FicWad

Chapter 43: the Long Night begins



MARGAERY

I’d brewed enough of my plant growth chemical to fill a large wine barrel. It sat next to me, in its’ side, with a tap in place and I had a bucket to fill from it that was currently full. I had been assigned to my place here, on top of the gate house so I could help guard the path leading up to the gate. Bran was with me, along with his soldiers he had brought from Riverrun. Edric was a little further down the wall of the castle commanding his army of Wildlings. Since the Gatehouse was taller than the wall, there were mostly archers posted with us. Bran was armed with his short spear in one hand and his wand in the other.
The trebuchets in the courtyard started flinging bowls of flaming pitch. With the light they game off, you could see them soar overhead, the light getting slightly dimmer as they went through the driving snow. When they hit the ground, the dimly seen flames would spread out a bit, but would quickly fade away. Too quickly! The fires should have burned longer than that!
We couldn’t see them, but we could hear them coming, the sounds of tens of thousands of feet trampling down six foot deep snow was almost drowned out by the screeching they were doing. When I heard them directly below us, I flung the bucket to empty it on the path leading up the gatehouse where I had arranged for thousands of weirwood sprigs to be planted. The screeching sound intensified, which was the only clue as to whether or not I was making a difference. Bran shouted something in latin and a jet of flame shot out of his wand burning some of the wights and allowing me to see that some of them had been de-animated when trees grew through them. But then, there was a big increase in the strength and coldness of the wind and Bran’s flame went out. I had refilled the bucket and so I threw another bucket of the chemical over the side. Bran cast a different spell, which made a ball of fire shoot out of his wand, and explode when it hit something. But the fire was quickly quenched. I threw another bucket full below. More screeching. The sound changed a bit. Over the howling wind I could just barely make out a sound coming us from below. They were climbing up here. Bran ordered the archers to shoulder their bows and use their daggers. He was shooting jets of flame directly down, as I continued with the buckets and others threw rocks over the side. The first one popped up over the side of the wall, Bran blasted it with another jet of flame as I dropped the bucket and drew my daggers, one in each hand. Another came over the wall and I stabbed it, making it drop like a puppet with it’s strings cut. Another came and swung a sword at me! I stepped into the swing so I could block it with my hand against its’ forearm. I then tried to twist it in a hold, but this thing did not seem to be able to feel pain. It clawed at my face with it’s other hand and I stabbed that one with my dagger, dropping it when it went limp. Another came over and I stabbed it. Then another, with a spear to stab me, I dodged the spear and did a roll forward to stab it in the gut. Bran was stabbing them with his spear in one hand and flames from his wand in the other. The other men were stabbing the wights with their daggers. Finally, we were able to drive them back and resumed fighting them from above.


EDRIC

The flaming pitch fired with the trebuchet was not working as it should! I could tell that somehow, they were using magic to counter the flames. As we heard them come closer to our part of the castle wall, Jojen and my other magical students began casting fire spells of various sorts at them. The short duration ones seemed the most useful, as every time we sent a fire spell at them, it would quickly fizzle out.
They kept getting closer! Not only could we hear them trample through the six foot snow drifts, we could also see them in flashes from the light of our fiery spells. There were also flashes of lightning in the distance. Thundersnow? When they got right below the castle wall, I ordered my wizards to shoot their spells down on them, while I cast a fiendfyre spell. Out of my wand shot dragons, stags, lions, snakes, wolves and assorted other animals, all made of flames. They surged forward and from the light of them I could see that they were burning as deep hole in a veritable sea of dead men marching on us, now made visible by the light of this spell. I couldn’t use it on the closer ones because I feared the spell getting out of control and attacking us. Instead, something was fighting me for control, gradually suppressing the flames bit by bit until they had gone completely out! When I cast the spell again, more of them had surged forward to fill the gap I had made and this time the spell died out even quicker! I ordered the others to switch to cutting spells. They all knew that one. I meanwhile, blindly flung bombarda and bombarda into the darkness. If I couldn’t burn them, I would explode them. Jojen followed my lead. He was more advanced than the other students and could cast a variety of curses at them like I could. We kept it up as they continued to attack our section of the castle. I sounded like they might be getting through in places. But we were kept too busy to investigate. The never let up on me and my wizards. My non-magical soldiers stayed at the ready with their dragon glass spears and daggers. But we wizards never let the wights get to the top of the wall where the dragon glass would be needed. They were like waves! The intensity of attacks would increase, then ebb away. When It got too intense, I would cast another Fiendfyre. But each time, it seemed less effective.
Then, my people started to succumb to magical exhaustion. One by one, the Free Folk wargs that I had taken on as students starting fainting. When I realised what was happening, I ordered Jojen to stop casting. And when I started to feel the effects, myself, I had to stop. After that, we had to poke down with our spears from the top of the wall, as they attempted to scale it and kill us.


TRYSTANE

They had given us all weapons made from the same stone as Apache Tears. We were told that metal weapons wouldn’t work against the Others. We accepted the stone weapons even if that didn’t jive with our past experience. Some of our weapons had worked fine agains the wights, like my spear, for instance. Others, like Arya’s Needle were useless agains them. So we accepted the new stone weapons but brought our own, just in case. Arya wore her sword: Needle and her valerian steel dagger on her belt. But in her hands, she had a double headed spear with a stone head on each end. I had the stone head spear I was issued, but brought the spear my father had given me, the one that I had replaced the head with a valerian steel one from Arya. I kept it handy in case the other spear broke. It was too dark to see and the wind and snow of the blizzard didn’t help any. But the shrieking of the wights as they grew closer was even louder. When they began climbing the castle walls, we started poking downwards with our spears. In addition to my wife, Arya, and myself. Her best friend, Lyanna Mormont was here, defending our part of the wall. She was only armed with a stone dagger, which she stuck in the hands of any wight that reached the top of the castle wall. I danced into the wereworld, where the army of zombies were, instead, and army of skeletons. I could see them slightly better in the wereworld and stabbing one in the wereworld killed it in the normal world too. I shifted back and told Arya:

“I can see them better in the wereworld, so I’m going to fight them there,” I explained, as I stabbed a wight with my stone spear. “I’ll still be with you.”

“All right, go!” shouted Arya, as she stabbed another wight in the face and it fell off the castle wall.

I shifted back to the wereworld and attacked the army of skeletons. I could see them slightly better here, but the seemed to be able to see me better and were preferentially targeting me. I could kill them here, and it killed them in the normal world. But they could also hurt me here. The only real advantage of doing this is that it decreased the chances of being hit by friendly fire. The weapons and bodies of my friends and allies in the normal world would pass through me like a wasn’t even there.
One of them tried to stab Arya in the back and I took it down, just before my wife stabbed backwards at it with the other end of her spear. Another poked a spear at me, which I dodged, before de-animating it with a thrust of my spear. as it fell away, I stabbed the other one who was targeting me. As I worked my way through them, from the perspective of Arya’s men, the wights were just falling down for no reason. When we managed to drive them back, I returned to the normal world. But this was just a temporary respite. The wights soon surged forward again to attempt to climb the castle wall and kill us. We got to work stabbing them as they got within reach of us. I had feared that little Lyanna was too young for this. But she never wavered. stabbing any wight that dared to stick a hand within reach of her dagger. And when they would make it on top of the castle wall, Arya was magnificent as she spun and danced and stabbed the wights with each end of her double spear. Any that she or I missed would be grabbed in the jaws of her horse-sized, three-legged dire wolf, shaken and cast off the wall to below.



JON

The Army of the Dead caused me pain just by their very existence! It felt sort of like the Dark Side of the Force, but different, in a way that only magic can. I could feel each and every one of them from the magic that suffused them. None of the others could see. But for me, they were as clear as day! When we tried using the trebuchets to fling fire on them, I could feel the magic being used to squelch the flames. We fired more and they did the same. Then the wizards starting shredding the Force with their fire spells. The enemy would counter with colder, more intense winds, magically produced to snuff out the flames. My magical allies continued to wield their powers in a way that the Force thought was an abomination. I could feel the power and anger of the Dark Side filling me! I sent forth a bolt of Force lightning at one of the wights and it instantly dropped! I sent Force lightning to destroy another and another! I was shooting out Force lightning with both hands as I heard myself cackling like a mad Sith Lord. Each one I hit would instantly lose the magic that held it together. But I could only hit them one at a time with each hand and there were too many of them. They surged forward, shrieking and crunching the deep snow as they trampled it down with tens of thousands of feet until they got where they could climb the castle wall. I was not alone up here. I had my best troops along side me, all armed with dragon glass spears, my dire wolf, Ghost and even my neo-Child of the Forrest squire, Lomy. Also with me was my brother Robb and his best men, similarly armed except for Robb who wore the family great-sword, Ice, on his back for luck. Beside him stood his own dire wolf, Greywind.
By the time the wights had climbed to the top of the wall, my allies had gotten over the shock of seeing me throw bolts of lightning and they held their ground to defend the castle wall stabbing at any wight that poked up. There were so many that the wights could stand on each other as they surged to climb over the castle wall. I continued to destroy them two at a time with bolts of Force lightning and when there too many coming over the castle wall at the same time for my men to fight them all, I used a Force push to knock them all down. The ones I had hit knocked the ones below the and the ones that took the full brunt were slower to get up, as if they were in pain from their contact with the Force.
Suddenly, there was a booming sound coming from the castle gates.


TORMUND

“How can there be so many of them?” asked Brienne, as she continued to stab at the wights coming over the castle wall with her spear. “Didn’t we rescue your people so they wouldn’t be turned into these things?”

“We burn our dead so we won’t come back as them,” I explained as I cut through the wights with the Sword of Icy Fire. “But every once in a while, we miss someone. A crow dies alone in a blizzard, an entire village dies of a winter fever and there’s no one to burn the dead, after 8,000 years it all adds up!”

That was all the time for talking we had as we battled the Army of the Dead. They just kept coming and coming! Occasionally, there would be a magical blast of colder wind, but it was not a form of magic the Sword count absorb. The magic was happening out there, and we were feeling the blast of wind here. This was feeling uncomfortable close to Doctor Mezlo’s Trap. I wish I could just go to the top of the building and kill the big boss. But there didn’t seem to be one, or if there was, he was smart enough to stay well behind the lines. Once in a while, a Wight Walker would show themselves, the archers would shoot him and he would go down along with a few hundred wights that were nearby. But then, another Wight Walker would just come along and revive the first one, along with all his wights.
Still, as frightening and frustrating as all this was, It was a joy to fight alongside my wife, Brienne. She is magnificent in the way she never backs down, never holds back. When there would be a lull in the fighting, she would give me a look that melted my heart. I could see the love in her eyes . . . or was that frustration?
In any case, we’d only have these moments for brief instants before the wights would surge again. We’d been at it for hours when something began pounding on the gates at the other end of the castle. But we were too swamped in foes to lend a hand with what ever it was.

“Go!” yelled Brienne, as she continued to battle the wights. “I can handle it here! Go!”

I hopped down from the castle wall on the inside and started racing across the courtyard in the direction of the gates.


TRYSTANE

When the pounding on the castle gates began, Lyanna ran down the stairs! Arya followed and since things here were in a temporary lull, I was able to follow her. We ran across the courtyard in time to see the doors of the castle gate come splintering open and four giant wights come striding in. Lyanna didn’t even slow down. She kept running until she was close enough to stab the giant wight in the foot with her stone dagger, which was all that was needed to drop the giant wight, like a stone. The next one, suddenly flipped over upside down and was hanging in the air by one leg. I could see that Lord Bran was waving his wand at the giant wight. Arya ran up to it and stabbed up with her spear, hitting it in the shoulder and causing it to go limp. Lady Margaery then leapt off the tower onto the head of the next one and stabbed at it with a pair of stone daggers, then hopped off of the giant wight gracefully, as it fell to the ground. By then, that Wildling, Tormund, the one with the glowing sword, had arrived and ran forward to slash at the legs of the giant, causing it to fall dead. He then rushed into the gates to defend them, followed by Lady Margaery, Arya, Lyanna and myself. Behind us, jets of flame from above were incinerating the giant corpses. But we were more focused on fighting off the wights that were surging forward to breach the castle walls. the five of us defended the open gate until Arya’s brother, Jon, arrived, waved his hand and pushed them all back. two different jets of flame from on top of the tower and castle wall roasted the wights. After that, there was another lull as the wights ran out of sight.

“Are they gone?” asked Arya.

“No. They are still out there,” said Jon. “They’ve retreated out to just beyond bow, shot. I think they are going to besiege us now. So lets get this gate repaired.

POP!

Lord Bran appeared out of thin air!

“Allow me,” said Bran. “Reparo!”

Suddenly the pieces of the shattered gate knit themselves back together and the gate was restored.

“All right, it looks like the battle is over for now,” announced Jon. “We need to keep some men on the walls, but the rest of you, lets have a meal in the Great Hall. We’ve been at this for hours. I’m going to go meditate in the Gods’ Wood. Don’t come in there and disturb me if you want to live.”


JOFFREY

We continued on South until we came to the Neck. It wasn’t like last time I came this way. Now the swamp was frozen and we could just walk over the ice, killing anyone we came across in the swamp that couldn’t escape us. Every couple of miles, the master would raise his hands and more people or lizard lions would rise up out of the ice and join us.