Chapter 33: Zombie Watch pt. 3, Human Refugees

Things were looking up by February.

The Wall was beginning to repopulate. The North had responded in force under Robb’s leadership, and Vale houses and their troops under Ser Brynden Tully’s command were coming in at Eastwatch to reinforce the Wall and its castles. There were feasts and other events that I went to, but I had mostly stayed tucked away working on my troops. The Blackfish was an able commander, and he and Robb needed little input from me as to the disposition of his troops.

I decided to increase my own forces at the Wall; I hadn’t realized how quickly my hounds would be breeding, and had Hue, who was posted as part of my communications network in Harrenhal, relay the order for fifteen companies, a full twelve hundred hounds as well as another two companies of Guard Ravens to come north to the Wall.

When they arrived, I formed them into three battalions of six companies each, with a company of the Ravens as aerial scouts and human/animal translators.

I had decided to model my human army roughly after the Romans, with eighty men or thirty cavalry to a company (century), six infantry companies or twelve cavalry ones to a battalion (cohort). It didn’t make sense for me to use a Legion sized structure though, as a single one would probably end up including every man in my army even after I finished expanding it.

Instead the largest sizes, still entirely hypothetical, were Regiments; these were designed as combined arms formations, and had a minimum of eight foot companies, including at least two of archers and at least four of pikemen. A Foot Regiment had no integrated cavalry element, while a Mixed Regiment had eight companies of cavalry attached. A Fast Regiment used mounted soldiers who would then dismount to fight as well as the integrated cavalry unit.

Romans had similar units: the Equitata Cohort, which included a cohort of infantry with an integral cavalry element, and the Equitata Milliara Cohort, an over-strength Equitata Cohort with ten infantry companies and eight cavalry. They were often made up of auxiliaries and used in the provinces when a full Legion would be overkill.

I planned on having a Guard Hound for every man in the Regiments, as well as two companies of Ravens attached to each Regiment. The Hounds could fight from beneath the pikes, screen the archers, and support the cavalry, while the Ravens would scout and carry messages. Because of that planned integration, the Hounds and Ravens were already assigned to companies of eighty animals each back at Harrenhal. I had trained the first of them to keep organizing themselves in such a manner, and the hierarchical pack-instinct I created them with further reinforced their training.

It made it easy for the Hounds to organize and deploy along the wall, that was for sure. The Northmen and Valemen took a bit of time to get used to organized packs moving about in formation, standing watch, and otherwise doing all the military activities they could. Some inquired about acquiring some for their own armed forces; I mentioned to them that I was selling shepherding dogs as the population of those grew, but that the Guard Hounds were not for sale. The fact that the Starks had some became quite a point of envy.

Although I wanted to I did not get to work on my teleportation, I couldn’t. The Vale and Northern forces had arrived just in time.

We had to deal with the Wildlings.

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We were fairly lucky in how long it had taken the Wildlings to move. It may have seemed incredibly slow, but their horde often made as few as three miles a day. The massive amount of foraging required, the lack of roads and mounts, the need to carry all their tents and furs, the slowing due to the children, and the difficulties presented by walking through the snow and over the ice… It all meant that the Wildling advance was less a military maneuver than it was a slow meandering migration.

As for the Walkers, they were either slowed by the desire to raise every corpse in the lands beyond the Wall, or were wise enough to let the Wildlings test our strength first. Either way, I was glad that we were dealing with merely human foes, especially since the stocks of obsidian were not so much low as they were non-existent. Though Robert assured me they were coming soon. I was assured. But I’d believe it when I saw it.

We weren’t sure of what exactly the Wildlings intended. Some believed they were coming to escape the White Walkers. Others thought that they were merely the first wave of human servants sent by the Walkers to open up a path through the Wall.

I didn’t particularly care; the Wildlings had a culture of rape, robbery, murder and general barbarism. Westeros wasn’t nice or pretty, especially by modern standards, but they were a damn sight better than the Wildlings. Hell, Volantis was better than the so-called free-folk, and they practiced massive amounts of slavery. Letting Wildlings through the Wall, assuming they wanted to escape rather than serve the White Walkers, would be saving their wicked lives at the expense of all the innocents they would go on to harm.

I wasn’t willing to do it.

The Wildlings would be given a simple choice. Surrender, bend the knee, accept the King’s laws, the Stark’s rule, and peacefully settle in the Gift, a stretch of land owned but not particularly used by the Night’s Watch. Fight, and be destroyed by my sorceries and the gathered armies of the Seven Kingdoms. Or run back into the chilly embrace of the White Walkers.

No other options were acceptable.

I just had to hope the Wildlings were clever enough to accept it. Failing that, that the Wall was high enough I didn’t have to worry about the scent of burning flesh.

The first to show up were their scouts and outriders. My ravens reported that they were visibly dismayed at the number of banners on the wall. The scouts then turned to the sides, moving along the Wall for tens of miles in each direction, growing more and more bothered by the fact that the Wall was once again properly garrisoned. Other scouting parties approached the wall in other locations, though with a similar lack of success and growing consternation.

A number of my Ravens followed them back to the Wildling host. The reports of it reminded me a bit of the Dothraki khalasars, just without the horses and with more clothing. The Wildlings were no army, more a collection of tribes, villages, clans and warbands which had decided to wander in the same direction. That must have been part of the reason why it took them so long to arrive at Castle Black; foraging for food for that many people was a gargantuan task.

There were a few things I wanted to get a better look at.

They had giants, which modern Earth would claim inefficient and ponderous due to the square-cube law; I wanted to get a good scan of their biology and any magic they had.

And they had Wooly Mammoths; I wanted some to modify as line-breakers and mobile archery/artillery platforms for my Guard. I had always loved the Armored Elephants in Medieval Two Total War, after all.

Other than that, the Wildlings were a collection of hardscrabble barbarians and I wanted little to do with them. Unfortunately, I was the one assigned to treat with them by Robert, should they so choose.

My raven scouts had marked their leader, and one of my spies had heard his name: Mance Rayder. The traitor of the Night’s Watch turned King-Beyond-the-Wall.

I gathered together Marsh, Robb and the Blackfish in case I needed to consult with them, then I sent Mu out to begin negotiations.

Watching from Mu’s eyes, I saw Rayder’s massive pavilion of a tent approaching quickly. It was very barbarian chic, made from the white pelts of Westero’s version of polar bears and adorned with antlers from a great elk, but I thought he might have been trying a little bit too hard to stand out from the crowd.

Mu flew right past the guard in a flash and into the tent, interrupting a meeting between Mance and a number of other wildling leaders. They recoiled in shock, even their leader, though his face was neutral again so quickly I would not have caught it with ordinary human senses.

Other than the mid-sized and relatively non-descript Mance Rayder, there were three other men and three women there. One man was a massive bear of a person, with a long white beard and engraved armbands of gold. Another, tall, bald, lean and earless, wore heavy bronze scale armor. The third was in a shirt of bones. For the women, one was squat and round and stunk of blood. The second, a pretty young blonde woman, sat by the third who was pregnant.

“Greetings,” I relayed through Mu.

“Oh by the hells it talks!” shouted the white beard.

Mu turned his eyes to look at the man dismissively. “Indeed. I talk. Surprisingly, so do you,” Mu replied before breaking into caws of laughter. The seven wilding leaders’ puzzled stares stood testament to their confusion and shock.

The blonde girl guffawed. “See, Tormund, even ravens think you more animal than man.”

His face darkened. “Aye, well we’ll see who ends up in whose belly, and who has the last laugh then,” he muttered.

“Peace, Tormund,” Mance said. “I would hear what our feathered friend has come to say.”

Mu turned to look at Mance and looked him up and down. “Clever,” Mu noted, then began to relay my words again in a somewhat different voice, the tone and timing shifted to match my own.

“Mance Rayder. I am Ser Odysseus Gangari, Lord of Harrenhal and Envoy of His Grace King Robert,” I introduced myself.

“I didn’t realize they made ravens into lords in the south,” Tormund said sarcastically.

Mu laughed, a trio of sharp, strident caws coming out of his beak.

“No,” I said through him. “Though I suspect Mu here could do a better job than most, I am speaking through him from Castle Black.”

The bald, earless man frowned. “I think that wargs can not do this?” he asked in somewhat broken common.

“I’m no warg, but a sorcerer of a sort that has not been seen for an age,” I replied.

Mance raised his hand, drawing the wildlings back into line. “And what does the envoy of the southern king have to say to us free folk?”

“I am here to tell you some facts, ask you a question, and offer you a choice,” I answered via Mu. “The Night’s Watch is aware of the White Walkers; their Great Ranging was slaughtered, but all accounts of those dozen that managed to escape agreed that the dead walked as wights and their commander was a white man of beautiful but inhuman form and power.

“In response to this and your own movements, the armies of the Seven Kingdoms have mobilized. Already thirty thousand men have gathered to defend the Wall, twenty thousand more are on their way, and twenty five thousand are available should they be needed. Dragonglass is being sourced and processed into daggers, arrowheads and spear-tips. We are ready to meet any and every threat from beyond the wall, living or dead.”

I could see their expressions grow dark at that. A good fortress, with strong stone walls and towers, required around ten times as many men to attack it than to defend it. Something like the Wall, with seven hundred foot walls, was far, far harder to assault. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume a fifty to one combat multiplier for the defenders so long as their supplies of arrows were maintained, and even a hundred to one or more was quite possible.

The Wildlings may not have been experts in siege warfare, but it was clear that their plan for a lightning assault to break through the Wall and into undefended North had failed before it had truly begun.

“What we do not know is why you come south,” I continued. “It could be you are fleeing the White Walkers. It could be you are aiding them, a first wave of humans to break through the Wall that would stymie their fell magics and undead. So which is it?”

Mance looked at Mu seriously. “All men with warm blood in their veins are enemies of the White Walkers,” he said. “And we are no exception.”

I had Mu give a jerky up and down nod. “That is good to hear. So now, I offer you a choice. The first, if you wish to enter beyond the Wall, you must bend the knee. You will accept the King’s laws, and whatever communities you form will accept both the Starks and the Night’s Watch as their overlords. You will peacefully settle in the Gift, and only those invited to settle further south will be allowed to do so. Further, you will be responsible for providing a number of your warriors to help man the Wall during the present crisis.

“The second, you may fight, and be broken on the Wall by the gathered might of Seven Kingdoms. Or, the third option, you may turn and flee, running back into the chilly embrace of the White Walkers.

“I will come again tomorrow to hear your thoughts.”

As Mu turned to leave, Mance asked a question. “What if we agree to kneel, then go back on our word?”

Mu transmitted my laugh, turning it even harsher and crueler. “Did you think Mu was unique?” I asked, mocking. “That I only practiced my art on ravens? The hounds I breed are as smart as men, can run three hundred miles in a day, tear through plate armor like it was parchment, and have flesh as tough and hard as bronze. Fifteen hundred are already with me to protect the Wall. By year’s end there will be fifteen thousand to patrol these lands.” Mu copied well my voice as I continued, its cold harsh tones and promises of violence ringing clear.

“Should individual raiders test their mettle, they will die,” I promised. “Should the former free-folk prove too irksome as whole, or march south again, I will come north again with an army of men and beasts. We will kill everyone that carries a weapon, and drop the rest off in chains outside Volantis. Perhaps their slavers would have better success in teaching those oathbreakers to kneel.”

Mance snarled at the idea. “I did not realize the king’s laws on selling slaves had changed.”

Mu cawed, transmitting my bark of laughter. “What did I say of selling? No, what the slavers do to traitors all the way in Essos is beyond our concern. Mind me well, Rayder. You will have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Or not live, as the case may be. Till our next meeting.”

Mu leapt off the table, flying out of the tent and quickly winging his way into the air. I broke the link, coming out of it in a stone room in Castle Black. Robb, Marsh and the Blackfish were all there, and had heard my side of the conversation.

Robb’s face was worried. “What do you think they will do?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea, but if they are wise they will kneel.”

But everyone who’s watched a zombie show knows that the human refugees are just as great a threat as the zombies themselves.