Eastwatch.
Noon on the third day after the sun went out.
The north wind howled. The sky was dim and the earth was dark. No light could be seen. Falling snowflakes were as thick and annoying as a stunning beauty's thin silk stockings.
Silk stockings should be light and sheer, but because they were snowflakes, they felt heavy and oversized.
A beauty's stockings should stir the imagination, just as snowfall inspires poets to write, but snow in the North was like stockings wrapped around a beautiful woman's burly husband's stinking feet. No matter what, the Watchers on the Wall could never learn to like it.
The underground passage the Watchers called "the wormway," the Watchers' dining hall.
A scrawny blond boy, thin as a monkey, licked clean the mashed potatoes on his tray, stamping his feet. "It's so cold past the Wall! I thought wading barefoot in the Blackwater to catch fish was cold enough, but I never imagined the Wall would be this cold even with thick sheepskin boots!"
The tall youth beside him used a piece of bread to wipe his plate clean. "Cold or not, we have food and clothes here. It's a thousand times better than sleeping on the streets of King's Landing and eating brown stew.
At the Wall, we live like human beings."
The skinny one grinned and nodded. "Not just like human beings. We're heroes protecting the Seven Kingdoms!
Thanks to Uncle Strick for sending us here, we can be heroes, fill our bellies, and earn two silver coins at the same time.
Two a month. If I save them, they can feed my two little sisters for several months!"
"We should thank more than Uncle Strick. Her Majesty Daenerys too. If not for her, we would've starved to death on the streets years ago," the tall youth sighed.
The skinny boy's eyes turned dreamy. "Feels like a dream. While begging on the streets, we actually ran into the Dragon Queen and Ser Barristan.
Lucky I had good eyes. I could tell she was special the moment I saw her, so I dragged all of you to follow her."
The tall youth sneered, "Please, your eyes were good all right. You spotted a fat purse the moment you saw her. Too bad—"
"Ahem!" The skinny one cut him off, embarrassed. "We were working under Scarface Luban. If we didn't finish a job, we didn't eat!"
"Jimmy, Tom, your shift!" Hunchbacked Ulma stomped over, frostbitten, scarred hands slapping the thick greasy ironwood table. "Have you lost track of time? The men above are waiting to come down for lunch, and you're still dawdling!"
Tall Tom stuffed the last bread soaked in mutton carrot soup into his mouth and muttered thickly, "Instructor, we haven't even finished eating. What's the rush?"
"Next time you can be the one waiting up top on an empty stomach. See if you're in a hurry then."
The two rookie Watchers stopped arguing, handed their trays to the cook Hogan, put on gloves and cloaks, grabbed their dragonbone swords, and followed veteran Ulma up the wormway to the winch lift.
With the rattling of chains echoing through the silent, wind-screaming castle, Jimmy and Tom slowly rose into the air.
"Before I came to the Wall, I thought the Red Keep of the Cersei Queen was the tallest building in the world," the skinny boy sighed, staring into the pitch-black sky. "If it were summer, looking down from the Wall, the sea eastward would be blue, wildflowers blooming to the south, jagged hills winding to the west. Sea, plains, and mountains all in sight. It would be impossibly beautiful."
"You've got the makings of a bard," Ulma muttered, unclear whether mocking or praising.
"Really?" Skinny Jimmy took it as praise. Beaming, he said, "I'll study reading and writing with Maester Hamund, become a real bard, and then I can be a wandering crow. I'll go back to King's Landing all the time!"
"Wandering crow." Ulma snorted. "The last wandering crow was also a singer. His face was handsome as a young lord's, his voice thunder sweetened with honey. Guess how he ended up."
"A favorite among nobles and ladies?" Jimmy said hopefully.
"As a singer, women adored him. Too bad he was a Watcher, and a recruiting officer at that. He failed to recruit a single man, and instead lost himself."
"Lost himself?" Jimmy frowned.
"He fell for a little wench named Roshi. Planned to ditch his black cloak and run off with her. Got caught by an Oldtown lord and lost his head. Remember, lads—any highborn of the Seven Kingdoms has the right to behead a deserting Watcher."
"I never planned to desert," Jimmy muttered.
"When you start longing for the outside world, you are not far from running," Ulma said plainly.
"I don't long for outside. It's fine here. Food, clothes, and coin."
"Then why did you say you want to go to King's Landing?"
"I've got two little sisters in Flea Bottom. Uncle Strick watches over them. I'm not worried, but being able to visit would be better," Jimmy's voice faded into the wind and drifted away.
Clunk. The cage reached the top of the shaft.
"Took you long enough. I'm starving."
As the three stepped out, three more Watchers squeezed into the cage, grumbling.
Squeak, groan. The cage sank slowly down.
To the east of the crane, on the section of the city wall near the bay, a small wooden hut had been built for the sentries on duty.
Inside the hut, a large brazier of glowing coals burned. It should have been warm and comfortable, but this was an observation post. The wooden door facing beyond the Wall stood wide open, unreservedly embracing the wind and snow from the farthest reaches of the far north.
"The quartermaster should issue every night watchman on sentry duty a crystal faceplate helmet," complained the tall young man Tom.
"And the helmet should be stuffed full of fluffy cotton," Jaime added.
"You two summer-soft chicks from the south, what do you know about the hardships beyond the Wall!" Ulmar stuffed a leaf of sour grass into his mouth and chewed as he sneered. "Standing guard on the Wall is already the easiest job there is!
"If you cannot even endure this bit of wind and snow, how are you supposed to survive if you go alone on horseback into the Haunted Forest?So just treat this as training. Once you are beyond the Wall, you will only regret that you did not grow two more eyes on the back of your head, and you will stop dreaming about crystal helmets to see the Others with your own eyes."
"Going beyond the Wall is ranger work. I do not want to be a ranger. The ranger mortality rate is too high. I need to stay alive to earn my pay and support my sister," said Skinny Monkey, shaking his head repeatedly.
"Tsk, no ambition," the thirty-year veteran ranger said, shaking his head. "Rangers are the most glorious calling of the Night's Watch.
"From Queen Alyssane, the so-called Good Queen of old, to today's Dragon Queen who commands awe across the world, when they came to the Wall, the ones they praised most highly and expressed admiration for were always the rangers.
"You think you get two silver coins a month just for standing guard in wind and snow?Heh, that pay is meant for the rangers. You little brats have gotten a huge bargain, all because you ran into a queen who is rich and generous."
"Ah, even the Dragon Queen admires the rangers?" Skinny Monkey could not help drifting into reverie as he murmured, "When my sister grows up and marries into a good family, I will definitely…"
"Ah!" Suddenly, tall Tom let out a scream. He pointed beyond the Wall and said in a trembling voice, "Instructor, look down there. What is that?"
"What are you making such a fuss abou—" Ulmar leaned out to take a look, his pupils instantly contracting as his voice cut off abruptly.
The snow lay like a thick cotton quilt, firmly covering the distant Haunted Forest.
The last trace of green between heaven and earth was buried beneath pale snowdrifts.
At a glance, the vast land looked as if it were spread with a white blanket evenly dusted with coal ash, dim and gray.
Then, within that grayness, one or two points flickered, followed by hundreds of pale blue stars.
It was as if hundreds of blue diamonds had been set into the edge of the blanket.
They were not bright, like gazing at a brilliant starry sky through a layer of gauze over one's eyes.
Hazy, yet undeniably real.
"Bring the spyglass, and torches. You two, hurry and throw two torches down there," Ulmar seemed to hear another person using his throat and his voice, roaring hysterically.
With a thunderous whoosh, two logs soaked in lamp oil burst into flames and were then hurled out with force.
Then the two novice watchmen heard their officer let out a terrified howl: "The Others! An army of the Others!"
After receiving large amounts of gold dragon support from the Dragon Queen, spyglasses had become standard equipment for sentries.
The two boys from King's Landing also saw clearly. The torches hit the ground, and the flames were rapidly dying out. By the last faint glimmer of light, they beheld the most horrifying sight they would ever see in their lives. Countless corpses, packed together like grains of wheat on a great landlord's threshing floor, layer upon layer, stretching endlessly. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even more.
Jaime swore that even if everyone in King's Landing were gathered together, there would not be this many.
More terrifying still, every corpse had its eyes wide open, emitting a faint blue glow, staring straight at them.
Thankfully, the spyglass was threaded with a cord and hung around the sentry's neck. Otherwise, that sudden shock would have made it slip from his hands and fall.
"So these are the legendary Others? Why are there so many!" Skinny Monkey Jimmy shouted, his voice breaking with tears.
"Hurry, hurry, blow the horn!" Ulmar urged anxiously.
The two young watchmen hastily raised the horn. "Ooo—ooo—ooo—"
One blast meant friendly forces. Two blasts meant wildlings. Three blasts meant the Others.
The deep, resonant horn call overpowered the howling north wind, awakening the "massive" war machine behind the Wall: fifteen hundred fully armed men in black.
Well, fifteen hundred men could not even make a splash on the battlefield of Meereen in Slaver's Bay, but in the North, they were absolutely a force that could not be ignored.
Back when Old Bear was still alive, the five-hundred-kilometer Wall had only a thousand men of the Night's Watch in total.
Because of the Dragon Queen's intervention, the regular forces of the Night's Watch had already exceeded fifteen thousand. All seventeen castles along the Wall were garrisoned, and along nearly the entire five-hundred-li stretch of the Wall, everything lay under the Watch's surveillance.
Incidents like wildlings secretly climbing over the Wall in the past would never happen again today.
"By the Drowned God, the Others have launched a general assault!" exclaimed Carter Pike, captain of the Eastwatch garrison, in horror.
Yes, Carter Pike was an Ironborn and worshipped the Drowned God.
At this moment, more than two hundred watchmen had already climbed onto the Wall, while several hundred more waited quietly for orders in the tunnels.
One after another, fire-oil bombs were hurled from the catapults, tracing fiery red arcs that lit up patches of the sky before landing on the wights and igniting piles of bonfires.
White freezing mist, thick as gauze, quickly smothered every flame.
(End of chapter)
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