Categories > Books > Harry Potter > All Men must Serve
EDRIC
After fighting off the boarders, my secret was out. Prince Stanis and everyone else on the ship now knew about mine and Bran’s ability to do magic. So when we approached Pike and saw the small fleet of ships still at port, there was no reason to hold back. Since we were some distance away, and at sea, I thought it might be safe enough cast fiendfire on the ships. But then Stanis‘ girlfriend in red did something and made the spell more powerful, too powerful! It nearly burned our own ship along with the Iron Fleet. While I was wrestling with the fiendfire, Jon had fallen to one knee. I could tell he was in pain. Why did magic affect him so? When I finally got the fiendfire under control and doused, the Ironborn ships, the docks and the buildings along the shore were all turned to ash. looking up the hill, we could see the survivors running back to the castle on the hill. But without the docks, we couldn’t get the ships close enough to land. We had to use the ship’s dingys to ferry us over a few at a time. This gave the Ironborn plenty of time to escape. Once the whole of Stanis’ army was on shore, we proceeded up the hill to the castle.
The castle at Pike was actually a series of castles on pillars of stone with rope bridges to connect them. Each of these pillars were more than 100 feet tall. I can’t imagine how someone could build such a castle. Without magic, someone, or a bunch of someones had to climb each of those pillars and haul the ropes up to make the connecting rope bridges. And once the bridges were in place, each stone for each castle would have to have been carried across the rope bridge to the next pillar so that the castle could be built. Frankly, it was amazing what the people of Westeros could build without magic. The first castle, the one that was closest to land, had a drawbridge to connect it to the top of the cliff that marked the edge of the island before the pillars of stone. And that drawbridge was currently in the up position.
“How are we to get over to there?” Bran asked Stanis.
“The Lord of Light can provide a way,” replied Melisandra, as she turned to look at me. “We just need to make a proper sacrifice . . . someone with king’s blood.”
JOFFREY
While my music is having a profound effect on the people of Mole’s Town, and to some extent the entire North, I’m still a man of the Night’s Watch. And Lord Commander Thorne will never let me forget it. I am never allowed any lessening of my duties and can only play music in my spare time. Still, the tedium of standing watch on the wall staring at nothing or cleaning out the latrines gives me plenty of time to write new songs in my head.
When I had started playing at the Mole Hole, I had, at first, just played music from my childhood, the songs of the greats of Rock and Roll that I had grown up with. Then I had added some of the early songs I had written with my first band and some of the songs of my peers from when I had been a big star. But now, I was starting to write new songs. But anything I wrote had to be simple enough that I could quickly teach it to whoever showed up to be in my band that night. Colleen was the only person who was sure to be there. Everyone else may or may not be able to be there that night. And not of them were as good as the guys I had played with in my past life. Sometimes, I miss being in a band with people who were almost my equals. But my current situation made for an interesting song writing challenge.
TORMUND
After talking with that nosey man who kept asking us all kinds of questions, (if I didn’t know better, I would think he’s some kind of video news reporter) we headed back to the docks at the port. This Sam fellow seemed very interested that we had more of these wights and wanted to see them for himself. Along the way, we kept running into the local bully boys who wanted us to come with them. When we refused, they tried to arrest us. But Wun Wun and I could easily shove them aside. When we got back to the wharf, two of the boxes of wights were missing! Oh, scratch that. Four men with frightened expressions were carrying back one of the boxes. It clearly had been opened, because now it was tied shut with a rope, instead of nailed shut as it had been back in White Harbor.
“Hey! Watcha doing with our box?” I asked.
“We’re sorry! We didn’t know! We didn’t know!” pleaded one of the men as they set down the box and ran away.
We walked over and inspected the box. The wight inside was making quite a racket, as he had been disturbed by the thieves who had opened his box. But it appeared that they had done a good job of tying it shut. While we were distracted by all this, a large number of the local bullies had surrounded us. They all had those yellow cloaks on. There appeared to be more than 20 of them. We could probably take them. But it wouldn’t be an easy fight.
“In the name of Prince Renly, you are summoned to the Red Keep!” proclaimed one of the knights.
“Fuck off! We came here to see the King of the Kneelers!” I explained.
“The King is not here,” explained the knight. “Prince Renly is ruling King’s Landing at the moment.”
“Then I guess he is the man we want to see,” I replied, before gesturing to Wun Wun to grab the tied box and bring it with us.
The whole way to the Red Keep the wight kept banging on the inside of the box. When we arrived, they made us give up our weapons before entering. Ygrette was especially pissed about that. But since The Sword was inside me, the guards didn’t know about it. Finally, we were brought into a large room. There were people wearing fancy clothes standing in raised sections along the walls and at the far end was a man sitting on a pile of partially melted swords. There were people standing alongside him, including a knight in white. The man sitting on the swords wore the fanciest clothes and the way people were defering to him made me think he must be in charge here. The wight was still beating on the inside of his box, making quite a bit of noise.
“You must be Prince Renly?” I shouted, trying to be heard over the pounding of the wight.
“What the hells have you got in that box?” yelled Renly.
I gestured, and Wun Wun put the box down on it’s end. I reached for my knife to cut the ropes, but then realized that they had taken it from me. So I got one of the knights to cut the ropes for me. The front side of the box fell away with a bang, and Renly turned pale when he saw what was inside. I ripped open the rest of the box so that the cage and the wight inside was visible from all sides and people gasped at the sight. Some of the women even screamed. The wight gave off a hissing scream as it tried to reach through the bars at us.
“As you can see, the Others, the Wight Walkers, are real.” I proclaimed. “This is why we came here to your city. To show you this. The Wight Walkers are turning every one of the Free Folk they can catch into this. If you don’t tell the Crows to let us onto the this side of the wall, every single man, woman and child of the Free Folk, whom you call: Wildings, will turn into this.”
“My Prince, this is just a mummery, a man made up in a costume,” said a fat bald man standing near the prince.
“Let’s see,” replied Renly, before pointing at the wight and commanding his knights. “Kill it!”
One of the knights stepped up to the wight, stuck his sword through the bars of the cage and stabbed it in the heart. In response, the wight reached through the bars of the cage and grabbed the knight by the throat, choking him. One of the knights cut the hand off the wight while the others stuck their own swords through the bars to stab the wight. The wight seemed completely unharmed by the multiple swords sticking out of his body, while his severed hand continued to choke the knight. The knight struggled to pull the hand off his throat until I helped him pry the fingers of the hand off him and freed him. I took the squirming hand and held it over on of the torches that lit the room.
“Fire is the only thing you have that can hurt them,” I explained as I burned the hand.
Although the burning hand stopped moving the rest of the wight was still struggling in its‘ cage.
“This is all very interesting,” said an old man, who was standing near Renly. “But I do not see what it has to do with us. Let the Others have the Wildlings. The Wall has kept the Others back for 8,000 years.”
“THE WALL HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED!” I yelled. “The Wall was build after the Long Night. We don’t actually know that it will do anything to slow the Wight Walkers. You can’t just let our people die. If you do, you’ll have to fight us as a part of the Army of the Dead!”
“No one is going to let your people die,” assured Renly as he gazed fearfully at the wight that had been stabbed many times over. “A final decision will have to wait until my brother, the King returns. But I assure you, we will take the threat beyond The Wall seriously. In the meantime, I have heard you have brought more than one of these wights?”
“Yes,” I affirmed. “We already put one of them up in front of the big church with the seven pointed star on it.”
“A good idea,” agreed Renly. “The people need to see this for themselves. The others need to be sent to the other Kingdoms, where they can be displayed in a public place and people can see this for themselves.”
“My Prince, if this is not some mummery, you should send them to the Citadel to be studied,” said the old man.
“Very well Grand Maester, we’ll send one of them to the Citadel,” commanded Renly.
“In the meantime, we should inquire about what the Night’s Watch knows of this,” added the fat bald man.
SAM
When the Gold Cloaks arrived in Force at the waterfront, I melted into the crowd. After all, the interviews I had obtained from the Wildling had given me quite a story. Much of it seemed too fantastical to be true. But the Wildlings all seemed to be in agreement about the details and so I deemed to the story factual enough to run. Especially with the evidence of a real, unliving, wight, that they had left in the cage in front of the Sept of Balor. Never had mine eyes witnessed such a sight. And I would need to do more experimentation with the wight in order to determine it’s vulnerabilities.
After fighting off the boarders, my secret was out. Prince Stanis and everyone else on the ship now knew about mine and Bran’s ability to do magic. So when we approached Pike and saw the small fleet of ships still at port, there was no reason to hold back. Since we were some distance away, and at sea, I thought it might be safe enough cast fiendfire on the ships. But then Stanis‘ girlfriend in red did something and made the spell more powerful, too powerful! It nearly burned our own ship along with the Iron Fleet. While I was wrestling with the fiendfire, Jon had fallen to one knee. I could tell he was in pain. Why did magic affect him so? When I finally got the fiendfire under control and doused, the Ironborn ships, the docks and the buildings along the shore were all turned to ash. looking up the hill, we could see the survivors running back to the castle on the hill. But without the docks, we couldn’t get the ships close enough to land. We had to use the ship’s dingys to ferry us over a few at a time. This gave the Ironborn plenty of time to escape. Once the whole of Stanis’ army was on shore, we proceeded up the hill to the castle.
The castle at Pike was actually a series of castles on pillars of stone with rope bridges to connect them. Each of these pillars were more than 100 feet tall. I can’t imagine how someone could build such a castle. Without magic, someone, or a bunch of someones had to climb each of those pillars and haul the ropes up to make the connecting rope bridges. And once the bridges were in place, each stone for each castle would have to have been carried across the rope bridge to the next pillar so that the castle could be built. Frankly, it was amazing what the people of Westeros could build without magic. The first castle, the one that was closest to land, had a drawbridge to connect it to the top of the cliff that marked the edge of the island before the pillars of stone. And that drawbridge was currently in the up position.
“How are we to get over to there?” Bran asked Stanis.
“The Lord of Light can provide a way,” replied Melisandra, as she turned to look at me. “We just need to make a proper sacrifice . . . someone with king’s blood.”
JOFFREY
While my music is having a profound effect on the people of Mole’s Town, and to some extent the entire North, I’m still a man of the Night’s Watch. And Lord Commander Thorne will never let me forget it. I am never allowed any lessening of my duties and can only play music in my spare time. Still, the tedium of standing watch on the wall staring at nothing or cleaning out the latrines gives me plenty of time to write new songs in my head.
When I had started playing at the Mole Hole, I had, at first, just played music from my childhood, the songs of the greats of Rock and Roll that I had grown up with. Then I had added some of the early songs I had written with my first band and some of the songs of my peers from when I had been a big star. But now, I was starting to write new songs. But anything I wrote had to be simple enough that I could quickly teach it to whoever showed up to be in my band that night. Colleen was the only person who was sure to be there. Everyone else may or may not be able to be there that night. And not of them were as good as the guys I had played with in my past life. Sometimes, I miss being in a band with people who were almost my equals. But my current situation made for an interesting song writing challenge.
TORMUND
After talking with that nosey man who kept asking us all kinds of questions, (if I didn’t know better, I would think he’s some kind of video news reporter) we headed back to the docks at the port. This Sam fellow seemed very interested that we had more of these wights and wanted to see them for himself. Along the way, we kept running into the local bully boys who wanted us to come with them. When we refused, they tried to arrest us. But Wun Wun and I could easily shove them aside. When we got back to the wharf, two of the boxes of wights were missing! Oh, scratch that. Four men with frightened expressions were carrying back one of the boxes. It clearly had been opened, because now it was tied shut with a rope, instead of nailed shut as it had been back in White Harbor.
“Hey! Watcha doing with our box?” I asked.
“We’re sorry! We didn’t know! We didn’t know!” pleaded one of the men as they set down the box and ran away.
We walked over and inspected the box. The wight inside was making quite a racket, as he had been disturbed by the thieves who had opened his box. But it appeared that they had done a good job of tying it shut. While we were distracted by all this, a large number of the local bullies had surrounded us. They all had those yellow cloaks on. There appeared to be more than 20 of them. We could probably take them. But it wouldn’t be an easy fight.
“In the name of Prince Renly, you are summoned to the Red Keep!” proclaimed one of the knights.
“Fuck off! We came here to see the King of the Kneelers!” I explained.
“The King is not here,” explained the knight. “Prince Renly is ruling King’s Landing at the moment.”
“Then I guess he is the man we want to see,” I replied, before gesturing to Wun Wun to grab the tied box and bring it with us.
The whole way to the Red Keep the wight kept banging on the inside of the box. When we arrived, they made us give up our weapons before entering. Ygrette was especially pissed about that. But since The Sword was inside me, the guards didn’t know about it. Finally, we were brought into a large room. There were people wearing fancy clothes standing in raised sections along the walls and at the far end was a man sitting on a pile of partially melted swords. There were people standing alongside him, including a knight in white. The man sitting on the swords wore the fanciest clothes and the way people were defering to him made me think he must be in charge here. The wight was still beating on the inside of his box, making quite a bit of noise.
“You must be Prince Renly?” I shouted, trying to be heard over the pounding of the wight.
“What the hells have you got in that box?” yelled Renly.
I gestured, and Wun Wun put the box down on it’s end. I reached for my knife to cut the ropes, but then realized that they had taken it from me. So I got one of the knights to cut the ropes for me. The front side of the box fell away with a bang, and Renly turned pale when he saw what was inside. I ripped open the rest of the box so that the cage and the wight inside was visible from all sides and people gasped at the sight. Some of the women even screamed. The wight gave off a hissing scream as it tried to reach through the bars at us.
“As you can see, the Others, the Wight Walkers, are real.” I proclaimed. “This is why we came here to your city. To show you this. The Wight Walkers are turning every one of the Free Folk they can catch into this. If you don’t tell the Crows to let us onto the this side of the wall, every single man, woman and child of the Free Folk, whom you call: Wildings, will turn into this.”
“My Prince, this is just a mummery, a man made up in a costume,” said a fat bald man standing near the prince.
“Let’s see,” replied Renly, before pointing at the wight and commanding his knights. “Kill it!”
One of the knights stepped up to the wight, stuck his sword through the bars of the cage and stabbed it in the heart. In response, the wight reached through the bars of the cage and grabbed the knight by the throat, choking him. One of the knights cut the hand off the wight while the others stuck their own swords through the bars to stab the wight. The wight seemed completely unharmed by the multiple swords sticking out of his body, while his severed hand continued to choke the knight. The knight struggled to pull the hand off his throat until I helped him pry the fingers of the hand off him and freed him. I took the squirming hand and held it over on of the torches that lit the room.
“Fire is the only thing you have that can hurt them,” I explained as I burned the hand.
Although the burning hand stopped moving the rest of the wight was still struggling in its‘ cage.
“This is all very interesting,” said an old man, who was standing near Renly. “But I do not see what it has to do with us. Let the Others have the Wildlings. The Wall has kept the Others back for 8,000 years.”
“THE WALL HAS NEVER BEEN TESTED!” I yelled. “The Wall was build after the Long Night. We don’t actually know that it will do anything to slow the Wight Walkers. You can’t just let our people die. If you do, you’ll have to fight us as a part of the Army of the Dead!”
“No one is going to let your people die,” assured Renly as he gazed fearfully at the wight that had been stabbed many times over. “A final decision will have to wait until my brother, the King returns. But I assure you, we will take the threat beyond The Wall seriously. In the meantime, I have heard you have brought more than one of these wights?”
“Yes,” I affirmed. “We already put one of them up in front of the big church with the seven pointed star on it.”
“A good idea,” agreed Renly. “The people need to see this for themselves. The others need to be sent to the other Kingdoms, where they can be displayed in a public place and people can see this for themselves.”
“My Prince, if this is not some mummery, you should send them to the Citadel to be studied,” said the old man.
“Very well Grand Maester, we’ll send one of them to the Citadel,” commanded Renly.
“In the meantime, we should inquire about what the Night’s Watch knows of this,” added the fat bald man.
SAM
When the Gold Cloaks arrived in Force at the waterfront, I melted into the crowd. After all, the interviews I had obtained from the Wildling had given me quite a story. Much of it seemed too fantastical to be true. But the Wildlings all seemed to be in agreement about the details and so I deemed to the story factual enough to run. Especially with the evidence of a real, unliving, wight, that they had left in the cage in front of the Sept of Balor. Never had mine eyes witnessed such a sight. And I would need to do more experimentation with the wight in order to determine it’s vulnerabilities.
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