( Jon POV )
"Can I have his boots?" someone asked, as Janos Slynt's head went rolling across the muddy ground. "They're proper boots, they are, almost new. Lined with fur too."
Jon glanced back at Stannis, and their eyes briefly met. Beside him, he heard the sound of the man taking his refusal to address the question as assent, and soon after the rest of the men descended on the body like a murder of crows, stripping the headless corpse of all but a coarse layer of roughspun. Stannis's gaze flicked over to the crowd, and then after a long moment he turned, shot Jon an approving nod, and disappeared again inside his tower.
Jon braced himself as he turned away from the scene of the execution and made for his tower. Black brothers parted as he approached, nervously leaving him a path. The boots of his guards tromped in the mud behind him. He had killed Janos Slynt for refusing orders, for refusing to serve the Wall and refusing to man Greyguard despite receiving direct orders, but to them death was death.
The man was an oathbreaker, Jon wanted to say to the lingering looks and watching eyes. A deserter in all but name. No man is more dangerous. No man is more deserving of death.
And yet, Jon kept his peace, even as he met the cold gaze of Alliser Thorne in the crowd, ever defiant. I am the Lord Commander now, Jon said with his eyes. This would not be his last beheading. And Janos Slynt was not worthy of his guilt anyhow. He would have to kill better men in the days and weeks and months to come. It was best to spare his remorse for them.
As it was, executions always induced a bout of melancholy in Jon, some more pronounced than others. He who passes the sentence should swing the sword, he remembered his father had said as he climbed the steps. A good way to earn the deference of men if done well, and a good way to earn their disdain elsewise.
Jon dismissed his guards with a lazy wave of his hand as he arrived in his solar. Today was more an autumn day than a winter one. The snows did not fall, and the curly blanket of clouds did not sit atop the sky. The air was cold, but that was all. Jon pushed open the shutters as he pulled himself a seat and poured himself a cup of wine. This would likely be one of the last days of true light the Wall would be lucky to receive in a good long while. He would relish that while he could, before his whole world would be plunged into overcast darkness and bitter chills.
From his window, Jon watched the Wall. The sunlight bounced off the icy construction of the Wall, little teardrops of water rolling down the sides, sparkling like diamonds. He'd seen the Wall from up close, when it was unimaginably vast and so tall as to make one feel like a gnat, but he preferred it like this. It was still massive, but from a distance one could better appreciate the awful beauty of it.
Jon sighed, sipped the last dregs of wine from his cup, lit the fire in his hearth to ward away the cold - even as he left the shutters open to the breeze - and set down to work at his desk. Yet not one minute into his work he was interrupted when Sam came in - cautiously at first, peeking to see if Mormont's raven was still about to peck at his fingers, and then more confidently once he realised he was safe - and pressed a letter onto the table.
"Another from the Iron Throne?" Jon guessed, knowing Sam would not make the trek himself unless it was important.
Samwell nodded and sat himself down, even as he pushed the letter across the surface of the table for Jon to read. With the crook of his finger, Jon pulled off the seal and unfurled the scrap of parchment. He read it once, then twice, then swallowed and asked: "Can you keep a secret, Sam?"
Sam's eyes narrowed with concern, and he nodded tentatively, almost nervously. "Of course I can, my lord."
"It's Arya," Jon said, still looking at the letter, running his thumb over the ink, over the parchment, tears pricking his eyes. "She wrote this letter."
Samwell frowned. "Are you certain? It's not a forgery?"
"I'd know her hand anywhere," Jon said. "I helped her with her letters, when she was struggling with Maester Luwin's lessons. I've seen it a thousand times, and I'm seeing it again today."
Sam frowned. "So King Tommen was telling the truth."
"Apparently," Jon said, his look souring again.
"But we can't turn our backs on Stannis," Samwell said.
Jon shook his head in agreement.
"Then you need to destroy that letter, my lord," Samwell said, a warning tone in his voice. "I know you might want to keep it, but if one of Stannis's men finds it... If they find out that the Lord Commander has a sister held under the thumb of the Iron Throne..." Sam shook his head. "And it won't just be them either. The other black brothers will start having doubts as well."
"I know," Jon said hotly. "And I'm not under anyone's thumb. I do only what is right for the Watch. But I won't destroy it. Just not... Not right now. Give me a day or two."
Samwell nodded and rose to his feet. "I'll leave you be, my lord," he said, his brow still furrowed in concern for his friend as he turned and left.
Jon sat in silence for what felt like hours after that, reading and rereading till the words were burned into his mind and the letters began to blur together. He watched the flames slowly die in his hearth and become embers and when he went to sleep he awoke to wolf dreams again.
He was on his haunches in Winterfell's Great Hall, howling for his pack. Howling and howling, his voice echoing off the cold stone walls. The only light was moonlight, falling in harsh lines on the flagstone floors through the windows. No matter. As Jon's nose twitched the scents pushed him onwards, guiding him, his padded feet soundless. Ahead was warmth, a fire, a good meal, and his family.
Robb would be there with an easy smile, a sword in his hand and an offer to spar. Bran would be there, his legs still working, ever curious, ever climbing. Rickon would be there as well, small and happy and unacquainted with the horrors of this world. So would Sansa, ever prim and proper, and Arya, ever wild and free.
And so too would he find the warm embrace of his father.
Yet so far, all he had was silence. In his deepest heart, he knew it to all be a dream. Yet the tiniest sliver of hope refused to die.
At the end of this hall he would find his family.
Jon advanced further, his fear slipping away, replaced with a surging desperation. A slow walk became a jog, and then a run. Yet the hall did not end. It grew and grew, the ceiling rising, the floor widening, the end somehow further away then when he started. He heard a voice, young and girlish, calling out at first, and then screaming. He knew not the words the voice said, but he recognised it to be begging.
Jon pushed himself even faster, sprinting now, the wind whipping through his fur, making for the screams before they were silenced. A terrible panic seized him as the voice grew weaker, and the stench of fear filled his nostrils. His muscles burned.
Suddenly, he saw it.
A naked girl lying flat on her back; shivering, whimpering, blood leaking out onto the floor from between her legs, her entrails visible through a slit in her stomach. Her face was hidden by a cloak of shadows. A woman was hunched overtop, her back turned, her head covered by a hood; silent, slow, dangerous. She turned, and Jon saw eyes of murky blue like a sky shrouded by icy clouds, set into a shredded face of rotten flesh, a halo of stringy white hair spilling out from under the hood. Blood stained her fingertips and lips and spattered her tattered cloak.
A wight, Jon thought at first, but was soon frozen in fear as he saw the look in it's eyes. Or something worse?
And then he started awake, his chest heaving.
Arya? Ygritte? Sansa? he asked himself. Perhaps, yet I didn't get a good look at the girl. I was too distracted by the woman. Not that that much mattered. Normally during his wolf dreams the halls he visited were empty. Normally all he found was silence, no matter how much he wished otherwise. But today...
Jon sighed, shook away what last vestiges of sleep still lingered, and pulled himself from his bed. The morning chill struck his skin and caused an outbreak of reddened gooseflesh. Across the room, the letter caught his eye. Jon thought back to his dreams, grit his teeth, and snatched up the scrap of parchment. He looked it over one last time, eying the ink, memorising the words, and then flicked the letter into the dying embers still glowing in the hearth from the fire he had started yesterday.
It caught alight quickly enough, and Jon watched it burn in solemn silence as he dressed himself. You're not the only thing that will burn today, Jon thought as he watched the edges of the parchment crinkle and curl and slowly blacken as wisps of smoke trailed up.
Despite his best efforts to convince him to the contrary, today was the day that Stannis had determined as the most auspicious for the King-Beyond-the-Wall to die.
And the Red Witch left no doubts in Jon's mind as to how the execution would be conducted.
...
Shooting one last forlorn look at his hearth, Jon wrapped his fur cloak tight about himself and left his chambers, descending down the steps to find his guards waiting at the bottom, neatly falling in behind him as he trudged through a fresh layer of snow. The day may have been warm and cloudless, but the night had been bitter and heavy. The evidence of that was all around, a thin sheet of white covering every exposed surface.
Through the snow Jon walked, and through the snow Jon rode, all the way to the foot of the Wall.
They brought forth the King-Beyond-the-Wall with his hands bound beyond his back and a noose hanging loosely off his neck. He had been stripped clean, left only a small hemp shirt that left his arms and legs exposed to the cold as he was led to the wooden scaffold raised over the firepit. Behind him, Jon saw the Wall was still weeping, albeit slower than the day before. The winter chill would set the remaining rivulets of icy water in place soon enough.
I tried, Jon wanted to say as he watched Mance stumble. But, alas, all his claims and attempts at convincement of Mance's usefulness had fallen on deaf ears. The law remained plain and simple; a deserter's life was forfeit. And so long as this was true, Stannis's famously iron will would not be shaken.
Beside the prisoner, Jon watched as the Red Witch made her presence known. "We all must choose!" she proclaimed, in a surprisingly loud voice. "We must choose between light or dark. Between good or evil. Between the true god or the false one."
Mance listened to the rest of Melisandre's speech with a smile on his face, his courage unfailing, but when he turned and saw the woodwork his bravery faltered. It was a cage that hung from the scaffold, made from the twisted and gnarled branches of a weirwood tree all woven together. He balked for a brief moment, and then turned away and recoiled at the sight of the cage, his features marked with horror.
...
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