Chapter 416: Melee in the Harbor
The Night's Watch Defense Protocols were divided into three parts—The Great Gorge, The Wall, and The Gift. While they weren't all-encompassing, they covered nearly every conceivable military situation within the Watch's jurisdiction, from foreign invasions to internal strife, providing clear and specific response strategies.
The Great Gorge spanned over fifty miles. Even with the Night's Watch command doing its utmost to mobilize troops, they could only average a few dozen men per mile. Clearly, such a density was sufficient for sentry duty but wholly inadequate for a sustained defense.
The majority of the Great Gorge Defense Protocol was dedicated to solving this dilemma.
After establishing the sections and sentry arrangements along the gorge, the plan focused on personnel and material logistics. In an ideal scenario—where the enemy attacked at one or several specific points—the defenders were instructed on how to mobilize limited manpower to achieve maximum defensive intensity, while ensuring that un-attacked sections remained secure.
Placing half of the wildfire and dragonglass weapons with the front-line squads was a measure to prevent the Others from launching a sudden strike in a remote area, breaking the line before reinforcements could arrive. The other half was stored within the three fortresses along the line, ready to be precisely deployed alongside reserve units to provide powerful support where needed.
Despite a twenty-to-one disparity in numbers, human forces could theoretically offset the wights' massive numerical advantage through clever coordination, specialized weaponry, and geographic superiority—provided the battle occurred on narrow fronts. To fight a war, one must first build roads. The mountain paths, widened and smoothed through constant labor, provided a transportation network comparable to the top of the Wall. This meant that an attack on any single point was effectively an engagement with the entire gorge defense.
...
The plan was comprehensive. Unfortunately, the enemy commanders were intelligent magical beings. The new Night King lacked experience in large-scale warfare, but that didn't stop him from making a sound judgment: an all-out assault across the entire line would maximize his numerical strength while exposing the defenders' lack of depth, avoiding the embarrassment of a localized stalemate.
Attacking the enemy's weakness with one's own strength—the superior strategy!
In the age of cold steel, due to differences in individual officer capability, communication limits, and battlefield variables, it was rare to see a true all-out assault synchronized across a line that exceeded visual range. Even if a high command formulated such a tactic, troops could rarely implement it perfectly.
The army of the dead had no such concerns. Every wight was controlled by the White Walker that raised it, and every White Walker was mentally linked to their leader, the Night King. The entire host was less an army and more a single biological entity composed of a hundred thousand cells. Any wight could coordinate tactically with another wight a thousand meters away, even if they couldn't see each other. It was a perfect army with near-total execution of its supreme commander's will.
Was there a countermeasure for this in the Great Gorge Defense Protocol? Yes, but it occupied only a single page, summarized in two points: 1. Each section was to hold its ground, inflict maximum casualties, and retreat to the nearest fortress only after exhausting their wildfire and dragonglass supplies; 2. The three fortresses were to provide orderly support, ensuring that defensive sections fell in a sequence from distant to near to cover the retreat of as many soldiers as possible.
This was the best strategy Egger could devise in the face of an insurmountable numerical disadvantage.
But now, even the second of these two pillars faced an impossible hurdle because... something had gone wrong at Westwatch-by-the-Bridge, the westernmost of the three fortresses.
According to the protocol, once the gorge faced an all-out assault, Westwatch was supposed to dispatch reserves to support the western quarter of the line, helping them hold the front until they could execute an orderly retreat from east to west, eventually pulling as many men as possible behind the fortress walls. But now... the soldiers who should have been performing this task were busy dealing with an attack from within the human ranks.
The defense protocols did consider the possibility of an Ironborn attack on the harbor. However, the new commander of Westwatch was not as experienced or calculating as Cotter Pyke or Denys Mallister. He hadn't had enough time to bond with his troops, and the soldiers panicked in the heat of battle, forgetting their instructions. Jaime Lannister was not a specialist in siege defense, and the presence of Northern soldiers who didn't report to the Night's Watch created a muddled chain of command. Individually, these factors weren't fatal, but combined against a cunning opponent like Euron Greyjoy, they became a disaster.
Unlike Eastwatch, Westwatch had no wall on its seaside. The Ironborn elite who had slipped into the harbor were inside the fortress the moment they hit the beach. They split into three groups, charging toward the center of the fort, the seaside watchtowers, and the three moored ships, wreaking havoc as they went.
Ironborn were pirates; they were never comfortable in head-on clashes with organized infantry on land. To slip in quietly, they hadn't brought a massive force. Their goal was not to hold Westwatch but to destroy it—specifically the shipyard—to crush the Northern Navy in its cradle.
The Northern sailors, who had been preparing to fight fires on their ships, saw the danger and pulled in the gangplanks, turning the only three Northern warships into floating fortresses. The guards on the watchtowers abandoned their exchange with the distant Ironborn fleet to defend the stairs with steel. A small squad of Northern soldiers, seeing the ferocity of the enemy, retreated toward the shipyard to prioritize protecting the shipwrights and technicians.
The harbor was a chaos of running men, shouting, and scattered firelight. Though the Ironborn had tricked their way in, they found the defenders were not surrendering in terror. There were no unarmed civilians in Westwatch. The settlers from the New Gift were hardened wildlings by nature, and their discipline as trained militia gave them incredible willpower. Even the women took up weapons to fight. Guards on the towers threw wildfire down the stairs to save themselves, while sailors pushed their ships away from the docks in the dark to avoid capture. After a period of aimless skirmishing, the invading Ironborn began setting fire to buildings, attempting to burn Westwatch to the ground.
...
"I'll take men to the harbor!" Jaime barked, grabbing the commander who was about to lead his last soldiers to the docks. "You already made the mistake of bringing every reserve to the walls; don't make it twice. Driving the enemy out of the harbor is vital, but if we all leave and the enemy outside breaks the gates, Westwatch is finished!"
"No, you stay and hold the wall, I'll take the main force—"
"Your 'main force' would be useless without leadership!" Jaime interrupted rudely, ignoring the fact that the man technically outranked him. "I said I'm going, so I'm going!"
Without waiting for a reply, he gathered his Westermen and the stragglers he had rounded up—totaling over a hundred men—and hurried down the stairs. Passing a crate, he paused. "These... aren't these the dragonglass bombs from Queenscrown? These aren't for the living; what idiot brought these up and opened the lid?"
"It was me... they explode, don't they? I thought if we couldn't hold, a few big bangs might scare them off," a soldier stammered.
"Fine, take a few and bring torches." The soldier's answer reminded Jaime that the beacons in the Great Gorge to the east had formed a solid line of fire, looking as if the entire canyon were ablaze. Since these bombs couldn't be sent to the front now, he might as well put them to use.
With his hundred men, the Kingslayer charged toward the chaotic harbor. The sight of a hundred torches approaching like a glowing dragon caught the invaders' attention. Under the command of two captains, nearly two hundred Ironborn quickly formed a rough horizontal line and advanced to meet them.
...
Jaime did not fear them. Comparing their gear and strength, he judged that under his lead, his men could cut through the enemy formation despite being outnumbered two-to-one.
But Westwatch was in turmoil. A thousand defenders were scattered, confused by failing command and the sneak attack. The enemy currently held the numerical advantage on the immediate field. With the possibility of more Ironborn reinforcements at any moment, he had to end this cleanly and quickly.
"On my mark, throw!" As the two hundred enemies pressed in, Jaime grabbed a bomb from a subordinate with his right hand and a torch with his left. When the enemy closed to thirty meters, he lit the fuse and hurled it with all his might.
"Cowards!"
"Sissies!"
"Fight like men!"
The Ironborn had heard of the wildfire incendiaries. Seeing spheres slightly smaller than a man's head flying toward them, they were surprised the defenders would risk burning their own buildings in a street fight, but they scrambled to avoid them amidst a chorus of curses. Four or five bombs hit the ground with a thud and rolled... Just as the Ironborn wondered why they hadn't shattered into green flames, the fuses reached the end, igniting the black powder within.
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