“A Night’s Watch deserter has been caught.” Maester Luwin set the raven scroll on the desk and delivered the news without flourish.
Eddard Stark stared out the window for a long moment before answering.
“I see.” This was the third deserter this year.
The Watch was no longer the honorable order it had once been.
These days it mostly served as a place for men to hide from justice or punishment.
Even so, this many broken men showing up in a single year was new.
Every one of them arrived half-mad, babbling about horrors chasing them.
Their minds were shattered.
Ned had already read the latest report from his brother.
The situation was worse than he had feared.
The Watch’s strength had fallen below a thousand men.
Desertions were only part of it.
Patrols sent beyond the Wall were being wiped out.
“When did the wildlings become so dangerous?” Ned asked, turning to Luwin.
His voice was quiet but urgent.
In his lifetime the wildlings had always been a nuisance, raiding villages and running when the Watch responded.
They had never caused losses like this.
” Mance Rayder was once one of them,” Luwin said.
“He knows every weakness, every patrol route.
If he is leading them now, the Watch is in real trouble.” Or the Others?
The thought flashed through Ned’s mind and he almost smiled at his own foolishness.
White Walkers were stories old nurses told to frighten children.
They had been gone for eight thousand years.
He had believed in them once, when he was small and loved hunting for old barrows and strange stones.
He was not small anymore.
Still, the Watch needed men.
For decades the wildlings had grown bolder as the Watch grew weaker.
Some were now raiding as far as the Umber lands and even Bear Island instead of just the nearest villages.
They took steel, spices, silk, furs, coin, rings, and jeweled cups.
In summer they stole wine.
In winter they stole meat.
In every season they stole women and dragged them back across the Wall.
“We do not have enough prisoners to fill their ranks,” Ned said.
Winterfell’s dungeons were not overflowing.
Even if they emptied them, sending untrained criminals to the Wall would not solve anything.
The Watch needed fighters who already knew how to hold a line, not frightened men who would break at the first sign of trouble.
“Few men volunteer for the black these days.” Once, service at the Wall had been seen as an honorable duty.
Knights and younger sons of great houses had joined willingly.
Now the black cloak was mostly given to thieves, rapists, and broken men pulled from dungeons.
It had become a punishment, not a calling.
Even disgraced nobles and bastards were “encouraged” to take the vow, and most did so with bitter hearts.
The two men talked for a while longer but found no good answer.
“Winter is coming,” Ned said quietly, looking out at the dark sky.
He spoke the words to Luwin, to himself, and to the North.
Every noble house had its words.
Some spoke of glory.
Some spoke of honor or duty or faith.
The Starks had never boasted.
Their words were a warning, plain and cold.
Prepare, or die when the cold comes.
“How are the children?” Ned asked, pulling his gaze back inside.
He had six.
Robb would one day rule the North.
Bran and Rickon would hold lands of their own as his bannermen.
Arya and Sansa would marry south and carry Stark blood into other great houses.
And Jon… “Robb is taking Theon and the others hunting,” Luwin answered.
“They mean to bring down that stag.
Jon Snow is going with them.” “Have they left yet?” “They are still at the stables.” Ned felt the familiar complicated twist in his chest at the mention of Jon.
His bastard son.
The boy whose mother he had never named, even when Catelyn raged and demanded answers.
He had told her only once, and never again.
Jon is my blood.
That is all you need to know.
He had prayed to the old gods that Catelyn would one day forgive him, and that Jon and Robb would grow up as brothers who watched each other’s backs.
“The stag still hasn’t been brought down?” Ned asked.
Luwin shook his head.
For months the beast had terrorized the countryside.
It was huge, fearless, and strangely clever.
It trampled crops in broad daylight and gored anyone who tried to drive it off with farm tools.
Ned had put a bounty on its head and sent Ser Rodrik with a party of hunters, but the stag always slipped away.
“Call them back,” Ned said.
“I will lead the hunt myself.” He needed to move.
He needed cold air and the weight of a sword in his hand.
Sitting in this room thinking about deserters, wildlings, and things that should not exist was going to drive him mad.