𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐁𝐎𝐘

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ꜰɪꜰᴛᴇᴇɴ

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Torsten had burned himself more badly then he knew throwing the flaming lamp, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he'd felt nothing, the agony had come after. Torsten flexed his bandaged fingers, his cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as roaches. "Are you well?" Lord Mormont asked scowling. His raven screeched.

"I am, my Lord." Torsten lied loudly, as if that could make it true. "And you?" He offered the Old Bear a weak smile.

"A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?" Mormont frowned. He scratched under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire. "You do not look well. How is your hand?" The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy.

"Healing." Torsten flexed his bandaged hand once again, to show him. "The Maester says I'll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before."

"A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you'll be wearing gloves often as not." Mormont said.

"As you say, my lord." It was not the thought of scars that troubled Torsten, it was the rest of it. Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Torsten thanked the Gods that no one but Ghost and Jon saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain.
Jon had done all he could to help the pained boy. Often changing the basins of snow as it slowly melted.
When he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse.

"Dywen and Hake returned last night." The Old Bear said. "They found no sign of Ben Stark, no more than the others did. Best you go tell Jon... Tell him I'd like to speak to him." He did not seem to expect an answer so Torsten left.
Torsten dragged himself to the courtyard, where the large grey dead bodies laid burning. The fire cracked and the heat of it on Torsten's face was sweeter than any kiss.

"There's no burning smell." Torsten said as he joined his friends.

"They were touched by White Walkers." Samwell said. "That's why they came back. That's why their eyes turned blue." He informed.
Torsten squinted against the heavy smoke that weaved through the morning air.

"Only fire will stop them." Torsten muttered, barely audible.

"How'd you know that?" Jon asked, his eyes twitched between his two friends.

"I read about it in a book." Samwell smiled.

"I've read it. It's in Maester Aemon's library." Torsten informed.

"What else did the book say?" Jon asked. His eyes twitched back to look over the fire.

"The White Walkers sleep beneath the ice for thousands of years, and when they wake up..." Torsten cut himself short. It was like a nightmare, something he hoped wasn't real.

"And when they wake up... what?" Pypar asked his head twitched around to his friends.

"I hope the Wall is high enough." Torsten said in a whisper that drifted throughout his friends. "Lord Commander wanted me to tell you... they didn't find Benjen."

"I know." Jon had dragged himself to the Common Hall to sup with his friends, and the failure of the rangers' search had been all the men had been talking of.

"He wants to talk with you." Torsten said and Jon nodded.

Torsten watched the Lord Commander reach up to his screeching raven and pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to the light above a window. "Grief and noise." Mormont mumbled. "Aemon sent two copies of my letter, with his best birds, but I haven't heard about Eddard Stark or the girls. I fear we count for less than nothing in King's Landing. They tell us what they want us to know, and that's little enough." Jon's brother Robb had called banners and ridden south to war, yet no word of that had been breathed to him. Save by Samwell Tarly, who'd read the letter to Maester Aemon and whispered its contents to Jon and Torsten earlier that morning in secret, all the time saying how he shouldn't. Doubtless they thought his brother's war was none of his concern.
The raven began crying. "Oh, be quiet." The Old Bear told it. "Here. You'll be ready for this." On the table between them, Lord Mormont laid a large sword in black metal scabbard banded with silver.
The raven flapped down and landed on the table, strutting toward the sword, head cocked curiously. Torsten watched Jon hesitate.

"My Lord?" Jon said.

"Take it." The Commander said. Awkwardly, Jon took the sword in hand. Carefully, he pulled it from its scabbard and raised it level with his eyes.
The pommel was a hunk of pale stone weighted with lead to balance the long blade. It had been carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf's head, with chips of garnet set into the eyes. The grip was virgin leather, soft and black, as yet unstained by sweat or blood. The blade itself was a good half foot longer than those they used at the Wall, tapered to thrust as well as slash, with three fullers deeply incised in the metal.
This was a hand and a halfer, sometimes named a 'bastard sword.'
When Jon turned it sideways, Torsten could see the ripples in the dark steel where the metal had been folded back on itself again and again.

"It's Valyrian steel, my Lord." Jon said wonderingly.

"It is." The Old Bear told him. "It was my father's sword, and his fathers before him. The Mormonts have carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in my day and passed it on to my son when I took the black." The blade was exquisitely balanced. The edge glimmered faintly as they kissed the light.

"Your son..." Jon wondered.

"My son brought dishonour to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to leave the sword behind when he fled. My sister returned it to my keeping, but the very sight of it reminded me of Jorah's shame, so I put it aside and thought no more of it until we found it in the ashes of my bedchamber. The original pommel was a bear's head, silver, yet so worn its features were all but indistinguishable. For you, Torsten thought a white wolf be more apt. He carved it himself." Jon's eyes lifted to meet Torsten's own.

"You carved this?" Jon repeated and Torsten nodded.

"One of our builders is a fair stonecarver. He taught me when I was a little boy." Torsten smiled.

"My Lord, you honour me... but..." Jon began.

"Spare me your but's, boy." Lord Mormont interrupted. "I would not be sitting here were it not for the two of you and that beast of yours. You two fought bravely... and more to the point, you thought quickly." Truly, the Gods had heard Torsten's prayer that night. The fire had caught in the dead man's clothing and consumed him as if his flesh were candle wax and his bones old dry wood. Torsten had only to close his eyes to see the thing staggering across the solar, crashing against the furniture and flailing at the flames. It was the face that haunted him most, surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh melting away and sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath.
The twisted thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again. And this time the burning corpse was a Wildling. Its skin burst and blackened, its eyes ran liquid down its cheeks like jellied tears. Torsten didn't understand why that should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say. "It's a small payment for a life, take it I'll hear no more of it, understood?"

"Yes, my Lord." The soft leather gave beneath Jon's fingers.

"I want no courtesies either." Mormont said. "So thank me no thanks. Honour the steel with deeds, not words." Jon nodded.

"Does it have a name, my lord?" Torsten wondered aloud.

"It did, once. Longclaw, it was called." Mormont answered and his raven cried.

"Longclaw it is." Jon practiced a cut, the steel seemed to flow through the air, as if it had a will of its own. "Wolves have claws, as much as bears." The Old Bear seemed pleased by that.

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