After hearing this news, Aegor felt both relieved and troubled.
What he was glad about was this. Fortunately, the enemy did not know that he, the highest commander on the human side, had ventured away from the front line some time ago, leaving the Gift in a temporary state of leaderless vacuum. If they had taken the opportunity to launch a full-scale attack instead of playing tricks, they would likely already have broken through the Great Gorge, destroyed the Gift, and would be on their way south to Winterfell, destroying the Seven Kingdoms.
And what troubled him was this. While calling these movements of the wights tricks, in reality, the Night King had clearly recognized and utilized the advantage of his army being sleepless, tireless, and fearless of death, specifically devising tricky tactics that were difficult for the human defenders to counter, making it hard to find a way to break them.
The reason Aegor insisted on setting up a defense line despite knowing the Great Gorge was difficult to hold was, in addition to what was mentioned before, providing warning time for tens of thousands of residents of the Gift and preventing the enemy from quietly bypassing the Wall to directly attack the North to the south. Another important factor was using the Great Gorge, a natural barrier no less formidable than the Wall, to achieve as favorable a casualty ratio as possible, exchanging fewer lives for more, and depleting the enemy's strength.
The Night's Watch has one town and twenty castles, which sounds like a lot, but at least a third of them are dilapidated with little defensive capability. If the White Walkers attack by bypassing the Wall, Aegor would find it difficult even to cram all forty thousand soldiers and civilians behind the walls, and the advantage of numbers and ample preparation could not be utilized at all. Conversely, sending ten thousand of them, armed with nearly half of the Gift's Dragonglass weapons and Wildfire, to the Great Gorge, and relying on the geographical advantage no less formidable than the Wall, if the Night King truly led the army of the dead in a human wave tactic to force a crossing, even if they could break through the defense in one go, they would have to sacrifice at least five figures of wights under the power of Wildfire.
Depleting a quarter to a third of the enemy's forces in one battle would significantly reduce the pressure when the Night's Watch subsequently fights them in the Gift.
But now, the Night King not only did not attack directly as Aegor had anticipated, he also employed this method of small-scale nighttime harassment, consuming the morale and war preparations of the human side, like cutting meat with a dull knife, slowly grinding down this defense line that Aegor had meticulously prepared.
Sending hundreds or thousands of soldiers to climb over the Great Gorge and cross the frozen Milkwater River to their deaths at the feet of the defenders every night is a tactic that normal armies would never use, because the impact on their own morale is far greater than the trouble caused to the defenders. But the wights have no concept of morale at all, nor are they afraid of fatigue or injury. They cross the river at night to destroy the weirwood trees on the southern wall of the Great Gorge right under the defenders' noses. If the defenders want to eliminate them all in the dark, they will inevitably consume a lot of war preparations. If they ignore them, psychological tension is secondary. The fear is the wolf is coming scenario repeating day after day. If the defenders in a certain place lower their guard on some day, and the enemy happens to turn a feint into a full-scale attack, then a major disaster would occur.
"The most important thing now is to assess the enemy's intentions. Are the White Walkers truly so wary of the weirwood trees that they will not cross the Great Gorge until they are all cleared, or is destroying the forest just a cover, and their main goal is to use attrition warfare to deplete our energy and war preparations?" Aegor regained his composure, tapped the table, and forcibly steered the topic from the false alarm back to serious military discussion. "Besides this, we also need to consider a third possibility. Is the enemy using a feint, attempting to tie down the main defense force of the Gift in the Great Gorge, while the main body bypasses the Wall elsewhere to launch a sneak attack?"
Jarman nodded. "We had this suspicion, so the day before yesterday, we put Lord Stark's warning aside and risked sending wargs to scout the north side of the Wall. The result was that the hawk controlled by the warg responsible for the Great Gorge section did not return, and the person also went mad. He is currently under house arrest in the Shadow Tower. According to other wargs, with luck, he might recover, but we do not know how long it will take."
It is quite difficult for a warg to obtain a controllable bird of prey, so we have lost one. Hopefully, the person is alright.
Aegor sighed. "Good, this way we at least know that the Night King is still across the Great Gorge. Stop sending wargs to the other side of the Great Gorge to lose birds. Aerial reconnaissance along the Wall can continue. Although it carries the risk of losing wargs, at this critical juncture, it is not the time to quibble over these things."
"Understood, I will immediately relay this order to the castles along the Wall."
Aegor's idea was simple. Unless the Night King would act alone, separated from the army of wights, wherever a warg was lost, he would be there. As long as aerial reconnaissance was ongoing, an army of the dead numbering in the tens of thousands could not silently move to other places to launch a surprise attack. And once the wargs responsible for a section of the Wall also suffered losses of birds, that would at least prove that the defenders in that section needed to significantly increase their vigilance.
"The troop strength on the other side of the Great Gorge has reached my expected limit. The narrow and rugged trails along the cliffs make it impossible to deploy more troops. The Wall can block the penetration of the cold god's power to the south. Protecting it has a higher priority than the gains or losses of individual towns. Regardless of how the commanders of the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea exaggerate the urgency of the situation, absolutely no basic garrison forces are to be withdrawn from along the Wall for reinforcement, lest there be gaps in the wall-top defense. Besides holding this bottom line, in other aspects, all departments of the Gift are to do their utmost to meet all demands of the front-line commanders." Aegor took a deep breath. "Alright, is there anything else that needs to be discussed now?"
"Yes." Yam hesitated after glancing at his two colleagues before speaking. "That night of the false alarm, after the beacon in the Great Gorge was lit, the Gift immediately entered the highest state of alert you arranged, but many incidents occurred during this process, and many problems were exposed. In the outer district of Crowntown that night, there was a riot, several brawls, and at least half a dozen cases of rape. Robberies were countless, and some people even tried to attack the inner keep under the cover of darkness. After we caught the ringleader, he admitted that they wanted to rescue the King-Beyond-the-Wall, Mance Rayder, whom we had under house arrest, so he could replace you, who had fled from the front, to command this war against the dead. The most absurd thing was, someone even drowned in the small lake in the center of Crowntown. No, to be precise, they froze to death. We could not determine if he was forced into the ice hole or if he thought hiding under the frozen lake surface would allow him to escape the White Walkers' slaughter."
"Similar situations occurred at many castles along the Wall, but Crowntown was the most severe because of its large population." Jarman Buckwell interjected with a grim expression. "That night of the false alarm, none of us were killed by the White Walkers or wights, but the internal chaos resulted in double-digit casualties. After dawn the next day, we pursued accountability, and in Crowntown alone, we hanged more than a dozen people who caused trouble. Many of the culprits admitted that they believed the rumor that the commander had abandoned the Wall and fled, thought we had no hope of winning this war, and acted recklessly out of despair."
"Have you caught the people spreading the rumors?"
"No, my lord. This is different from ordinary slander and malicious defamation. The rumor was not fabricated by a specific person but evolved from associations triggered by the fact that you left Crowntown. It is impossible to trace and impossible to catch the culprit. More accurately, if we really wanted to pursue it, we would have to deal with a lot of people."
"There was also a small tribe assigned to live south of Crowntown that directly violated the Night's Watch's operational plan requirements. When the beacon was lit, they directly abandoned their encampment and fled south along the King's Road, preparing to escape the Gift and seek refuge in warmer places. They did not even think about how a large group of over a hundred people, including women and children, could pass through the North without being noticed. If I had not personally led the cavalry to chase them back the next day, I am afraid they would have died by the swords of the Umbers' army before even seeing the White Walkers. Their deaths would be no loss, but this mismanagement would most likely be blamed on you, my lord, by the North." Jarman said coldly. "The leader of this tribe has been thrown into the dungeon. How to deal with him awaits your decision, my lord."
(To be continued.)
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