Chapter 428: The Chess Match
The situation was shifting with a velocity that completely eluded Egger's expectations.
He had just finished whispering in Daenerys's ear to sever any possibility of her accepting the Reach's defection, and then respectfully watched her ride off on her dragon. It was supposed to be just another peaceful, routine day in the Gift. But as he walked back from the Dragon Landing Field to the inner keep of Queenscrown, Melisandre hurried toward him before he could even step through the door, demandingly asking where the Queen had gone. After he answered honestly, the priestess—who usually maintained an air of unshakeable calm—suffered a total change in expression. She shrieked a few accusations at him and, without explaining why, fled back to her chambers in a panic.
Egger initially thought the charlatan had finally had her brain fried by magic, but it turned out the Priests of R'hllor don't have nervous breakdowns for no reason. Just after dinner, as darkness fell, the highest-level emergency signals arrived from Eastwatch and the Great Gorge in quick succession. This final war, which the entire Gift had awaited for over ten months, erupted abruptly less than five hours after the Queen took flight. Factoring in the time needed for the enemy to mobilize, it was almost certain: the enemy had begun their move the very moment Daenerys departed.
The Gift Defense Protocol was activated instantly. The industrial zone ground to a halt as workshops were evacuated, and key personnel on the list were moved into the inner keep. The ordinary residents of the Gift who had moved outside the walls—including the giants—dragged their belongings through the gates under the orderly direction of the garrison, settling into their designated sectors within the walls.
The plan contained no provision for meeting the enemy in the open field. Once the evacuation was complete and the gates slammed shut, every man and woman capable of holding a weapon was armed with dragonglass. All that remained was a long, agonizing wait, accompanied by prayers that the front lines at the Wall would hold the enemy at bay—or that the walls of Queenscrown were high and sturdy enough.
Unlike the ordinary residents who could only wait and leave their fates to the gods, the leadership still had to find ways to understand the situation and react. Though the Great War had begun, the Night King had not—or perhaps chose not to waste the energy to—sever the enemy's communication lines. Massive amounts of information from the front continued to flow to the Lord Commander's desk via raven. The command center at the core of the inner keep was a hive of activity, with people coming and going in a heated rush.
The situation at Eastwatch required little debate. The freezing of the Bay of Seals had been one of the primary contingencies considered in the protocol. Aside from a violent ice storm that felt like the gods sneezing, which caught everyone off guard, everything else unfolded as envisioned.
But at the Great Gorge... specifically in the direction of Ice Bay, an unforeseen variable had emerged.
"Iceway Port was ambushed by the Iron Fleet. Due to initial command errors, the port was briefly overrun and the fortress breached. We have over two hundred casualties, and internal facilities and supplies have suffered heavy losses. The Northern Fleet has lost one warship, another is heavily damaged, and only one remains without severe damage."
"What? The Iron Fleet? Why the hell would they strike Iceway Port at the exact same time the Others are attacking?"
"They say Euron is a madman. Is it possible he's made a deal with the Night King to eliminate the Night's Watch and destroy the world of men from within, so he can rule the survivors?"
"Stop overthinking. If the Night King had the desire or capacity to negotiate with humans, wouldn't it be easier to come to our Lord Commander with an offer? Why go thousands of miles to find a pirate ally on a tiny, broken island?"
The officials in the room broke into a cacophony of arguments, while Egger meticulously reread the post-battle report from Iceway Port.
The Ironborn had been at odds with the North for two years. It was perfectly logical for Euron to discover the secret Northern naval port hidden in Ice Bay and lead the Iron Fleet there for a show of force. But for him to strike on the same day—the same hour—as the Night King's general offensive? If someone called that a coincidence, would anyone believe it?
He certainly didn't.
Once, Egger might have reluctantly accepted he was simply unlucky after some internal conflict. But now, knowing for a fact that deities existed in this world, he immediately connected it to something that few would believe if spoken aloud.
He had heard from Melisandre that the Drowned God was a servant of the Great Other. He had previously dismissed this as the usual rhetoric of religious fanatics inflating their own god while belittling others, but now it seemed to carry weight.
The role Euron played in this final war was likely a mirror of Egger's own: Egger was a pawn of the Lord of Light, and Euron was a pawn of the Cold God!
The Ironborn certainly wouldn't consciously act as human-traitors to help their natural enemies at the climax of the war—they likely didn't even know or believe in the existence of Others and the army of the dead. But the Great Other only needed to plant the subconscious thought in Euron's mind that tonight is an auspicious day for an attack to effortlessly turn a group of living humans into his own assistants. At the critical moment when the Night King led his army across the gorge, he had used humans to fight humans, providing a perfect flanking assist for the main force!
The ultimate harvest of this brilliant move was that Iceway Port, besieged by the Ironborn, could not send reinforcements or supplies to the nearby front. The western section of the Great Gorge collapsed in less than half an hour, ensuring that the entire gorge defense line failed to achieve the efficacy envisioned by its builder—Egger.
However, there was no point in dwelling on the cause of the coincidence or wallowing in self-pity. What mattered now was deciding how the Night's Watch should respond based on the next moves of the two enemy forces.
He tapped the table, cutting off the discussions in the room. "Let's not continue this meaningless topic. Keep checking the raven cages and all letters. Get me the casualty data from the gorge line and report the enemy movements observed from the Wall!"
...
Unlike the long-distance ravens used for business with the South, the short-range ravens between Queenscrown and the various outposts along the Wall had been trained to fly back and forth day and night. Consequently, communication was constant, occurring every hour or two. Between the number of outposts and the number of ravens, a steady stream of personnel carried messages from the cages to the command center. Egger, who had intended to find time to inspect the outer wall defenses, ended up stuck in the war room all night—he didn't mind, but he felt for the clever birds flying back and forth through the darkness.
After the Night King's army successfully crossed the gorge and took Westwatch-by-the-Bridge, they delayed their assault on the Wall, leading to brief concerns that they might head south directly toward Queenscrown... or even bypass the Watch's strongholds and head straight for the North. Fortunately, this worst-case scenario did not materialize. When the ravens destined for the Shadow Tower began returning to their nests after circling once, refusing to leave again, the command center determined that the attack on the Shadow Tower had begun.
This was good news. At the very least, it proved that what the Greenseer Bran had said about the magic within the Wall was true: the Others could not simply bypass the Wall and head south, which would have rendered Egger's painstaking defense of the Gift a hollow gesture.
However, though the attack was late in coming, it ended with alarming speed. In just over an hour, the Shadow Tower—the sturdiest fortress on the western end of the Wall, which Egger had hoped would stall the enemy for a night—had become a sea of fire. Qhorin Halfhand, tasked with destroying the stairs, used the ravens at Sentinel Stand to report the details of the battle and why the fortress fell so quickly.
This was the first complete military report of human defenders engaging the army of the dead led by Others. Its significance was beyond measure. Just as Egger and his staff were gravely analyzing the new capabilities and tactics displayed by the enemy, news of Eastwatch's unexpected victory was brought into the room.
"Well, this is interesting. The defenses at the Shadow Tower should have been at least as strong as Eastwatch, if not stronger. Why is the gap in performance so vast?"
"Exquisite. Our forces fought a loss and a win at two different locations. By analyzing and comparing the two, we can certainly extract intelligence useful for the battles ahead!"
This sentiment struck a chord with Egger. With his nod and command, everyone in the room—the entire Night's Watch brain trust—put aside their current tasks to gather around and prioritize summarizing the useful information from these two disparate reports.
...
First was the enemy's strength. Since Eastwatch was a victory, the numbers could be counted with more precision: the wight army crossing the sea was likely between ten and twenty thousand, led by two Others. The strength of the main force crossing the gorge could only be estimated; Qhorin Halfhand's personal judgment was over fifty thousand. Even with the Watch having already accepted over thirty thousand wildlings, for the enemy to still have such numbers was chilling.
Next were the differences in the enemy's behavior compared to previous knowledge. The wights showed clear signs of being commanded; they no longer simply swarmed the enemy but could execute simple tactics like encirclement, feints to draw attention, focused attacks on weak gates, and direct thrusts toward vital objectives within a fortress. Furthermore, the Others displayed two previously unseen abilities: the capacity to extinguish wildfire and an apparent immunity to certain dragonglass weapons.
While these changes rendered some of the defense protocols outdated, they weren't entirely unexpected. They reinforced the existing consensus that the Others possessed high intelligence. Wildfire and dragonglass were weapons the Watch had used in previous skirmishes; it was only natural for the enemy to prepare countermeasures.
Finally, they summarized why Eastwatch had won. It was now past midnight, technically the next day... but only now did everyone, Egger included, remember that a fleet from Dragonstone loyal to the Queen had arrived at Eastwatch the previous day with a book-retrieval team. No one had expected that a mere few dozen people would play such a massive role, turning the tide for the Watch at the start of the Great War.
After reconstructing the hunt for the Others at Eastwatch word for word from the report, Egger quickly realized he had made a minor but deadly error.
Because he had personally engaged and killed an Other at close range, he had subconsciously assumed everyone knew what they looked like and could find them. But the reality was that most people had only seen them from a distance or heard descriptions. When these magical creatures hid within the sea of wights instead of offering themselves up to be killed, the humans possessed divine weapons but could find no targets!
Mortals without magic required the guidance of extraordinary beings like Moqorro, Melisandre, or the Greenseer Bran to identify key enemies and deliver focused attacks. In the entire Gift, only those three possessed this ability; there wasn't even a fourth.
"Send word to all castles along the Wall. Inform them of these developments and order all commanders to seal their gates tonight and develop new contingency plans for when wildfire fails," Egger commanded, his mind whirring as he utilized the new information to craft a tactical response. "Furthermore, in polite terms, thank Mr. Moqorro for his contribution to the Watch and request that he—immediately—proceed to the Nightfort to assist in defending the most critical magical core of the Wall."
(The human side currently has three extraordinary beings in the Gift. Queenscrown has two, while the Nightfort, the magical heart of the Wall, has none! Queenscrown holds nearly half the civilians in the Gift and must be defended. The only option is to ask Moqorro to make the arduous journey to the Nightfort to fill that void.)
"Yes, my lord!"
"Yam, go organize men immediately. Tear down the less essential buildings in the industrial zone and use the materials to seal our gates. They must be reinforced until they are sturdier than the walls themselves!"
(If the enemy uses heavy siege weapons on the weak points of the wall, the best response is to make those weak points disappear.)
"Understood!"
"Humphrey, find Master Mott and Lady Melisandre. Reopen a single forge in the industrial zone and ask them to recast some of the dragonsteel arrowheads into fragments. Use them to fill two bombs—for the assassination of the Night King!"
(Egger had originally intended to use dragonglass bombs as a 'gift' for the Others, but plans had changed. The enemy had mastered a way to counter dragonglass weapons, which by extension made them immune to dragonglass bombs. While dragonsteel arrows were still effective, there was no guarantee the Night King wouldn't find a counter for those as well. The safest path was to improvise a new weapon. Perhaps, since they looked identical to dragonglass bombs, these 'dragonsteel bombs' would find it even easier to achieve a miracle.)
"Understood, I'll see to it immediately."
"As for the rest of you, those who need to process reports stay here. Anyone else, help me draft a new chapter for the defense protocol—theme: How to rapidly mobilize reserves to seal a breach when wildfire fails at Queenscrown. I'll join you to brainstorm in a moment," Egger finished, rising and heading for the door. "As for me, I'm going to have a chat with young Bran Stark to see what else... what new, useful information he can provide."
(A Greenseer is far more than just a set of eyes. With the enemy at the gate, it's time to squeeze every bit of value and talent out of that boy.)
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