Chapter 442: The Bloody Battle of Long Lake (Part I)
Beneath a pitch-black sky devoid of stars or moon, the temporary camp of the Northern army was ablaze with torchlight. Soldiers scrambled in every direction, their flickering shadows dancing against the snow.
The scouting cavalry that had raced north and the eerie ravens that continuously delivered precise messages into Robb's hands brought identical intelligence: the wight army had reached a point ten miles north of the main road before dusk. At their current pace, they would reach the hastily constructed defensive lines before midnight.
This Northern army was fortunate; they were about to face an enemy whose numbers had been whittled down to a tenth of their peak strength and whose leading White Walkers were nearly drained of mana—an enemy at the end of its tether. Yet, they were also about to become the first human force in this war to engage the wights on level ground without wildfire, explosives, dragonsteel weapons, or the protection of formidable fortifications.
In the afternoon, House Tallhart's forces had arrived from the rear to join the host, bringing the North's total strength to seven thousand. Their current hand consisted of fragile walls and barricades built over the course of a day using fresh timber and piled snow, supplemented by a meager supply of dragonglass and incendiaries like fire-oil and pitch.
The enemy, meanwhile, was exactly as the scouts had described: A dense, massive black tide.
Torches and oil lamps brought with the baggage train were lit without reservation, illuminating the entire defensive line, yet the light failed to penetrate far into the darkness beyond the camp through the swirling snow. Clutching bows and spears, the soldiers stood behind the low wooden walls facing north, quietly awaiting the final clash.
The various lords had assembled their men and marched north the moment orders arrived; these were veterans of a hundred battles who had spent the last two years fighting the Lannisters in the West, the remnants of Renly Baratheon's party, the Reach, the Golden Company, and most recently, the Ironborn. But in this moment, cloaked in the freezing dark, the stories told by elders years ago—tales that made children scream and gave grown boys nightmares—loomed before them: White Walkers in the woods, cold shadows, and giant spiders hunting the warm-blooded.
Fear buried deep within their souls surged to the surface. No matter how brave or seasoned a warrior was, they could not help but shiver from the combination of tension and the biting cold.
...
The messenger ravens were the first to grow restless. They flapped their wings and shrieked in a wild frenzy, eventually beginning to batter themselves against their cages as if desperate to break free and fly away. The keepers tried to soothe them with scraps of meat and corn, but the birds pecked painfully even through gloves and bars, forcing the men to give up and let them thrash.
Next came the dogs. Most houses had habitually brought war-hounds for tracking or hunting to supplement supplies, with House Bolton's hounds from the Dreadfort being the most numerous. At first, they merely huddled together with tails tucked, whimpering in fear, but they were soon infected by the madness of the ravens. While not yet extreme enough to turn on their masters, they began barking and howling frantically, straining against their leashes to flee south. In the chaos, one handler lost his grip, and several hounds bolted into the night, dragging their chains behind them.
Finally, the men had to tie the beasts to stakes driven deep into the frozen earth to put a tentative end to the confusion. Even then, the animals continued to snarl and wail, the rattling of their chains drawing curses from the nervous soldiers.
The snow fell heavier. The soldiers had to add oil and shield the flames from the falling flakes to keep the braziers and torches alive. Some impatient nobles began to question if the wights had veered into the Wolfswood to bypass the camp. After an agonizing wait of nearly two hours past the projected time, the enemy finally appeared in the sentries' sight.
Lacking the high vantage point of a stone fortress, the approaching sea of wights did not appear as a tide to the soldiers on the low watchtowers; instead, it looked like a thick black line. It seemed to be birthed suddenly from the distant dark horizon, charging through the snow toward them. From the first blast of the warning horn to the moment they were at the gates, only a few short minutes had passed.
Raven cries, dog barks, horse whinnies, and the sharp intakes of breath from the men—all sounds seemed muffled and distant through the heavy snow. But a second later, the booming commands of the officers atop the watchtowers snapped everyone back to reality.
"The enemy is here!" a voice like a great bell roared. "Nock arrows! Light them! Draw!"
Hundreds of arrows were pulled from quivers. Their oil-soaked tips were thrust into fires and nocked to bowstrings.
"Gods... how many are there?"
"Quiet! Hold your ground!" the bell-like voice boomed again. "Steady... wait for my mark... DRAW!" The taut wood of the bows groaned. Bowmen pulled the fletching to their ears, the bright flames at the tips of their arrows blinding them to the world outside. They could only sense the things surging through the snow toward the low wall. Terror and defiance made their arms tremble. "Wait for it!" the commander emphasized. Two seconds after the bows reached full draw, the order finally came: "LOOSE!"
Hundreds of flaming streaks hissed through the air, arching over the wall like falling stars into the dark mass. The impact visibly slowed the enemy for a heartbeat.
"Light again! Draw! LOOSE!"
Another volley hissed into the dark.
"Switch to dragonglass! Infantry to the front, prepare!"
After two volleys of fire arrows, the black tide reached the wooden wall. The archers no longer had time to wait for fire to take hold and began utilizing the limited obsidian weapons provided earlier by the Night's Watch. Some wights stumbled or burst into flames under the barrage, but their sheer numerical advantage meant they disregarded losses. After weathering a volley of dragonglass, the sea of corpses finally slammed into the low barricades of ice and wood, their screeches signaling the true beginning of the assault on the Northern line.
Due to the haste of their arrival, the Northern soldiers had been unable to build high or sturdy walls. They had simply sharpened the ends of freshly felled trees, hammered them into the frozen ground as best they could, and piled snow behind them for support. It was more a palisade than a wall. Beyond this fence, the soldiers—following the Night's Watch's advice—had cleared the snow and laid a narrow kill zone of dismantled wagons, barrels, and tent materials soaked in fire-oil. The flaming arrows soon ignited this, creating a roaring wall of fire that provided the men inside with a small measure of security.
...
Using the combat guidance sent by Egger via raven, Robb Stark had formulated a simple tactic for the battle.
The spiked stakes and low walls created advantageous terrain on the flat Kingsroad, slowing the enemy's momentum. Archers could use this time for the first wave of kills, while the belt of fire would effectively incinerate enemies huddled outside the barricades. Infantry were arrayed behind the walls to harvest any who survived the flames and scaled the fence, while cavalry and reserves patrolled with torches, ready to respond to any breakthroughs.
To a keen observer, the intent was clear: Robb was attempting to replicate the Night's Watch's successful fortress-defense tactics in the open fields of Long Lake.
The logic and tactical arrangement were sound, and the mana-depleted Others did not attempt to extinguish the fires with sorcery as they had at Queenscrown. However, the insurmountable difficulty lay in the materials: a fire belt made of common scrap could not compare in intensity, scale, or duration to the carefully prepared "Sea of Fire" kill zones of the Watch. Similarly, a single-layered wooden palisade could not match the thick, high walls of the Wall's forts, built over months with stone and frozen earth. The limited supply of dragonglass only made matters worse.
A slight deficit here, a slight deficit there... in the heat of battle, these small gaps culminated in a catastrophic difference in overall effectiveness.
And their opponents?
The emotionless wights felt no drop in morale from repeated failures, nor did they fear the bite of spikes or the sear of flames. The density and intensity of the ten thousand remaining wights on the narrow front showed no perceivable difference from a host of a hundred thousand: they simply swarmed over everything. Driven by the suicidal determination of their masters, the wights impaled themselves on stakes until the points were blunt, filled the gaps at the base of the wall with their own bodies, and used the collective weight of those climbing over them to exert massive pressure. They were delayed for less than ten minutes before they began to scale or simply push over sections of the wooden palisade, pouring into the camp as if the ground were level.
The archers retreated behind the shield-wall and spearmen, continuing to loose volleys, while Robb Stark himself raised a torch high and roared to his men, "Soldiers! Fight with me! Hold back these monsters! The North forever!"
"THE NORTH FOREVER!"
Amidst a thunderous collective roar, hundreds of soldiers standing shoulder-to-shoulder met the wights who had squeezed past the spikes, survived the fire, and toppled the fence.
"KILL!"
"Gods, is that a bear? Where are the spears—HELP! ARGH!"
The roars of battle, screams of the wounded, and the dull thud of weapons hitting flesh instantly filled the temporary camp. These were Northern elites, a victorious army that had marched across Westeros under Robb without a single defeat, an iron force that could maintain its composure even when ambushed. Despite the lack of dragonglass, they had arranged alternative tactics: shield-bearers and spearmen would hold and control the wights, while those with torches or obsidian weapons would move in for the kill.
The tactics were ideal and the soldiers' discipline was high enough to execute them accurately, but battle is never a one-sided affair. In practice, the situation rarely follows the plan. The relentless, suicidal impact of the wights often knocked shield-bearers flat. Even when a spearman impaled a wight to keep it at bay, the creature would often simply walk forward along the spear-shaft, oblivious to the weapon, to claw at the soldier's face or snap his neck. As for fire, it was indeed a potent weapon, but it did not work instantly; the camp was soon filled with wights who fought while wreathed in flames. While humans weren't weak to fire, they had no resistance to the agonizing heat of being grappled by a burning corpse.
The panic of a first encounter, the severe shortage of counter-weapons... a myriad of disadvantageous factors could not be overcome by sheer morale and courage. The line was forced back as the enemy advanced. The screams of agony grew more frequent and dense. The rapid deployment of reserves did nothing to turn the tide. Within minutes of the engagement starting, while the army had not yet broken, the experience gained from dozens of battles told Robb clearly: he had no chance of winning this fight.
(How did the Night's Watch repel such an enemy, and find the courage to chase them?)
"My Lord, the Warden of the North must not fall! We will hold here, please retreat to the rear!"
"Shut your mouth!" Robb had not forgotten that his last retreat had cost him Grey Wind, and he had to admit that he truly should have retreated then. But this time, facing a spectral enemy unlike the Ironborn, where could he retreat to? If these wights stepped over his body... no, if they controlled the corpses of these Northern elites and marched on Winterfell and the heart of the North, where could he run? "You swore fealty to me! Then follow me to the death! If anyone dares drag me from the field today, the first thing I do when I reach safety will be to take his head!"
With their liege's declaration to fight to the end, the followers and soldiers found their courage and shouted their defiance. Those not yet facing the wights set fire to tents, grain, and the remaining oil under their commanders' orders, turning the camp into a literal inferno. Just as the Northern soldiers launched a desperate, suicidal counter-charge and Robb pushed into the center of the chaos surrounded by his inner guard, a thunderous boom echoed from the sky directly above the battlefield.
Before the first man could realize what was happening, a massive pillar of orange-red flame split the air like the sword of a vengeful god, plunging directly into the mass of wights that had just breached the walls.
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