#featured: jeorjon

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Jon I      “We’re all scared. We’d be fools if we weren’t.” Too many rangers had been lost the past two years, even Benjen Stark, Jon’s uncle. They had found two of his uncle’s men in the wood, slain, but the corpses had risen in the chill of night. Jon’s burnt fingers twitched as he remembered. He still saw the wight in his dreams, dead Othor with the burning blue eyes and the cold black hands, but that was the last thing Sam needed to be reminded of. “There’s no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it.”

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Clash of Kings - Jon III      Jon remembered how he’d felt the day they had left the Wall: nervous as a maiden, but eager to glimpse the mysteries and wonders beyond each new horizon. Well, here’s one of the wonders, he told himself, gazing about the squalid, foul-smelling hall. The acrid smoke was making his eyes water. A pity that Pyp and Toad can’t see all they’re missing.

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Game of Thrones - Jon IX      Jon was not afraid of death, but he did not want to die like that, trussed and bound and beheaded like a common brigand. If he must perish, let it be with a sword in his hand, fighting his father’s killers. He was no true Stark, had never been one...but he could die like one. Let them say that Eddard Stark had fathered four sons, not three.

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Game of Thrones - Jon VII      He found himself glancing at every shadow with unease. Unbidden, he thought back on the tales that Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice, and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and kingdoms of men all fell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses, leading hosts of the slain.

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Game of Thrones - Jon VI      “Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow,” they recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Game of Thrones - Jon VIII      “It would seem there were only the two of...of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and...well, that doesn’t bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen.”

Chapters of A Song of Ice & Fire - A Game of Thrones - Jon III      He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet; Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but “my half brother” since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant. And Arya...he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had...yet she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him.