Nerd In the North: 3-10 (Patreon)

III-10: The First Ranger

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Every single footfall that resounded back toward his ears did so off ancient stone that had known the tread of ten thousand black brothers before him. His boots found the worn grooves in the floor without thought, muscle memory born from years of similar journeys to the Lord Commander's solar. Three abandoned villages. Old Gods save us, it's worse than we feared.

The cold found Benjen Stark even here, seeping through black wool and leather as if the Wall itself breathed its chill through the castle's bones. Frost crept along the edges of arrow slits, delicate patterns that a ranger's eyes couldn't help but read like tracks in snow. 

The heavy oaken door to Mormont's solar loomed ahead, iron bands black against weathered wood. Benjen's knuckles rasped against the wood, the sound sharp in the corridor's silence.

The raven's harsh "Corn!" greeted him before Mormont's growled acknowledgment, the bird's wings catching torchlight as it launched itself from its frost-rimed perch. Benjen ducked slightly as he opened the door- an old ranger's instinct - as midnight feathers swept past his face. The solar's warmth hit him like a physical thing, though he knew it for the illusion it was. 

No fire truly drove Castle Black's cold away; it merely pushed it back for a time.

"Quiet, y'old bastard," Mormont muttered, his massive form hunched over his desk like a bear over kills. His eyes remained fixed on the maps spread before him, each one marked with the Old Bear's heavy hand. The raven landed atop a stack of curling parchments, tilted its head once, and settled into what Benjen had long ago learned to recognize as its plotting silence.

The brazier's heat fought its endless battle against the chill, managing only to keep their breath from frosting. Its familiar scents filled the solar - coal smoke thick enough to catch in the throat, old parchment gone yellow with age, and the musty tang of damp fur rising from Mormont's bearskin where it draped his chair like a slumbering beast. 

A ranger's eyes missed nothing, and Benjen's gaze cataloged the chaos of Mormont's desk with the same precision he'd use to read signs in fresh snow. Empty tankards stood sentinel among the papers, marking long nights spent searching for answers in ravens' words. Crumpled messages bore mute testimony to frustration, their broken seals and crushed edges speaking of unwelcome tidings. 

And the maps - gods, the maps were everywhere, corners weighted with daggers and inkwells, their surfaces a maze of markings that tracked something Benjen feared he already understood.

Jeor's face, when he finally looked up, was carved deep with shadows. His brows drew together until they were nearly one, a storm gathering above eyes that had seen too much to waste time on pleasantries. "Benjen." The word came as a grunt, accompanied by a sharp gesture toward the waiting chair. "Sit. We've had word."

The worn leather creaked beneath him as Benjen settled in, his movements carrying the measured silence learned beyond the Wall. His gaze caught fragments of messages that made his jaw clench tight enough to ache. Wildlings vanished. Three ranging parties, no word. Signs of movement, but no bodies. The pattern he'd watched building over months of ranging lay bare before him in ink and parchment, and the sight of it made his blood run cold as the Wall itself.

"Three more villages empty," Mormont growled, his Bear Island accent thick with barely contained fury. "Not a corpse nor a footprint left, same as th' others. Like your report from Whitetree."

"Aye." Benjen leaned forward, leather sighing beneath the shift of his weight. His fingers found the edge of a map, slowly tracing the distance between the abandoned settlements. Every inch represented leagues he'd walked, terrain he knew as well as Winterfell's halls. "Wildlings don't abandon good hunting grounds, not with winter coming. They know better than most what that means." 

His voice dropped lower, weighted with certainty born of too many ranging's beyond the Wall. "These aren't raids. Raiders leave bodies. Leave blood. This… this is something else entirely."

Mormont's gaze locked onto Benjen with the intensity of winter steel. "Gared's ranging party found something in that last village." His jaw worked beneath his beard as he shoved a crumpled message across the desk's scarred surface. "Or rather, what they didn't find. Six villages emptied, Stark. Not a single child's track among them."

The grimness etched into the Old Bear's features struck deeper than Benjen had seen since that night three winters past, when they'd found those rangers frozen south of the Wall, their faces twisted in horror that even death couldn't erase. Some expressions shouldn't last beyond the grave. Tension coiled through Mormont's shoulders, as broad as his house's sigil beneath the black wool, speaking volumes his words didn't dare voice.

"It's quiet beyond the Wall." Each syllable fell from Jeor's mouth weighted with command, the cadence familiar as steel on stone. Firelight caught in his beard, turning grey to silver that matched the blade at his hip. The words themselves seemed to drop into the silence like stones into a frozen pond, each one sending ripples of unease through the solar's warmth.

"Too quiet," Benjen agreed, retreating slightly in his chair. His fingers found the worn arms, tapping out the same rhythm he'd learned decades ago in Father's solar at Winterfell, when grave matters demanded attention. When has silence beyond the Wall ever meant anything but death walking? "Wildlings don't huddle in caves without cause. They're gathering—" His mouth tightened around words that tasted of ash. "—or running from something worse."

A sharp nod answered him, Jeor's expression hardening further. "Every ranger's word matches yours. Villages standing empty. No raids, no blood, no bodies left to burn." His scarred hands, weathered as old leather wrapped around castle-forged steel, clenched into white-knuckled fists atop scattered papers. "But there's worse yet to tell."

Benjen leaned forward, heat from the brazier ghosting across his face like a dead man's breath. "What else?"

The Lord Commander's fingers closed around a small scroll, one that bore the marks of countless readings. Its edges had softened like wet leather, ink smeared where worried hands had traced the words time and again. The sound of it unfurling seemed to carry physical weight in the solar's oppressive quiet. Benjen's ranger-trained eyes caught the slight tremor in those weathered hands as they spread the message flat—a detail that sent ice crawling down his spine faster than any northern wind.

"Rumors," Jeor spat, his thick Northern accent turning the word into something foul. 

The raven mimicked his tone with a harsh "Rumors!" before ducking low at his commander's thunderous glare. "Talk of magic, if you can believe it. Damn magic, Benjen!" His thick finger stabbed at specific lines. "Jarman—you know him well enough."

"Aye." Benjen's response carried the weight of years ranging alongside the man. "Steadiest blade on the Wall."

"Claims he saw figures in the trees," Jeor continued, each word sharp and barked. "Says they moved too fast, too quiet to be anything born of woman."

The brazier crackled violently, sparks dancing like falling stars, as Benjen forced out a derisive sound instead, shaking his head with conviction he wished he felt. "Frost plays tricks after weeks alone." The words rang hollow, his own unexplained instincts making him doubt more than anything else. "Shadows stretch long in northern light. Nothing more."

Jeor's eyes narrowed to chips of ice, his gaze cutting deeper than any blade. The massive chair groaned as he leaned forward, presence filling the solar like gathering storm clouds. "What of Maester Aemon then?" His voice dropped lower, rough as stone on steel. "Hale as a man half his years these past weeks, mutterin' about fire and blood in the dead of night?"

His fist crashed against oak hard enough to make the inkwells dance. "Forty years I've served this Wall, Benjen. Watched hard winters break harder men like waves on rock. But this—" One hand swept through the air, encompassing the scroll, the window, all of it. "This tastes of something fouler than winter."

Something stirred in Benjen's blood as he considered Mormont's words, a warning passed down through generations of Starks that made his heart thunder against his ribs. He'd seen Maester Aemon's transformation himself - watched the man's frail shuffling shift overnight into something that set his ranger's instincts screaming. Those clouded eyes burned now with an inner fire that had no right existing in a man near or past his hundredth year, and his voice... Seven hells, his voice. 

When Aemon spoke these days, even hardened rangers who'd survived a dozen winters beyond the Wall fell silent, as if some primal part of them recognized a power that shouldn't walk in daylight.

"The old magic's stirring." The words escaped before Benjen could catch them, bitter as wormwood on his tongue. His fingers found an ancient gouge in the desk's surface, some long-forgotten blade's testimony etched deep in oak. The groove felt wrong beneath his fingertips, like touching a fresh wound in dead flesh. "The old gods keep their silence till they don't, and when they wake..." He let the words trail off, remembering tales Old Nan had whispered of the last time the gods broke their silence. Some stories aren't meant for summer's telling.

Jeor's grunt carried decades of hard-learned skepticism, the barely-there sound carrying across the room with weight to it. "Winter's always brought its strangeness, lad." The Old Bear's scarred knuckle rapped against his temple, the sharp sound making the raven shuffle anxiously on its perch. "But this..." His voice dropped lower, rough as iron fresh from a mine. "This gnaws deeper than any cold I've known."

The silence stretched between them like ice over deep water, deceptively solid but ready to crack at the slightest pressure. The brazier's dying light painted shadows across the solar's walls, each flicker making Benjen's hand twitch toward his sword hilt. 

Mormont's fingers found an empty tankard, the unconscious gesture of a man seeking familiar comfort in unfamiliar waters. The vessel hit the desk hard enough to make ravens' scrolls jump like startled prey, his scowl dark enough to send green boys running for the safety of their barracks. "Patrols need strengthening," he growled, massive hands raking through his frost-streaked beard as if trying to drag wisdom from its tangles. "More eyes beyond the Wall, more boots in the snow, more—"

"More men to vanish into the silence?" Benjen's sharp certainty cut through the air like Valyrian steel, each word weighted with the blood-price of hard-learned lessons. "We need stronger outposts, not longer patrols. Spread our numbers thinner and whatever hunts out there will pick us off one ranging at a time."

The Lord Commander's frame tensed like a bear scenting challenge, but forty years of command had taught him to weigh pride against wisdom. His next words came slower, deliberate as a master swordsman choosing his strike. "And these wildlings? All those empty villages?"

"If they're gathering, we'll find them." Benjen measured each syllable like steps across treacherous ice, ranger's instincts screaming warnings he dare not voice. "If they're running..." His mouth tightened, remembering the terror frozen on those rangers' faces south of the Wall. "Then we damn well need to know what drives free folk to abandon shelter with winter breathing down their necks."

Storm clouds gathered in Jeor's expression, dark as the Haunted Forest's depths. "Find me answers then, First Ranger." Each word fell heavy on Benjen’s shoulders, laden with command and something else that made Benjen's neck prickle with warning. "Before whatever stalks beyond our gates decides stone and ice won't stop its hunger."

The familiar weight of his blacks settled around Benjen's shoulders as he rose, duty heavy as a castle-forged blade. Steel whispered against leather as he adjusted his sword belt, the sound as much a part of him now as his own heartbeat. His voice emerged steady and calm, though his blood sang with nameless warning. "I'll lead the next ranging myself. The frost keeps its own counsel, but we'll make it speak true enough."

Jeor's only answer was a grunt that carried volumes of unvoiced concern, his scarred fingers drumming against ancient oak in a rhythm that spoke of contained storm-fury. The Old Bear steered them toward mundane matters then - patrol routes worn thin, dwindling supplies that winter would stretch past breaking, rusted weapons that needed tending before good steel failed at crucial moments.

Benjen matched the shift with practiced ease, even as he chose to remain standing, though his thoughts circled back to the unnatural silence beyond the Wall like ravens around battlefield carrion. Aemon's transformation haunted him - that vigorous stride possessing bones thrice his age at the very least. Wrong as watching dead men dance to pipes we can't hear.

The brazier spat its last warmth into air that seemed to thicken with each passing heartbeat, orange light seeming to fail. His wolf’s blood sang warnings older than the Wall itself, a song of winter and watching eyes and things that walked in darkness. After a final exchange about watch rotations, Benjen inclined his head to his commander, each word falling deliberate as ritual. "I'll see the men readied." And pray the old gods still hear their children's warnings, before whatever wakes beyond the Wall decides to test its strength against ours.

The Old Bear's dismissal came with a growl that shook dust from ancient rafters, his massive form already curved over another scroll like a man trying to hold up the sky. The raven's harsh "Dark!" slammed into the silence, those oil-black eyes fixing on Benjen with an intelligence that made his sword hand twitch. Wrong. Everything's wrong. The thought came unbidden, sharp as a knife between ribs.

Iron sang against his palm as his fingers found the door's ring, the metal so cold it burned. Time seemed to stretch like pulled shadows, each heartbeat lasting an eternity as—

"Benjen?"

He turned, one hand still white-knuckled on freezing iron. Firelight caught Mormont's face at exactly the wrong angle as the Old Bear's eyes caught flame and held it, twin stars burning in darkness that seemed to pulse with each breath.

"Don't let the shadows take you."

The words hit like a physical blow, stirring something primal in blood that had guarded the realms of men since Brandon the Builder raised the Wall with magic and pride. Benjen's answering smile felt like cracking ice. "We both know shadows all fear the sun, Lord Commander. I'll bring back the light."

The corridor's chill struck him nearly as hard as the commander’s words as he stepped outside, winter's teeth finding gaps in his blacks with practiced ease but not quite as sharp as it had before. Each step down the winding stair echoed off stone that had watched ten thousand brothers march to glory or death or worse as fresh snow fell in lazy spirals beyond arrow-slit windows.

The yard spread before him like a blank page waiting for war to write its story, white powder turning the Watch's banners into pale ghosts that hung impossibly still in air that had forgotten how to move. Two brothers trained near the armory's weathered bulk, their dulled blades singing discordant notes that set Benjen's teeth on edge. Every strike screamed of bone-deep exhaustion, of men trying to learn war's art before war came to test them.

His approach was shadow-silent, boots finding the spaces between sounds. The younger one's guard dropped low enough to invite any blade that felt hungry, his desperate lunge leaving vital organs exposed to whatever wanted them most. Dead man walking, and he doesn’t even know it.

"That sword arm's slower than a dead man's last breath." Benjen's voice cracked through their clumsy dance like a whip. "Beyond the Wall, that gets your guts painting pretty pictures in fresh snow."

Summer still clung to the younger one's cheeks like a mother's last kiss. His face flushed crimson as his blade dropped, eyes finding sudden fascination with boots that had never known true ranging. "Y-Yes, First Ranger." The words came out choked and the flush on his cheeks deepened futher with shame. “I mean, yes, First Ranger!”

"Then again!" Raw command rang out in the First Ranger’s voice with the order, sharp as the winds of the North and edged with the vicious snarl of a wolf. Their dance resumed with desperate energy, fear lending strength to exhausted muscles. The boy's strikes, though raw as fresh wounds, carried determination that made Benjen's mouth quirk. The Watch needs that fire. Winter brings worse than cold these days.

Snow crunched beneath his boots as he made for the Wall's impossible height, each step marking time like a headsman's drum. The ascent waited before him, ice-slicked steps reaching toward iron skies that promised nothing but more cold. Wind screamed around him, clawing at his blacks with bestial fury, yet Benjen barely felt its rage. His mind churned with darker things – shadows that moved too fast to be men, whispers that carried too far in dead air, whole wildling camps vanishing between one heartbeat and the next.

Something's stirring out there. The thought came with certainty born of ranging-honed instincts and blood that remembered older magics. Something that sends wildlings running with winter's breath on their necks.

Yet it wasn't just the threat beyond the Wall that weighted his thoughts. Jon. 

His nephew's image rose unbidden – that long face so like Ned's, carrying burdens no boy his age should bear. The lad had taken to the Watch with a determination that struck too close to home, reminder of another Stark who'd found purpose in endless white. Jon's skill with a blade was undeniable, his mind sharper still, but there was a darkness in him that Benjen recognized all too well. It showed in every single step, measured and careful as they were, every single second of brooding silence that somehow managed to echo all the same with questions best left unspoken, for the good of Jon and the good of all.

Some burdens run deeper than blood. The thought came unbidden and unwanted as Benjen nearly reached the Wall's summit, wind howling a song of ice around him, any secret in mind lost to the white around him. Below, Castle Black huddled against the cold like a wounded beast, its black stones stark against endless white. 

Wind slammed into Benjen like a physical blow as he crested the Wall's height fully, the gale fierce enough to steal breath from lungs and warmth from bones. Ice stretched endlessly in both directions, a frozen serpent's spine crowned in crystalline teeth. The world beyond spread white and endless beneath storm-bruised skies, shadows lurking between the trees like living things. Something's changed. The very air tastes wrong.

His nephew stood at the precipice, black cloak snapping like ravens' wings against the pallid backdrop of endless ice. Jon wore little more than roughspun wool beneath his blacks, seemingly untouched by the killing cold that could likely strip the flesh from an unprotected man if left for too long to the elements. Ghost sprawled beside him, the beast nearly the size of a good-sized courser now, the wolf’s red eyes piercing the gloom like hot coals embedded in snow. Direwolf fur rippled in the wind, each white strand catching what little light remained and turning it to liquid silver.

"By the old gods, Jon!" Benjen's voice cracked through the wind's howl. "The cold up here would freeze a giant's blood!"

The boy of only fifteen namedays remained motionless, attention fixed on the endless white beyond as if searching for answers in the gathering dark. Something in his stance set Benjen's ranger instincts screaming - the unnatural stillness, the way snowflakes seemed to shy away from his skin like they feared his touch.

"I don't feel it." Jon's words drifted back, soft yet somehow cutting through the wind's fury with unnatural clarity. "The cold... it doesn't touch me anymore."

Ice crackled beneath Benjen's boots as he moved closer, each step deliberate as approaching a wounded shadowcat. The wind tore at his blacks with renewed fury, as if trying to drag him from the Wall's height. "Don't feel it?" Sharp concern edged his tone. "You'll be feeling it right enough when the frost claims your fingers. What madness brought you up here half-dressed?"

Jon's shoulders rose and fell in a breath that seemed to carry the weight of winter itself, but he kept his gaze locked on the darkening horizon. "Thinking."

Benjen pressed his leather-clad palms against the icy parapet, the familiar bite of cold barely registering through years of ranging-hardened nerves. The light caught Jon's profile, carving shadows where there shouldn't be any, highlighting angles that seemed sharper than memory allowed. Ghost's burning gaze met his for a heartbeat, and Benjen could have sworn he saw something in those blood-red depths.

"Dangerous pastime, that." Benjen forced lightness into his tone, trying to pierce the unnatural stillness that had claimed his nephew. "Care to share what's worth risking frostbite over?"

The pause stretched long enough that Benjen wondered if Jon had heard him over the wind's endless song. When the answer came, it carried a hollow quality that made the hair on his neck rise. "The North. The Wall. My place in it all." Another pause, heavy with unspoken weight. 

"Everything looks... clearer now. Like my eyes… my eyes simply opened one day, uncle. But understanding what I'm seeing..." Jon's voice trailed off, lost in the swirling snow.

Benjen crossed his arms, confused but doing his best not to seem such, as he carefully studied the boy who looked so much like Ned it made his chest ache. Yet there was something else there now, something that sang of older blood and darker secrets. "Aye, the Wall shows you truth whether you want it or not." He kept his voice carefully neutral, probing. "Is it Ser Alliser's special attention that's got you in such a way, or something more?"

Jon's mouth tightened, fingers burying themselves in Ghost's thick ruff. The direwolf leaned into the touch without taking those burning eyes off Benjen, as if measuring him against some standard only the beast understood.

"Uncle..." Jon's voice dropped to barely a whisper, yet each word seemed to echo with impossible clarity. "Do you ever dream of... impossible things?"

The question hit Benjen like a physical blow, stirring memories of his own recent dreams - dreams of ice that sang and things that should not walk beneath the light of day. 

"What kind of dreams?" he managed, forcing his tone to remain steady.

Jon's fingers tightened in Ghost's fur, knuckles white with tension. When he spoke again, each word seemed to frost the air despite the unnatural warmth that radiated from his skin. "Fire that covers the ground for miles. Wings dark enough to blot out stars. They feel..." He swallowed hard. "They feel like memories… memories of things that haven't happened. Yet."

Old Gods take me. Benjen's ranging-trained eyes caught what he'd been too distracted to notice before - the way snow melted before it could touch Jon's skin, the faint shimmer in the air around him like heat rising from summer stones. His boots crunched against ice as he took a deliberate step forward. "Jon. Look at me."

For several heartbeats, Jon remained still as a statue, jaw clenched tight enough to crack stone. “...Jon, please.”

Then, with the slow inevitability of ice sheets breaking, he turned.

Benjen's hand found his sword hilt before conscious thought could intervene, ranger's instincts screaming warnings older than the Wall itself. The words died in his throat as he stared into eyes that should have been Stark grey but now burned with an inner fire that turned them to living amethysts. The old powers truly are waking. And they've chosen blood of my blood to work their will.