The sun did not rise over the bogs of the Neck so much as the darkness simply bled into a pale, freezing grey.
In the sprawling, mud-choked camp of the Faith Militant, the morning brought no warmth. It only revealed the extent of the night's horrors. The crannogmen had not launched a massive assault; they had simply whispered from the reeds, dragged sentries into the black water, and extinguished fires with wet mud. Five hundred men had vanished in the dark, leaving behind only dropped scythes and the lingering smell of bog-rot.
Pate sat on an overturned, broken bucket, shivering uncontrollably. He was not a warrior. He was a baker's apprentice from a small, unremarkable village in the Riverlands. Two moons ago, a wandering septon had arrived in his village square, preaching about the heathens of the North hoarding grain and turning their backs on the gods. The whole village had gathered. Men Pate had known his entire life began carving stars into their chests and grabbing their pitchforks.
Pate hadn't wanted to go. But when the village elder, the blacksmith, and every girl he had ever tried to court started calling the non-believers cowards, Pate had grabbed a rusted boar spear and joined the line. He marched because everyone else was marching.
Here he was sitting in freezing slime, surrounded by twenty-six thousand five hundred terrified men, staring at an impenetrable fortress of black stone.
"The Mother has spared us the night, Pate!" a voice croaked cheerfully.
Pate looked up. His friend, Olyvar, was kneeling in the mud a few paces away, his hands clasped in fervent prayer. Olyvar's feet were black with frostbite, his coarse wool robe was torn and caked in blood, and he had lost half his teeth to scurvy on the march. Yet, Olyvar smiled with the blinding, terrifying radiance of a true fanatic.
"She has kissed our brows with the dawn," Olyvar continued, standing up and leaning heavily on a wooden club. "The darkness of the swamp could not consume the righteous! The Father tests our resolve, but today, we shall break their wicked walls!"
Pate stared at his friend, his jaw trembling from the cold. He looked out at the causeway leading to the massive towers of Moat Cailin. The black stone road was completely obscured by the frozen, twisted bodies of the eight thousand men who had charged yesterday.
"Olyvar," Pate whispered, his voice cracking. "Look at them. Look at the road. They killed a fifth of our host without stepping outside their gates. We are walking into a slaughter."
"It is a trial!" Olyvar countered passionately, his eyes wide and feverish. "The heathens have spent their arrows in their panic! They are out of iron, Pate! The Warrior has dulled their blades and emptied their barrels! We have only to walk up and push the gates open!"
Pate looked down at the dull, rusted tip of his boar spear. He thought of the quiet warmth of his village bakery. He thought of the peaceful, thriving northern lands they had been told were filled with demons.
"Olyvar," Pate murmured, looking at the distant, imposing towers of Stark Stone. "Are we the wicked ones?"
Olyvar blinked, genuinely confused by the question. "What?"
"We marched a thousand miles to burn their farms," Pate reasoned softly. "They never attacked us. They just wanted to trade glass and grain. And now we are sitting in their swamp, trying to kill them. Are we the bad men in this story?"
"Blasphemy!" Olyvar hissed, grabbing Pate's shoulder with a surprisingly strong grip. "They consort with wildlings! They worship trees! The Seven demand their cleansing! Do not let the Stranger cloud your mind, brother!"
Before Pate could argue further, a harsh horn blast cut through the freezing air.
Septon Raynard, his heavy robes stained with mud and his brass censer dented from a fall, climbed atop a broken supply cart to address the shivering, broken mass of the vanguard. The plump man from the Reach looked significantly thinner, but his zealotry burned hotter than ever.
"Brothers of the Faith!" Raynard's voice echoed across the frozen camp. "The night is over! The false demons of the swamp have fled before the light of the Seven! Ahead of you stands the last redoubt of the heathen wolves!"
Raynard pointed a trembling, fat finger toward the Gatehouse Tower.
"The faint of heart look upon that road and see death," the Septon preached, his voice rising in a fanatical crescendo. "I look upon it and see a staircase to the heavens! The heathens will rain their iron upon us. They will try to break our spirit. Some of you may die today, falling upon those black stones. But that is a sacrifice I am willing to make for the glory of the Father!"
Pate stared at the Septon in absolute disbelief. He is willing to make our sacrifice? Pate thought, his stomach churning with dread. I'm just here because the elder said he'd take my pigs if I didn't march.
"Form the lines!" Olyvar shouted, joining the chorus of thousands of starving zealots who were entirely immune to logic. "For the Seven! For the cleansing fire!"
Pate was grabbed by the elbows and shoved forward into the massive, crushing throng of the vanguard. He clutched his boar spear to his chest, his feet numb, as twenty-six thousand five hundred men began to shuffle toward the causeway of the dead.
High above the slaughterhouse, the air was crisp, clean, and entirely devoid of the smell of bog-rot.
Bennard stood on the battlements of the Gatehouse Tower, stretching his shoulders. He wore a thick, wool-lined leather gambeson, and his hands were wrapped in clean linen to protect against bowstring blisters. He had slept eight solid hours in a warm, stone-walled barrack heated by thermal vents drawn from deep beneath the earth. He had eaten a breakfast of hot oat porridge, smoked bacon, and fresh bread.
He felt excellent.
Beside him, another Karstark archer named Torrhen leaned against the smooth basalt crenellations, blowing on his hands to keep his fingers limber.
"They are forming up again," Torrhen noted casually, nodding his chin toward the southern edge of the causeway.
Bennard stepped up to the edge and looked down. The causeway was a nightmare of frozen corpses, piled three deep in some places. The blood had frozen into slick, dark sheets of ice across the black stone. And beyond the wall of the dead, the massive, ragged horde of the Faith Militant was beginning to move forward once more.
Bennard shook his head slowly. He had spent years training for war. He had expected to face proud knights on destriers, or wildling berserkers charging with roaring fury. He had not expected to face a disorganized mob of starving bakers, cobblers, and farmers who didn't even have the sense to bring wooden shields.
A brief, sharp twinge of pity fluttered in Bennard's chest. He looked at the barefoot men shuffling toward the gates, shivering in their thin wool robes. They were so miserable. They were so outmatched. It felt wrong to shoot men who were already half-dead from the swamp. He almost felt bad for them. Almost.
Then, Bennard remembered the missives Lord Stark had read to them. He remembered the High Septon's decrees, calling for the glasshouses of the North to be shattered, for the weirwood trees to be burned, and for the families of the Old Gods to be put to the sword. These starving men might look pitiful, but if they breached the gates, they would tear Bennard's family apart in the name of their southern gods.
Bennard's pity vanished, replaced by the cold discipline of the North.
He reached into the fresh barrel of arrows placed beside him by the quartermaster's runners. He pulled a heavy, iron-tipped bodkin and set it on his string.
"It isn't much, but it's honest work," Bennard muttered to himself, stepping up to the firing line.
Torrhen snorted a laugh next to him. "Aye. Beats shoveling snow in Karhold." He casually pulled a copper coin from his pouch, resting it on the stone crenellations. "Two coppers says I can hit the shouting septon before he finishes his prayer."
Bennard shook his head, testing the tension of his bowstring. "Wind's shifting left. Make it three coppers and aim for the knight with the shiny star."
Behind them, the captain of the archers began his steady, unyielding pacing. "Stand ready! Wait for the mark! They must climb the dead to reach us today!"
Bennard drew his string back to his cheek. He looked down at the causeway. The vanguard of the Faith was reaching the edge of the corpse-pile. They hesitated, the reality of the obstacle finally piercing their religious fervor. To move forward, they had to physically climb over the frozen, staring bodies of the men they had marched with yesterday.
"Loose!" the captain roared.
Bennard released the string. Thousands of arrows hissed through the grey sky, plunging downward in a perfect, lethal arc.
Pate heard the sound of the arrows before he saw them. It sounded like a massive flock of ravens taking flight.
The volley struck the front lines of the vanguard just as they began to scramble over the pile of frozen corpses. The impact was devastating. Men shrieked as iron punched through their thin robes.
"Do not halt!" Olyvar screamed from beside Pate, his voice cracking with manic energy. "The Maiden protects the bold! Climb!"
The sheer press of the tens of thousands of men behind them left Pate with no choice. He was shoved forward, his boots slipping on the frozen blood. He dropped his boar spear to use his hands, crawling over the rigid, frozen body of a man he recognized as the blacksmith from a neighboring village.
Another volley hissed through the air. Men fell around Pate, their bodies adding to the macabre ramp.
"They have the high ground!" a panicked knight of the Warrior's Sons shouted, his horse having been abandoned long ago. "We have no shields! We cannot advance!"
Olyvar grabbed the knight by his chainmail collar. "The Stranger provides, Ser! The Father gives us the tools we need!" Olyvar pointed frantically at the frozen corpses beneath their feet. "Use the fallen! Their flesh will shield the faithful!"
Pate stared in absolute horror as Olyvar grabbed the frozen, rigid arm of a dead Poor Fellow. With the help of two other crazed zealots, Olyvar hoisted the stiff corpse off the ground, holding it vertically in front of him like a grotesque, life-sized wooden board.
"Advance!" Olyvar screamed, pushing forward behind his meat shield.
The madness was contagious. Desperate to survive the unrelenting rain of iron, dozens, then hundreds of zealots began hauling the frozen dead off the pile, hoisting them onto their shoulders or holding them upright. They formed a horrific, staggering wall of frozen flesh, pushing slowly up the causeway.
Pate found himself doing the same. His mind completely detached from reality as he grabbed the frozen collar of an unfamiliar dead man, lifting the stiff body to cover his own chest.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Pate felt the heavy, jolting impacts as three Northern arrows drove deep into the back of the corpse he was holding. The frozen meat absorbed the iron perfectly. The arrows did not penetrate through to Pate.
"It is working!" Olyvar cheered, staggering forward under the weight of his own corpse-shield. "The gods reward our ingenuity! Push forward!"
Pate stared blankly straight ahead over the shoulder of the dead man. His hands were numb. His boots were soaked in blood. The air was filled with the deafening shrieks of dying men and the relentless whistling of arrows.
This is fine, Pate muttered internally, his eyes wide and unblinking. Everything is fine. The elder can keep the pigs. I just want to sit down.
Shielded by their macabre wall, the vanguard actually managed to push further up the causeway than they had the previous day. They ground their way over the massive pile of bodies, closing the distance to the heavy ironwood gates of the Gatehouse Tower. The flanking fire from the restored towers tore into their sides, dropping men by the hundreds, but the sheer, crushing mass of twenty-six thousand five hundred men pushing from the rear forced the front lines inexorably forward.
They reached the base of the massive basalt wall.
"We are here!" Olyvar screamed, dropping his arrow-riddled corpse and slamming his bare fists against the unyielding ironwood of the main gates. "Bring the axes! Hack it down in the name of the Warrior!"
Pate dropped his corpse as well, pressing his back flat against the freezing black stone of the wall, trying to make himself as small as possible to avoid the arrows plunging from the side towers.
They had reached the gates. For one, brief, shining moment, the zealots at the front of the crush believed they had achieved a miracle. They had weathered the storm of iron. They were at the threshold of the heathen fortress.
High above, leaning over the smooth crenellations of the Gatehouse Tower, Greatjon Umber watched the wretched, blood-soaked mob banging their fists and rusted scythes against the ironwood gates far below.
He had watched them hoist their own dead to use as shields. He had watched them crawl over mountains of their brothers just to reach a door they could not possibly break.
The giant Lord of the Last Hearth did not look angry. He looked entirely unimpressed. In fact, he leaned over the stone and began shouting down unsolicited advice.
"Put your backs into it!" the Greatjon's booming voice carried easily over the din of the dying. "My grandmother swings a heavier stick than that! And close your ranks, you're leaving your left flank open, you barefoot fools!"
The sheer insult of the enemy commander trying to teach them how to properly besiege his own castle was entirely lost on the panicked zealots below.
"Well," the Greatjon rumbled, finally stepping back from the ledge and turning to the archers. "Looks like meat is back on the menu, boys."
Bennard and Torrhen lowered their bows, stepping back from the edge of the wall to make room.
"Archers, fall back!" the captain ordered sharply. "Throwers, advance the line!"
From the rear of the wide rooftop, a dozen massive, bare-armed men of the Umber and Karstark vanguard stepped forward. They were not carrying bows. They were rolling heavy, dressed blocks of solid basalt—the leftover, irregular chunks of stone from the reconstruction of the towers. Each stone weighed easily over a hundred pounds.
"They want to hide behind dead flesh," the Greatjon ordered, pointing down at the tightly packed mass of zealots at the base of the wall. "Let's see if dead flesh stops stones. Drop them!"
The soldiers hauled the massive basalt blocks to the edge of the crenellations. They didn't aim. They simply shoved the heavy stones over the ledge.
Pate was still pressing himself against the wall when he heard the strange, whistling hum from above. It didn't sound like an arrow. It sounded like a falling tree.
He looked up.
A shadow blotted out the pale grey sky.
The heavy basalt block struck the tightly packed crowd directly in the center. There was no sound of clashing steel, no heroic deflection. There was only the wet, catastrophic sound of a boulder crushing a dozen men into the stone pavement simultaneously.
"Hold the line!" Olyvar screamed, his eyes wide as the man next to him was instantly pulverized. "The Smith tests us! We must be the anvil!"
A second shadow fell from the sky.
Olyvar looked up, raising his wooden club defiantly toward the heavens. "Praise the Sev—"
The basalt block hit Olyvar square on the chest. The fanatical zealot vanished instantly beneath a hundred pounds of falling stone, silenced forever by the brutal, unyielding physics of the North.
Pate stared at the spot where his friend had been standing a fraction of a second ago. There was nothing left but a crushed, bloody robe and a splintered wooden club.
More stones rained down from the battlements, smashing into the densely packed crowd with devastating, explosive force. The meat shields that had protected them from the arrows were entirely useless against gravity and basalt. The front lines of the Faith Militant were being liquefied against the gates they had fought so hard to reach.
Something inside Pate finally snapped. The sheer, overwhelming absurdity of the slaughter broke through his paralyzing fear.
Pate looked at the ironwood gate. He looked at the falling stones. He looked at the pulverized remains of his friend.
"Nope," Pate said aloud.
He didn't scream. He didn't pray. He simply turned around, shoved his way violently past a terrified septon, and began to climb back down the mountain of frozen corpses.
The realization that there would be no divine intervention rippled backward through the ranks of the Faith Militant faster than the falling stones. The zealots at the front, realizing they were trapped against the wall and being crushed from above, turned and began desperately clawing their way back through their own men.
The retreat was not a military maneuver. It was a blind, frantic stampede of pure, animalistic terror.
Men dropped their scythes. They dropped their holy crystals. They trampled their brothers into the slick, frozen blood of the causeway, desperately trying to put distance between themselves and the black towers of Moat Cailin.
Back at the edge of the camp, Ser Lymond of House Peake watched the horrific rout from his undersized garron. A hot-headed, young Reach knight rode up to him, his chainmail still completely unsoiled.
"Ser Lymond!" the young knight demanded. "We must sound a cavalry charge! If the heavy horse rides now, we can break their lines and cover the retreat!"
Ser Lymond didn't yell. He didn't even draw his sword. He simply stared blankly at the young knight, then pointed silently to the narrow, elevated stone road that was currently completely blocked by a mountain of over twelve thousand dead bodies and massive, falling basalt boulders.
The young knight looked at the impenetrable slaughterhouse, slowly realized how incredibly stupid his suggestion was, and rode away in utter shame.
As the surviving zealots scrambled back off the causeway and onto the solid earth of their encampment, the harsh reality of their geography finally set in.
They were running from the anvil, but there was nowhere to go.
Behind them, the grey mist of the Neck was rising. The endless, bottomless bogs stretched for hundreds of miles to the south. The crannogmen were waiting in the reeds, their blowpipes loaded and their lizard-lions hungry.
On the high balcony of the Gatehouse Tower, Eddard Stark stood with his hands resting on the stone balustrade.
He watched the surviving host of the Faith Militant shatter for a second time. He watched the remaining men break and flee wildly back to the edge of the treeline, abandoning the causeway in a desperate bid to survive.
The Greatjon walked up behind Ned, wiping a bit of rock dust from his massive hands.
"They broke faster today," the giant rumbled, looking out over the corpse-choked causeway and the panicked rout in the distance. "But there's still over twenty thousand of them sitting in the mud down there. Think they'll try again tomorrow?"
Ned nodded slowly, his grey eyes cold and distant. "If their septons whip them hard enough. But they have no food, no cover, and no hope. The swamp will take the weak tonight, and we will take the charge tomorrow."
He turned away from the balcony, leaving the carnage of the zealots behind.
"Rotate the archers and send word to the men to rest," Ned commanded, walking back into the warmth of the tower. "And tell the quartermasters to begin gathering the iron from the dead before it freezes to the stone."
Down in the mud of the southern camp, Pate collapsed against the broken wheel of a supply cart. His hands shook violently as he stared at the blood soaking his tunic—Olyvar's blood.
Around him, thousands of surviving zealots wept, prayed, or simply stared blankly into the gathering dark. The commanders were shouting, trying to reform a defensive perimeter against the treeline, but the holy fervor of the morning was completely dead.
Pate pulled his knees to his chest, shivering as the freezing mist of the Neck began to roll back over the camp. He had survived the anvil for one day. But as the giant bullfrogs began their deep, mocking chorus in the dark, Pate knew there was no escape.
Tomorrow, the septons would blow the horns again. And Pate would have to choose between the crushing stones of the North or the bottomless black water of the swamp.