Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire. I don't own the Wall or the Night's Watch.
cristianronald278: Robb has in fact already a lot of gold in his possession, as he raided a lot of Lannister mines plus took the ransom for Theon and many Western nobles. The problem right now is the lack of food in the rural areas has created a lot of inflation and food transports from Essos are slow to arrive.
Invading the Iron Islands is impossible for the North at the moment. The available forces are on their way to the Wall, which is a far more pressing threat.
raw666: Oh, don't count Braavos and the Iron Bank out of the equation yet. Despite the economic crisis, they remain the wealthiest city and the naval superpower of this world.
X59: Part of the problem is that this conflict has absolutely no military equivalent by its sheer level of destruction and change of winning sides. It's medieval times, so the emissaries were often demanding things taking their orders from completely outdated instructions. That and the author is a Westerosi who is not a friend of Braavos.
The Others will have a hierarchy, though humans will only be able to deduce a vague idea of it. It's not like you can discuss with a White Walker...
Master of Dragons God: Thanks for the review.
Revan3363: Thanks for following my story.
Matt Quinn: A bit of Westerosi propaganda here; the banker made an unfortunate comment about how the Drowned God and the debt were two different things. One Ironborn didn't like the remark, and the representative was slaughtered on the spot. Asha executed the culprit, but the deed was done...
Paul: Let's just say the Iron Bank representative at Oldtown may have been after the illegal actions of a certain Master of Coin. It's his actions and some underlings deciding to save their skins which led to his murder in a spontaneous riot. Similar things happened at Casterly Rock and Storm's End with Drowned God fanatics and R'hllor worshippers. Afterwards, history was rewritten to make the Westerosi looks good.
As for Braavos, the city is well-defended and is going to enter the conflict with their manpower completely intact. With a titanic fleet and professional assassins, their enemies aren't going to have a lot of fun...
And now the Wall to visit our best frozen threats...
They are coming
The Wall Stands Part III
"Do you want thousands of wildlings fighting to your side or thousands of wights trying to kill you?" Jon Snow, 300AC.
"They are coming. Prepare for the Long Night." General message sent by Maester Aemon to all the Houses of Westeros, 300AC.
"They come and they bring with them ice and death." Cotter Pyke's message sent to Castle Black, after the disaster of Hardhome.
"We will have to stop them here. It is at the Wall that the destiny of humanity will be decided." Lord Tyrion Lannister to King Robb Stark, 300AC.
The election of Qhorin Halfhand as Lord Commander had been a moment of hope for the Night's Watch and the Northmen defending the Wall against the Wildling horde. There was none of this feeling left when the second election to name a new Lord Commander began in 300AC. Usually, the logical decision for two elections so near in time would have been to nominate the best contenders of the previous one. Unfortunately, this was not possible. Qhorin himself, the Lord Commander, had perished in a duel of legend against Mance Rayder, but so had Donald Noye against the King of the Giants, Ramsay Snow at the teeth of the cannibals, Ser Endrew Tarth against a formidable Thenn warrior (making the main line of House Tarth really extinct) and many others knights and veterans of the Night's Watch. Janos Slynt, former commander of the Goldcloaks, had during the battle cowardly deserted his post in top of the Wall (despite the lack of danger so high in altitude) and hid himself in the upper levels of Castle Black where Maester Aemon himself found him the next morning. Slynt was executed by Robett Glover himself three days after the battle, his excuses being so pathetic no one managed to believe them.
Lacking a unified leader for Castle Black, the other two fortresses commander Cotter Pyke and Denys Malllister began their campaign to become Lord Commander. The commanders of Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea cordially hated each other, making all attempts of a rapid election impossible. The 151 men of Shadow Tower voted for Denys Mallister. The 241 men of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea voted for Cotter Pyke. With only 752 black brothers, 501 votes were needed to win the election, and these two serious candidates were unable to convince enough men of Castle Black to follow them. To be fair to these two men, the garrison of Castle Black was unable to do anything as a coherent force. Jon Snow, illegitimate son of the defunct Lord Eddard Stark, had the support of most of the rangers and fighting men, having brilliantly served as the Lord Commander's second in the Battle of the Wall but was only the more popular commander of many, his young age been considered by many as too great a disadvantage. The steward Bowen Marsh had rallied to him most of the black stewards. Othell Yarwyck was followed by most of the builders. Furthermore, the rounds coming day after day convinced many new recruits coming from all Westeros to put their name in the vote. What no one had expected was the elections to be rapidly perturbed by an external factor. The morning of the fifteenth day of elections, a formidable mass of men, women and children emerged from the Haunted forest. The wildlings had come back again.
The eyes of the experienced watchmen with Myrish glasses in top of the Wall however noticed quickly this wildling group was no threat to them. If the wildlings following Mance Rayder had had the ferocity and the appearance of an army, these newcomers were a crowd of wounded and starved men, women and children, most having lost their weapons and their will to fight. Hunted by the White Walkers, with no resources and no other way to escape, the wildlings had come back to the place where their hopes had been shattered. As a weak sun illuminated the Wall, a lone giant advanced with a flag of parley. No Night's Watch commander being particularly eager to test if a giant had the honour to respect the customs of parley, it was Robett Glover and a group of his personal guard who emerged of the tunnels to talk. The Northmen were received by the wildling leadership, the "wildling's princess" Val and her lieutenant the famous Tormund "Giantsbane".
The negotiations were brief and to the point, Northmen and wildlings having little interest in the finest points of diplomacy. The wildling delegation freely admitted they were at the end of their road, and unless help came, there would be no tomorrow for them. The White Walkers could not be stopped. The weather was becoming incredibly cold, even for the inhabitants of the lands bordering the Shivering Sea. Val, Tormund and some 12 000 wildlings were ready to surrender, but only if the Northmen and the Night's Watch authorised them to travel further south. The barely-hidden threat being that while the 12 000 humans in front of them were absolutely no threat, nor were the thousands of defeated wildlings marching towards Hardhome, once the White Walkers would deal with them the issue was going to become significantly worse. Twenty or thirty thousand wildlings having barely the strength to stand and walk were never going to be a threat for the black brothers and the Northmen. Thirty thousand wights in service of the Others were a danger no matter how optimistic the perspective.
In a perfect world, the Night's Watch and the Northmen would have accepted to let pass the wildlings in order to have a better chance to fight the enemy which mattered. Unfortunately, the Wall in 300AC was far from a nice place. Robett Glover and most of the men having enough strategic sense recognised letting pass the wildlings survivors was the sane choice. On the other hand, that left a large number of men in the Night's Watch focused on hating their long-lasting human enemies and refusing to admit the Wall and the Watch had been created to defend from something far worse than cannibals. The issue of the truce between the wildlings divided the ranks of the bad brothers and the Northmen so badly it came to civil war. Learning Ser Denys Mallister, Jon Snow and Othell Yarwyck had the intention to form a temporary alliance with Val and Tormund's force, the Lord Steward Bowen Marsh, Ser Alliser Thorne and several other black brothers tried to eliminate them, judging these men had failed to uphold their vows (external influence was never proven). The move was stupid: even if this brutal removal had functioned, the thousand or so Glover and Northmen present would never had stayed idle while murderers and oath-breakers were among them. As it was, surprise was far from total and the conspirators only managed to kill Othell Yarwyck before being discovered and forced to defend their lives. Marsh, Thorne and their followers were encircled (numbering 50 in all), broken and massacred, then cut piece by piece and thrown off the Wall. It was one more betrayal and disaster the Night's Watch really didn't need in these dark hours, but it had happened and now the weight of the Northmen to defend the Wall was even more important, the black brothers having lost 78 of their numbers for 21 Northmen. The arrival of Lady Maege Mormont with 600 men at Shadow Tower and seven Manderly and Flint ships with 500 men at Eastwatch only accelerated the vision of the black brothers rapidly becoming irrelevant. The day after the mutiny of the Forsworn (as Marsh and his conspirators then were known) Ser Denys Mallister was elected 999th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. The gates of the tunnels were opened, and for the first time in centuries, wildlings were free to cross the fortification of Brandon the Builder. It had a price, of course. While part of the spearwives, the children and any men unable to fight departed to the south under the escort of a sizeable escort of Northmen, 4 000 wildlings under Val and Tormund stayed at the Wall to help defend it, the defenders reopening the castles of Oakenshield and Queensguard for these unexpected reinforcements. Cotter Pyke stayed Commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, while the ranger Blane (once Qhorin's lieutenant) was named as the new Commander of the Shadow Tower.
Several ships from White Harbor having arrived in the last days, an expeditionary force was rapidly launched to save the wildlings they could from the assaults of the Others and the climate. Needless to say, the Hardhome expedition was a complete fiasco. Storms of an intensity never seen before struck the ten ships of the fleet, delaying progress to what had been once the only true wildling city beyond the Wall. When Cotter Pyke and his second Jon Snow arrived to Hardhome, the wildlings were starving and cannibalism had already begun to spread in the habits of several tribes. Another complicating factor was also that the wildlings present there had too much endured at the hands of the Night's Watch to trust them again. After a first round of peace talks, only about seven to eight hundred men, women and children began to embark in the Manderly ships, while several thousand stayed stubbornly on the shores. Perhaps the tribes and their leaders hoped to receive a better deal from Cotter Pyke. Maybe it was just in the Free Folk to cling stubbornly to their convictions. Anyway, it was too late. As it had been feared, the White Walkers were not about to let the chance to multiply their army of undead without acting. The first echelon of wildlings was just taking refuge in the ships hulls when a monumental avalanche collapsed not four leagues from the biggest concentration of Free Folk concentrated at Hardhome. As hundreds of undead emerged from the snow and ice, it was clear it was not a natural phenomenon.
Panic spread like a lightning. While White Walkers raids had been a deadly common occurrence since the last year, it was the first time the Great Enemy launched its troops in a full day assault. The Free Folk stationed there were not ready for this horrific change in tactics. Neither was the Night's Watch. The rare fighting men and women were dispersed all over the vast plain of Hardhome, with only a core force of Thenns, archers and black brothers of about 300 men and women in the fort directing the evacuation towards the ships. Considering the rapport of strength, the battle was lost from the start. The Others had brought with them tens of thousands wights, outnumbering their living opponents by at least four-to-one. Worse, the inhuman beings of ice held the high ground over the cliffs, letting them choose where and when to launch the undead in a horrific avalanche, and the men and women fighting had nothing to oppose this nightmarish tactic. In less than two hours, the vast plain of Hardhome was a sinister butchery, awful warning of the intention the Others had towards humanity. No champion was able to stop the dead. Killing one wight was increasingly futile, as five others took his place in the next second. Even the few giants available were simply submerged by thousands of monsters from humanity darkest nightmares. The fort of Hardhome, defended by Cotter Pyke, Jon Snow and the Thenn force, was able to oppose some resistance for several minutes, until the White Walkers finished the Free Folk and raised them as wights. After that, the undead came again, not by thousands but by the tens of thousands. The wood and the ancient stone protecting the human defenders collapsed under this pressure, with White Walkers warriors leading the way in the numerous breaches.
For two of these ice warriors, it revealed itself a very bad idea as one was impaled on Jon Snow Valyrian blade Longclaw while the other came face to face with the direwolf Ghost. On this day, the Night's Watch learnt that the White Walkers were not invulnerable to the steel of Valyria and being torn apart by the jaws of an adult direwolf. That was the extent of the good news. While the death of two of its commanders paralysed magically hundreds of wights during several seconds, giving time for the defenders to evacuate and retreat, the battle was lost. The fort of Hardhome was submerged, half of its fighting force was lying dead and there were simply no reinforcements to help humanity. Cotter Pyke, Jon Snow, Edd Tolett, Pypar and Grenn were the last black brothers to leave the shore, pursued by a mass of animated corpses nothing seemed to stop. Nine black brothers, seven Manderly men and the rest of the wildlings remained behind, slaughtered without mercy. The Battle of Hardhome was over, ending in an overwhelming Other's victory. The last coherent force of the Free Folk was now gone, replaced by thousands of wights. Too many wildlings had fought there their last stand, Cotter Pyke's evacuation managing only to save a thousand and one hundred Free Folk plus the giant Wun Wun. The culture, the history and the lives of hundreds of tribes having lived since immemorial times were erased forever. The White Walkers had succeeded in less than five years to exterminate or force to flee every human being living Beyond-the-Wall. Now the path to the Wall was completely open to the legions pouring from the Land of Always Winter. Under vast and dark clouds of snow and ice, the army of the dead surged southwards. The Second Long Night had begun.
