battle for the wall [memory: open to both courts]

[baseborne]

Then the rising sun broke through to send pale lances of light across the battleground. Jon found himself looking down the 700 feet of solid ice that made up the Wall, onto the great wildling host drawn up before it.

Mammoths centered the wildling line, he saw, a hundred or more with giants on their backs clutching mauls and huge stone axes. More giants loped beside them, fourteen or fifteen feet tall apiece, pushing along a tree trunk on great wooden wheels, its end sharpened to a point. A ram, he thought bleakly. If the gate still stood below, a few kisses from that thing would soon turn it into splinters. On either side of the giants came a wave of horsemen in boiled leather harness with fire-hardened lances, a mass of running archers, hundreds of foot with spears, slings, clubs, and leathern shields. The bone chariots from the Frozen Shore clattered forward on the flanks, bouncing over rocks and roots behind teams of huge white dogs. The fury of the wild, Jon thought as he listened to the skirl of skins, to the dogs barking and baying, the mammoths trumpeting, the free folk whistling and screaming, the giants roaring in the Old Tongue. Their drums echoed off the ice like rolling thunder.

He could feel the despair all around him. "There must be a hundred thousand," a pretty youth named Satin wailed beside him. "How can we stop so many?"

"The Wall will stop them," Jon heard himself say. He turned and said it again, louder, to the thirty-odd brothers left in Castle Black to face this hellish assault, every man of them too young or too old or too maimed to have left with the garrison. It's plainly hopeless. "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself." Hollow words, but he needed to say them, almost as much as his brothers needed to hear them. "Mance wants to unman us with his numbers. Does he think we're stupid?" He was shouting now, his shaking, wounded leg forgotten, and every man was listening. "The chariots, the horsemen, all those fools on foot... what are they going to do to us up here? Any of you ever see a mammoth climb a wall?" He laughed, and Pyp and Owen and half a dozen more laughed with him. "They're nothing, they're less use than our straw brothers here, they can't reach us, they can't hurt us, and they don't frighten us, do they?"

"NO!" Grenn, a great big shaggy youth, shouted.

"They're down there and we're up here," Jon said, "and so long as we hold the gate they cannot pass. They cannot pass!" They were all shouting then, roaring his own words back at him, waving swords and longbows in the air as their cheeks flushed red. Jon saw Kegs standing there with a warhorn slung beneath his arm. "Brother," he told him, "sound for battle."

Grinning, Kegs lifted the horn to his lips, and blew the two long blasts that meant wildlings. Other horns took up the call until the Wall itself seemed to shudder, and the echo of those great deep-throated moans drowned all other sound.

"Archers," Jon said when the horns had died away, "you'll aim for the giants with that ram, every bloody one of you. Loose at my command, not before. THE GIANTS AND THE RAM. I want arrows raining on them with every step, but we'll wait till they're in range. Any man who wastes an arrow will need to climb down and fetch it back, do you hear me?"

"I do," shouted Owen the Oaf, thickly. "I hear you, Lord Snow."

Jon laughed, laughed like a drunk or a madman, and his men laughed with him.

Comments

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[steeledskin]

...How brave!

[ sansa answers. wide-eyed and rapt and wholly invested in this little narrative. what madness and what fear must have driven these men. what scraped-together honour. what brotherhood. ]

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[steeledskin]

[ it isn't until her heartbeats slow back down to a manageable flutter that she collects herself, remembers who she must be, and in a pattering panic she asks the locket to make this conversation private.

breathlessly: ] Can it truly have happened?

[ unsaid: how spectacular you were! what a leader of men! ]

private video »

[baseborne]

[Jon's response comes fairly quickly - he'd been checking the lockets with a near-obsessive frequency since separating from Sansa and Arya (though Arya had not stayed separated for long.) Of all the memories that might have been shared, to find this on the magical necklace is something of a relief - he could almost take pride in it, if he dared. The brief look of awe on her face, the unspoken compliment hanging in the air... they both make something go light and airy and nice deep in his chest.]

Aye, it did. [Tormund Giantsbane had threatened Mance might make a song of what happened, after. Jon has to wonder what Sansa would think, hearing some sweet-voiced singer tell stories of her bastard brother back in the Vale... though they would probably not be particularly flattering, coming from the Once-King Beyond the Wall.] They looked fearsome, but they were no army, and they had no discipline. Their line broke that day, and the next day, and the next day, and every day until King Stannis rode to the defense of the realm to break the siege while the Lannisters [and Tyrells he thinks but doesn't say] sat comfortable in Kings Landing.

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[steeledskin]

[ lines breaking: again and again! yes. it does sound like a story. like a ballad. she cradles the locket with her fingers linked lovingly behind its burnt-gold plate. and she tilts her head.

king stannis. that choice of title does not lose itself on sansa's thoughtful shores. but she decides not to draw attention to it. not when she is keener still to do her part in honouring the men at the wall: ] Who was the one declaring there must be a hundred thousand?

[ he's very handsome, she thinks! ]

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[baseborne]

[Jon almost has to smile at that, and he looks amused at the very least. She would notice the comeliest boy on the Wall, this shade of his little sister.] That was Satin, from Oldtown. He was yet a raw recruit then, but he is my steward now. [He's not very good at it, in truth, but he's kindly and clean and not bad to talk to on the rare occasion that Jon has any time for idle conversation. It is likely safer for him to be separated from most of the men who have been stuck on the Wall for decades, as well, considering his former occupation.]

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[aliased]

[ here. have a very, very, very proud little sister.]

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[baseborne]

[Ugh fine he lets himself grin at her!! She's going to ruin his reputation as a sullen stick in the mud if people see this.]

Oh, what's that look for?

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[aliased]

You're their leader.

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[baseborne]

Just what did you think a Lord Commander does, little sister?

action!?

[bullhorned]

Because they had been given neighboring rooms to stay in and because Gendry had woken in the middle of the night, he'd seen the memory not long after it appeared on the lockets. He hadn't realized what it was until he saw Jon in it. Which meant everything he saw had happened, didn't it? Giants, monsters, and savages. He had seen magic, but he realized that it was nothing compared to this.

An hour later, he was knocking on Jon's door.

yesss action!

[baseborne]

Luckily, Ghost had already woken him up to see the locket vision for himself, because Jon can honest to gods sleep like the dead and might have otherwise missed Gendry's civil knocking on the door.

He finds a pair of breeches in the dark and tugs them on, calling "half a minute!" at the door before grabbing the fire poker and coaxing the sad little embers in he room's modest fireplace back into some small life so he might actually be able to see whoever has come.

When he swings the door open he blinks in surprise and steps back out of the way so Gendry can come in if he wants. "Has something happened?"

I'm like the bunny who broke all the rules

[bullhorned]

Gendry waited on the other side, listening to the sounds of movement on the other side. It was strange really, because it was more than Gendry was known to do. But then, Gendry wasn't exactly one for courtesy. (It was a blessing then that Arya did not remember waking a nude Gendry in the night).

"This," Gendry said mildly as he dangled his locket by its chain. He stepped inside until he was close enough to crouch by the fire. He looked over to Jon. "I saw strange things in it. You were a part of them."

[baseborne]

Jon's eyebrows shoot up, but eventually he nods and shuts the door again, joining Gendry nearer the fire. He'd expected to have until the morning before anyone else saw it, and had been lying awake in bed trying to think up exceptionally clever things to say about the whole mess. About why he hadn't talked about it much before (only a brief word to Sansa while she was still so far away, and even then he'd failed to mention any specifics... like that he'd been the one to hold the Wall, with a small handful of unfit men. That the wildling strength was tens of thousands, and they'd brought with them a hundred giants, and as many mammoths to match.)

He'd come up with nothing, though, clever or otherwise - as was usually the case with him.

He runs a hand through his hair to stop it sticking up in strange directions from being pinned against the pillow only a minute ago. Ghost looks around at them, but snorts, unconcerned, and lays his head back down on his paws to doze. "The Battle for the Wall?" Jon asks, just to be sure, though he hadn't seen anything else that would rouse Gendry from his bed at night when he'd last looked.

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[retraced]

[So this man who had been so skilled with a sword was really no simple knight after all, but a man who could hold this much authoritative power over an army facing down such a terrifying enemy.

Well, now he's definitely never going to attempt to fight him, even in a practice match.]

What were those things...?

[He winces and then follows the question with an apology.]

Sorry, I didn't realize that it was another memory until it had ended.

[Intruding on someone's memories has become a common enough occurrence in Gilbert's world, but not quite in this same manner.]

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[baseborne]

The giants? Or the mammoths...?

[He remembers Gil well enough, and gives a tired little half-smile by way of greeting that falls away quickly enough, but it had still been there.]

It makes no matter. No one appears to have much control over this sort of thing, in any case.

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[retraced]

[The giants, at least, are pretty self-explanatory.]

Oh, the mammoths.

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[baseborne]

The giants keep them like men keep horses, but they're more fond, I think.

[Jon sounds passing fond himself, despite everything from the vision.]

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[mildly]

Did such a thing truly happen?

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[baseborne]

[Jon hesitates, but then nods. It's impossible not to see the Tyrell in her after meeting Loras at a feast: they might as well be twins, as much as the golden Lannisters, at least.] Aye, many times across the expanse of the Wall, but it was a gate they needed, so it was Castle Black they came for in true strength. [Also giants are real and still alive. Surprise!]

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[mildly]

The Night's Watch is made up of brave men indeed, though I suspect none more than their Lord Commander.

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[baseborne]

[Oh gods what does he do, there's a super pretty woman complimenting him (never mind her name), his brain is just casually going to be short circuiting in 3, 2, 1...] You, ah... are being very generous, my lady.

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[teenyoda]

Okay, I'm feeling a little emasculated now. My thing shows me at seven with my parents and yours shows you being a badass warrior fighting giants and mammoths.

I think I can actually feel my balls trying to climb back up into my body since I'm clearly not ready to be a man by your weirdo world standards.

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[baseborne]

[Damnit Stiles don't make him laugh you'll ruin his rep.] Every man there was frightened, Stiles.

And I was scarcely being a... badass [you can practically hear the ???? following the word when he speaks it] warrior, I was standing atop a very tall wall.

[teenyoda]

[He can't help it, Jon. It's genetic. Smile, dammit.]

Every man there still had a sword and huge balls.

[Don't argue with him, Jon.]

Dude, you were so badass. I'm surprised your pants could fit with how huge your balls must have been. I bet they were close to mammoth-sized balls. Huge balls standing on top of a huge wall with a huge sword. That's practically the dictionary definition of badass, Jon. All you needed was an explosion behind you.

[baseborne]

[Alright, Jon can't help it, he gives a rather undignified snort of amusement. Stiles is like Tormund Giantsbane's polar opposite, generously insisting that other people have improbably huge members.] And you say I speak queerly? You've strung two insults together to make a compliment. [Jon has called plenty of men bad, and plenty asses, but never had he meant either in a particularly flattering manner in those moments.]