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“Someday, I will personally deliver the headsman’s stroke to Alliser Thorne.”
Jon rose to his feet as he said it, eyes burning with something unshakeable, the words ground out through clenched teeth.
Leon, standing beside him, nodded.
He agreed completely.
Hanging was too clean.
Beheading felt more like justice.
When Leon helped the still-unsteady Jon into the mess hall, the place was already empty.
Cold leftovers sat abandoned on the tables.
The fat cook scraped the bottom of the pot with her ladle, the sound harsh and deliberate, making it perfectly clear she had nothing left for them.
Edd the Old Iron had been nowhere in sight when they arrived.
Now he materialized from the side, sidling up with the careful look of a man carrying contraband.
Before Jon could say a word, Edd reached into his greasy sleeve and produced two blackish lumps of bread.
On closer inspection, tucked inside each one was what appeared to be wild boar meat — the exact thing Jon had been craving.
“This one’s mine.
The other I snatched from Jenny after she hit me twice with the iron ladle.
You two eat.” Edd handed them over.
Jon took the bread.
For a moment, something moved across his face, and he looked dangerously close to tears.
Leon had no such hesitation.
He shoved the entire bun into his mouth in one go.
A full day on the sentry tower, wind and sun, nothing to eat since morning — he was hollowed out.
He didn’t manage to say thank you.
Jon’s state wasn’t much better.
He took his portion and ate.
Ravenous as he was, he still kept himself in check, chewing the modest bun slowly, taking five or six careful bites to finish what could have gone down in one.
“The arms master made an announcement during the meal just now.” Edd’s expression shifted from concern to something more entertained.
“All Night’s Watch recruits who can still walk have to assemble at the training yard this morning.
Looks like your little brother is about to get his wish and get shipped off to Mole’s Town to be a big teapot.”
Edd let his gaze drift over Leon in a long, unsubtle sweep.
It took a moment before Leon understood.
The “little brother” in question was himself.
The original body’s reputation at Castle Black wasn’t exactly sterling, but it wasn’t rock-bottom either.
That was before Mole’s Town.
After whatever had happened there, the former self had come back sick, burning with fever for days, flat on his back.
A first among the Night’s Watch brothers, the kind of story that made people laugh and wince at the same time.
Leon kept his face blank.
Edd might as well have been talking about a stranger.
He had no intention of being held accountable for a past that wasn’t his.
Jon’s expression was another matter.
His jaw tightened.
His hand dropped to the hilt at his waist.
“That won’t happen.
I won’t let it happen.
Leon and I have already agreed — we’re going to become rangers together.
I’ll be First Ranger, and he’ll be my second.”
“Hah.” Edd’s grin was sharp.
“Lord Snow, that is honestly the funniest thing I’ve heard all day.”
Jon didn’t smile.
He closed his fist slowly and looked at Leon with the quiet, immovable certainty of someone who had already decided.
Edd turned back to Leon, still unbothered.
“What’s so terrible about being a teapot, anyway?
Spending all day underground, warm and comfortable, in good company?
That beats climbing up and down the Wall in the wind and cold.
A good-looking young man like you could live quite well in Mole’s Town.”
Neither Leon nor Jon gave any sign of being persuaded.
Both had finished eating.
They stood, and the three of them walked to the training yard together.
“Leon.” Jon fell in beside him.
“Don’t worry.
While I’m here, no one is going to touch you.”
He’d had a humiliating morning.
He carried himself like none of it had happened.
Leon felt something shift in his chest.
He knew what Jon was doing, covering for him, propping him up, because Leon’s performance over the past few days had been exactly as bad as it looked.
No one who had watched him stumble through the last few days would have bet on him for anything.
He had the Mount & Blade Panel now.
His combat strength had tripled.
But explaining all of that to Jon felt like more trouble than it was worth.
He’d let the training yard speak for him instead.
Nearly the entire intake had already assembled when they arrived.
The recruits had kitted themselves out from the armory and were coiled with restless energy, eyes moving over their competition with the calculating look of men already sorting opponents into categories.
When Leon, Jon, and Edd walked through the gate, most of those stares went flat.
The recruits pulled their hostility back in.
A handful didn’t bother.
It wasn’t Leon’s doing.
It was Jon’s.
Under Ser Rodrik Cassel’s years of instruction, Jon’s swordsmanship had been honed to something most men in that yard couldn’t match.
Size didn’t matter.
Reach didn’t matter.
Recruits who outweighed Jon by 50 pounds hadn’t lasted one exchange.
Everyone there knew it.
The ones who’d lost to him before looked different today, though.
Easier.
Like they were waiting for something.
“Little bastard.” Alliser Thorne’s voice carried down from the raised platform, cold and precise as a blade.
“What are you doing here?
Are the privies and stables so easy to clean that you’ve found time to join the rest of us?”
He had expected Jon to go somewhere and disappear after the morning’s humiliation.
Coming here, of all places, was either courage or foolishness, and Thorne clearly knew which one he thought it was.
Jon’s answer wasn’t words.
It was his eyes, dark with hatred, carrying a meaning anyone could read: you don’t want me here, and that is exactly why I’m standing in front of you.
Alliser Thorne looked at that expression.
He smiled.
Not warmly.
The smile of a man who has already seen how this ends, and finds the whole thing rather enjoyable.
➤ Next: Thorne’s Scheme, Near-Zero Defense