The blizzard that hit Castle Black was not natural weather. It was a physical wall of white hate.
Visibility was reduced to ten yards. The massive electric searchlights mounted on the Wall were just glowing milky orbs in the soup.
Inside the command bunker Robb Stark looked at the map.
"We are blind," Robb said. "The airship is grounded. The dragons cannot see to fly. If they attack now..."
"They will attack now," Andar interrupted.
He was checking the feed belt of a heavy Maxim gun. The brass cartridges gleamed in the bunker light.
"The Night King nullified our range advantage," Andar explained. "He wants a knife fight in a phone booth. He wants to swarm us before we can bring the heavy artillery to bear."
A bell rang. It was the wired telephone line from the sentry post on top of the Wall.
Jon Snow picked it up. He listened for a second. His face went pale.
"They are climbing," Jon said dropping the receiver. "They aren't attacking the gate. They are climbing the ice. Everywhere."
Seven hundred feet up the wind was screaming.
Gren, Pyp, and Edd stood by the edge. They peered into the swirling white abyss.
Scritch. Scratch. Scritch.
It sounded like a million rats clawing at the door.
"Flares!" Edd shouted. "Drop a flare!"
A soldier pulled the pin on a magnesium flare and tossed it over the edge.
It fell glowing bright red.
As it descended it illuminated the face of the Wall.
It was not white ice. It was black with moving bodies.
Thousands of wights were climbing. They used daggers of bone and swords of rusty iron to stab into the ice. They climbed over each other forming ladders of rotting flesh. They were like ants swarming a sugar cube.
"They are halfway up!" Gren screamed.
"Open fire!"
The defense of the Wall began.
It was not arrows this time.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
The Maxim guns opened up.
The heavy .45 caliber bullets tore into the climbers. They did not just kill; they disintegrated. Limbs were blown off. Skulls were shattered.
The wights fell in clusters knocking down the ones below them.
But for every one that fell two more took its place.
"Grenades!" Andar's voice came over the speaker system. "Use the potato mashers!"
The defenders grabbed the stick grenades. They pulled the cords and dropped them over the edge.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Explosions blossomed against the face of the Wall. The shockwaves shattered the ice sending avalanches of snow and zombies plummeting to the ground.
But the sheer number was overwhelming.
A dead hand reached over the parapet. Then another.
A wight in the rags of a Night's Watch brother pulled itself onto the walkway.
"Contact front!"
Jon Snow drew Longclaw. He slashed the wight in half.
"Hold the line!" Jon roared. "Do not let them gain a foothold!"
Down at the base of the Wall the situation was even more desperate.
The giants had returned.
Under the cover of the blizzard Mag the Mighty led a suicide squad of undead giants. They did not carry a ram. They carried massive shields made of boiler plate scavenged from the Hardhome wrecks.
They ran toward the tunnel entrance ignoring the rifle fire that pinged off their shields.
"They are going to smash the gate!" Tormund shouted from the barricade. "We need the dragon!"
"She can't see!" Robb yelled back firing his revolver into the mist.
"She doesn't need to see," Andar said. "She just needs coordinates."
Andar grabbed the radio handset.
"Dragon Queen. This is Control. Target is the tunnel entrance. Range two hundred yards. Danger Close. Do you copy?"
"I cannot see the ground!" Daenerys's voice crackled. "I will hit our own men!"
"Trust the math!" Andar shouted. "Fly heading North. Count to five. Dracarys. Then pull up."
There was a pause.
Then a roar tore through the blizzard.
Drogon swooped down low. He was just a shadow in the snow.
Daenerys did not aim. She counted.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
"Dracarys!"
A river of black fire washed over the ground in front of the gate.
The undead giants were caught in the inferno. Their metal shields glowed red hot then melted. The fire consumed them turning them to ash in seconds.
Drogon pulled up his wings buffeting the defenders on the wall.
"Good hit!" Andar confirmed. "Target destroyed."
But the fire died down quickly in the supernatural cold.
And from the smoke something else emerged.
Ice Spiders.
They were the size of hounds. They moved with terrifying speed skittering over the snow and up the walls. They were fast targets too small for the cannons too fast for the rifles.
"They are breaching the tunnel!" Tormund screamed.
The spiders swarmed into the tunnel entrance crawling on the ceiling.
"Pull back!" Jon ordered. "Seal the inner gate!"
Suddenly a whistle blew.
It was not a command whistle. It was a steam whistle.
WHOOOO-OOOOOO!
From the Kingsroad a monster emerged from the gloom.
It was the Armored Train. The "Iron Wolf".
The locomotive was encased in angled steel plating. It looked like a moving fortress.
Pushed in front of it was a flatcar carrying a terrifying weapon.
A massive tank with a nozzle.
"The spiders are in the tunnel!" Robb shouted.
"Perfect," Andar said. "A tunnel is just a gun barrel."
The train hissed to a halt fifty yards from the gate.
"Flame Thrower crew!" Andar signaled. "Ignite!"
A pilot light flickered at the nozzle of the tank.
"Pressurize!"
A jet of liquid fuel shot into the tunnel.
It was not normal oil. It was Napalm. Jellied gasoline mixed with aluminum soap. It stuck to everything.
FWOOSH.
The tunnel became a cannon of fire.
The flame shot three hundred feet into the darkness of the tunnel. It consumed the spiders instantly. It consumed the wights behind them. It consumed the air itself.
The screams of the dying (if the dead could scream) were drowned out by the roar of the fire.
The heat was so intense that water began to drip from the Wall itself.
"Cease fire!" Andar ordered. "Save the fuel!"
The flame cut out.
The tunnel was glowing orange. Nothing moved inside.
The attack stopped as abruptly as it began.
The blizzard remained but the wights retreated into the whiteout.
Daenerys landed Drogon in the courtyard. The dragon was covered in ice. Daenerys shivered as she slid from the saddle.
"Did we win?" She asked her teeth chattering.
"We survived," Andar said walking over to the train. He checked the pressure gauge on the napalm tank.
"Empty," Andar noted. "We used a week's supply in five minutes."
Jon Snow came down from the Wall. He looked exhausted.
"They were testing us," Jon said. "They wanted to see what we had."
"And now they know," Andar said grimly. "They know about the guns. They know about the fire train."
He looked at the Wall which was scarred and blackened.
"The Night King is learning. He won't mass his troops again. Next time he will spread out. He will hit five castles at once. We cannot be everywhere."
"Then we must kill him," Daenerys said fiercely. "Cut off the head of the snake."
"We can't get to him," Robb argued. "He stays behind the lines. He hides in the storm."
Andar looked at the photograph of the Night King again.
"He hides," Andar agreed. "Because he is a general. Generals don't fight until they have to."
He looked at the telegraph lines running South.
"We need to lure him out. We need a bait so juicy he cannot resist it."
"What bait?" Tyrion asked waddling up in his heavy furs.
Andar looked at Bran Stark who was sitting quietly by the fire.
"The Three Eyed Raven," Andar said. "He wants to erase the memory of the world. He wants Bran."
Bran looked up. His eyes were distant.
"He knows where I am," Bran said softly. "His mark is on me."
"Then we use that," Andar said.
He turned to the map of the North.
"We cannot defend the Wall forever. We are burning ammo faster than we can make it. We need a decisive battle."
He pointed to Winterfell.
"We pull back. We turn Winterfell into a kill box. We put Bran in the Godswood. And we wait for the Night King to come for him."
"Abandon the Wall?" The Greatjon gasped. "After all this?"
"The Wall is just ice," Andar said. "Winterfell is Iron."
[Quest Started: The Bait]
[Objective: Lure the Night King into a trap]
[Location: Winterfell]
[Risk: Existential]
Daenerys looked at the Stark brothers.
"You are asking me to put my armies inside a cage," she said.
"I am asking you to enter the Thunderdome," Andar smiled a humorless smile. "Two armies enter. One army leaves."
....
Author Note
Hi guys! Thank you for reading my fanfiction.
I wanted to let you know that I'm releasing bonus chapters for Power Stones. Here are the goals:
50 Power Stones: 1 Bonus Chapters
75 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
100 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
120 Power Stones: 3 Bonus Chapters
Thanks for the support!