Chapter 215: The Might of Wildfire
The Wall was so vast it rendered all ladders and siege towers useless by its height, and its thickness made any ram a laughable futility. Ordinary bows could not reach the summit, nor could catapults hurl stones large enough to mar its face. Should one attempt to use fire, the melting snow would quickly extinguish the flames. True, Wildlings could climb it, as the raiders often did, but only if the climbers were strong, steady, and agile. For a great host encumbered by families and livestock, there was no way through save for attacking the gates.
"Stone! Arrows! Don't let them near the Wall!" The blacksmith who had ascended to the top with Egger knew the Wall's defenses best; he took command with a booming voice.
Barrels of pitch were swiftly loaded into the catapults and ignited with torches. The wind fanned the flames into a violent frenzy. With a great roar of "Fire!", the counterweights dropped, the throwing arms slammed against the crossbeams with a heavy thud, and the burning barrels tumbled into the dark. They streaked through the night like orange-white comets before smashing into the ground in an explosion of light. Two mammoths near the impact point panicked; their giant riders struggled to steady them, bellowing in the Old Tongue—a sound like ancient thunder that was clearly audible even atop the Wall.
Nearly a hundred defenders struck at the enemy below. Atop the Wall, spears and steel swords were useless, so Egger took up a bow, cautiously leaning over the edge to loose arrows. The cold wind blowing from the northeast hit the Wall and turned into a rapid lateral current. In this darkness and gale, aiming was a meaningless endeavor. Everyone simply rained arrows, oil, and stones toward the thickest clusters of enemies. Every projectile was swallowed by the blackness the moment it left the summit; the heavier oil barrels and stones at least landed near their intended targets, occasionally bursting into flame. As for the arrows... whether they were blown off course, struck some unlucky soul, or simply thudded into the earth was entirely up to fate.
Wildlings continued to pour from the woods, charging the Wall. Soon, the narrow clearing below resembled a white pie crust covered in toppings—the Wildlings were the black sesame seeds, while the giants and mammoths were the assorted nuts.
In the television adaptation, the directors had designed various flashy maneuvers for both sides to make the battle exciting. In reality, there was no chance for ordinary Wildlings to climb the Wall only for the Night's Watch to knock them off. All the Free Folk, giants, and mammoths charged with a singular purpose toward the outer gate of the Castle Black section of the Wall, determined to smash through and enter the south.
The task of the Night's Watch was the monotonous, desperate slaughter of an endless foe.
"The gate!" Egger noticed an issue with some of his men and shouted as he moved along the line. "Ignore those fools standing back and shooting arrows; they can't reach this high! Everyone aim for the men near the gate!"
The so-called gate was actually a narrow, twisting tunnel carved through the ice, barely wide enough for two horses to ride abreast. Compared to the massive bulk of the Wall, the passage was pathetically small, obstructed by three iron portcullises. Even if the enemy breached the sturdy outer door, the interior was easy to defend... but the Wildlings outnumbered them hundreds to one, and they had giants. Once the battle moved into the narrow tunnel as a war of attrition, the Watch would stand no chance.
At all costs, the Night's Watch had to keep the battle exactly as it was: fought across the height of the Wall!
Cries and shrieks drifted up from the gate as attackers were crushed by falling debris. The casualties were entirely one-sided; dozens of Wildlings had already fallen to the Watch, while Egger saw not a single casualty among his own. Yet he could not find joy in it: there were still thousands of Wildlings, and more importantly, they had reached the gate. Under the cover of night, they were beginning to tamper with the outer door to Castle Black!
"Stop them! Throw everything you have, don't hold back!"
Two horn blasts echoed from Castle Black to the south. Glancing at the second enemy force surging toward the castle from the direction of Mole's Town, Egger gritted his teeth. He pinned all hope of holding the castle on Jon and Jaime down below, while he turned his focus back to the north side of the summit. In the dark, it was hard for those atop the Wall to see exactly what the Wildlings were doing to the gate, but everyone knew: if they were allowed to continue, Castle Black would fall.
Scorpions were swiveled toward the gatehouse, their heavy ropes snapping tight as they sent spear-sized bolts plunging down. Men without bows hoisted rocks and hurled them over the edge. The most lethal weapons—barrels of oil—were dropped as if they cost nothing. The area before the gate instantly resembled a bombardment zone: flying stone shards and splashing burning oil ignited everything combustible.
A mammoth was struck by a splash of burning pitch; it fled back toward the forest, trumpeting in agony and trailing fire, forcing countless Wildlings to scatter in terror. Fire was a potent deterrent against beasts. However, Wildlings and giants were sentient; when their clothes caught fire, they simply threw themselves into the snow and rolled, extinguishing the flames instantly.
The ground before the gate was carpeted with corpses and slicked with blood, yet the Wildlings displayed a resilience and will to fight unlike anything seen before. They pushed aside the dead, used handfuls of snow to smother the burning pitch, and endured the falling rocks and arrows as they continued to sabotage the outer door. The sound of splintering wood drifted up. The giants fastened thick ropes to the gate posts and hitched the other ends to several mammoths, cracking whips to drive them forward. The ropes went taut, and the gate began to let out a high-pitched, agonizing groan.
...
"Gentle Mother, font of mercy, save our sons from war and weary, stop the arrows, check the swords, let them see a brighter..." In this most desperate moment of the battle, Cellador, the septon of Castle Black, actually had the heart to sing a hymn, though his voice was thick and trembling—whether from the wind or the terror of being pinched between two armies.
"Stop that madness! Get over here, open the oil barrel lids, and let the wildfire seep in!" Egger kicked him and roared, "Everyone else get back! Keep the torches away, this stuff explodes!"
Many stopped to stare. Donal Noye had to roar even louder to get them moving: "What are you looking at? Keep shooting! Out of arrows? Go grab another bundle over there! Egger, what are you doing?"
"I have to use something they can't deal with to break their assault on the gate!"
"There are too many of them; the outer gate won't hold!" Noye shook his head. "Keep loosing arrows; even if they miss, they'll harass them." The blacksmith looked at the faces illuminated by firelight atop the Wall. "I need two archers and two spearmen to hold the tunnel with me, in case they smash through."
A dozen men stepped forward. Noye picked four and headed for the lift. "Egger, until I return, the Wall is yours."
The scene felt hauntingly familiar. Egger suddenly realized: if he didn't find a way to stop the attack on the gate, the blacksmith and his five men would end up dying in the tunnel along with a giant. He pried open the seal of a barrel and nodded without looking back. "Understood. They won't get into the tunnel, I promise!"
The pitch and oil were mixed together, appearing as a dark sludge in the barrel. Egger scooped out a large bowl's worth to create space, then carefully lifted one of the two jars of wildfire he had brought. He gently poured the thick, eerie green liquid into the pitch barrel, filling the void he had created, and had a nearby brother reseal the lid.
Repeating the process, Egger mixed one of the two wildfire jars into a dozen barrels of pitch, creating a row of low-grade liquid incendiary bombs.
Amidst the gasps and sharp intakes of breath from the surrounding soldiers, a corner of the gate was wrenched from its frame by the mammoths. The structure began to deform with a piercing, screeching sound. There was no time to lose. Egger waved his hand. "Light them and throw them down!"
Several idle men without bows ran forward, pushed the resealed barrels to a point a few meters east of the gate's vertical line, and ignited them with torches.
There was no explosion. Egger, standing a few meters away, breathed a sigh of relief. "Drop them, now!"
"But the pitch isn't hot yet—"
"It's not just pitch in there! If we wait for it to heat, we're dead. Drop them now!"
The builders and stewards obeyed. As the wildfire-infused barrels were pushed over the edge, Egger leaned over the parapet to see the effect of his experiment.
Infused with wildfire, the flames licking from the barrel openings turned a ghostly green. A dozen barrels tumbled down with emerald tail-flames. One struck a protruding outcropping of the ice wall and shattered, spraying its contents... Had it not been for the wildfire, the unheated mixture of pitch and lamp oil would have been extinguished by the freezing wind. This time, however, the green fire spread through the biting air. The liquid spraying from the barrels ignited mid-air, looking like a green demon with outstretched wings swooping down upon the Wildlings and giants.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The barrels smashed outside the gate, erupting into bursts of dark green flame. The attackers were used to fire; those splashed with flames dove into the snow to roll, while the others stepped back a few meters, intending to wait for the fire to be frozen out by the cold ground and snow before resuming work...
But this time, they were wrong.
Those rolling on the ground soon stood up, but the liquid they thought they had smothered flared back to life with green flames the moment it touched the air. The lucky ones managed to heap piles of snow on themselves to suppress it entirely, but those splashed with more liquid found themselves in a nightmare: no matter how they rolled, the green flames burned stubbornly on their clothes, melting the snow they touched and spreading further across their wet garments... soon turning several unlucky souls into screaming wraiths of green fire.
The death of a few men wouldn't stop the attack, but a worse situation soon followed: the green-flaming liquid began to flow and burn across the ground at the gate. Instead of being extinguished by the low temperature, it continued to spread. The wildfire mixed in the pitch heated the liquid and the ground itself through its own combustion, baking the permafrost. Soon, the ground was heated above the ignition point of the pitch and oil mixture. The two more abundant liquids ignited as well, and the emerald fire demon deepened in color, suddenly surging five or six meters high. It completely blocked the gate and even began to lick toward the mammoths holding the ropes...
(This green fire will not go out until it has burned itself out!) Before the Wildlings could realize this and try to smother it with massive amounts of snow, the emerald flames had grown to over ten meters high. The clearing for hundreds of yards around was illuminated by an eerie green glow, and the air began to fill with a pungent, acrid scent like burnt bacon. Embers of fire danced through the night sky like swarms of green fireflies.
The mammoths, nearly touched by the green flames, wailed and struggled frantically. Two of them snapped their heat-brittled ropes and broke free, while the remaining ones were quickly unhitched and led back by their giant riders.
The green fire demon danced before the gate, acting as a loyal sentinel of the Wall. Until it extinguished itself, attacking the gate had become impossible... Though the casualties and exhaustion had not yet reached the breaking point for a full retreat, the vast host of Wildlings had no choice but to pull back into the forest, waiting for the next wave.
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