Roman had absolutely no intention of validating Maester Aemon's bizarre suspicions.
"Maester Aemon, have you ever seen a talking dragon in your long life?" Roman asked with a dismissive scoff. "I am Roman Rivers, a bastard of Harrenhal. The cold wind has clearly rattled your senses."
Maester Aemon merely shook his head in silence.
The moment Roman had allowed the physical contact, the old man felt an undeniable surge of ancient power. He could sense the deep, primordial magic woven into the ice of the Wall actually resonating with the creature standing before him.
The two massive magical entities vibrated in perfect harmony. Maester Aemon knew Roman was lying through his teeth, but the old maester chose not to expose him. He simply offered the young lord a quiet nod and shared his knowledge of the Wall's history instead.
Later that day, Roman stood out on the frozen drill grounds of Castle Black.
The Night's Watch garrison was no longer a skeleton crew. Harrenhal had brought a formidable force consisting of one thousand cavalry and two thousand heavy infantry. The cavalry was evenly split between the heavily armored vanguard and the highly mobile light riders.
Combined with the nine thousand men Lord Eddard had marched from the North, the defenders now boasted a highly equipped army of over twelve thousand soldiers.
With Roman's devastating industrial advantages and a fully mobilized Northern host, losing the Wall seemed mathematically impossible.
However, their first priority was establishing a clear picture of the battlefield. They needed to patrol the few traversable gates and locate the main host of the Free Folk.
This monumental task fell to Fili, who was rapidly revealing her terrifying potential to the bewildered lords of the North.
As Roman's own magical strength continued to grow, Fili's latent abilities as an Apostle evolved alongside him.
Previously, she had to wait for the ravens to physically return and interpret their behavior. Now, as long as she remained in close physical proximity to Roman, the blonde girl could directly tap into the birds' memories and share their vision.
Watching her work, Roman suddenly remembered a crucial piece of Northern lore. The wildlings possessed specialized magic users of their own.
"Fili, redirect your flock. I need you to actively scan the surrounding forests for any suspicious animals."
"Suspicious animals, my lord?"
"There are individuals among the Free Folk known as skinchangers, or wargs. They can possess animals and use them to share vision. Have your ravens look for owls, eagles, or shadowcats that seem to be observing our troop movements."
Fili nodded emphatically, her blue eyes flashing with absolute focus. As the undisputed queen of the ravens, she knew exactly how to root out rival spies in the sky.
Lord Eddard and the black brothers watched in sheer astonishment as the massive flock of ravens circled Fili. The birds moved with the precise, terrifying coordination of a disciplined military unit.
Landing, reporting, resting, and rotating shifts. The ravens swarmed around Fili like a living black storm cloud, yet there was no chaos in their movements.
Intelligence flowed into the camp like water. Fili had engineered an aerial relay system. If a raven spotted something unusual, it did not need to fly all the way back to Castle Black. It simply passed the message to a relay bird and returned to its surveillance target.
In barely half a day, Fili had stripped the Wall of all its hidden secrets.
"My Lord Roman, we have located the enemy," Fili reported crisply. "Small raiding parties are harassing the regions near the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch. We have not spotted the main host anywhere. It appears to be a coordinated feint."
"It is a distraction," Lord Commander Mormont agreed. "The wildlings are trying to lure our patrols away from the center so they can concentrate their true numbers on a single weak point."
The Old Bear's wrinkled face hardened as he issued his next command.
"Search the farming villages in the Gift to the south. Mance Rayder may have already slipped raiding parties past our defenses to attack our supply lines!"
Roman immediately ordered Fili to dispatch ravens south of the Wall. He knew Mance Rayder was a cunning tactician. There had been no reports of attacks on the Northern supply trains, which meant the wildling vanguard was still hiding in the shadows.
South of the Wall, a small farming village sat quietly in the snow.
The scattered farmhouses and frozen fields painted a bleak picture. Life in the Gift had always been a brutal, unforgiving existence for the local smallfolk.
However, their living conditions had improved drastically over the past year. Subsidized goods from Harrenhal had trickled all the way up the kingsroad, providing these isolated villagers with better heating fuel, sturdy tools, and preserved rations.
A group of village elders sat huddled around a fire pit, chatting idly.
"Thank the Gods for Lord Stark," one elder muttered gratefully. "We actually have enough grain to survive this winter."
"We owe our thanks to Lord Roman of Harrenhal as well," another elder corrected. "Without his cheap goods flowing North, even Lord Eddard wouldn't have the coin to help us."
"Aye, I heard the troops of both lords marched to Castle Black together. Something terrible must be brewing in the frost."
The other villagers glanced nervously toward the treeline. Their tiny settlement could not withstand a real conflict.
"Do you think it's the wildlings?"
"Impossible. The Free Folk never raid this far south into the Gift. They usually hit the lonely holdfasts near the Wall and run back to the frost."
Before the old man could finish his sentence, a woman's terrified shriek echoed across the frozen fields.
"Wildlings! The wildlings are here!"
The elders scrambled to their feet. Dozens of ragged, fur-clad savages were pouring out of the nearby ravines.
The Free Folk warriors charged toward the village with feral roars, brandishing rusted axes and crude bone weapons.
The village instantly erupted into pure chaos. Smallfolk abandoned their tools and frantically rushed to their homes to grab their children.
Screams of pure terror filled the freezing air. The elderly and the sick, entirely unable to run, could only watch in despair as the bloodthirsty raiders closed the distance.
"Kill the men and torch the houses!" a wildling captain roared.
The raiders grinned maliciously, already tasting the sweet thrill of a successful slaughter.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing horn blast echoed over the hills. The wildlings froze in confusion. They possessed no such military instruments.
"It is an army! Scatter!"
One of the wildling veterans recognized the sound of a cavalry charge, but his warning came entirely too late.
A massive column of Harrenhal Light Cavalry crested the snowy ridge. They wore identical, perfectly maintained steel armor. Their yellow banners snapped fiercely in the wind, displaying the nine black bats of House Whent.
The wildling captain could not comprehend how a Southern cavalry unit had arrived so quickly. He had carefully avoided all the Night's Watch patrols.
There was no time to ponder the mystery. The Harrenhal cavalry crashed into the raiding party with devastating momentum.
What followed was not a battle, but a localized extermination. The disciplined light cavalry utilized steel sabers, lances, recurve bows, and flails to reap the wildlings like winter wheat.
A few desperate wildlings attempted to return fire. Their crude bone arrows simply bounced off the heavy Whent armor without leaving a scratch.
Within minutes, the brutal raiding party of fifty men was reduced to five terrified survivors. The Whent captain ordered them bound in iron chains to be transported back to Castle Black.
With the threat neutralized, the cavalrymen dismounted and approached the trembling smallfolk.
"Are you safe? Has anyone been gravely injured? We carry medical supplies."
The Northern villagers had heard rumors that the Harrenhal soldiers were the most disciplined professional army in Westeros. Today, they witnessed that absolute professionalism firsthand.
After cleanly bandaging the few villagers injured in the panic, the Whent soldiers politely refused all offers of food and coin. They mounted their warhorses and rode back into the snow to continue their patrol.
Similar massacres played out across several settlements within the Gift. The fearsome reputation of the Harrenhal Vanguard quickly became legendary among the Northern smallfolk.
By nightfall, the cavalry units returned to Castle Black, dragging roughly twenty surviving wildlings behind their horses.
The rest of the raiders had fiercely resisted capture and were executed on the spot by the pragmatic Whent soldiers. Only the cowards and the desperately pragmatic remained alive.
Deep in the ice cells beneath Castle Black, Roman began his interrogation.
He had the surviving wildlings chained to heavy wooden chairs. Crackling tendrils of blinding Pale Flame danced across Roman's fingertips, illuminating the absolute terror in the savages' eyes. The superheated magical energy behaved exactly like arcing electricity.
"Do you know who I am?" Roman asked softly.
"I don't care who you are, kneeler!" a wildling spat defiantly. "Kill me and be done with it!"
Roman simply raised his hand. He manipulated the crackling Pale Flame, lightly brushing the arcing plasma across the wildling's face. The intense heat instantly singed the man's eyebrows and curled his filthy hair.
"Tell me where Mance Rayder is hiding his main host, and I will grant you a swift, painless death."
The wildling refused to speak. Instead, he hacked up a mouthful of bloody phlegm and spat it directly at Roman's chest.
The spit was instantly vaporized into steam by the ambient heat of Roman's Pale Flame before it could even touch his clothes.
Roman did not waste another breath on negotiations. He clamped his massive hand down onto the wildling's shoulder, sending a violent, agonizing surge of magical plasma directly into the man's nervous system.
A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the icy dungeons.
The long interrogation had officially begun.
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