"I said: Nock and hold, you cunts! Does Nock mean: Draw?
Does fucking Hold mean fucking Drop? You all plan to die here tonight?!"
[ Ser Alliser Thorne screaming abuse at the Night's Watch, at the opening of the Battle for the Wall. ]
During the Battle of Castle Black (Season 4 Episode 9, "The Watchers on the Wall"), the sworn brothers of the Night's Watch posted at the ramparts first make some few petty mistakes, and get sharply bawled out by an infuriated Alliser Thorne who's directly leading them. That gave me the idea to emphasize the feature, and to bring poor Ser Alliser to despair in the face of a bunch of hopeless morons accumulating blunder on blunder in so dire straits. I shall conclude with a point of view from Mance Rayder's Free Folk army, amazed at facing such an incredible amount of incompetence. Good reading!
Usual disclaimer: The events in this tale are starting in the same time as those of Episode 9 ("The Watchers on the Wall"), Season 4 of the TV series. However, these events, as well as the original characters and their unique personalities, remain the property of the TV series produced for HBO, itself inspired by Mr George R.R. Martin's fantastic universe.
– Translation of a novel previously published in French: Please forgive the fact that English is not my native language... –
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The wind was whipping the top of the Wall, blowing bursts of snow again and again. The sworn brothers of the Night's Watch had lined up all along their battle stations at the ramparts, poorly protected from biting cold by their lousy black rugs worn out to the thread. In front of them, down below the Wall, countless fires were burning in the night: the blazes lit by the hundred thousand wildlings of Mance Rayder's army!
The head of Castle Black's garrison was standing amid his men: Ser Allister Thorne, one of the most seasoned rangers in the whole Night's Watch. It would be up to him to hold the Wall, with only one hundred sworn brothers against a hundred thousand of the most ruthless brutes from the far North! Ser Alliser pricked up his ears in order to catch some of the words exchanged around him, and thus to get an idea of his men's spirit. He soon wished he never did!
-–- Freezing cold! Roll on bedtime again!
-–- Damn right, fatso! Hey, what are you hiding there, under yours covers?
-–- A piece of lard pie crust: damn, we didn't even finish dinner! Want some?
Alliser Thorne sighed in despair. This night would certainly not be the most glorious one in his life. But possibly the shortest...
The master-at-arms of Castle Black had just come back from a long-term mission, a diplomatic assignment that had led him down to King's Landing. A fruitless assignment, as a matter of fact... Which well-dressed nobleman of the Red Keep would pay real attention to the Night's Watch scruffy scum?! The shabby look of Ser Alliser's black rags had just earned him a handful of copper halfpennies sown broadcast, as for the lowest beggar of Flea Bottom! Anyway, Alliser Thorne had finally ridden back, with his bitterness and small change; and he had just reached Castle Black at last, when he had learnt there that he would have to deputize for late Lord Commander Mormont.
Not long before, the 997th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch had actually been stabbed in the back by angry drunkards, in some family brothel beyond the Wall known as Craster's Keep. It seemed rather doubtful that Jeor Mormont would ever enter the legend, with such a death! Yet so many previous Lords Commanders had passed away in so many various ways, any of them sounding more pathetic than the others – such as Ferris Baratheon who fell seven hundred feet while urinating upon the wildlings from the top of the Wall, or Rudigar Targaryen who castrated himself while shaving his private parts with a valyrian steel blade! –, that old Mormont's death could almost pass as a heroic feat!
Many others among the brothers Ser Alliser had known were now to stay forever north of the Wall. The new commander of Castle Black could not see around him but new faces he didn't know, and strangely thickened silhouettes for the few mugs he could vaguely recognize! Maester Aemon was even more senile than usual, and Ser Alliser's new deputy, Lord Janos Slynt, inspired him so little confidence, that he probably wouldn't have called that weasel for help, even if slipping off the top of the Wall! Alliser Thorne would have liked to spend more time to get acquainted with his new garrison and command. Unfortunately, Mance Rayder's wildlings, as poorly educated as usual, had chosen to attack without granting him this grace period...
However, Ser Alliser had had time enough to get a sense of the average quality of the men he would have to lead on this dreadful night. And his assessment was... appalling! The common batch of rough bumpkins and petty thugs that usually ended up in the Night's Watch, had never really added the wisdom of maesters to the virile strength of knights; rather the opposite mix, actually: muscular as bookworms, and dumb as jousters! But here, considering the bunch of top oaves with whom he was to give this decisive battle, Ser Alliser felt like he had really hit the Wall!
Close to him, one of the sworn brothers, who was trembling with fear as much as with cold, whined miserably:
-–- They're said to be hundred thousand strong ahead, and we barely amount to a hundred!
-–- Well, not that an unfair fight, the man next to him observed. That means they're only, what? ten times our number, right?
-–- Personally, another brother added proudly, I know I'm worth several men, single-handedly! Sure, my own mother used to say: «I wouldn't like to have two of you!»
Alliser Thorne breathed in the icy air of that night, in an attempt to calm his nerves. The prospect of dying as the 997th and half, and last acting Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, did definitely not please him at all.
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