Chapter 440: Hunting the Dead (Part II)
Those strange, spectral creatures could play tricks and weave plots?
Daenerys raised an eyebrow slightly, feeling that Egger was perhaps being a bit paranoid.
However, the Lord Commander was leading his own army in his own war. She had only become the monarch to whom he owed fealty two days ago and had yet to fulfill her part of the bargain. If she swooped in immediately and used her dragons to snatch the glory of destroying the White Walkers, it might indeed be somewhat improper.
Thinking this over, she shrugged and offered no objection. "Where do you see something wrong?"
"I don't just see it; I calculated it. We are in the army, eating and marching with the soldiers, so we know our own condition and pursuit speed perfectly," Egger said, pointing his finger at the line on the map connecting the western Wall to Queenscrown, the capital of the Gift. "And the average transit speed of the wight army can be roughly deduced from the fact that they covered the distance from Stoney Sept to Queenscrown in a single day. Factoring in that the enemy started a dozen hours ahead of us and travels all day without rest, it becomes..."
It was a classic pursuit problem that even a primary school student could solve. However, since this world had neither primary schools nor the established terminology for pursuit problems, Egger struggled for the right words before settling on: "It becomes a simple arithmetic problem."
Under Daenerys's questioning gaze, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper and scribbled a rough calculation, explaining his conclusion. "Regrettably, whether I rely on intuition or mental math—even substituting the highest or lowest estimates for the wights' speed—the result is the same: we shouldn't have been able to catch the enemy before reaching the Long Lake."
"But we have caught them now."
The Queen enjoyed watching the expression of a man sketching on maps and paper, but she was more curious to see how Egger intended to explain the discrepancy between reality and his judgment.
"Indeed. Either I miscalculated, or something went wrong that caused reality and math to diverge." Egger sighed and handed the draft to a few literate guards. "Pass this around and see if I was careless... though it's unlikely. It's not arrogance; the model is simply too basic to get wrong easily. If it wasn't a miscalculation, then either Last Hearth was better prepared than the Night's Watch forts and the Others wasted a dozen hours in a stubborn siege—which is unlikely—or there is one final reason: the enemy's speed is much slower than my original lower-bound estimate."
"That is good news. Why should we stop?"
"Because being 'much slower' falls into two categories: either they truly cannot move faster, or they are intentionally slowing down—perhaps even stopping to wait for us. Based on what we know, we can't distinguish between the two yet." Egger narrowed his eyes and answered in a deep voice. "It is dark, and the troops haven't finished eating. If we force a pursuit now, we might find ourselves fighting a brutal battle in the dark on an empty stomach. Rather than risk it, we should suppress our impatience, camp here, and wait the night. By tomorrow, we will know the truth."
He took the paper back from the guards, who shook their heads indicating the math was sound, and delivered his final verdict. "If the enemy is truly slower than my most conservative estimate, we leave at dawn and will surely catch them by noon. Conversely, if we only catch them near nightfall again tomorrow, it proves my suspicion: they aren't slow, they are keeping us at arm's length to lure Your Majesty into flying ahead of the main force and straight into a trap!"
"Lord Egger is truly a cautious statesman; this is a prudent test and confirmation." Moqorro, who had caught up with the main force on horseback from the Nightfort, smiled at Daenerys. "Your Majesty, if the Lord Commander is indeed being over-cautious, the only consequence of waiting tonight is that the war ends one day later. But if he is right and there is a trap, a reckless sortie could lead you and your three dragons into a great crisis. You are a Queen; you should not gamble with your life."
Daenerys listened carefully to Egger and Moqorro, understood their reasoning, and nodded in agreement. At that moment, the scout who was still waiting for orders couldn't help but ask, "Then... my Lord, what should be done about Last Hearth?"
"Nothing needs to be done." Bran Stark, who had been silent in his wheelchair for a long while, opened his eyes, having finished his close-range scouting through the eyes of a crow. "The corpses left inside and outside the Umber castle are real. The Others likely have no surplus power to convert wights, which is why they abandoned so many bodies. Write to Queenscrown and have the remaining personnel send logistics to clean up the aftermath. No extra attention is required."
"They have no surplus mana to convert wights?" Egger's brow shot up. He nearly blurted out a question asking if that also meant they couldn't convert an undead dragon, but he hesitated. Ultimately unwilling to take the risk, he swallowed his words.
"Waiting another night is fine, but there is one more question," Daenerys spoke again. "It would be best if we catch up and end this mess tomorrow, but what if it's proven they are deliberately slowing down to lure me? How do we solve it then? We can't just have three dragons follow behind soldiers all the way into the southern heart of the North!"
"The enemy is not fleeing north to the Lands of Always Winter; they are heading into the heart of the North. As long as we stay on their heels, someone will eventually check their progress and force them to slow down." There were armies currently heading north that could play this role. Egger had originally feared the enemy would expand their ranks into a massive sea of death as they had at the start of the war, but with that worry lifted, he felt much lighter. "Bran, where is the Northern coalition led by your brother right now? Can you use the crows to pinpoint their location and contact them? We need the two armies to coordinate, ideally to catch the Others in a pincer movement from the north and south."
Robb Stark had initiated a total mobilization of the North immediately after receiving the alarm from the Wall.
Considering the battlefield was in the Gift while Winterfell sat in the center of the North, he chose a village near the Kingsroad west of Last Hearth as the muster point to avoid wasting the time of lords whose lands lay further north.
Thanks to it being winter, most residents were gathered in winter towns. Furthermore, the North had been in a state of alert due to the long war with the Iron Islands. Consequently, the Northern houses raised their armies with remarkable speed. The Winterfell forces set out the day after the alarm—just as the wights were moving from Stoney Sept toward Queenscrown. They marched north at a steady, urgent pace, joining with the nearby forces of Houses Cerwyn, Glover, and Bolton along the way—totaling over six thousand men. After several days of marching, they were nearing the Long Lake, less than two days from Last Hearth.
However, on this morning, as the Warden of the North prepared to resume the march after a night on the Kingsroad west of the lake, he encountered a strange occurrence.
A crow suddenly dived from the sky and landed on his shoulder while he was eating breakfast. It didn't flee when he reached for it. Upon inspection, a scroll was tied to its leg. It contained urgent intelligence: Last Hearth had fallen, and the Others were leading an army south. It requested the Northern army to halt and build a fortified camp to intercept the enemy.
...
Trained messenger ravens could remember several locations; that was not unusual. But even the smartest bird could only fly between fixed rookeries; they couldn't deliver mail to a moving target, let alone pinpoint the commander-in-chief himself. After reading the startling news, Robb immediately halted the army's preparations and announced the contents to the other nobles dining with him.
"How did this crow find you so accurately, my Lord?" The gathered nobles stared with suspicion and wariness at the large black bird, which had returned to Robb's shoulder after being released. The head of House Cerwyn was the first to speak. "I've never heard of a crow having the knack for tracking people. Could it be a spy sent by the enemy using sorcery to sow discord and delay us, ensuring we never reach the Wall to help?"
The messenger crow let out a loud caw, as if protesting the accusation.
"The Night's Watch took in the wildlings from beyond the Wall. I've heard some of them possess the ability to control animals, especially birds," Lord Glover asked. "Who wrote the letter? Is there a signature or a seal?"
"The signature is my brother Bran's, and it bears the official seal of the Night's Watch. It doesn't look like a forgery." Robb frowned—truth be told, he had actually forgotten what Bran's handwriting looked like. "Perhaps my brother learned some magical way of sending messages while he was beyond the Wall. My Lords, what do you think? How should we respond to this news?"
"Assuming the news is true, what is the Night's Watch doing?" another noble asked angrily. "Didn't they say the Others entered the Gift through the Great Gorge? How far is Last Hearth from the Gorge? How could it fall in less than four days? That Egger West talks a big game about his abilities, but now that the real fighting has started, he couldn't even hold the enemy back for a moment?!"
The heads of the houses and their heirs began talking at once, and what was supposed to be a calm breakfast meeting instantly turned into a chaotic mess.
"My Lords, please, quiet!" Roose Bolton said with a cough. "The Others lead the dead; we cannot judge their marching speed by the standards of the living. If they can march day and night at the speed we march north, it's not impossible for them to reach Winterfell in three or four days. Regardless, the Night's Watch sounded the alarm immediately and is now hot on the enemy's heels at Last Hearth. They aren't being useless; it's better than 'Sleepy Jack' ninety years ago, who didn't even notice the enemy crossing the border." The Lord of the Dreadfort didn't speak loudly, but his voice always possessed a peculiar piercing quality. "The question we must decide is: does this letter truly come from the Night's Watch, or is it, as Lord Cerwyn suggests, the sorcery of the Others?"
Roose Bolton's words reminded everyone, and so a new round of discussion began.
"Lock the crow up first so it doesn't fly away! Poke it with dragonglass; if it's a spell of the Others, it will surely die instantly!"
"Nonsense, what crow doesn't die if you poke it with dragonglass?" a more sober dissenter argued. "I say, even if it is true, so what? Since when does the Northern army take orders from the Night's Watch? We have dragonglass weapons to deal with the Others, and we brought fire-oil and pitch. What is there to fear? Every day we delay here, the enemy invades deeper into the North. To sit by and watch the enemy invade one's own lands is the height of incompetence!"
"Bollocks! We have all seen what wights look like. To watch an invasion is incompetence, but to lead these few thousand men into a suicidal charge, leaving hundreds of thousands of Northmen to be slaughtered by the Others—is that glory and courage? If the letter is true, the only way to avoid total annihilation is to camp here, build fences and barricades for defense, wait for the Hornwood and Tallhart forces to catch up, and then perform a pincer attack on the Others with the Night's Watch. This isn't 'following Watch orders'; it is the only way forward. We should do it even if the letter hadn't told us to!"
...
While the rowdy debate seemed to lack any positive direction, a commander can gradually absorb opinions from all sides through the process of overhearing, filling in the blind spots of his own thinking. Soon, Robb had formulated and refined his plan.
"Enough!" The young Warden of the North raised his hand to terminate the escalating discussion, settling the matter with finality. "We camp here. Each house will assign men and tools to fell trees in the surrounding forests. We will build temporary spiked barricades and walls and prepare for battle. Additionally, send a few of the best riders with enough spare horses to scout north. Whether they find signs of the enemy or make it all the way to Last Hearth, they are to return immediately and report what they have seen!"
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