The King of Winters

Chapter-24

Samwell

The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Samwell Tarly knew these lands from his books. The barrows of the First Men. 

A sharp pang twisted in Sam's heart at the thought of riding through a graveyard. He wanted to cry, to scream, to leave, most importantly he wanted to go home, to his mother and sisters. But his father's words frightened him more than the graves did. "on the morrow we shall have a hunt, and somewhere in these woods your horse will stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to die . . ." 

Sam wiped his tears away at the thoughts of the past but the tears were unending. Like the snowfall in the north it seemed as if his tears would never end. He had never seen snows before. Samwell Tarly had been born south in the lands of the Reach as the firstborn son of Lord Randyll Tarly of Horn Hill and his lady wife Lady Melessa Florent. 

There were no snows in the south and no cold, yet he never found warmth at Horn Hill. His thoughts went back to the old life he had left back, mostly his mother. He cried again at the thought of his mother. Sweet mother who used to call him Sam. But it was not his mother's face he could see now but the hard and brittle face of his father. "You will be thrown from the saddle..." his voice ringed in his ears. 

His breath steamed in the cold air and with every passing moment the land became cooler. Sam hated the cold. It had been warmer in Horn Hill, though Sam hated it there seeing the cold of the north he certainly missed the southern lands of his father. He had never seen snow until last week.

They had been entering the barrowlands, Sam and the men his father had sent to see him north, when the white stuff began to fall, like a soft rain. At first he had thought it to be so beautiful, like feathers drifting from the sky, but the snowfall kept on and on, until he was frozen to the bone. Before him his father's men had crusts of snow in their beards and more on their shoulders, and still it kept coming. Looking up at the snowflakes drifting down he thought that it was not going to end and the thought frightened him.

He ought to be unafraid of them. He might be seeing the snows and feeling the bite of the cold for the rest of his life. It may be even colder in the Wall, the place where he was going to spend the rest of his life in. Sam knew of the Wall as everyone in Westeros did. The looming structure made of ice, and he was afraid of it. He knew that he was a craven and a coward and he also knew that the Night's Watch was no place for a coward. Yet he had very little choice in that matter. His eyes grew wet again when he thought about his last nameday. 

The Tarlys were a family old in honor, bannermen to Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South. Being the eldest son of Lord Randyll Tarly, Samwell was born heir to rich lands, a strong keep, and a storied two-handed greatsword named Heartsbane, forged of Valyrian steel and passed down from father to son near five hundred years. 

Whatever pride his lord father might have felt at his birth vanished as he grew up plump, soft, and awkward. Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, though he was clumsy in it. But he grew ill at the sight of blood. He even wept to see even a chicken slaughtered. A dozen masters-at-arms came and went at Horn Hill, trying to turn him into the knight his father had wanted him to be. He was cursed and caned, slapped and starved. One man had him sleep in his chainmail to make him more martial. Another dressed him in his mother's clothing and paraded him through the bailey to shame him into valor. He only grew fatter and more frightened, until Lord Randyll's disappointment turned to anger and then to loathing. One time two men came to the castle, warlocks from Qarth. He remembered them, with white skin and blue lips they had scared him to death. The Warlocks slaughtered a bull aurochs and made him bathe in the hot blood, but it didn't made him brave as they'd promised. He just got sick and retched. And his father had them scourged.