Chapter 7 Chapter 7 Jon

"Sam?" Jon called softly. The air smelled of old dust and decaying paper.In front of him were tall wooden bookshelves, the tops of which were submerged in darkness. The shelves were full of leather-bound books and boxes of ancient scrolls.There was an oil lamp somewhere in the room, a faint yellow light seeping through the stacks of books.There were old papers everywhere, and to avoid catching fire, Jon blew out the candle in his hand, followed the light, and shuttled through the narrow passage under the vaulted ceiling.He was dressed in black, with black hair, a long face, and gray eyes, like shadows in the dark.He even wears black moleskin gloves on both hands: the right hand because of the unhealed burn, the left because the glove looks ridiculous on one side.

Samwell Tarly sat hunched over a table set into a niche in the stone wall.The light comes from an oil lamp hanging above his head.He heard Jon's footsteps and looked up. "You've been here all night?" "Really?" Sam seemed surprised. "You didn't come to have breakfast with us, and your bed didn't show signs of sleep." Rast thought Sam had abandoned camp and fled, but Jon didn't believe it.It takes a little courage to be a deserter, and Sam didn't have even that. "Is it morning already? There's no way to tell the time down here."

"Sam, you're a sweet fool," Jon said. "I promise you, when we've got nothing but cold, hard floors to sleep on, you'll miss your bed." Sam yawned, "Master Aemon sent me down to the cellar to help the Lord Commander find a map. I didn't expect... Jon, look at these books, you have never seen so many! There are thousands of them!" He looked around, "There are hundreds of books in the library in Winterfell. Have you found the map?" "Yes, yes," Sam said, waving his sausage-fat fingers at the scattered books and scrolls on the table in front of him. "There are at least a dozen kinds." He unfolded a piece of parchment. "Although the ink on this has faded, you can still see the wildling settlements marked by the painter, and there is a book... Where did I put it? Reading." He pushed aside several scrolls to find a dusty book with a rotting cover. "This is it," he said reverently, "by a ranger called Redwyne, and the account of his travels from the Shadow Tower to Cape Desolation on the Frozen Shore. Though it has no date, But he mentions Doron Stark, King of the North, so it must have been done before the War of Conquest. Jon, they fought giants! Redwyne even traded with the Children of the Forest, all of which Inside the book." He carefully turned the pages with one finger, "Look, he drew a map..."

"Perhaps you can write down our patrol too, Sam." He meant to encourage, but he said the wrong thing. The last thing Sam needs reminded at this moment is the fate they will face from tomorrow.He turned over some scrolls casually, "There are still many maps, if you give me time...it's a mess here, but I have a way to organize everything, I know I can do it, but it will take a lot of time... well, say Really, at least a few years." "I'm afraid Mormont won't be able to wait that long," said Jon, drawing a bunch of scrolls from the chest and blowing off the thick dust, only to have a small corner of the scroll peel off between his fingers as he unrolled it. "Look, this one is about to break." He frowned at the faded handwriting.

"Easy." Sam went around the table and took the scroll from him, holding it as if it were a wounded animal. "Important bibliographical records are copied as often as necessary. The oldest book here may have been copied fifty or sixty times." "Hey, but this one is nothing to copy. Twenty-three barrels of salted cod, eighteen cans of fish oil, one barrel of salted cod..." "It's a bill of goods," said Sam, "or a receipt for a sale." "Who cares how much cod people ate six hundred years ago?" Jon wondered. "I will," Sam carefully put the scroll back into its original box, "you can learn a lot from the accounts, really, I kid you not. For example, you can learn from it that the Night's Watch had How many people, what kind of life they live, what they eat..."

"Isn't that what they eat?" Jon asked. "How is their life any different from ours?" "Then you'd be wrong, Jon, there's treasure everywhere." "You say yes." Jon was dubious.The so-called "treasure" should refer to gold, silver and jewels, not dust, spiders and rotten leather, right? "I mean it!" the fat man blurted out excitedly.He was older than Jon, legally a man of age, but he looked like a child anyway. "I found a portrait of a human face on a weirwood, a treatise on the language of the Children of the Forest . Change record..."

"Books can't run away, so it's not too late to read them when we come back." "Then we have to come back..." "The two hundred brothers that Elder Xiong picked this time are all experienced veterans, and three quarters of them are rangers. Besides, Colin Halfhand will bring a hundred brothers from the Shadow Tower to join us. It couldn't be any safer than in your lord father's castle in Horn Hill." Samwell Tarly forced a sad smile, "I wasn't very safe in my father's castle." The gods take pride in all the cruel tricks they play on people, Jon thought.Pip and Todd, who can't wait to participate in this long march, must stay at Castle Black, but it is Samwell Tarly who needs to face the Haunted Forest.He is a self-professed cowardly person, extremely fat, extremely timid, and can't do everything with horseback riding and sword dancing.But the Old Bear meant to take two cages of ravens with him, to carry the message back to the castle along the way, and Maester Aemon was blind and too weak to go with them, so his steward had to go instead. "Sam, we need you to take care of Raven, and I need your help to take care of Grenn myself, to make sure he is careful."

Sam's jaw trembled, "I'm not the only one who can take care of Raven, it's you or Glenn, anyone can do it." There was a trace of despair in his voice, "I can teach you how to do it, You can also read, and you can write letters for Lord Mormont no worse than me." "I'm Old Bear's steward. I have to be by his side, take care of his mounts, and pitch his tent. I don't have time for the birds. Sam, you swore you were a member of the Night's Watch." "The Night's Watch shouldn't be afraid, should it?" "Which of us is not afraid? If anyone is not afraid, he must be a fool." In the past two years, too many rangers have disappeared, including Jon's uncle Benjen Stark.They found two of his uncle's subordinates in the forest, both of whom were brutally killed, and their bodies were resurrected in the cold night.Jon's burned fingers twitched involuntarily at the thought.He still sees Othor the ghoul in his dreams, with those burning blue eyes and black hands, but he can't tell Sam about it. "My father said to me, you don't have to be ashamed of your fears, the important thing is how you face them. Come on, I'll get you the map."

Sam nodded sullenly.The bookshelves are placed very closely, and the distance between each other is very narrow, allowing only one person to pass through.From the cellars came the tunnels that my brethren called "Wormways," the winding wormways that lay beneath the ground and connected Castle Black's strongholds and towers.In summer, except for the rampant rats, few people use the insect tunnels, but it is very different in winter.When the snow was fifty feet deep and the north wind was howling with frost, these were the only passages that connected the rest of Castle Black. That day is coming soon, Jon thought as they crawled out of the cellar.He had seen the envoy at Maester Aemon's place announcing the end of summer—a raven from the Schoolhouse, all white and as quiet as Ghost.In his childhood, he had seen the scene of winter, but everyone said that winter was neither bitter nor long.This time was different, he could feel it in his bones.

By the time they climbed the steep stone steps and walked back to the ground, Sam was panting like a blacksmith's bellows.There was a gust of wind that snapped Jon's cloak.Ghost was sleeping on his stomach under the barn fence, and when Jon approached, he jumped up and followed them, his fluffy white tail sticking out. Sam squinted his eyes toward the Wall.The city wall stands majestically, like a 700-foot frozen cliff.Jon sometimes felt that the Wall seemed to be alive, with its own mood changes.The color of the ice wall changes with the movement of the light. Sometimes it is the dark blue of frozen rivers, sometimes it is the dirty white of accumulated snow, and when there are flowing clouds blocking out the sun, it becomes dim again and becomes the light gray of uneven rocks.The Great Wall extends east and west until the end of the line of sight. Its colossal momentum makes the wooden fortresses and stone towers under the wall seem insignificant.It is the end of the world.

But we are going north over the wall. There were a few light gray thin clouds floating in the morning sky, but beyond the clouds, the light red line could still be seen.The brothers in black called this wandering star in the sky "Mormont's torch", half-jokingly saying that it must have been sent by the gods in the sky to guide the old man through the haunted forest. "This comet is so bright that you can see it in the daytime." Sam held up a stack of books to cover his eyes. "Don't worry about comets, what Xiong wants is a map." Bai Ling ran forward.Without the drunk rangers digging for treasure in the Mole's Village brothel, the camp in the morning looked very empty.Even Grant went.To celebrate Grenn's first mission, Piper, Hodder and Todd decide to pay a woman to help him complete his first mission.Jon and Sam were invited, too, but to Sam a whore and the Haunted Forest were about as scary a thing as Jon hadn't thought of that. "Whatever you want," he said to Todd, "I've sworn it." As he passed the church, he heard hymns being chanted loudly.On the eve of the war, some people want to be whores, some people want to ask the gods. Jon doesn't know which one will be more satisfied after that, but the temple and the brothel are just as unattractive to him.The wilderness, where the weirwoods stretched pale as bones, was their ancestral temple to his gods.The Seven have no power outside the Wall, he thought, but my gods are waiting for me. Outside the armory, Sir Andrew Tars was training the recruits who had arrived last night.The man was brought by Conway. Like Yoren and others, he traveled all over the Seven Kingdoms to recruit men for the defenders of the Great Wall.The group included an old man with a gray beard and a cane, two blond boys who looked like brothers, a heavily powdered youth in a soiled satin coat, and a ragged man with a wooden leg and a self-important, giggling fool—Sir Andrew was correcting his wrong ideas.Compared with his former coach, Sir Alliser Thorne, Andrew is much gentler, but he still has injuries all over his body after being trained by him.Sam frowned when he saw someone being beaten.Jon Snow watched them fight intently. "Snow, what do you think of them?" Donal Noye stood by the armory door, naked to the waist, wearing a leather apron, and his severed left hand was also exposed.Although Noye was not very good-looking, with a big belly, a flat nose, and a black beard on his chin, Jon was glad to see him, because the Armorer turned out to be a good friend. "They smell like summer," Jon said, watching as Ser Andrew charged at his opponent, knocking him to the ground. "Where did Conway get these people?" "A lord's dungeon near Seagulltown," answered the blacksmith. "A robber, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a young whore. We'll have to keep the kingdom with these." "They can do it," Jon said, smiling knowingly at Sam, "and so can we?" Noy pulled him closer, "Have you heard about your brother?" "Heard about it last night." Conway and the group of recruits brought the news north, and that was all the talking in the hall last night.Jon wasn't sure how he felt yet.Robb is king?The elder brother who played and fought with him since he was a child, and drank the first glass of wine in his life together?But it wasn't the same mother's milk that fed us, so now Robb drinks summer red from a bejeweled goblet, and I kneel by some nameless brook, sucking the thaw from my cup. "Robb will make a good king," he said reverently. "Really?" said the blacksmith, looking straight at him. "I hope so, my boy. I hoped so for Robert before." "I heard you were the one who struck his hammer," Jon remembered. "That's right, I used to be his subordinate, a subordinate of the Baratheon family, a blacksmith and a weapon master in Storm's End, until I lost this arm. I still remember Lord Stephen's voice and smile before he was swept away by the sea, I've watched his three sons grow up from the day they were named. I tell you—Robert was a different man when he put on that crown. Some men are made for war, like swords, if Hang them up and they'll just rust." "And his two brothers?" Jon asked. The weaponsmith pondered for a moment, "If Robert is real steel, then Stannis is pure iron. It is black, hard and strong, but it is also easy to damage. Like iron, it will break before it can be bent. As for Renly , he is like shiny bright copper, looks beautiful, but is actually not worth a lot of money." What kind of metal is Robb?Jon dared not ask.Noye had been a Baratheon once, and I'm afraid he thought Joffrey was the rightful king and Robb a traitor.There was an unwritten rule among the brothers of the Night's Watch that such matters should never be discussed in depth.The defenders of the Great Wall come from all over the Seven Kingdoms. No matter how many oaths a person has sworn, the old love and family affection will never be wiped out...Jon himself has a deep understanding of this.Even Sam was confused: his family had sworn allegiance to Highgarden, and Lord Tyrell of Highgarden now supported Renly.So it's best not to talk too much about it, the Night's Watch is unbiased. "Lord Mormont awaits us," said Jon. "Then I won't delay you, go find Old Xiong." Noy patted him on the shoulder and said with a smile, "Xue Nuo, starting tomorrow, may the gods be with you, bring your uncle back to me , did you hear that?" "Well, sure!" Jon assured him. Lord Lord Mormont has been stationed at the King's Tower since his residence was burned.Jon leaves Ghost with the guard at the door. "Stairs again," Sam complained as they went upstairs. "I hate stairs." "Hey, luckily there aren't any in the forest." As soon as they entered the study, the crow spotted them at a glance. "Snow!" it snapped.Mormont had been talking. "You've spent a lot of time," he said, pushing the leftovers of breakfast off the table to make room. "Put it here, I'll see later." Thoren Smallwood was a stocky Ranger with a weak jawline and mouth buried under a small beard.He was originally on good terms with Alliser Thorne, so he didn't like Jon and Sam at all, and only gave them a cold look. "In my opinion," he continued to tell Mormont, ignoring the two men who had just arrived, "the Lord Commander should sit at Castle Black and be in charge of planning and governing." The crow patted its black wings, "I! I! I!" "When you become Commander-in-Chief, you can do what you like," Mormont said to the ranger, "but in my opinion, I haven't lost my hair yet, and my brothers haven't elected you to replace me. seat." "Now that Benjen Stark and Ser Jeremy are dead, I am Chief Ranger," said Smallwood stubbornly, "and I shall command the attack." Mormont was unmoved. "Ben was sent by me, and I sent Sir Waymar before him, and I don't want to send you out too, and then sit here and wait until it's dark before I finally give up hope and judge you to abandon the corpse in the wilderness ’” he pointed out. "Also, until we're sure that Stark is dead, he's still Chief Ranger. Even if he does die, it's up to me to appoint a successor. It's not up to you. Well, don't waste my time, We have to start at dawn, don't you forget?" Smallwood stood at attention. "Yes, my lord." He frowned at Jon as he went out, as if scolding him. "Chief Ranger?" Xiong Lao's eyes stopped on Sam, "I might as well let you be it! There is someone so shameless that he thinks I am old and inferior to him in front of me! Boy, I see Getting old?" Mormont's hair, which had long since escaped his age-spotted scalp, had regrouped around his chin, and a thick gray beard almost covered his chest.He beat his chest hard, "Do I look weak?" Sam opened his mouth, but there was only a pathetic squeal, for he had always been afraid of Old Bear. "Of course not, my lord," Jon said hastily, "you're as strong as...as strong as..." "Stop coaxing me, Snow, you know I don't like this. Come, let me see the map." Mormont flipped through the map roughly, glancing at each one, and grunting. "That's all you found?" "My... lord, lord," Sam stammered, "and... there's a lot more, ba-ba-but... it's a... mess in there..." "These are too old," Mormont complained, and his raven snapped back. "Old! old!" "The location of the settlement may change, but the orientation of the hills and rivers remains the same," Jon pointed out. "That's right. Tully, is the crow ready?" "Master I-I-Imon beat-beat-plans to-re-select again tonight, after he-he-feeds them." "I want his best bird, not only smart, but also strong enough." "Strong!" cried his crow, preening its feathers. "Strong! Strong!" "If we are all killed, I have to let the successor know where we died and how we died." As soon as this remark came out, Samwell Tarly was speechless in fright.Mormont leaned forward, "Tarly, once when I was half your age, my mother told me that if I stood there stupidly with my mouth open, the weasel might mistake my mouth for its lair and slink away. Get into your throat. So, if you have something to say, hurry up, or watch out for weasels." He waved his hand roughly to signal him to back off, "You go, I'm too busy to listen to your nonsense. I think there should be work at Maester's waiting for you." Sam swallowed, stepped back, and walked away quickly, almost tripping on the straw mat. "Is this kid really as stupid as he looks?" After he left, the Commander asked. "Stupid!" the crow complained.Mormont didn't wait for Jon to answer, "His lord father is quite important in King Renly's court, and I meant to send him... well, I'm afraid it won't go well if I send this fat, stupid boy to see Renly." I'll send Ser Arnell, he's calmer, and his mother is a Green Apple Fossoway." "May I ask, my lord, what do you ask of King Renly?" "Boy, don't I want the same thing as every king? Soldiers, war horses, swords, armor, grain, cheese, wine, wool, nails... The Night Watch Corps is not picky at all, what others give, we take orders Take all." His fingers tapped on the rough wooden tabletop. "If the wind blows, Ser Alliser will be in King's Landing in a month, but whether little Joffrey will pay him any attention, I dare not say. The Lannisters have never been kind to us Night's Watch." "But Thorne brought a ghoul's hand to draw their attention." It was a disgusting thing, pale in color, with black fingers, twisted endlessly in a jar, as if it was still alive. "I wish we had one more, so Renly could see it too." "Devon said there's everything beyond the Great Wall." "Come on,' said Devon. The last time he was out on patrol, he said he saw a bear fifteen feet tall." Mormont snorted. It's even worse than that. Although it's a world where dead people walk... Well, even so, one has to trust one's eyes. I've seen dead people walk, but I haven't seen any giant bears." He surveyed Joan En Longjiu, "But we're talking about hands, how are your hands?" "Much better." Jon showed him, taking off his moleskin gloves.From the palm to the elbow, there are scars all over the place. Although the mottled red and tender skin is still inconvenient to stretch, it has gradually healed. "It's still itchy, but Master Aemon said it was a good sign, and he gave me an ointment to take with me on the road." "Is it convenient to use long claws?" "No problem," Jon held out his fingers, clenched and opened his fist the way the maester ordered. "Master Aemon wants me to move like this every day, so I can keep my fingers sharp." "Aemon is blind, but his head is clear. May the gods bless him for another twenty years. Did you know he could have been king?" Jon was taken aback. "He only told me that his father was king, but... I thought he was not the eldest son." "He was not. His grandfather was Daeron Targaryen, King Daeron II, who brought Dorne into the kingdom. He married a Dorne princess by agreement, and she bore him Four sons. Aemon's father, Maekar, was the youngest, and Aemon was Maekar's third. Note, though Smallwood speaks of me as an old man, this was long before I was born .” "I heard that his grandfather named him Aemon in honor of Prince Aemon, the Dragon Knight." "Yes, don't people often say that Aemon is the real father of King Daeron, not Aegon IV the 'York King'? But, our Aemon was not born with the martial arts of a dragon knight. He always said that he His movements are slow, only his mind is quick. No wonder he was sent to the academy by his grandfather, he was only nine or ten years old at the time, I think... he was ninth or tenth in the line of succession." Jon knew that Maester Aemon was over a hundred years old, and it was strange to think of this frail, atrophied, wrinkled, blind old man as a little boy of Arya's age. Mormont went on: "Aemon's uncle, the heir to the throne, was buried in his books when his uncle, the heir to the throne, died unexpectedly at a tourney. His uncle had two heirs, but they soon followed each other. Died of the great spring plague. King Daeron also fell sick and died at the same time, so the throne passed to Daeron's second son Aerys." "'Mad King' Aerys?" Jon was confused, Aerys was the king before Robert, it shouldn't be so long ago. "No, that was Aerys the First. Robert overthrew the Second." "How long ago was this?" "I think it must have been eighty years," said the old bear. "I can't tell exactly. I was not even born at that time, but Aemon had already made most of the necklace. According to the tradition of the Targaryen family, Aerys married married his sister, and ruled for more than ten years. Aemon took the oath of a bachelor, and then left the Academy to serve a certain nobleman... until his uncle died without heirs. The Iron Throne was passed on To King Daeron's last son, that is, Aemon's father Maekar. The new king recalled all the sons to the palace. He originally planned to make Aemon a high-ranking minister, but Aemon did not want to usurp the position that should belong to the Grand Master, so Refused. He went to the castle of his elder brother and chose to serve him. That one was also named Daeron. However, this Daeron died soon, leaving behind only a mentally handicapped daughter. If I remember correctly He seems to have contracted syphilis from whorehouses. The next heir to the kingdom is Aerion, the second son." "'Devil' Ilion?" Jon knew this person. "The prince who thinks he is Jackie Chan" is a particularly scary one in Old Nan's story, and his younger brother Bran loved it the most. "Exactly, but he calls himself Aerion the Bright Flame. One night he got so drunk that he downed a can of wildfire and boasted to his friends that wildfire could make him a dragon, but luckily the gods have eyes. Make him a dead body. King Maekar fell in battle against the bandit leader less than a year after his death." Jon is not ignorant of the kingdom's history, thanks to Maester Luwin. "The Great Council was held that year," he interjected. "The Lords of the Land decided to give up the young son of Prince Aerion and the daughter of Prince Daeron, and give the crown to Aegon." "You're only half right. They quietly offered the crown to Aemon, but he quietly refused. He told them that the mission entrusted to him by the gods was to serve, not to rule, and he swore an oath , would never forsake him, even if the High Septon would pardon him. Well, no one in his senses would allow Aerion's son to sit on the throne, and Daeron's daughter is not only imbecile, but also unmasculine, and as a last resort, Make Aemon's younger brother king—this is Aegon V, the fourth son of the old king's four sons, they call him "the king who should not be king". Aemon knows that if he stays in the court, Inevitably being used by those who opposed Aegon, so he came to the Great Wall and never left, letting his younger brother, his nephew, and his grandnephew rule the country one by one, and die again, until Jaime Lannister Ended the lineage of the dragon kings." "King!" the crow quacked strangely, fluttering across the study and landing on Mormont's shoulder. "King!" it called again, shaking its head. "It seems to like the word." Jon smiled. "The word is easier to say and easier to like." "King!" cried the bird again. "I think it wishes you had a crown too, my lord." "There are now three kings in the country, and I think there are two more." Mormont stretched out his finger and flicked the crow's chin, but his eyes never left Jon Snow. He felt something was wrong, "My lord, why did you tell me about Master Aemon?" "No reason," Mormont moved, frowning. "Your brother Robb is now King in the North. You and Aemon have something in common. You are both brothers of the king." "Not only that," said Jon, "we all swore our vows, too." Old Xiong snorted loudly, and the crow also flew up, flapping its wings and circling the room. "If every oath-breaker is assigned to guard the Great Wall, I won't have to worry about the lack of manpower." "I knew Robb would rule Winterfell someday." Mormont whistled, and the bird flew back to rest on his hand. "A lord and a king are two different things," he said, taking a handful of corn from his pocket and feeding it to the crow. "They'll dress your brother Robb in all kinds of silk and satin, but you'll be dressed in black all your life; he'll marry a pretty princess, and have a lot of grandchildren, and you'll never marry, let alone have any." Raise children; Robb is high above, ruling the Quartet, but you are only an ox and a horse; others call you a 'crow', but he will respectfully call him 'Your Majesty'; no matter what nonsense he does, he will be praised by poets to heaven , and you are doomed to obscurity, even if you do great things. If this doesn't bother you at all, Jon...then you're a big liar. You know, I'm right." Jon stood up, his whole body tensed like a bowstring, "If this really bothers me, what about my bastard?" "What do you think?" Mormont asked. "What do you do as a bastard?" "Keep haunting," Jon said, "but keep the oath."