As they passed the sept, he heard voices raised in song. Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods. Jon wondered who felt better afterward¹. The sept tempted² him no more than the brothel; his own gods kept their temples in the wild places, where the weirwoods spread their bone-white branches. The Seven have no power beyond the Wall, he thought, but my gods will be waiting.  Outside the armory³, Ser Endrew Tarth was working with some raw recruits. They’d come in last night with Conwy, one of the wandering crows who roamed the Seven Kingdoms collecting men for the Wall. This new crop consisted of a greybeard leaning on a staff, two blond boys with the look of brothers, a foppish⁴ youth in soiled satin, a raggy man with a clubfoot, and some grinning loon⁵ who must have fancied himself a warrior⁶. Ser Endrew was showing him the error of that presumption⁷. He was a gentler master-at-arms than Ser Alliser Thorne had been, but his lessons would still raise bruises⁸. Sam winced⁹ at every blow, but Jon Snow watched the swordplay closely.  “What do you make of them, Snow?” Donal Noye stood in the door of his armory, bare-chested under a leather apron¹⁰, the stump¹¹ of his left arm uncovered for once. With his big gut¹² and barrel chest, his flat nose and bristly black

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