Chapter 227: A Stab in the Back
The Flint clan moved into the Nightfort with over eleven hundred people. Since their ancestral lands were relatively close to the Wall, they completed their relocation quickly. They were followed by eight hundred from the Wull clan, then over four hundred from the Norrey clan... thousands of clansmen rushed toward the Wall as scheduled. Although the agreement was to pay per head, the clansmen were quite honorable; they arrived primarily as family units, with a normal ratio of men, women, children, and elders. There was no attempt to simply dump the elderly and infirm at the Wall to be cared for.
To ensure that the Night's Watch industries could afford the burden, Egger eventually abandoned the ideal vision of garrisoning all nineteen fortresses. Only seven abandoned forts along the Wall were reactivated to house the clansmen. Counting the three originally occupied by the Watch, a total of ten fortresses now formed a complete line of defense.
In its first stage, Egger's Gift resettlement plan attracted nearly four thousand clansmen. Each person received three copper pennies a day for living expenses. This price... was equivalent in modern terms to giving someone less than a dollar a day for food, truly taking the concept of guaranteeing no one starves to the absolute limit. Thus, Egger only had to pay a few dozen gold dragons a month in stipends.
However, paired with these extremely low living expenses were equally low commodity prices—offered with no intent to profit—and decent labor income. Repairing the fortresses they lived in earned them nothing, but participating in the restoration of the lift cages and wooden ladders, building perimeter walls, or assisting in clearing snow and paths atop the Wall all paid ten coppers or more per shift. Patrolling and sentry duty atop the Wall paid thirty coppers, while those who followed rangers into the Gift to sweep for Wildling raiders earned a full Silver Stag. The danger of intercepting Wildlings along the Gorge was the highest, so that pay was doubled.
For any who fell in the war against the Wildlings, a pension of one gold dragon was provided.
One gold dragon was less than Tyrion's daily spending money back in King's Landing, but for that single dragon, the enthusiasm of the clansmen warriors was staggering. A joke even began to circulate: One man dies for the Watch, and his whole family is set for life.
The intensity of the Wildling attacks continued to escalate. At the Bay of Seals, the rafts used for smuggling were completely unable to compete with the Night's Watch fleet—now bolstered by White Harbor—and the warships sent by Stannis. But along the Wall, especially in the vicinity of the Gorge, the Wildlings' reckless attempts to scale and bypass the defenses still brought considerable trouble to the defenders.
The physical advantages of the Wall became fully apparent in this defensive war. Even at its lowest point, it stood over seven hundred feet high; even using stairs took about ten minutes, let alone climbing with tools. Whether ten men climbed or a hundred, as long as a patrol spotted them, just two brothers... a few stones and a quiver of arrows could bring the attempt to a final halt. The sheer height made it impossible for the Wildlings even to leave men on the ground to provide cover fire.
Once the builders led the clansmen and Gift folk in clearing the paths atop the Wall and the Ranger department gradually restored patrols, life became increasingly difficult for the Wildlings.
After the Watch thwarted a Wildling plot to drop rope ladders and bring a large force up the Wall, and successfully eliminated several groups of raiders clinging to the ice without taking a single casualty, the attempts to scale the Wall ceased entirely. The raiding parties that had already bypassed the Wall still tried to harass the various fortresses, but faced with the newly constructed perimeter walls, these raiders—who possessed zero siege experience—found themselves with no way to strike.
As for tunneling through the Wall... it was easier said than done. With patrols restored across the entire length of the Wall top, it became an impossible task. If Giants and mammoths gathered at the foot of the Wall, the patrol simply had to drop a few barrels of lit pitch, and the digging team would instantly scatter like startled birds.
Faced with a defensive system built on burning coin, the Gorge became the Wildlings' last hope. However, the spots where this natural barrier could be crossed were few, and most had already been mapped out by the rangers. With a thousand men gathered to hold the Bridge of Skulls and patrol the Gorge's edge, the Wildlings—despite their population of a hundred thousand—found themselves helpless against the Wall. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
...
Whether it was the stipends paid per head or the wages paid for labor, the money given out eventually returned to the hands of the logistics department in the form of consumption. By helping the clansmen master the use of money, the Wall and the Gift quickly formed a closed, efficient, and stable internal cycle. Egger was indeed squeezing the utility out of the clansmen, but the reality was this: in winters past, the elderly and sick among the clans would often walk into the mountains to die voluntarily to save food and give their families a chance to live. Now, for the first time in history, someone was feeding them; resentment hardly had a chance to surface.
In this closed micro-society, Egger essentially only needed to inject capital once; he wouldn't need to add much later. The fuel that would keep this society—which could not produce its own food—running would be the grain the logistics department intended to transport in a steady stream from the North and even the Riverlands.
If this most critical link failed, everything that followed would be for naught.
Just as the Night's Watch, with the help of the clansmen, was holding the line and even beginning to sweep the raiders from the Gift, bad news arrived from the North. Ironborn longships had appeared on the western coast. However, they were not executing Stannis's command to head north and assist the Night's Watch. Instead, they were burning, killing, and looting along the coast. They had even seized Moat Cailin and Deepwood Motte, striking while the defenses were weak. Now... a small half of the North was crawling with these pirates from the Iron Islands.
"Isn't Theon Greyjoy in the hands of the Starks?" That was Egger's first reaction upon hearing the news. "Did someone get stupid and release him?"
"To my knowledge, no. It's clear that Balon Greyjoy, who crowned himself with driftwood as King of the Iron Islands, is prepared to lose his last son," Mormont said with a solemn expression. "Instead of worrying about that, I suggest you consider the logistics... We are currently feeding nearly seven thousand people using Castle Black's winter stores. If we keep the supply wide open, we can only last another month. If your plan to obtain supplies from the North is sabotaged, then the Wildlings only need to hold out until winter truly falls, and they can simply walk across a Wall that is empty because the defenders have all starved to death."
Egger nodded. This turn of events wasn't exactly a surprise; he certainly remembered this part of the story where the Iron Islands rebelled against the North. But with the situation having changed so drastically, why was the plot still unfolding as usual—and at this most critical juncture? He even began to suspect if the architects of this situation—the Greyjoys and the Ironborn—were, like Jojen being influenced by the Three-Eyed Crow, being subtly manipulated by the Great Other, the master of the Others, to ensure the Wall's defense was disrupted at the most vital moment.
"Understood. I'll head to Queenscrown today to confirm what supplies the North can still provide the Watch. We'll discuss further when I return."
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