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Hand Of The King
Punishment From The Wall
If you haven't yet watched the final episode of Season 5, this will serve as a primer and contains no spoilers. If you have, I'm sorry for your multiple and deep felt losses and wish you a speedy recovery from the depression you are no doubt grappling with.
Hand of the King: Lord Commander dishes out Punishment
Lord Commander Jon Snow, the 998th man to hold that title in the long and storied history of the Nights Watch, woke up with a headache. He was suffering from a personality dysmorphia of sorts. Last night he'd dreamed about a horrific battle North of the Wall where thousands of Wildlings were slain and risen again to fight for the armies of the dead.
Or had he been there in person?
These were the types of questions that had been dogging him frequently of late. His split personality was a result of his creator writing him one way on the page and then the showrunners on HBO taking that mold and turning him on his head when he hit the screen. None of that made any sense to Jon though, as he didn't like books and TV doesn't exist in Westeros.
The door to his chamber opened and in came his personal steward Oly holding his breakfast of boiled quail eggs, stale bread and mead that was as black as his cloak. Jon considered the boy as he set down the tray of food.
"Didn't your name used to be Satin?" Jon inquired of the young man.
"No my Lord," the 15 year old replied. "You have me confused with your steward in the books who was sent to the wall as punishment for being a child prostitute. I'm the guy whose parents were murdered by your girlfriend and her wildling buddies."
Again, Jon hated the confusion.
"I seem to recall you putting an arrow through her heart," Jon sighed recalling his red haired lover who had died in his arms. "Perhaps you can forgive them now that the dead march on the wall."
Jon's suggestion was not met kindly.
"No my Lord, I won't ever forgive them. You keep pretending that they are people, but they are little more than animals. The Thenns ate my mother in front of my father as I ran away. A crow may look like a raven, but it is not. Ravens have a purpose. They carry our messages to far off lands and return with their replies. Crows are just carrion that pick over the bones," the boy said, his voice rising as the color in his pale face reddened.
"I'm sorry you feel that way Oly but we need them to fight the army of the undead," the Lord Commander told him, not for the first time.
"But how do you know they won't lure us into a trap and stab us in the back?" the young man shot back.
"Well, in the books I took hostages… Every family that passed through the wall left their youngest son here at Castle Black so that I could use them as leverage if the Wildlings ever got out of hand," Jon explained. "What's happened on the show I take no responsibility for."
Now Oly had a headache.
"Will there be anything else my lord?" the boy said leaving the chilly tower. "Or should I go and serve the wildling women some of our food?"
Jon waved his hand, happy to be rid of the boy.
He wondered why Sam and Gilly were still at Castle Black. He distinctly remembered sending them to Old Town along with Maester Aemon before he'd gone ranging beyond the Wall. Somehow, that never happened though. Now that Aemon was dead, he needed a new Maester and fast. Jon decided to visit the library.
He found Sam deeply involved in a text on how to maximize burning pitch. Oly had just left, shooting the Lord Commander an aggressive side eye on his way out.
"Good Morning Jon!" the fat Tarly called to his friend. "How goes the day?"
"Cold and lonely as usual Sam," Jon said honestly. "Even Oly seems to be turning on me."
Sam put away the manual on explosives and turned to his bastard friend.
"He's just a boy Jon," Sam told him sympathetically. "He needs a father now more than a Lord Commander. My father, Lord Randall Tarly, used to beat my younger brother with the blunt end of his polearm so he would be tough and wouldn't turn out a craven like me."
Jon never ceased to be amazed at the things that Sam had endured in his youth.
"Why your brother but not you?" Lord Snow asked.
"My mother protected me. She wanted me to be a kind and gentle lord, and assumed that since I was first born, that I would inherit the Lordship of Horn Hill," Sam's high squeaky voice explained. "But my father didn't want a fat weak son to tarnish his name, so here I am."
"Sam," Jon said with a baffled look on his face. "Did you just suggest I beat my steward with the blunt end of a polearm?"
His fat friend laughed.
"No, no," he chuckled. "I'm just saying, even though he's your sworn brother; take him in hand. If he gives you a little lip, give him a pop on his breeches. If he challenges you or defies you, take a belt to him. He's not so weak as me. The bonding may even bring you two closer together."
Jon had no words. The last man who had challenged his orders had parted ways with his head. It seemed both overly cruel to spank the boy but also, somehow not as harsh as the alternative.
"I'll think about it," he told his counselor. "In the meantime, you should have already left for Oldtown. Due to some quirky writing, that storyline didn't survive to the show until now."
"Odd, I was just about to ask you to go," Sam replied. "We'll leave at once. I'll drop Gilly and little Sam off at Horn Hill. My mother will love having a new baby to look after. She and my brother never got along. You know… it might have been because she would beat him with her slipper whenever he would pick on me…"
"SAM!" Jon yelled at his friend. "Go. Now, unless you'd like a taste ofwhat you're prescribing for Oly."
"I'd like to see you try," the rotund man said coming to his feet and gathering scrolls up to reshelf them. "I've killed a white walker and a Thenn, I'm not afraid of you," he said in a jovial tone.
As if on cue, Ghost, Jon's albino direwolf bounded up the stairs into the doorway.
"What about him?" Jon asked stroking the man of his horse sized canine.
"He's a puppy when he's not ripping out your throat," Sam said turning to the inner chamber of the library to pack his things. "We leave at midday."
Jon and Ghost went to the training yard. They watched the untested boys from the latest batch of criminals from the South get schooled by the war weary veterans of the Wall. At his insistence, the brothers now focused on training new recruits, not humiliating them as Ser Alistor Thorne had done in the past.
"Lord Snow," Ser Alistor said, strolling up to stand beside him. The wolf showed his teeth to the knight and Jon sent him away. "These boys will be in for a fight from both sides of the Wall if your Wildlings friends decide to betray us."
Thorne had been as vocal as he dared in opposition to the new Lord Commander, skirting treason and mutiny while masking it with snark and mockery.
"I'd sooner have them alive and on our side then dead and on theirs," Jon told his Lieutenant, referring to the white walkers who would have surely killed the thousands that Jon had offered refuge in the Gift. "The matter is settled. What of our provisions Ser Alistor?"
"We scant have enough for a short winter, Lord Commander and Winter is Coming. If it is to be the Long Night, as you say, we'll be eating the horses by the second year, the dogs by the third and our sworn brothers before the fifth," the First Ranger told him.
Jon knew that their stores had dwindled when he provisioned Wildings at the abandoned garrisons along the wall, but only one year of food would not see them through the cold that winter would bring. He needed help from anywhere he could get it.
"Send word to the Wildlings settled in the Gift. Tell them we require 10 bushels of wheat, corn, barley or hops from each village by the turn of the moon."
He waited for the knight to nod.
"And send out a ranging party down the Kingsroad. I want every deer, boar, bear and any wild game they see slaughtered and brought back here in a fortnight to be frozen in the vaults below the wall. We also need to live catch any rabbit, hare, squirrel or rodent that breeds quickly and build cages for them next to the stables," he went on. "If we can't hunt when the snows come, at least we can raise our own food."
Ser Alistor moved off to follow his orders, clearly dismissive of the idea of eating rats and rabbits during the years long winter that was sure to come. He would have to speak to his loyal brothers about how to deal with this upstart bastard who had seized control of the Nights Watch.
Sam and Gilly departed without fanfare, taking a carriage to East Watch by the Sea where they would board a ship bound for the Reach. Jon overheard Oly remark to one of the builders that he was glad to be rid of the wildling whore. It made him sad to think that one so young could have so much hate in his heart. He decided to talk to Olly at supper.
When Jon took his evening meal, he invited his steward to join him in his private chambers. Olly sat staring vacantly out the window as the Autumn snow fell against the ancient castle not touching the beet and radish stew that the mess had sent up. Jon melted the hard cheese from his plate in the hot, watery stew and sopped it up with a trencher of brown bread.
The Lord Commander broke the silence.
"I heard you on the ramparts today Oly," Jon said, hoping to start a dialogue that would lead to understanding and forgiveness. "I heard you call Gilly a whore. In another life Oly, you might have been called that. It's not a nice word and it's not one that she's earned."
Oly reached to his knife and stabbed a radish, biting into it whole and looking Jon squarely in the eye.
"She's done nothing to you. The wildlings are like all people; some good, some bad. It's not for us to judge them," Jon tried to explain. "We have to make peace with them or we'll lose everything, not just the Wall but the whole Seven Kingdoms."
The steward took a swing of ale and said: "Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"
Jon was taken aback. The boy had never openly challenged him until now. He was beginning to believe that Sam was right.
"I'm telling you the way things are, whether you like them or not," Jon said sternly. "It doesn't matter if it's fair or not, if you like it or approve of it. My orders stand and you are to accept them from now on. Do I make myself clear?"
The Northern boy had been holding his emotions in check for far too long and they spewed over at last causing him to last out.
"You don't know what it's like!" he shouted, eyes watering. "To see the people who murdered your parents every day! To see their plots and schemes to murder you in your sleep every time they lurk in dark corners. How would you feel if you found the wildling that killed your Uncle Benjen? You can command me all you want, but I will never look at those beasts as more than wild animals who wear clothes and walk on two feet!"
The table flew across the room as Jon Snow flipped it over. Jeor Mormont's old raven flew down from its perch and attacked a beet that landed on the now soupy floor before flying off. Oly recoiled back in his chair as his warden towered over him.
"I know exactly what it's like to see the people who murdered your parents. Janos Slynt put a spear in my father's side before the Lannister's cut his head off!" he yelled at the cowering boy. "For all I know my Uncle is a blue eyed corpse marching on the Wall at this very moment. Don't tell me how hard you have it you little brat. Your father may be gone but that doesn't mean that I won't beat you as if you as if I was him."
He backed away from the seated boy and freed himself of his cloak.
"Now," Jon said more calmly. "You may either clean this mess, fetch us some more food and obey my orders with respect," he paused for effect. "Or, you can lower your breeches, bend over that table and be punished like a boy who needs a lesson."
"I'm a man of the Nights Watch," Oly said with an edge of defiance in his voice. "Punish me as you would any other brother."
Jon closed the distance between them and breathed heavily into his sworn brother's face.
"Any other man of the Nights Watch would have his head on a block right now," Jon threatened him. "I am Lord Commander here, but for now, I shall simply be your big brother and give you the treatment a little boy deserves."
He lifted Oly up by his shirt, drug him to the upturned table and pushed him over it. Oly pressed his hands into the rough wood grain to steady himself. His boots were barely able to make contact with the floor given the angle Jon had placed him at so he was forced to stand on his toes. Behind him he heard Jon rummaging around chests, unclasping his riding bag and pulling out drawers.
He returned and walked in front of the boy, kicking the two bowels on the ground towards the door. Jon squatted down to eye level with his captive.
"How did your father punish you Oly?" he asked almost tenderly.
A single tear rolled off the steward's face.
"He was a horse trainer my Lord," he whispered. "He used the whip on my back or a horse brush on my butt."
Oly paused and then spoke again.
"My mother would use a razor strap or bundle of birch," he continued as another tear streaked his cheek.
Jon produced a riding crop and set it on the floor in front of the boy. He then put went to the shelf in the corner, retrieved his brush and put it beside the crop. The Lord Commander then pulled the great bearskin hide that covered the eastern wall down and drew his sword. Oly watched as Longclaw sliced a section of rough leather from the skin and shaped it into a strap, cutting three wicked forks away at the end. Finally, Jon went to the fireplace and wrapped a loose cord around the thin kindling that was waiting to be burned. He dipped the bundle in the cistern next to his chamber pot and pulled the wet bunch of twigs out, depositing it again before the trembling teenager's eyes.
With the implements of his punishment displayed before him, Oly steeled himself as he had with his parents. He was a stubborn boy. His father had broken him on occasion, as had his mother, but more often than not, his hide proved thicker than the tools they tried to chastise him with. Jon was barely ten years older than him and Oly didn't think he'd have any trouble remaining stoic.
He was wrong.
Eddard Stark's bastard son gathered Oly's shirt up and lifted it over the boy's head. The cold Northern air hit his bare chest and back causing him to break out in goosebumps. His hair stood on end as Jon unlaced his breeches, sliding them down to his ankles. The only garment on the boy that wasn't black were his grey woolen smallclothes. While somewhat itchy, they never failed to keep the boy warm.
Warmth left the black brother as his underclothes joined his leather breeches around his ankles. Oly balled his hands and pressed his naked body against the table turned on its side. Jon picked up the riding crop.
"How many years have you boy?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Five and ten my Lord," the nude teen replied.
"Then five and ten lashes with the whip, for disrespect," Jon announced.
He wasted no time. The crop smacked firmly across Oly's naked shoulders leaving an angry red line punctuated with a welt at around his side where the looped leather end of the whip cut into his skin. Oly made no more but to tense and then relax. Jon swished the next stroke just below his rib cage, knocking the breath out of the boy and forcing him forward.
The steward regained his footing and set himself right for his next lash. In all, twelve more lines and twelve more ringed welts crisscrossed their way onto the northern boy's pale skin before Jon applied the final stroke diagonally, cutting across the first fourteen and breaking the flesh on his right shoulder blade.
Oly hissed, taking in air through his teeth, as he felt the faintest trickle of blood slip down his shoulder blade. Jon picked up the boy's shirt and pressed it hard into the tiny gash, his cold leather leggings making contact with the naked bottom of his steward. The blood pooled and his bleeding stopped after only a moment and Jon let the shirt fall to the floor.
Next, Jon picked up the brush.
"It's not a horse brush, but it will have to do," he said before asking: "How many years have you?"
"Five and ten my Lord," Oly again relied.
"Five and ten swats with the brush for disobedience then," his brother told him.
Jon put his rough, calloused hand in the curve just above Oly's surprisingly shapely bottom. Luckily, Jon hadn't strayed that low with the crop, because if he had pressed on one of those recent wounds, Oly might have cried out.
A rush of air preceded the splat of the hard round brush on the soft pale globes of recently whipped boy. Jon would flick his wrist just before it made contact, adding a degree of stinging into the already wicked swats. Oly knew from experience that he would be taking his meals standing up for the next few days. Oly was also learning that Jon Snow was just as strong, if not stronger, than his late father.
The final four blows with the brush were delivered to the especially tender region, just below the cleft of Oly's bottom, where they met his thighs. Jon angled the brush, striking up, which launched the boy a few inches off the ground each time he the brush made contact. Oly would dance from side to side on his feet to regain his balance, but it was clear to both of them that he was beginning to lose his composure.
With the brush discarded, Jon picked up hastily fashioned strap. The leather of the bear hide was heavy and rough. Once again they agreed on fifteen strappings, this time for dissention. Jon knew he wouldn't have to add any force when laying it across Oly's skin. It turned out that while he didn't have to, he did anyway.
As Jon strapped the boy only the fourth time, Oly's resolve broke.
"Mercy my Lord!" he begged. "Please no more!"
Jon lowered his face to meet that of his unruly steward and said: "The Mother's Mercy is for Southerners. We in the North follow the Old Gods and the old ways."
He strapped the boy across is red splotched bottom.
"The old ways like following orders."
Another slice across his lower back.
"Respecting one's elder's."
The boy began to blubber as tears and snot sprung from his face. Jon let loose a swing on the boy's bare calves which caused his knees to buckle, leaving him hanging limply over the table by his underarms. His spanker did not relent.
"The old ways like not sowing discord," Jon said letting the force of the strap do all the work as its raw hide struck the soft tender skin of the pale naked boy. Jon gave him his due with the strap before grabbing up the birch bundle.
"How many years boy?" Jon asked solemnly.
Oly shook his head.
"No more my lord," he let out with a heart wrenching cry. "I'm sorry… Please."
Words failed him as he returned to his blubbering state. Jon considered him for a moment. One the one hand, he had clearly broken the boy. On the other, his father's words echoed in his mind, he had passed a sentence, he must carry it out. Perhaps there was some mercy to be had.
"I'm going to birch you Oly," he stated eliciting a bodily shudder from the now candy striped boy. "But I'm going to carry you to the bed so that you can lie down first."
Jon tossed the sticks to the side and lifted the boy from the front over his shoulder, the lad's shriveled cock flopping onto his mantle. He gently lowered the boy, raw side up, onto the featherbed. Oly grabbed a pillow and hugged it tight, his crying still intense, but abating ever so slightly.
"Five and ten," Jon said without asking this time. "For ignorance and false judgement."
Somehow those words snapped Oly out of his weeping and he turned to look at the Master of Castle Black.
"Ignorance my lord?" he coughed. "What ignorance?"
"For calling an innocent girl a whore," Jon said. "She was a victim of her father's rape and bares no blame for its result."
Oly's indigence rose to its boiling point.
"A whore is a whore whether you beat me or not Jon Snow!" he spewed venom with each word.
Jon grabbed a corner of lye soap from the basin beside his bed and jammed it into his squire's mouth. Oly tried to spit it out but Jon's strong hand clamped his jaw shut. He gargled up the soapy suds and began crying, gasping, choking and begging all at once.
Not until his convulsion had abated did the Lord Commander release the lad from his head hold. With two fingers, he swiped the spit covers block of soap from Oly's mouth. The boy looked rabid; foam at his mouth, his skin leaking cold sweat, and radiating heat from red marks all over his body.
Without another word, Jon laid the wet birch branches across the back of Oly's knees.
"I'm sorry father," the boy mumbled over and over into the pillow. "I'm sorry…"
Jon lifted the bundle and swished it down onto the back of his victim's thigh. He worked his way up and then back down the boy's body, slashing mercilessly, so that not an inch of his backside was spared, from his ankles to his neck. Jon then snapped the bundle in half and tossed it into the hearth. The fire crackled as the water burned off throwing an eerie light across the room.
He ran his hand over the length of the naked boy's body and for a moment, Jon thought that the redness on the stubborn boy's back, buttocks and legs might catch a flame given heat coming off of them. A sponge with cool water was then applied to Oly's abused flesh and it began to bring the boy out of his agony.
The steward regained enough of his composure to turn to the Lord Commander and say: "Next time, just take my head," with a half-smile.
Snow took that as humor and laughed. When Oly did finally raise himself up onto his knees, he reached down, slipped off his boots and freed himself of his remaining clothing before flopping back into the sheets. He craned his head to look at Jon.
"My father and mother would always hold me after a beating my Lord," Oly said with an innocent sincerity that was a stark contrast to his earlier defiance. "You don't have to, but I'd like it if you did."
Jon went to climb into bed, acquiescing to the boy request but Oly stopped him.
"It's a cold night my Lord. Why not let our bodies warm each other?" the boy asked to a confused Lord Commander.
It was well known among the watch that stripping down and sleeping back to back during a particularly harsh winter storm would keep you warm all the night, but Jon wondered why Oly wanted him naked in bed with the fire burning warm and bright only a few paces away. He decided to let the boy have this indulgence as he had just put him through a rigorous punishment.
The bastard of Winterfell stripped down to his small clothes as an oddly interested Oly watched intently. At last he removed his underwear and climbed into bed beside the younger boy. The black haired Lord Commander lay on his back and pulled the sheets up to cover his nakedness while Oly's assaulted arse and backside tingled as the soft cotton rubbed against his wounds.
Oly surprised Jon by reaching over and pulling him onto his side, while Oly also rolled onto his side. With mere inches between them, the brown headed steward scooted his body back until he could feel Jon's chest on his shoulders, thighs against his thighs and finally Jon's cock pressed against his sore and tender bottom. Jon didn't know how to react until Oly spoke.
"Hold me my Lord," the boy begged. "It's alright. We are sworn brothers."
With that, Jon pulled the teen into him tightly, wrapping his arms around him in a bear hug. Oly flinched at the pain, but embraced the forbidden contact. For the briefest of moments, he thought he remembered nights like this back in the brothels of Kings Landing. But he had never been to Kings Landing.
It seems that a little bit of Satin, the boy whore, survived in Oly…
As Jon drifted to sleep, Oly recalled the nobleman and merchants that had made use of his literary counterpart. His shrunken manhood expanded, growing to full size. He spit into his hand, the saliva still soapy, and fisted his cock, bucking lightly against the naked man behind him.
He remembered a Tyrell Lordling who pleasured him with his mouth as he squeezed his balls. He recalled a yellow haired squire that had hungrily licked his boyhole before penetrating him, jerking his cock insistently. Oly came hard, as the memory of a tan skinned prince and his paramour had made him their favored whore and the glorious week that followed: licking, sucking, fucking, being licked, being sucked and being fucked.
His boyjuice leaked from his cockhead into the mattress as Jon Snow slept none the wiser behind him. Oly himself drifted off a moment later.
He awoke in the frigid morning air. Jon's arms were draped loosely about the boy, so he carefully shuffled out of bed, dressed and went about quietly cleaning the mess from the previous evening. He left the Lord Commander's tower and ran headlong into a grumpy Alistor Thorne.
"You're up early lad," he said with a raised eyebrow. "Where are you off to?"
"The kitchens, to break the Lord Commander's fast," Oly responded.
"Before you go," Ser Alistor told him, "I have an idea for dealing with the wildlings… Are you interested in helping?"
Oly thought of the previous night with Jon; the pain and pleasure. His broken pride and shattered resolve. Jon had beaten him into submission, but he hadn't changed his mind.
"Tell me more," Oly said.
© Copyright Nicholas Patrick July 1, 2015
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Last updated: July 1, 2015