Chapter 32: Zombie Watch pt. 2, Politics and Preparations

Marsh went back inside, followed by the people that he had previously been meeting with. As I was introduced to the men, I realized that not only were they the officers of the Night’s Watch, but also those trying to get voted in as Lord Commander.

First Steward Bowen Marsh was acting Lord Commander, but it didn’t seem likely that he’d manage to take the seat. That piece of shit Janos Slynt, the corrupt gold cloak I helped remove, was also bucking for the position.

So were: Ser Alliser Thorn, the much-hated, ever-unpleasant Master-at-arms of Castle Black who had just been humbled by First Hound Captain Fritz; Cotter Pyke, the former Ironborn and commander of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea; Ser Denys Mallister, who has commanded the Shadow Tower for over three decades; and a few others who didn’t really have a shot at winning anyways. Thankfully the shit Joffrey had had an “accident” at some point, otherwise I’m sure he would have been in the running too, just to make my life more miserable.

Both Pyke and Mallister would be decent choices; they had, after all, successfully commanded castles of their own, and were popular among the men at the Wall. The only problem was that they fucking hated each other. Thorn was already out of the running; I didn’t know what he’d been promised, or what sweet lies he’d been told, but he’d thrown his support to Slynt. Luckily that support was worth less now after everyone saw Fritz maul his ass. Acting Lord Commander Marsh didn’t look like a fighting man, and was known for a bean-counter by the men at the Wall; he had, after all, held the position of chief bean counter for many years. It was unlikely that he’d be made Lord Commander, as the men didn’t see him in that way.

It was looking increasingly likely that Slynt, fucking Slynt would end up winning as the compromise candidate. I just couldn’t trust a man like that at the head of an organization that was at least half full of thieves, murderers, rapists, bandits and other crooks. But it was looking increasingly likely that I wouldn’t have a choice, and something needed to happen to break the gridlock. Not to mention it was insane to leave the two castles meant to hold the flanks unattended by their leaders in this time of crisis.

So I took a different option. I decided to try and half-shame, half-bully the Watch’s leadership (after all, Slynt had no shame to begin with) into deciding that since the vote was not deciding the matter of the next Lord Commander quickly enough that Marsh would stay acting Lord Commander, and everyone would get back to doing their fucking jobs.

Even at the Wall they had heard about how I’d killed the Mountain. Between that, fear of my magic, Robert’s appointment as his envoy, and the two hundred forty Guard Hounds I’d brought with me they were willing to listen.

Given any luck, Marsh would prove himself a successful commander, or some other man would rise up out of the ranks. Failing that, I’d see to Slynt’s tragic accident myself.

After that dick measuring contest had been decided, I turned to Marsh and asked a simple question. “What are the strategic and tactical situations?”

He grimaced. “We are light on the stores needed to feed such large armies as you say are coming, Lord Gangari, and bringing large amounts overland will be difficult as the weather cools. However, Eastwatch remains accessible by sea in all but the coldest months of winter, and that normally during years of Winter. For the Watch’s current numbers, our supplies are reasonably extensive, and we have large stores of arrows, flammable cloth, pitch and other necessary items for a siege.”

I nodded. “That is about as good as I could have hoped for, Lord Commander,” I said, showing him my support. “Clearly you did well as First Steward to see the Watch so well prepared.”

He puffed up a bit, his gut moving forward ponderously as he smiled. “Thank you, Lord Gangari. As for the tactical situation, we are most pressed. We have barely seven hundred men in the Watch now. It is difficult to carry out the necessary maintenance and repairs with so few men, let alone to turn back an invasion by a hundred thousand wildlings. Should even a small band of raiders slip past, it would be a dire threat to our castles.

“As for the threat of Wildlings, there are four main routes of attack. Furthest to the west, there is the Bridge of Skulls. It is the only way past the Gorge. The nearest castle, Westwatch-by-the-Bridge, is more a gatehouse than a true castle. Although easy to defend, a sufficiently large band may be able to force their way through. We have too few men to guard it as well as I would like without weakening the Wall elsewhere.

“The second threat is less localized; the wildlings may attempt to climb over the Wall at any point along its length, and attempt to take our castles from the unprotected southern sides. This is again an issue hard to defend against without many more men assigned to the task of patrolling.

“The third threat comes from Castle Black. Other than the path that leads over the Bridge of Skulls and through Westwatch, it is the only tunnel through the wall at present that we have not filled. Should the Wildlings be attempting to truly force the Wall and move their entire people through to attack the Seven Kingdoms, they are most likely to come here.

“The fourth and final threat comes from raiders taking ships and slipping by Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Luckily Wildlings make for poor shipbuilders and sailors; though the Watch’s naval forces are small, I doubt that the Wildlings will be able to sneak too many by. That said, should they be willing to endure extreme casualties a massive raft-borne invasion is possible there, and there is the risk that raiding parties might get through to attack us from behind.”

I considered for a moment, thinking about how to best employ my forces. “Very well. I think that my forces can help in three main ways. I will send out a platoon of twenty five of the Ravens to each of the three main castles. They will patrol for Wildling movement, watch for ships and give warning for forces that target the Bridge of Skulls. Two of the companies of Hounds will be set to patrolling the wall. They will run along it, day and night, and ensure that no wildlings make it up undetected. Finally, I myself will remain at Castle Black with the last company of Guard Hounds as a mobile reserve. Should it prove necessary, I can split the company and send portions to reinforce all three locations as needed.”

Marsh nodded thoughtfully. “That would free up the vast majority of the men I have patrolling the wall, and allow me to send extra forces to both Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower,” he agreed. “I will reinforce the Shadow Tower with a hundred men due to the risk of the Bridge of Skulls being attempted by the Wildlings, bringing the force there up to three hundred strong. Fifty will go to Eastwatch, bringing them to two hundred men, while the remainder will stay here at Castle Black.”

A bunch of much happier officers began to work out the details.

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All that hustle and bustle to get there, and after I arrived we had little to do but wait. So I buckled down to magical research. There were three priorities that I worked on. First, analyzing the Wall; there was a shit-ton of magic through the thing, after all. Second, figuring out how to apply and update enchantments in mass numbers and from a distance. Third, I wanted to finally figure out how to teleport.

The Wall was an impressive structure. Despite being some eight thousand years old, it was still in good repair, and had stayed frozen and seven hundred feet tall the whole time. I had anticipated White mana being involved; the wall was ice, which was a structured crystal, and it warded against the undead. There was basically no more obvious a sign of White magic than structure and anti-undead. But that didn’t explain the eternal, unchanging, self-repairing nature of the Wall. Not with the Wall being so far away from civilization.

The secret, surprisingly, was in the use of Green mana. The effect that made the ice permanent, slowly dying down before I revitalized it, was copyable with White and Green. It made the ice have some essential aspect of life energy to it. Then there was the spell to make the ice truly “living” in its ability to self-repair. Last, there was an enchantment that made the ice sacred, for lack of a better word. It basically gave it a localized anti-undead ward.

The coolest thing about the ice was it was self-powering; the ice counted as alive enough and certainly sufficiently a part of civilization to generate high amounts of White mana, while being in the frozen and wild north meant it had high amounts of ambient Green at hand too. There was a highly efficient feedback loop, and if properly staffed the Wall was naturally self-powering.

I learned to reshape the ice without much difficulty; I suspected I’d use the set of spells, or minor modifications thereof to make highly efficient cold-box devices that recharged when exposed to towns and cities. I looked forwards to having iced fruit juice in the south.

Meanwhile the anti-undead field was something I was interested in investigating further; it would likely lead to anti-undead beam attacks and a more generalized ward-undead that I hoped to use with some of my animals.

Because fuck zombies.

Luckily, it was ridiculously easy to modify into an anti-undead enchantment. It basically had to be attached to something with high concentrations of white and green. Which included all my animals and myself. Unlike Valyrian steel, which I suspected would work against the undead by applying conceptual cutting damage, the aura was more of a shield, working against allowing undead energies within that space.

Unfortunately, it was still pretty weak. The effect on the Wall relied a lot on being a massive, three hundred mile long, seven hundred foot tall, fifty foot wide chunk of ice. My animals were individually a lot more magical than the ice, and the anti-undead aura enchantment was powered by that, but the efficiency was still low enough that on an individual basis all I expected it to do was prevent my animals from being raised as wights, and to allow for impacts with their flesh or blood to harm the White Walkers.

That was good, to start, but not really satisfying. Luckily, the aura was linkable much like the projectile shields, and so blocks of my troops would cause nearby undead to be weaker and suffer damage over time. It wasn’t enough to make a fight a foregone conclusion, but it did serve to make my troops more efficient.

For myself, it was more useful. I could use the structure of the enchantment to serve as a spell, then dump colorless mana into it to flare the size of the aura, strengthening it with more White and Green. It should be as effective as setting every undead near me on fire with sufficient mana, without the issue of a pile of actually burning bodies to menace my allies. I also figured out how to fire beams and bolts of the anti-undead energies.

The latter technique was easily adapted to send packets of healing life-force energy as well, the energy signatures of anti-undead and pro-life being quite close to each other. It wasn’t really that useful; most injuries were either too severe for a basic life-force infusion to work fast enough, or too minor to need my attentions, but it was an application nonetheless.

Since I was messing about with attack spells, I figured it was time to set up a continuous version of chain lightning. Chain lightning was mostly a one shot attack; the bolt could be guided a bit after I shot it, but the size and strength of the bolt was defined when it was cast in the first place.

But that was from a time that my mana regeneration was slow. When I arrived at Castle Black with over a thousand mana to call on, I could have a used mana bond ready to go again in a little under two minutes. I basically had ten mana a second to spend before I started drawing down faster than I recovered.

It was worth making a spell that I cast once, then kept channeling through as opposed to making multiple instances of the same spell. It was easier on my concentration, and it meant that I could save on the mana required to build the spell-pattern every time I cast it. For chain lightning, that was a full four mana to structure the spell and provide a minimal effect, but with the bulk of the power coming from the extra colorless I imbued the spell with. Continuous chain lightning was only one colorless more to start off, and after that the power depended entirely on how much magic I was feeding it. It was effectively my magic machinegun.

Figuring out the Wall, developing an anti-undead aura, and gaining the ability to shoot anti-undead beams and continuous lightning only took a little over two weeks.

As for my progress in enchanting, it took me about a month to be able to be able to lay the same enchantment on multiple people or objects at a time, and it wasn’t until two months later in mid January that I figured out how to cast enchantments at a distance.

At first I was overly focused on casting the same enchantment multiple times simultaneously. It was like trying to write the same word with both my left and right hand at the same time; in theory understandable, in practice very, very difficult. The trick that I eventually figured out was that I could cast the enchantment, and then when I went to tie it into the animal could instead send tendrils out to tie it to multiple animals at a time.

The problem was in keeping the enchantment stable while subjecting it to those stresses, which required a fine control of mana; by adding mana into the enchantment at the same rate that it was flowing to the targeted beings, I could keep the enchantment stable. When enough mana to enchant all the beings was finished, the enchantment would separate and flow into all the creatures.

The advantage was that I could process as many as a dozen animals in the time it used to take me to process one, and that improved processing factor kept increasing as I kept getting more mana and more skill controlling it. The disadvantage was that it wasn’t possible for me to add the top level of what I could accomplish with enchantments; those were by definition cutting edge, at the very limit of what I could achieve and needed all my skill and focus.

But that top level kept reaching higher and higher, with what used to be the apex suddenly something I could distribute to all of enhanced friends and forces.

Which brought me to the topic of how to enchant people at a distance. I started in mid November, and was pretty close to a solution when I realized it was once again coming up on Christmas. I was depressed; every year my family would gather, everyone from all the over world coming to Florida for our family celebration.

I knew that I wasn’t there, that I’d be kept in the Christmas eve and New Years prayers. That my mother would be all tense, waiting for someone to say something about how I was probably in a better place or whatever so she could jump down their throat, insisting that I was fine, that I would be fine, that I’d make it back someday to be with them again.

They were heavy thoughts. I’ll admit, despite all the blood I’d shed, the things I’d done, the thought of that scene, my parents in the family setting, the specific idea of their faces and reactions to my being brought up after being missing for almost two years, for the second Christmas in a row, as everyone just prayed that I’d get home but secretly feared I wouldn’t… It was tough.

I spent a lot of time in private for those few days.

But then Togo came along, picked up my wrist in his mouth, and dragged me to where I’d been doing experiments. I had talked to him about my problems, taking comfort in his quiet support, and he knew what I needed to do. I needed to work. To make progress with my magic. And to one day make my way home.

It seemed that jolt of motivation was exactly what I needed to make progress. Through meditation I found these slight links between me and those that I’d previously enchanted. I had a habit of taking a perfect memory of people before and after I did an enchantment so I’d be able to diagnose and fix whatever damage was done in the event of some sort of enchantment failure or rejection. When I thought about those memories while meditating, I found ever-so faint links between me and them. I could use those links to pass my spells without issues of distance.

It wasn’t great at letting me put in place entirely new enchantments, at least not yet, but I could easily upgrade the ones that were already there and with significantly more time and effort add new ones.

Then, after spending enough time practicing, meditating, and upgrading the Guard animals back home to a higher standard, I made another breakthrough. I gained the ability to track all the magic I was responsible for. With deep focus I could suddenly feel out not just the animals that I had enchanted, but all of their progeny, at least so long as they were touched by my magic.

The Guard Hounds, with a pregnancy period of about two months and litters of several puppies at a time had been expanding particularly rapidly; there were over four thousand of them in the Guard, patrolling my lands to maintain peace and order, with thousands more too young or pregnant to be part of the active units. It took me six days just to get all of them up to the latest standard.

Judging from the fact that they were almost as good as Togo, mostly just lacking his size and experience, I could probably upgrade myself again; I had over twenty-eight hundred mana by the time February came and I was finished upgrading my Guard variants to their latest standard, so I certainly had the extra power to spare.

But teleportation was, I considered, of slightly higher priority.

A pity I didn’t get to work on it just then.