The mission to lead a suicide squad north into the Haunted Forest to capture a White Walker, organized by Dany, was something Stannis was aware of—but he had no intention of taking part.
First of all, he was unwilling to work with the Dragon Queen. He couldn't stand her flaunting manner while riding her dragon.
It also stirred up the dark and twisted schemes hidden in his own heart. Being around her reminded him of his own shame—though he normally held himself to strict standards and prided himself on his moral integrity (he had managed to convince himself that Renly's death had nothing to do with him), plotting to assassinate the Dragon Queen contradicted the values he claimed to uphold.
Secondly, though he frequently declared himself the savior and insisted that his only goal in claiming the Iron Throne was to unite the Seven Kingdoms under the rule of the rightful king—namely, himself—to confront the evil otherworldly god in the North, in truth, Stannis had never actually seen a White Walker. He hadn't grasped the real meaning behind "the prophesied child ending the Long Night."
To put it plainly, fighting the White Walkers was just a political slogan for the Stag Party—a way to raise a banner and ensure they occupied the moral high ground.
As for the threat of the White Walkers, they had never even seen one with their own eyes, so it was impossible for them to truly believe in it from the heart.
Lastly, the Stag Party was exhausted and had no energy to waste following the Dragon Queen into more chaos.
The battle where they ambushed the wildling camp lasted only a morning and was over by the time lunch came around. It didn't seem to consume much effort.
But the Stag Party weren't Night's Watch, permanently stationed at the Wall. They had set out from Dragonstone, spent months at sea, crossed thousands of miles to reach Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, and without a chance to rest, were immediately rushed toward Castle Black.
This was the land beyond the Wall, where nighttime temperatures plunged more than ten degrees below freezing!
The Stag Party was made up entirely of Southerners. After trekking 250 kilometers through icy terrain, they finally arrived outside the wildling camp.
To ensure the element of surprise, they had to enter the Haunted Forest in the middle of the night, circle around, and position their cavalry behind the wildling camp.
After that, they fought fiercely through the morning, and tragically lost two hundred heavy cavalry to just a few hundred giants.
Then came the tasks of securing prisoners, clearing the battlefield, and tending to the wounded. By nightfall, they were still burning the corpses of the fallen, only to be mocked by the Dragon Queen. They were utterly drained—physically and mentally—too exhausted to even scheme.
Thus, when cries of grief, curses, and sounds of combat echoed from outside the camp, the Stag Party's knights were still deep in slumber. When the Night's Watch blew three blasts of the horn and came to King Stannis for help, the drowsy Stag Party commander refused Melisandre without hesitation.
"I don't care about the wildlings' lives," said Stannis, jaw clenched, face dark, "but I do know they can rise again after death. The more of them that die now, the bigger the trouble later. Yet after yesterday's battle, my cavalry are utterly spent. It'll take two or three days before they recover.
Besides, it's night. We can't tell who's friend or foe. What if the White Walkers are laying in ambush?"
As one of the top three generals in Westeros (as rated by Barristan), Stannis understood well the principle of "know your enemy and know yourself, and you will never be defeated."
He and his knights had never fought a White Walker before. He certainly didn't want to waste their first engagement stumbling around in confusion.
If his force of over a thousand cavalry were to be wiped out in one charge beneath the Wall—like Daenerys's Dothraki screamers in the final season of Game of Thrones—then what claim would he have left to being the prophesied hero?
Bowen Marsh left the command tower in frustration, climbed the Wall, and urged the horn-blowers to keep sounding the alarm nonstop.
"Let's just hope Her Majesty Daenerys hears the horn and brings her dragon," he said helplessly to one-armed Donal.
Then, as if moved by emotion, he muttered, "A king with a dragon... that's a true dragon."
Dany's new wildling camp had taken in over twelve thousand fleeing wildlings. For the time being, they weren't yet considered Thenns, nor had they decided their future: some might remain wildlings, some might cross the Narrow Sea with the Dragon Queen to beg for survival, some might work as temporary laborers for the Night's Watch, renting themselves out.
But since Dany had saved them from Stannis, she wasn't about to abandon them, leaving over ten thousand people to rot at the foot of the Wall—she had always despised the wildlings' chaotic leadership, lack of social structure, and absence of organization or law.
From morning until sunset, Barristan had been busy organizing the wildlings, under Dany's orders.
He grouped them based on tribe, customs, and region, temporarily placing them into structured units. The camp was divided into twelve zones, each forming a thousand-man battalion, subdivided into 120 hundred-man companies, and then into 1,200 ten-man squads.
Whether commander of a thousand, a hundred, or ten, all leaders were elected by the wildlings themselves—neither Dany nor Barristan interfered.
Only the commanders of thousands had to report to Barristan and Dany—so their faces could be remembered. The appointments and dismissals of other officers didn't even need to be reported to Dany.
As a result, when the wights attacked, the camp didn't fall apart.
"Whoooosh, whoooosh..."
With the first group of blue-eyed wights appearing at the forest's edge, a fierce wind rose from flat ground, coiling around the people like venomous snakes, sapping away their warmth.
Next, the silvery-gray sky dimmed, as though a thin veil had covered the round moon in the sky.
A northern wind blew in, bringing with it milky-white fog to the camp.
"Careful! Those ghost things are coming!" Morona, who was guarding the pyres, woke with a jolt, grabbed the spear beside her, and shouted urgently to the nearby wildlings.
"What?" Old Yogen, on the other side, didn't react at first. But the moment he looked into the forest and saw the dense cluster of flickering ice-blue glowing eyes, a chill ran down his spine.
"Dang dang dang dang—!" He frantically rang the copper gong beside him and sprinted toward the camp, shouting as he ran, "Wights are attacking! An army of the dead is attacking! Get up, everyone, stop sleeping! Hundreds—no, thousands—of corpses! Light the wood, the tents, the barrels of oil—hurry, hurry!"
Before long, Varr mounted a horse and began galloping around the camp. "Children and the elderly, to the base of the city wall. Brave men and spear-women, follow me to the pyre!"
The wildlings were far more experienced in dealing with wights than the Night's Watch. They had been contending with the White Walkers for several years.
At the very least, they had the psychological resilience—their ranks didn't collapse.
When the first wave of roughly four hundred wights, their eyes glowing with icy blue light, emerged from the forest, the four wildling chieftains—Morona, Yugen, Big Walrus, and Varr—had already led over a thousand wildlings to form the first line of defense in front of the new camp, using the pyre as a stronghold.
Fortunately, to reduce construction efforts, the pyre had been built using local materials, right on the old campsite.
Backed by the forest, it was convenient for chopping wood and gathering fuel, as well as collecting corpses from the old camp. The old camp was directly opposite the new one—right in the path of the White Walkers.
But the wights weren't fools. They circled around the pyre, which still radiated residual heat and smoldering embers.
"What's going on?" Old Yugen held a torch in his left hand and a bronze scimitar in his right, cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as he watched more and more blue-eyed wights gathering east of the pyre in the frigid wind.
Yugen was the chieftain of a wildling tribe. He had eighteen wives and more children than he could count—he wasn't even sure, nor did he care, how many were actually his. Thus, he earned the nickname "Old Dad."
It was precisely because he had too many mouths to feed that he hadn't fled into the woods. Instead, he joined the new camp, hoping to try his luck across the Narrow Sea.
"No, something's off. Why aren't they charging straight at us like before? What are they waiting for?"
He had already guessed what the wights were waiting for, but the truth was so terrifying that he desperately hoped his companions would give him a different answer.
Latest chapter first published on 69shu!
Varr mercilessly shattered Old Yugen's illusion. "There's a White Walker. It's controlling them. It's waiting for all the wights in the forest to come out so they can charge us together."
"Damn it! Wasn't the Dragon Queen out hunting White Walkers? Why is one showing up here instead?" Big Walrus shouted.
Big Walrus was the chieftain of a coastal tribe from the Frozen Shore—a giant, bearded man who looked like Hagrid from Harry Potter.
He had been won over by the Dragon Queen as early as the three-way talks.
If Mance Rayder hadn't proposed Article Three of the Tripartite Lease Agreement (no need to sign immediately, wildlings were allowed to observe), he would've signed the agreement right then and there.
"The Night's Watch is desperately blowing their horn. They must be trying to summon the Dragon Queen," Varr muttered.
"Will the Night's Watch come out? That Red God King—doesn't he have armored cavalry? This would be the perfect moment for them to charge and break up the wight formation," said Morona, the spear-woman wearing a white weirwood mask.
Morona was the chieftain of a small tribe and wasn't qualified to attend the three-way talks. But she was also a shaman—intelligent and respectful of power—and was among the first to sign a lease contract with the Dragon Queen.
"Don't count on it. The gates are shut tight, and no one's coming out. The King of the Fiery Heart doesn't care if free folk live or die," Varr said, shaking his head.
"Careful, they're coming!" a wildling shouted shrilly.
The corpses made no sound. In fact, apart from the thudding of feet over the muddy ground, the army of thousands moved without a single unnecessary noise.
Their speed was terrifying—none of the staggering, clumsy gait of typical zombies. They moved almost as fast as living people.
As the wights approached, gusts of icy wind reached the wildlings first, blowing their hair wildly. The chill was bone-deep, and the flames on the torches shrank sharply.
"Kill!" Old Yugen roared, hurling his torch at the oncoming blue-eyed wights.
Boom! It struck a one-armed wight square in the face. The torch oil splashed over it, and in the blink of an eye, its entire head went up in flames, crackling and popping as the fire spread to its body.
The wights were shockingly flammable—it was as if their skin were cloth soaked in oil.
Old Yugen lifted his right leg and stomped fiercely into the wight's belly.
Boom! The wight, now a blazing torch, was kicked into the air and burst apart mid-flight, landing in two pieces on two other advancing wights.
Boom! Boom! Two more torches ignited.
"Haha! Die, you filth!" Big Walrus laughed triumphantly.
Whoosh! A slicing sound cut through the air—a glint of icy light shot toward him.
Old Yugen's experience paid off. He didn't use the torch in his left hand to block. Instead, his right hand swiftly raised the bronze scimitar to meet the attack.
Crack! The bone-white flash barely slowed as it arced through the air—the bronze blade snapped cleanly. Old Yugen's expression froze, a thin line of blood trailing from his brow to his chin.
Thud! The legendary chieftain of the wilds, who had dominated the wilderness for decades, collapsed to the ground. His limbs twitched briefly before he struggled back to his feet.
Ssss— The torch in his left hand flickered and went out.
"——" There was no cry of pain. His face remained the same, but a frozen line of blood ran from his brow, down the bridge of his nose, splitting his lips in two, and continuing to his square chin.
Holding the extinguished torch in his left hand and the broken bronze scimitar in his right, he turned to face Morona in the distance.
(End of Chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09