Game of Thrones: The Watchman

The horn wailed.

Then it wailed again.

One blast meant rangers returning. Two meant wildlings. So why was the horn still sounding?

For thousands of years, no man of the Night's Watch had sounded three blasts. Some of the brothers in black had nearly forgotten what three meant. Aeg had not.

When the third blast came, longer and more piercing than the first two, it tore through the freezing air atop the Wall and hammered against his eardrums. Of all days, Aeg had drawn sentry duty up there. He braced a trembling hand against the ice, leaned over the northern edge, and looked down.

Below him waited a horror unlike anything he had seen in this life. The sight turned his blood to ice.

* * *

Aeg woke with his back soaked in sweat.

Nightmares of the Others had plagued him from his first days as a recruit, persisting even after he took his vows and joined the rangers. Being terrified of a legend from thousands of years ago should have been ridiculous. But Aeg was different from the men around him.

He knew that many of the old stories about the Others were true.

Aeg was a transmigrator.

A transmigrator in the Night's Watch.

A visitor from another world had arrived in a land of magic, monsters, kings, and ancient prophecies. Instead of amassing a harem or conquering kingdoms like some wish-fulfillment protagonist, he had been dumped at this godforsaken wall of ice, where he had sworn to take no wife, hold no lands, and father no children. He had become a guard on the Wall, a shield for the realms of men, standing between Westeros and the threat waiting in the far north.

What noble selflessness. What devotion across worlds. A sacrifice worthy of song.

The truth was much simpler.

He had not taken the black by choice.

It had begun a year ago. He had not even been called Aeg then. In his old world, he had been an ordinary college graduate. After graduating, he found a quality-control job at a large state-owned company. The role was technical and at least vaguely related to his degree. The pay was mediocre, but the job was stable and enough to support a quiet, unremarkable life.

Then one day, he woke up freezing in the wilderness, wearing nothing but pajamas.

With no road in sight, he wandered for most of the day before finally finding a village--then stopped short in disbelief. The villagers looked nothing like the people back home, and he could not understand a word they said.

When he could not make himself understood, hunger and cold drove him to steal a few potatoes and some clothing so he could eat and keep warm. He was eyeing a chicken coop and debating whether to steal a few eggs when he was caught.

They dragged him before the village headman.

Stealing a few small things was hardly murder, but the man--who looked more like a farmer than a judge--quickly lost patience when the stranger failed to understand him. He set two things before him: a cleaver and a black cloak.

Then, using gestures even an idiot could understand, he made the two choices clear.

Lose a hand or take the black.

Aeg had no intention of losing a hand on his first day in Westeros. So he was sent to Castle Black as a criminal and, in time, became an "honored" brother of the Night's Watch. The villagers had saddled him with the name Aeg, and somewhere in the confusion, it stuck.

He still remembered the first moment the Wall came into view.

It rose before him like the edge of the world, vast and magnificent enough to steal the breath from his lungs. Unlike a mountain, it offered no slope, only a sheer face of man-made ice nearly seven hundred feet high. It looked grander and more imposing than any mountain he had seen in his previous life.

There was no mistaking what stood before him.

He had been thrown into the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. Or Game of Thrones, depending on which version he had fallen into. Trapped at the Wall like a prisoner, he did not yet have enough information to tell the difference.

* * *

"Awake?"

Gared, who shared the room with him, was already by the window packing his things. Hearing him stir, the old ranger glanced over.

"Then get up. Get an early start for once. Better than finding half your gear missing when it's time to ride."

Gared was a veteran of the Night's Watch. Orphaned as a child, he had joined the order while still young and, now past fifty, had spent forty years in the Watch. He was one of the few men in the whole order who could honestly say the Watch was his home. His grizzled-veteran routine could be irritating, but he had also done a great deal to help Aeg find his footing.

After all Gared had done for him, Aeg could hardly ignore the old ranger's advice.

With a resigned nod, he climbed out of bed, threw back the covers to air out the damp bedding, and began to dress.

He had always been quick to learn and adapt. A year in Westeros had given him enough time to understand the basics and blend in as well as circumstances allowed. Though his distinctly East Asian features still made him stand out, he could now manage everyday conversation with his brothers in the Watch.

Learning the Common Tongue had confirmed one particularly annoying fact: it was not the British-accented English he remembered from television. Its grammar and script bore a faint resemblance to English, but the similarities all but ended there.

Had it actually been English, his command of the language might have kept him from ending up at the Wall.

Once he was dressed, he ate breakfast with Gared. After they finished packing, the two of them joined the other rangers assigned to the patrol. The four men went to the stables, mounted their horses, and rode to the tunnel through the Wall.

It was time to ride beyond the Wall.

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