Year 9 / Turn 9 - Learn Green Magic(Nature)

  The Wall still dominated the world the way Jon remembered. A sheer, impossible thing of ice and ancient spellwork, rising higher than pride and colder than mercy. Even after five years away, even after all he had learned and endured, its presence pressed against him like a familiar weight. Not comfort never that but history.

  Jon Snow stood at the edge of the frostbitten plain and watched smoke curl above Castle Black. Thick with the scent of tallow and unfamiliar cooking. There were banners too, but none he recognized rough hides dyed in ochre and ash, crude sigils stitched in bone and thread. Mammoth skulls adorned the outer yard like trophies.

  “This place has changed,” Benjen Stark said beside him.

  Jon nodded. “So have I.” He adjusted the black cloak at his shoulders. It still fit. It always would. The fabric was older now, mended with thread the Children had spun from plant-fiber and sinew, but the color remained true. Benjen wore his as well, frost never melting from its edges.

  Behind them, the Children of the Forest lingered at the tree line—silent, watchful, their golden eyes reflecting the Wall’s pale light. Ghost stood at Jon’s right hand, larger now, scarred and scarlet-eyed, his presence alone enough to still the wind.

  They walked forward together. The horn sounded. Not the Watch’s horn. A wildling horn low, rough, badly tuned blowing once in warning. Figures poured onto the battlements. Men and women in furs and boiled leather. Spears of bone and iron. Bows already drawn. Crude shields raised.

  Wildlings. They had taken the wall. Thinking about it, it was inevitable. It was only thanks to his defence did they win the day now in this life the black brothers were not able to stand against the tide of desperate wildlings fleeing the others.

  Their voices rose in alarm, in disbelief, in fear. “Is that a corpse?”

  “Those are Children—”

  “By the old gods…a green man—”

  Jon did not stop. The gates creaked open slowly, cautiously, as a score of armed wildlings formed a loose line in the yard. Their leader stepped forward, a tall man with braided hair, a mammoth-tusk dagger at his belt. His eyes flicked from Benjen’s frozen stare, to the Children, to Jon.

  Then lingered on Jon. The Barkskin was not active, but the land clung to him anyway. Plants pushed through cracks in the stone at his feet. Frost withdrew where he stepped. His presence bent the air subtly, like heat over stone.

  The wildling swallowed. “Name yourself,” the man demanded. “And say why you come armed with dead men and forest demons.”

  Jon stopped ten paces away. “I am Jon Snow,” he said. The name carried no weight in this life as they looked at each other with no recognition.

  He looked around at the wall, The towers were damaged. The armory burned once and rebuilt poorly. The old sept was gone entirely. The Night’s Watch banners had been torn down, replaced with hides and trophies.

  Defeated. Broken.

  A strange sadness touched him then not sharp, not bitter. Distant. Like grief for something already buried. He thought of Bowen Marsh. Of Wick. Of Olly. He felt nothing.

  But Maester Aemon’s blind smile came unbidden. Sam’s nervous laughter. Donal Noye’s gruff voice. Jeor Mormont’s steady hand on his shoulder.

  Those losses did hurt. They had treated him well and stood by his side.

  “You are a Crow aren’t you,” the man frowned as he took in his clock.

  “I was for only a year before I went beyond the wall and came back now as a Green Man,” Jon answered honestly.

  The word carried weight. Old tales and instincts. Campfire warnings. Mothers’ stories meant to frighten children into obedience. “Magic,” someone hissed.

  “Yes,” Jon said.

  The leader swallowed. “What do you want?”

  “I don’t come to spill blood,” Jon said. “Or try to kick you out of the Wall.”

  The wildling leader narrowed his eyes. “Then why come at all?”

  Jon met his gaze. “Because the dead are moving again,” he said. “And this Wall won’t hold if you are not prepared.”

  A murmur spread through the crowd.

  He raised his voice, letting it carry not shouting but being grounded. “Take me to your leader.”

  Some of the wildlings bristled at the tone. Others stepped back unconsciously. One man crossed himself. Another spat. “And if we refuse?” the leader asked.

  Jon’s eyes flicked briefly to the ground. The stone beneath his boots cracked. A thin line at first. Then another. Then a jagged web spreading outward, roots forcing their way through ancient masonry as if it were soil, stone buckling with a sound like bones snapping.

  Ghost growled softly. Benjen did nothing. The Children watched.

  Jon lifted his gaze again. Calm. Cold. Certain. Then spoke in the language he knew they understood. “Then I keep walking,” he said. “And the Wall can decide whether it wants me as a guest or a problem.”

  -

  The Hall of the Kings Beyond the Wall had once been the armory.

  Jon remembered it clearly. Racks of spears. Shields stamped with the black crow. The smell of oil and iron and old sweat. Men grumbling about cold fingers and dull blades. Ser Alliser’s voice, sharp as frostbite. Now it was none of those things.

  The stone walls were blackened with soot. Trophies hung where weapons once rested mammoth tusks carved with crude runes, giant skulls split clean down the crown, bundles of antlers bound together with sinew and wire. Firepits burned openly in the center of the hall, smoke drifting up through gaps torn in the roof where repairs had been deemed unnecessary. The air smelled of meat, pine resin, and something feral.

  Wildlings lined the space in loose circles rather than ranks. Clan chiefs. War-leaders. Skinchangers with wary eyes. Women with axes resting casually against their shoulders. Giants’ blood still crusted on some of their furs.

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  They all watched Jon Snow.

  He felt it not as fear, not quite as hostility, but as tension. Like a bowstring pulled too tight. The land beneath Castle Black was old, layered with oath and blood and spellwork, and it knew Jon somehow. It remembered him even if the men did not.

  Benjen Stark stood half a step behind Jon’s left shoulder, silent, red eyes glowing faintly in the firelight. The Children of the Forest had not entered the hall; they lingered outside, unseen but felt. Jon could sense their quiet presence the way one sensed roots beneath soil.

  At the far end of the hall, seated on a rough-hewn chair of oak and mammoth bone, was Mance Rayder. The King Beyond the Wall looked older than Jon remembered. He recalled their last duel before he slew him in the last life like it was yesterday.

  He was weathered in a way that suggested years of hard choices and harder compromises. His beard was streaked with gray now. His red-black cloak hung loose on his shoulders, patched and mended a dozen times. He held a cup of something dark and steaming, but he did not drink.

  He studied Jon Snow with an expression Jon recognized immediately. Not surprise. Recognition. “Well,” Mance said at last, his voice carrying easily through the hall without effort. “If it isn’t the bastard son of the North. Jon Snow”

  A ripple went through the gathered wildlings. Murmurs. Uneasy laughter. A few hands tightened on weapon hafts.

  Jon inclined his head. “King-beyond-the-Wall.”

  Mance smiled faintly. “Polite. I see.”

  “Southern nonsense,” Tormund Giantsbane laughed. The giant man was still as boisterous as Jon remembered. It was good to see some people did not change.

  Mance gestured with two fingers. “Come closer. Let them see you properly. It’s bad for men to fear shadows.”

  Jon stepped forward. The firelight danced across his face, catching on the faint green-gold sheen in his eyes when he focused. He could feel the ground resisting slightly, the ancient stones unsure whether to yield or crack.

  Mance’s gaze flicked to Jon’s hands. To his boots. To the way frost withdrew instinctively where Jon stood. “A Green Man,” Mance said softly. “Thought they were all gone.”

  “So did I,” Jon replied. “I see you managed to take the Wall.”

  “Aye,” Mance said. “The order of black brothers has fallen to such a poor state even us savages could overturn them. We offered peace but they were stuck in their old ways.”

  “You would know wouldn’t you since you were one of us,” Jon nodded his head, revealing a secret that he had shared to him in his last life. The words landed heavy.

  Some of the wildlings glanced at one another. Mance looked surprised and also terrified but he quickly eased his features. “You know much Green Man.”

  “The land tells me its secrets,” he shrugged his shoulders, really lying through his teeth. “Tell me how things are down South? It has been many years now since I was back in civilization.”

  “You won’t like the answer,” the man stated as he sipped his drink.

  Jon folded his hands loosely before him. “I’d rather truth than comfort.”

  Mance studied him for a moment longer, then nodded. “Fair.” He turned, gesturing for Jon to walk with him. “The rest of you go on about your duties,” he commanded.

  They moved toward the side of the hall where the stone was less scorched, the noise of the gathered chiefs fading into a low background murmur. “Your father is dead,” Mance said without preamble.

  Jon did not flinch. “I know,” he said quietly. He knew it deep within his bones if his father went South he would end up dead. No Stark did well in the South.

  Mance glanced sideways. “Do you?”

  Jon nodded once. “The land told me.”

  Mance snorted softly. “Figures.”

  They stopped near a broken arrow slit that let in a thin ribbon of moonlight. The Wall loomed outside, pale and indifferent. “Eddard Stark went south,” Mance continued. “Did his duty. Played the game. Lost.”

  Jon’s fingers curled slowly. “And my family?”

  Mance was silent for a beat too long. “Lady Catelyn took charge for her son.”

  Jon opened his eyes. “Really?”

  “Aye,” Mance said. “She took charge of the North then the troubles begin right away. Lords started questions her authority and some rose in rebellion foremost, the Boltons.”

  Something cold settled in Jon’s chest. “She showed them all that was a mistake. She was not gentle, not patient. She crushed the lords who wavered. She sacrificed everything,” Mance said. “Men. Land. Oaths. Mercy. But she won. The North held for a time but it had bled itself dry.”

  Silence stretched. “They called her Lady Stoneheart. She grew more and more paranoid and tyrannical.”

  Jon stared at the Wall, seeing not ice but ghosts. “And then the Ironborn came.”

  Mance nodded. “Yes, like vultures.”

  “Theon,” Jon said. It tasted like ash.

  “Turncloak,” Mance confirmed. “Led them in. Took Winterfell.”

  Jon’s hand tightened at his side. “Victarion Greyjoy captured Lady Catelyn,” Mance went on. “Planned to marry her. Thought to bind the North to the Iron Islands.”

  Jon’s breath went shallow. “And?”

  Mance’s eyes hardened. “On the wedding night, she poisoned them all. Herself included. Had nothing left to lose.”

  The words echoed in the hall like a funeral bell. Jon bowed his head, just slightly. “She died as she lived,” he murmured. “For her children.”

  Mance watched him carefully. “Yes. The North is broken. Leaderless. Bitter. The Ironborn retreated once a new King was declared who had other plans. Down South is worse last I heard. Kings rise and fall like snowdrifts. We hear little of it now. Trade’s gone. Roads aren’t safe. Ravens don’t fly this far.”

  Jon exhaled slowly. “Now we have the dead to worry about.” All he could do was think about the bigger picture. If he stopped for a moment all he could do was weep for all that was lost.

  Mance’s face went grim. “They’re moving.”

  “Yes, they will soon attack the wall,” Jon replied. “That’s why I’m here,” Jon said.

  Mance studied him. “You don’t command the Wall. You don’t command us.”

  “No,” Jon agreed. “All I can here to do was warn you.”

  Mance’s eyes flicked to Benjen. To the way frost clung unnaturally to him. To the faint green shimmer around Jon when he focused. “We have plans…” he admitted.

  “We are split into three camps.

  The first camp says the Wall is still a shield. Old magic or no, it’s stone and ice, high and hard. They want to man it. Repair what can be repaired. Use your black towers, your old murder holes, your heights. Hold fast and bleed the dead until they choke on bones.”

  Jon doubted it would work, he could feel a great army something never seen before was coming to the wall. But he respected the wildlings that wanted to make one last stand.

  “The second camp is the largest,” he went on. “Women. Children. The old. Along with a fighting force enough to keep them alive. They want to sail for Skagos.”

  “Skagos is harsh,” Jon said. “Cold. Hungry. Full of half-wild clans and worse seas.”

  “Which is why the dead don’t go there easily,” Mance replied. “Few ports. Fewer roads. Hard land. Easy to watch. If the Long Night comes and stays, Skagos might endure simply because it’s too miserable for anything else to bother conquering.”

  “And if the dead do come?” Jon asked.

  Mance met his eyes. “Then at least they come to where ships can flee if need be. It’s not victory. It’s survival.”

  Jon nodded slowly. That path made a grim kind of sense. He could already see the problem, though: Skagos could feed only so many mouths. Too many, and famine would do the Others’ work for them.

  Mance raised his third finger. “And then there’s the last camp,” he said, voice tightening. “The ones who say the Wall is a tomb, Skagos a cage. They want to go south. All the way. They will raid and take what we need. Some wishing to carve out land of our own.”

  Jon felt a familiar, bitter twist in his chest. This was what he was suppose to guard against wildlings pouring south, castles burning, men killing men while the real enemy marched behind them.

  “The dead will follow?” Jon simply said.

  Mance spread his hands. “That’s the gamble. They think distance buys time. That if we scatter into the realms of men, the dead will have others to worry about.”

  “They won’t,” Jon said flatly.

  Silence followed. Even the fire seemed to quiet. “What do you wish to do, Jon Snow?”

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