Samwell
You are as hopeless as any boys I have ever trained," Ser Alliser Thorne announced when they had all assembled in the yard. "Your hands were made for manure shovels, not for swords, and if it were up to me, the lot of you would be set to herding swine. But last night I was told that Gueren is marching five new boys up the kingsroad. One or two may even be worth the price of piss. To make room for them, I have decided to pass eight of you on to the Lord Commander to do with as he will. " He called out the names one by one. "Toad. Stone Head. Aurochs. Lover. Pimple. Monkey. Ser Loon. " Last, he looked at Edd next to Sam. "And Sour Edd. "
Pyp let fly a whoop and thrust his sword into the air. Ser Alliser fixed him with a reptile stare. "They will call you men of Night's Watch now, but you are bigger fools than the Mummer's Monkey here if you believe that. You are boys still, green and stinking of summer, and when the winter comes you will die like flies." And with that, Ser Alliser Thorne took his leave of them.
The other boys gathered round the eight who had been named, laughing and cursing and offering congratulations. Halder smacked Toad on the butt with the flat of his sword and shouted, "Toad, of the Night's Watch!" Yelling that a black brother needed a horse, Pyp leapt onto Grenn's shoulders, and they tumbled to the ground, rolling and punching and hooting. Dareon dashed inside the armory and returned with a skin of sour red. As they passed the wine from hand to hand, grinning like fools, Samwell Tarly walked away from them to stand by himself beneath a bare dead tree in the corner of the yard and watched the boys play. When Edd saw him from amidst the other boys he walked to him. He offered him the skin. "A swallow of wine?"
Sam shook his head. "No thank you, Edd. "
"Are you well?" asked Edd.
"Very well, truly," He lied. He was not well truly. "I am so happy for you all. " His face quivered as he forced a smile. "You will be a Ranger someday. "
"Piss on that," Edd said. "I want to live for sometime." Before he could say more, Halder cried, "Here, you planning to drink that all yourself?" Pyp snatched the skin from his hand and danced away, laughing. While Grenn seized his arm, Pyp gave the skin a squeeze, and a thin stream of red squirted Edd in the face. Halder howled in protest at the waste of good wine. Edd sputtered and struggled. Matthar and Jeren climbed the wall and began pelting them all with snowballs.
Sam was frightened, again. They were leaving him. His friends. He remembered the day he had left Horn Hill, all the bittersweet farewells; atleast to his mother and sisters. Now it was his friends who would say the farewells to him. Once his friends say their words, they'll all have duties to attend to and no time to spend with the recruit Samwell Tarly. Some of them would be sent away, to Eastwatch or the Shadow Tower. But Sam will remain in training, with Rast and Cuger and these new boys who are coming up the kingsroad. Gods only know what they'll be like, but he can see it clear as sunset that Ser Alliser will send them against him, first chance he gets.
Looking at them happily playing with each other, Sam left the ecstatic boys to their snowball fight.
A deep restlessness was on him as he went back to his cell. He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to get away from there. He followed the way back to his cell, listening to the howling of the winds. The kingsroad would be just away from him, narrow and stony and pocked with weeds, a road of no particular promise. Yet the thought of it filled Samwell Tarly with a vast longing. Winterfell was down that road, cold and gloomy and beyond it Riverrun and King's Landing and the Eyrie and so many other places; Casterly Rock, the Isle of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the hundred islands of Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria and most importantly, the Citadel. All the places that Sam would never see. The world was down that road . . . and he was here, away from family and now away from friends too.
Once they swore their vow, his friends would be assigned to their posts as the men of the Night's Watch. Rangers, builders, stewards, they would be assigned accordingly. Every man who wore the black walked the Wall, and every man was expected to take up steel in its defense, but the rangers were the true fighting heart of the Night's Watch. It was they who dared ride beyond the Wall, sweeping through the haunted forest and the icy mountain heights west of the Shadow Tower, fighting wildlings and giants and monstrous snow bears.
The order of builders provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and towers, the miners to dig tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the woodsmen to clear away new growth wherever the forest pressed too close to the Wall. Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher. Those days were centuries gone, however; now, it was all they could do to ride the Wall from Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower, watching for cracks or signs of melt and making what repairs they could.
Sam would've given anything to join them. He would be content with any post but no he would get no post. He had no hope to pass on the training under the eyes of Ser Alliser. He would stay a recruit until he was old as Maester Aemon.
Sam left straight for his cell and stayed there until nightfall. He never went to the common hall for the feast Three-finger Hobb would've made for the passing recruits. His belly showed its complaint but Sam was strong in his decision as to not cry in front of all those men. He saw the distant glow of lamplight from the Lord Commander's Tower and wondered if Lord Commander Mormont could help him in any way but he knew the answer already. The recruits were given under the command of Ser Alliser Thorne and it was his word which matters the most.
He was about to go to sleep when a knock came. Sam rubbed the tears off his eyes and opened the door. "Edd?" Sam asked, surprised to see him there.
"Come, Sam," Edd turned and walked away from him.
"Where are we going?" Sam asked.
Edd turned and looked at him over his shoulder. "To an outside stroll." He didn't wait for a reply and continued in his path. Sam scurried off behind him. Sam continued to ask him questions but Edd kept quiet all the way. Edd brought him to the rookery. Sam understood at once where he had brought him.
Maester Aemon's apartments were in a stout wooden keep below the rookery. Aged and frail, the maester shared his chambers with two of the younger stewards, who tended to his needs and helped him in his duties. The brothers joked that he had been given the two ugliest men in the Night's Watch; being blind, he was spared having to look at them. Clydas was short, bald, and chinless, with small pink eyes like a mole. Chett had a wen on his neck the size of a pigeon's egg, and a face red with boils and pimples. Perhaps that was why he always seemed so angry.
It was Chett who answered Edd's knock. "I need to speak to Maester Aemon," Edd told him.
Chett eyed him and Edd. "The maester is abed, as you should be. Come back on the morrow and maybe he'll see you."
He began to shut the door.Edd jammed it open with his boot. "I need to speak to him now. The morning will be too late."
Chett scowled. "The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do you know how old he is?"
"Old enough to treat visitors with more courtesy than you," Edd said. "Give him my pardons. I would not disturb his rest if it were not important."
"And if I refuse?"
Edd had his boot wedged solidly in the door. "I can stand here all night if I must."
The black brother made a disgusted noise and opened the door to admit them. "Wait in the library. There's wood. Start a fire. I won't have the maester catching a chill on account of you two."
Sam and Edd had the logs crackling merrily by the time Chett led in Maester Aemon. The old man was clad in his bed robe, but around his throat was the chain collar of his order. A maester did not remove it even to sleep. "The chair beside the fire would be pleasant," he said when he felt the warmth on his face. When he was settled comfortably, Chett covered his legs with a fur and went to stand by the door.
"I am sorry to have woken you, Maester," Edd said.
"You did not wake me," Maester Aemon replied. "I find I need less sleep as I grow older, and I am grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts, remembering times fifty years past as if they were yesterday. The mystery of a midnight visitor is a welcome persion. So tell me, Tollet, why have you come calling at this strange hour?"
"To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of the Night's Watch."
Sam looked at Edd eyes wide with surprise. He never knew why Edd had brought him to the Maester but he sure as hell never thought that he had brought him to get the approval of the maester.
"This is no concern of Maester Aemon," Chett complained.
"Our Lord Commander has given the training of recruits into the hands of Ser Alliser Thorne," the maester said gently. "Only he may say when a boy is ready to swear his vow, as you surely know. Why then come to me?"
Sam had known that would be his answer. He had known that much and why wouldn't Maester Aemon know that. He thought that it was just a waste of time and was ready to get away from there but Edd was not ready to give up just yet.
"The Lord Commander listens to you," Edd told him. "And the wounded and the sick of the Night's Watch are in your charge."
"And is your friend Samwell wounded or sick?" the old Maester turned his head slowly to face Sam. How he did it without the sight, Sam never knew but the old man seemed to know his presence. "Are you wounded, Samwell?"
"He will be," Edd spoke up for him, "unless you help."
Edd told them all about him, right from Ser Alliser's training to Rast's promises. Maester Aemon listened silently, blind eyes fixed on the fire, but Chett's face darkened with each word. "Without us to keep him safe, Sam will have no chance," Edd finished. "If Ser Alliser makes him fight, it's only a matter of time before he's hurt or killed."
"The Wall is no place for the weak," Chett said looking at him, his face red with anger. "Let him train until he is ready, no matter how many years that takes. Ser Alliser shall make a man of him or kill him, as the gods will."
Sam grew afraid once again. It was not going in any way he had thought it to go. As time passed by he was losing hope more and more. But it seemed as if Edd has not given his hope.
"That's stupid," he said.
Sam took a deep breath to steady his breath. His heart was beating wildly in his chest now. He was so nervous that it made his palms sweaty.
"The Night's Watch needs all sorts of people. Why else have rangers and stewards and builders? Lord Randyll couldn't make Sam a warrior, and Ser Alliser won't either. You can't hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn't mean tin is useless. Why shouldn't Sam be a steward?"
Chett gave an angry scowl. "I'm a steward. You think it's easy work, fit for cowards? The order of stewards keeps the Watch alive. We hunt and farm, tend the horses, milk the cows, gather firewood, cook the meals. Who do you think makes your clothing? Who brings up supplies from the south? The stewards."
Maester Aemon was gentler. "Are you a hunter, Samwell?"
Sam's lips quivered at the mention of hunting. He had never liked hunting, never wanted to hunt. "A disgrace to House Tarly. Not fit to wear even my arms." his lord father had always said. The striding huntsman was the arms of house Tarly and Sam hated hunting. "I hate hunting," he had to admit.
"Can you plow a field?" the maester asked. "Can you drive a wagon or sail a ship? Could you butcher a cow?"
Sam could do none of the things Maester Aemon said. He couldn't even lift a tool to plow a field, he couldn't even ride properly, he was even afraid to see a chicken die. "No." He said at last.
Chett gave a nasty laugh. "I've seen what happens to soft lordlings when they're put to work. Set them to churning butter and their hands blister and bleed. Give them an axe to split logs, and they cut off their own foot."
His hopes had gone shattered with it and he could feel tears clouding his eyes but Sam would not bring himself to weep infront of them.
"I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone," Edd said at last. Sam looked at him eagerly waiting to hear what he did better than anyone.
"Yes?" Maester Aemon prompted.
Edd glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and angry. "He could help you," he said quickly. "He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can't read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam has read every book in his father's library. He'd be good with the ravens too. There's a lot he could do, besides fighting. The Night's Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead."
Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Sam was afraid that he had gone to sleep. He was his last hope. He knew he wouldn't survive without the help of his friends. Finally Maester Aemon said, "I shall think on what you have said. And now, I believe I am ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brothers to the door."
When they came out of the Maester's chambers, Sam turned to look at Edd. "I don't know why you did it," he told him, "but thank you. I've never had a friend before."
Edd smiled at him. "We're not friends," he said. He put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "We're brothers."