New chapter is live.
Settle in, take your time, and let’s see what waits in the dark 🖤 ✦ The hoofbeats drew closer.
The rider soon came into view.
Will’s horse—the one whose skull had been split open by an ice sword ten days earlier—emerged from between the trees.
Icicles clung to its stiff body, and a pale, gaunt figure sat astride it.
The Other pursuing Aeg had raised the dead horse as a wight.
Mounted now, it would have caught the two men long before they came this close to the Wall if not for its poor horsemanship.
Still, the result was acceptable.
Something like satisfaction stirred inside the Other.
At last, it had caught them.
By human standards, the endurance and will of the two black-clad men were impressive.
The younger one in particular had proved worth watching: he had fled without hesitation at the first sight of the Others, resisted the foolish urge to attack when the ice sword left the Other’s hand, dodged the thrown blade, and maintained a punishing pace through the long pursuit.
He was a capable human.
After today, he would make a capable wight.
Two against one should have mattered.
But the Other’s strength, weapons, and nature gave it an advantage so great that one extra opponent meant almost nothing.
The two humans before it had already reached the edge of what their bodies and minds could endure.
This was not a battle.
It was a hunt.
* * * The collapsed horse whinnied, struggled to its feet, and stumbled away into the trees.
Aeg drew his weapon and stared at the mounted Other.
His lungs burned.
A low, hoarse growl tore from his throat as shock and terror hardened into a desperate will to fight.
The enemy had a horse.
Running was no longer possible.
Either the creature died here, or Aeg did.
This last stand had nothing to do with guarding the Wall or defending the realm.
It was about survival.
“I’ll hold it off.” Gared had also realized they were trapped.
He raised his sword.
“You run.
Someone has to warn the brothers.
Winter has come.” “No.
I’m not going to watch you die only to be ridden down a few moments later.” Aeg knew Gared could not stop the creature alone.
“We kill it here, then cross the Wall together.
We can work out the rest later.
Watch its weapon.
Steel cannot stop it.
If it tries to throw that thing at us again…” The enemy did not wait for him to finish.
It stared at the two men for several seconds with eyes that glowed a faint, cold blue.
Then it charged.
“Move!” The two men split apart, using the trees as cover.
They circled trunks and other obstacles until the mounted Other’s repeated charges failed to land a blow.
After several failed passes, the Other snarled something in that piercing voice, dismounted, and rushed them on foot.
“Now!” Gared shouted, charging in.
“Careful!” Aeg cried out.
The Watch taught its men only the simplest blocks and counters.
Against wildling raiders who relied mostly on instinct and strength, that was usually enough.
But the style rested on one assumption: the weapon in your hand would survive the collision.
Against an Other, that assumption was false.
There was no probing or circling.
The fight reached its killing stroke almost as soon as it began.
Aeg had warned Gared about the Other’s weapon, but the old ranger had fought the same way for more than thirty years.
When he saw an opening after the creature dismounted, instinct drove him forward in a hard overhead cut.
It was a plain strike, but honed to perfection.
The angle was clean.
The timing caught the Other before it had fully settled its footing.
Gared had never learned any elegant courtly swordplay.
He had only forty years of experience and repetition, but this blow seemed to gather all of it into one stroke.
If the Sword of the Morning had climbed out of his grave, he would still have needed to take that cut seriously.
For one instant, the old ranger even felt sure of it.
‘Aeg will not need to finish it.
This strike ends the fight.’ Even if the blow were blocked, he could draw back into a side cut and force the creature to keep defending.
Then Aeg could attack it from behind and finish the damned thing.
Best of all, if they killed the Other that had come right to them and carried proof back to the Wall, neither of them would have to risk becoming a deserter.
It was a sharp, deadly blow.
Against a human opponent, it would have been a serious problem.
The plan failed at the first clash.
Gared’s sword broke.
The fine blade Waymar Royce had brought from home had barely lasted a few exchanges against an Other’s ice sword.
The standard weapons used by common men of the Watch were ordinary steel at best, and only just worthy of the name.
Their toughness and strength could not compare with fine castle-forged steel.
The instant Gared’s blade met the Other’s weapon, it shattered at the point of impact, snapping in two and throwing off several fragments with a flat, ugly crack.
In more than fifty years, Gared had never seen anything like it.
That single stunned heartbeat was enough.
The Other calmly drove its ice sword into him.
“No!” Aeg’s eyes went wide with horror.
When Gared clashed with the Other, Aeg was still two yards away.
He had no time to support him, no chance to make the plan work.
He could only watch his companion fall.
Aeg had never loved or revered Gared.
The old man had spent forty years in the Watch and remained an ordinary ranger, while Aeg’s former life had been that of an educated engineer.
Back then, he would never naturally have formed a close friendship with a laborer thirty years his senior whose life and experience were so different from his own.
It was not contempt.
They simply had little common ground in age, education, habits, or interests.
But none of that changed what was happening in front of him.
With a desperate shout, Aeg charged the Other from behind.
✦ ✦ ✦ Want to keep going?
I hope this chapter gave you another reason to stay with the story.
There’s still plenty ahead, and things are only starting to unfold.