SANDOR
It took every part, every ounce, every infinitesimal scrap of self control he had to not scream in terror as he willingly and knowingly marched back to the east gate, climbed the steps to the wall, and looked out at the fiery battlefield. His eyes watered from both the heat and the bitter cold. His heart had set an unsteady cadence in his chest as every instinct told him to find some broom cupboard and hide from the fire until the wights came barging into the castle and cornered him. He fought for each step when he wanted nothing more than to turn back before he could get into position, but with Mormont pulling on his arm and the white wolf's nose nudging at his arse, he had to keep going forward.
Atop the wall, he found himself between Beric and Mormont, waiting just behind the archers who were picking off wights as quickly as the dead gathered on the ground below. Sandor knew better than to look down, but he also was no fool in believing they could hold off forever, that the dead would be scaling the walls sooner rather than later, and sooner came too soon as he heard that fateful call of, "They're at the walls!"
"Relieve the archers! Shields and spears form a line at the front, swords behind!" shouted Jaime Lannister and the order was relayed all up and down the walls.
Sandor had just stepped up to take a ready position to hack off the first head that came up to his eye line when there came a shriek of the dead dragon and he dropped his sword, grabbing for limbs on either side of him to pull Mormont and Beric down to kiss the wall top as two enormous claws descended upon them and snatched up an archer who was poised to fire into the throng below. There were shouts of, "What the fuck was that?" once the dragon had passed, and Sandor wondered if he had missed a vital part of his command in forgetting to inform his men that there was a dead dragon to contend with. But then it occurred to him that that responsibility could not have fallen to him. Surely, someone else had spread the word that there was a dead dragon and in any case, what did the idiots think the scorpions were for?
The scorpions…
Almost in what seemed like a taunt, the dragon came back for another pass and deliberately crashed into the nearest dragon-slaying contraption. Hereafter, Sandor would have to find some way to avoid thinking at all since most likely the Night King and by extension, the dragon, seemed capable of reading his thoughts.
When the cry arose that the wights had begun climbing or stacking their bodies on top of each other or whatever the hells they were doing to scale the walls, Sandor called for all nearby defenders to stand back as runners appeared with kegs of oil. The oil was dumped, poured, and splattered over the ramparts, followed by torches to light the wights below on fire, which would hold them back for a little while longer. While a successful tactic, it was the final straw for Sandor who could not stand to be so near the flames yet again, and with an order to his men to hold the wall, he slumped back down into the courtyard where he could see Lyanna Mormont directing reinforcements to the east gate.
He figured that he would wait here, for wights to rain down from the sky as they leaped over the walls or for them to batter the gate down, whichever came first. No sooner had he made up his mind to do so, however, that the first wight sailed down and impaled itself upon his sword. Cries of fear sounded across the wall as the fighters returned to the forefront to meet the rising dead. They did not come as quickly as they had over the trenches, but there were enough to keep Sandor occupied. One wight would fall, then another, then a fallen defender's body, then a battling duo of living and dead combined. He stepped well out of the way of the wall to avoid becoming a cushion for something heavy to land on when he saw what he least suspected he might see this night, which was Littlefinger locked in combat with a wight on the steps and what's more, Littlefinger was on the offense.
Sandor had a brief moment of weakness in hoping that the wight might actually win, but he knew that as sniveling, cowardly, and loathsome as the little cunt was, he was still a fighter, still human, and Sandor needed him alive for as long as he could afford. Littlefinger got in a lucky blow and sliced his dragonglass short sword across the wight's neck, but was then hit from behind as another defender accidentally barreled into him, sending him flying from the steps and landing in a snow bank near the bottom where he had sunk in deep enough that he had trouble climbing out.
Reaching down with one hand, Sandor fished him out from behind and Littlefinger flailed as Sandor's grip on the scruff of his neck tightened. "It's just me, you stupid twat," he snarled as Littlefinger tried to blindly stab him.
"If you're here to kill me because I am not to be found atop the wall, I fell–"
"I saw. Get back up there."
"No need. The wall, it seems, is coming down to meet me."
Wights were falling freely now, flooding into the bailey. Sandor shoved Littlefinger away from the radius of where they were landing. There was nothing to stop the wights from running about every which way, stampeding over everything in their path until they had completely decimated the castle. They needed to be drawn to something, something that could hold their attention to delay the use of the final defenses.
"They're flocking to the godswood," said Littlefinger as he too watched the dead attempt to move northeast. "It's where Bran is."
It was also where the Stark girl was and even she wouldn't be enough to hold back the wights that would come for her and her brother if given the chance. Sandor had to draw them in another direction somehow, but he had nothing to entice them other than being a living being that it was their duty to slaughter. He was given little choice in the matter as a sudden surge of the dead pushed him back through the entryway to the southeastern courtyard which housed the sept and great hall. Quarters were nearly too close to swing his sword and he had to revert to the Valyrian steel dagger that the Stark girl had gifted to him. His reach went further than most wights, but he could not make a dent in their numbers.
He knew a terrible fear in the possibility of losing his footing and being trampled to death or suffocating on the sheer numbers of bodies pressing in around him. There were a thousand ways to die this night and Sandor would be in a right state in whatever afterlife existed–if one existed–if he ended up dying being crushed by undead feet.
Those fighters who had been unlucky enough to get caught in the swell with Sandor were trying to fight in near darkness, as the fire that raged on outside the walls did not extend its light here. Anything that swung at them, they returned an attack without knowing but hoping that it was not a fellow soldier. What had been screams of terror were turning into screams of agony as the dead fought on relentlessly and with some sort of newfound vigor to kill in the most lethal and drawn-out way possible.
Sandor was no stranger to the cries of the dying, but never in numbers such as these. When before he could not see because of the mixture of fire and ice, he could not see now because of the blood spraying into his face from every direction and the sweat trickling down into his eyes. He tasted copper on his tongue so heavy that he might as well be guzzling it from a tankard.
He spent one precious second wiping at his face and saw the wight rushing him from the right, but it was brought down by an arrow fired from the wall above and if Sandor squinted hard enough, he could just make out the colors of the kraken on a man reloading. There was no time to even breathe a sigh of relief as the dead continued to press in, surrounding the defenders and picking them off one by one.
Sandor felt someone back into him and saw Beric with his flaming sword, though he had no idea how or when he had left the east wall to get mixed up in this lot. To Beric's left was Tormund, to his right Bronn who Sandor had last seen before the fighting even began but who had orders to stay topside once the trenches were overrun. Someone else trod on Sandor's foot in their haste to back up and he had a mind to cuff the offender upside the head but saw that it was Littlefinger slinging his bow over his arm in exchange for his short sword since he had no room or time to draw arrows. Then Mormont's elbow knocked into Sandor's ribs.
What an unlucky coincidence that the majority of those who had fought the dead before had all ended up in this courtyard about to be hacked into pieces. Of the many thoughts going through his head in what very well might be his last moments, Sandor shamelessly considered pushing Littlefinger in front of him just to not have the displeasure of dying first. He had fought staggering odds before, but always found a way out–except for when he thought his time had come and Brother Ray had saved him. This time, however, was not like that in that he didn't want to die. He was not in pain, not alone, and not ready.
His warrior's blood would not let him give in. There were some hundred or so wights encasing them in this impenetrable circle, but he had faced worse odds than this on that frozen lake. They had faced more wights and had had one more fighter and slightly more space to swing a sword. At the end, there had been just the five of them against the entire army of the dead and now, it was the six of them against just over a hundred corpses. He could not do the calculations in his head, but as long as every one of them stood their ground, they might just outlast the storm.
Then he recalled how tired his arms had been the last time he was in this situation, which was nothing to the weight he felt in his muscles now. He remembered how he had been running short of breath, ready to collapse, and realized that he was not only long past that point now, but was also hanging on by a thread after being exposed to his worst fear magnified tenfold. Ironic, and fucking stupid that what had saved him on that lake was dragonfire.
Another shriek that shook his ribs alerted him to the sound of a dragon descending on them and Sandor swore to the high heavens at his miserable luck as he warned the others to drop low to avoid the dead dragon's clutches.
The wights had ceased movement just feet away from them, a solid wall of blue eyes and rusted weapons that were waiting for the order from their master to surge in all at once.
"It's not the dead one!" called Bronn as the shriek grew closer.
"How the fuck d'you know?" Sandor asked, sword held up high defensively in anticipation of the attack he knew was coming.
"Because I killed it!"
"Fuck you, you did no such fucking thing."
"If he didn't, he wounded it enough that it can't fly," said Littlefinger.
Sandor was about to ask again how Bronn could possibly know if a living or dead dragon was circling above them when bright orange and yellow dragonfire erupted above them, slaying a row of wights and offering a moment of reprieve. Then, the wights closest to him went flying backward, caught in the backdraft of an enormous set of billowing wings. Sandor saw two giant green claws descending on them and they scooped up Beric and Tormund–who had been battling closest together–with one claw while the other took hold of Bronn. All three men made rather unmanly shouts as they ascended with no means of securing themselves from a deadly fall and only the hope that the dragon wouldn't drop them to cling to. Bronn was swearing the loudest, as he had never been atop or underneath a dragon in any capacity before.
As the wights recovered and rushed in to slay the three of them who remained, Sandor stepped far ahead and swung his sword wide, cutting through at least four bodies in one swipe. As his sword came down and he prepared for another strike, Mormont moved up to block a blow meant to pierce him through the lung and Littlefinger used what little body mass he possessed to ram his shoulder into another wight that had tried to charge Sandor from the right.
The black dragon circled overhead and Sandor knew what it was about to do mere seconds before it happened. He sheathed his sword, hollered for Mormont and Littlefinger to prepare themselves, and then instinctively grabbed Mormont's forearm. Of the two men beside him, he wasn't sure which the dragon would be unable to snatch up but he wasn't about to bank on leaving Mormont behind. His instincts proved to be correct as the black dragon's right claw closed around Littlefinger and its left enveloped Sandor's lower body.
He felt his feet leave the ground, felt a sudden rush of warm wind, felt his arm stretch as it took the full weight of Mormont's body. The knight let out a frustrated cry, terrified to once again be dangling hundreds of feet above the ground. Sandor had a fleeting, maddening urge to point out that at least this time Mormont had not fallen off the dragon, but he seemed to have left his voice behind somewhere on the ground.
Below, he saw the southeastern courtyard overwhelmed, saw the last wall defenders of that sector toss more oil into the masses and follow up with a torch to burn the lot of them where they stood. The fire illuminated Mormont from below and Jorah could clearly see the streaks of purplish-red blood of so many slain wights painted across his face and knew he probably looked no better.
His adrenaline had returned at the arrival of the dragons, but it was quickly fading and reminding him of how sore and fatigued his arms were. All at once, he feared that he would drop Mormont if the dragon didn't find a spot to set them down now.
Mormont, it seemed, sensed this as well, and tried to swing his other arm up to secure a better hold, but the movement caused him to slide ever so slightly further down and Sandor felt his grip slackening.
"Khaleesi!" Mormont hollered, and as if the Targaryen knew why her knight called for her, she sent the dragon into a dive, hovering just above the northeastern wall, not landing because nearly every spare space was taken by a defender. Those atop the wall braced against the wind from the dragon's wings and it was them that Sandor had to gauge to see if it was safe enough to drop Mormont. He gave forewarning and let Mormont slip from his grip and the knight was caught by two archers below. He felt the dragon's claws loosening around him, he fell through open space for half a second, and then hit the wall hard on his side. He only just had time to roll out of the way as the dragon dropped Littlefinger who was much more lithe on the descent and much quicker to stand back up.
Helping Sandor to stand was Beric who was doing his best to keep his sword away from Sandor's face in the process. He and Sandor pressed their backs to one another, facing outward as wights came from both sides of the wall top. Where the others had suddenly fucked off to, Sandor didn't know, but as he struggled to not trip over the lifeless limbs underfoot, he had a sinking feeling that if he looked down, he just might find several faces that he recognized.
/ /
JORAH
He held no personal vendetta against Drogon, but Jorah's luck where the black dragon was concerned was problematic at best. He vowed to never, ever allow himself to be in a situation again where he would need rescuing with dragons as the solution because luck rarely favored a man twice and he most certainly would not escape a third flying encounter with Drogon unscathed. His gratitude did have its limits, though, and he was relieved when he fell into the waiting arms of the two archers who lowered him to the floor and then returned to firing their arrows over the wall top.
With no time to recover or consider how closely he had come yet again to his own mortality, Jorah relieved the archers to begin a vicious repetitive cycle of stabbing a wight, stepping back as multiple bodies climbed over the battlements, gaining the upper hand, and stabbing again, all while trying not to gag on the constant splatters of blood that were flying up his nose and down his throat. A steaming, heavy scent of copper made fog rise from the frozen ground and bring moisture to his eyes and it was this difficulty seeing that made him doubt the round, fearful, boyish face that he suddenly saw beside him.
Samwell Tarly was doing his best to aid the wall top defenders, but was by no means an asset as he fought whichever wights managed to get through the more experienced fighters. He was just another body to be cut down, even if he had killed a White Walker and a Thenn.
"Get off the wall!" Jorah ordered, taking hold of Tarly's arm. "You're final defense!"
"That's why I am on the wall," Tarly returned, and Jorah realized that those in the courtyard parties, those who had been ordered to stand back until absolutely needed, were now needed. Half of those forces were stationed at the base of the walls in preparation to meet the wights that made it through the wall defenses and the other half had come to aid atop the walls. The southeastern courtyard had been blocked off as the wights inside burned and the main courtyards had not yet been overrun, but those fighters inside were at last being called upon to lend aid.
Somewhere down there, his little cousin Lyanna would be entering the fray.
Jorah did not want to belittle Tarly when he was doing more than would be expected of him in choosing to fight rather than hide when he was not a born fighter, but he did not want to watch this man be killed in front of him. For his father, for his own life and debt as yet unpaid, Jorah had to do what he could to displace Tarly from the battle.
"I don't need you up here. I need you down there. Find my cousin and do not leave her side," Jorah instructed.
"But–"
Something sharp struck Jorah across the side of his head and he keeled over, dazed and nearly blinded by the hit. The ground came up to smack him in the face and he just barely managed to save his nose but throwing out his hand. Blinking hard, temple throbbing, he tried to make sense of the sounds around him, but everything blurred together. He felt the weight of someone or something stepping on his back and then two more sets of feet trampling over him and it occurred to him that it had to be wights believing him to be just another dead body, so he lay as still as possible to keep up the ruse. What little breath he managed to take in was driven out of him every time a foot stomped onto his back, bruising him and he struggled to not make a sound or betray a single movement until he was certain that the wights had stopped climbing this particular section of the wall.
He lifted his head and came face to face with the open, unblinking eyes of what moments ago had been the breathing, living body of Samwell Tarly. His throat had been slashed and his blood was dripping down into the cracks along the floor. Heart heavy with guilt and remorse, Jorah set his hand upon Tarly's head, silently thanking him for the second chance the man had given Jorah, and apologizing for not being able to do the same.
Death almost seemed possible to beat up until this moment. Though Jorah had seen hundreds of men and women cut down already, it had not seemed entirely real until he could put a name to the face of one of the fallen. Not just a defender, not just a person, but a man who Jorah could have called friend. His savior, the man who had risked everything on the slim chance he could liberate Jorah from a gruesome death when no one else dared to try.
If there were gods, Jorah prayed that they would forgive him for not being able to save Tarly, to make his father's hard work worth it, to honor the bond shared between two men who had gone through such a harrowing experience as his father and Tarly had and that Jorah had also had with Tarly.
Heartsbane was heavier in his hand as he stood up, feeling the weight of the Tarly house and name as if it knew the people to whom it belonged were dead.
Still disoriented, Jorah could see Clegane and Beric far off to his left and some twenty paces from them, Baelish beside a ground quiver, firing arrows with his back to a bastion. Defending the walkway on Baelish's other side were Lady Brienne and Ser Davos, the latter being another member of the last defense as the man was a self-proclaimed shit fighter. No one else remained on this stretch of wall and Jorah was in no fit condition to defend it alone.
"If you're not going to fight, get the fuck out of the way, Mormont!" came the deep, commanding voice of Tormund who was leading some ten or so wildlings to resume defense.
In truth, Jorah wanted nothing more than to find a bit of soft earth to lay down upon and rest his eyes, but he willed his instincts to aid him now. Clutching his head and straining to focus, Jorah trudged forward, surprising himself at every step that he was still alive when he expected to be taken off guard at any moment. He was halfway to where Clegane and Beric were still holding their own when a shadow fell upon him and he threw up his sword arm to catch the curved blade of a wight. It reached its hand between Jorah's arms and its rotting skeletal fingers closed around his throat.
Already at a disadvantage due to the hit his head had taken, Jorah's breath caught before he could inhale properly and as his dominant hand kept hold of his sword to continue parrying the wight's blade, his left tried unsuccessfully to reach around for his dragonglass dagger. The wight was bigger and heavier than him and Jorah was unsure that he could upset its balance by attempting to trip it or maneuver it toward the edge of the wall.
The firm, unforgiving hold on Jorah's throat was beginning to send him into a panic and he allowed himself to be thrown backward against the turret behind him as his one chance to pry the wight's hand off of him long enough for him to call for help. The hand loosened on his throat for a moment during the impact and Jorah screamed for the only man whose name he knew as the airflow to his brain cut off. "Petyr!"
He knew he wasn't loud enough, that there was no conceivable way for Baelish to have heard him over every other sound currently battling to make itself heard tonight, but miraculously, he saw the arrow tip come out from the wight's forehead and its hold on Jorah's throat released. Massaging at his neck, Jorah blinked up through the snow and ash to see Baelish now not even ten feet away, reloading but looking to him for assurances that he was unscathed. Jorah nodded to him, slapping himself hard across the cheek to bring himself back into full alertness.
He was now the very thing he had privately admonished Tarly for being, a useless body, and he had to get down off of the wall before he got someone else killed. He needed a few moments to gather his wits, tend to his head injury however possible, and then head back into it, but he would do no good here if he had to be rescued at every turn because he could not think straight. It went against everything he believed in and everything he knew he was capable of doing after decades of fighting, but he had to abandon his post if he was to stand any chance at all.
Grasping for Baelish's forearm to steady himself, Jorah told him firmly, "Hold the wall, Petyr. Hold it for as long as you can."
"And when I no longer can?" Somehow between the ambush in the courtyard and now, Baelish had lost his sword and the sight of him standing there armed only with a bow that seemed so insignificant and worthless did not sit well with Jorah.
He picked up an axe from a fallen comrade and pressed it into Baelish's hands. "For as long as you can, however you can, you must. Hold. "
Fate worked in very strange ways indeed to be sending Jorah off of the wall and keeping Petyr Baelish atop it, but if Baelish was still seeking Jorah's validation, this was Jorah's last chance to give it. Somehow, he knew this would be the last time he spoke to the man. One way or another either or both of them would die. Baelish offered out his hand to Jorah who shook it, grasping tightly with a thousand words left unsaid. He couldn't hear it, but he saw Baelish mouth words of thanks to him. Jorah clapped his shoulder and turned away.
/ / /
BRONN
He lost count of how many times he had heard his own voice saying, Fuck me , in his head. He thought he'd surely met the end more times tonight than he had fingers and toes, yet here he still was, though for however much longer that might be was anyone's guess. If he was so lucky to survive this night and live to have grandchildren, the stories he would tell them of how he shot a dead dragon without being able to see it and then how a living one had snatched him up at the eleventh hour and carried him to safety would make him the stuff of legend.
But he had to survive first, and as fortunate as he was thus far, his chances of continuing those odds were not looking favorable.
Over the ramparts they came in overwhelming waves. Bronn and the men who held the wall with him fought them back but each corpse he felled was replaced by three hundred more. He stopped trying to find any recognizable faces in either those fighting alongside him or those dying at his feet. His men had long since been scattered to the wind and it was impossible to give orders and have anyone heed them. It was every man for himself so long as every man held his position.
He soon realized that among his fighters was Petyr Fucking Baelish, his bow gone, his face gashed as he battled the wights with nothing more than an axe he had acquired from a fallen ally. In true form, he waited for the wights to break through Bronn's ranks instead of fighting them at the front line, but that was the only reason he was still alive, for a frontal assault for an inexperienced man was a death sentence. It made no sense to Bronn that Littlefinger, of all men, was still fighting, was still in possession of his wits and enough courage to hold the line when better, stronger, braver men had fallen back, and yet here they were.
Bronn downed a wight by hacking off a leg and Littlefinger drove his axe into its head. With every kill, the man seemed utterly amazed by both his own luck and skill for someone who had wielded a close-combat weapon but once before. Desperate men often surprised themselves.
Bronn considered complimenting or even congratulating Littlefinger on still being alive, but forming words just now required more thought than he could spare if he wanted to live.
A wight cut down another one of Bronn's men, slicing through his neck to where his blood sprayed backwards and blinded Littlefinger. The wight stabbed outward and its blade grazed Littlefinger's side, slicing through his thin armor and opening a very fine gash across his hip. Bronn cut the wight's skull in half before it could do more damage but now Littlefinger was holding a hand to the wound, hopelessness etched onto his face as he suddenly came to terms with the fact that he was detrimentally wounded.
"Go," Bronn ordered. "You're no use to us on the wall anymore. Get somewhere that you can do some good."
The man had no words for him, though he lifted his axe half-heartedly as if to prove that he still could fight. Now was not the time for gallantry, though Bronn was doing that very thing in putting someone else before himself. If this battle had occurred just a few months ago or even a few weeks ago, he would have told Littlefinger to fight until he bled out if it meant delaying his own demise, but sending him off to likely die somewhere else where Bronn wouldn't have to watch was an act that puzzled him. There was no room for a man of such generosity in a vicious battle like this.
"Fuck off before you get more've my men killed," snapped Bronn, shoving Baelish toward the steps. "An' get a weapon you can actually lift. Go!"
Littlefinger lunged at him and stabbed his dragonglass dagger just past his ear at a wight that was seconds away from decapitating Bronn. Then ten more came and Bronn could wait no longer. He elbowed Littlefinger in the gut and sent him flying where he crash-landed in a thick pile of snow several feet down. Bronn lost sight of him after that and then had to forget about the man entirely.
Against his better judgment, he chanced a glance out onto the moors and was devastated to see that for the hours or maybe days that they had been fighting, they appeared to have made absolutely no difference in the numbers of wights outside the walls. The black mass of corpses awaiting their turn to lay siege on the castle extended as far into the darkness as it had when Bronn first laid eyes upon the army.
He recalled what Jon Snow had said during one of those tedious war council meetings: Our enemy will not tire, will not rest, will not stop.
Thousands of the defenders were dead and nearly every one of them still alive were fatigued beyond recall and yet they could not rest because to rest was to die. But what purpose would be served in continuing to fight what already appeared to be a lost battle? It was just the selfish need to take one more breath, to have one's heart beat one second longer, to keep death at bay for one more moment that kept them all fighting now. Any fighter who still believed they could win was in denial or delusional and though Bronn was neither, he also was not a coward, so he would fight until he dropped dead from exhaustion or some wight ran him through. He would not allow death to come for him so easily; death had to earn the right to claim him.
He heard the squawking of ravens from above, surprised that they had not yet fled when the air smelled so heavily of death, but there was an irregularity in the uniform manner in which they were flying as if they were surveying the castle and the immediate grounds in search of something.
That awful prickle that Bronn had come to associate with the crippled Stark boy watching him traveled up his nape and he smacked at the hairs there, but the boy was in the godswood and surely could not see Bronn from here. Even if he could, why would he be searching Bronn out now when he should be looking for his siblings?
It registered with him that when the boy had given him visions and riddled hints, he had done so deliberately. There was always a reason for him revealing what he revealed, telling Bronn only what he needed to know when it was imperative to know it and not before, and so if Bronn could sense him now, the boy was trying to speak to him.
And hadn't he called himself the Three-Eyed Raven or some horseshite of that nature? It would stand to reason that he might be using those ravens above to see through, but why? What was he trying to tell Bronn that he couldn't somehow tell someone who would understand his cryptic methods of communication?
The ravens dipped lower and rose again once, twice, and on the third time, Bronn saw past them to where twelve figures were walking effortlessly toward the trenches where wights were throwing themselves flat to create a bridge so that their masters could pass unharmed over the fire. Each figure was dressed in what appeared to be frozen black leather and had a head of wispy white hair. Their lipless skin was stretched thin over the hollow holes that were their mouths. They were armed with weapons made of some crystallized material.
And their eyes glowed brighter, deeper, more severely than those of their thousands of servants.
"Walkers!" hollered Tormund somewhere far off to Bronn's left. "They're coming for the boy!"
From what Bronn was led to believe about these more superior fucks, they served as battlefield commanders to the Night King and were much more difficult to kill than the wights. Killing one of them would result in all the wights it had raised dropping dead as the connection between master and servant was severed. But if they were coming forward now, it meant that they believed the battle was nearly over and that nothing would be able to stand in their way as they marched for the godswood to seize Brandon Stark and deliver him to the Night King.
"Hold the wall!" Bronn ordered. "Aim for the Walkers and do not let them through. If they make it over, every one of you fuckers is dead. Hold the fucking wall!"
"Baelish, you sniveling fucking cunt, just where the fuck d'you think you're going?" bellowed the voice of Clegane, and Bronn tore his eyes from the battlefield to see Littlefinger astride a horse with that crazed light of hysteria in his eyes as he veered his mount around and took off around the First Keep toward the north gate.
Bronn believed the worst in everyone. He was a man who had lived most of his life with the sole purpose of serving himself, so he knew to what depths any individual could and would sink to in order to preserve their own lives, but his last few interactions with Littlefinger had led him to believe that the man had a ball or two hanging twixt his legs and that he would at least avoid dying a coward. Apparently, Bronn had been wrong, which angered him more than it should have.
He couldn't say that his time sparring with Littlefinger had been for naught since the cunt had proven himself capable of holding his own and standing firm, even going to the lengths of arguably saving a life or two. What was the fucking point, though, if he was just going to tuck tail and run? What had happened between having to be thrown from the wall and deciding that he might just be able to outrun the dead? Had something finally snapped inside of him and there was simply a delay in it that hadn't manifested until he saw the horse and thought that he could escape? Or was the thought of White Walkers joining the fight too much for him to handle?
Bronn hadn't considered how betrayed he would feel when there was so much more he needed to be focusing on. This sort of distraction was like as not to get him killed, yet he was positively boiling with rage, and for what? For a man who had never been more than a backstabbing, two-faced, lying cunt son of a whore?
It mattered fuck all now. Littlefinger was gone, and Bronn prayed to the gods he didn't believe in that the little shit would have the most painful sort of death when his time finally came, tonight or many nights from now if the world lasted that long in the event that Winterfell was overrun.