𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐘

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰɪᴠᴇ

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Others were gathering around the yard to look at Torsten and Jon with curiosity as they shared their swordplay. Jon noticed Grenn a few feet away. He looked anxious and uncomfortable, not menacing at all. Jon gathered Torsten and the two went to him. Grenn edged backward and put up his hands. "Stay away from me now, you bastard." Jon only smiled at him.

"I'm sorry about your nose. Robb used the same move on me once. It hurt like seven hells. Look, if you want, I can show you how to defend that." Alliser Thorne overheard him.

"Lord Snow wants to take my place now." He sneered. "I'd have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this Aurochs."

"We'll take that wager, Ser Alliser." Torsten said, finding his voice.

"I'd love to see Ghost juggle." Jon smiled. Torsten heard Grenn suck in his breath, shocked. Silence fell. Three of the black brothers guffawed from nearby. The laughter spread throughout the yard and finally Grenn and Pypar began to chuckle.
Ser Alliser never took his eyes from Torsten or Jon. As the laughter rolled around him, his face darkened, and his sword hand curled tighter around his longsword.

"Well see, bastards." He said at last in the acid tones of an enemy.

Jon was showing Grenn how best to deliver a sidestroke when the new recruit entered the practice yard. "Don't stand so still, it's harder to hit a moving target." Jon informed, he sent a friendly smile towards Grenn who wore a smile of his own. Lifting his hand Grenn smacked the sword away from himself while mist puffed from between his slightly chapped lips as he let out a deep gargling chuckle.

"Except for you." Torsten was quick to turn his sword on Pypar. "You move too much." He urged. Pypar sent the flat of his sword to the back of the younger's head making a laugh break from him.

"That's good. Now pivot as you deliver the stoke, get all your weight behind the blade." Grenn broke off and lifted his visor.

"What in the seven hells is that?" Grenn murmured. "Seven gods, would ye' look at this, Jon." Torsten turned. There beheld the fattest boy he had ever seen standing in the courtyard. By the looks of him, he'd have had to weigh around twenty stone. The fur of his embroidered surcoat was lost beneath his chin. With pale eyes he moved nervously in a great round moon of a face, and plump sweaty fingers wiped themselves at the velvet of his doublet.
Torsten had never seen a fat boy at the Watch. Mostly because the food was limited and the variety even more so. Ale wasn't any better. As the boy approached the group hot on Ser Alliser's heels, the boys who stood staring didn't hesitate to mock the large boy.

"A lordling." Pypar observed to the group. "Southron, most likely near Highgarden." Pypar had travelled the Seven Kingdoms, and bragged that he could tell what you were and where you'd been born just from the sound of your voice.

"It would seem they have run short of poachers and thieves down south. Now they send up pigs to man the Wall. Is fur and velvet your notion of amour, my Lord of Ham?" Alliser mocked darkly and the other recruits barked up a storm of laughs. "Well go on, tell 'em your name." Alliser snapped.

"Samwell Tarly of Horn Hill, I mean I was of Horn Hill. I've come to take the Black." The boy said slightly out of breath.

"Come to take the black puddin' more like it." Rast sniggered causing the yard full of recruits to erupt into laughter. Torsten and Jon however, held a stone cold expression.

"Well you couldn't be any worse than you look." Alliser sneered. "Let's get you out of those god awful clothes first." As none of it was black, Ser Alliser insisted that he reequip himself from the armoury.
That took half the morning. His girth required Donal Noye to take apart a mail hauberk and refit it with leather panels at the sides. His leathers bound so tightly around his legs and under his arms that he could scarcely move.
Dressed for battle, the new boy looked like an overcooked sausage about to burst its skin. "Let us hope you're not as incompetent as you look." Ser Alliser said. "Halder, see what Ser Piggy can do." Torsten winced, he was aware Halder had been born in a quarry and apprenticed as a stonemason. The boy was nineteen, tall and muscular. His blows were as hard as Torsten had ever felt.

"This'll be uglier than a whore's ass." Pypar interrupted, while Torsten sent the boy a harsh blow to the back of his head with the flat of his sword.
Within minutes Samwell ended up on the ground begging for mercy.

"I yield, please no more!" Samwell shrilled, holding his hands up to brace himself. Rast and some other boys were laughing.

"Get back onto your feet, Ser Piggy. Pick up your sword." Alliser ordered. "Hit him until he finds his feet." He instructed. Halder wasted no time in delivering a harsh smack to the side of the boys pork belly build. When Samwell continued to whine and cling to the ground, Thorne gestured to Halder. "You can hit harder than that." Thorne taunted with a vicious smile that tugged at his tight lipped mouth.
Torsten silently watched as Halder now grabbed a hold of his longsword with two hands. He brought it down so hard the blow split leather, even on the flat. The new boy screeched in pain.

"Cut us off a slice of ham!" Rast urged, laughing.
Torsten could hardly stomach the scene. He remembered when he was in the boy's position. All the eyes, the laughs and the mockery. Torsten had only been ten at the time, but that hadn't stopped the older boys.

"He yielded!" Torsten had finally found his voice.

"Enough, Halder!" Jon echoed. Halder stood still of his movements, his eyes searching for Ser Alliser's.

"The Bastards speak and the peasants tremble." Throne's voices was sharp and cold.

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