Chapter 309: Giants
When the wildling army brought the giants through the Wall and into the Gift, the Night's Watch—based on a series of considerations—settled the big fellows several dozen miles northwest of Queenscrown, near a forest by the river. Coincidentally, the location was also several dozen miles south of Iceark, meaning they wouldn't have to backtrack or waste much time to get there.
Human initiative is a powerful thing; the speed with which the Northern lords, anxious to save their homes, packed their bags and hit the road was nothing short of astonishing. Not long after breakfast, the party was underway. Following a trail blazed by the New Gift residents who brought food to the giants, the group spent only half a day reaching a small forest that didn't even exist on the map previously, now dubbed Giant's Nest due to its new inhabitants.
The snow that had started falling when Robb reached Castle Black had not ceased. Ordinarily, it was hardly the weather for an excursion, but the party spotted what they had come to see—or rather, the creatures—from a great distance.
The reason was simple: the big fellows didn't know how to build shelters. Regardless of the weather, they simply found a spot out of the wind and sprawled out on the bare ground.
Their thick fur, massive frames, and the resulting layers of fat made them fearless of the biting cold. Even as winter arrived, they lived on quite contentedly.
Within the woods, one could catch glimpses of towering humanoid shapes, as well as the cries and silhouettes of their mounts, the mammoths. Most of the sheep and pigs the wildlings had driven through the Wall had already been converted into meat products during winter preparations, but the Night's Watch hadn't—and didn't dare—mention slaughtering the giants' pets and mounts.
Egger was indeed skilled at persuasion, but the giants' intelligence wasn't high enough for one to present facts and reason with them. Furthermore, incredibly powerful domesticated creatures like mammoths might prove useful for other purposes in the future.
The party dismounted outside the woods of Giant's Nest. Egger sent a guide who spoke the Old Tongue to call someone out, while the inspection tour waited on the spot.
"I heard giants eat their meat raw and drink blood, that they have blood porridge for breakfast and can eat a whole bull in one sitting," Mors Umber asked casually, stretching his limbs. He seemed exceptionally satisfied now that he had recovered his daughter and grandsons. "How do you keep them fed?"
"Like most legends about them, that is an utter lie. Giants are vegetarians—strict vegetarians. Their teeth and digestive systems cannot process meat; even if they wanted to, they couldn't. We settled them here because there is water and grass, and it's centrally located within the Gift, making it easy for human settlements to transport vegetables and other food to them," Egger explained to the group. "Generally speaking, giants are quite mild-mannered... of course, 'mild' only means they won't attack without provocation; it doesn't mean they aren't aggressive at all. We stopped here instead of entering their living area specifically to prevent accidents. There are over a hundred giants here, and we haven't lived with them long. If we do something wrong and provoke them, it could end poorly."
"You let so many giants through the Wall; are you not worried they'll cause trouble and the Night's Watch won't be able to control them?"
"Of course I'm worried. When we let them through, it was only two or three at a time; we didn't dare be careless. But after dealing with them for a while and getting to know them, we found that giants aren't as terrifying as imagined." Egger pointed toward the woods, where a giant was following the guide toward the group. "Look, everyone. Is that giant smaller than you expected?"
A hundred meters away, the guide was returning with a giant. The guide was about five feet seven inches tall; the massive humanoid creature following him was roughly twice his height. Compared side-by-side, the gap was large enough to be unsettling—yet, most had to admit: the giant was far smaller than they had imagined.
In myths and legends, giants were usually "ten or twenty meters tall, capable of destroying a castle single-handedly, swallowing a man in one gulp, fierce, wild, and able to fight gods." But the one walking toward them was nearly eleven and a half feet tall—impressive, to be sure, but only relative to an ordinary human. It lacked the suffocating impact one felt when first seeing the Wall. As it walked slowly, it certainly didn't produce the ground-shaking effect seen in stage plays.
Robb observed the approaching giant from a distance, estimated its size, and concluded that a few elite soldiers with polearms could definitely handle it.
"Indeed, smaller than expected. Are all giants this size?"
"The one walking over should be the giants' newly elected leader. The previous one was killed by the Night's Watch during the attack on Castle Black," Egger replied. "Like wolves, a giant leader must be the strongest in the tribe, which naturally means the tallest. The other giants will be roughly his size or smaller, with few exceptions."
"Hmm..." Robb nodded. "You've recruited the wildlings as New Gift residents. Have you thought about training the giants to work or fight for the Watch?"
He asked exactly what was expected. Egger had anticipated this and nodded. "Of course I've thought about it, but there are many issues... I will explain further in a moment."
It wasn't that Egger was being mysterious on purpose, but during the conversation, the giant had reached them. Under the wary gaze of the Northern soldiers, it knelt on one knee a few meters away and said in a voice as deep and booming as rolling thunder: "Kneel... greet... Lord of North."
"Whoa—" Arya was so excited she almost screamed. "Can I... can I touch him?"
"Don't even think about it," Robb warned his sister with a glare, then turned to Egger. "I thought you said giants don't know the Common Tongue?"
"We taught them a few words," Egger explained. In reality, this giant leader only knew that one sentence. Even giving the giants such a simple task had taken a fair amount of effort, according to the translator. "Beyond the Wall, they speak the Old Tongue."
At such close range, everyone finally got a good look at the creature they had only heard of in stories. The difference between a giant and their imagination went far beyond size; they didn't look like up-sized humans. Their arms were very long, nearly reaching their knees. They wore no cloth or furs; instead, they were covered in incredibly long, thick hair, as if their entire bodies were covered in long hair.
Not only were their bodies different, but their faces were strange: the head didn't sit atop the shoulders but protruded forward, as if they could never look up, existing on a different plane from the torso. Their faces were large and flat, with two tiny, slit-like eyes and horny folds of flesh between them.
Rather than giant humans, they looked more like giant, long-haired apes.
"Well, hello. It's a pleasure to meet you, King of Giants," Robb said with a hint of disappointment. After the guide translated the sentence, the big fellow stood back up and stood silently to the side, observing the crowd of little people from the south.
"There's no need to translate what I say next," Egger instructed the guide before returning to the previous topic. "Training giants to work or fight for us sounds wonderful, but it faces three problems: their intelligence, their physical physiology and mobility, and cost-effectiveness."
The group gripped their sword hilts and kept their eyes on the specimen while listening to the Night's Watch officer's explanation.
"First, as you can see, giants do not possess human-level intelligence. They build no shelters and wear no clothes. Beyond simple manual labor, it's difficult for them to follow complex orders. When calm, they seem capable of thought and communication, but once enraged or irrational, they are purely wild beasts."
"They can even speak; how stupid can they be?"
"True, the first issue is the least significant," Egger acknowledged. "To explain the next point, I must clarify a concept: the relationship between size, strength, and weight. I won't go into specific calculations, only the conclusion in an ideal scenario: for creatures of the same shape, if height and length double, the cross-sectional area of the muscles—the thickness of arms and legs—increases fourfold, but the volume and weight increase eightfold. Take this giant leader; he is roughly twice my height. If we were the same shape, he would be four times as strong but eight times as heavy. I think you understand what that implies."
Explaining the square-cube law to a group of rough Northern lords was too complex; they likely wouldn't understand terms like square or power. But life experience told them Egger wasn't talking nonsense. The sharp-witted understood his point, while the duller ones still argued.
"But this giant's arms and legs look more than four times thicker than yours."
"Of course. If a giant's frame were the same as mine, he wouldn't even be able to stand. The larger the creature, the larger the ratio of limb thickness to torso. Our giant leader here has limbs five or six times thicker than mine. But arms and legs have weight, too. This means he is using less than ten times my strength to support and operate a weight more than ten times my own. They struggle with empty-handed movement; if you gave him a steel weapon or tool sized for his frame, he likely couldn't even lift it."
"I see. You're saying a giant must use a large part of his strength just to support his own body, leaving little left for movement—he isn't as 'infinitely strong' as we imagined," Robb nodded. "But he's still stronger than us. Isn't that enough?"
The reality wasn't that simple. When a creature grows larger, the problems extend far beyond weight... there's the increased time for nerve signals to travel, higher oxygen requirements, the inability of bones to easily support the body during intense exertion, and the limits on endurance caused by surface-area-to-volume heat dissipation...
Naturally, Egger found it hard enough to say all that in the Common Tongue, let alone make Northern nobles understand it. He could only explain the more intuitive results of their size. "Indeed, they are stronger than us. But giants have other drawbacks: poor sight and hearing, slow movement, and disappointing endurance. Directing them to work takes a massive effort, and bringing them to war... despite their long legs, walking a single mile continuously is a great ordeal for them. If incorporated into an army, the main host would have to stop constantly to keep them from falling behind. A giant on the battlefield might be a great shock to the enemy, but the effort required to get them there would far outweigh the benefit of their combat."
Lord Karstark frowned and interrupted, "Hey, boy, it feels like you're trying very hard to make giants sound useless, as if you're afraid we'll take them from you."
"You truly wrong me, milord," Egger said with a wry smile. "Fine, I'll stop listing their faults. Even with these deficiencies, a giant is still a formidable combatant. Let's assume one giant is worth ten elite soldiers. But they are vegetarians. Obviously, grass is far less nutritious than grain or meat; they need to eat frequently. To feed them, you have to increase logistics. Their endurance is poor, so they can't carry their own armor or weapons; you'd need a baggage train specifically for them. All these problems require manpower to solve. If we have the manpower to serve the giants, why not just train more soldiers?"
Egger wasn't making up the idea that giants weren't suited for labor or war. As non-predatory creatures with almost no natural enemies before the First Men arrived, giants lived freely without much effort. Without a need to hunt or the pressure of survival, why would they evolve into hardworking tools or fierce war machines?
Of course, this didn't mean giants were completely useless. For simple strength tasks in a fixed location, or in siege or defense operations where long-distance travel wasn't required, they would be excellent helpers. At the very least, one could drive mammoths to help move supplies.
But the reason Egger didn't want Robb to get ideas about the giants—aside from the fact they weren't as legendary as perceived—was a more practical factor: giants were generally honest and mild, but they were not human slaves. They had followed Mance Rayder because they faced the same threat from the Others. The King-Beyond-the-Wall had gone to great lengths to convince them to surrender and settle in the Gift. If the Northerners dragged a dozen away to use as fodder and something went wrong and injured his own people, who would have to bear the pressure? Not them.
He wouldn't do something so thankless.
Fortunately, Robb ultimately didn't push the matter.
He had asked to see the giants for two reasons: to confirm if the species had the ability to threaten the North, and... he had indeed thought about deploying them in war to compensate for the North's vast territory and sparse population. But seeing them in person—primitive, dull, lazy, and slow-moving vegetarians—half his ideas vanished instantly.
Bringing such treasures to a battlefield sounded like a headache; better to just train more soldiers.
"I believe you." Robb nodded, cutting off Karstark's questioning of Egger. He waved a hand. "Manage these big fellows well. Don't let them wander off. If they frighten or harm Northern residents, I'll hold you accountable."
Egger breathed a sigh of relief. "Of course. That is the duty of the Watch."
After those instructions, the Lord of Winterfell looked back at the big creature and raised his voice: "King of Giants, it was a pleasure to see you today. If the Others come, I hope you will lend your strength to help us hold the northern border!"
The guide, being clever, knew what to do without being told. He quickly translated Robb's words for the giant leader. The big fellow nodded slowly and grunted something in the Old Tongue to Robb, the gist of it being that he was also glad to meet him.
Afterward, Robb signaled the group, intending to continue south to deal with the Ironborn invasion.
Of course, he clearly didn't plan on bringing his little sister to a battlefield. "Ser Rodrik, I will lead the lords directly south to Deepwood Motte to command the battle against the Ironborn. Take ten good men and return to the Wall with Egger. When the snow stops, take the road from Castle Black to Queenscrown and return Arya safely to Winterfell."
"What?" Arya pouted in dissatisfaction. "I want to go with you!"
Robb shook his head, adopting a non-negotiable stance. He didn't even bother to say more, immediately directing the soldiers of the inspection tour to mount up. This place was still several hundred miles from the West Coast; if they didn't want to delay the war, they couldn't waste a single moment.
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