Ygritte
The wights came as a horde, unceasing and relentless. They trudged through the snow, hurling their dead bodies towards the wall and the gates, and it wasn't just humans. There were dire wolves with blue eyes that moved faster than the humans, but the true danger lay in the trudging form that was hidden behind, its bulky physique a dark, huge shadow in the distance. A giant, and not a young one like they had behind them, but a full-grown one.
A hundred fur-clad men stood on the walls, their hands tightly gripping the bow shafts in their off hands. They glanced at each other, worry written on their features, yet despite the worry the free folk felt, they knew they had to stand, fight, and die if needed because beyond just their mortal lives, there were their immortal souls to think about, their children and wives and husbands hidden behind them. The cost of losing here was unimaginable.
"Pull!" Ygritte yelled.
As one scattered form, the group of men pulled at their bows; the tip of their arrows had been soaked in oils and lit alight, unfamiliar oils that held strong, whose fire would hopefully survive the flight. Another gift from the strangers that slept behind the black stone walls of the castle. Master Hector and Master Isaac.
"Loose!"
They loosened their grip on their bows, and hundreds of arrows tore through the sky. Their barrage was not as coordinated as that of an actual trained and professional army. A great many of the archers firing above the wall were hardly sharpshooters; however, the wights were uncountable, their forms were tightly packed like a sea of human flesh and blue eyes. They did not need to aim in truth; all they had to do was fire.
The arrows reached the height of their parabolic arc, then dipped and began to fall, covering the sky with fire. As they fell, the wights died. They died in the dozens, the alchemical oil and fire catching onto the dry and cold bodies of the wights; their tightly packed form meant that the fire spread, from one wight to another. Ygritte saw the chaos their first shots had caused, and she smiled, yet there was an itch at the back of her neck that told her that it wouldn't be so easy, so she didn't waste another breath to observe her work.
"Pull!"
This time when they pulled, they were more hurried, more enthusiastic. They pulled as one and aimed.
"Loose!"
The arrows flew once more, covering the skies. The scenario ahead of them played out much like the first time; the surging bodies of wights were caught flat-footed by the rain of fire-tipped arrows. The fire hardened tips tore through flesh as multiple wights combusted spontaneously, their bodies falling, leaving gaps in their formation, gaps that were quickly sealed back as the rest of the wights were forced to die slower deaths.
"We might actually pull this off." Gavin muttered beside Ygritte, and she turned to face him. Seeing hope in his eyes and it wasn't just him. They could all see the damage that they were doing to the horde, it was enough to bolster them, enough to breathe hope into them. This time Ygritte didn't even have to call for them to pull, they did so on their own more enthusiastically.
"Loose!"
That was when things changed. As the loosened projectiles completed their arc and were about to descend, Ygritte finally saw them. The reason why she had felt an itch at the back of her neck, even with her exceptional eyesight, she could not place their numbers, but she saw them. Blue eyes, a lighter shade of blue than the wights, hair as white as snow that floated in the air like gravity had no control over them.
The lead Other stretched forth his hand, and all of a sudden, a storm came to life, a storm that had been brewing for minutes but had been unnoticeable till now. What started as a few scattered snowflakes quickly became a driving blizzard, the wind howling across the battlements with enough force to make the defenders squint and shield their faces. The snowstorm immediately extinguished the fire that still spread among the horde while sending the arrows flying away. The few that managed to land among the horde caused minimal harm, with the fire extinguished.
Before the shock of the change could overwhelm them, Tormund took over, his voice booming as he called out with a yell. "Switch out the fire tip arrows for dragon glass tips and aim for the legs!" Tormund bellowed, his massive frame silhouetted against the torchlight as he drew back his own bowstring. "Their weight should make it harder to blow them off target, and they can't bloody well run or climb if they can't walk!"
The Free Folk took up the cry, changing the arrows as well as the firing arc of their arrows. This time, they aimed low, seeking knees and ankles with as much precision as they could manage. Many arrows missed but just as many hit, and several wights toppled, the ones at the front trampled upon by the ones behind, but even legless, they continued crawling forward with their fingernails and teeth, leaving trails of black ichor in the snow.
Ygritte appeared beside Hector, her bow singing as she loosed arrow after arrow into the approaching mass. "You do not seem worried that the wights are almost at the walls, Master Hector." Hector gave her a thin smile before looking above her head and into the horde. His face was tight yet not even that could hide the amount of curiosity he looked at the wights with, at the snowstorm that the Others had conjured.
Ygritte moved to speak again, but she saw the look on Hector's face and knew it was a lost cause. He was more fascinated by the magics he beheld than the actual danger.
She was not blind to the dynamics between the two men that served Lord Dracula. Hector was the diplomat, the architect, the one with the friendly face and soothing voice. While Master Isaac was the fighter, the killer, the knife in the dark, the warrior, and the one that Lord Dracula sent to solve problems.
If she was forced to admit, she would've said she preferred Hector, in the darkest part of her mind, she would even admit to some sort of crush on the older exotic man, yet in this situation with a horde of the dead hurling towards the walls, she knew who she would prefer leading the fight, and it wasn't Master Hector.
"They've gotten to the walls!" Gavin called out, and Ygritte ran to join the free folk firing straight down into the horde of the dead. This close, she could see their forms more clearly. More than one of them was missing an eye or a limb. Entrails hung from disemboweling blows that had killed them in life, while some bore the black, burnt skin that signified they were survivors of the fire that the Others had quenched.
They fired and fired, but there was hardly any difference; as long as it wasn't a fatal blow, the wights took the arrows and continued to move. The gates were well protected. They had been carved strong and bound with iron to ensure that it would take more than the wights scrambling against it to ensure that it would not fall. It would take at least the giant that Ygritte could see clearly in the distance. It was making its way towards them, dragging something heavy behind it, but it was not the immediate threat. The immediate threat lay in the wights scrambling beneath her.
Ygritte was the first one to notice what they were doing. She turned to the others and cried. "They're climbing over each other!"
Only then did the others notice, but it was for naught. No matter how they fired into the climbing horde that used each other as a footstool, it didn't reduce the amount of flesh scrambling upon each other. Gavin pushed over the oil pots and threw torches after them, burning a great many of the wights, but the storm remained; it didn't allow the fire to spread and extinguished it, and once more, and in the places that the wights had lost a foothold, they began to gain once more. Then the wights made it over the wall and died promptly.
The first wight to crest the wall died to Tormund's axe, its head spinning away into the rabid mass beneath it. The second fell to Gavin's hammer, caving in its head and throwing it back. But the third made it fully onto the battlement, and suddenly the nature of the battle changed entirely.
x
Tormund
The fighting on the walls was fierce.
Tormund ducked underneath the wide swing of a wight, then he pushed up, flipping it behind him for the man there to kill. The next wight that charged at him was greeted with an axe to its face; however, another rushed behind, and before Tormund could pull on his axe, the blue eyed abomination hurled itself at him, only to be met with a dragonglass sharpened spear to the eye that stopped it dead as the weapon pierced the soft membrane and into its brain.
Tormund finally managed to huff out a breath; his body ached fiercely, both from a smattering of injuries and from the effort it had taken to kill the dozens of wights he had to his name. Gavin bumped his shoulder and shot him a look, and that was enough for Tormund to grin fiercely. Many a son he had, but few were as exceptional as Gavin in combat.
As the screams and cries of free folk fighting and dying around them spread out, they finally heard it. A horn signal that they had been waiting for.
"Give ground, disengage, and retreat!" Tormund yelled as the father and son duo gave ground, retreating with each other's backs to each other. The archers were barely armed; they had not been the true force planned to hold the walls. That honor was given to the heavily armed and armoured men in black who came from behind, slipping past the retreating form of the free folk and anchoring themselves with solid shields.
The Night's Watch were all armoured. The least of them with gambesons and chainmail over them, the best of them with gambesons, chainmail, and half plate. They had exchanged their steel forged weapons for the dragon glass spears and axe heads that the Free folk had shared with them, yet by order of the Lord Commander, enough of them held steel swords, both to lop off arms and legs, while the true damage dealers killed the unarmed wights with quick stabs.
Tormund watched the wights struggle and scramble against the crows, their blunt weapons bouncing off steel plate, their fingers latching to chainmail instead of flesh. The walls were tight enough that the crows had an advantage based on their armor and weapons alone, forcing the tight packed wights to die in droves, but already as Tormund took a break behind the black cloaked men, he could see cracks forming.
More than one man was pulled into the horde, and his screams were enough to stagger the rest of them, yet they fought and held even as they were pushed back, and as time passed, the recovered free folk began to join in the scramble. Hurling spears into the mass of bodies, firing arrows over the heads of crows, and into the mass of bodies, they were holding off. What had slowly turned into a checkmate slowly changed as they began to win.
Then a boom rang out and the wall shook.
Tormund looked down in realization as he saw the Others. A clear view of the four white haired creatures on their spider mounts, then the boom rang out again, and his sight shifted, and they were greeted to the sight of the gate, the gate that had held strong so far, being hammered in place by the giant that had finally made its way to them.
Held in a two-handed grip was a giant stone mace scaled to size, and as Tormund watched it swing its mace once more to a corresponding boom that cracked the gate and shook the wall, he knew that it did not matter how well they held the wall; if the gates were breached, they would lose everything.
Then a screech rang through the skies, and Tormund turned to face the pale-haired man they called Hector, and he saw him looking to the sky. Tormund had glimpsed him a couple of times in the furious melee, and the man had stood at ease. Unused hammer in hand, cloth sparkling clean, and despite the dead at the gates, there was not the slightest hint of worry on his face.
"You definitely took your time, Isaac," Hector said, looking to the sky with a smile.