Beck
His first shot landed directly onto a corpse, sending it sputtering into the snow. Lance had brought his rifle up as well and the two men began firing off rounds carefully, one shot for each of the corpses. With the obsidian-tipped rounds in their weapons, they only needed one shot for each corpse, but they only had a limited supply. Blythe was also firing now, protecting their flank. Even Turk had been given a rifle and, despite his initial protest at using a weapon, was trying to protect the group. The southern troops began fanning out, becoming overly confident.
"Form into a tight circle!" he shouted at the group in between shots. The two doctors brought themselves closer to the watchmen, huddling down together. The southerners realized how thin their line had become when one of theirs was suddenly overtaken by a corpse. He screamed in terror as the wight took him down. More appeared just as quickly and joined their unholy colleague in devouring the man. Their leader, Forscythe, began corralling them closer to the rest of the group. The sound of gunfire and shrieking was deafening, but the horde kept coming.
As the bodies fell, the still-moving corpses began climbing over the fallen, creating a wall of wights that needed to be summitted before they could attack. Beck reached down to his vest and retrieved the last magazine he'd been given before announcing his status to Lance. His partner agreed as he loaded his final magazine as well. Before he fired, he looked down at the weapon briefly before grimacing and clicking the safety on. He slung it around to his back and drew the sword, gripping it tightly as he took a step forward. He didn't see Lance grin and draw his own sword. As the sound of gunfire slowed to a stop around them, they saw that only a few of the dead remained.
They hacked through them easily enough – the dead came straight at them with no strategy or thought. It felt odd, but strangely satisfying, to swing the sword and feel its impact against the old bones of the fallen. Most of these were skeletal, with only fragments of metal armor pieces, rusted through, clinging to scraps of fur dangling with bits of brown-green flesh. Few had any sort of identifiable features, but Beck did lament dropping one wight that was clad in a ruined, black cloak – the blue eyes snuffed out as the sword cut through the corpse of the old watchman. He looked forward and saw the White Walker summit the wall of bodies, standing atop them as if a conqueror. It looked down at them, piercing them with an unholy gaze. Beck could have sworn it was a woman. He didn't have any time to think about it before the creature descended onto their side of the corpse wall.
"Go left," Lance shouted, circling to the right. Beck didn't answer, only mimicking the move instead. The Walker slowly stepped down onto each corpse beneath it, crunching the bones into the snow. The gaze seemed fixed on the doctors, ignoring the two armed men confronting it. Whereas the wights were nothing more than shambling corpses, this one had elegant black armor with long, flowing white hair. The face was withered with immeasurable time, but distinct from the rest. It shrieked again as Lance charged it. Beck joined from the opposite side.
The icy blade swung up quickly, blocking Lance's strike before pivoting around and catching his own blade before it could penetrate, sending it harmlessly away. Before he could reset his stance, the creature had already come about and was swinging down on Lance. His partner blocked the attack, stumbling backwards clumsily. They may have trained with swords, but firearms were still the weapon of choice for these men. The White Walker seemed completely at home swinging the jagged blade, blocking Beck's next attack with ease. He began to worry. As the two men fought for their lives against the creature, they saw another wave of wights come screeching towards them. Lance noticed it too, fear spreading across his face.
Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot pierced the air, echoing off the trees. The White Walker looked up and screamed as it disintegrated into a pile of icy shards that fell into the snow before dissolving in the wind. As it fell, the charging wights let out a death rattle, and their bright, blue eyes went out. The bodies collapsed harmlessly to the forest floor. Beck looked over and saw Doctor Stone holding a pistol in her shaking hands, pointing where the creature once stood. Lance looked around, his sword ready for more adversaries.
"They've stopped," he finally announced once he realized their situation, straightening his back and turning to his partner. "They're done for."
"I thought we were done for," Beck admitted, sheathing his sword and looking over to Lisa. "Good shot."
Lisa offered a pitiful smile, betraying the anxiety and fear that drove her. She lowered her shaking hands, staring at the weapon. Forscythe approached her, placing a hand on her shoulder and reaching down to click the safety on the pistol. She looked up at him and mouthed the words 'thank you' without saying it out loud before slipping the weapon back into the black leather holster underneath her coat.
"That one," Beck pointed at the patch of disturbed snow. "Was..."
"A woman," Lance finished for him. Beck nodded.
"Yeah," he agreed. "But when she fell, so did the others."
"So, we focus down the Walkers and the rest drop," Lance reasoned. "Their leader is probably going to have the same effect – we take out the boss and these go, too." They looked over to the maester, who rose to his feet and nodded in agreement.
"Every text I read describes this exact scenario," he explained. "When we find her and stop her, we'll be stopping the Long Night entirely." Beck grimaced.
"We're low on ammo," he lamented. Forscythe nodded as he examined his remaining men.
"We're all down to our last mags," he agreed. "And that was just one engagement," he considered. The group sat in silence for a moment contemplating the reality of their situation. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking: That they were supremely unprepared for this expedition.
"Sorry about your man," Lance broke the silence, looking over to where the soldier had fallen. Forscythe hummed mournfully and approached the man, rolling the body over and retrieving the magazine from his jacket. He placed it in his own and then removed the magazine from the fallen weapon before tossing it aside, revealing that the man had fired every round in it before falling.
"We should keep moving," Dr. Stone urged. "If the ghost knew we were here, and that thing knew we were here, then it's likely she knows where we are right now, too," she surmised. Beck slid the sword back into its sheath.
"Right," he agreed. "Everyone else okay?" He examined the group and found they were ready to travel. He pulled the hood from his coat over his head and began to march forward, Lance joining him. "Keep close," he added, turning back to Dr. Stone and Maester Ebrose.
By the time night fell, they had fortunately avoided any further sightings of the dead. They found a grove off of the gravel road they were following with thick underbrush protecting it from the worst of the winds. Lance set to building a fire while the southern troops gathered wood. Beck and Turk unfurled the green camouflaged tarpaulin that would serve as their tent, securing it to two strong trees and pounding the rest into the earth with spikes. As they finished, so, too, did the fire begin to grow.
"You're really good at that," Lisa complimented Lance, causing him to grin.
"I'll teach you sometime," he offered. "You know, when we're not on a suicide mission north of the ol' Wall." She politely smiled at the offer, choosing not to comment on his choice of words.
Once the fire had grown to its peak, the group gathered around it, their hands outstretched for even a little bit of warmth. The wood crackled as the flame licked the air, the rich smell of smoke filling their nostrils. Beck retrieved the sleeping bag from his pack and cleared away as much snow and brush as he could from underneath the tarp until he had enough space on the dark dirt to unroll his bed. One by one, the rest of the group followed suit, with the southern troops unfurling a second tarpaulin opposite the fire, their makeshift camp coming together strategically to cover the flame and protect the group from the winds. They shared an evening meal of rations together, mostly in silence. It was Lance that spoke first.
"We used almost all of our ammunition today," the ranger bemoaned. "If we have another encounter like that, we're truly screwed."
"Maybe not," Beck countered, looking over at Lisa. "When she took down the White Walker, the rest dropped. It only took a single shot," he reasoned.
"We're missing one important factor," the maester chimed in. "We're not sure if the undead are controlled by proximity, or if that White Walker in particular had turned those corpses – so that when it fell, it took out its own 'children,' if you will," he explained.
"You mean to say we could drop one of the White Walkers, but if they didn't turn 'em, they won't drop?" Beck clarified.
"That is a possibility, yes," Ebrose confirmed.
"What did the books say?" Lisa asked. Ebrose shrugged slightly and sighed.
"The books are ancient," he offered. "The people then knew about as much as we know now. All we know is that the Night King was destroyed, and the army fell when he did," he continued. "To make matters worse, they believed that the threat was ended forever – that the Night King's demise heralded the end of the age of White Walkers. Clearly they were mistaken." The group sat in silence after he spoke, contemplating his message.
"You're suggesting that – should we even succeed here, and kill this 'Night Queen' – that we might not even be solving this problem forever?" Beck questioned in a hushed tone, staring at the fire before slowly turning his gaze to the maester. Ebrose frowned.
"Unfortunately, yes," he answered. "From the evidence – both from the books I've read, to the oral history we've shared with one another, and now from our personal experience – I'm confident in saying that every thousand years, they come back, we fight, we defeat their leader, and given time, we forget about the threat until it returns," Ebrose concluded.
"What if we lose?" Lance asked. Lisa looked down at her feet in fear. Ebrose shrugged.
"How did this even start?" Forscythe added before anyone could answer the previous question. "Is this just how life is? Is this a natural process?"
"I couldn't tell you," Ebrose admitted, defeated. "It appears to be the fate of our species to... eliminate ourselves. Maybe it's nature's way of population control. Maybe there's a biological explanation," he reasoned. "I think we'll figure it out when we speak to the Raven again."
"If," Beck interjected. "If we speak to him again."