33

Chapter 33: Interlude: NorthChapter Text

"The King-Beyond-the-Wall was a cunning man, whom believed in learning the tricks of his enemy, and listening to the advice of learned men. As proven by the Battle of Castle Black, which while a great tactical victory, was also a humiliating strategic defeat for the Night's Watch."

-Excerpt from 'The War of Four Directions', by Maester Daenys Fyre

107 AC, The Nightfort

The crows were masters of the field.

Near four thousand lay dead at the foot of Castle Black, the Night's Watch having mustered their might at the castle, to crush his army.

Not that it was much of an army. Cannibals and cave-dwellers. Crazed murderers and the most unsavoury raiders. Every single man and spearwife whom even other Free Folk found repulsive, bolstered by every cripple, sickling and whitehair in his army, dressed up in armour and furs to make their numbers seem greater.

Regardless, his expendables had done their job. The crows had called for reinforcements, until Castle Black swelled with five thousand men.

Leaving the other castles undermanned and undefended. 

The Nightfort was left to ruin, having grown too costly to maintain. The men had since moved to Deep Lake and Queensgate further to the east. When Castle Black's scouts had spotted his eastern force, they had called for reinforcements, leaving Deep Lake and Queensgate with only skeleton crews. Old men and boys.

They never saw his army coming, marching to the Nightfort right beside them. He had found the Black Gate, the blind weirwood asking who he was. And he had replied with the vows of the crows, which he had learnt from his time in the Night's Watch. And the gate opened, it's maw allowing them entry into the North, and what a pretentious name that was! These men hadn't known what the true north was like, unlike the Free Folk.

As part of their deal, the Triarchy had also given him three dozen of their sappers, to aid his army. Although the rest of the Free Folk found the foreign soldier-scholars queer and unmanly, Bael could appreciate their expertise. 

Directing the Free Folk, the sappers opened the sealed gates of the Nightfort. Using great ropes, picks and as many giants and mammoths as they could coordinate, alongside pitch and torches, they melted the frozen stone and gravel before wrenching it out, allowing them to enter the gate through the wall. The largest in existence, and the only one which the mammoths could squeeze through.

While some of their other chieftains complained about wasting days digging their way through, Bael had overruled them all. They numbered at twenty thousand, including four thousand women and children. While they no longer had any elders with them, their sixteen thousand wasn't enough to fight against the armies of Lord Stark.

When he was last at Winterfell, a guardsman had told him that House Stark could raise up to forty-five thousand men for war. However, it would take time for them to muster. At best, they could muster half that number quick enough to face him.

He had invaded during winter, so the storms and blizzards would slow their gathering and march, peeling soldiers off the army. But it was a sure thing that they would be able to match their sixteen thousand with sixteen thousand of their own. Likely more.

Not to mention that they'd have better arms and armour. Good steel and iron, to his bronze and stone. Plate and mail, to his furs and boiled leather. Yew longbows, to his bone bows. Heavy horsemen, to his paltry freeriders.

But the worse thing about fighting southerners was that they had discipline. It allowed a hundred southron soldiers to defeat two hundred Free Folk warriors, grinding them down against an unbreaking shield wall.

So he had found himself a counter to all their strengths. Every single one of the near one thousand giants in his army was armed with great yew longbows, each taller than he was and firing arrows the size of spears and thicker than his fist. They would punch through the southron shield walls like they were paper, shred steel mail like kindling and make their heavy calvary look like light horse. It had taken him a long time to train them to fight as archers, but it was worth every hour of it.

Now, with their mammoth mounts carrying extra arrows and surrounded by Free Folk warriors, preventing anyone from approaching, the giants were as walking siege engines, a vicious counter to anything the south could throw at them.

Even a dragon, Bael fancied. Not that any should be present. The Myrmen whom sold him the weapons told him that they were about to invade from the far south. They would depose the dragonlords and conquer the Seven Kingdoms for themselves. In exchange for the longbows, steel and food for the campaign and the sappers, they wanted him to lead an invasion of the North, to tie down their reinforcements.

He agreed, mostly because he was already planning on doing so. Summer had lasted for five years, or close enough. Which meant that winter would last equally long. He wasn't about to let his people freeze and starve in the north, so what choice was there but to march south? To warmth and food.

The dragonlords should be hip-deep in Dornish and sellswords now. Too busy for Bael in the hinterlands of their empire. Still, there was no harm in being prepared.

———

107 AC, Frozen Ford

They made good time, surprisingly agreeable weather allowing them to march south at a faster pace. But their good luck was about to come to an end. A week after they left the Wall, his skinchangers had reported spotting outriders in Stark livery. An increasing number of them. That meant that they were close to the southron host.

Still, while the battlefield wasn't one he picked, Frozen Ford wasn't half-bad. Essentially a frozen river cutting through snowy plains, it was flat and level, with little cover.

Bael ordered a fortified camp raised, and the sappers had led the Free Folk in seeing it done. Fortifications were raised on the northern bank of the frozen river, atop a small hill, with a palisade of tree trunks tied together by ropes and reinforced with packed snow. Pit traps and ditches were dug around the palisade, with sharpened branches at the bottom. To prevent them from being flanked, more wood was driven into the ground, stakes angled to discourage horse charges.

While there was grumbling among the clans and tribes for fighting in such a manner, Bael had overruled their objections. Better all these preparations than fighting without them, and letting the horsemen flank them. The Free Folk were ferocious warriors, but they weren't disciplined enough to withstand a calvary charge, and would break and run, even if they outnumbered the horsemen twenty-to-one. Walls and stakes were the only way his host would hold together against southron riders.

They waited there for two days, with more pit traps and ditches dug every day, until his skinchanger scouts had reported seeing the Stark host a day's march away. Thirteen thousand, of which three thousand were horsemen. Which were far better odds than Bael had expected. Come to think of it, the Northern Mountain Clans hadn't been harassing their position even though they were on the outskirts of their lands. Mayhaps their menfolk were all somewhere else instead, which was why the southron host was so undermanned.

He didn't believe it, not truly, but mayhaps victory wasn't a dream after all.

Unfortunately all of his dreams for victory literally went up in smoke that night.

———

107 AC, Frozen Ford

Ever since Laena and Rhae claimed their mounts, Mother had spent a great amount of time training them on how to fight on dragonback. She taught them that when fighting dragons, the only real true counters to them were another dragon or a copious amount of siege engines. Arrows, grapnels and javelins worked, but not against adult dragons. As such, the greatest Valyrian warriors and soldiers had spent five thousand years pouring over how to counter and counter-counter dragons and their countermeasures.

The fundamentals remained the same. When fighting siege engines, strike hard and fast with a dive, from high out of their range, and retreat before the arrows got there. Day meant that the arrows were visible, making it easier to dodge, however the dragons would also he easier to see and shoot. Night meant that the dragons were harder to hit, being less visible, not to mention the surprise factor, but the arrows too would also be harder to see.

This surprise factor was exactly why Rhae ordered a nighttime raid instead of a daytime one. That utterly cuddly and adorable witch had figured out how to grant people the ability to see in the dark. It didn't last for long, or work on too many people, but it essentially negated the weaknesses of attacking at night.

Which was exactly what they did, assaulting the Wildling camp in the dead of a moonless night.

Vhagar began the dance with a sonorous roar that caused snow to tumble off trees and sent every bird in the Wolfswood into the air. Laena whooped happily as her mount roared, guiding Vhagar into a dive. Her mount descended, a great greenish-bronze shape of scales and fury. Emerald flames scorched the grounds, vaporising snow and ice in an instant, sending great clouds of vapour into the air. Filling it with the light steam from the boiling snow and dark smoke from the burning wood.

The Wildling commander was no fool, having raised a fortified camp, backed by earthworks, pits, trenches and stakes in the surrounding field. Though primitive, those defences would have at the very least, severely impede calvary charges, which were one of the two great advantages the Northmen had against the Wildlings. It even partially countered the second great advantage: better discipline. Walls and fortifications would put steel into Wildling spines, making them less likely to break and run under northern blades.

So Rhae ordered them to strip said advantage away from them.

Laena and Vhagar had circled the camp thrice, scorching entire swaths of land before the Wildling commander was able to order his troops back into a semblance of order.

The whistling of the air told the Velaryon scion of approaching arrows, likely fired by those giants with the largest bows Laena had ever seen. As her mother had trained into her, Laena urged Vhagar to accelerate sharply into the sky, eyes on the descending wood, before swerving in a different direction. The arrows the size of small trees impaling themselves into the ground harmlessly.

As soon as Vhagar rose into the sky, Daena descended on Caraxes on the other side of the camp, unleashing crimson flames onto the fortifications. The giants shot a volley of arrows at her, but she dodged as well. The oldest Dragonseed had taken to flying with almost as much ease as Laena herself, mastering every lesson Mother had taught her in the sky. Before she had even finished ascending back into the safety of the night sky, Laena struck once more, guiding Vhagar into another strafing run, setting the western palisade afire.

It was a rhythm of sorts. One dragonrider would attack first, before evading the arrows. As soon as the arrows were loosed, a second would dive down and attack from the opposite direction. Rinse and repeat.

They didn't attack the sprawling camp itself, instead ruining the surrounding field and fortifications. Eradicating the pit traps, ditches and stakes created by the Wildlings. Their only hope of halting a calvary charge. They struck at the palisade as well, unleashing the flames from higher up to avoid becoming a pincushion. Although the fire was weaker from a distance, unable to outright blast the wood apart from the pure force of the stream, the palisade still burned, crumbling into kindling and cinders.

For over an hour, they struck again and again, methodically scouring the northern bank of Frozen Ford with their dragonfire. While it was questionable if the Wildlings had trapped the entirety of the bank, it was better to be through than not. Plus, Rhae had ordered a demonstration of their power.

Shock and awe. Laena's lover had ordered. And thus shock and awe, Laena had delivered. Unleashing dragonfire until all that was left of the camp were ash-stained tents surrounded by the burnt-out remnants of a palisade, itself surrounded by a field of scorched and blackened earth.

———

107 AC, Frozen Ford

The good news was that the nighttime attack hadn't stripped Bael of many men. Most of the casualties were the scouts and watchmen he had deployed, alongside an unlucky few in the camp whose tents had burned down when the palisade was torched. There hadn't even been more than a dozen deserters, most too scared to leave the camp in fear of the dragons.

The bad news was that all of his fortifications were ruined, and the Stark host had arrived, pitching tents and raising fortifications of their own on the southern bank of Frozen Ford.

The worse news was that the southerners had dragons on their side. Bael was a learned man. He had spent time in the south singing his songs and learning their own. And he knew that they sang of Aegon's Conquest. How three dragons humbled six kingdoms and made them all kneel before one king. There were eight currently orbiting the Stark camp, including Vhagar herself. The last surviving veteran of Aegon's Conquest.

And so when the first horseman rode across the frozen river, bearing a truce banner, he let them into the camp.

"Kneel or die." The envoy had simply said. "My Prince offers mercy if you kneel. Refuse, and once the sun sets tonight, the dragons will take to the skies once more. All eight this time. And will drown every last Free Folk south of the Wall in Fire and Blood."

———

That night, three weeks after the wedding of King Viserys, the northern front ended.