04 Night's Watch.pdf - Chaos Bleeds

Chapter 2: The Wall & the Giftpractically lost in a grove of sentinel trees. The old fortress, abandonedfor over a century, is but a ghost.Those that know where to look can find the bones of the old castle.Here the bricks of a forge still standing where the armory used to be.There the well that fed the kitchens. But there is no more than scrapsto show that once a thousand men of the Night’s Watch lived and diedand did their duty here.While the structures of Greyguard have fallen, the spirit of the castlelives on in the histories of the Watch. It was men from the Greyguardthat marched against the warriors of the wildling brothers Gorne andGendel. Some say that it was the curse of Gendel that brought Greyguarddown. There are tales told by men who travel that way at night,men of the Watch riding patrols between Castle Black and the ShadowTower. Tales of pale figures glimpsed in the night, gaunt and nakedwith eyes as big as moons and teeth like sharks. Gendel’s children, theysay. Hungry wildlings come up out of the earth from their wanderingsto feed their unwholesome taste for the flesh of men. The commandersscoff at such stories, but the patrols do not camp at Greyguard, whetherthey ride at the top of the Wall or the bottom.The stair at Greyguard was of stone, once. It has collapsed in recentyears, its upper length pushed over by shifting ice. The tunnel that oncewent through the Wall has been so thoroughly sealed that it is practicallyimpossible to see where it pierced the ice if one does not know it already.StonedoorStonedoor was sister castle to Greyguard, and when Greyguard went outto meet Gorne and Gendel and their wildlings, Stonedoor went as well.Stonedoor was further from the battle though, and arrived late. Some saythat’s all that saved them from Gorne’s curse. If so it’s small comfort—timehas left it no less empty than Greyguard and only marginally less ruined.Three floors of the commander’s keep still stand at Stonedoor, thethree above them collapsed years ago littering the ground around it withbroken masonry. The shell of the old common hall stands as well, butroofless and crumbling. Trees grow up within its walls and the mortarbetween the stones is dry and fragile. One wall of the armory is intact,held up by the chimney of the only forge still whole and pieces of thetwo adjacent walls. The rookery is just a heap of stone. The rest havebeen swallowed by the forest, grown over and subsumed in the decadessince the black brothers abandoned the place.The castle was called Stonedoor because, rather than an iron portcullisor gates sealing the tunnel it guarded there was a huge slab of graniteraised and lowered by a pair of chains run through eyelets carved intothe stone. When the Watch left it behind, they took down the chains,blocked the tunnel with stone and ice, and left the stone door in place.The Wall has grown out around it. Now it’s only visible as a darkeningin the ice at the base of the Wall. The same goes for the stone stair thatstood near it. Hardly a hand’s span of stone stands out at any pointalong it, and that is rimed and slick with ice.Hoarfrost HillHoarfrost Hill is a low mount with a cap of stony gravel and steep, grassysides. At its crown sits a tall square tower slitted with arrow loops. Thetower has two gates in it, one to the north and one to the south. The northgate is narrow, only wide enough for a man and a mule to pass throughat once, no more. It is six inches thick, studded with iron and barred fromthe inside. The southern gate is broad—wide enough for a wagon to passthrough—and has three rows of iron brackets for bars, all on the outside.There is no stair at Hoarfrost Hill. Instead, the north door of thetower lets on a long, sloping causeway built of packed earth. To eitherside the causeway slopes steeply to the ground, each side covered inloose gravel, the bottom third of the slope laced with shards of razorsharp rocks. The ramp climbs from the north door of the keep to withinthirty feet of the top of the Wall. The last ten yards was spanned by abridge of timbers, but when they closed up the castle, the black brotherspulled the bridge down after them. Now the gap yawns wide over a pita few hundred feet deep and lined with knives of flint.Hoarfrost Hill has its tunnel, just as all the other castles on the Wall.It stands sealed on the western side of the causeway, nestled into thecrease between the Wall and the ramp. It’s sealed, as are its brothersin the abandoned castles. Many of the castle’s lesser keeps still stand,though empty. To the west, close by the shut up gate through the ice,are the old stables, a small forge and armory, and three low barracks. Onthe east stand the shells of the old common hall, a rookery, and kitchens.Tunnels run beneath the causeway, linking the buildings to either side,and a long, dark stair rises up through the center of the hill giving themen of the tower passage down to the rest of the complex.Hoarfrost Hill is in far better shape than most of the castles of theWatch, but its wells ran dry over a century ago and the nearest water isa league away.IcemarkIcemark holds the Wall ten leagues to the west of the Nightfort. Itconsists of three towers, two of which still stand mostly intact. The thirdtower has been sheared off, the two upper floors and the crenellatedcrown having fallen into the old sept that once stood beside it. Thewooden walls and floors in the broken tower have long since disintegratedthanks to the withering effects of sun, snow, and rain. The othertwo are remarkably well appointed, though infested with rats and hometo a prodigious colony of crows.Away east of the towers a double row of thick wooden posts standsas the only evidence of the barn that served Icemark as stables, andalongside it a small shed with a heap of broken bricks shows where thecastle’s tiny forge once stood.One hundred and fifty years ago, during the reign of Lord CommanderKevan Flint, the garrison of Icemark—nearly three hundred men andboys—vanished. They left no sign. No word or warning. Their quarterswere left just as if they had stepped out to go to the privy. All of them.All at once. Spare clothes were left in their chests, tools at their benches,horses in their stables and food to burn, boil or rot. Lord CommanderFlint did not bother to retake it, believing he would only make desertersout of the men he sent. Instead, he dispatched a troop of builders to sealup the gate, retrieve anything useful, and close the castle up for good.Deep LakeDuring the reign of King Jaehaerys I, Good Queen Alysanne came tovisit the Wall. The Nightfort was already three-quarters empty by thenand suffering for lack of funds to maintain it. It was at her behest theKing bequeathed the New Gift to the Watch, and at her urging thatDeep Lake was built: a smaller, cheaper castle just seven miles east ofthe Nightfort where the Wall bends around a cool, green lake.58