Woo woo woo woo woo—
The horn sounded, and sounded again.
One blast means brothers returning home, two blasts mean Wildlings attacking, but today, why does it continue?
It had been thousands of years since the Night's Watch had blown three blasts, so much so that the muddled Black Brothers had almost forgotten its meaning, but Aegon hadn't. When the third blast, a low whistle higher and longer than the previous two, pierced the cold air atop The Wall, drilled into his ear canal, and echoed against his eardrum, he had just drawn the short straw for watch duty on top of The Wall. Trembling, he held onto the Ice Wall and looked down from the North edge, seeing a terrifying scene he had never seen in his life, one that scared him out of his wits.
***
Aegon woke up, his back again drenched in sweat.
The nightmare of White Walkers attacking had plagued him for a long time, from when he joined the Night's Watch as a recruit and began participating in watch duty, up to today when he became a full Ranger. Being so afraid of a legend thousands of years old was undoubtedly ridiculous, but unlike the people around him, he knew: many accounts about the White Walkers were true.
Aegon was a transmigrator.
A visitor from another world, coming to this colorful magical world… not building a harem or striving for dominance, but instead running to this godforsaken place, The Wall, swearing not to marry, not to hold land, and not to have children, becoming a guard on The Wall, the steadfast shield of the Kingdom… defending the people of Westeros from the threat from the Far North.
What noble sentiments, what cross-world dedication? But the truth was, he didn't voluntarily put on the Black Clothes.
The story begins a year ago, Aegon wasn't actually called Aegon, he was an ordinary university graduate from his original world, after leaving school he worked in the quality inspection department of a large state-owned enterprise, doing a job that had "a bit of technical content and was slightly related to his major".
Relying on that not-so-high but stable salary that was enough to comfortably support himself, he lived a passionless life day after day…
Until one day, he was suddenly frozen awake and found himself lying in the wilderness wearing pajamas. After wandering aimlessly for most of the day without finding a path, he finally found a populated village, only to be dumbfounded: all the villagers he saw had Western faces, and he couldn't understand what they were saying.
Communication was fruitless, driven by hunger and cold, he stole some potatoes and clothes for sustenance and warmth, and when passing by someone's chicken coop, he even thought about whether to steal two eggs, and then unfortunately, he was caught on the spot and sent before the local official.
Stealing small things wasn't a heinous crime, and under modern law, this would definitely fall under emergency avoidance. Unfortunately, due to the inability to communicate, the village official, who looked like a farmer, impatiently placed two items directly in front of Aegon: a cleaver or black clothes— and used body language to tell the unlucky transmigrator: He had two choices—have a hand chopped off, or put on the Black.
Someone was not mentally prepared or planning to become disabled on the first day of transmigration, so he was sent to Black Castle as a criminal and became a "glorious" member of the Night's Watch.
As for "Aegon", the name casually given to him by the villager who caught him, it somehow became his name.
He still remembered, the moment the tall and majestic figure of The Wall, like the edge of the world, appeared in his sight, he was almost shocked into suffocation. Since there was no slope, this two-hundred-meter-high artificial structure looked more spectacular and towering than any mountain Aegon had traveled to before transmigration. The visual impact of this landmark was too strong, and he instantly confirmed what he had encountered: He had transmigrated into the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, or Game of Thrones, which one specifically, trapped in The Wall like in prison, he temporarily didn't have enough information to judge.
***
"Awake?" Gared, who shared the room with him, was already sorting his pack by the window, and glanced at him when he heard the movement, "Then get up, start preparing early, so you don't always find you're missing this and that just before leaving."
The speaker was a Night's Watch veteran, whose parents died when he was a child, and he joined the Night's Watch at a young age. Under fifty years old, he had served in the corps for forty years, one of the few in the corps who could truly call the corps "my home".
Although his constant air of an old veteran was quite annoying, he did provide a lot of care during the unfortunate transmigrator's integration into this world— Aegon couldn't ignore his words.
Nodding helplessly, he crawled out of bed, lifted the quilt to release the moisture, and the young man slowly began to get dressed.
As a good young man of the new era with a higher education, Aegon was of course someone with excellent adaptability and learning ability— A year was more than enough time to become familiar with and integrate into this world. Apart from his typical Eastern face which made him slightly different, he could already communicate smoothly in daily life with the other Night's Watch around him…
Speaking of which, he had to mention something that made him very unhappy: In this damned alien world, the "Common Tongue" of the Westeros Continent was not the British-accented English he was used to hearing in TV shows, but a language whose grammar and alphabet were slightly similar to English, but unfortunately, the correlation was extremely low.
If not for this, with his decent English proficiency, how could he have ended up in such a state?
After getting dressed and having breakfast with Gared, everything was packed. They met up with the other two Rangers who would be performing this patrol mission. The four of them rode their mounts from the stable to the tunnel entrance through The Wall, ready to depart.
…
The iron gate slowly rose with a "clank clank" sound under the pulling of the winch and ropes, revealing the deep, dark tunnel behind it. Ser Waymar Royce kicked his horse, chest out and silent, and led the way into it.
The passage was perpetually dark and cold, with only the sound of air flowing. Illuminated by the light of torches, they passed through three iron grates in succession. As the last barrier slowly rose, everything before them suddenly opened up—they had departed from the Night's Watch headquarters behind them, the logistics and personnel center and Novice Village"Black Castle", crossed the Ice Wall to patrol Beyond the Wall, investigating and tracking the Wildling tribes that had been frequently appearing North of the Wall recently.
Before them lay the Haunted Forest. The Night's Watch regularly sent Artisans out of the castle to cut down timber to ensure that the forest North of the Wall did not extend within half a mile of The Wall, preventing Wildlings from using the cover of trees to approach and ambush The Wall.
As the Night's Watch's forces weakened year by year, apart from the three castles that were still garrisoned and could barely maintain this tradition, the scale of the entire buffer zone had long since shrunk.
Aegon looked back at the incomparably tall Wall and found that the Ice Wall was "weeping"—this was good news, indicating that the temperature was near freezing point at this moment. If the weather didn't change, the patrol team wouldn't have to worry about freezing at night, at least.
The horses moved forward with small steps, and the four of them crossed the buffer zone and approached the forest. Because it was almost untouched by logging, the Haunted Forest, which extended North all the way to the Land of Always Winter, was the second largest forest on the Westeros Continent. Aegon had participated in patrols several times, but every time he entered this forest, he still felt his scalp tingle and a chill run down his spine.
The current time was the 298th year After Aegon's Conquest. Jon Arryn had not yet been assassinated; Eddard Stark was in Winterfell, muttering "Winter is Coming" while enjoying his wife, children, and warm bed; Robert Baratheon was still on the Iron Throne drinking, squandering his wealth, and siring bastards everywhere…
The Mother of Dragons was still a pitiful young girl living under someone else's roof across the distant Narrow Sea; the White Walkers had just emerged from the Land of Always Winter and were beginning to attack small groups of Wildlings to strengthen their army of the dead.
The plot familiar to fans of the original world's TV series or books had not yet begun, and the clash of ice and fire, the power struggle in the political center of the Kingdom, was still in the undercurrent stage. To be fair, transmigrating to Westeros at this point in time, when summer had not yet ended and the world was peaceful, wasn't too bad luck—the problem was, Aegon somehow became a damn Night's Watch Ranger. This meant he not only couldn't hide far away from the natural enemies of humanity North of the Wall and find a place to enjoy his life in another world, but he also had to go Beyond the Wall every now and then, putting himself right under the noses of the White Walkers!
…
All Night's Watch are combatants, but only Rangers take going North of the Wall as a routine. What made Aegon vomit blood was that he became a Ranger still not of his own free will. In the months he spent training as a recruit at Black Castle and waiting for assignment, he had tried to demonstrate his flexible mind and broad knowledge as a science student, hoping that he could be noticed by Commander Jeor Mormont or Maester Aemon and kept by their side as a confidant… Failing that, even being a Steward or Artisan within Black Castle would be fine, but all his plans fell through. After a series of baffling events, he was assigned under Benjen Stark and became one of the elite of the elite he least wanted to be—a Ranger.
Of course, no officer deliberately targeted him; in fact, many people would have been eager to swap positions with Aegon. Although Rangers had to go North of the Wall from time to time, the temperature hovering near freezing point in summer wasn't considered cold, and the mission was merely patrolling and scouting. With the Night's Watch organization weakening and manpower becoming increasingly strained, Commanders would usually require Rangers to prioritize preserving their lives and avoid risking open combat with the enemy—for many years, the number of Rangers who died in combat and patrol was far less than the number of Artisans and Stewards who froze to death or died in accidents.
But Winter is Coming, the White Walkers have awakened, and the King-Beyond-the-Wall has gathered all the Wildlings to prepare for an invasion from the South. Starting several months ago, patrol teams have begun to suffer casualties sporadically… Aegon knew that Rangers could no longer be as carefree as they had been in previous years.
After the initial bewilderment and resentment, Aegon quickly figured out the reason for everything: he was no longer the only child and top student from his original world, he neither had the noble surname of First Ranger Benjen Stark nor the aura of Jon Snow, the Duke of Winterfell's bastard son. No matter how much he knew about astronomy, geography, and even physics and chemistry, in the eyes of the Night's Watch officers, he was just a "foreigner" who had committed theft. In a Night's Watch corps of nearly a thousand people, who had the time to specifically pay attention to and care for him? And as a young man who was 1.8 meters tall, healthy and strong, with decent training results, no matter how he was chosen, he was destined to be picked by the Rangers.
No one cared if he wanted to be a Ranger, and he could even be certain that if he went missing during a patrol in the North, the Night's Watch would never go to such great lengths to search for him as they would for Ser Waymar Royce or Benjen Stark… Here, he was just a low-ranking Night's Watch soldier. It was conceivable that in the upcoming war between humans and White Walkers, he, who had barely learned to use a sword and ride a horse, would likely just be cannon fodder.
If he didn't want his transmigrator life to end here in a muddled way, he had to find a way to change his fate.