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"It's unfortunate, but the Night's Watch just doesn't have the strength to do it. Our numbers are far too few. If the wildlings really go mad, there's no way we could stop them—unless we get reinforcements. Without that, it's simply impossible."
Lord Commander Mormont let out a long sigh, the breath he exhaled turning white in the cold sunlight, a visible wisp of helplessness. There was so little the Night's Watch could do… after all, they were down to just a few hundred men.
Now, at last, everything was clear. Clay finally understood why Lord Commander Mormont had come all the way to Winterfell. This wasn't something the weakened Night's Watch could handle alone. Without the North's support, their downfall could come in the blink of an eye.
Because if the Wall gates were opened, and the wildlings were let in, then given how wild and untamable their nature was, keeping them in line would be impossible for just a few hundred black brothers. There had to be more troops. No way around it.
In this age, there wasn't really a gap in weaponry. Honestly, if you just picked up a stick and drove some rusty nails through it, you'd have a weapon—one that came with the added bonus of tetanus.
And as long as it hit flesh, even a knight or a well-trained soldier wouldn't stand much of a chance. With the kind of primitive medicine they had and how scarce it was, just let time take its course, and the damage would rival that of any finely forged blade.
So trying to keep tens of thousands of wildlings under control—even if most of them were women, children, and the elderly—was never something a few hundred men could possibly manage. Which meant that, whether they liked it or not, the North would have to send reinforcements.
That was the real reason Lord Commander Mormont had come south in the first place. The power to make a decision on this matter no longer rested with the Night's Watch. It now belonged to Robb Stark, the newly crowned King in the North, and to Clay, who commanded the Northern armies.
If Winterfell refused the Watch's plea for help, then the Night's Watch would be left with no choice but to seal the gates, brace for the worst, and prepare for a desperate final stand against a wildling horde driven to madness by the will to survive.
But if the new King in the North chose to let them in, then the North would also have to take responsibility. Troops would have to be sent to manage them. Otherwise, if the wildlings were left to scatter across the northern countryside, they would pose a terrifying threat to defenseless farmers.
"Lord Commander Mormont, we understand your request," Robb Stark said calmly. "Now we'll need some time to discuss it. Jon, would you take the commander to one of the guest chambers in Winterfell?"
He had caught the look Clay had given him and understood what it meant. Clay wanted a private word, and truth be told, so did he. So Robb politely asked the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch to excuse them.
"Jon," Robb added as Mormont turned to go, "make sure to come back later. There are still a few things I need to ask you."
Clay couldn't help but shake his head inwardly. "Still a few things to ask"? That wasn't it. Robb just didn't want to shut Jon Snow out completely. He still saw him as a brother—someone close, someone he trusted.
But that wasn't how it should be. Things had changed. Jon Snow wasn't just another Stark boy living at Winterfell anymore. If he weren't a sworn brother of the Night's Watch, it might have been different. But now?
Now, one was the personal guard of the Lord Commander, potentially the next commander himself. The other was already the King in the North. In matters like this, their positions could very well clash.
And in a moment like this, Robb Stark letting Jon stay in the loop while asking Commander Mormont to leave—it just didn't make sense. Why even bother sending Mormont away, then? It was completely unnecessary.
Once their footsteps faded and the room quieted again, Clay turned to Robb, his brow furrowed.
"Robb, you're the king now. That means this is your responsibility. What are you thinking?"
"My father always taught me to give a chance to anyone who can still be forgiven," Robb answered without hesitation. "Besides, if we just leave them out there and they end up turning into white walkers or wights, it'll only come back to bite us."
He was speaking more openly now, sharing his thoughts freely with no one else around. Their conversation flowed more naturally in private.
"You're not wrong," Clay said slowly. "But think about it. We've already declared war on the Lannisters in King's Landing. You've just been crowned King in the North, and now you want to go fight wildlings?"
"And it's not just your call. What about the other Northern lords? What will they think? What about the Night's Watch? They've been fighting the wildlings for years, losing brothers in the process. And now, just like that, they're supposed to be our friends? What does that say about all the men who died fighting them?"
"But they came to us," Robb argued. "If they didn't want this, they wouldn't have come at all, right?"
"That's exactly where old Mormont showed his cunning," Clay replied. "He's actually handed the problem straight to you. If you decide to turn them away and they all die, then that blood is on your hands."
"And if you order the Night's Watch to let them in, remember—that will be your command. All the backlash from the Night's Watch, all the discontent from the Northern lords, it'll fall squarely on Robb Stark's shoulders. I hope I've made myself clear."
Yes. Once Clay understood the full picture, he immediately saw through the old Lord Commander's clever maneuver. Whether they allowed the wildlings in or shut them out, the Night's Watch would bear no responsibility either way.
Because in the end, the decision rested with the King in the North. The Night's Watch was far too weak to act on its own—they could only follow orders. So no matter what happened, it would not fall on the shoulders of the Lord Commander. And if anyone had a problem with that, they would have to bring it up with the king.
That was exactly why Clay hadn't wanted Jon present. The boy still had deep affection for the Night's Watch, and if Clay had said all this in front of him, it would almost certainly have led to a fight. It would only have made things more complicated.
Clay's words left Robb's head buzzing. He hadn't thought that far ahead. The reason he'd asked Clay to come back was simply because this matter involved troop deployment, and he needed his military advisor's counsel.
"I get it," Robb muttered. "What you're saying is… no matter what we decide, we'll still have to send soldiers. Either to keep order or to help defend the Wall. Is that right?"
Robb Stark was no fool. He had already pieced it together, his thoughts sharpening despite Clay's steady barrage of logic.
Just then, Jon returned, having finished escorting Lord Commander Mormont. He gave Robb a brief glance before quietly taking his seat once more.
Clay gave him a nod in greeting, then turned back to address Robb's question.
"Yes. You must send troops. But now the real question is—what are we going to do about the southern campaign?"
"Damn it," Robb snapped, slamming his fist against the table. "I forgot to ask Lord Mormont how many men he actually needs. I cannot just hand over our entire army."
This sudden turn of events had completely derailed his plans for vengeance. And what made it worse was the realization that Lord Commander Mormont had played him—he had pushed all the responsibility and all the risk onto the King in the North. Now Robb was trapped. He had no choice but to respond.
What Robb Stark hated most was being deceived. And here was the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, lying to his face so boldly and so shamelessly. The worst part was that Robb could do nothing about it. If Clay had not pointed it out, he would have remained completely unaware.
"Jon," Robb said, his tone tinged with frustration, "what's really going on with the Night's Watch? There is no one else here—it's just the three of us. We need you to be honest."
He shot his brother a sharp look, one edged with irritation, which left Jon blinking, slightly thrown by Robb's sudden intensity.
Commander Mormont hadn't shared much with Jon either, so neither of these two earnest young men had any idea just how deep the trap truly ran.
"It's bad," Jon admitted, giving a bitter shake of his head. "Really bad. The worst part is the morale. Between the White Walkers, the wildling army, and those strange armored horsemen… the losses have shaken the Watch. There's fear in the ranks."
Jon had witnessed it firsthand. Though he hadn't personally faced the White Walkers beyond the Wall, he'd seen what their aftermath looked like. The last ranging mission had cost them over two hundred men. For a force that small, it was a devastating blow.
"Tell us exactly how things stand in the Night's Watch," Clay said. "The Wall's defenses, what's happening beyond it—we need the full picture. Because your commander just handed Robb a real mess, and we're the ones stuck figuring it out."
Jon blinked again in confusion, not quite grasping what Clay meant. To him, this was just a desperate plea for help. Was it really that complicated?
"At the Wall, we still have men stationed at Castle Black, the Shadow Tower, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. But the other fortresses… they're all abandoned. We just don't have the manpower anymore."
"There used to be over six hundred men at Castle Black alone. The other two had around two hundred each. But after the last ranging beyond the Wall, we lost nearly three hundred men. Now, there's barely enough to get through the day. Even the patrols on top of the Wall have stopped."
"You both know how brutal the snowstorms get on the Wall. If no one clears the snow regularly, entire sections freeze over completely—solid blocks of ice. There's no way to move across them."
With so few men left, even keeping a thousand alive and functioning was a challenge. Most of them had to take on multiple duties. But after losing nearly three hundred beyond the Wall, the Watch had also lost many of its skilled laborers and craftsmen. A lot of essential work had come to a standstill.
"All right. Got it," Clay said with a short nod. "Now tell us what's happening beyond the Wall. Let's start with the wildlings. How many are there? And how well can they fight?"
Clay could already tell from Robb's line of questioning that the king in the North had made up his mind—troops would be sent. Which meant there was no need to argue further.
"If you stand on top of the Wall on a clear day, you can actually see their massive camp sprawling across the land," Jon answered honestly. "It's strange and misshapen, but enormous. The experienced brothers estimate there are close to a hundred thousand."
When Robb asked about their fighting strength, Jon frowned slightly, carefully searching for the right words.
"The wildlings—or the free folk, really—they don't have the means to forge their own iron weapons. The lucky ones are armed with blades looted off from our fallen brothers. But most of them just fight with weapons made from bone or stone."
That answer didn't surprise Clay in the slightest. That cursed land beyond the Wall remained frozen all year round. Even with scattered settlements like Hardhome or Craster's Keep, there was simply no way to develop anything close to a real civilization—let alone forge powerful weapons.
"These hundred thousand people… not all of them are fighters, right?" Robb asked after a moment of thought. "How many of them are just the elderly, the women, and the children?"
Jon shook his head. His dark hair swayed gently in the cold, pale light as he replied, "You can't count them like that. The free folk's women fight too. They're called spearwives, and they charge into battle just as fearlessly as the men. I've seen sworn brothers killed by them with my own eyes."
"Jon, don't take this the wrong way," Clay said, his voice steady, "but we need a rough estimate. How many of the free folk could one of our trained soldiers handle? This is important. You have to understand—I'm already at war."
That question hit the heart of the matter. Even if there really were a hundred thousand free folk, not all of them could fight. Suppose half of them could—fifty thousand. And within that, there were spearwives.
Call them whatever you want. The simple truth remained—women were not as physically strong in combat as men. That was not about training, but about biology. And with the kind of malnutrition most wildlings endured, even the spearwives were only slightly stronger than boys.
"If no one's injured, and it's one-on-one, we can take down several of them. Seven or eight, easy. Of course, I'm not talking about all of them attacking at once."
"Their gear is terrible. That's a huge disadvantage when they face us. A wildling's weapon might shatter after just a few strikes against our blades. You're all swordsmen—you know what it means when a weapon breaks in the middle of a fight."
"And they don't wear armor. At most, they bundle up in thick layers of clothing. That might block the cold wind, but it won't stop a blade from cutting straight through."
So that was it—Jon was describing the ultimate pauper's version of light infantry. Fierce, yes, but their actual combat strength was so low it was painful to even think about. No wonder, in Clay's memory, Stannis had crushed Mance Rayder's so-called army of a hundred thousand with just a single cavalry force of a thousand men.
"A bunch of lunatics with no sense," Robb Stark muttered with disdain. In his eyes, these people were suicidal. Charging the Wall in that condition? They might as well throw themselves off a cliff.
"Clay, if you took your cavalry, could you finish them in one battle?"
"If what Jon told us holds up, we probably could. But Robb," Clay said, his voice tightening, "we don't know where those other things behind the wildlings are. We have to be ready to encounter them at any time. Like Lord Commander Mormont said—our steel swords are ineffective against them. And that's a big problem."
Clay knew that this wasn't yet the stage where the White Walkers would assault the Wall, so frankly, he didn't want to waste precious manpower cleaning up wildlings. There were hundreds of thousands of them scattered through the Haunted Forest. What Mance Rayder had under his command was just a fraction.
To be brutally honest, even if all those people got wiped out by the White Walkers, Clay wouldn't lose sleep over it. Because the true core of the wight army wasn't made up of wildlings. What he was really worried about were those terrifying armored horsemen who had appeared out of nowhere.
He still had no idea what they really were. When it came to magical creatures—things that touched on the fundamental laws of the world—anything was possible.
There was a faint guess forming in his mind, but it was so outlandish that he couldn't bring himself to believe it. Not without seeing them with his own eyes. And if that guess turned out to be right… then things would get very interesting indeed.
"No choice, then," Robb said, his voice firm now. "We'll have to send the troops. Sending infantry up there is too slow. Besides, the terrain beyond the Wall is mostly flat, which makes it the ideal battlefield for cavalry to gallop."
Clay didn't want to argue with him at this moment. He simply nodded, knowing this wasn't the time to push back, then turned to Jon Snow.
"Whether they call themselves free folk or wildlings—if they want to come onto our land, then they must become part of the North. In my view, we should accept their surrender, scatter them, and distribute them evenly among the Northern lords."
Jon Snow shook his head.
"They won't agree to that. They call us the Kneelers. For them to kneel before Robb, to become his subjects… they'd rather die."
To that, Clay responded with nothing but a cold, merciless laugh.
"Fine, then. If they won't kneel, I'll say this to their faces as commander of the Northern cavalry and heir to House Manderly—the gates of the Wall are open only to those who understand what it means to be human. If they refuse to kneel, then they are rebels. And when the longsword falls on their skulls, they'll learn the true meaning of regret."
"They're still pitiful people…" Jon murmured. "Before the Wall was built, they were no different from us. I once heard a wildling prisoner say—they always believed we came, built the Wall, and drove them out. Then we hunted them down like animals."
There was raw sympathy in Jon's voice, and Clay could hear it. The boy's soft heart was acting up again. He got passionate too easily and lost his footing when it really mattered. That had always been Jon's problem.
"Jon, get your head on straight. You're a Northerner. Even if you joined the Night's Watch, you are still a shield for this kingdom. However the wildlings ended up like this, it has nothing to do with us building a wall. Not even a copper star's worth of blame."
"We've never had a huge population in the North. A lot of our land still lies uncultivated. You're Lord Eddard Stark's son—don't pretend you don't know that. If they're willing to put aside that ridiculous pride of theirs and honestly accept being part of House Stark's people, who would ever make things hard for them?"
"I'll tell you right now, I wish they could all make it past the Wall alive. The most we could ever rally in the North is twenty thousand men. And the Tyrells in the South? Their first call to arms pulled in over eighty thousand."
"But if those wildlings refuse to bow, if they won't kneel to us lords and nobles, then they're a real problem. How are we supposed to govern them? How do you expect me—or your brother—to manage people like that? Can we trust them to live freely in the countryside? Wild instincts like that only lead to disaster. Do you understand?"
Clay didn't pull a single punch. If it came to war, then it needed to be a war that shattered the wildlings' spine completely. And if they still dared to resist, he had no qualms about cutting them down himself.
He'd already killed plenty of people in his life. Anyone hoping he might show mercy in a situation like this was grossly underestimating him.
"Jon. Go tell Lord Commander Mormont that in two days, I will have the army assembled and marching north. You will return ahead of us and prepare the grounds for encampment and our supply lines. The Night's Watch might not meddle in the affairs of the Seven Kingdoms, but if you're asking for our help, then don't expect to stay above it all."
Clay's voice was cold, his order as firm as iron. The commanding presence of the Northern cavalry's commander stood in sharp contrast to Jon Snow, who, at the end of the day, was still just a steward.
Robb didn't say anything. He let Jon leave in silence. But deep down, he wasn't feeling much better.
Supporting the Night's Watch was something every Northern lord was expected to do. That part made sense. But the way this whole situation had fallen into his lap, right in the middle of his campaign for vengeance—it felt like someone had taken an axe to all his plans.
And more than that, it was his brother's stance that left him unsettled. Because the truth was, Clay hadn't said anything wrong.
Robb had always treated Jon as his brother, which was why he'd included him in this meeting to plan their next move. He thought they were standing together—as members of House Stark, as nobles of the North, of the Manderlys and all the great families. But every word Jon spoke came from the perspective of the Night's Watch. Every argument was for the sake of his sworn brothers.
It might've been expected of him. And yet, Robb Stark couldn't help but feel a quiet sting, as though his own brother had chosen another family.
"All right. I won't say any more about it," Clay said with a shrug. "There's still a mountain of things waiting for me back in the barracks. I'll take the cavalry and head out."
"How long do you think it'll take to get it done?"
"No idea. Maybe I'll get lucky—cut off Mance Rayder's head in one charge, scare the wildlings so badly they drop their weapons, let the Night's Watch round them all up and march them straight to Winterfell. Done and dusted."
"Then you'd better go spend some time in the Godswood, sit under the heart tree and ask the old gods to bless you."
"You forgot, didn't you? House Manderly prays to the Seven. The old gods wouldn't dare let me worship them."
"…Just get going. Stop dragging your feet."
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