Chapter 13: The Burning Fishmarket and the Narrowing Gate
The order, once given, ripped through White Harbor's remaining hope like a shard of obsidian. To burn a part of their own city, to sacrifice homes and history to the encroaching ice – it was a brutal calculus, a Lord's terrible arithmetic of survival. Lord Leobald Manderly, his face a mask of anguish, nodded his assent, the tears freezing on his plump cheeks before they could fall. He knew, as Torrhen knew, that sentimentality was a pyre upon which they would all burn if the wights breached the inner city.
Captain Voran, a man whose loyalty to Torrhen was forged in the frozen hell of the Last Hearth, did not flinch. His face, already grimed with soot and blood, hardened into a death mask of duty. "It will be done, my lord," he said, his voice raspy. He gathered his remaining firelance squads and the designated archers, their expressions mirroring his own bleak resolve. They moved like spectres through the panicked, retreating crowds of the southern districts, towards the Fishmarket, not as saviors, but as destroyers in the name of salvation.
The screams that followed were different from the howls of battle. These were cries of loss, of homes being abandoned to the inevitable. Manderly guards, under Voran's direction, began to systematically douse the tightly packed wooden buildings of the Fishmarket with oil and pitch – supplies ironically stockpiled for shipbuilding and now repurposed for this grim task. The air filled with the acrid scent of accelerant, overlaying the pervasive, unnatural cold.
Torrhen, meanwhile, orchestrated the desperate fighting retreat to the Market Square, the designated fallback position. It was a slow, bloody affair. The wights, sensing a weakening in the defenders' line at the southern bastion, surged forward with renewed ferocity. The two Others leading that assault pressed their advantage, their ice swords flashing, their mere presence seeming to drain the warmth and courage from the Manderly men who fought to hold them back.
"Hold the line at the Tanner's Row!" Torrhen roared, his voice hoarse, pointing with Ice towards a narrow, defensible street leading towards the Market Square. "Archers, on the rooftops! Create a killing corridor! Ghost, with me!"
The direwolf, a white fury streaked with the black gore of wights, needed no urging. He moved with terrifying speed, hamstringing the dead, tearing out throats, a primal force of destruction that bought precious seconds for the retreating soldiers. Torrhen himself was a whirlwind of deadly motion, his Valyrian steel blade a dark blur, his movements economical, lethal – the assassin awakened by the stench of death and desperation. He no longer fought with the calculated precision of a general, but with the focused rage of a cornered wolf, every strike aimed to kill, to maim, to create an opening for his beleaguered men.
Lyanna, her face pale but her eyes blazing with an unnatural light, clung to a vantage point on a partially collapsed watchtower. Her connection to the weirwood network was a tenuous thread in this urban chaos, far from the comforting presence of a heart tree, yet she fought her own battle. She cried out warnings – "Wights in the tannery vats, brother! They're coming up from the drains!" or "The Other on the left… it's trying to freeze the barricade!" – her voice, amplified by some nascent magic, cutting through the din. At one point, as a group of wights overwhelmed a small band of Manderly spearmen, she screamed, a raw, primal sound, and a wave of invisible force seemed to ripple outwards from her, staggering the dead, giving the men a chance to break free. The effort left her trembling, blood trickling from her nose, but her eyes remained fixed on the unfolding horror, her will an unbending reed in the storm.
The Fishmarket itself was a scene of growing chaos. Captain Voran's men worked with grim efficiency, their torches touching the oil-soaked timbers. Flames erupted, first hesitantly, then with a greedy roar, licking at the wooden stalls and homes. The unnatural cold fought against the fire, the blizzard's icy winds whipping the flames, but the sheer volume of accelerant, combined with Flamel's fire-salt enhancements, ensured the conflagration took hold. A wall of fire began to rise, cutting off the southern district from the Market Square.
The wights, driven by their masters, plunged into the burning streets, their frozen forms crackling and hissing as the flames consumed them. The stench of burning, undead flesh was nauseating, a truly hellish miasma. But the firebreak worked. It slowed their advance, channeled them into narrower, more defensible approaches to the Market Square, and, most importantly, seemed to discomfit the Others themselves. The two leading the southern assault recoiled from the intense heat, their shimmering forms flickering erratically, their advance momentarily checked.
"To the Market Square!" Torrhen commanded, rallying the last of the retreating defenders. "We make our stand there! Manderly, your spearmen form the first rank! Winter Guard, archers and firelances behind them! We hold, or we die!"
The Market Square of White Harbor was a wide, paved area, usually bustling with commerce. Now, it was a desperate fortress. Barricades of overturned carts, stacked crates, and piled cobblestones had been hastily erected. The defenders, a motley collection of Manderly soldiers, Torrhen's exhausted Winter Guard, and even armed civilians – fishermen with sharpened whaling lances, dockworkers with heavy cargo hooks – waited with grim determination.
The wights, funneled by the burning Fishmarket, poured into the square from the remaining streets, a relentless tide of undeath. The battle that ensued was brutal, intimate, a swirling melee of desperate courage against insensate horror. Dragonglass shattered against frozen bone. Firelances erupted in gouts of searing flame, clearing swathes of the dead, but their charges were dwindling rapidly. The archers, both Manderly and Stark, rained down arrows, each one aimed with deadly precision, but there were always more wights.
Torrhen fought at the forefront, Ice a song of death in his hands. He moved with a grace and lethality that surprised even those who had seen him fight before. This was not just a lord defending his people; this was a master of combat, every sense honed, every movement purposeful. He felt a strange detachment, the assassin's clarity in the midst of chaos. He saw openings where others saw only a wall of bodies, anticipated attacks before they were launched. He was a whirlwind of destruction, but even he was tiring, the endless waves of wights wearing down his stamina.
Ghost was a legend reborn, a white demon of the North. He fought with a savagery that was both terrifying and inspiring, his howls a defiant challenge to the encroaching night. He seemed to be everywhere, protecting Torrhen's flank, savaging wights that broke through the lines, his presence a beacon of hope for the beleaguered defenders.
Lyanna, from her perch on a sturdy merchant's stall now serving as a command post, continued her invaluable work. Her warnings saved countless lives. "They're massing at the Silversmiths' Alley, brother! A heavy concentration!" she'd cry, and Torrhen would dispatch a squad of his remaining Winter Guard to reinforce the threatened sector. She seemed to be drawing strength from the sheer desperation of the moment, her abilities growing under the immense pressure. At one point, seeing a wight about to overwhelm a young Manderly boy who had bravely taken up his fallen father's spear, she thrust out her hand, and a bolt of what looked like pure, cold starlight shot forth, striking the wight in the chest and shattering it into a thousand pieces of ice. She stared at her hand afterwards, a look of shocked discovery on her face, before the demands of the battle reclaimed her attention.
The two Others from the southern assault, having navigated the edges of the burning Fishmarket, now advanced into the Market Square, their presence a palpable wave of dread and cold. They moved with an eerie synchronicity, their ice swords weaving a deadly dance, wights parting before them like water before a ship's prow.
One of them, the larger of the two, locked its burning blue gaze on Torrhen. It raised its hand, and a barrage of razor-sharp ice shards, like a volley of frozen needles, flew towards him. Torrhen threw himself aside, feeling several of the shards slice through his cloak and bite into his arm, the cold searing like fire.
"Torrhen!" Lyanna screamed, her voice filled with terror.
Before the Other could press its attack, Lord Leobald Manderly, who had been fighting with surprising ferocity for a man of his girth, wielding a heavy, dragonglass-studded mace, charged forward with a roar of defiance. "For White Harbor! For the North!"
He brought his mace down in a crushing blow towards the Other's leg. The creature sidestepped with impossible speed, its ice sword flashing. The mace glanced off its icy armor, but the Valyrian steel studs, empowered by Torrhen's earlier instructions to Manderly's smiths to incorporate dragonglass dust into their forging, seemed to cause it discomfort. The Other hissed, its attention momentarily diverted from Torrhen.
It was a fatal mistake for the brave Lord of White Harbor. The Other's ice sword lanced out, too fast to see, and pierced Leobald Manderly through the chest. The Lord of White Harbor gasped, a look of shocked surprise on his face, before the blue light of the Others' magic began to creep into his eyes, his skin turning a ghastly, translucent grey.
"Father!" a young voice screamed. It was Wylis Manderly, Leobald's young son and heir, who had been fighting nearby.
Torrhen felt a surge of cold fury. He lunged towards the Other that had struck down Manderly, Ice whistling through the air. But the creature was already turning, its attention back on him, its fallen foe forgotten, already beginning to stir with unholy life.
It was in that moment, as Torrhen prepared to meet the Other's charge, that something unexpected happened. From the narrow street leading towards the city's northern gate, a new sound arose – not the shrieks of wights or the cries of battle, but the thunder of hooves and the defiant roar of fresh voices.
A column of riders, small in number but fierce in aspect, charged into the Market Square. They were clad in the furs and leathers of the deep Wolfswood, their banners bearing the intertwined trees of House Forrester and the flayed man of House Bolton – an incongruous, almost shocking alliance. Leading them was a grim-faced young lord Torrhen recognized as Ethan Forrester, and beside him, even more surprisingly, rode a woman clad in dark, boiled leather, her pale eyes blazing with a cold fire – Bethany Bolton, Edric's younger sister, known for her reclusive nature and rumored skill with a bow.
"Forrester! Bolton!" Torrhen roared, a surge of desperate hope, however faint, flaring within him. He had ordered Northern levies to gather in the central Wolfswood, but he hadn't expected any to reach White Harbor so soon, let alone from such disparate, often antagonistic, houses.
"Lord Stark!" Ethan Forrester yelled back, his sword already red. "We heard the bells of White Harbor tolling the alarm as we made camp! We came as fast as we could!" His men, a mix of Forrester woodsmen and grim-faced Bolton archers, crashed into the flank of the wight horde, their fresh energy and sharp steel creating a momentary disruption. Bethany Bolton, nocking arrow after arrow with incredible speed, sent dragonglass-tipped shafts into the eyes and throats of wights with uncanny accuracy.
Their arrival, though not enough to turn the tide of the entire battle, provided a crucial respite for the beleaguered defenders of the Market Square. It broke the momentum of the wight assault, created confusion, and, most importantly, bought Torrhen a few precious seconds to reassess.
The Other that had slain Lord Manderly was now advancing on him, its ice sword raised. The newly risen Leobald Manderly, his eyes glowing with blue fire, was lurching to its feet beside it, a grotesque parody of his former self.
Torrhen knew he couldn't fight them both, not in his current exhausted state. He had to make a choice. His gaze fell upon Lyanna, still on her makeshift command post, her face pale with exertion but her eyes fixed on him, filled with a mixture of fear and unshakeable trust. He thought of the burning Fishmarket, the sacrifice made to create this chokepoint. He thought of the ice spiders, the shadow ships, the sheer, overwhelming scale of the enemy.
This was not a battle they could win through conventional means, not even with dragonglass and firelances alone. They needed something more. Something to break the Others' control, something to turn their own unholy power against them.
Flamel's most forbidden texts whispered of such things – rituals of disruption, of sympathetic unbinding, of using an enemy's own life force (or unlife force, in this case) to create a cascade of entropic decay. It was dangerous, unpredictable, and required a potent focal point, a sacrifice.
His gaze fell upon the still-burning pyres of the Fishmarket, upon the fallen form of Lord Manderly, now a puppet of the enemy, and upon the advancing Other. An idea, terrible and desperate, formed in his mind.
"Lyanna!" he roared, his voice cutting through the din. "The heart tree! Can you feel Winterfell's heart tree from here? Even a thread?"
Lyanna looked startled, then closed her eyes, her brow furrowed in intense concentration. After a moment, she gasped, "Yes… faintly! Like a distant drumbeat! Why?"
"The runes we carved! The obsidian discs! They are not just for defense! They are conduits!" He fought off a lunging wight, his mind racing. "The Other that attacked me at the Last Hearth… the black ichor… it was like a wound in its magic! If we can create a feedback loop… channel its own cold energy back through the weirwood network, amplified, corrupted by fire and earth…"
It was insane. It was a wild, desperate gamble based on a fusion of Flamel's most esoteric alchemy and the raw, untamed magic of the Old Gods. But it was all he had left.
"Distract them!" he yelled to Ethan Forrester and the newly arrived Bolton contingent. "Buy me moments!" He turned to his remaining Winter Guard. "Form a circle around my sister! Protect her with your lives! No matter what you see, no matter what you hear, hold the line!"
He then looked at Lyanna, his heart aching with the terrible burden he was about to place on her, and on himself. "Lya," he said, his voice softer now, filled with a desperate urgency. "We are going to try something new. Something dangerous. Trust me."
She met his gaze, her own fear overshadowed by a fierce, unwavering loyalty. "Always, brother."
As the battle for White Harbor raged around them, as the fires of the Fishmarket cast dancing, demonic shadows on the faces of the living and the dead, Torrhen Stark prepared to unleash a magic that Westeros had not seen in millennia, a magic born of desperation, knowledge, and the unbreakable will of a king who would sacrifice anything, even his own soul, to see the dawn. The narrowing gate to survival demanded nothing less.