Chapter 417: The So-Called Hero
Specks of blue light, rising and falling, resembled countless sapphires submerged at the bottom of a deep abyss. They were dazzling and magnificent, swaying slightly with the ripples of movement—poignant and dreamlike. They were like the stars arrayed across the heavens, shining brightly against the black silk of the night sky, flickering and floating with the atmospheric turbulence.
If one could ignore the fact that these were the eyes of a dense mass of wights surging toward you, the scenery might actually be considered exotic and beautiful. If one were optimistic enough to look on the bright side, the wights' glowing blue eyes actually marked their positions—even without torches or the moonlight flickering through the clouds, the defenders could see at a glance where the wights were pressing the line and where they were still distant, allowing for targeted defense based on battlefield pressure.
However, the reality was that this sight was enough to terrify anyone. The defenders along the mountain paths of the Great Gorge had no interest in appreciation; their hair stood on end as they squeezed every ounce of strength from their bodies, using every means possible to prevent this magnificent blue ocean from reaching their lines.
The cross-section of the Great Gorge was a slightly flared U-shape. It was easy for the wights to descend the north slope and cross the frozen Milkwater at the bottom, but scaling the south slope to enter the Realm meant facing increasingly steep cliffs. This was exactly why the Night's Watch rarely worried about wildlings bypassing the Wall here: while vertical terrain like the Wall's ice was rare, steep slopes of sixty or seventy degrees with drops of dozens of meters were everywhere. These slopes—composed of soil mixed with mountain rock and, in some ways, less reliable than the ice of the Wall—were the defenders' greatest asset.
The black-clad brothers stood in a line holding their weapons. The long, narrow front prevented them from standing shoulder-to-shoulder; they were spaced nearly ten meters apart, fighting almost in isolation. The sudden intensification of the snow constantly dusted their armor in white, only to be shaken off by violent movements. Everyone was desperately loosing arrows. Marksmanship became meaningless at this moment—the steep slope below was packed with pairs of blue eyes. Just shoot toward the eerie bright spots; you couldn't miss!
Soldiers kept drawing their bows toward the gorge floor. The time they held the draw was too short to be called aiming; they simply whispered "Die, monsters!" in their hearts and released the dragonglass arrows into the wight horde. Whisper, shoot; whisper, shoot...
With bad luck, an arrow accomplished nothing; with good luck, a pair of blue eyes vanished from the mountainside. Muscles began to ache, breaths grew ragged, and hearts pounded violently. The soldiers had to struggle not only to control the rhythm of their counterattack but also to maintain their composure.
At their feet were bundles of dragonglass arrows and crates of wildfire jars. Torches flickered on the railings, and arrows hissed through the gorge. While the supply of wildfire was limited, dragonglass weapons—especially dragonglass arrows—were plentiful. Yet the problem facing the defenders was a lack of men and bows to fire them; they could not create a true rain of dragonglass, and thus could not truly halt the rising tide of corpses.
Someone, unable to hold out after a dozen arrows, finally picked up a wildfire jar and hurled it down the slope. A sphere of green flame erupted in the front of the wight tide, the blaze and shockwave knocking back a cluster of enemies. Seeing that wildfire worked, the men's confidence surged. However, as the initial flash subsided, that confidence was immediately discounted.
...
In terms of quantity, the war material along the entire gorge—even excluding the reserves in the fortresses—was theoretically enough to destroy the entire wight army if the White Walkers didn't intervene. However, that assumed an enemy standing in neat rows without resisting. The reality was that the Others had learned from human defensive tactics. Under the direction of their heads, the wights were arranged in a clever, honeycomb-like grid, keeping specific distances from one another as they surged forward like a signal network...
From above, it looked as if the wights were swarming to break the line through sheer numbers and ant-hill tactics. But when the defenders poured out their fire in expectation of a massacre, they found that only two or three out of every ten dragonglass or fire arrows hit a target. While the wildfire jars ignited upon breaking, the extreme cold and the snow on the ground greatly weakened the fire's potency. The green flames only caught the few unlucky wights directly splashed; many knocked down by the blast simply rolled in the snow and stood back up. Even the few that became irrecoverable pillars of fire would instinctively huddle where they fell to avoid obstructing the movement of those around them.
Moreover, the lucky wights nearby would pull back in a wide circle with uncanny coordination, and the following waves would intelligently bypass the flames. It was impossible to easily create the massive sea of fire the defenders had imagined.
Where the wildfire landed, the wights' advance was briefly checked, but elsewhere they continued to pour in like a breached flood, rolling upward against gravity like waves in slow motion—slow, steady, and inevitable. They stepped over their predecessors fallen to dragonglass arrows, bypassed the burning clusters, and pushed resolutely toward the defensive path on the mountainside.
The defenders were indeed killing wights in large numbers, but it simply wasn't enough, nor was it fast enough!
Facing the encroaching dead, the soldiers instinctively wanted to keep throwing wildfire, but the section commander strictly forbade such drinking poison to quench thirst behavior. While effective, there were only a few jars per man; if not used sparingly, they could all be thrown in a single minute.
Unable to maintain peak fire, the wights climbed upward without hesitation. While the living had yet to suffer casualties, fear had begun to spread. It seemed to mix with the wind brushing against them, to be inhaled into their lungs with the air, and to be encoded into the sound of their officers' orders and their comrades' ragged breathing... it crept into their skulls, whispering at the lowest volume:
(Gods... what do we do?)
(This is impossible to hold.)
(Will we survive the night?)
When this tiny internal whisper finally slipped from the mouth of someone who couldn't hold their tongue, the fear spread instantly through the ranks.
"There are too many of them!"
"How long until our reinforcements arrive?"
"That one just now—I hit it dead center, but it just won't die!"
"They aren't stopping, my lord!" a recruit screamed, his body shaking like the last leaf on an autumn tree. The wights below had reached the mid-slope, barely thirty meters from the path. "More are coming! Gods have mercy, they even know how to roll to put out the fire! If we don't use the wildfire now, we'll never get the chance!"
If we throw all the wildfire and the reinforcements still aren't here, we can retreat. That's what the plan says—those are the Lord Commander's orders to preserve our strength. It's not desertion!
Everyone was thinking the same thing.
...
"Shut your damn mouths!!! I've killed a White Walker myself; you think I'm going to be scared off by a few dead men today?!"
Gared's booming roar silenced the fearful cries. He was a timid man by nature, but ironically, he couldn't stand it when others were more timid than him.
As the veteran who had been the guide for Egger's integration into the Night's Watch—and who had survived that deadly patrol alongside him, narrowly escaping the sword of an Other—Gared had spent forty-four years in the Watch. Nearing fifty, he had finally caught the wave of Egger's election as Lord Commander to gain a promotion and shed his status as a common soldier.
With his seniority, battle record, and special relationship with the Lord Commander, he was well-respected by both old and new soldiers. However, his personal abilities were average, and he couldn't handle heavy responsibilities. Egger had originally transferred him to Queenscrown to guard a gate—essentially a retirement post—but upon hearing the gorge front lacked junior officers, Gared had volunteered to come. Commanding a defensive section of dozens of Mountain Clansmen and New Gift recruits felt much more fulfilling than leading a few Southerners in the logistics department!
The wound from four years ago, where an Other's blade had nearly transfixed his chest, had left him with permanent mobility issues in his left shoulder and arm. But for a squad leader directing ordinary soldiers, sharing experience, and leading recruits, it was more than enough.
He was a famous hero officer now; he couldn't let that reputation slide!
"Stop just using dragonglass arrows. Light them! Dip the tips in wildfire!" After thinking hard for a few minutes, he found a way to solve the issues of wildfire potency and quantity. "If we kill and ignite a row of wights to form a wall of fire, we can force them to cluster in one spot. When they get close, then we use the wildfire jars. we have to be stingy—we've got to hold out until reinforcements arrive!"
Dragonglass arrows could kill a wight, but they only turned it into a cold corpse. Wildfire could ignite a wight, but a wight wouldn't run around in pain like a living man, spreading the fire; instead, they would huddle where they didn't obstruct the army and wait to die. This greatly weakened the fire's effect.
But using Dragonglass + Fire Arrow solved this!
The fire-attribute magic inherent in obsidian killed the wight instantly, preventing them from moving with the flames. The burning wight fallen in place became a combustible obstacle. If shot accurately enough to form a line, they would leave the enemy with nowhere to bypass. Even with the wildfire's potency weakened by the weather and snow, this created a barrier that disrupted the wights' formation and forced them to cluster. Then, throwing a wildfire jar would have a devastating reaping effect!
Under the loud direction of the veteran captain—who was said to have killed an Other and saved the current Lord Commander's life—the soldiers suppressed their urge to flee and obeyed. They each opened a jar of wildfire beside them and began using the most primitive method to add flame to their weapons. An ordinary dragonglass arrow, dipped in wildfire and touched to a torch, instantly became a Wildfire-Dragonglass Arrow glowing with eerie green light. Because wildfire has an extremely low ignition point, soldiers didn't have to wait for the arrowheads to heat up; they could shoot immediately without fear of the flame extinguishing mid-air. They only had to be careful not to shake sparks onto themselves—it was infinitely more effective than standard oil-and-cloth fire arrows!
The wight tide surged up another few meters. The slope of the gorge became so steep they could no longer walk and had to crawl. The distance was close enough for the torchlight to reveal their features—rarely was it a normal dead man. Most wights were withered and dry like thousand-year-old demons emerging from a tomb, with few having intact clothing or skin. Through the rents in their bodies, one could even see the reflection of the corpse oil that drove their movements... If one occasionally saw a fresher, more normal-looking wight, it was even more terrifying. Normal meant they were recently killed before being turned; you could see the clothes they wore, their faces, and their fatal wounds, leading one to involuntarily imagine who they were in life. A Night's Watch brother or a wildling? How did they die? How long had they been a wight? Did they have families? Would I look like that after I die?
Even though they were sweating from the exertion, such thoughts combined with empathy made them tremble with fear.
"Stop being such pussies! If we don't run into an Other tonight, we should thank every god in the sky. If we do, you should be happy—I'll lead you to become 'Other-Slayers' too! After this, girls everywhere will be throwing themselves at you, and when you're old, you can tell your grandkids about killing White Walkers, if you have any! Stop shaking and shoot the bastards!"
Inspired by their loud-mouthed commander, the soldiers found the courage to keep firing. The enemy was indeed closer, but that at least meant the targets were easier to aim at. Constant flaming arrows flew like meteors in the night, and after a concentrated effort, a thin but functional wall of fire finally took shape just ten meters away from the defensive path. The scorched and ignited wights formed a thick oil-cloth blanket that insulated the flames from the snow and frozen earth, gradually baking and drying the ground, creating a more favorable environment for the wildfire and corpse oil to burn. Eventually, it formed an impassable wall of fire.
The scene was white-hot; the warmth could be felt even ten meters away, and the edges of the defensive path seemed to soften under the heat. The area looked like a massive crematorium, with a foul gray mist rising above the wight pile, drifting upward even against the thickening snow.
The soldiers let out a ragged cheer, but the strange grease on the wights alone couldn't sustain such a blaze; they had to keep throwing oil and wildfire to maintain it. Despite their best efforts to conserve, the supply dwindled. In ten minutes... the wildfire would be gone. According to the protocol, the reserves from Westwatch should have arrived or at least passed by with supplies and reinforcements by now. But looking toward the west at the harbor, which was also ablaze, Gared knew no help was coming. The only way out was to finish the supplies and retreat as a unit.
"Don't drop your bows when we move. Every man take a quiver of arrows. Line up; we might still have to fight on the way back!"
Gared whistled as he began organizing the retreat. He wasn't panicked—having escaped an Other and participated in several missions to capture wights unharmed, no one in the Night's Watch was better at getting away from the dead than him. But as he packed his things and prepared to call his boys to move, he looked up and saw a mass of blue light crowding the mountain path to the west.
"Dammit! The west has fallen. Brothers, change of plans—we retreat east! You boy, stop shooting! Are you addicted? Let's go, let's go!"
Throwing the last half-jar of wildfire, the entire squad set off on their tactical retreat, unscathed and high-spirited under their legendary captain. But what Gared hadn't considered was that the enemy launched an all-out assault because there would always be weak points. His flash of inspiration to save wildfire had helped their section hold out longer than expected without reinforcements. These green recruits, encouraged by his bravery, had set a record of killing nearly a thousand wights with only thirty men and no support. This heroic feat ensured their names would be remembered in the history of the Night's Watch, but it also led them into a trap. The mountain paths leading east toward Gorgeview and west toward Westwatch had both been overrun by wights after other squads had hastily thrown their wildfire and abandoned their posts. They were an island in a vast ocean, a bright lamp in the darkness, destined to be swallowed by death.
Four years ago, Gared had intended to lead Egger away from the Great Gorge to escape south. Facing the tide of wights surging from all directions this time, would his talent for running away still serve him?
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