RoWE - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Tyrion Lannister

The sound of flutes, drums, and dancing was left behind in the great hall as Aeg stepped out into the cold wind that brushed against his face. The empty courtyard was particularly quiet. Guards on the battlements of the inner wall pulled their cloaks tighter to ward off the chill. The Night's Watchman turned and looked around, spotting the figure of the young man, and walked towards him.

"Kid." A strange voice sounded, Aeg didn't see where the speaker was, but he knew his memory hadn't failed him, and this step wasn't a mistake. "Is that a wolf beside you?"

"It's a direwolf, named Ghost," Jon turned and found the speaker, and also saw Aeg coming out of the door, turning his head away so they wouldn't see his tears. "What are you doing there? Why aren't you inside at the banquet?"

Aeg walked around the doorpost and followed Jon's instinctive line of sight, also spotting Tyrion Lannister. The dwarf was sitting on a protruding ledge above the main entrance of the hall, looking down at them. If he had remained still, he might have been mistaken for a statue.

"It's too hot and noisy inside, and I've had a bit too much to drink," the dwarf answered Jon's question. "A long time ago, I learned that it's not very polite to vomit on your own brother. Can I come closer to see your wolf?"

Jon hesitated for a moment, then nodded slowly: "Can you get down by yourself? Or should I go get a ladder?"

"What, you looking down on me?" the little man said. He pushed off with both hands and flipped into the air. He skillfully reduced his size in mid-air and landed lightly on his hands, then did a backflip to stand up.

The little direwolf instinctively took a few steps back, and even Aeg had to admit that, relative to his size, Tyrion's move was quite impressive.

The dwarf brushed the dust off his clothes and smiled: "I must have scared your little wolf. I'm really sorry."

"He wasn't scared," Jon said as he bent down to call out: "Ghost, come here, come on, good boy."

The wolf sauntered over, affectionately rubbing its nose against Jon's cheek, but remained wary of Tyrion Lannister. When the dwarf reached out to touch it, it immediately retreated and bared its teeth, letting out a silent growl. "Quite shy, isn't he?" Lannister said.

"Ghost, sit," Jon commanded. "Just like that, stay still." He looked up at Tyrion, "You can touch him now. He won't move unless I tell him to. I'm training him."

"I see." Lannister scratched the snow-white fur between Ghost's ears, "Good wolfy."

Aeg stood to the side, constantly looking for an opportunity to interject and quickly catch the dwarf's attention. Now that Tyrion was silent, rubbing the direwolf's head, he finally had a chance to speak: "Jon. I don't know if I can call you that, but I must tell you, your uncle doesn't want you to join for your own good."

"For my own good?" The young man was still somewhat angry. "For my own good, he should have controlled his brother back then and not let me be born into this world!"

"Ah." Tyrion, who was listening to their conversation, tilted his oversized head and looked as if he had just realized something. He looked Jon up and down, "You're Ned Stark's bastard, you want to be a Night's Watchman, but Benjen refused you?"

The dwarf guessed the truth from just one exchange between the two, his thinking was quick, but his words were no different from rubbing salt into the wound. Jon pressed his lips together and stood up, and his wolf almost simultaneously moved away from Tyrion's touch.

"If I've offended you, I apologize," the little Lannister immediately realized something. "But why. Isn't the Wall a place that doesn't care about one's background and only values ability, a good place to…, I mean, to place bastards?"

"Once you see the vast tent cities set up by the hundred thousand wildlings preparing to attack the Wall, giants tall enough to tear a man apart with their bare hands, pale white walkers with blue eyes piercing through the bodies of comrades with ice swords, the dead rising again after they've cooled. you won't think it's a good place."

"An intriguing introduction." Tyrion also stood up and looked back at Aeg. "First, I must state my position. I have great respect for the Night's Watch, I admire your sacrifice in defending the realm. Although I would never take your vows, I do admire you."

The dwarf paused before continuing: "However, I don't believe in those tales of giants and wights and other monsters. The difference between wildlings and us is simply that they happened to be north of the Wall when it was built."

"Lord Tyrion, have you been to the Wall? Do you know that the Wall is the largest structure built by humans?"

"It's a well-known fact," Tyrion shrugged. "Not only the largest, but undoubtedly, also the most useless structure."

"The most useless structure?" Aeg struggled to suppress the urge to scoff. The dwarf before him might be friendly and approachable, but in a world where the concept of equality didn't exist, the gap between their statuses was too great. It was best to be cautious on the first day of acquaintance: "Do you know how big the Wall actually is?"

Tyrion gave Aeg a strange look, finding the Night's Watchman's way of speaking odd: "A hundred leagues long, seven hundred feet high, and wide enough at the top for twelve fully armed knights to ride abreast. As for how wide that is, I really don't know."

Aeg nodded: "Correct, those are the official figures given by the chief architect. But I bet you've never seen a wall a hundred leagues long or a building seven hundred feet high. The Hightower in Oldtown is also very tall, but it's still somewhat short of the Wall. You should go and see it for yourself, measure it. But if you can't, I can now show you through a more intuitive calculation how massive the Wall is." Aeg spoke with confidence: "Seven hundred feet high, with a width about a tenth of its height, let's assume it's seventy feet wide. Now, we're facing the inner walls of Winterfell, which are a hundred feet high at their highest point and about ten feet thick. I've heard that you're exceptionally intelligent, so do you know what it means that the Wall is seven times as high and thick as the walls of Winterfell?"

What does it mean? Tyrion frowned. He was rarely stumped. After thinking for a moment, he understood what the other man meant: "It means that to build a section of the Wall the same length as the walls of Winterfell, the former would require forty-nine times the amount of materials."

"Your mind is as renowned as they say," Aeg subtly flattered the dwarf. "Now, considering that the Wall is a hundred leagues long, what does that imply?"

The dwarf's frown deepened, while Jon Snow watched the two of them doing calculations, completely unable to join in. When it came to swordsmanship and riding, he might be stronger than both of them combined, but when it came to arithmetic, he couldn't even match Tyrion, let alone Aeg, who had received higher education in another world.

"Let me tell you, my lord, this means that if the Wall were dismantled and rebuilt to the height of Winterfell's inner walls, it would be five thousand leagues long. That length could easily encircle the entire North, or separate the King's Road from the fields on both sides, all the way from King's Landing to Winterfell. The weight of the Wall is greater than all the city walls in Westeros combined."

"But the Wall is made of giant ice blocks," the dwarf roughly estimated, realizing that the Night's Watchman before him was not spouting nonsense, but still argued unconvinced: "Winterfell's walls are built of stone."

"A block of stone weighs about twice as much as an equal volume of ice, but considering the difference in construction difficulty and the amount of work between building a seven-hundred-foot Wall and a hundred-foot wall, I suggest we call it even." Aeg's mind raced, quickly steering the conversation back to his agenda: "You just said that the difference between wildlings and us is simply being on opposite sides of the Wall, I agree with that statement. Using your logic, can I say that the difference between Northerners and Southerners is also just being on opposite sides of the Neck?"

"Most people in the North have the blood of the First Men flowing through their veins." The bastard had long forgotten the humiliation he felt in the hall from his uncle's words. Feeling like a fool for eavesdropping for so long, he finally found a chance to speak up.

"'The First Men' refers to the first humans to arrive in Westeros. They are neither a separate race nor older than any other nation." Tyrion corrected Jon's misconception. "In terms of race, the First Men are very similar to the Andals or the Rhoynar, with no essential difference, so the concept of 'First Men's blood' is actually meaningless. It's more about heritage and cultural beliefs than blood."

"Agreed." Aeg expressed his approval. "Lord Tyrion, after consulting the literature, I learned that the Wall was not built within a single generation. Brandon Stark, the Builder, eight thousand years ago, only built the stone foundations of Winterfell and the Wall. The astonishing height of seven hundred feet was achieved by thousands of Night's Watch craftsmen over decades, even centuries, using large blocks of ice from the glacial lakes of the Haunted Forest to slowly pile up and increase the height."

"Isn't the Wall entirely made of ice?" Tyrion raised an eyebrow. "It seems I haven't read carefully enough. But it sounds reasonable."

"It doesn't matter much what it's made of," Aeg said indifferently. "I don't understand military matters, but I also know that such a massive fortification, built at the Neck, would make the North invulnerable to the armies of the South. But the Builder chose to build it at the farthest north. Even if the first generation of Wall builders were crazy, why did their descendants continue the project? Is it because the Northerners are all crazy, or is there another reason?"

"Hmm." The dwarf stroked his chin.

"Moreover," Aeg continued without stopping: "According to the records, at its peak, there were over five thousand soldiers stationed at Castle Black alone, and the entire legion had over ten thousand combat troops, not counting servants and attendants. That was eight thousand years ago, when the population on both sides of the Wall was far less than today. The number of wildlings living north of the Wall might not have been as many as the Night's Watch. What made the Northerners build and constantly raise the Wall, while maintaining such a large standing army to guard it?"