Chapter 435: The Achilles' Heel
Amidst the swirling, heavy snowfall, two small sparks of fire flashed in the darkness a thousand feet away. As the roar of the explosions reached the ears of the crowd on the wall a second later, the tide of corpses—which had suddenly begun surging toward the sea of fire—collapsed in great swaths like harvested leeks. Ultimately, not a single one reached the base of the wall to launch an attack.
Amidst the tsunami-like cheers, for a brief moment, Egger felt just like the common soldiers—believing that this war, though short in duration yet unprecedented in its brutality and terror, was finally over.
...
But Melisandre's low, solemn voice quickly woke him from the dream. "The Night King is dead, but the other White Walkers have not vanished. Another aura, only slightly weaker, appeared out of thin air amidst a violent surge of energy and quickly hid itself. His power may have been absorbed by another Other! Use the dragonglass bombs now—perhaps we can strike while they are vulnerable and throttle this new threat in its infancy!"
The order was immediately executed by the defenders. However, amidst the thundering explosions, no further miracles occurred. As the remnants of the sea of corpses, now shrunk by more than half, receded into the darkness like a low tide, Egger even entertained the fleeting thought of unblocking the gates and sallying out... Fortunately, the ongoing melee within the walls soon brought him back to his senses: it wasn't over yet.
Setting aside his reckless thoughts of heroism, Egger ordered half the wall guard to remain on high alert and extinguish fires, while the other half regrouped and rushed into the town—to hunt down the enemies that had already breached the perimeter.
With the officer corps built upon the framework of the Night's Watch Logistics and Security Force, a comprehensive set of protocols, and the grim determination of men with their backs to the wall, the Gift's army—born of wildlings and mountain clans—performed far beyond their usual level. Yet, amidst the chaos, mistakes still occurred. While burning buildings to retreat and fight was a tactical arrangement, many units used it as an excuse to set fires and fall back at the mere sight of a ghost. They utilized the dense architecture and spatial depth of Queenscrown's outer residential area to trade space for casualties. While soldier fatalities did indeed decrease slightly, the consequence was that the outer town suffered massive, largely meaningless destruction from its own defenders—destruction that even reached women and children who hadn't been evacuated in time.
The former capital of the Gift was now wreathed in roaring flames, looking as ravaged as if it had been plowed by a bomber aircraft using napalm. Under such chaos, the White Walker hunting parties, led by elite marksmen carrying dragonsteel arrows, found movement and combat difficult... In the end, of the eight White Walkers that had entered Queenscrown, only three were successfully slain. The remaining five used the confusion to cross through the infernos and break out, scaling the outer wall and escaping that terrifying death trap under the helpless gaze of defenders who lacked dragonsteel and could do nothing to stop them.
A great victory, yet a landscape of ruins.
The wights and White Walkers were either dead or gone, leaving the place clean of monsters but a total mess for the humans.
According to preliminary post-war statistics, the Queenscrown garrison suffered over seven hundred casualties, including more than ten giants. Civilian deaths and disappearances exceeded a thousand, with the number of people killed by fires set by their own side nearly equaling those slain by the invading wights and Others. Such a tragic irony felt sickening. Fortunately, the industrial zone, separated by a distance from the residential area, suffered little damage. Within the heavily protected inner keep, no significant casualties occurred among the key personnel on the list—a rare bit of good news in this bloody conflict.
Extinguishing fires, hunting down stray wights trapped within the walls, and clearing the scorched battlefield took the surviving soldiers and citizens the rest of the night. It wasn't until the sun of the third day since the arrival of the White Walkers once again illuminated the cloud-choked sky that the garrison was ordered to carefully dismantle the gate blockades. They cautiously began the task of burning the tens of thousands of wights—or rather, corpses—scattered across the hills outside the walls.
Of course, it wasn't as if there were no incidents that left Egger with a cold sweat. Arya Stark, having learned a bit of swordsmanship and thinking herself quite formidable, had been clamoring to help kill White Walkers before the battle. After he had flatly and sternly refused her, locking her in the inner keep, she had actually come up with a devious plan of her own. Last night, amidst the constant flow of messengers and deployments in the keep—when everyone was at the gates or on the walls watching the tide of battle and no one could spare a moment for her—she had quietly slipped away to release a temporarily unguarded Asha Greyjoy. She broke Asha's shackles, and the two ladies, one large and one small, disguised themselves and blended into a squad of soldiers sent out to join the fight, hoping to find their own way to the battlements.
They got their wish and encountered wights that had broken into the city. After a harrowing but ultimately non-fatal skirmish, it wasn't until the commanding officer led the survivors back to the keep that he discovered two highborn ladies had been hiding in his ranks.
Luckily, the plan to swallow dragonglass had worked, stripping the Others of the capital they needed to cause havoc in the outer town and flip the scales of victory. Otherwise, while Asha's death would have been her own fault, if anything had happened to Arya Stark in a battle Queenscrown actually won, Egger truly wouldn't have known how to explain it to the Warden of the North.
As he was standing there with a grim face, berating the reckless child, a soldier reporting on the reconnaissance outside the city pushed open the door.
"Lord Commander, the rangers have completed the first round of scouting and estimation. Based on the marching tracks in the snow, the enemy's remaining strength is between ten and twenty thousand. They are currently heading south along the Kingsroad, at least ten miles away!"
"What!" Egger struggled to suppress his shock. "Heading south along the Kingsroad?"
"Ha!" Arya, who had been standing there obediently taking her scolding, suddenly brightened up. "You won't let me steal the Night's Watch's work, but now the White Walkers are heading for the North! You can't stop me from—protecting my own home!"
"Shut up!" Egger glared at the girl and shouted to the guards at the door. "Take her away. Tell those friends from Winterfell—they worked hard to defend Queenscrown last night, so I'll pretend the unpleasantness never happened. Tell them if they can't keep an eye on their lady, I'll have to lodge a formal complaint with their Lord!"
Arya was dragged out of the room, shouting. Egger pulled his focus back and seriously questioned the messenger again: "Is it certain the dead are heading south along the Kingsroad?"
"The rangers followed the tracks south for several miles and saw no sign of them turning back or changing direction. That's why I was sent back first to report."
...
Dammit. This was a nightmare.
After such a crushing defeat where even their leader was slain, how did the White Walkers still have the courage to continue south?
According to common sense: when a dominant party invades enemy territory and receives a head-on blow that reverses the balance of power, they should, by all rights, retreat to their home turf to catch their breath and plan for the future... For the White Walkers, home turf was simply North of the Wall. If they had a plan to retreat—whether through the Great Gorge or by circling the frozen Seal Bay—the Night's Watch would have absolutely stepped aside, watching them leave without the slightest intent to interfere.
It wasn't that Egger wanted to let the tiger return to the mountain; it was the reality that the Night's Watch had exhausted nearly all their courage and war materiel in this battle. They had barely won through walls and sheer luck; they possessed absolutely no strength to block an enemy's retreat in a pitched field battle. Thinking optimistically with a bit of spiritual victory, once an enemy that had suffered such heavy losses returned to the Lands of Always Winter, no matter how they recovered, they wouldn't be able to return in the short term. Even if they did, the threat to the Watch would be greatly diminished. They would no longer be a mortal threat, but rather a bandit force Egger could use to maintain his own importance. He could use the excuse that Others have not been completely eliminated to continue demanding supplies, expanding his forces, and training day and night—accumulating chips for the highest stakes of the Game of Thrones.
But the remaining White Walkers, perhaps possessing a sort of no face to see the elders back home pride, actually continued forward in such a hopeless situation, plunging deeper into human territory like reckless fools...
The terrifying thing was that the wight army had no supply lines to be cut, nor did they fear being surrounded. Thus, they were immune to the usual disadvantages of an isolated force deep in enemy territory. By sheer accident, they had struck Egger—and the entire human side—right in their Achilles' heel!
The Night's Watch had indeed provided some dragonglass weapons to the Northern lords and taught them how to use them, as a gesture of gratitude for their long-standing support. But those symbolic gifts were more like samples and good luck charms than actual war materiel—barely enough to arm a castle's guard, but not even enough to give every resident a single bead to swallow if melted down. Moreover, the protocols designed by the Night's Watch command didn't extend to the Northern nobles sworn to House Stark.
The Northmen were simply not prepared to deal with White Walkers. If they fought in a panic, they would be walking into a trap, becoming a perfect source of reinforcements for the wight army. If the enemy were allowed to recover their strength from the populace, how much war materiel and how many soldiers would the Watch have left to fight one final battle after another?
"Send ravens to the Northern houses. Inform every noble of our combat process and the keys to our victory. Tell them to prepare fire-oil and pitch, and emphasize—they must hold their castles and wait for relief!" The master of the rookery happened to be in the room, and Egger immediately issued his orders. "The Wall has not fallen. The enemy has used magic repeatedly; their mana must be exhausted. As long as they don't sally out to die and let the army of the dead replenish their numbers, we can wait for the Queen to return with her dragons. Once she joins us, we will march south to break the sieges and save the day. It will be a sure thing!"
"My lord, a raven came from Winterfell yesterday afternoon. You were busy with the city defenses and might not have seen it—House Stark has issued a general mobilization order for the entire North. The armies of the various houses are likely already assembled and on the march toward the Wall."
What? Egger's mouth hung open as he remembered—he had seen the letter, he just hadn't opened it. Yesterday, when the wight army appeared outside Queenscrown in a vast, grand host to establish their siege, the atmosphere was suffocating. In a situation where his own survival was in doubt, how could he have cared about the North's movements?
The northern section of the Kingsroad, renovated with great effort, provided massive logistical convenience to both friend and foe. Now, a human army without wildfire, without bombs, and without dragonsteel—armed only with a small amount of dragonglass—was marching north, destined to meet the defeated, southward-bound remnant of the wight army head-on... Should the Gift sit by and watch the enemy annihilate the coalition and turn the Northern lords into wights? Or should Egger grit his teeth and risk a sortie while his own strength was diminished, attempting to finish the job in one final stroke?
Quickly, Egger realized he had no choice at all: a pursuit, while dangerous, still offered a chance of victory... But if he allowed the enemy to ravage the North, slaughtering tens or hundreds of thousands of wights and then turning back, then everyone would be doomed beyond hope!
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