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

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

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.

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Oh, you'd not believe. [Jon had shirked his duties in coming here and it still ate at him some nights, made him feel a craven and a traitor no matter how often he told himself he thought it only a dream when he agreed to aid, but if there was one thing he never regretted leaving behind it was those same administrative duties.] You can never please every man, and any choice you make no matter your reasons makes half of them curse you in their cups at night. [It doesn't help that Jon had consistently chosen those of the lowest birth for the highest honors and told anybody who protested to get stuffed more or less every time, but there you have it.]

[ but she would believe! though sansa refrains from explaining how she had aided in the administration of first the eyrie and then the gates of the moon. she does not like talking about alayne stone to her family, and so lets that common ground sink away. ]

But so long as they are the right choices--

[ and she innocently believes jon's must indeed be right. her faith in her blood might be one of the few scraps of innocence she has remaining. in her mind. ]

They are. [That was the first thing he'd learned to be bullheaded and stubborn about. Might be some of them weren't the best choices, gods know he tried to get decent advice from his men, but the more they pushed him on such matters and offered up utterly useless grudges instead of thoughtful opinions, the more Jon had to push back lest they start to think they could puppet him like some air-headed boy king.

In any case, he'd given posts on merit, of that he was confident. He'd even set aside personal feelings to do so, in the case of men like Janos Slynt, though it had been thrown back in his face that particular instance.] But it matters little here, one way or the other. Do you yet fare well in Caer Glaem?

I won't lie to you. It's lonely. Sigrid is sweet -- and I am grateful for her. And there are yet others who allow me to take up moments of their day. [ ...with a tilt of her head. ] Stiles speaks quite fondly of you, Jon. Would you name him a good person?

[ he makes her laugh over these pretty lockets. but she gets nervous spending time with him. person-to-person. face-to-face. but a solid word from her brother would go a long way. ]

Does he? [Another look of amusement flickers across Jon's long face. He made friends with a great big, slow-witted giant whose language he only has a few words in, and he still thinks Stiles is less easy to understand some days. (Most days.)] I would name him odd-- but decent, aye. He is kind, in his own queer way, and I think there is little harm in him.

Is he one that you spend your time with? [Does Jon need to give him The Talk?]

My time? [ a brief pause. ] Only some of it. Only a very little of it. We talk over these lockets -- on occasion.

[ they'd not even met in person before she'd returned to the castle. ] He knows Alayne, dear brother. Alayne spends her time with him.

Aye, I thought so. [A pause.] We spoke on bastardy once, and he mentioned knowing... you. Her. [Jon's face screws up when he tries to navigate the language of her farce: he finds it strange to pretend his sister is two different people. From the outside, she seems to him a girl with a mask, putting on and taking off her bastard's name like clothes.

Clothes for her heart, she might think, but still something she can cast off at the end of the day.]

Edited 2014-07-22 05:56 (UTC)

[ gently -- dully, as if she doesn't want to betray her curiousity: ] Does he speak well of Alayne?

[ it's a girlish curiousity. childish, really. platonic. before the drabwurld, it had been a long time since she's met so many who merely wanted to sit and know her. talk to her. make her laugh. and so she feels it's important that they like her. ]

He said nothing unkind. It's only that he doesn't... understand. [About bastards.] But his world is... different, so that should be expected.

He speaks so well of women. [ is it any wonder she is charmed? stiles stands like a sanctuary of enlightened thought, an offer of escape from everything she's survived. she craves his friendship because he does not bestow kindness on her like a rare treat -- but he gives it like second nature. he makes her think of her family, and their sweeter ways. ]

And of other matters. I cannot be bad, can it? To share my time with him. [ ... ] Not if you do, as well.

[ jon's approval suddenly means a great deal to her -- as if his opinion could be her dowsing rod for safety. ]

[Jon's experiences with women are so far removed from that of most Westerosi men that he scarcely thinks he can speak on such matters. Gods know King Stannis and the majority of his own brothers thought him mad enough to take on the wildlings, and twice as mad as that to see the worth in their fighting women, and their right to choose.

To Arya, he once might have shared his tales of the spearwives of the free folk to cheer her when she'd done terribly in her embroidery, or some other equally hated task. But Sansa had always been eager for the propriety of a high born lady, he'd thought talk of the wild women from north of the Wall, treated as equals in so many more ways, might do naught but offend her.

Jon pauses for a moment, to mull it over - he and Stiles hadn't spent long talking of women, mostly they spent their time comparing tales of what age and birth and wealth meant to either of their worlds (and enjoying his so-called modern food.) But if he's learned anything of the odd boy's point of view, he thinks he can hazard a guess what he's been saying of women.] Might be that he's not wrong. In that, at least.

[In other things, well.] It seems fine, to me. You ought to spend time with anyone you wish, Sansa. [And any time less with Renly Baratheon or Loras Tyrell would make him feel better, though that's hardly fair.]

[ her brother's confirmation of her freedom warms her. tickles her heart. sansa smiles. he is a hero in his own right, giving her counsel. ]

...Would Father be so forgiving as you, Jon? [ because she does worry about his thoughts on the matter. his daughter spending time alone with an unknown young man. in ser gendry's case, it had at least been necessity. ]

Father wants you to be happy. [As impossible as that seems now. Even when he gives her word that pleases her, Jon sees the sadness in her too. The fear that the Lannisters engraved into her heart.] And it isn't as though he's courting you. [Right? Right??]

[ a clumsier person might stammer. flush red. chatter and prattle and flap her fingers as if to dismiss the topic. but sansa has been put through a gauntlet of far too much self-control to let her reaction devolve so. she winds the implication around her thoughts and finds herself feeling all the sadder for it. the grief does not come from stiles -- he is as yet just barely a friend, too kind and gentle with her boundaries for her to half-think about courtship.

no. her grief is sourced in the certain knowledge that she will never have that dream-state courtship. she will never have a proper suitor. ]

No. [ simple, albeit hesitant. ] It's...nothing of the sort. And if it was -- if anyone tried -- [ a hard swallow. ] It would be impossible.

[ there are impediments! grave serious awful impediments. ]

[Jon winces. Right, he should not have mentioned that. The problem is, he liked the Imp, damned and a kinslayer though the little man might be. If those kin were lions, could anyone truly blame him?

But he'd been married his little sister, after all that talk up on the Wall of his love of whores, and such things sat uncomfortably enough with Jon that he mostly tried to forget about it. He might have been funny, in a vicious, sarcastic way, and gentle (after a fashion) with bastards and cripples, and he was certainly nothing like his perfect, terrible golden siblings... but he was still a fearsomely ugly little creature. Surely no one would want that in their bed, without so much as a coin to show for it, and certainly not a girl so highborn and well fed as Lady Sansa Stark.]

Aye... [He pauses, awkward again.] Father will never recognize such a thing, even if the Imp comes. No power but your own will could move him to return you to any Lannister bed.

I haven't yet told him. About how -- I don't want to disappoint him.

[ as if it is her fault. as if she did not protest enough. as if she is somehow to blame for being marched into the sept. thank the gods that however an ugly man the imp is, he isn't a terribly cruel one. but she cannot gather together the courage to explain to jon that she may be married but she is not ruined. ]

[Jon can empathize with that. There are things he has not confessed to, either, for fear of seeing some look of coldness in his father's eyes, for falling out of the kindness that he has only just found again. They're both far enough in the future that they've learned to hold too much to the chest, the only news either of them has to share brings their lord father more and more pain.]

He won't hear it from me, I swear it. [He knows their father wouldn't be wroth with her, but he would be so with himself, and Jon doesn't think such words would lift Sansa's spirit any.]

They made me marry him. I didn't want to--

[ because it had not yet been said to jon. sansa has talked her way around the fact and alluded to it and all at once she was seized with the fear that jon might think she cares for her lord husband. after all, he'd alluded to her own possible will to return to tyrion's bed. and... ]

I don't believe he wanted to either. [ there. her one flimsy defence of the imp. ]

[The first bit doesn't surprise him, but the second bit does. He pauses, but decides asking further would just be insensitive.] Sansa-- it wasn't your fault. None of it was. The Lannisters are monsters, father knows that now. [Scarcely human, in Jon's eyes, the lot of them. Not Tyrion, maybe, in anything but looks... the little man never made a secret of his loathing for his own family, after all. And he had halved their number on the throne single-handedly.]

We both of us learned too late. Him. Me. [ how can she ever trust again? ] Jon. If Tyrion Lannister were to ever come here--

[ no. he would not subject her to their marriage? she's been here long enough that the manages to nurse a seedling of optimism. ]

--I will speak to him. [Or worse, if it comes down to it. He likes Tyrion, but not enough that he would abandon a sister. One of the two he now has, that he never truly did before.] He'll stay far away from you. If he ever comes.

Thank you. Jon. I...

[ she swallows hard. ] I wish you were here. Still.

[ because she knows after a promise like this, she would cling to him with such a desperate embrace. ]

[Guilt does a little twist in his gut. She'd only just returned, and they turned around to leave her again, even taking Gendry with them. That he'd been enjoying himself so far felt like a betrayal of her seemingly omnipresent sadness.] It will not be long. We've learned so much already. [Even Arya, who Jon has been teaching on the side behind closed doors, because of course he has.] And those fairy rings will make the return much shorter, it seems to me.

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

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