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[SAM gets in the lift back down off the wall. An owl perches on a post. Cut to the Wildlings where the Thenn Warg is standing with his eyes white. YGRITTE, TORMUND, and STYR are sitting in the background]
"So their warg already knows everything then! What was even the point of going out to kill the deserters then!" Brandon the Elder exploded with a scowl
"They may not know everything" Ned pointed out, more in hope than anything else. "They may not know the exact details of any plans"
"Brother, we both know the gods have not been that kind to any of us" Branden muttered.
Ned sighed. His brother wasn't wrong, but still, he would hold on to his hope. Lest he fall to grief and madness.
"Right now all I want to think about is each one of these arrows finding its way into a Crow's heart."
"We could be waiting here a while."
"Good. The longer we wait, the more arrows I'll have."
Jon shook his head as he knew what was going to happen next.
"When they came up here, to our land, and put up a big wall and said it was theirs. Then they started hunting us down. But this time, we're the ones doing the hunting."
"That is a good question. Who exactly were the first settlers before the wall went up?" Shireen asked, looking right at Jon. He was so far the only one who had any answers to these questions.
"Both" Jon answered. "Their ancestors and those of the North were once the same people. Long ago when the first Long Night ended and the wall was set up, people were sent beyond the wall to range and keep an eye on the events, in case the White Walkers returned. These rangers settled, had families amongst themselves and populated the lands beyond the wall. At a certain point in history, the connection between the two sides cut off and the people forgot the true reason that the people South of the Wall settled there. And as time passed, the White Walkers became legends. The wall being built needed to have a reason. Surely the wall was built to keep the Wildlings out, somebody had said many centuries ago. And since then, the Wildlings and the Watchmen have fought."
"The Wildlings are descendants of Rangers?" Robb asked. "But no women could join the Wall! And no man could have children!"
"Men and Women fought in the first Long Night. The North had a history of women warriors, a history the wildlings have kept. The years of Southern contact have decimated that tradition in most parts of the North. And as for the vows, humans are flawed. Pit men and women together in places where you'd need to huddle to keep warm, things would happen" Jon shrugged.
The information took time to digest, mostly because most of it seemed unbelievable to them. But Jon hadn't been wrong so far... so maybe he was right this time as well.
[GILLY walks along the top of the hill with her baby, looking down at the Wildling camp. She walks away quickly]
"I knew it!" Jon whooped with a large grin. He knew that Gilly would not be dying so easily!
The others who were worried about the girl smiled at the revelation.
[The scene changes to SAM in the library. MAESTER AEMON enters]
"And what is it that couldn't wait until morning, Tarly?"
"Maester Aemon. How did you know-"
"That it was you? Who else but Samwell Tarly would be wasting candles to read in the middle of the night?"
"Let me help you."
"Oh, no need. I know my way around this library better than any other place in Castle Black. Thousands of books and no eyes to read them. Old age is a wonderful source of ironies if nothing else."
"It must be sad" Daenerys muttered sadly, "to no longer be able to read books or see the world around you, not being able to put faces to people anymore. Is it complete darkness he sees? Or is it something worse?"
"I think it's more lonely than sad" Jon spoke. "To be surrounded by people yet not know what they look like, or how they look at you. He's been there the longest and has probably sat through countless funerals by now. And the faces he does remember, who knows how he remembers them, whether he remembers every detail of them or are they just blurry images in his head now?"
Daenerys stared at the boy for a moment, before she dipped her head and bit her lip.
"It's a bit of both, I guess," Daenerys said after a moment, "sad that he may never know a new face and lonely that the old faces he does remember are now ghosts that are distorted in one manner or the other.
"But you didn't answer my question, what are you reading?
"Maester Faull."
"Ah, the Wildlings. I can assure you that the closest Maester Faull ever got to a Wildling was this very library.
"But what he says about what they do...it's all true. It's exactly what the survivors of their raids report."
"Yes. Imagine the stories Wildlings tell about us! Love is the death of duty. I told that to your friend Jon Snow once. He didn't listen and neither did you. That's why you abandoned your watch atop the wall to come here and read about the things that may have happened to the girl you love."
"He caught on fast" Olenna said with a small smirk.
"I don't love her."
"Yes, you do! I heard it in your voice when you first brought her to me. I remember how it sounds! I was in love once."
"You were?"
"You can imagine all manner of horrors befalling that poor girl and her child, is it so difficult to imagine that an old person was once, more or less, like you?"
Jon Arryn snorted softly.
"It is not easy to imagine people of our age being in love" Olenna chuckled.
The Queen of Thorns then proceeded to roll her eyes at her granddaughter.
"Your grandfather was a fool, but I did love the man. In my own way of course."
"You know who I was before I came here? What I could've been if I'd only said the word? Of course, you do. I met many girls when I was Aemon Targaryen. A future king always does. Some of them were quite forward in their attempts to win my affection. One of them succeeded. I was very young."
"I could tell you everything about her. Who she was. How we met. The colour of her eyes and the shape of her nose. I can see her right in front of me. She's more real than you are."
"That answers one of our questions," Jon said to Daenerys.
"What is worse? A memory so distorted that you can't even remember the face? Or a memory so vivid that you can remember everything? Which is more painful?" Robb asked.
Neither Jon nor Daenerys had an answer for that.
"We could spend all night trading tales of lost love. Nothing makes the past a sweeter place to visit than the prospect of imminent death. Go to bed Tarly."
[AEMON gets up and blows out the candle. SAM leaves the room and outside hears GILLY at the gate talking with PYP]
"She's home" Arya muttered with a smile. They'd be safe. She was worried whether Gilly could have escaped easily.