The Dothraki fell first. Only Ser Jorah and a handful of the stronger horsemen had returned, bruised and bloody, to the castle; the rest were thought lost. Brienne had thought that they might be able to beat them back on the crest of the hill, but the enemy was obviously quicker and deadlier than anyone imagined they could be – even those that had fought them before were alarmed by the destruction of the Dothraki army.
The sky was black, the crescent moon offering just enough light to see each other's fear. They could only rely on their hearing to sense the approach of the masses, and when they did the roar was deafening.
Brienne eyed Podrick. Constant Podrick. He would stick to her side as much as possible, she knew. He was alright fighting on his own, but his instinct to defend her made him fiercer.
She turned to Jaime. The uncertainty and fear she saw in his face turned to resoluteness as he met her gaze.
He nodded to her and tightened his grip on his sword. As the sounds of the dead got closer, he watched her strike a defensive pose, and he felt himself mimic her. When the masses attacked, the onslaught was endless.
Jaime felt himself being beaten on all sides, his sword swinging blindly. Through the grunts and screams of the melee, he tried to listen for the sounds of the living around him so as to avoid clashing with his compatriots, but the crush of the dead was astounding and it was all he could do to stay upright.
To his left, he thought he heard her cry out. He took down a wight and turned to try and focus on the sounds of her distress in the near-darkness, when her scream rang out, chilling his blood.
I'll kneel down
He pushed living and dead out of his way to reach her, finally seeing her disappearing under a handful of corpses. He raced to her and pulled one, then another, then another wight off of her, slashing each with Widow's Wail in turn until he could see that she was dispensing with the other two from her position on the ground. He reached down to pull her up and she was looking past him in shock, eyes glowing.
He felt the heat behind him and spun around to see that Daenerys' dragon was cutting a fiery path through the dead, destroying hundreds at a time – just as she'd done with the Lannister army in the Reach.
A wight ran at him through the smoke and he sliced it in two. He heard Brienne's grunts just behind him and realized that she had stood and they were now guarding each other's backs. Even with fire and destruction of their ranks, the dead did not stop coming at them. Although the fires lent light to the battle, the smoke was dangerously thick.
"If we stay out here, we'll wind up joining them!" Yelled Brienne at his back.
He stopped a dead man coming at them from the side and spun to face her. "Let's go!"
"Fall back!" she screamed, his yells echoing hers, sounding the retreat.
They ran for the castle, the crush of the living only a shade better than that of the dead. That gates opened before them and the living rushed in. Brienne found purchase just inside and urged the troops to move faster, looking for Pod and Jaime, having lost sight of them as they'd run. She spotted Pod crossing the threshold and pulled him to the side, gripping his shoulder. He was whole, thank the gods. She pushed him further into the castle and spun back toward the entrance, searching.
Jaime was already beyond her position directing soldiers to recovery or defense, sending them up to the tops of the walls if they were still able-bodied. He caught sight of Brienne edging back towards the gate and called out to her, but the sounds of the battle drowned him out. He sheathed his sword so as to avoid dropping it as he pushed his way through the throng.
Lyanna Mormont was commanding her men to close the gates just as Brienne reached them. She was quickly running out of time and, for all she knew, that meant that Jaime was too. She knew she shouldn't venture further, that she should stay back and command her men in defense of the castle, but she couldn't stop her frantic feet. Her hand was on the gate door when she thought she heard her name and started to turn back. But then someone yanked her backwards by the elbow. She stumbled and put her arm out, catching herself on Jaime's shoulder, gasping.
Know my ground
He cupped his hand near her ear and raised his mouth to it to shout over the din, "What are you doing?"
She blinked at him through smoke, "I thought – "
They heard shouting from the top of the gate she looked up, dropping her hand from him to her sword just as another blast of warmth hit them, the dragon screeching as it flew off again.
"Brienne!" She looked back at him, "We have to man the walls!"
"Go!" she yelled, then spun to call the troops to her.
Jaime ran deeper into the courtyard and sent the stragglers up the steps. Pod ran to him, a look of panic in his eyes. Jaime grabbed his arm, "Pod, your sword?" Podrick shook his head – he'd lost it in the melee. Jaime drew the dragonglass dagger from his belt and held it flat to Pod's chest. "Take it – go! You're needed on the wall." Pod straightened his shoulders and ran for the steps.
The Unsullied were doing all they could to protect the retreat and now that the gates had closed they had pulled themselves back behind the trenches. Ser Davos, positioned furthest from the fight - where the north and western wall met, tried to signal Daenerys and Jon on the dragons overhead but the mix of fog and smoke had made it impossible for them to see the signal, even when they were close.
The northerners had been waiting in semi darkness with the glow of burning wights giving them their only sense of distance, the din still chaotic, when the trenches burst into flames as if lit from within. The fires cast a ghastly glow on the faces of the men surrounding Brienne and she glanced at each of them in turn wondering just how many would survive the night.
Jaime peered over the wall and watched as the wights seemed to dive directly into the fire unabated, screaming and writhing as they burned. But then any hope he'd harbored turned to dust; as the wights fell in groups across the fiery trench, the fire was quenched creating a path for those behind them to infiltrate the burning perimeter.
"They're at the wall!" he yelled to the archers, calling them to alter their focus and then crossed the parapet placing men in staggered positions at each opening. If arrows couldn't arrest the progression, and if the dragon glass welded to the castle walls did not manage to hinder them, then the dead would be upon them soon.
Brienne stared in horror as the wights crossed their lines and began scaling the walls, arrows loosed by the archers falling helpless into the swelling masses below. "They're climbing! Hold your positions! Do not let them through!" She took a spot at the center of the parapet behind her men, sword drawn and ready.
They reached the top of the eastern wall first. Gendry dropped his hammer on the first of them, shattering the skull and sending the pieces raining down onto the reanimated bodies below. Tormund grabbed two of them at once and smashed their heads together, throwing them off.
They came quickly then. The men and women of the eastern wall beat them back viciously but they were being replaced too quickly and climbing much too fast. One of the men was grabbed and pulled off the wall screaming. Others stepped forward to replace him but the hesitation in it was enough to let two of the wights reach the top and climb over. Jaime took them on himself, dispatching the first easily enough with his blade, but the second pinned him. He struggled to push it off, but then realized he was no longer fighting one corpse but three and they had him shoved up against the edge of the wall. They tore at his armor as he struggled against them. One managed to reach skin and dug its dead nails into his right forearm, just above the leather straps to his hand.
He screamed.
A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from Mumford & Sons' "I Will Wait" (C) 2012.