I am. I was raised to it: I am only a bastard, but my father was a lord and raised me alongside his trueborn children, and if you’re the son of a lord, they teach you sums, they teach you the history of the kingdoms, but they also put a wooden sword in your hand as soon as you can walk. You will fight for your House or your people or the king, or you’ll be ready to. I joined the Watch myself just before my eighteenth name-day.

[It is no trouble to talk of the White Walkers, though sometimes it is a trouble to think of them as they are, and to remember feeling the blast of ice in his face as he shattered the body of a White Walker with Longclaw. Sometimes he dreams of that. But if he didn’t talk of them, he would not be able to rally the aid to fight them.]

We do fight creatures out of legend. We did not think to, and people in the southron lands don’t want to believe it, no matter that they are in danger, too. There is truth to the stories of the White Walkers and their Night King. They’re creatures of the cold, always bringing snow and darkness with them, and they raise those they kill to march in their army and fight for them. They are death —- the death of every living thing. All I can hope to do is bring enough people together to stop them.

[And it might be that he has.]