Chapter 167: Trial by Steel
The Night's Watchmen were all disarmed and led into the Red Keep by the grey-cloaked guard who had announced them. However, the group did not head toward the Tower of the Hand as Egger expected; instead, they stopped at a small plaza on the path leading to Maegor's Holdfast. Eddard Stark was actually there waiting for them.
As the Hand, Ned had many momentous tasks to attend to today. To save time, condescending to leave his office for a moment was a small price to pay. He only hoped these black brothers claiming to have brought a wight weren't playing a joke; if they were, Eddard Stark was more than willing to show them through action that he, too, possessed a temper.
"Lord Hand," the Watchmen greeted the Hand of the King as he came out to meet them personally.
Ned nodded, not returning the greeting, but instead walking directly toward the reinforced wooden cage on the wagon to observe the object contained within.
A wight knew nothing of fatigue, and without a White Walker to direct it, it understood nothing of strategy. It was always perfectly cooperative in its single-minded goal: to hurl itself at the nearest living thing with body heat. Its snarling, relentless movements kept the entire wagon vibrating constantly. Fortunately, the cage was lashed down with ropes, and the draft horse was a steady old beast... otherwise, they surely would have overturned a dozen times on the road from the River Gate to the Red Keep.
"This is a wight?" Eddard Stark was human, and one of the few in the world born into high nobility, educated with a sense of critical skepticism. He quickly voiced the same doubt Tyrion had earlier: "To me, it looks like a man driven mad by disease."
This doubt was easily resolved. All it took was for someone to reenact the "Wight Inspection" performed at the gate, but the Watchmen's weapons had been confiscated.
Fortunately, the guard who had witnessed the scene outside was still present. "My lord, the black brothers demonstrated this outside the gates. This man... cannot be killed."
Ned was a man of action. Without wasting words, he reached out and took the guard's steel sword, gripping it as he cast a glance at the Watchmen. "If I thrust this blade through him and he dies..."
"We are at your disposal, my lord."
If the thing before me is still a living man, killing him would be a mercy, Ned thought. Without further hesitation, he found the position of the wight's heart through the bars and thrust precisely.
Cold steel went in, cold steel came out, swift and clean. The blade was merely coated with a greasy, translucent viscous liquid that carried a foul, unidentifiable stench.
Eddard Stark looked at the steel sword in his hand, then at the humanoid figure in the cage, which remained as vigorous as ever. He waited half a minute, seeing not the slightest sign of it dying. His habitually somber face grew even darker. He stood motionless, lost in thought.
"Perhaps there is a disease in this world that allows a man to survive a blade to the heart, but wights have a trait no living man possesses," Alliser added. "My lord may cut off one of its arms."
"Cut off an arm?"
"Cut off anything you like. Even a head will continue to move once separated from the body, until it rots away completely," Alliser said. "But the arm is most convenient; it's already reaching through the cage... one for the Hand, one for King Robert."
Ned said nothing. He raised the steel sword and hacked down at the wight's arms protruding from the bars. As a Northman who prided himself on the blood of the First Men, he believed the one who passes the sentence should swing the sword. As the Warden of the North, Ned was quite practiced at taking lives. His hand rose and fell with the clean precision of an executioner. One of the wight's arms fell away with a thud, hitting the ground.
He handed the sword back to his guard and bent down to pick up the severed limb. The appendage seemed unaware it had left the host; its fingers continued to curl and flex, grasping at the air. The scene was eerie in the extreme.
Ned had been on battlefields and seen plenty of severed limbs. Limbs that move after leaving the torso do exist, but they are usually just weak, twitching reflexive movements. They certainly never behaved like the one in his hand—moving back and forth with strength and completeness... even giving the impression of purposeful grasping.
He had never experienced holding a living severed part like this. An instant of inattention allowed the severed hand to grip his own arm. He shook it several times but couldn't dislodge it. Alarmed, another guard quickly drew a dagger to pry open the dead fingers and pull the limb off Ned.
It wasn't exactly a close call, but Eddard Stark's face had turned deathly pale.
"This is a wight? Thousands of them, north of the Wall?" Ned's face was ashen. He immediately thought of the same thing his soldiers had—the North was the closest of the Seven Kingdoms to the lands beyond the Wall, facing the direct threat of these monsters. "Why have the Night's Watch rangers never discovered this in all their years of patrolling?"
"They have only begun to emerge in the past year, following the appearance of the White Walkers," Alliser answered solemnly. "The worst part is that large animals can also become wights. Now, for every man, wolf, or bear that dies north of the Wall... the number of these things grows by one."
Faced with the ironclad evidence before him, Ned dared not ignore it further. For the first time, he became truly earnest. "Is it completely unkillable? Has the Watch found no way to deal with it?"
"There is a way. Likely due to this 'corpse oil' on the blades, wights are highly flammable. Once ignited, they burn to ash in a very short time, dying for good. Therefore, fire is the best weapon against them," Alliser answered seriously. "But the same method is ineffective against the other enemy—the White Walkers. Egger reported that he killed one with an obsidian dagger, a claim later confirmed by the rangers involved in capturing this wight—they also successfully killed a White Walker with dragonglass arrows. We later tried using obsidian against wights and found it works, but the effect is quite limited."
Ned turned to look at Egger with a complex gaze. Ever since this outlander had followed Benjen to Winterfell claiming to have killed a White Walker, Ned's impression of him had been that of a silver-tongued opportunist. Although he had gradually realized Egger was a clever, resourceful man who could get things done... in his heart of hearts, he still considered him someone who could never be fully trusted.
Could it be that I was wrong from the very beginning? Is this boy truly a 'Walker-slayer'?
"The effect is limited? What does that mean?" Egger interjected. "Can obsidian kill a wight or not?"
"It can, but only if it hits a vital spot... the problem is, we have no idea where a wight's vitals are," Dormy took up the explanation. He had faced wights beyond the Wall and had the right to speak. "Analyzing actual battle cases, a hit to the head or chest usually does the trick. But the rangers at Castle Black have reported that once giants or other large animals are turned, hits to the head or chest won't kill them quickly. Furthermore, wights led by a White Walker are harder to kill than wandering ones... conversely, fire arrows usually kill with one shot and are the most effective weapon."
"But fire arrows aren't like dragonglass arrows; you can't prepare them in advance. You have to wait for the torch to heat the arrowhead after lighting it, otherwise it goes out the moment it's shot... it's fine for defending a wall, but totally unrealistic for a field battle beyond the Wall." Alliser shrugged and produced a letter. "This is a personal letter from Mormont to you and the King. He instructed me to hand it over only after you had seen the wight, for fear that a raven message would be dismissed because the Maesters refuse to believe in the existence of wights and White Walkers."
Ned took the letter and opened it, browsing it with a frown.
As the Hand began to read, Jaqen H'ghar asked the guard for the still-moving severed arm, observing it with a look of utter disbelief. Egger, meanwhile, fell into thought amidst the silence.
Obsidian is effective against wights, but the lethality is subpar? Egger knit his brows in confusion. Because of the mess last night, he had come straight to the Red Keep after meeting the escort squad this morning and hadn't had a chance to exchange information with Alliser's group; he was just learning this now. He tried to recall the information about White Walkers he had discussed with Melisandre on Dragonstone.
The bodies of White Walkers were almost entirely shaped by magic, making them immune to physical attacks, while their meager physical husks allowed them to ignore low-intensity fire magic... so what was the deal with wights?
Egger had pondered this before. Wights weren't created like the Night King, but were more like biological weapons reanimated by necromancy. Their form of existence was the polar opposite of the White Walkers—they were composed almost entirely of physical matter (corpses), but were infused and controlled by a sliver of ice magic or necromancy. This established a link with the White Walkers, making them loyal thralls.
Wights had no vitals, yet the Watchmen felt that obsidian weapons hitting vitals can sometimes kill them. Unless wights were playing dead, the effect definitely wasn't from the obsidian's physical damage itself... Egger thought it through and reached the only logical conclusion: It was the fire magic contained within the obsidian hitting a so-called vital spot that happened to neutralize or dispel the sliver of evil magic keeping the corpse animated! It severed the link to the Great Other or the Night King, creating the phenomenon of obsidian killing a wight.
As for why larger wights or those led by White Walkers were harder to kill—it was likely because larger wights contained more magic, and those near White Walkers could continuously replenish their energy from their masters, making the minute amount of magic in a piece of dragonglass insufficient.
This was all just speculation; only the Night King or perhaps the Great Other truly knew the truth... but as Egger thought, he suddenly felt a jolt of alarm. If his guess was right, two new problems arose: First, away from the Land of Always Winter and the White Walkers, would this captive wight eventually run out of ice magic and turn back into an ordinary corpse? Second, could wights killed by obsidian north of the Wall be re-reanimated by a White Walker?
Just as he was lost in these doubts, a powerful male voice approached from a distance. Baristtan Selmy, looking deeply anxious, walked toward them. "Eddard, I've been looking for you. What are you doing here?"
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