Ch 43 Where's Your Army? Part 2

"STOP!!"

A loud shout came out of the crowd and echoed throughout the gathering filled with the Wildlings and all of them turned around to find a small man with a knobby chin, thin moustache, and pinched cheeks come out of the crowd. He was wearing a yellowed broken giant's skull as his helm and also had a boiled leather armour covered with loosely tied bones from all kinds of animals such as aurochs, cows, elk etc, bones that rattled as he moved, which also gave him his infamous name, Rattleshirt.

"Don't be rushin' to grant him guest rights, Mance," Rattleshirt croaked out. "We still need to see if this pretty little cunt deserves it," he finished while looking towards Jon with a malicious look in his eyes.

"Don't fuck with me, Rattleshirt," Mance said dangerously, with his hands on his sword, "You already agreed not to intervene in the trade today so what the fuck do you think you're doing right now?"

"I did agree with that... We all did, I remember that quite clearly," Rattleshirt said nodding his head mockingly, "But I also remember everything else you said to persuade us... You said that he was Magnar from the South, that he was the Son of Stark, that he had an army of thousands upon thousands of well-trained soldiers under him. Soldiers with armours and weapons of steel, soldiers with fast horses and countless archers among people, you said all of those things, but..." he made a show of looking left to right searchingly, "But I see no signs of that fucking army here,"

"I am warning you—"

"So I say fuck what we said before," Rattleshirt ignored and interrupted Mance while turning towards the crowd of wildlings as well as the other leaders who were looking at him with interest in their eyes, "I say we kill this little fucker right here and then we take over his ships and all the food he so generously bought for us and WE FEAST!" he finished with a smile showing his cracked brown teeth and mad yellow-tinged eyes.

His speech immediately had a profound effect on most of the normal wildlings, who started nodding their heads and whispering to each other with greed in their eyes. Attacking and forcefully taking things was after all the norm here, but sadly for Rattleshirt, the people whose opinion actually mattered, the real leaders, the ones who commanded their respective clans, weren't so easy to sway.

After all, it wasn't like they hadn't already considered everything he was saying before, as if they hadn't the idea to loot the vessels from the beginning, they did... and they would have followed through with it if it was just a one-time thing, but it wasn't. It was a trade that would impact the future survival of their whole people, so they weren't as short-sighted as the other common Free folks.

They knew what was at stake here and they weren't too interested in the momentary satisfaction of eating good food for just a few weeks. They knew what the real danger was, the danger that was slowly encroaching on their territory, destroying their homes and the ones that they were completely helpless against so these supplies would be a well-timed lifeline for them in the future, which is why most of them were almost unaffected by Rattleshirt's speech... but the mad brute wasn't just done yet.

"I know what you're all worried about," he said looking directly towards the leaders, "But we don't have to depend on this brat's charity to survive... Because we could have something that we never had before... The ships," he said dramatically pointing towards the ships in the distance with a maniacal gleam in his eyes, "We steal his ships and then we use them to raid his home where we can steal even more ships... And then after that, we can go where we want, loot whoever we want and we won't have to depend on the bits and pieces that this brat throws us instead we can do whatever the fuck we want like we always Have!!"

"AYE!" "AYE!" "AYE!"

Quite a lot of wildlings followed suit and replied to his shout enthusiastically and this time even some leaders had excited expressions on their faces, and more importantly even the atmosphere in the periphery of Jon seemed to have shifted as Jon saw from the corner of his eyes Tormund nodding in agreement and even Mance displaying a momentary hesitation in his eyes before he controlled himself.

Seeing so many wildlings getting rowdy and banging their weapons while shouting with savage expressions, anyone else would've already peed their pants. But even as a lone man amidst thousands of hostile wildlings around him who were looking at him as if he was a piece of meat, Jon still maintained the comfortable smile that he had on his face from the beginning of the speech.

After all, it wasn't like Jon hadn't envisioned something like this happening from the start. In fact, he had agonised over this matter for quite a while as he knew that it was impossible for anyone to control all the wildlings and that sooner or later some brutes would get greedy and try to loot his ships. This would mean that he would have to maintain a sizable guard on the ships constantly. Which wouldn't be feasible in the long term, even after considering the sizable chunks of silver in the pile that he could see nearby.

So Jon had decided that he would need to do something.... something that would put the fear of God in all these savages, something that would completely dominate their minds, something that would make them piss their pants at even the thought of putting their hands on something of his... So when Rattleshirt started his speech Jon was quite happy as he had gotten the exact opportunity that he was craving for.

Mance saw that the situation was getting too out of control so he finally decided that he needed to do something to control them before something irreversible happened but just as he took a step forward someone else beat him to it, "Don't worry, I'll handle this..." Jon said to him with a smile before moving towards the centre.

The shouts abrptly started to die down which confused Rattleshirt who was enjoying all the attention, and when he looked towards them he realised that their attention was on something behind him so he turned around only to find that brat he was talking about killing brazenly walking straight towards him.

"Are you here to beg for your life, boy?" Rattleshirt asked loudly with a guffaw as Jon came to stand before him in a leisurely stance, "Because I am not in the mood to be merciful—"

"You're quite talkative for a wildling, Aren't you?" Jon interrupted with an amused expression on his face, "I mean even I was moved for a moment after hearing your impassioned speech and convinced you were a cunning southerner like me, not a Free Folk."

Rattleshirt immediately scowled as he heard the Wildlings behind him scoff and snort at that, "You can try and mock me all you want, but it won't change the truth about you dying today... This is True North, boy, here only the strong survive while the weak perish in the storm, that's how it's always been and how it would—"

"You're right," Jon interjected calmly, and Rattleshirt bristled with anger. "In fact, I agree with everything you've said. So why don't we settle this in a fair and square manner?" Jon drew his sword swiftly, mid-sentence. "If you somehow manage to kill me, you can have all five ships behind me." He gestured to the vessels. "But if I kill you..."

Jon paused for a moment, contemplatin', then shrugged. "Eh, you don't really have anything I need, so we'll call it even with your death."

Rattleshirt almost agreed in his fury but caught himself just in time. While he was quite confident when it came to a fight, this one was a bit different. He could see that even in this situation the boy looked too relaxed, so either he was bluffing or he was a really good fighter, but either way Rattleshirt didn't survive till now by risking his life when he didn't have to, "It seems that you still don't understand where you are boy... there's no such thing as 'fair' this side of the Wall," he smirked while making a gesture with his right hand and almost immediately some fifteen wildlings came out of the crowd one after the other with fierce smiles on their faces and slowly started to approach him along with Rattleshirt.

Seeing the situation go awry, Mance at last decided to step forward to stop this nuisance before something happened that would bring down the fury of Starks on them but he was once again halted in his tracks by Jon making a subtle stop sign with his hand behind him pointing in his direction without even looking towards him.

"What the hell does the boy think he's doing," he asked Val in a frustrated whisper.

"Don't know," Val shrugged while watching the happenings with narrowed eyes, "But it doesn't seem like it is out of his control yet," her eyes flicked to the sky for a moment where she managed to catch the fleeting blue shadow calmly circling above.

"Aww... Now that just cheating, " Jon said with mock sadness on his face while blatantly ignoring the warriors slowly approaching him, "You know cheating just takes all the fun out of the game," he shook his head with a disappointed sigh while putting his sword back in its sheath.

"So you finally decided to give up," Rattleshirt said with a gleeful tone while ignoring everything Jon said, "It's a wise decision, at least this way you'll get a quick death—"

"Blah! Blah! Blah!" Jon mimicked a mouth with his finger and mocked the lord of bones loudly, "Is that all you can do? I am almost falling asleep here after listening to all your drivel, Is that how you kill your enemies? By boring them to death—"

"ARGH!!! That's it, you arrogant brat! You've done it now, " Rattleshirt said with an enraged expression on his face, "I am not going to kill you now, I'll just cut off your arms and legs and then I'll bring you along with me and make you watch as I kill all your family and fuck all—"

"You talk too much," Jon cut him off in a dangerously calm tone with emotionless eyes before he abruptly raised his hands above his head and almost simultaneously something absolutely miraculous happened as an absurdly massive tentacle rose out of the sea right beside the shore mimicking his hand's movements making a visually horrifying spectacle that scared the shit out of every living wildling present there and left Rattleshirt and his clique frozen with shock.

Before they could even think of running away Jon suddenly slapped his hand towards the wildlings who were about to attack him and simultaneously the tentacle smashed into them and they were sent flying away like a pile of dominos destroyed by a child's tantrum.

Disgusting crunchy sounds of bones breaking echoed into the surroundings making even the hardened Wildlings nauseous and scream with terror.

"Ah—" "It's a monster," "Don't kill me,"

The Wildlings started to look at the bodies in terror and started backing away from the situation. The condition of the men and woman who set out to kill Jon was quite dreadful, almost half of them had died immediately from crushed organs while the rest were lying around haphazardly with broken limbs and crushed ribs, groaning in agony, but the most miserable one was their leader.

The tentacle had skillfully captured Rattleshirt during the attack and was holding him tight in his grip and playing with him as if he were a toy. Almost everyone who heard his pain-filled screams flinched and shivered as the tentacle shook him like a drum. Unfortunately, it didn't last long as the tentacle was too excited and accidently shook him too fast and broke the poor bastard's neck putting him out of his misery.

The entity with the tentacle seemed to be quite peeved when the screams suddenly stopped, then after trying a few times with no further sounds, the tentacle got angry and like a child upset when her toy broke she flicked and threw away the corpse far into the distance before going back to her standby position above the sea like a pillar rising towards the heavens.

"Ah... It doesn't seem like he'll be coming back anytime soon," Jon said nonchalantly while looking towards the distance where Rattleshirt had disappeared, "Ah! Well... so does anyone else want to try their hand at stealing my ships," he said with a smile while turning to the wildlings around him who were looking at him horrified awe-filled eyes and almost simultaneously everyone shook their heads like a rattle at his question and backed away.

Jon shrugged and turned towards the leaders in the distance who also seemed to be stuck dumb with what they had just seen, "How about you then?" Jon asked them the same question with an amused expression but none of them replied to him, in fact, all of them had their faces down and didn't even dare to look him in the eye.

"It looks like that'll be it for today, " Jon said while stretching his upwards with a lazy sigh before he nonchalantly turned to Mance and asked with a smile, "Shall we get back to it?"

Mance immediately gulped and nodded, "Y-Yes!"

Whatever happened in the future, if there was one thing Jon was sure of after seeing the sheer terror in everyone's eyes, it was that anything with his name on it would be safe on this side of the wall for quite a while.

///