CARPE NOCTEM, jon snow

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀twenty one

twenty-one. the wildlings

loc. the haunted forest, beyond the wall. 299AC

⠀⠀⠀CARSEN COULD NOT fathom at this point how she had not yet shoved her fellow rangers' heads in the snow.

⠀⠀⠀She trailed behind sullenly with a longsword at her hip; it was her first time handling a blade that wasn't blunted at the tip. This steel sword stretched from hip to ankle and felt three times as heavy as it looked; Jon had scrounged it from the old weapons left behind by the previous men of the Watch at the Fist. He'd handed it over with a small, boyish grin: "It's almost as skinny as you, see?"

She'd tried not to linger on the ease in which he hefted it; it danced like glass between his nimble fingers.

Her brothers marched ahead. She only learned their named that day—Corrin Blackel and a man they called Fig. They each had game slung through the belt at their hips, dead rabbits and squirrels alike dangling limply from cracked leather, but Carsen's waist was empty.

⠀⠀⠀It was Fig's vulgar chatter that made her knuckles tighten over the hilt of her sheathed sword more than one—chatter about drinks and whores and brothels, of fights and dead men and rape. To even walk the same footprints as him seemed to sully Carsen's feet like sprouting mold. She noticed that Blackel seemed as uncomfortable with Fig's talk as she felt, and he often glanced back as if wistful of falling out of step with Fig.

⠀⠀⠀He must be awful company if Blackel was more willing to walk with a mute who could scarcely lift a real sword.

⠀⠀⠀Blackel was a man of perhaps four-and-twenty. He had copper skin that gleamed like gold in real sunlight, but with only this weak sliver of pale sun to polish it, it looked bleached and pallid. His hair was a mass of dark curls that looked uncomfortably like Jon's, but his eyes were the blue of a pigeon's down, like the ice that shimmered on a lake. He had a kindly, doe-like face that, strangely, only served to irritate her.

⠀⠀⠀She was half-seriously considering blowing her cover and screaming at Fig when she heard the rustle.

⠀⠀⠀Her muscles seized; she went rigid, as rigid as if she were made up of elastic and letting go would make all the bands snap. But Fig was deaf to the world; the milkmaid he had taken on his kitchen table was far more important.

⠀⠀⠀He wasn't talking for much longer. The arrow hit him in the side of the throat and struck through the other side, dripping with gore.

⠀⠀⠀Carsen almost screamed, but held her tongue. Blackel did scream, yelling in shock and flinging himself away from the reddening snow. He scrambled up, kicking up spurts of snow and clumsily reaching for the bow slung across his chest. Carsen unsheathed her sword and twisted in a jerky circle, her eyes straining against the snow-dusted, bare plantation, the still columns of slender trees that cast long shadows on the frozen ground. Somewhere behind her, Fig was still choking on his own blood.