𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐘

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰᴏᴜʀ

𝟚

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The village was named on Samwell's old maps. Torsten did not think it much of a village. Four tumbledown one-room houses of unmortared stone surrounded an empty sheepfold and a well. The houses were roofed with sod, the windows shuttered with ragged pieces of hide. And above them loomed the pale limbs and dark red leaves of a monstrous great weirwood.
It was the biggest tree Torsten Snow had ever seen, the trunk near eight feet wide, the branches spreading so far that the entire village was shaded beneath their canopy. The size did not disturb him as much as the face. The mouth especially, no simple carved slash, but a jagged hollow large enough to swallow a sheep. Those were not sheep bones, though. Nor was it a sheep's skull in the ashes. "An old tree." Mormont sat atop his horse, frowning. His raven screeched in agreement.

"And powerful." Jon said and Torsten could feel the power. "My lord father believed no man could tell a lie in front of a heart tree. The old gods know when men are lying." Jon announced.

"My father believed the same." Said the Old Bear. "Let me have a look at that skull." Torsten dismounted. He knelt and reached a gloved hand down into the maw. The inside of the hollow was red with dried sap and blackened by fire. Beneath the skull he saw another, smaller, the jaw broken off. It was half buried in ash and bits of bone.
When he brought the skull to Mormont, the Old Bear lifted it in both hands and stared into the empty sockets. "The Wildling's burn their dead. We've always known that. Now I wished I'd asked them why... when there were still a few around to ask." Torsten remembered the Wight rising, its eyes shining blue in its pale dead face. He knew why, he was certain. "The children of the forest could speak to the dead, it's said. But I can't." He tossed the skull back into the mouth of the tree, where it landed with a puff of fine ash. "Go through all these houses. Giant, get to the top of this tree, have a look. I'll have the hounds brought up too. Perchance this time the trail will be fresher." His tone did not suggest that he held out much hope of the last.
Two men went through each house, to make certain nothing was missed. Torsten was paired with Jon, while Grenn was paired with Eddison Tollett, a squire young though slightly greying and thin as a pike. The brother's called him Dolorous Edd. 

"Bad enough when the dead come walking." Torsten said to Jon as they crossed the village. "Now the Old Bear wants them talking as well." He sighed.

"No good will come of that, I warrant. And who's to say the bones wouldn't lie? Why should death make a man truthful, or even clever?" Jon said and Torsten couldn't argue.
Torsten had to stoop to pass through the low door. Within he found a packed dirt floor. There were no furnishings, no sign that people had lived there, but for ashes beneath the smokehole in the roof. "What a dismal place to live." Jon said.

"I was born in a house much like this." Declared Dolorous Edd, who had appeared with Grenn by his side. "Those were my enchanted years. Later I fell on hard times." Torsten watched as he and Grenn moved on to the next house.
A nest of dry straw bedding filled one corner of the room. "I'd give all the gold in the Seven Kingdom's to sleep in a bed again." Torsten sighed.

"You call that a bed?" Jon asked.

"If it's softer than the ground and has a roof over it, I call it a bed." The young bastard shrugged. Torsten sniffed the air. "I smell dung." He announced while his nose scrunched. The smell was very faint.

"Old dung." Said Jon. The house felt as though it had been empty for some time. Kneeling, Torsten searched through the straw with his hands to see if anything had been concealed beneath, then made a round of the walls. It did not take very long.

"There's nothing here." Nothing had been what he had expected. Whitetree was the fourth village they had passed, and it had been the same in all of them. The people were gone, vanished with their scant possessions and whatever animals they may have had. None of the villages showed any signs of having been attacked. They were simply... empty.

"What do you think happened to them all?" Jon asked.

"Something worse than we can imagine." Suggested Torsten. "Well I might be able to imagine it, but I'd sooner not. Bad enough to know you're going to come to some awful end without thinking about it aforetime." Two of the hounds were sniffing around the door as they reemerged, while other dogs ranged through the village. Chett was cursing them loudly, his voice thick with the anger he never seemed to put aside. The light filtering through the red leaves of the weirwood made the boils on his face look even more inflamed than usual. When he saw Torsten and Jon his eyes narrowed, there was no love lost between them.
The other houses had yielded no wisdom. Mormont's raven had cried, flapping up into the weirwood to perch above them.
Torsten mounted his garron, wheeled him about, and trotted off. Beyond the shade of the great weirwood the men of the Night's Watch stood beneath lesser trees, tending their horses, chewing strips of salt beef, pissing, scratching, and talking. When the command was given to move out again, the talk died, and they climbed back into their saddles. Jarman Buckwell's scouts rode out first, with the vanguard under Thoren Smallwood heading the column proper. Then came the Old Bear with the main force, Ser Mallador Locke with the baggage train and pack horses, and finally Ser Ottyn Wythers and the rear guard. Two hundred men all told, with half as many mounts.
By day they followed game trails and steam beds, the rangers roads that led them ever deeper into the wilderness of leaf and root. At night they camped beneath a starry sky and gazed up at the comet. The black brothers had left Castle Black in good spirits, joking and trading tales, but of late the brooding silence of the wood seemed to have sombered them all. Jests had grown fewer and tempers shorter. No one would admit to being afraid, but Torsten could feel the unease. Four empty villages, no Wildlings anywhere, even the game seemingly fled. The haunted forest had never seemed more haunted.

As he rode, Torsten peeled off his glove to air his burned fingers. Torsten found Samwell with the other stewards, watering his horse. He had three to tend, his own mount, and two pack horses, each bearing a large wire and wicker cage full of ravens. The birds flapped their wings at Torsten's approach and screamed at him through the bars. A few shrieks sounded suspiciously like words. "Was there anything in Whitetree?" Samwell offered the younger boy a smile.

"Bones, ashes, and empty houses." Torsten handed Samwell the roll of parchment. "The Old Bear wants word sent back to Aemon." Samwell took a bird from one of the cages, stroked its feathers, and attached the message.

"Fly home now, brave one. Home." The raven quorked something unintelligible back at him, and Samwell tossed it into the air. Flapping, it beat its way skyward through the trees.
Samwell pulled up the hood of his enormous black cloak and clambered awkwardly back onto his horse. It was a plough horse, big and slow and clumsy, but better able to bear his weight then the little garrons the rangers rode. Torsten mounted again, gave Samwell a parting smile, and rode off.
The column was well underway, so he swung wide around the village to avoid the worst of the congestion. He had seen enough of Whitetree.
Ghost emerged from the undergrowth so suddenly that the garron shield and reared. The white wolf hunted well away from the line of march, but he was not having much better fortune than the forages Smallwood sent out after game. The woods were as empty as the villages, is what Dywen had told him one night around the fire. Jon had insisted that the game had been frightened away by all the noise the march had made. Torsten hadn't thought it was them that frightened the game away, and neither did Dywen.
Once the horse had settled, Ghost loped along easily enough, following Torsten towards Jon. He'd caught up to Jon and Mormont as he was wending his way around hawthorn thicket. "To me Ghost." Jon called and Ghost listened.

"Is the bird away?" The Old Bear asked.

"Aye, my Lord. Samwell seemed to be teaching them to talk." The Old Bear snorted.

"He'll regret that. Damned things make a lot of noise, but they never say a thing worth hearing." They rode in silence, until Jon finally spoke.

"If my uncle found all these villages empty as well..." Jon began.

"He would have made it his purpose to learn why." Lord Mormont finished for him. "And it may well be someone or something did not want that known. Well, we'll be three hundred when Qhorin joins us. Whatever enemy waits out here will not find us so easy to deal with. We will find them, Jon, I promise you." Or they will find us, Torsten thought.

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