Land of the King, Chapter 83: The War for the Dawn

Moat Cailin was a mighty fortress. Twenty strong towers and three sets of curtain walls and a keep guarding the only easily traversable track of land for miles. Yet mighty or not, Moat Cailin was not impregnable, especially from the north. As they neared the fortress, Aragorn observed that it was under heavy attack. A fierce battle was raging there. Seeing that they were needed, Aragorn ordered his unit to ride faster toward the Moat.

Even though the Neck had been slowly drained for decades, the Causeway and the Fever River still remained the only suitable path for an army and supply train to march north. And therein lied the problem.

From the north, Moat Cailin was far more approachable than it was from the south, which made holding the castle against the north from the south infinitely more difficult than the reverse as the defenders had only two routes of supply and reinforcement versus the enemies’ three. That one of the southern routes was actually a river flowing directly west did not help matters at all. In effect, that meant that Arnor had only one means of transporting men and materials to Moat Cailin fast, and that was through the Causeway.

It had taken them three and a half months to muster a sizable enough army, and in that time, almost the entire North had fallen to the Army of the Dead. Aragorn had brought over a hundred thousand men with them, with millions more mustering to arms in Arnor, but winter made things difficult and unless they could push out from Moat Cailin, their armies would be bottlenecked at the Neck.

As he rode through the open southern gates of the Moat, Aragorn steeled himself. The lives of millions depended on victory in this battle. White Harbor, Barrowton, and other northern settlements were under siege and if they did not drive the Army of the Dead from Moat Cailin, there would be no saving them.

“Careful with those!” Aragorn barked as he saw the explosives slowly moved in on the carts. Barrels of wildfire and the new black powder would be priceless against the wights in combat, but they were risky to transport, especially wildfire.

“Aragorn!” He turned hearing his cousin Brandon shouting his name.

“Brandon, it’s… good to see you alive and well,” Aragorn said hesitantly. He loved his cousin, but he remembered well their last encounter almost two decades ago.

Brandon it seemed had forgotten his grudge and wrapped his arms around him in a firm embrace. “And I you. I only wish my father was here to see you as well.”

“He died honorably. We will avenge his sacrifice,” Aragorn said firmly. There was little else he could say to console his cousin. “Now, what is the situation?”

“The wights have been endlessly throwing themselves at the walls. We’ve been able to keep them at bay for now, but barely. Every one of ours that dies is another soldier for them, and we have had to keep several soldiers in reserve to burn the bodies of the slain to prevent them rising up as wights and attacking us in the rear. And there are more of those white bastards showing up. Where is the King?”

“Helegorthad.” Aragorn cursed. “I understand cousin. We have much wildfire and more to incinerate these wights, but the Others will be a problem.

“The king and the greater part of our host are further south, the supply train has been getting bogged down in the marshes. We were meant to arrive together but we heard of the siege here and feared for the worst.”

“We will not hold out much longer, even with the men you brought, the enemy seems to be throwing most of their strength against us here,” Brandon warned.

“We don’t have a choice but to hold out here until my father arrives with the bulk of our army. We both know Cailin is the gateway to the North. We lose here and Formenor is lost to us forever,” he told his cousin before walking away, shouting orders at his captains.

Imrahil!” he called out to the Prince of Dol Amroth. “The Swan Knights need to be ready to patrol the Fever, make sure none of those wights cross!”

Climbing up the walls, Aragorn saw the endless hordes of wights before him and almost gave in to despair. He felt an arm grip his shoulder. “Aragorn, I do not like our chances. The wights are far too many, even for Arnor. Do you see that now?” Brandon said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and despair.

“We defeated Valyria cousin, we can defeat the wights,” Aragorn said with more than a little bit of bravado. Brandon was not wholly convinced but Aragorn’s words had been just in time to see as the same endless hordes of wights were eviscerated by the wildfire launched from their trebuchets. As they watched the wildfire continue to burn through the undead with deceptive ease, like a fire through dry grass, he let himself think for a few brief moments, that fighting the Others might even be easy.

He was wrong of course. In the next moment, white figures emerged from the hordes of undead, and before the eyes of Aragorn and every other living soul on the walls of Cailin, they tamed the magical green fire, dispelling it with ease. All of a sudden, the air turned cold with the coming of the Others, like their very presence sucked all the heat in the world away. A fierce freezing gust of wind blew in from the north, snapping the flagpoles of the castle as snow blanketed the land. Aragorn shivered, it was so cold. He could feel his fingers going numb and the chill seeping into his bones.

Soon enough, the endless hordes of wights replenished, like they had never been gone, and this time the Others stalked among them, a massive horde of white ice spiders accompanying them. The wights began piling up on top of each other, forming a ramp of corpses to climb over the walls and clambering over on to the battlements.

“Loose!” Aragorn cried as the Army of the Dead renewed its assault. Obeying his commands, a new volley of endless arrows, boulders, and burning, oil, wildfire, and black powder was fired at the enemy and poured over the battlements, blackening the outer walls of Moat Cailin and incinerating the corpse ramps. And yet it seemed like the horde never ended and the Arnorian soldiers began to tire.

“The Fever! The Fever is freezing over!” Aragorn heard a man shout in panic and his mind raced. If the accursed Icewraiths were freezing the river, then it meant they could possibly encircle Moat Cailin. After all, it was not like marshy and swampy ground were much hindrance to the dead and freezing that into solid permafrost would be no challenge to the Others if they could freeze rivers seemingly at will.

“Faramir! I need your rangers to reinforce the Swan Knights and guard the flanks of the Moat!” Aragorn shouted at his friend in the courtyard of Cailin from the walls. Faramir nodded.

Dividing the battlefield, Aragorn ordered Boromir and his detachment to assume the defense of the Fever River, outside the walls. Brandon and Ned took the west and the east flanks of the castle while Faramir’s Rangers and Imrahil’s Swan Knights patrolled the surrounding marshes, trying to prevent the wights from flanking them and keeping the Causeway supplying them with more men and supplies safe.

Their forces were stretched thin. Against any other foe, Aragorn would say 100,000 fighting men to hold the Moat and the surrounding region would be plentiful. Against the Army of the Dead however, it was too little too late, even with the formidable fortifications of Moat Cailin.

It was endless nights of fighting in the sheer cold, nights for the sun never appeared from the clouds it was hidden behind. Time became difficult to keep track of without the sun and the near perpetual dimness and darkness.

All the while, the wight hordes kept attacking and savaging the defenders of the Moat, and it was clear that they, or at least their masters, were not dumb. They began employing masterful strategies and tactics, reorganized by their Other leaders into proper units and fighting battalions. Soon they began coming at the walls with crude but functioning ladders, making it easier to swarm the castle walls.

Aragorn was almost constantly on the walls during this time, overseeing the army and boosting morale. Sleep was hard to come by, and his tired eyes begged to rest. Even when not on the walls, the garrison had to remain alert in case any of their dead had not been burned and had been risen by the Others. There had been a few nightmarish close calls because of that. As the ladders fell against the walls once more, with their wildfire stocks empty again, Aragorn resigned himself, knowing battle was near.

As one ladder was pushed from the walls, three more sprang up and soon the wights began flooding onto the battlements. Aragorn drew his weapon, a large mace, far more primitive and crude then the sword on his belt, but much more effective for smashing wights into pieces.

Besides him, his trusted friend and companion, Arthur Dayne, drew his own heavy weapon, a great battleaxe and soon the two were back to back, cleaving and smashing through wights by the dozen, sometimes needing but one strike for their Arnorian steel to smash cleanly through them. Yet for each wight they killed, ten more climbed up the walls.

As his muscles burned with exhaustion and his his lungs struggled to breathe in the icy cold air, Aragorn felt the thousand cuts he had gained over the course of the endless battle begin to take his toll on him as he tired. Looking around him, all the others were much the same and he knew they would not last much longer. They were using up all of their supplies and ammunition faster than they could replenish them from the supply convoys and with the savagery of the melee, they would tire even faster.

Hope filled his heart however, when he heard the horns blowing from the south and he began to fight with renewed vigor. In the following hours, fresh soldiers began to pour onto the battlements, allowing the tired defenders to finally rest. Aragorn’s father had finally arrived with the greater part of the army.

Aragorn was in awe at how their strained supply lines could support so many, even with lembas, but with 800,000 soldiers, the tide began turning as the wights began being pushed back. On the sixth day, Arnor finally sallied forth from the Moat.

With a massive bombardment of wildfire and artillery upon the field, the wight hordes were thinned somewhat and the Swan Knights of Dol Amroth led the vanguard, carving through the enemy as the Arnorian army advanced behind them.

On the eighth day, the Army of the Dead withdrew from Moat Cailin. The whole time, the Others themselves had never entered combat directly, their focus spent entirely on supporting and commanding their undead slaves. Perhaps they were also too cowardly to face the steel and obsidian of Arnor, Aragorn did not know.

The triumph of their victory however was dulled by their losses, for they were so grievous, Aragorn wondered how they could ever hope to attain anything more than a stalemate against the Others. And with each loss they suffered, the enemy gained more.

Soon even more dire news arrived, telling of the fall of Barrowton and the slaughter of all of its remaining people who were presumably turned into wights as well. Not even half of its people had been able to flee by ship, and its fall meant hundreds of thousands, if not millions of wights, had joined the Army of the Dead.

Now, plans were being desperately made. The rest of the empire was slowly being mobilized to reinforce their army here which was to march to the defense of White Harbor before the city fell, as their skinchangers reported a bird’s eye views of hordes of undead racing to the city. And in the way of their army was the horde that had been assaulting Moat Cailin, soon to be bolstered with reinforcements.

As he watched a rare ray of light break through the cloud cover of the sky, lighting up the dark lands to reveal the endless plains of snow, Aragorn thought the end of the world was hauntingly beautiful.

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Almost eighteen months later, near the end of 5421, the war had reached its height. After several brutal battles, the Arnorian had successfully pushed all the way to Winterfell itself. White Harbor had been secured, and though hundreds of thousands had fallen against the hordes of the undead, millions more wights had been eviscerated by their army or incinerated with wildfire.

In the depths of his own mind however, Aragorn grieved. The population of the North might never recover. Millions had died or fled during the winter, and millions more had died as a result of the war against the Others. Even if they reclaimed Winterfell and defeated the Others, what then? His cousin Brandon would have a dead and empty realm to rule.

He put those thoughts aside for the meantime. Before they could worry what was to be done after the war, they had to win it first, and that would be no small task. Growing up, Aragorn had been taught how to besiege Winterfell. His father’s own experience with the Succession Crisis of the North centuries ago had him teach his son how to take the castle as a last resort.

Winterfell was one of the greatest castles in the world, and one that had not been built by Númenórean hands. The massive castle complex had two grey granite walls encircling it, with a large wide moat in between the two walls. The inner walls were a hundred feet high and the outer, eighty.

Some part of Aragorn wondered how the castle had even fallen to the Others in the first place. Sheer numbers could only do so much. In the end he had concluded that the magic of the Others had enabled them to break into the castle, but that magic was unlikely to save them now.

The Army of the Dead had withdrawn into Winterfell. Though they had other battalions and hordes spread out throughout the North, the vast remainder of their strength was concentrated in Winterfell and it was believed that the Others had taken it as their capital and seat.

Everything hinged on winning at Winterfell. Winter was showing no signs of letting up. Hyarmen was now supplying the homeland to support the war effort but without winter receding, there was no way Arnor could push any further north than Winterfell. Yet so long as Winterfell remained in the hands of the Others, White Harbor, the last truly populous settlement in the North, would remain under threat.

Spying through the far-eye, Aragorn saw the battlements of Winterfell, filled to the brim with wights, fearless of the artillery and arrows raining down on them. One major disadvantage the wights had, was that their motor functions were severely limited, impairing their ranged abilities. On the open fields, this mattered less than you would think as arrows that were not lit on fire did little to wights and their sheer numbers often allowed them to whittle down a smaller Arnorian force.

When on the defensive in a fortification however, it was a great disadvantage indeed. As the Arnorians bombarded the walls with artillery until they broke, the wights could do little against them, allowing the army to almost casually watch and rest as the artillery did their work. Aragorn however knew this rest would be sorely needed, because once sufficient breaches in the walls were made, the Arnorians would have to storm the castle and engage in a savage melee with the wights.

Finally, three days after their arrival, the order was given for them to storm Winterfell. The forward units of the army advanced toward the castle when suddenly, they all heard it.

It was a horn blow, but from no horn they had ever heard before. It was like the grinding of ice, the whir of a winter blizzard. The horn sounded like winter, that was the only way Aragorn could describe it.

Almost like a call to arms, tens of thousands of wights began crawling out of the ground from which they had buried themselves into, hordes began pouring out of the surrounding countryside while massive packs of ice spiders began descending onto the flanks of the army like wolves.

Soon they were surrounded, by a host far larger than theirs, and Aragorn realized their mistake. They should never have underestimated the Others, never have even dared to think they could have struck at Winterfell without their allowance. They had lured them here to surround and trap them.

At that moment, the wights garrisoning Winterfell began to pour out of the holes in the walls that the Arnorians had left and the castle gates opened. Out stalked a troop of the Helegorthad.

The air became cold as a fierce blizzard storm blew in from the north. The Others rode on ice spiders, wearing their strange reflective armor and bearing their crystal ice swords. At their head was one that looked to be an Other, but Aragorn could feel he was not.

His form was tall and terrible, like the giants that had once served the Kings of old. He wore much the same armor as those he led, reflective and shimmering, and even from this great distance Aragorn could see the malice in his blue eyes, as bright as stars. He wore no crown, but bore a fearsome helm with many points. Yet what terrified Aragorn and those that stood beside him the most, was not his imposing figure, but the power he radiated, the power that oozed from his aura, seeping into all the land, easily eclipsing the Others like the sun outshines any star.

Maia

The name came to Aragorn’s mind and he knew the implications. If this really was a Maia, it could explain the unnatural winter, even the existence of the Others themselves. It also meant however, that they barely stood a chance.

Almost immediately, the hordes of the undead and the ice spiders began overwhelming their army. At the vanguard of their advance, the Others led by the Maia, the Great Other, Aragorn realized now, from the old legends, cut through their ranks with ease, their weapons covering their steel blades and armour with frost, and shattering them.

Over the course of the war, Arnor had found that regular steel was perfectly usable against the wights and ice spiders, but against their masters it was utterly useless. Only obsidian daggers and enchanted steel worked. But not everyone could be equipped with such weapons.

Wielding a massive two-headed crystal ice greataxe, the Great Other carved his way through the Royal Guard to reach Aragorn and his father. Drawing his own enchanted steel sword, Aragorn stood alongside his father Arathorn who drew Narsil. The Sword of the Morning, Sir Arron Dayne drew Dawn while his nephew Arthur drew his own sword. The Prince of Dol Amroth, Imrahil was there as well, as were Captains Halbarad and Beregond, his cousins, Brandon and Eddard, Jon Umber, and the sons of the Steward Denethor, Boromir and Faramir.

The highest ranking commanders of their army had been gathered in one place in preparation to command the siege, guarded by the elite crop of the allied Arnorian and Northern army. Terrifyingly fast, the Great Other had carved his way through to them, and they all drew their weapons to face him.

With a great blow, his father and Arron Dayne locked blades with the Maia, Narsil and Dawn each against one head of his greataxe. The rest of them moved in to strike at the Maia’s unprotected flanks, but in an instant he had kicked the King and the Sword of the Morning away, swinging his greataxe in a wide motion, decapitating Beregond and slashing into other soldiers who had come to their aid.

All around them, the battle continued on as the army of the living desperately tried to fend off the hordes of the undead. Aragorn found himself drawn into a duel against an Other wearing an ice sword crown alongside his cousins Brandon and Eddard.

The Other taunted them in Nordic. “More Starks! Excellent. Come out Rickard!”

The wight of his deceased uncle appeared then and took up arms near the Other.

“No!” Brandon shouted, charging forward recklessly before the Other disarmed him and his sword sliced through his head, separating his head clean from his shoulders.

“Brandon!” Ned shouted beside him and Aragorn grimaced.

“Another Stark crossed of my list!” the Other laughed in delight and then before their very eyes, Brandon’s headless corpse rose from the ground and picked up its sword. The Other charged at them then, with the wights of Brandon and Rickard beside him.

In a two vs three duel, Aragorn and Eddard soon found themselves on the defensive, neither of them able to properly fight as their inherent hesitance to harm Rickard and Brandon’s bodies impeded them. Taunting them, the Other, revealed his true identity as Night’s King to them with a smirk, bragging about how he had killed Rickard and going into morbid detail about how he would kill both of them and add more Starks to his personal legion of wights.

Wishing to spare his cousin the pain, Aragorn cut Rickard and Brandon’s wights to pieces but Night’s King took advantage of his distraction to focus his attack on Ned. Overwhelmed, Ned made the slightest mistake and the Other, with thousands of years of experience, exploited it. Night’s King thrust his cold icy sword into his cousin’s body and laughed savagely as Ned fell to the ground.

“Ned!” Aragorn shouted in grief before he turned his attention on the Night’s King. He refused to see yet another family member raised from the dead and made into a wight. This ended now.

He charged the Other, grief and fury driving his furious attacks. As their swords clashed against each other, Aragorn could feel the cold spreading. Even though the blades had been enchanted to be resistant, there was only so much they could take. His sword shattered, and he missed a block, ice cutting into his leg. Falling to the ground in pain, Aragorn looked up to see the Night’s King’s raised ice sword about to end his life.

Before the Night’s King could deliver the killing blow however, an obsidian dagger made its way through the gaps of his armor in his side. Ned had forced himself to his knees and had driven it through the Other with the last of his strength. Night’s King was paralyzed as the obsidian began tearing at the magicks and spells that had turned him into an Other, his icy blue blood gushing out from the wound. Forcing himself to his feet, Aragorn pulled out his own obsidian dagger and thrust it into Night’s King’s chest, making the Other explode into shards of ice.

His cousin smiled at him before he collapsed onto the ground. Uncaring of the danger, Aragorn rushed to his side and found that he was already dead. Before he could grieve however, he heard screams of agony and despair and turned, horrified to see as before the entire army, the Great Other threw down his father, the High King, with Narsil breaking upon his fall.

The other champions who had stood alongside his father were all either dead or wounded and the last of them, Arron Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, fought against the Great Other alone now.

Rushing to his father’s side, Aragorn took up the hilt-shard of Narsil and wielded it like a dagger beside his obsidian blade, thrusting them both into the lower right leg of the Great Other. The Maia’s distracted shrieks of pain allowed Arron Dayne to thrust Dawn into his heart, but not before the Great Other’s axe carved him into half.

In an instant, the Great Other collapsed onto the ground, defeated. The blizzard came to a stop, and millions of wights dropped dead and unmoving onto the ground. The surviving Others despaired at seeing their master defeated and fled.

With the Great Other vanquished, the power creating the unnatural winter began to dissipate, and for the first time in almost two years, Aragorn saw the sun’s light piercing through the dispersing clouds. They had won.

Yet the price was too great he thought as he caressed his dead father. Today he had lost a father and two cousins, and had been forced to desecrate the corpse of his own uncle. All over the battlefield, many were also deep in the throes of grief. His friends Faramir and Arthur mourned their lost kin and so did he.

Many had fallen and would never return to their homes. Arcalen would see not Beregond again, nor Osgiliath Halbarad, Emyn Arnen Boromir, or Dol Amroth Prince Imrahil. Rickard, Brandon, Eddard, and Benjen would never return to Winterfell whole and alive, and Morlond would never see King Arathorn again.

Aragorn picked up the broken shards of Narsil, and wept bitterly.