Author's Note: Me again lords and ladies. Had a pleasant uptick in reviews last time, which always warms my heart to see and makes me want to write all the more. Hopefully that trend continues here.
There are a few switches between POVs below. Just to be clear, they are not happening at the exact same time. You're smart people, you'll figure it out.
I hope you enjoy!
When they finally moved, they moved as one.
Damon had been staring at the mass of motionless corpses for hours, their bodies just outlines in the night. He, Tyrek, Robb Stark and Jon Snow—all young, too young for the responsibility on their shoulders—had discussed standing their forces down, but no one knew when the dead would strike. Instead, the men and women atop the Wall suffered, fatiguing themselves under the strain of waiting for an attack that would not come.
Until it very suddenly did. The dead gave no war cries or blood-curdling screams, no hint that they were about to do anything other than the dormant standing they had done all day. One moment they were motionless, the next a mass of dead men at the run.
There was a precious second wasted by the watchers on the Wall before anyone reacted, the living taken by surprise by the abrupt change. Before a second second ticked by, shouts of fright and alarm and, Damon swore, almost relief began echoing up and down the line. Men and women rushed to regain the edge of readiness they had let blunt over the past hours, archers re-knocking arrows they had quivered and descending like carrion birds on the braziers, lighting the ends.
Damon, reacting a hair faster than his men, marched to the left, eyes on the approaching mass of enemy. "Arm!" The mass of fixed catapults and trebuchets, their original number having grown during the army's occupation here, shouted back their readiness as the command was repeated up and down the Wall. Damon strolled between them and the lines of archers, waiting for that mass of bodies to reach the line of markings in the clearing that represented the extents of their range. Red Alex, white cloak flapping, followed close behind on his left, and Tyrek his right.
The king knew his sword was no good up here, but also knew that his presence certainly was. He had kept command of the Wall for himself despite his true talent being bladework, for he knew what was coming and most of his men didn't. The first waves of archer and siege fire were crucial, not only in whittling their numbers down but in showing those who hadn't fought them before that yes, these dead men could die. They needed only to hold and fire to prove it to themselves and to those below waiting with spear and sword and shield.
Damon intended to make sure they did indeed hold. He was poor king, but he was one his men knew, one they respected as a warrior. He hoped seeing him, a man who had fought the dead and lived to speak of it, would give them the edge they needed to take that first shot and see that they had the advantage.
He could also yell louder than a thundering bull when he wished, a talent proven vital amidst the sounds of battle.
The second the dark mass hit the marker—a row of huge pitch-black flags, easily visible against the snow even at night—Damon bellowed the command. "Fire!"
Waves of burning bolts and pitch filled the sky, like a wave of pure fire. It hits its mark, though a blind man couldn't miss the mass of targets streaming from the trees. "Reload, then fire at will!" Damon turned his attention to the archers, his eyes fixed on the second row of such flags. "Archers, ready!" A war cry answered him, buoying his spirits. "Draw!" The sound of a thousand bowstrings tightening overrode even the mechanical sounds of the siege weapons and the shouts of the men working them. Once again Damon waited until the first few dead were passed the marker, then shouted again. "Loose! Draw and loose! Do not stop!"
Before the first syllable was out another line of fire filled the night sky, thousands of burning arrows descending onto the mass of dead. They fell by the scores, by the hundreds, yet the blanket of dark against the snow remained moving, streaming around those burning like a river around rock.
The king shouldered his way between a wildling girl in furs and an aging man in mail, peering over the edge directly above the tunnel. The waves of dead crashed against it, scratching, clawing as if to climb the very face of it.
To the immense relief of his greatest fears, they could not. For all their scrabbling they found no purchase, no dark magic ability to climb up and over. Hundreds—thousands—futilely continued to try, but most focused on the entrance to the tunnel.
He and the war council had discussed at length filling the tunnel with ice and stone—teams had been sent to the Shadow Tower and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea for just that purpose moons ago, when the alliance between wildling and southron had been forged. The logic in leaving it open and closing the others was to force the Night's King to come to Castle Black. If that dread being still had an open tunnel through the Wall he would try to take it, meaning the living would know where he was and could combat his efforts. Brandon Stark—or the Three-Eyed Raven or whatever he truly was now—had championed this strategy, certain the Night's King would go wherever Bran was. It clearly had worked, for the patrols up and down the Wall, both from before the dead's arrival and those sent out to scope the Night's King positions after he arrived, made it clear the enemy was focused here.
To defend the mouth of the tunnel he had implemented a formation borrowed from old Ghiscari and modern Unsullied tactics, modified to fit the need. A wall of shields filled the entirety of the opening, volunteers packed so tightly together that there was barely enough room for the pikes that bristled between shoulders, between gaps in the shields, and from every conceivable angle that men behind the shieldbearers might thrust and stab. Farther down the tunnel, at each of the three great iron grates set into the ice of the Wall itself, further lines of spears waited, ready to battle from behind if the front rank broke. Buckets of oil and torches were at each murder hole, ready to turn the tunnel into a passage of fire if things truly went badly.
But, for this first attack, things were going smoothly. Archers and crossbowmen on either side focused on the approach in a withering, flaming crossfire, and on either side of Damon stones were flung and barrels of pitch dropped, turning the area in front of his turtle of shields into a chokepoint of fire and bodies. Already they were mounding up, some burning, some not. They fell in droves, yet still they came.
Until, just as abruptly as they had begun, they stopped.
One moment they were running forward. The next, the dead had turned and retreated, stopping whatever attempts to climb they were making and turning to flee. They reminded Damon of a great flock of birds moving as one, or a great herd of elk changing direction at the sight of a predator.
It had been a short, intense attack. Hundreds of corpses filled the field, a thick carpet of them having formed in the approach to the tunnel. A few of the allied forces cheered as the enemy broke, but most froze in confusion, Damon among them. Arrows and pitch chased the dead as they fled, but it all felt almost hesitant, no one able to believe that months of waiting resulted in a single, fiery defense shorter than a meal.
Tyrek spoke from behind him. "That can't be it. There has to be more." Damon said nothing, though he thought the same.
Both were right.
The enemy turned once more the moment they were out of range of the catapults and trebuchets, again as if they had one mind. It was a surreal moment, for if it wasn't for the mass of fire and unmoving dead bodies on the field before them, Damon wouldn't have been sure anything had changed. The Others were again a still field of standing dead men, shadows against the white snow and flickering fires, frozen and unmoving.
"Hold," Damon called through the growing murmurings of confusion. "Hold!" Other commanders echoed the call, all eyes north. Something isn't right. This is a ploy, a trick, a devilry.
Damon had just opened his mouth to say so when the first snowflake fell, drifting down to land on the gauntleted hand he extended to catch it. It sat there, bright against the dark leather of the palm, the air so cold it did not melt. The king turned his head up towards the sky as the moon, a moment ago so bright, retreated behind a screen of clouds.
The second snowflake landed against his shadowskin, the third his golden beard, and then the skies opened.
Winterfell had carried much surprise for the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
The first was the scope of the maze of tents and bonfires, which had been a near-city those moons ago when she had come north. Now it had turned into a fully-fledged one, filled with women and children and old men. Rows upon rows of tents and lean-tos and wagons spread out farther than her eyes could see, flying dozens of banners from houses great and small.
And all to the south of the high grey walls of Winterfell, leaving an open killing field for the castle's northern approach. One I pray we'll never need to use, she had thought when it came into view, hand on her belly and mind on her husband. May the Seven protect us all.
The second had been Cersei Lannister, though Cersei seemed the more rattled. Neither woman had been taken aback by the other's presence—Margaery had known Cersei was in Winterfell for moons, and Cersei had known Margaery was fleeing south while her son fought at the Wall. Nor was their renewed relationship as goodmother and gooddaughter the shock, for word of Damon's abrupt marriage had passed quickly at the Wall and the home of the Starks and to those gathered at both.
It was the state of Margaery's middle, beginning to show now, that had thrown the Dowager Queen into disarray. It had been no secret, announced to the commanders as soon as she had told the king. While the usual rumor mill of court had not been around to spread the tidings, word had still passed, and Margaery had no doubts that Cersei had been aware—even if her relationship with her eldest surviving son was strained at best. But the sight of Margaery stepping from the wagon a fortnight ago, one hand on her middle, seemed to have shaken the usually implacable Cersei to her core.
Margaery had been expecting a flurry of questions and demands, centered on why the king had forbidden her to go north and what sort of bewitchment Margaery had cast upon him, but had instead gotten nothing. The Dowager said little to her, neither tirade nor lament, and when they were near one another Cersei barely seemed to even see her; her eyes would glance at the swell and then away, lost in her own thoughts.
Margaery found it both a blessing and a worry.
The third surprise had been the presence of a thin faced woman in her mid-twenties, lean and long-legged, dark hair shorn short. Asha Greyjoy's path had been a complicated one, the type one heard in stories and did not believe. Her flight after the Kingsmoot that had seen her uncle Euron crowned had taken her to Old Wyk, then the Riverlands, and finally to the North, where she had finally abandoned the sea and gone to ground, for Euron's crews had hunted her the entire way and drew closer by then day. With nothing else to her name and no chance of allies in the country her father had preyed upon, she had travelled on foot from Barrowton to White Harbor and finally Winter's Town with the few men still loyal to her.
All that way she probed and prodded about what had happened to one man, largely forgotten by Westeros but never by her.
Two moons ago, she had attempted to free her brother Theon Greyjoy from where he languished in Winterfell's dungeon, an afterthought spared first by Robb and then by Catelyn. It had not been mercy that left his head on his shoulders but instead time, for other more pressing issues had always taken precedent over the trial of a traitor. Once the survival of Bran and Rickon had become known—exonerating Greyjoy of murdering the Stark boys but not their household—he had been left to rot, too much else to prepare for and focus on. Filthy and haggard after over a year of imprisonment, he may never have seen the sky again if not for his sister.
She and three men—all that remained of her once loyal crew, the others all taken by greed or cold or lack of faith—had hidden among the waves of refugees flocking to Winterfell and its protection and managed to infiltrate the castle itself. During the hour of the wolf, they had very nearly melted into the night with Theon, leaving three unconscious guardsmen in their wake.
It had all been undone in the end, by sheer bad luck and porridge. A young woman, a serving girl in the Keep, had brought a bowl to the steps leading down to Winterfell's dungeons, where her brother was a guard. She found herself staring instead at four figures she didn't recognize, and one she certainly did. Her screams had brought the remaining guardsmen running, and Theon Greyjoy—after one breath of fresh air—was returned to his cell, this time with three companions.
Asha herself, however, neither joined her younger brother in the dungeons nor lost her head, likely due to her having gone to efforts not to kill the guardsmen in her way. The Greyjoy girl openly admitted that she only did so for just this instance, and her candor and decision had paid off; she had been given her brother's old chambers and treated well. Truth be told she seemed as much of a guest as Margaery was, albeit one under constant guard.
That was the doings of the final surprise, Sansa Stark.
When Margaery had first come North, Sansa had already been a far cry from the scared girl she'd been at King's Landing. Now, however, she was a true Stark, the Stark in Winterfell. Despite the presence of her mother, the formidable Catelyn Tully, and her brother's wife and titular Lady of the North, Jeyne Westerling, it was Sansa who commanded Winterfell. She was polite about it, perfectly proper, always showing respect for and offering deference to Lady Jeyne, but Margaery had seen quite quickly who truly held power as her brother's regent.
Sansa had, after much careful prodding, confessed that Robb himself had asked her to take those reins, in the same letter that had spoken of Bran's survival. Knowing the difficulties his wife faced as a southron, and still not fully forgiving of his mother after she had freed Jaime during the first war, he had given Sansa a task to complete, one she had carried out far better than even Robb could have expected.
The North was ready to fight here at Winterfell.
Or to flee it at a moment's notice south.
Each family that had fled to Winterfell had brought stores of grain and salted beef with them or sent back for them to be brought up with the rest of their households. Now those same stores sat in wagons under the heavy guard of old men and boys in their young teens, ready to be hitched to teams and to bolt at the word of a Stark. While her people gathered beneath Winterfell's walls, Sansa readied them to run from it to the south and the daunting ruin of Moat Cailin, where nature had choked the gateway North to a narrow stretch of passable ground.
That Robb Stark felt it necessary to have his people prepared to abandon the home he'd known his whole life had terrified Margaery like nothing else. She had heard the stories of wildling and Black Brother, and what it was the former fled and latter dreaded. She'd heard the more credible reports of the men who had gone north of the Wall, including her husband; while Damon didn't talk of it much to her, the shadow of Garlan between them, there had been more than one nightmare since their marriage. It took little effort to guess just what those might be about.
Despite all of that, this simple precaution of Robb Stark finally sank the truth fully in. Robb had seen war and had earned a reputation as both a tactician and a brave man. For him to ask his sister to ready their people to flee… it terrified her as a queen. It terrified her as a daughter and a sister. It terrified her as a wife and a mother.
Seven hells, it simply terrified her.
Each night, one hand on her growing middle, she wondered which of those hells her husband faced that day, and she wept.
"Up!" Red Alex called to the figures lying throughout the tunnel. "They're coming again."
The king rose to his feet from where had been dozing fitfully against the wall of the tunnel, his neck stiff. Fatigue was heavy in his bones but he refused to show his men that weakness, gaining his feet before any of the other roused figures. Tyrek, bags below his eyes, handed him a pike, his own held in his other hand. Together the two men slipped into their place centered behind the front wall of shields, the formation quickly coming together around them, all having done this now for-how many days? Is it weeks by now? It's all a blur.
Jaime Lannister and the other commanders had long ago given up begging Damon to withdraw from the tunnel. He had joined the burly stalwarts there on day two, when it became clear he was only so much use in the relative safety atop the Wall now that the initial attack was done. Leaving command of the Wall to Robb Stark and Jon Snow, he had descended on the lift, shouldered his way to the front, and taken up a pike. Tyrek, ignoring Damon's command to stay with Stark and Snow, had joined him and stubbornly refused to leave. Once a day the two men retreated to Castle Black for a war council, and the rest of the time they manned pikes at the front, stabbing and slashing and fighting when the waves of dead hit, sleeping and pissing and eating salted beef and drinking ale when there was respite.
There was no pattern to the strikes. The thick, snowy fog that had plagued them night and day since the original attack sometimes hid hundreds of attackers, sometimes a paltry dozen. Once the warning of attack went up a volley of burning pitch and arrows would fire, lighting the fog up as best it could. Secondary volleys followed quick on the heels of the first to strike what groups of enemies that brief visibility revealed. Each time the dead tried to scrabble up the Wall or take the tunnel, and each time they were repulsed, yet they never stopped for long. Attacks were sometimes two hours apart, sometimes two minutes. Though the living rotated the frontline at regular intervals, no one at the Wall had truly rested since that first day.
Only Damon and Tyrek remained at the front indefinitely, as the men around them rotated in and out. Damon would not leave men to fight when he might fight himself, and Tyrek would not leave Damon.
A wildling boy named Torreg, quick on his feet and uncannily good at sensing the approach of the dead through the snowy fog, appeared out of the white abyss at the run, torch in hand. He slid under the row of shields as it formed, touching Damon's shadowskin as he passed by. It was the ritual of all the wildling runners, touching the king's cloak for luck as they quietly entered the killing field to scout, then touching it again when they returned to leave that luck for the next of their number. After a while Damon had realized they called him Shadowskin, not just the cloak, and that the practice had spread among the other wildlings, and recently among the southrons as well.
That, too, kept Damon at the front.
Sure enough, Torreg had been right. Shortly after he slipped by the king, figures emerged from the snow and fog with blue eyes aglow.
Damon grit his teeth and loosened his shoulders. "Once more, lads," he called to those around him. "To the death."
"To the death," they called back, as they always did now.
Then death came upon them, and the Golden Stag struck.
The ravens arrived at Winterfell four days after Eddard Stark came screaming into the world, big and healthy and with a squall so loud his father could likely hear it at the Wall. It was unkindness, dozens of them, some bypassing Winterfell and flying farther south while a handful entered the rookery. A maester soon brought the message strapped to ones leg to Sansa, his face grave. The red-haired woman, taking her breakfast with Margaery and the recovering Lady Jeyne and various other noble ladies, paled upon opening it. Her blue eyes met Margaery's brown ones, and Sansa offered it to the queen without a word.
Margaery, the new heir to the North asleep in the crook of one arm, took it one-handed, her spirits sinking and the overwhelming fear of the past moon taking her in its cold clutches.
Two words were written there.
Moat Cailin.
A/N: *tease* Eyes, some pale, some purple