fandomweekly | [#108] THE NIGHT'S WATCH (GAME OF THRONES)

Theme Prompt: #108 - After midnight
Title: The Night's Watch
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jon's watch duty atop the Wall is both a blessing and a curse.

A chill wind whipped across the top of the Wall, sending an involuntary shiver down Jon's spine. He would rather have been warm under his furs in bed, but another day of weapons training with Ser Alliser had earned him another shift atop the Wall at midnight. Ser Alliser took offence that Jon was able to cut down all the lads he'd trained for months without so much as breaking into a lather. Jon was beginning to wonder what deeds had earned him the title befitting a knight, though he knew the man trained through fear rather than encouragement and that was most of the problem. Fear had its place in a fight, but not in learning how to fight.

He pulled his furs closer around him as he huddled by the gap, watching out over the darkness that lay beyond the Wall. The snow glimmered a pale blue against a black sky dotted with pinpricks of light. He wanted to be staring in the opposite direction, south towards his home at Winterfell, even if he couldn't see it. The Gift stretched on for endless miles before reaching the uppermost boundaries of the North that belonged to the Starks. Instead his view was that of the large stretch of barren snow that led into the forest beyond. His Uncle Benjen was out there somewhere, and not dead as so many believed. The First Ranger of the Night's Watch was not a man easily killed by Wildlings, Jon felt certain of that.

Something small caught his eye as he strained them in the darkness, trying not to look back to where their small fire burned bright if not warm, lest it further dim his night vision.

'Ranger,' he called back over his shoulder, feeling a rush of excitement at seeing a figure of a man wandering horseless towards the Black Gate. There was every chance it was Benjen Stark, returning to Castle Black wounded but with news.

His watch partner, Jovver Sand, was a Black Brother with fifteen years service. He'd slit the throat of a man who had attempted to steal his horse. The thief, being of noble blood and higher standing than a bastard son, even one of Dornish descent, had him sent to the Wall for his crime. His bitterness at the sentence had hardened itself into a desire to fight. He was firm - sometimes even harsh - but a loyal Night's Watchman.

Jovver moved in front of him to get a closer look. His dark skin and black eyebrows squinted into the night. 'A ranger don't move like that, boy. And he carries a fire with him so that no green lad like you mistakes him otherwise.' He spared Jon a look. 'You've got to have eyes as keen as that wolf of yours. Perhaps we should have your beast do watch duty with you.'

Jon didn't think Ser Alliser would enjoy that idea any more than he enjoyed Jon's presence at Castle Black. He studied the tiny man's movements down below, trying to memorise his gait, stowing it away as that of a Wildling. 'What's his plan?'

'To climb the Wall,' Jovver replied plainly. 'Though most do it further west, between here and the Shadow Tower, where the forest has grown close.' There was barely a grunt of disdain. 'Bold or stupid.'

'Should we sound the horn?'

Jovver Sand looked at him in askance. 'Wake the whole of Castle Black for the sake of one Wildling? You must be joking. Fetch me that longbow, boy.'

Jon weaved down the narrow ice corridor and found the bow resting near the fire pit. When he wrapped his gloved hand around it he could understand why the wooden weapon rested so dangerously close to the fire which threatened to burn it. The wood was supple in his hand and a quick testing draw of the bow showed the string to be as springy and flexible as the day it had been made. It was also one of the largest bows he'd ever handled, almost as tall as he was. It took a skilled man to draw such a large thing, let alone hit a target with it. From up here on the Wall, the recoil would be enough to send a man toppling over the edge and to his death. He grabbed the wallet of fletched arrows that sat beside it and carried both back with more haste than before, realising that their line of sight on the Wildling might be fleeting.

'Took you time, boy,' Jovver said, snatching both from his hands whilst keeping his gaze fixed on the precipice below them. He expertly nocked the arrow and leaned even further out through that gap in their defensive battlement, holding the longbow out over the edge and pointed into a path of almost endless night sky. 'Almost… almost…' Jovver muttered under his breath, adjusting his body a hair's breadth each time.

The arrow loosed with a low thud, careening invisibly into the air for an age. Jon lost sight of it against the starlit sky, instead letting his gaze fix itself instead on the tiny shadow of the Wildling. It kept moving ever forward towards them until something arrested its movement. Jon caught the brief flailing of arms and then watched it fall backwards into the snow whereupon its movements ceased.

Jovver eased back from the ledge with a relaxed pose. He took no pride or accolade from having so expertly shot and killed a man in the dark and at such a distance. 'One less we'll have to watch for tonight but where there's one there's bound to be another. Stay sharp. If your uncle was out there he wouldn't have let any Wildling get that close to the Wall. He'd have cut his throat and used his bones for soup.'

Jon swallowed down his disappointment but it wouldn't stop him looking and hoping the next man he saw was one of their own. That was his duty.