Game of Thrones Fanfiction - Sam
Title: Sam
Tv show/Book: Game of Thrones
Rating: K+
Characters: Samwell Tarly, Jon Snow, Stark family
Genre: Friendship/brotherhood
Summary: Jon tells Sam about a day he spent at Winterfell with his brothers and father
Spoiler warning: Safe if you have seen all of season 1/read Game of Thrones.
Note: I didn't use a beta for it and I'm not a native speaker of English, so do point out any mistakes I made :)
Word count: 2703
Written: July 2012
For Caroline :)
Sam
Samwell Tarly had stopped trying a long time ago to get the smell of the dirty potato skins off his hands. There was only so much hot water you could spare in these conditions and the snow worked as a natural body cleanser too. The stench was the only thing that remained, but they all smelled so much of sweat, dirt and dead meat by now that no one seemed to even distinguish a smell on anyone anymore.
He threw a skinned potato in the copper kettle, ready to cook them for the Night’s Watch’s Lord Commander’s evening meal.
“You never talk about home, you know.” Sam avoided Jon’s eyes, but he knew his friend, standing across from him at the other side of the table, knew he was talking to him. A potato went flying through the air, creating a little splash as it dove into the water. “I’d love to know what it was like at court. With all those pretty ladies in pretty dresses. Did you have to dress up often?”
“Sometimes.”
“Were you invited to official courtly celebrations?” A few skins fell to the snowy forest floor. Sam bent down to pick them up. “I always imagined you had feasts every night, drinking, eating. Lots of merriment.” As he came back up he threw his friend a smile, but Jon was still firmly staring at his potatoes.
“Not much of that for me. They always put me at the other side of the room during feasts.”
Sam looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, but most men were busy attending their horses or trying to create a fire. Sam was supposed to attend his crows, but he hadn’t spoken much to Jon the past few days as Jon was meant to ride with the Lord Commander at the front and Sam came further behind. “Were you never invited to family gatherings then?”
“Lady Stark never liked having me around much.”
“But you were your father’s son, a Stark. How could she refuse you? It’s not your fault you’re a.. a…” Sam never liked saying the word, even though he knew Jon had heard it often enough to be okay with it. “You know.. Surely she should understand that. Especially being a Lady.” Sam tried smiling again, but noticed Jon was abusing the potatoes at the mention of Lady Stark, hacking off more skin that he should. “What about your brothers and sisters? Hm? You must have played with them.”
Jon eyed him suspiciously. “What is it you want to know, Sam?”
“Nothing!” He blurted out. He was curious about life at Winterfell, but if Jon did not want to tell him, that was alright with him. He just wanted to see his friend smile again. Sam had not seen John do that in a while. “I’m just curious about… about your life before you came here.” Sam waved his knife around to signify their black brothers. “What did you do during the day?” he asked as he continued skinning a potato. They could not even see the bottom of the pile yet.
Jon sighed deeply, but seemed willing to share. “Well I got up. Ate breakfast, sometimes took archery lessons with Bran and Robb, get beaten at it by Arya, our little sister, and Theon, my father’s ward.” Sam noticed a slight smile peeling through as he mentioned their names. “Then sometimes we would hunt. With father.”
That reminded Sam of home and not in a good way. “Hunting. I was too scared to go hunting. My father stopped making me after having cried all day in the forest. That wasn’t long before I came here actually.” Sam sniffed a little, before frowning at a potato. “But go on. You went hunting?” He tried to change the subject back, but it was too late. Jon was always there to give him a little positive nudge whenever he mentioned his misery from before they met.
“Look at where you are, Sam. Beyond the Wall! You did not ask to be left behind with Maester Aemon, you went beneath the Wall with us. You are braver than you think.” Jon looked honest, but Sam did not believe he meant it. He was just trying to make him feel better, and even though he was sure Jon didn’t meant it, Sam did feel his cheeks reddening.
“You’re just saying that. But thank you. Did you kill many animals, during the hunt?” It seemed a subject Jon was willing to talk about, so Sam would put his own memories aside and listen to his friend.
“No. Father did most of the killing. And Robb. He was always good at hunting. I went along mostly for carrying extra arrows.”
Sam didn’t believe a word of it, but he appreciated Jon undervaluing his own skill in front of him. He figured he would play along. “Extra arrows?”
“Yeah. Bran came along for the first time not long before he…” Sam saw Jon swallow his pain as he played with his knife. “…got hurt and I left for the Wall. We were giving him archery lessons that day and he failed miserably at hitting his target. So instead father decided to make the target bigger. He decided we were going to hunt some boar that day.”
“Oh yes,” Sam interjected, “nothing as easy to shoot as a running, attacking and snorting boar.”
It made Jon laugh out loud. “You’d be surprised, Sam. So we packed our bow and arrows, and rode out.”
“What kind of day was it?” Sam asked.
Jon looked up at him in amusement. “What does it matter what kind of day it was?”
“I like knowing what kind of day it was. Deep in summer, blue skies? Smell of daisies in the air, or of a wet forest?” Sam loved descriptive stories. He would rather sit in the library all day and read about the sun than see a bit of sun with his father near. In the library he could pretend to be in the world of a writer, hearing the sounds of the words in his head, pretending to smell the fumes of the fire and envisioning the colours of a summer’s day.
Jon smiled broadly at him. It made Sam happy to see him so content for the moment. “It was a warm day. I remember sweating like an ox in my hunting garments.”
“What kind of garments were you wearing?”
“Sam! Please!” Jon poked him from across the table with the back of his knife.
“Okay okay, go on, tell the story,” Sam tried not to giggle, but failed.
“It was a warm, sunny day in the forest around Winterfell,” Jon started teasingly, as if he started reading Arya a story before bedtime, like he did when she was younger.
“Stop it,” Sam giggled. Jon’s look seemed to Sam one that he would have given little Arya too as she giggled over his storytelling as a little girl. Sam knew Jon had not had it easy as a bastard in his own household, but at the same time he wished he had the bond with his family that Jon clearly had had. “Did Arya not come?”
“No, Lady Stark forbade her.”
“I bet that went down well,” Sam said aloud. Jon had told him about Arya, Robb and Bran before, but always small and short references. He did feel like he had gotten to know them a little.
Jon smiled melancholically. “She threw a tantrum, but it didn’t work. She had to go with Septa Mordane and Sansa to learn sewing.” His melancholic smile turned into a maniacal one.
Clearly Arya loved sewing.
“Robb and I decided to head for the White Knife towards the Long Lake. We hadn’t been out of the gates for long when a dark cloud suddenly came over our heads. We all got drenched to the bone very quickly. I can still hear Bran scream and yell at the gods to stop making it rain and the horses hooves trampling over the muddy forest floor. There wouldn’t be much use for hunting though with all the boars hiding from the rain.”
Sam was envisioning the four of them on their horses, all dark-haired, curly hair like Jon's, Stark hair, on big majestic horses, galloping across their own lands. Bows tight around them, quivers on their backs, swift as they heard the wind blew past them, leaving a trail of rainwater behind them. What he would give to see that for himself someday, Jon and Robb off ahead, with him trailing behind perhaps on his own horse, carrying extra arrows.
“Poor Bran though,” Jon continued, even though he didn’t seem to mean it. “He was shivering on his horse so much, the animal took his trembling feet as a sign to gallop off ahead. Robb almost fell of his horse from laughter.” Jon’s voice made Grenn turn his head and frown at them, as he walked past them to his own fire. “Of course just as we headed after Bran, it finally stopped raining and the sun came peeking through the clouds again. Bran was seriously grumpy when we had caught up with him, so to put a smile on our own faces, Robb and I kept poking his horse with our boots, hoping it would make a run for it again. We almost fell off our own horses laughing, seeing his animal dart off at unexpected times, Bran hopping and yelling on top of it. But after a time we got so impressed with his skill at handling and controlling the animal, we stopped laughing and started using it as a training.” Jon smiled sadly as the table came in sight under the potato skins. Sam guessed he was remembering how Bran could probably never ride a horse again in his life.
“And your father?” he asked, to keep Jon’s mind occupied.
“Laughing too at first. Until it took too long, and we got a verbal beating for abusing both Bran and the horse. Then he spurred Bran on and gave him tips on his riding.” Jon and Sam threw another potato in the kettle simultaneously. “When the sun appeared we headed for the Long Lake to dry ourselves. Robb ahead. He had always been the best rider of us all. Didn’t take long till we got to the lake.”
Sam imagined the Long Lake. He had read it was big and long. Not too deep though, so his inability to swim would not be too much of a problem for him perhaps. Maybe Jon could take him there some time. In the meantime, he imagined the four Stark’s tying their horses’ reins to the sentinels at the water front, sitting down in the wet grass, the sun blinding them as it reflected off the water. Jon had said it had been a warm day, for Winterfell anyway, so the grass and clothes would have dried quickly.
“It wasn’t long before Bran got bored at the water side though and started plotting his revenge.”
Sam chuckled. “How could you tell he was plotting his revenge?”
Jon grinned. “We could tell. Mostly because he was whispering with our father whilst giving us both foul and mischievous looks.”
“Did your father approve?”
Jon grinned at him once more. “Of course.”
“So? Tell me! What did Bran do?”
“Made us play come-into-my-castle.” John could hardly pronounce the game’s name without resorting to a fit of giggles, but Sam had no idea what he was talking about. Come-into-my-castle was not a game he had ever played with his friends. As he thought about it, he hadn’t played many games as a child at all, nor had he had many friends.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know come-into-my-castle?” Jon looked up at him in surprise.
Sam shook his head wearily.
“It’s probably only played in the north,” Jon tried. “It’s a game where you draw a circle, your castle, around yourself with the length of a stick or a branch.” He mimed the movement with his skinning knife. “It’s a bit like fencing, but instead of hitting each other with that same stick, you try to hit inside your opponent’s castle. If you succeed in coming inside my castle, you need to defend both your own castle and the one you just conquered, while your defeated opponent joins the third party in attacking your two castles. You have to play with a group to make it a real challenge to defend your walls. You can also ask someone to join you in your Watch, but you will need a larger group for that to work.”
“Sounds like fun,” Sam beamed.
“It is,” Jon answered dreamily. “But father, who was the Rulekeeper, decreed that Bran could use two branches for his castle defence and us only one. Of course he won both mine and Robb’s castle in the first round.” Jon’s mouth turned into a grin again and his eyes were glistening in delight of the memory. “He also cheated.”
“How so?” Sam was eager to know.
“He didn’t take the hit-nobody-rule very seriously. Robb and I ended up with a few bruises on our legs to show for it till two moons later.”
Sam gasped. “I’m sure your father punished him for that!”
Jon let out a hearty laugh. “No, he thought we deserved it. Bran had had a few bruises of his own from when we poked his horse and it galloped off. And he probably liked seeing Robb and I lose for a change. It made Bran feel good about himself anyway.”
“Winning from you guys, I can imagine.”
Jon smiled at Sam. “The sun was at its highest after that and warm, so Robb and I went ahead and took a few swims around the lake.”
Sam gasped. “You can swim?”
Jon chuckled. “Of course! Can’t you?”
Sam shook his head wearily again.
“I’ll teach you some time.”
Sam nodded in approval. He would like that.
“Of course I won at swimming. Nobody beats me at swimming, not even the King in the North, Robb Stark of Winterfell.” He nodded to himself in assurance and amusement at the memory.
Even a bastard has to beat his lord heir brother at something, Sam thought as he skinned the last potato left on the table amidst skins. “Did you make a competition of it?”
“Everything was a competition for us two,” Jon said happily.
“A brotherly one, I assume,” Sam replied.
Jon grinned. “To a point. I might have pushed him under water a few times to make sure I would come out on top. And make it to shore first.”
“You almost drowned your brother?” Sam said in shock.
It made Jon laugh. “Of course not. Just a friendly push to make sure he wouldn’t pull my legs instead of me his.”
The memory clearly did Jon well. During the cooking of the potatoes and the two rabbits Ghost had come back to Jon with, the grin remained fixed on his face. Sam was happy to see it.
After the meal the two of them shared - they had reserved three potatoes and a rabbit’s leg for themselves - , most of their black brothers sought the comfort of their furry cloaks and blankets for sleep. Sam had the first group watch and sat himself down on a log near one of the fires at the edge of the Night’s Watch camp. He watched the other men fall asleep one by one, snorts starting up from different sides of him. Behind him he heard footsteps on the damp forest ground. He turned around to see who it was.
“I thought I’d keep you company, if that’s alright? Tell you another story?” Sam nodded happily at Jon. “Maybe of the time when I dressed up as ghost in the crypts beneath Winterfell and Robb took our siblings down into it?”
Sam moved over on the log to leave room for Jon, while his white direwolf sprawled himself in front of them on the ground, head resting on his front paws. Sam watched Ghost gaze into the fire as his human companion started a tale of pretending to be a ghost to scare his younger siblings together with his brother, petting the animal as he spoke.
Tv show/Book: Game of Thrones
Rating: K+
Characters: Samwell Tarly, Jon Snow, Stark family
Genre: Friendship/brotherhood
Summary: Jon tells Sam about a day he spent at Winterfell with his brothers and father
Spoiler warning: Safe if you have seen all of season 1/read Game of Thrones.
Note: I didn't use a beta for it and I'm not a native speaker of English, so do point out any mistakes I made :)
Word count: 2703
Written: July 2012
For Caroline :)
Sam
Samwell Tarly had stopped trying a long time ago to get the smell of the dirty potato skins off his hands. There was only so much hot water you could spare in these conditions and the snow worked as a natural body cleanser too. The stench was the only thing that remained, but they all smelled so much of sweat, dirt and dead meat by now that no one seemed to even distinguish a smell on anyone anymore.
He threw a skinned potato in the copper kettle, ready to cook them for the Night’s Watch’s Lord Commander’s evening meal.
“You never talk about home, you know.” Sam avoided Jon’s eyes, but he knew his friend, standing across from him at the other side of the table, knew he was talking to him. A potato went flying through the air, creating a little splash as it dove into the water. “I’d love to know what it was like at court. With all those pretty ladies in pretty dresses. Did you have to dress up often?”
“Sometimes.”
“Were you invited to official courtly celebrations?” A few skins fell to the snowy forest floor. Sam bent down to pick them up. “I always imagined you had feasts every night, drinking, eating. Lots of merriment.” As he came back up he threw his friend a smile, but Jon was still firmly staring at his potatoes.
“Not much of that for me. They always put me at the other side of the room during feasts.”
Sam looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, but most men were busy attending their horses or trying to create a fire. Sam was supposed to attend his crows, but he hadn’t spoken much to Jon the past few days as Jon was meant to ride with the Lord Commander at the front and Sam came further behind. “Were you never invited to family gatherings then?”
“Lady Stark never liked having me around much.”
“But you were your father’s son, a Stark. How could she refuse you? It’s not your fault you’re a.. a…” Sam never liked saying the word, even though he knew Jon had heard it often enough to be okay with it. “You know.. Surely she should understand that. Especially being a Lady.” Sam tried smiling again, but noticed Jon was abusing the potatoes at the mention of Lady Stark, hacking off more skin that he should. “What about your brothers and sisters? Hm? You must have played with them.”
Jon eyed him suspiciously. “What is it you want to know, Sam?”
“Nothing!” He blurted out. He was curious about life at Winterfell, but if Jon did not want to tell him, that was alright with him. He just wanted to see his friend smile again. Sam had not seen John do that in a while. “I’m just curious about… about your life before you came here.” Sam waved his knife around to signify their black brothers. “What did you do during the day?” he asked as he continued skinning a potato. They could not even see the bottom of the pile yet.
Jon sighed deeply, but seemed willing to share. “Well I got up. Ate breakfast, sometimes took archery lessons with Bran and Robb, get beaten at it by Arya, our little sister, and Theon, my father’s ward.” Sam noticed a slight smile peeling through as he mentioned their names. “Then sometimes we would hunt. With father.”
That reminded Sam of home and not in a good way. “Hunting. I was too scared to go hunting. My father stopped making me after having cried all day in the forest. That wasn’t long before I came here actually.” Sam sniffed a little, before frowning at a potato. “But go on. You went hunting?” He tried to change the subject back, but it was too late. Jon was always there to give him a little positive nudge whenever he mentioned his misery from before they met.
“Look at where you are, Sam. Beyond the Wall! You did not ask to be left behind with Maester Aemon, you went beneath the Wall with us. You are braver than you think.” Jon looked honest, but Sam did not believe he meant it. He was just trying to make him feel better, and even though he was sure Jon didn’t meant it, Sam did feel his cheeks reddening.
“You’re just saying that. But thank you. Did you kill many animals, during the hunt?” It seemed a subject Jon was willing to talk about, so Sam would put his own memories aside and listen to his friend.
“No. Father did most of the killing. And Robb. He was always good at hunting. I went along mostly for carrying extra arrows.”
Sam didn’t believe a word of it, but he appreciated Jon undervaluing his own skill in front of him. He figured he would play along. “Extra arrows?”
“Yeah. Bran came along for the first time not long before he…” Sam saw Jon swallow his pain as he played with his knife. “…got hurt and I left for the Wall. We were giving him archery lessons that day and he failed miserably at hitting his target. So instead father decided to make the target bigger. He decided we were going to hunt some boar that day.”
“Oh yes,” Sam interjected, “nothing as easy to shoot as a running, attacking and snorting boar.”
It made Jon laugh out loud. “You’d be surprised, Sam. So we packed our bow and arrows, and rode out.”
“What kind of day was it?” Sam asked.
Jon looked up at him in amusement. “What does it matter what kind of day it was?”
“I like knowing what kind of day it was. Deep in summer, blue skies? Smell of daisies in the air, or of a wet forest?” Sam loved descriptive stories. He would rather sit in the library all day and read about the sun than see a bit of sun with his father near. In the library he could pretend to be in the world of a writer, hearing the sounds of the words in his head, pretending to smell the fumes of the fire and envisioning the colours of a summer’s day.
Jon smiled broadly at him. It made Sam happy to see him so content for the moment. “It was a warm day. I remember sweating like an ox in my hunting garments.”
“What kind of garments were you wearing?”
“Sam! Please!” Jon poked him from across the table with the back of his knife.
“Okay okay, go on, tell the story,” Sam tried not to giggle, but failed.
“It was a warm, sunny day in the forest around Winterfell,” Jon started teasingly, as if he started reading Arya a story before bedtime, like he did when she was younger.
“Stop it,” Sam giggled. Jon’s look seemed to Sam one that he would have given little Arya too as she giggled over his storytelling as a little girl. Sam knew Jon had not had it easy as a bastard in his own household, but at the same time he wished he had the bond with his family that Jon clearly had had. “Did Arya not come?”
“No, Lady Stark forbade her.”
“I bet that went down well,” Sam said aloud. Jon had told him about Arya, Robb and Bran before, but always small and short references. He did feel like he had gotten to know them a little.
Jon smiled melancholically. “She threw a tantrum, but it didn’t work. She had to go with Septa Mordane and Sansa to learn sewing.” His melancholic smile turned into a maniacal one.
Clearly Arya loved sewing.
“Robb and I decided to head for the White Knife towards the Long Lake. We hadn’t been out of the gates for long when a dark cloud suddenly came over our heads. We all got drenched to the bone very quickly. I can still hear Bran scream and yell at the gods to stop making it rain and the horses hooves trampling over the muddy forest floor. There wouldn’t be much use for hunting though with all the boars hiding from the rain.”
Sam was envisioning the four of them on their horses, all dark-haired, curly hair like Jon's, Stark hair, on big majestic horses, galloping across their own lands. Bows tight around them, quivers on their backs, swift as they heard the wind blew past them, leaving a trail of rainwater behind them. What he would give to see that for himself someday, Jon and Robb off ahead, with him trailing behind perhaps on his own horse, carrying extra arrows.
“Poor Bran though,” Jon continued, even though he didn’t seem to mean it. “He was shivering on his horse so much, the animal took his trembling feet as a sign to gallop off ahead. Robb almost fell of his horse from laughter.” Jon’s voice made Grenn turn his head and frown at them, as he walked past them to his own fire. “Of course just as we headed after Bran, it finally stopped raining and the sun came peeking through the clouds again. Bran was seriously grumpy when we had caught up with him, so to put a smile on our own faces, Robb and I kept poking his horse with our boots, hoping it would make a run for it again. We almost fell off our own horses laughing, seeing his animal dart off at unexpected times, Bran hopping and yelling on top of it. But after a time we got so impressed with his skill at handling and controlling the animal, we stopped laughing and started using it as a training.” Jon smiled sadly as the table came in sight under the potato skins. Sam guessed he was remembering how Bran could probably never ride a horse again in his life.
“And your father?” he asked, to keep Jon’s mind occupied.
“Laughing too at first. Until it took too long, and we got a verbal beating for abusing both Bran and the horse. Then he spurred Bran on and gave him tips on his riding.” Jon and Sam threw another potato in the kettle simultaneously. “When the sun appeared we headed for the Long Lake to dry ourselves. Robb ahead. He had always been the best rider of us all. Didn’t take long till we got to the lake.”
Sam imagined the Long Lake. He had read it was big and long. Not too deep though, so his inability to swim would not be too much of a problem for him perhaps. Maybe Jon could take him there some time. In the meantime, he imagined the four Stark’s tying their horses’ reins to the sentinels at the water front, sitting down in the wet grass, the sun blinding them as it reflected off the water. Jon had said it had been a warm day, for Winterfell anyway, so the grass and clothes would have dried quickly.
“It wasn’t long before Bran got bored at the water side though and started plotting his revenge.”
Sam chuckled. “How could you tell he was plotting his revenge?”
Jon grinned. “We could tell. Mostly because he was whispering with our father whilst giving us both foul and mischievous looks.”
“Did your father approve?”
Jon grinned at him once more. “Of course.”
“So? Tell me! What did Bran do?”
“Made us play come-into-my-castle.” John could hardly pronounce the game’s name without resorting to a fit of giggles, but Sam had no idea what he was talking about. Come-into-my-castle was not a game he had ever played with his friends. As he thought about it, he hadn’t played many games as a child at all, nor had he had many friends.
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know come-into-my-castle?” Jon looked up at him in surprise.
Sam shook his head wearily.
“It’s probably only played in the north,” Jon tried. “It’s a game where you draw a circle, your castle, around yourself with the length of a stick or a branch.” He mimed the movement with his skinning knife. “It’s a bit like fencing, but instead of hitting each other with that same stick, you try to hit inside your opponent’s castle. If you succeed in coming inside my castle, you need to defend both your own castle and the one you just conquered, while your defeated opponent joins the third party in attacking your two castles. You have to play with a group to make it a real challenge to defend your walls. You can also ask someone to join you in your Watch, but you will need a larger group for that to work.”
“Sounds like fun,” Sam beamed.
“It is,” Jon answered dreamily. “But father, who was the Rulekeeper, decreed that Bran could use two branches for his castle defence and us only one. Of course he won both mine and Robb’s castle in the first round.” Jon’s mouth turned into a grin again and his eyes were glistening in delight of the memory. “He also cheated.”
“How so?” Sam was eager to know.
“He didn’t take the hit-nobody-rule very seriously. Robb and I ended up with a few bruises on our legs to show for it till two moons later.”
Sam gasped. “I’m sure your father punished him for that!”
Jon let out a hearty laugh. “No, he thought we deserved it. Bran had had a few bruises of his own from when we poked his horse and it galloped off. And he probably liked seeing Robb and I lose for a change. It made Bran feel good about himself anyway.”
“Winning from you guys, I can imagine.”
Jon smiled at Sam. “The sun was at its highest after that and warm, so Robb and I went ahead and took a few swims around the lake.”
Sam gasped. “You can swim?”
Jon chuckled. “Of course! Can’t you?”
Sam shook his head wearily again.
“I’ll teach you some time.”
Sam nodded in approval. He would like that.
“Of course I won at swimming. Nobody beats me at swimming, not even the King in the North, Robb Stark of Winterfell.” He nodded to himself in assurance and amusement at the memory.
Even a bastard has to beat his lord heir brother at something, Sam thought as he skinned the last potato left on the table amidst skins. “Did you make a competition of it?”
“Everything was a competition for us two,” Jon said happily.
“A brotherly one, I assume,” Sam replied.
Jon grinned. “To a point. I might have pushed him under water a few times to make sure I would come out on top. And make it to shore first.”
“You almost drowned your brother?” Sam said in shock.
It made Jon laugh. “Of course not. Just a friendly push to make sure he wouldn’t pull my legs instead of me his.”
The memory clearly did Jon well. During the cooking of the potatoes and the two rabbits Ghost had come back to Jon with, the grin remained fixed on his face. Sam was happy to see it.
After the meal the two of them shared - they had reserved three potatoes and a rabbit’s leg for themselves - , most of their black brothers sought the comfort of their furry cloaks and blankets for sleep. Sam had the first group watch and sat himself down on a log near one of the fires at the edge of the Night’s Watch camp. He watched the other men fall asleep one by one, snorts starting up from different sides of him. Behind him he heard footsteps on the damp forest ground. He turned around to see who it was.
“I thought I’d keep you company, if that’s alright? Tell you another story?” Sam nodded happily at Jon. “Maybe of the time when I dressed up as ghost in the crypts beneath Winterfell and Robb took our siblings down into it?”
Sam moved over on the log to leave room for Jon, while his white direwolf sprawled himself in front of them on the ground, head resting on his front paws. Sam watched Ghost gaze into the fire as his human companion started a tale of pretending to be a ghost to scare his younger siblings together with his brother, petting the animal as he spoke.