He saw the White Walkers.
He fled straight south from the Haunted Forest, only to be caught in the New Gift.
Damn it, he had been just one step away from The North!
He had not been executed on the spot. His former brothers said they would use his head to remind everyone: Deserters would not meet a good end.
That gave him a few more days to live, but also forced him to endure such a long stretch of agony and terror.
Gods, was waiting for death really this painful?
Sometimes he thought it would have been better to die in the New Gift, or even to die gloriously in the line of duty in the Haunted Forest. Yet at other times, hope suddenly sprang up within him, and he felt that something might stop his death.
And now, Castle Black was right before his eyes.
It was time.
He was dragged from his horse. The other end of the hemp rope binding his hands was held by one brother, while a strong hand behind him clamped down on him and kept shoving him forward.
He no longer struggled. Instead, he stared foolishly at everything around him.
The towers and stone walls were dull gray and black. No member of The Night's Watch would call them beautiful, but right now, he felt they were the finest castle in the world.
The ice and snow were piercingly cold, the campfires so weak they seemed ready to go out at any moment, and almost every year brothers lost fingers, toes, or ears to frostbite. Yet now, he would gladly live here for a thousand years, ten thousand years.
More and more brothers emerged from the buildings. No one spared even the slightest effort to speak to him. There were only cold,