonely life of a brother of the watch. Or a short one, he heard it in Wylan’s voice. He’d always said that Satin wouldn’t last long. Do as you’re told or you’re out, it’s for her own good. You’d never last long out there on your own. Maybe Donal Noye was right and the Wall was not one of the hells, maybe some men were here that didn’t deserve it. But Satin did. He looked down at the castle, the small black shapes of keeps and towers, dark against the gravel and cobblestones of the courtyard. No way out. Like Mully said, only one way off the Wall. 

“Most look the other way, you know, the view’s fairer,” someone behind him said. 

Satin startled and almost lost his footing. He stumbled back from the edge, and a big gloved hand found his shoulder, steadying him.

“Careful lad! Wouldn’t want to lose you to a gust, you’d not be the first.” 

He looked up and saw one of the men from the brazier, the big northman who sometimes sat at the high table in the Common Hall with the knights and officers. Breathing hard and trying not to tremble, Satin couldn’t for the life of him recall his name. He had a big fierce beard and long brown hair, braided as northerners often wore it. The wind had pulled some strands loose and they fluttered around his face. 

“Forgive me, I never heard you!” Satin gasped.

“No, forgive me, I didn’t announce myself. You seemed in need of company.”

Liddle, his name was Liddle, Big Liddle they called him, Satin remembered. He must have a given name as well, but Satin had never heard it. “As it please you, m’lord,” he said carefully. It was always safest to call the ones with second names ‘my lord’ even if they weren’t lords.

That made Big Liddle laugh. “As it please me!” He patted Satin roughly, and let him go. “Well, it pleases me to meet you properly, lad, what’s your name?” 

Satin was sure he knew his name, everyone knew who he was by now. “I’m called Satin.” 

“And I’m Big Liddle, as you’ve likely heard.”

Introductions made, silence fell between them. Big Liddle looked south, over the woods as Satin had moments before.

They stood there for a long moment, Satin unsure what was expected of him, before Big Liddle spoke, Satin braced for the question, the one everyone who got a moment alone with him asked eventually, but what he said was, “does it look queer to you?”

“M’lord?” Satin glanced at him, and saw that he was looking up at the half-moon where it hung, pale in the black sky.

“Oh leave off the ‘m’lord's. The moon, does it look queer? Dornish Dilly says in the south it gets higher than it ever does up here, and it’s turned on its side. Oldtown’s not so far from Dorne, I’ve heard.”

Satin squinted up at it, and gasped with wonder. The half moon he’d always known had been a crooked grin, tilted. This was half a silver coin, cut straight up and down. He looked over at Big Liddle, delighted, and saw the big man smiling at him. He was handsome, in that blunt northern way. Under the beard he could not have been more than thirty.

Feeling bold, Satin asked, “why did you come out here to speak with me?”

“As I said, you seemed in need of company.”  He tilted his head meaningfully at the edge. 

Satin flushed and stammered. He hadn’t been, not really, not truly thinking of it, only looking. He’d come up here to clear his head, no more.

Liddle held a hand out to stop his stammering, continued as though it had never come up. “I’ll not lie. Donal Noye asked me to have a word with you. But trust I mean it, and it’s not some trick o’ his when I say there’s a life here for you, for men like you, if you want it.”

“I’m not sure I take your meaning.” The words came out wooden, Satin knew very well his meaning. These crows, dissembling, muttering behind their hands. I know what I am, you know what I am. Is it so difficult to say outright?

“Do you know why I’m called Big Liddle?”

The question caught him so off guard that he forgot his bitterness. “No m’lord, why?” he asked, baffled. He was big enough, to be sure.

Big Liddle snorted “I’m not a lord, but you’re not far off, at that. My true name is Duncan, son o’ Torren, The Liddle. I’m sure in the south they’d call him a lord. I am his eldest son and would’ve become the Liddle in my time, but it’s my brother Morgan who stands to inherit his seat when the gods take my father. The Middle Liddle he’s called, though he hates the name.” He smiled at that. “I gave up that claim and came here of my own free will because my father would have seen me wed before I turned five and twenty. Men o’ the watch never marry.” 

Satin understood, then. He looked at Big Liddle again, at the man beneath the furs and leather and the big brown beard, saw him true. Is it so shameful, Duncan? Can you truly not say it?

“There is a life here for you, if you want it,” Big Liddle said again, “Many… men find lives here.” He looked down at the towers and the keeps below. Satin looked too. It was a small place, hardly a castle in truth, the whole of it could fit in the square where the Honeywine flowed through the center of Oldtown, where mummers often played their farces and tragedies. “I know it seems a gaol, but there’s freedom here too. If you look to find it. There are ways to live, different than the ones you know, this isn’t Oldtown, but there’s ways.” His mouth gave a wry twist “It’s the same moon up here, just looks different. Do you know about Whoresbane Umber?"

“Do I want to?”

That earned him another laugh. “No I suppose you don’t,” he said, “in any case, it’s only that they don’t know you yet, all they have are the rumors and your pretty face to go on. Pick up a sword. Listen to Ser Endrew. Knock a few of ’em in the dirt and then offer your hand to help them back up. They’ll learn to like you well enough. And…,” he paused and studied Satin’s face for a moment, brought a hand up to his chin to tilt it to the light, “if you can manage it, grow a beard, you’ll be safer.” He flashed a grin and with a final pat on the shoulder, left Satin to the wind and the dark. His broad shouldered shadow shrank and vanished back the way he’d come before Satin could think of how to thank him. 

The new boy Conwy had brought from Fair Isle was a fiercer fighter than either twin, and half again as brutal with his blade. The gravel scattered under his feet, leaving black smudges in the morning’s dusting of snow as he came at Satin, his jaw set with determination. 

Satin got his own sword up in time to block the blow, but the impact shook the bones of his arm up to the shoulder. Without a moment to breathe, Jace was at him again, a feint to the knee, a slash at the heart. Satin took the blow to the chest, he had no shield, having given up moons ago trying to lift the heavy thing with one hand and hold a sword in the other. He felt Jace’s sword clatter hard against the ringmail, the padding beneath dulled the blow but he still felt the breath knocked from his lungs. He stumbled back, but then darted around, parried another quick lash to the back of the thigh, then twirled behind Jace and tried for a blow of his own. Jace rounded on him, and hacked his thrust away brutally, sending the practice sword flying across the yard. Satin put his hands up, weaponless. His elbow hurt from the impact, his whole ribcage rang like a bell, and his fingers stung where the sword had been ripped from them. 

Jace grinned like a hungry dog and turned away, going after Halder this time, leaving Satin to retrieve his sword. It was a full melee, all seven recruits and three young brothers with nothing better to do with their morning, no teams, every man for himself. 

Satin saw Merryl coming for him next, fast as a striking hawk, that mad mocking smile the only part of his face visible below the grille of his helm, but somehow Halder had avoided Jace and happened between them, engaging the madman with an easy backhanded swing that Merryl had to block or receive full across the face. Satin turned, breathing hard, to see Rast on the other side, having left Hop-Robin yielding on the ground, coming to give him another bruising. But Rast never reached him. Pyp was there suddenly, light on his feet. The two exchanged blows and started to dance. Satin looked around him, Toad was fighting Arron, Jace, Emrick. The old man they just called Barber, for that had been his profession before and he had never given a proper name, and Hop-Robin were both staying down. Satin was alone until all the little duels came to their ends and Ser Endrew called a stop. 

Satin glanced at the sworn brothers, bewildered. Pyp winked at him. Satin had the distinct feeling of being the butt of a jape. 

It happened again on the next round. Everyone fought, but somehow no blow ever landed on Satin, a sworn brother found his way between every opponent and him. They are mocking me, he thought, the soft little whore, not even worth coming to blows with. 

And after that, when they paired off, Toad wouldn’t so much as hit his sword when he put it up to block, and parried every attack as lightly as he could. Angry, Satin went at him hard, but all of his moves were slow and clumsy it seemed, and easily turned aside. 

Ser Endrew never noticed, he had the twins and Jace to perfect, and Merryl to keep from hurting Barber too badly. What minor bruises Satin did or did not receive were of little import to the master-at-arms. 

Satin was furious by the end of it. He stormed into the armory and all but tore off his mail and leather, glaring daggers at the back of Pyp’s head as the ranger pulled his half helm off, laughing with Toad and waving him off when he left out the back way. Who else would organize such a joke?

Pyp spotted Satin then and turned to him with a smile, helmet still in hand, but the grin died on his face when he saw the look on Satin’s. “Say your jape!” Satin fairly snarled at him. 

Pyp looked confused. He blinked “Jape?”

“Whatever joke you mean to make. I’ll be mocked to my bloody face if you’re going to mock me!” Satin had not quite realized before, but he was nearly a head taller than the little ranger, and loomed over him in his anger. Pyp took a step back, cowed.

He heard Halder come up behind him and felt his stomach sink. By then, the other recruits had finished disarming and gone, off to break their fasts or to their duties, leaving Satin alone with the sworn brothers. All his bright hot anger turned to leaden fear in an instant. He felt no taller than anyone, as small as a mouse. Donal Noye was not in the armory. There would be no one to stop what happened next, and that would be no jape.

But with a glance and a slight shake of his head, Pyp stopped the big builder advancing. “What do you mean?” he said, putting the helmet down, “there was no joke. We were only…” he trailed off, as if at a loss for words. Satin had never seen him without something clever to say.

“What’d I tell you, Monkey,” said Halder from where he stood by the rack of practice swords. “He isn’t Sam. We should’ve left well enough alone. We’ll never hear the end of it from Albett and Rast.”

“Fie. Albett and Rast can hear the end of it from me. I never said he was Sam I just said we should help him like Jon had us do for Sam.” 

Now it was Satin’s turn to be confused.

"Samwell Tarly,” Pyp supplied, “Jon Snow got us all to make sure no one hurt him in the yard when he first got here.”

“Ser Alliser was having me and Rast beat him bloody. He would never have survived,” Halder said.

All Satin could think to say was, “Tarly?” He knew Randyll Tarly, the lord of Horn Hill. The striding huntsman had flown with the high tower and the gold roses above many a tourney or festival in Oldtown. There were rumors too, whores gossiped, tales of which lords and knights were good customers, and which were not, spread from lips to ears through every brothel in the city. Lord Randyll took only girls to bed, Satin knew, only in secret, and he did not treat them gently.

Pyp nodded, “Sam Tarly. Fat sweet fool he is. About this tall, this wide,” he indicated a spot some inches above his head, and then held his hands out some feet on either side of him. “He’s the one writes the letters from the ranging.”

Satin remembered then, a fat boy and a thin one by the armory door, that first morning. One was Lord Snow with his wolf, and the other… can that truly be Randyll Tarly’s son? Satin had seen the lord himself once or twice at a distance, a lean tall man. Hard to imagine someone called a fat sweet fool was a son of his. “Why help me?” he asked carefully, “I’m no lordling.”

Pyp shrugged. “And I’m no poncy bastard with a great big wolf. But I haven’t seen you without a bruise on your face since you got here. I thought…,” he gestured vaguely, the tips of his big ears red either with cold or embarrassment, “damn me for a fool, I thought it’d be a kindness. I’m even thinking like Lord Snow now, that you’d be so grateful for the lack of a few bruises.”

Satin thought a moment, choosing his words with care, still mindful of Halder looming behind him. “Thank you for your concern. Truly, I’m grateful. I don’t know how it was with Tarly, but you do me no kindnesses stopping Rast and the others hitting me.” He glanced back at the builder, then to Pyp again. “I’ll just get it twice as bad next time we train without you. And I’ll never get any better at stopping myself being hit if I can’t so much as practice.”

Pyp did not take offense, as Satin feared he might, instead he grinned. “See, Stone-head? He isn’t afraid to get hit. I told you he’s no Sam.” 

“I was who said he wasn’t Sam…,” Halder tried.

 But Pyp was already talking again, “it’s so simple. Satin, if you need extra practice, we’ll practice with you.” He looked at Halder, expectant. 

The big builder shrugged, “I could use the extra training anyway,” he said.

So it was that Satin and Pyp met the next morning before Ser Endrew called recruits for morning drills. At the sound of the clanking of practice swords being taken from the armory before the sun was even up, Donal Noye stuck his head out of his rooms behind the forge and blinked owlishly at them from across the great anvil, but seeing who was there, he gave a firm nod in Pyp’s direction and vanished once again. Satin eyed Pyp suspiciously. Did he put you up to this too? But Pyp only shrugged, looking just as puzzled as Satin. 

In the dawn gloaming, they faced each other with blunted steel, no armor between them. Satin went first, a lunge for the chest, Pyp turned just so and his blade never touched, stabbing empty air. Just like that, Satin was overextended and Pyp was on the attack. Their swords rang together as he steadily pushed Satin back across the yard. He was barely able to block Pyp’s nimble strikes, and any attacks he managed to make were quickly turned aside. Both of them were breathing hard by the time Satin missed a parry and found the tip of the blade to his throat. 

“Not bad. You’re quick,” Pyp said. “But your swing’s all wrong. You hit too hard.”

“Too hard!” Satin panted, he could hardly believe that, when Jace could smack his sword clear across the yard, Rast raised welts, and Satin barely left bruises, when he even managed to land a blow.

Pyp gave him that smile again. “Ive watched you fighting Merryl. You treat that thing like it’s a greatsword that weighs thirty pounds, give every move away before you even make it. He’s stronger than you, but you could beat him. You’re quicker than him, so be quicker. Power comes later.” He moved closer, adjusted Satin’s grip on the pommel “There, lightly, like a wine glass.” He took a fighting stance, light on the balls of his feet, the sword held almost carelessly, as though it had grown there in his hand. 

Satin copied him, held the sword out in front of him like it was light as a feather. Pyp made the first move this time, a slash to the elbow. Satin flicked his wrist and sent it away, stepped forward, blocked the next slash and made a lunge of his own. They went back across the yard, Pyp the one on the defensive this round. “Did Ser Alliser teach you this?” 

“No, Jon Snow did.” He did something with his face, all the while parrying Satin’s blows and edging backward, his mouth drew down, dour and serious. “To duel is to dance,” he said in a northern accent so convincing it might have come out of Big Liddle’s mouth “the master-at-arms at Winterfell told me, a fighter must be light as a dancer, he is a snowflake on the wind.” He grinned again, “or some such. He was always saying that sort of thing. The twat.” 

Lord Snow again, it’s always Lord Snow. Satin was curious about this Jon Snow. The more he learned about him, the stranger he became. This boy who’s father was a lord and who's brother was a king. Satin feinted for the shin, and then tried to hit Pyp’s wrist, but the ranger was too quick, parrying easily. “He was a good fighter?” 

“Aye, beat us all up and down the yard at first. We hated him. Near broke Grenn’s hand. But then he started giving lessons before practice, like we’re doing now.” He blocked a blow to the face, but not so easily as he had before, Satin felt quicker. “Started with Grenn, but then I asked to join, then Toad and Matt and Jeren and the rest, besides Rast and Cuger. 

“Grenn?” Satin knew all the other names, but that one was new to him. “One of your friends?”

Pyp gave him a queer look, lowering the tip of his sword. They had made it all the way back across the training yard and come to a natural halt by the armory. “He’s… my friend. They all are. Sam and Jon too.”

Before Satin could respond he heard Rast’s voice from behind him. “Playing Lord Snow, Monkey?”

Pyp looked up, all the humor gone from his face. Not him though, Satin thought, watching them glare at each other. “Only if you’ll play Ser Eunuch, Rat,” Pyp said, “though it’s not as fun a part as Jon’s. Shall I kick a bowl of stew and try to gut you with a knife? I’m sure you know your lines after that.”

The sun was fully up by then, the courtyard growing lighter. A scattering of brothers had appeared, on their way to the Commons to break their fasts.

Rast sneered. “If Ser Alliser were here….”

“And if Lord Snow were here? with Ghost?”

Rast turned his head to spit on the ground, and rubbed at a spot on his neck. “Have your fun with the whore until the bastard gets back. When he does, they’re sure to get along. He so loves to be reminded of his mother.” He gave a nasty smile and headed into the armory as Emrick and Arron arrived, yawning, Jace not far behind. 

Satin looked to Pyp, who’s brows were drawn down in anger. “What does he mean?” he asked.

Pyp sighed and leaned on his sword, the anger going out of him. “Well,” he glanced around, looking uncomfortable, but no one seemed like to help him.“Jon Snow’s bastard born, he never knew his mother. Most like she was…,” he pursed his lips, not finishing the sentence.

A whore. I’ve heard the word before, I’m sure you’ve said it before, too. “Well,” Satin said loftily, leaning on his own sword in turn, “I never knew my father. Perhaps he was a lord.” 

Pyp guffawed and burst out laughing. “Might be you would get along, at that,” he said, still laughing, and gave Satin his sword to take back to the armory before he left for the Common Hall. 

And so it was that Satin never dropped his sword in that morning’s drills, and the day after that, following a short spar with Halder, he received no bruises from Rast. 

Todder was more circumspect, eyeing their little morning practices, dawdling as he walked to the Common Hall for breakfast for three days before he ever came over and picked up a sword, but before long, he started giving Satin pointers, and even praised his form a time or two. He never did say a word to Satin outside of practice though, nor let himself be alone in a room with him. It was enough though, more than enough. Within a fortnight, Satin could beat Hop-Robin three of every five duels, and it was not a moon’s turn before he had disarmed Merryl and made him yield.  

That night, on his way to the Common Hall for the evening meal, Emrick and Jace appeared on either side of him to clap him on the shoulders and chatter about how well he’d done in practice, and he somehow found himself sitting at their table, laughing along to one of Pyp’s stories with the other boys his age. 

In the corner, Hop-Robin had taken up his wheel-fiddle and begun one of his beggar’s songs, and Owen the Oaf took up his bow, and played along in harmony to a sprightly dancing tune.

Many of the men were clapping along, until Geoff leapt upon the table and began to dance a jig. Everyone only laughed and clapped along all the harder. Elron appeared, drunk as a dog, in a lady’s gown, gods knew where he’d gotten it, and they two swung each other about by the elbow. 

Septon Cellador looked scandalized, but Donal Noye said something to him, about how they could hardly fault him for wearing it, after all, the dress was black. Even Bowen Marsh and serious stern Othell Yarwyck laughed at that. 

It was a sweet night, the sweetest he’d had in moons, perhaps years. For a moment, he wasn’t afraid at all, and remembered what Big Liddle had said, about there being a sort of freedom, within the gaol.  

As the music ebbed and the night wore on, Satin’s mood turned to melancholy though. The boys grew weary and went to their beds, or they drank each other flat onto the table. Most forgot about Satin altogether, and his thoughts turned to home, to Oldtown, how he’d used to sometimes play the harp for everyone in the common room, late late at night when most of the clients had gone, and the girls would dance with the guard and with each other. 

When he turned his thoughts from home, oddly, they lingered on Jon Snow -a strange boy that organized all of the recruits to keep one fat sweet fool from being hurt, who broke boys’ hands and then gave them swordsmanship lessons- and his mother, who might have been a whore. Had she prayed for him when he was in her womb? Had she believed he was beloved of the Mother? What color were Lord Snow’s eyes? Had his mother given them to him? Satin’s mother had had eyes as green as glass, but his own were common brown. Nine of every ten men that came to see her had had brown eyes. Nine of every ten men in the world had brown eyes, he was sure.

The latch clicked. The cord snapped forward. The crossbow thrummed against Satin’s cheek as the quarrel sped away with a twang. He held his breath, and squinted down the barrel of the crossbow at the archery butt. “Got him!” he breathed, when he saw that the bolt had struck home. A heart shot, center mass.

Pyp whooped aloud and jumped up. “He’s got him! Did you see?” Barber and Hop-Robin nodded, less impressed. They were done with their archery practice, and loitering by the butts so as not to be given some other tasks to do before the evening meal. It was nearing dark, and Satin would have to give up practice in a moment when he could no longer see to aim. “Where in seven hells did you learn to shoot like that?”

Satin smiled, shy suddenly. “We used to shoot rocks at the seagulls, me and the fishmonger’s boy, down by the docks, with a sling.” 

“A sling!” Pyp was still grinning. “Ulmer of the Kingswood come again when he hasn’t even died yet and he says a sling! 

Strange to think of the fishmonger’s boy. Marq, his name had been. Satin had not seen him since they were boys of eight, when he had abruptly realized what his father was doing all those afternoons he spent with Satin’s mother while they played. Strange to think of anyone who had been his friend in Oldtown. His thoughts had been drawn back there often as the moon grew full again. It was nearing four turns since he had arrived on the Wall, and the waxing moon had begun looking down on him like an accusing eye. 

“Ho, it’s Cersei and the Kingslayer.” Pyp bobbed his head at Arron and Emrick as they arrived.

Emrick put a hand to his chest in mock-affront. “Why does he get to be the queen?!” 

Pyp winked. “Cause. You’re prettier.”

It was good to see Pyp laughing and joking again. He’d been quieter of late, since the last raven from Sam Tarly. Pyp could read the best of all of them, so had taken to tracing on a map in Maester Aemon’s chamber the course the ranging took, reading off the names of villages and rivers that Tarly had written of passing. There was White Tree, here was Craster’s keep, here a branch of the Milkwater and the Fist of the First Men. There was so much beyond, beyond the wall, to think that before he had come here, he had never spared a moment’s thought to what was on the other side. The latest letter had been different though. It had told of the scouting parties gone up into the Frostfangs, and that Qhorin the Halfhand had taken Jon Snow with him. 

That night, Pyp had not joked at all, nor taken them up to look at the map, but sat in the hall until it was nearly deserted, staring hollowly at the bottom of his fourth, or perhaps sixth mug of ale.

"Let's have a story, Monkey," Toad had said.

And Pyp had obliged, but he never did the voices, and it was not a farce like he usually told. It was some Northern tale Satin had never heard, about a hero with twelve friends who all went out into the winter to look for the Children of the Forest. One friend was killed by a bear, another by the cold, one fell and broke is neck, and another was eaten by a giant. They all grew grim and quiet, listening. Matt dared to ask what happened next, and Pyp glared at him and snapped, "all of his friends died and his horse died too. And then he walked through the snow until his dog was killed by the Others and his sword broke and the tears froze on his face!" He'd glared at them all until they left, all but Halder, and Satin, who had been sitting at the other end of the table and pretending not to hear.

“I thought he’d be safe,” Pyp mumbled then, more to himself than to Halder, but Satin had heard him in any case. “The big bloody fool. I thought, he’s too thick to die, he’ll never even notice he’s been killed, just get right back up and come… come back to me. Gods, I thought Jon would keep him safe, but none of them are safe.” 

“Best off to bed, Pyp” Halder had said, sounding anxious. He wound up more than half carrying him out of the hall. Pyp had only groaned that there was no point in going to bed when Grenn was out there. Halder had given Satin a shrug as they left, as if to say he hadn’t the slightest idea what Pyp was talking about. Satin supposed he didn’t either, but he had a notion.

None of them had seen Pyp touch a drop of ale since.

“Coming to supper?” Arron asked, “There might be news from the Fist, I heard Ty say, while he was on guard duty he saw Clydas bring a letter to the old Pomegranate, and he was white as a sheet.” 

That sobered Pyp, but he went along with the crowd when everyone else murmured and nodded and began to head off toward the Common Hall. Not even he noticed Satin hang back, he never even had to wave them off with the excuse he’d had ready, that he had to return his crossbow to the armory. He had no appetite tonight. The moon is full. It was just peeking over the trees, full and fat, yellow with the setting sun. I have stalled long enough. It was time he payed a visit to the sept. 

He had not kept careful track of weeks and months, could not be sure just exactly how long it had been, but if he reckoned it right, counting back, it must have been nine moons, or near enough as made no matter. These things were not exact, he had been given to believe. 

The light was not quite gone as he slipped inside, but it was dark within the sept, the only light the flickering of a few candles other brothers had left, seeking their own prayers, most for the Father and the Warrior, one lonesome candle flickered before the Smith as well. The air was thick with the smell of oils and incense and candlesmoke. It smelled as every sept he’d ever been in had smelled, though it was smaller than all but the smallest dockside prayer houses in Oldtown. He half expected the stout balding septon to come bustling out, scolding him for not coming more often. Satin recalled him well, and fondly, always scolding, but never trying overmuch to stop him from taking those coins he always nicked. When Satin’s mother died, it had been the septon who lit a candle for her and said a prayer, who put a hand on his shoulder and asked if there was aught he could do for him, he would, for her sake. Brown eyes, that septon had had. But then again, so had the fishmonger, and the Citadel acolyte, and the tanner, and the guard that lived with them there at the brothel. Satin had been too proud to accept the septon’s help then, twelve and sure he was a man grown, he’d already struck a deal with Wylan the very night she’d died, for her room, and her debts, and all that came with both. 

But it was not his mother he had come to pray for tonight. He passed the other gods, carved figurines in their niches on the walls, their eyes were all dark, unseeing, but the Mother’s were lit by the last rays of the setting sun through the south-facing window, accusing, like the moon. 

He took off his gloves and lit the candle before her altar, knelt and tried to pray. He had been taught proper prayers and hymns, but never truly learned them. They all escaped him now. He looked up at the Mother. She looked back at him with a stern stone face that was nothing like his own mother’s, nothing like that fat little septa carved of wood he remembered, nor the silly sweet girl he’d come to pray for either. 

“I have not come to ask for your forgiveness, m’lady,” he said, “it’s not for myself that I came, I know you must despise me now.” He closed his eyes, unable to bare the judgement in her gaze. “Once you granted mercy, to my mother, when she prayed for me. You let me be born. I only ask you do the same for her.” He could not bring himself to say the girl’s name. Even now he could see her in his mind, her olive skin and laughing eyes, tresses of her long brown hair swaying as she danced, a sweet girl, too sweet for the life they lead. Forgive me. “Please,” he said aloud, then six more times silently, to make it seven. 

He tried to feel as though the Mother had heard, as if he could feel her listening, but all he could feel was the chill in the sept and his knees beginning to ache. Have I angered her so much that she will not even hear my prayers? Satin stayed there with his eyes closed, praying, or perhaps only hoping that he was praying. He stayed until his knees went numb.

A soft noise behind him brought him out, he opened his eyes to find the sept almost pitch dark around him. His candle guttered in a draft, but stayed lit. His head felt light, the candlesmoke and incense made the world dreamlike, the shadows seemed alive around him, dancing with the flame. There was the sound again, a breath, a creak of boots on wood. Satin glanced behind him and saw a creeping black shape by the door. His heart gave a jolt. 

“Pardon,” said the shadow, and stepped a bit closer. The dim moonlight from the window caught a pale face, resolved it into familiar features. It was just Matt, clutching a handful of candles in his arms. He glanced around as if fearing there might be someone else hiding in the shadows of the sept. “I didn’t think anyone was in here, most pray in the mornings. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” 

“It’s alright, I had finished, don’t let me keep you from your prayers.” 

Matt came closer, so Satin could see him better. His eyes were wide in the dark. “I just came to change the candles, Septon Cellador forgets usually.” He looked at the one Satin had lit, it had burned more than halfway down. “Have you been here since archery? It’s been near two hours.” 

Satin blinked, has it truly? he’d not noticed the time go. “I had a lot of prayers.”

“For the ranging? There was no news like Ty thought, Clydas and Aemon never even came to the hall, Marsh neither.” 

Satin shook his head. “For a friend. Someone I knew before.” He stood with effort, his knees ached, he felt a man of seventy, not seventeen.

“Oh,” Matt said, and sat on one of the benches, his task apparently forgotten. Satin looked at him sidelong. Though he had started speaking with the other young men in the past few weeks, he had not spent much time alone with Matthar, not since that time in the armory. Matt was looking at him that way again, thoughts racing behind his shadowed eyes. He hugged the candles close to him. “Did you have a lot of friends, before? In… In Oldtown?"

He sat on the bench in front of Matt’s, they were plain low benches with no backs, so they could sit face-to face. “A fair few, fairer than most.” All of them fairer than me. Could he really call them friends? He’d not stopped to tell a soul goodbye, not spared a thought for any of them when he ran. 

“Why did you leave?” Matt glanced at him, then looked away. “That is, if you want. You don’t have to tell me. I just meant if I had friends someplace, I wouldn’t want to leave.”

Satin sighed, looked away, over at the window and the long shape the moonlight made on the floor. “I got too old. No one wants a boy whore with a beard,” he said simply, it was only half a lie. He sucked in a sharp breath when he felt fingertips brush his cheek, at the beginnings of a beard there. He’d let it grow out, like Big Liddle said to. Most times when he caught a glimpse of himself in a bit of polished plate or a dark window, he hardly recognized the scruffy, frizz-haired young man that looked back at him. He’d spent so long shaving every day, plucking hairs, looking sweet and soft, that now trying to look the opposite made him a stranger even to himself. 

“I would,” Matt breathed, his hand resting gently on Satin’s jaw, “I mean- Not because you were… I just mean that I’d… Not that I would- I’ve never…” He pulled his hand away abruptly. Satin couldn’t see in the dark but he was sure the other boy’s face was red as roses. 

He caught his hand. “Matt, you’re sweet, but I can’t.” He felt so sad suddenly, sad for Matthar, for Duncan Liddle, for Pyp too, and his Grenn, and half a hundred men he’d known. It had never been easy for Satin, but it had always been simple. No one had ever mistaken him for anything other than exactly what he was. “I’m not even a sworn brother. I’m not the man for you.”

Matthar’s hand trembled in his own. “I’ve never kissed anyone,” he whispered.

Satin smiled, for all he felt quite on the verge of tears. He said, “I can help with that at least,” and kissed him.

It was just then, of course, that the septon stumbled in.

Matt was sent scampering away with only a shouting-at, leaving his candles scattered across the floor where he dropped them, but Satin was not so lucky. The septon grabbed him hard by the upper arm, held him fast. He looked at Satin, a dark and drunken look, hatred and disgust matched with hunger and desire. Satin's mind was racing. He will take me to his rooms, he will make me do things, the gods won't help me. The septon seemed to decide, and marched Satin from the sept, but not to his own rooms, he took him straight to the Grey Keep, where the Lord Steward, Bowen Marsh kept his chambers on the second floor. He knocked sharply on the wooden door when they arrived. What will they do to me? Satin could hardly think from fear.

There was the sound of movement from inside, and grumbling, then the metal scraping of the latch. The door cracked open and a thin beam of light spilled into the hall. The plump little man glared out at the septon. “What? Cellador? I haven’t time for a drink! Renly Baratheon’s dead and Storm’s End’s fallen, and that’s not to even begin with the dire news from White Harbor.” Then he opened the door a fraction more and saw Satin there as well in the gloom of the hallway. “What’s this?” he raised the oil lamp he held.

“This little wretch.” Cellador pulled him forward into the lamplight. Satin stumbled, numb with terror. “I caught him in the sept.” 

Marsh blinked at the pair of them. “Is the sept not where you said you wanted the boys to be?” 

Renly Baratheon, dead? Renly Baratheon, King Robert’s own brother who they said Leo Tyrell’s cousin was bedding? That tall handsome young lord who had so often appeared at tourneys in Oldtown. How can he have died? The whole of the Reach had rejoiced to crown him king, Satin had heard. 

Septon Cellador yanked him by the arm, shaking him from his thoughts. “I caught him in the sept kissing Matthar!”

Bowen Marsh’s eyebrows jumped. “I see.” He stepped back from the door, letting them into the cell. Bustled in front of the septon, Satin dumbly shuffled inside. His eyes were glassy, barely taking in the orderly little study, the desk in the middle of the room piled high with neat stacks of parchment.

Cellador kept talking, his words only slightly slurred with drink. “It’s a disgrace, a blasphemy. From the moment I saw him I knew he’d bring dishonor to the watch.” Bowen Marsh moved to the other side of the desk, set his lamp down and sat primly in his chair. He watched Cellador thoughtfully as he continued, “he’s corrupting the other boys and perverting the very sacred ground of the sept!” 

The Lord Steward steepled his fingers. “Pray, what would you have me do about it?”

“He should be punished! It’s an affront to the sacred institution of the Watch. The gods will not forgive lenience to such as he.” 

Marsh tapped his thumbs against his lip, studying Satin. 

Satin’s fear was so big, he felt it might swallow him whole. There had always been someplace to run before, a friend or ranking officer to protect him. When Rast caught him alone in the baths one night, he’d run to Donal Noye for refuge in the forge. But Donal Noye was only a blacksmith, Bowen Marsh was Lord Steward and Castellan besides. Who protects whores from high officers? He felt so sick he might almost have laughed. All the while Marsh’s moss green eyes appraised him, he stared at the desk, at his own boots, at a bit of paper that he could not read, anything to avoid his gaze.

“You’ve been drinking,” Marsh said. Satin glanced up, and saw that he had leveled his gaze on Cellador instead.

The septon drew himself up. “I’ve been…? How dare you. I’ve brought you a miscreant recruit in need of punishment, not–” 

Marsh silenced him with a gesture. “You’re drunk, and you’ve come to my chambers shouting, bringing a recruit who’s never been caught fighting, who’s never once been accused of disobeying orders, demanding he be punished for religious crimes? Are you suggesting I have the boy thrown in the ice cells? Whipped before the sept?”  

The septon’s eyes bulged. “The Seven…”

“Are not my gods,” Marsh finished for him, his words crisp and calm with anger, his face was ruddy in the light of the oil lamp. “You would do well to recall where it was that I said my vows. My gods do not live in your sept, nor do they demand that boys be whipped for kissing. Perhaps you should go over your vows again. As I recall, they say nothing of the Seven. Do I remember incorrectly?” Cellador was sullenly silent. Marsh pressed on, “Jeor puts up with your drunkenness, and it’s none of my concern. Cellador, I hold you in high esteem, truly, but I will not tolerate you taking discipline into your own hands or presuming that the Watch is the domain of southron gods. Go to bed, septon, and put these follies aside. Next time I see you, you will be sober.” His tone brooked no argument.

Stiff with cold fury, Septon Cellador bowed. “My lord.” Then he turned without a word and left. He only wobbled a little on the way out.

The Lord Steward turned his gaze on Satin then, disgust plain on his face. “As for you. I had not taken you for a fool. Am I to believe that I was mistaken?” 

“No, m’lord,” he said miserably, to his boots. 

“I cannot help what men do in their cells, or with whom they do it. But the sept? You disappoint me.”

“I’m sorry, m’lord,” his boots blurred before him, he blinked back tears.

“You’ll not be punished this time, but I must never hear about you doing anything so foolish again. Get out of my sight.”

Satin fled. 

He didn’t know how long he ran, perhaps he had run for an hour, hours, perhaps it had only been minutes, but when he stumbled to a stop, panting, hands on his knees, and looked around, he saw only the dark pines all around him. He wiped his streaming eyes, hiccuped another sob and stood up straight. Looking back, he could not see the Wall nor the lights of Castle Black. The Kingsroad lay beneath his feet, above him, the Ice Dragon’s eye pointed the way north. Go back! it said, go back, there’s nowhere to run! He did not turn back, his boots moved of their own accord, carried him on in the direction of its tail, south, south, away.

It was only half a league to Mole’s Town, not even an hour’s walk. Conwy had told them of the little village and the people there, how they lived much of their lives below ground, how all the houses were connected by tunnels and cellars when they had passed through it on the way north, but he had not seen it since. Still, he could not fail to find the brothel with its red lantern swinging in the wind. He pulled his hood up as he approached, there were men in black outside, all with their faces shadowed.

Why am I here? He had not known this was where he was going, but now he had arrived, and could not make himself turn back. He met no one’s eyes, no one tried to meet his. The entrance was but a shack, three men could not have stood abreast inside, but behind the door within was a warmly lit stairwell. He moved as if in a dream, walking down the stairs. There was the common room, there a girl, there a couch with pillows. It was all as it had been and not at all the same. The air was close with the smoke of lanterns and torches, and the smell of sex, perfume, and being underground. 

“Hello lad,” the girl said, cheery in the way you had to be cheery when you were greeting, “what’s your pleasure?” Her voice was smooth and northern, lilted as Big Liddle’s and Watt of Long Lake’s was, how Pyp sounded when he did his Lord Snow voice, looking pensively to the middle distance and intoning something about honor or that winter would come soon. 

Satin could not find his voice to reply to her, he pushed his hood back, and was surprised to see his hands were bare, pale with cold. I took my gloves off in the sept, they must be on the floor by the Mother’s altar.

“Lad?” she said again, a note of fear edged into her voice, “you alright?  

“I,” he said, and felt fresh hot tears on his face, “I just wanted…” he wiped them away, still not sure why he was there. I should not be here, my place is at the Wall, he meant to say, but it wasn’t true. His place was far away, far away and gone, his place was nowhere. “I was a whore once,” was what came out of his mouth. 

Behind him the sound of the door and someone else coming down the stairs made her eyes flicker. She moved closer. “Out of the common room, you’ll scare away the brothers.” When Satin only stared at her, she made a tsk sound and took him by the elbow. She led him out through a doorway into a tunnel. “Su!” she called. 

“Can I not get a moment’s peace? I’ve only just got rid o’ that poxy one!” came another voice. A tall woman with shocking blue eyes appeared in a doorway. “Have Heather take the next one.” She crossed her arms and leaned on the frame, she eyed Satin, unimpressed “Who’s this?” 

“He’s not come to pay, says he were a whore once.”

“So?”

“So take him to the lady or fetch Kellen and have him throw him out on his arse, I don’t care, but he’s crying in the common room and I’ll not deal with it.” With that she turned and vanished back out to do her greeting. 

Su looked him up and down, and made up her mind, “Come on then.”

He followed without needing to be pulled this time, down tunnels and smoky hallways, past doors that could only have one thing going on behind them, and down another short flight of earthen stairs, until they came to an unassuming door that stood half open. 

“Lady Meliana?” said Su, pushing the door open. “I’ve got a boy here, claims he was a whore, Zei thought you should see him.”

A woman was sitting at a vanity inside the room. She was in the middle of counting stacks of copper coins. “Another from down the Weeping Water? I’ve no use for boy whores, tell him White Harbor’s the other way.”

“No, he’s come south, this one, not north. Little crow all in his feathers.” 

Lady Meliana left her coin counting, and they both looked expectantly at Satin.

All he could think to do was give a little bow. “My lady.”

Su and Lady Meliana looked at each other for a moment, and then both burst out laughing. 

Lady Meliana was no true lady, as she was happy to tell him, when she had finished laughing, the other woman was Sky Blue Su, who went and fetched some hot spiced wine before going back to work. The lady let him sit with her and sip the wine for a while as she counted coppers in exchange for what news he had from the south. Ravens came to Castle Black often, but traders and travelers with news came to Mole’s town but rarely.

Sometimes girls would wander in and out, just to chat or share a bit of gossip, or to discuss business or drop off coins. Satin sat, and sipped the wine, and soaked it in. It was fine, so fine and sweet to simply be in their company, that he found himself wiping more tears away just to hear Meliana argue with one of them about the interest on her room, as his mother had so many times. 

The brothers often spoke of how they longed for girls, for women, to look at and to touch and fuck and lie beside, to hold and kiss. He had not thought he shared that longing, had not quite realized how much he missed women. Dearly, desperately he missed them, all the girls and women he had known and lived with. There had been other boy whores too of course, and the boys he’d known in the streets and alleys of Oldtown, and he did miss them, truly, he did, but it was not the same. There were boys at the Wall, boys that were nearly becoming his friends and would someday be his brothers. There were no women at the Wall, and he had been raised by his mother and her friends, all the kind, and mean, strict, and sweet women who lived and worked in Wylan’s brothel before him. 

The hours fell away, and too soon he found himself being shaken awake by a gentle hand. “You’d best be going, sweetling, it’s too late by far for crows to be out o’ their nests.” 

He’d fallen asleep sitting on the floor in the corner of Lady Meliana’s room, She was stooped over him, her necklaces and dangling earrings all hanging down around his face. 

“Up up! You must away,” she laughed, “they’ll say we’ve run off to be wed, and where’d my ladyship be with you for a lord husband?” 

“They’ll snick his little wooly head off, poor lamb,” said the girl from the common room, Zei, from where she sat by the dressing table, her own cup of wine in hand. 

“How long?” Satin asked, standing unsteadily. Meliana offered him a hand and pulled him up. 

“Not long, an hour or two, you’ve still plenty o’ time before dawn, tis not even the hour of the nightingale.”

He nodded gravely, if he was not back before sunrise, he’d be a criminal again. He was no sworn brother yet, so he’d not be a deserter, who was a walking dead man, but there would be punishment, the ice cells perhaps, or the whipping. Or they’d simply hang him. Septon Cellador might call for it yet, “I thank you, truly.” 

“It was nothing,” Lady Meliana said, “I know Renly Baratheon’s dead now, and Robb Stark’s in the West, and I know that Stannis fellow’s crowned himself as well, More than payment for a bit o’ wine.”

He gathered his cloak around him and made to leave, but then a thought occurred to him, he turned back to Meliana and Zei, the pair of them were so lovely lit by three bright candles on the vanity. “You’ve been so very kind to me, but might I ask one more favor?” 

“Ask,” Lady Meliana gestured expansively.

“If you’ve any to spare, some oil? For my hair? It’s so dry up on the Wall.” That made them laugh again, and they sent him off with a flask of sweet almond oil, with a wink, and an old half empty jar of perfume none of them favored, for good measure. 

Lady Meliana told him to come back, if ever he needed them again, and Satin had smiled and promised that he would, but, turning north and heading into the dark, he knew he’d never return to the little brothel under the ground, with its swinging red lantern.

The eastern sky was only just turning grey when he arrived, footsore and tired, but feeling warmer than he had in moons. There was the Wall, huge and pale, here were its few shabby towers and its stout black keeps. Here was the end of the world. Somehow he did not feel quite like it would tip over on him anymore. 

He made for the Old Flint barracks, meaning to catch another hour or so of sleep, stash his treasures in the small locking chest beneath his cot, but despite the hour he found torches burning, men standing in the hallways and the stairs talking. There were a group of boys outside the twins' cells, he saw Toad elbow Pyp as he approached. 

“There you are! Where have you been? We thought Easy had gotten you,” Pyp said.

“Easy?”

“He’s decided he’s the Young Dragon, sick of Florian. Declared war on all the Dornish,” put in Arron, “Dilly nearly gutted him when he went after him with a rolling pin.”

“I’m not… My mother was only half Dornish.” He shook his head. “What? Why are you all awake, it’s not even dawn.”

“No one’s asleep. There was a bird,” said Emrick, 

“News? from the Fist?”  It must be good news, if Pyp is in high spirits.

“From White Harbor,” Emrick said. “Balon Greyjoy’s crowned himself king and he’s taken Winterfell. Deepwood and Moat Cailin too. It’s all in Ironborn hands. The North’s fallen.”

It was a long and restless wait. Every raven brought dire news, every rumor spread fast as plague through the castle. It had been weeks since the latest bird from Castle Cerwyn had arrived. With each retelling, the story became more grisly.

Old Henly, who had been on guard duty by the rookery at the time said the young princes had their heads cut off.

Jace, who knew about these things, said there was no doubt the boys had been drowned, as that was the Ironborn custom.

Wick Whittlestick was sure he heard they’d been hanged, their corpses tarred and dangled from the battlements by the nooses.

Spotted Pate, who had gone to Winterfell a time or two, said they’d been flayed and their skins flown like banners over the Great Keep. 

The only sure thing was that Robb Stark’s brothers had been killed. No news had come of Winterfell since. Satin didn’t know what to make of it all. He hadn’t even known Robb Stark had brothers at Winterfell. 

Pyp, almost as upset as Satin had ever seen him, had yelled at Toad, when he asked, that of course they were Jon Snow’s brothers, what other young princes, one a babe in arms, the other a crippled boy, might they have been?

The days grew tense and tenser. Every Northman in the castle looked at Ser Aladale Wynch askance. When a man took the black he left all allegiances behind, but the fighting was so near, and Wynch the only Ironman among them. It had nearly come to a head a few days past when Watt of Long Lake called him a salty savage and spat on his shoes.

Ser Aladale, taciturn and dark eyed, had only said that Balon Greyjoy was no king of his, and Prince Theon a bloody reckless fool just like his brothers, and stalked away. 

Ser Wynton Stout, a Northman himself, had nothing at all to say on the matter, and was under the impression that the last Greyjoy rebellion must surely be over soon, King Robert would put his hammer down on them, no doubt.

So it was that when Clydas, grim faced, helped Maester Aemon into the Common Hall during the evening meal, all chatter ceased at once. Some even held their breaths as the old blind maester climbed the dais, one pale hand on his cane, the other on Clydas’ round shoulder. 

One might have heard the whisper of a snowflake falling as he stood for a moment, unseeing eyes cast out upon the crowd.

“Winterfell is no more,” he said, his quiet voice reaching every ear. “A host of Northmen besieged the castle, and Prince Theon Greyjoy put it to the torch rather than surrender. Lord Bolton’s baseborn son has taken what survivors as he could safely to the Dreadfort. Greyjoy remains his captive, all the other Ironmen were slain.”

There was another moment of silence as the whole hall seemed to take a breath, and then everyone began to speak at once. 

Satin saw Ser Aladale fairly shaking Clydas “Was Ser Harras Harlaw with the prince?” he was shouting, “The heir to Ten Towers, did the letter say-“

He heard Emrick agreeing with Jace. “It’s just like Ironborn, rapers and pirates-“

Halder had his hand on Pyp’s shoulder, saying, “it wouldn’t have made a difference, He’d have gone south with Robb Stark, or just lost his fool bastard head, we did the right thing to-

But the only thing he truly noticed in the clamor of it all was Big Liddle. He had not stood and begun shouting as everyone else had, but brooded into his cup of wine, and then abruptly walked out of the hall without a word to anyone. 

It was more than an hour hence that Satin managed to escape. The announcement had come in the middle of a five way game of tiles, Pyp and Toad, their brief argument forgotten, Satin, and the twins, and they had resolved to finish the game, and to get roaring drunk, for Winterfell and for the fallen North. Much of the hall had got the same idea. All around them there were tearful toasts to the Young Wolf, to his poor brothers, even to the late Lord Stark, who King Joffrey had shortened by a head more than half a year past. The game dragged out and finally dissolved with no clear winner, and Satin extricated himself from the table lest he be dragged into another game.

More than a little tipsy, he made his way carefully to the Old Flint barracks. Beside it, Hardin’s tower stood lonely, leaning, its broken battlement like a wound making it lurch in pain. He looked at it a while, one window was lit with the dim light of a candle or a lamp, but he kept on into the barracks and up to his cell. 

Satin had never once let himself get drunk since he’d come to the wall. He’d learned too early and too well how to sip while a client gulped, but he felt so far from all of it that night. The war was everywhere, not just in the Riverlands, not just south of the Neck. It had gone to Storm’s end, to Lannisport, to Winterfell, ten thousand leagues of death lay between here and Oldtown. He took his boots, cloak and blacks off, and crept under the blankets in his woolen underclothes. But despite his pleasantly spinning head, he could not sleep. In his minds eye he saw Hardin’s still, it’s one lonesome window. I should leave it alone, he thought. I would be a fool to go. He lay in the dark until he could stand it no more. He rolled over and leaned over the edge of the cot, head dangling upside down, and reached beneath the bed. He pulled out the small chest. Inside he found the skin of wine he’d won at cards with three-finger Hobb a fortnight past, while waiting for the bread to rise on night-baking duty. He’d intended it for a gift to the twins when they were surely passed out of training and made brothers before he was, but he supposed he could always win another game of cards against Hobb.

He tucked it under an arm and shrugged his cloak back on, pulled on his boots. The barracks was still empty with almost every man in the hall, so he did not come face to face with anyone on his way out. 

Somehow, Hardin’s was even emptier. Most of the brothers stayed in the Old Flint barracks, but a few took rooms in the other towers, if they preferred their solitude. He knew which room to go to.

Perhaps I am a fool, he thought, outside the door, and rapped thrice, softly, then waited. When no response came, he rapped three times again, this time sharply with his knuckles on the wood. 

“Begone,” said a deep voice from inside. 

Satin bit his lip, “Duncan,” he said aloud. 

That prompted the sounds of shuffling feet, and the door pulled open. Big Liddle was still in his blacks, his hair unbraided though, and beard unkempt. He looked at Satin for a moment, eyes narrowed. “What do you want, little brother? I’m in no fit state. You’d do better to go to bed.”

Satin brandished the wine skin. “You seemed in need of company.”

Big Liddle looked at it, and back at Satin, His mouth twisted, and then he glanced to the end of the hall in each direction, as if to make sure no one saw, and stepped back to let him in, closing the door quickly behind. 

“I fear I am poor company tonight,” he said, sighing. He slumped over to the bed and sat. “You would find better drinking partners in the Commons.” 

Satin handed him the wine, “I left the Commons, it was too…,” he did not have the right words, “I thought you might want to talk about it,”

Big Liddle pulled the cork out and took a swig. “What’s there to talk about?”

“Did you know them? The princes?” Satin sat beside him. Big Liddle was a lord’s son, he might have known Eddard Stark’s boys.

“Not as such,” he said, “I went to a harvest feast with Benjen Stark some six years past, when the older one was a babe of two. Sweet little thing, looked like his mother. That boy Greyjoy was already there.” He held the wineskin out, Satin took it and drank. “Lord Eddard took him to ward, you know, after the rebellion. He was their foster brother, Others take him. But in truth… it’s not the boys I mourn for, though tis terrible it’s true, it’s Winterfell.” 

“For the castle?”  

“Aye, the castle and the Winter Town.” Liddle glanced at him “Pah, you are a summer babe, you do not understand.” 

Satin shook his head and handed back the wine. 

Duncan took it and sipped thoughtfully. He moved further onto the bed and leaned his broad back against the wall. “Twas a time any man could find a bed and a hot bowl in Winter Town. Even in the depths of winter when the cold winds howl at the holdfast doors, or the farms and crofts are frozen ruins, no one was so lowly they’d be turned away.” He sipped again. “Winterfell is built on hot springs, the water flows through the castle walls, it’s warm no matter the season. So long as there was a Stark in Winterfell, the hearthfire always burned in the heart of the North.” He looked long at the skin of wine then, letting the silence grow. “That was what Greyjoy put to the torch, the heart of it.”

Satin put a hand on his knee. “They might rebuild, when Robb Stark returns from war.”

Duncan exhaled and shifted his legs. “If Robb Stark returns from war.”

“He’s winning.”

“Aye but for how long?” He sounded sad, sadder than he’d even been when speaking of the Winter Town. 

Satin didn’t know what to say then, so he leaned over and kissed him. 

He didn’t flinch away. Satin took it for an invitation, and climbed into his lap, straddled his hips. It seemed the natural thing to do. Perhaps a fool is not so bad a thing to be. A hand rested lightly on his waist.

Duncan Liddle’s lips were soft, his beard was course, but he did not kiss back. He didn’t pull away either though. Satin felt a finger trace his jawline. “You grew out your beard.” 

“Someone said I should, if I could, that I’d be safer,”

Satin Tried to kiss him again. For a moment sure that if only he’d kiss back, if he’d put both hands on him, pull him down, it wouldn’t matter how many leagues away he was from home, how many wars raged, how many castles burned. He could have a place for true. Oh kiss me, let it be here. It would not be so cold. It would not be such a long and lonely life. But the warm body had gone still beneath him, the hand gone rigid on his waist. Please, just kiss me back. 

The hand that had touched his face found his chest and pushed him gently but firmly away. “This is folly, Satin.” 

Satin felt the wine grow sour in his stomach, felt his heart twist in his chest. He could not win his place here that way, not as he always had been able to in Oldtown. Duncan Liddle wasn’t Wylan.

A fool, I am a fool. He clambered back off of Big Liddle, off the bed, feeling dizzy and a little sick. “Forgive me.” 

“Satin…,” he heard him say, but did not stop to hear what he said next. He was already out the door. 

Somehow it all went back to normal. The North was fallen, Winterfell was gone, but life at Castle black was much the same. Satin trained, he pushed barrels of sand and mail around the yard with other recruits, he ate, he shaved his beard and combed oil through his hair til the curls were soft and lush and shiny again. Once he let slip how cyvasse was all the fashion in the south and that he’d learned to play, someone carved a board into a table in the Common Hall, burned the chequy pattern into the wood. Halder started carving pieces from bits of stone, after making Satin swear to teach him how to play. In the meantime they played with pebbles, acorns, coins and pinecones. 

Pyp took to it right away, and even faster to cheating. Matt was passing fair, Halder only passing, and Toad never sat for more than a few minutes with Satin as the tutor. But it was something to eat up the time, which stretched and sagged and fell into limp ribbons around them. Ravens came. News came. A great battle was fought at King’s Landing, but the king prevailed, and the other king lost. Riverrun remained in Stark and Tully hands, Lannisport in Lannister. The Ironborn still held much of the North. The days grew colder and shorter, it was autumn for true. 

Icy winds blew south out of the haunted forest, and with them came the ravens. The news was not given aloud in the Common Hall, but crept over the castle like a fog, whispered, it was too dire to speak aloud.

The Rangers had all gotten it direct from Bowen Marsh, but the builders, the stewards and recruits had it from their friends and brothers. An attack, a battle, something had happened on the Fist of the First Men, but according to Pyp, the letter had the look of something written out beforehand, it did not say who had attacked, or what. The rest of the birds bore no letters, “He must have let them go.” Pyp’s voice was wooden, “Sam had charge of the ravens, the kind dolt, he must have freed them all.” 

Satin, sent to the rookery with a sack of corn for the birds, found that they would not eat. Clydas said they likely wouldn’t for days, they were all fat with carrion. 

There was nothing to do but wait, and dread. Whispers turned to dead things with black hands. Castle Black held its breath, looked north, and waited. 

The days dragged their feet and became weeks, which limped into fortnights. And then, one day, while Satin was dyeing wool down in the laundry with Tim Tangletongue, a long sweet note blew from atop the wall. 

They both froze, waiting for the second blast, for Mance Rayder and his wildlings, but it never came. “R…,” Tim said, “It’s r… it’s rangers returning!” And they both abandoned their washtubs, hands purple with woad, to dash upstairs to see. 

By the time they reached the gate, almost every brother in the castle was already there, standing in a loose crowd to let the ranging through. But there was no ranging, no long line of horses and wayns, no cage, empty of ravens, no sweet fat fool, no boy with a wolf. There were just a few haggard men coming out of the tunnel, a bare dozen. Satin hung back among the recruits, he knew none of these exhausted men with haunted eyes, did not see the Old Bear, who he had never met, but seen riding at the head of the column that morning so long ago. “So few,” he heard someone behind him murmur, “is this all?” 

There was a wordless shout from across the yard, and someone came sprinting through the crowd, and one of the rangers, a tall man with shaggy hair and a beard, was nearly bowled over as a bundle of black wool and leather launched into his arms. 

“Pyp!” he said, in a boy’s voice, catching him.

“You damned fool. You! You fool! You’re alive!” Pyp was saying into the black fur that lined the big man’s cloak, his boots dangling a full foot off of the ground. 

A man with wooden teeth was asking after Bowen Marsh. Alf of Runnymudd was in hysterics embracing a man with a longbow strapped to his back. Halder and Toad were clapping some melancholy valeman on the shoulders. They were all of them, for that moment, too relieved to think of how two hundred men had ridden out of the gate, and only eleven returned. 

Mance Rayder was coming, he had a hundred thousand wildlings, and giants and mammoths besides, and he was coming. Sure as winter. Jarman Buckwell’s scouting party returned a week after the straggling survivors from Craster’s Keep, telling of the army on the march. 

His scout Goady said he’d seen Jon Snow in a sheepskin cloak, riding with the wildlings. 

Satin chanced upon Grenn and Pyp in the Common Hall, late a few nights after Buckwell's scouts had come telling tales, on his way to bed after helping Hobb and Owen with the morrow's bread. Grenn was stretched out on one of the benches, he was almost as long as the table, his head pillowed in Pyp's lap. At the sound of footsteps he started, but Pyp shushed him, petting his shaggy hair. "It's only Satin, he's alright." Pyp looked at Satin then, a hard look, daring him not to be.

He sat, making what he hoped was a reassuring face.

Grenn sat up with a nervous smile, but didn't move away from Pyp. "I didn't want to go to bed. I have dreams."

He could well imagine, Satin had had dreams as well, and hadn't even been there to see the horrors, dreams of dead things, of brother killing brother, of Samwell Tarly. Or perhaps of Jon Snow, coming with his black sword and his white wolf, and a hundred thousand wildlings. He wondered if Halder dreamed of the sword too. It had been he that carved its pommel. If Satin were Halder, he thought, he'd dream of looking down and finding a bastard sword in his belly, with the wolf's head he'd carved with his own hands looking up at him with garnet eyes. "Do you think it's true?" Satin asked, "about Lord Snow?"

"No," Grenn said without a trace of uncertainty, "he never would, not Jon."

Pyp looked away.

Grenn jostled his arm. "Come on, it's Jon! Remember when ser Alliser said his father was a traitor? Jon Snow would never turn his cloak."

"I don't know! Jon isn't like us." It sounded like it hurt Pyp to say it.

"He took a vow just like we did."

"Aye and rode off when Robb Stark called his banners. Or did you forget? He's a lord's son, you can't know what he'll do."

Grenn didn't bristle at the sharp words, just put his arm around Pyp's narrow shoulders and drew him close. "He's our friend. He wouldn't hurt us," he said, resolute, "it must be a mistake. Lots of boys look like Jon. Goady never saw him."

Satin shifted, uncomfortable, feeling like he was eavesdropping although they were talking right in front of him.

Pyp sagged, he looked over at Satin. "The Young Dragon never had any friends. I'd know. I did his voice in the puppet show. None of the heroes have friends, not by the end."

Did Easy know that? Maybe that was why he'd decided he was Florian the Fool again. Or maybe he was just tired of trying to fight Dornish Dilly.

"Jon Snow's not the Young Dragon," Satin reasoned. Nobody was a hero from the songs. Not truly.

Pyp smiled then, but not his monkey's grin, a smile so sad it looked alien on his face. "The puppets in the show don't know they aren't real, Satin."

He left them there in the empty hall and went to bed. He dreamed of black steel, white fur, red eyes, teeth. And a boy with tears frozen on his face, his friends all dead around him.

Jeren woke him by banging on the door, it was still dark. "Night guard duty, they need another set of eyes up on the ice," he called through the wood, and never waited to see if Satin had woken.

He donned his boots and cloak and climbed the switchback stair, glad, for once, to not have to sleep.

A hundred thousand Wildlings. Satin had never thought of a number so big. He tried to picture it, pacing up and down his league of ice with a horn strapped to his chest, watching the dark silent forest. But in his mind he could only see a swarm of ants, and every ant a monster. Half a year upon the wall now and he’d never seen a wildling. Grenn said they were just people, just like them. He’d told them in fits and starts about Craster’s keep, for he could not speak of the horrors of the Fist. So he told them of the poor girl Gilly and her baby, and poor sweet fat Sam who they had left cradling the Old Bear’s body. Satin tried to picture the girl Gilly too, but her face always turned to that silly girl from the Dornish marches, who was ten thousand leagues away, who might have a baby, or might not, who would surely not forgive him either way. 

I supposed I’ll die, when the Wildlings come, he thought, looking north, dawn was breaking and it painted the tops of the pines pink, it was too pretty by far to be the herald of an army come to kill them all, and then it won’t matter anyway. They would all die. At least the life had not been very long.

There were only a few dozen of them left at the castle. Raiders had been spotted all along the wall. The Weeper, the Dogshead, The Crowkiller and the Lord of Bones. Marsh had taken the garrison off to hold them back. It seemed a fool’s errand to Satin, but everything seemed a fool’s errand in the face of certain death. He’d taken Big Liddle too, before Satin had gotten up the nerve to speak with him again. He hoped he didn’t die. He would have liked to talk to him, to apologize for true. Fool’s errands, worrying about having lost a friend to a kiss while waiting for an army of wildlings to come and kill him. They were all a flock of fools at the end of the world, and they didn’t even have motley to wear, only blacks. 

His watch ended at daybreak, so he started the walk back to the switchback stair. Hop-Robin met him halfway, and took the horn. “There’s something going on, someone came up the Kingsroad, I saw Donal Noye rounding up the men, best go see what it’s about before you go to bed.” He left Satin with a weak smile, and went off to start limping his own league of ice. Satin took the cage down, never mind the sour look the man at the winch gave him. 

He found every able man gathered in the yard around Donal Noye. The blacksmith was giving orders as though he were the Lord Commander himself. The builders were to stack barrels and sacks of corn in a barricade around the gate, the stewards to fletch arrows, barrels of oil to be dumped onto the switchback stair and more piled beneath it with lard and straw and dry leaves. Swords were to be sharpened, and desperate terror to be girded. The wildlings were not coming, they were here. They were south of the wall and coming north to take the castle unawares. “But Castle Black can’t be defended from the south,” he heard Arron say. 

Donal Noye Rounded on him. “If you’ve any other ideas, out with them lad. Either we live, and prove it can be defended. Or it can’t and we die. I’d rather place my wagers on the former.”

Satin looked around for his friends, saw Emrick and Jace heading off to the armory, Halder stood with Spare Boot, Pate, and Alf. There were Matt and Toad with Deaf Dick. But he didn’t see Pyp or his Grenn. 

Noye saw him looking, and he didn’t even have to ask. “The Monkey’s up in the Maester’s rooms, the Aurochs too, they’re with Jon Snow.”

Satin didn’t see any of the three of them until the next day. 

He’d spent the whole day making scarecrows. Maester Aemon had thought of it, dummy watchmen to take arrows, to make the towers seem as though they were defended by a host of men, and not the ragged group of green boys and greybeards that they were. Satin was skilled with a needle and thread, so he’d been tasked to stitching straw into tunics, propping up false brothers with broom handles and branches, leaning them on crennels and handing them spears and crossbows. 

“There now, careful where you point it,” he muttered to his newest friend of straw. The Scarecrow didn’t laugh, Satin didn’t either. The crossbow didn’t even have a bolt. 

He’d given Zei and Su crossbows as well, happy despite his fear, to see the girls again. Lady Meliana and the other girls were up atop the wall with Maester Aemon, the rest of the women and children of Mole’s Town as well. 

Satin and Deaf Dick Follard were on the roof of the King’s Tower with six scarecrow sentinels. They had been there all day, smelling the smoke of Mole’s Town burning, and waiting for the wildlings. And, of course, Jon Snow was there as well. 

Strange and stranger, Jon Snow was. While Satin paced restless all the while, he stood, staring south like he could scare away the wildlings with a look alone. He was smaller than Satin had expected, thinner, shorter than Satin himself by nearly a hand’s breath. He hardly seemed a hero, or a villain of the songs, who slayed horrible dead monsters with one hand, dashed across the haunted forest and killed Qhorin Halfhand with the other. He did not look like the Young Dragon. He looked like an exhausted boy of fifteen. Maybe sixteen if you squinted at the hairs on his upper lip.

Jon Snow, who claimed he’d turned his cloak on the Halfhand’s orders, who’d climbed the wall, who’d escaped three days past and ridden all the way from Greyguard in that time with an arrow in his leg, who looked as though a stiff breeze might topple him from the crenelation where he stood, swaying on a crutch.

He should have been resting, really, wounded as he was, he should be in a sickbed, drowned in milk of the poppy. He was only a boy, he should have been far away in his castle. But Winterfell was gone, and here he was, offering a thin smile and halfhearted joke when Satin complained of the cold, reminding him to eat when terror stole his appetite, here they all were, waiting. 

The wildlings stole in with the night, like shadows up the Kingsroad, only the glint of moonlight on bronze helms to warn of their arrival. Then the horn blew, and all there was was fear. 

“I’m frightened,” he gasped out, when Lord Snow told him to wake Deaf Dick where he slept. 

He did, and Follard, to his credit was up, crossbow in hand the moment Satin touched him. Jon was still telling him things as he took up his own weapon and forced his fear-leaden feet to carry him to the crenel, he never heard the instructions, but he knew well enough to hide behind the merlons, not the scarecrows, and to only take sure shots. His breeches were soaked in terror-piss and his hands were weak with fear. But when he saw a shadow steal across the yard below, he loosed the quarrel, and saw the figure fall with a muffled cry. 

“I got one! I got one in the chest!” he was nearly crying himself. He’d never killed a man before, and it had been so easy, all he’d had to do was squeeze the trigger. 

"Get another!” came the lilted reply. 

He did as he was told. Aim, loose, duck behind the merlon, wind back the crossbow. Aim, loose, duck. He did it again, and again, until he ran out of bolts and turned for more. Behind him he saw the Common Hall afire, the east stables a roaring blaze, and Jon Snow alone. Where’s Dick?! 

But there was no time to ask, he grabbed the quarrels and returned to his crenel. There were too many, even if every bolt he loosed struck home there would still be too many. How could they ever have hoped to defend the castle against so many of them? 

Jon appeared behind him and they both rushed to the north to fire upon the men attacking the barricade. Jon vanished, Satin kept shooting, for how long he did not know. 

“Satin!” he heard Jon Snow fairly scream. Turning, he saw a wildling falling down the open trapdoor, Jon's sword wrenching from where it had been buried in his skull as he did. He didn’t have time to think, just pointed his crossbow and shot the next man in the face. “The oil,” said Snow, and wordless, Satin helped him take the boiling kettle from the fire, and pour it down the stairs. 

Below them men began dying, drowning, burning, screaming. The screams never stopped, they rang up out of the tower and into Satin’s skull, they were dying, he had killed them, they were not monsters, just men, just people, just like us. They were not dead, they were still screaming. Satin couldn’t breathe, Gods help me, Mother forgive me, the screams, he felt sick. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision, all he could see was the black pit of the trap door, the howling dark where men were still dying reached up to drag him down into it. Then the trap slammed shut and Jon Snow filled his vision. Hands were on his shoulders, shaking him. “Retch later!” he was shouting. His eyes were wide and dark, dark in the firelight, grey, he thought, his eyes are grey. Satin’s vision cleared, he could breathe again. 

They dashed back to the north battlements and saw the barricade breaking, all the black brothers and the Molestown men down there were dead and dying. Easy, both of the Henlys, Rast and Dilly, and a score more he could not make out. The wildlings were past the barricade and swarming like rats to the stair. One caught Kegs by the cloak and Satin put a bolt right through his throat, it was easy as breathing. “Got him!” he shouted, somehow finding strength to speak. 

The gate was lost, they were all going to die, but Jon Snow was beside him, and he knew he would not let Satin die without fighting to the last. He’d been paralyzed with fear so many times before, but now the fear was in him like fire in his veins, keeping him moving despite it all. They still had one hope, the wildlings were on the stair, running upward over the barrels of lard and the straw and leaves that had all been soaked in oil. Satin’s heart beat so loudly he could no longer hear the screaming of the dying below. 

Above the roaring in his ears, he heard Jon Snow ask, “What gods do you pray to?”

“The Seven.”

“Pray then. Pray to your new gods and I’ll pray to my old ones,” he said before limping off to get more arrows. 

Satin prayed. 

His hands moved of their own accord, loosing quarrels and winding back the crossbow, and he prayed, or he tried to pray. He had never quite learned how to do it properly.

They fired at the climbing wildlings, but it was a pointless task, for every man that fell from the steps, a dozen still beat upwards, chasing the brothers who had been stationed to guard them. He counted the landings, holding his breath, the fight had gone up to the fifth, he knew the fire would go up to the ninth. 

“Fetch the torches,” Lord Snow said. It was time. 

He fetched them, lighting one as he went. In the torchlight, Jon Snow’s dusky northern face looked ashen and terrified as Satin felt. If it were possible to piss himself again, he would have. If they failed in this, then all was truly lost. 

They stood there, breathless, all was suddenly silent atop the King’s Tower, waiting for Donal Noye’s signal. When it came, Satin feared he might freeze again, but he never did. Jon nocked the fire arrow and Satin lit it, and it flew away, tens of other little lights followed it down from the roofs of the other towers, down, missing the wildlings on the stair and landing in the pile of barrels and straw. They did it again, and again until the arrows were gone and then they took the torches and threw them too. Satin prayed. He prayed to the seven, to Jon Snow’s old gods, to anything that might have been listening. Jon’s hand was on his shoulder, dark eyes glimmering as he watched the blaze, as it licked up the stairs and down from the ninth landing, and Satin knew that he was praying too.

And then the stairs came down. 

Later, somehow he found himself down in the ruined yard, half carrying Jon Snow across his shoulders. He didn’t know how they’d made it down the stairs from the roof of the King’s Tower with all those burned and broken bodies inside, but he knew Jon had asked him to help him find someone, and that, just then, he would do absolutely anything in the world the thin wobbly boy asked of him. 

They shuffled around, going from body to body with the torch, looking at the faces of friend and foe alike. In the dark everyone was wearing black. The Common Hall was a smoking ruin, its roof caved in. As they passed, oddly, Satin mourned the cyvasse board. He’d never gotten Toad to learn to play it right. He hoped that Hop-Robin had had sense enough to keep his hurdy-gurdy in his cell and it had not burned up in the fire. It occurred to him that he didn’t know if Hop-Robin had survived, if anyone he’d known had survived, if anyone in the whole world was alive besides he and Jon Snow.

Suddenly, Jon gave a soft cry and sank to his knees next to a body, Satin never had to hold his torch near the face. It was a wildling, a girl. She was still alive, but dying. There was an arrow through her chest. Satin let them be, he stood by and looked away, looked up into the sky. It was snowing gently, though there was not a cloud in sight. When he caught a flake upon his tongue, he found that it was ash.

Beside him on the ground Jon Snow began to weep, clutching her lifeless corpse to him. 

Satin felt useless and tired. He didn’t think a hand on the shoulder would be much of a comfort to the weeping boy. 

They burned the bodies, the next day, Watchmen, Moles and wildlings alike, a great pyre with as many as they could dig out of the rubble of the stair and the collapsed portion of the wall. They would likely be digging out corpses for weeks though, once the builders got to clearing the wreckage properly. There was no time now, they had survived the first attack, but Mance Rayder was still coming with all his might to break through the gate, there was not time to dig. 

Satin watched the smoke go up, standing by Hop-Robin, who had lived without so much as a scratch, and the twins. Arron had pulled Satin into a fierce embrace when he saw he was alive, and still stood with his arm slung over his shoulders. He held his brother's hand with the other. Emrick, who had obtained a cut on his cheek, but otherwise seemed unhurt, had only smiled and said, "I knew you'd come through it." Satin was almost light headed with it. How strange to think that they had feared for his life. I supposed that's was comes of having friends. 

Jon Snow was not among the crowd gathered around the pyre, and if Satin spied another lonesome trail of smoke rising from somewhere off in the woods, he made no mention of it.

That noontide, Hobb gave him a basket of hot loaves of brown bread and told him to give one to whoever he passed. There had been no breakfast, the Common Hall was gone. The kitchens beneath were still intact, but there had not been time to stoke the ovens or make porridge the night before. He wandered the grounds, basket in hand. A shallow snow had fallen after all, and it made the carnage in the yard seem milder. The stables and the Common Hall were still smoldering, but the blanket of snow made it all soft and muffled, less like the scene of a horrible battle, more like the ruins of some old abandoned place. A ruined castle, and we the ghosts that dwell in it, he thought. The men he passed, and gave bread to seemed little more than ghosts, it was true. All shadowed eyes and pale faces. 

He found Halder and Matt at the maester's keep helping Albett tack up a new door to keep the snow out. The old door was all splinters from the wildling axes. In the armory, he found Pyp and Grenn. They were sat on the floor, leaning against the wall in the forge. The armory was empty of all its arms, most of them were still up in the hands of the scarecrows, it was one of the few warm places that were out of the way. Grenn had all three of the orphan boys from Mole’s town sleeping on him. Donal Noye had kept them when everyone else but Horse and Zei went back to salvage what they could from their burned town. The two younger lads were in his lap and the eldest tucked under his arm. Pyp was tucked neatly on the other side. 

“Grenn, pinch me, there’s a fair maiden bearing fresh baked bread. I must be dreaming,” Pyp said. 

“You’re not dreaming, it’s just Satin,” said Grenn. 

Pyp grinned, “You wouldn’t know a fair maiden if she came up and bit you on the nose.”

“I would too!” Grenn cried as softly as he could, so as not to wake the boys, “I’d know her before she ever bit me.” 

“Neither of you would know a fair maid if she kissed you full on the mouth,” Satin said, reaching into the basket, “now this maiden’s got bread to deliver elsewhere if you two can't behave.” He pulled out three of the loaves anyway, one for the brothers to share and two for the three boys whenever they woke. The bread wasn’t warm anymore, but it was soft and smelled like the seven heavens. “Hobb says he should have proper food ready for the evening meal. Gods know where we’ll eat it though.” 

Pyp and Grenn thanked him quietly through mouthfuls of bread, already chewing. Thinking better, Satin pulled out another loaf and left it on the anvil.

“Have either of you seen Lord Snow?” 

Smiling fondly, Pyp said, “up on the ice. Daft bastard hasn’t slept a wink.”

Satin took his last few loaves of bread to the winch cage and tugged the bell rope. It took a while, but eventually the cage lurched and carried him up. From above, the destruction was even more apparent. Even with the snow, the burned out interiors of the Common Hall and stables could be seen through their collapsed roofs, all charred tables and stalls. The horses they had left were in the old stable now, there was plenty of room for them, most of the mounts had gone with the garrison to chase raiders, haring off after their feints and prodding attacks. 

At the top he found more hungry mouths, and gave out as many loaves as he had left, save one. That he took with him and set out east upon the ice. 

He did not have to walk far before he found Jon Snow, huddled in his cloak, sitting beside a repaired catapult, staring north. His wounded leg was stretched out, his crutch lying beside him, his black bastard sword strapped to his back.

He turned his sad grey eyes on Satin as he approached, and gave a tired smile. “Come to tell me to leave off?”

Satin held up the basket. “Just bearing bread, m’lord. If Noye wants to order you to bed, he will.” 

“You can just call me Jon.” He grimaced. “I’m not hungry.” 

“Eat anyway, Jon. There’s no knowing when you’ll have another chance.” 

That made him smile again, it had been just what he told Satin the day before. He straightened up, tried to stand, and winced, gave up on standing and settled for bracing his back against the bulk of the catapult. 

Satin drew out the last loaf of bread and handed it to him.

Before he could leave though, Jon tore it in half. “Will you share it with me?” 

Satin bit his lip, he’d find a warm loaf of his own down in the kitchen, and Jon should have the whole one for himself, truly, but the sad eyes implored him. He sighed and sank down onto the ice beside him, leaning up agains the catapult as well. 

They ate in silence for a while. Huddled where they were, they were somewhat sheltered from the wind. It was not so terrible a place to break one’s fast. 

Satin watched him from the corner of his eye, studied the raw pink scars that marred one side of his dour face. They were too new to be something that had happened before the ranging, he must have gotten them beyond the Wall. Did his wolf do that? Qhorin Halfhand? He didn’t ask. There had been no sign of the wolf, and he had not mentioned it. 

Jon Snow was not particularly handsome, as northern boys went. His brown hair was a mess, falling in his eyes, and his face was more than a little horsey, too long in the jaw and the nose, too melancholy to be properly fair. But Satin thought he was sweet all the same. Sweet and sad and brave, he’d had bravery enough for the both of them to carry them through the attack. 

“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly.

Jon looked at him sidelong. “What have you to be sorry for?”

For being too much a coward, for your wildling girl, for your brothers the princes, for your lost uncle, for the Old Bear and your friend Sam, for your father and your mother who you never knew. “For Winterfell. I was here when Maester Aemon read the letter. I know you grew up there. I’m sorry Theon Greyjoy destroyed your castle.” It sounded hollow and lame even as he said it. 

Jon only laughed sadly, looking down at the last few bites of bread. “I... thank you. It was never my castle, though. It was my father’s, and was to be Robb’s” 

And the boys, were they only Robb Stark’s brothers? Pyp had seemed sure enough when he’d told Toad they were Jon’s. 

“Let us not speak of it.” Somehow, it was possible for him to laugh even more sadly than he had before. He finished the heel of bread. “What of you? Pyp tells me you’re from Oldtown. He told me…” 

Satin raised an eyebrow. “It’s true, and if he told you I was a whore, that’s true as well.” 

“…That you had become friends,” Snow finished, sheepish. “I’m sorry. That must have been hard.”

It was Satin’s turn to laugh. “Have you treated your whores so poorly, that you think you should be sorry?” 

Jon Snow blushed a dusky pink. It was a nice change from the dour look.

Satin patted his gloved hand to show he had not truly taken offense. “It was, I suppose, hard. But there were nice things as well, as there are everywhere I guess. The worst of it wasn’t the whoring, the clients aren’t what you fear.” He didn’t know why he was saying it, but Jon had not moved his hand from under Satin’s, and it was nice to tell someone about it. He supposed he felt he owed him a confidence, since Satin had seen his wildling girl, and heard him weep over her body. “The owner of the brothel was the one to fear, his name was Wylan and we all owed him debts that could never be paid, for room and food and safety. And he could call them in if you displeased him.” The guard and Wylan had protected him and the other whores from clients that meant ill, but even the gods had never protected them from Wylan. The Mother had not protected that poor girl or her baby.

Satin thought of the sept, of the septon. The gods had not protected him from Cellador, Bowen Marsh had. Donal Noye had protected him from Rast half a hundred times, and his own two hands and a crossbow protected him from the Wildlings. He thought of the stair, the fire, of Jon Snow telling him to pray. He didn’t know which gods had answered their prayers, but it had been Jon that brought him through the battle. 

Jon looked down at their hands, still didn’t move his away.

“There are worse places to be from,” Satin finished, there was not much more to say. He looked out north, toward where Mance Rayder was surely coming, and coming soon, a hundred thousand free folk coming with him. 

There are worse places to die. He gave Jon Snow’s hand a squeeze. He knew he wouldn’t let him die without fighting to the last. It would not be so long a life, nor so very lonely.