42
Chapter 42: Part XLIINotes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I own nothing, just borrowing for a while.
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The Red Keep - King's Landing – 299 AC
"My wholehearted apologies for my tardiness, My Lords" Octavian bade the Small Council as he entered the council chamber to find everyone already there and sat down. "Please don't rise on my account Lord Tyrell" he told the Master of Ships who had immediately started to get up. "As always I'm merely here as an observer."
The other members of the council had kept their seats knowing that the boy king had long made clear his view that they were the ones in charge, at least until the end of Eddard Starks regency, and as such he was their political, if not social, inferior. Unusually the entire Small Council was in attendance, usually at least one or two had to deal with more pressing matters, but it was difficult to envision a more pressing matter even existing than the one they considered today.
"No apologies necessary, Your Grace" Eddard Stark replied as the king took his seat. "You're not late as we hadn't started but it is unusual for you to merely be on-time as opposed to extremely early."
"We worried that you might have taken ill" Tywin Lannister told him.
Octavian smiled. "I'm hale and hearty, I assure you" he responded. "I was merely delayed at my previous appointment and thought it would be unseemly if the king was observed running through the streets of King's Landing to get back on schedule."
"I'm sure Ser Arys was grateful he didn't have to try and keep up" Ser Barristan Selmy suggested, clearly amused by the idea of the kingsguard assigned to Joffrey having to match the boy's pace whilst clad in full plate.
"I assume you've read the copies of the communications from Castle Black delivered to your quarters though, Your Grace?" Tywin checked.
"Oh, of course" Octavian replied. "I read through them over breakfast" he confirmed.
"That's a relief, if he wasn't early and hadn't done the reading I would have suspected he'd been abducted and replaced by an imposter" Lord Renly Baratheon observed in jest though few felt like laughing.
Ser Barristan Selmy turned to the Lord Regent. "Before we get underway I must tell you that I am deeply sorry that it appears your son Jon was not amongst that on the list of survivors I saw, Lord Stark" Ser Barristan interjected with a sorrowful expression. "I will offer up a prayer for his soul" he added with sincerity.
"A later missive from Castle Black that you may not have seen advised me that he wasn't with them at the Fist, Ser Barristan" Eddard Stark replied. "It seems that Lord Commander Mormont added him to the company of a long-range patrol sent off well before the battle" he explained. "I do not know where he is, or even if he still lives regardless, though I suppose better that than to know for certain he was killed."
"In that case my prayer will be that he returns alive and unharmed" Barristan told him.
"As will all of ours" Tywin added for the group. "I trust you will also pass on our thoughts and prayers to your family."
"I will and thank you" Eddard Stark replied. "His Grace the King was kind enough to call upon me and my daughters early this morning to do so personally."
Octavian adopted a sad expression. "I hope Lady Arya is less upset now, she seemed quite beside herself" he said. "Being older the Lady Sansa was of course more stoic and composed but if there is anything within my, admittedly limited, power to be of assistance to either of them in this trying time they have only to ask."
"Thank you, Your Grace" Eddard Stark replied, recalling the lad making much the same courteous and gracious offer at Winterfell after Bran's fall from the tower. "Shall we begin with the business of the day, My Lords?" he asked rhetorically, putting aside his own feelings for now and getting on with the business of government as he believed a diligent and conscientious Lord Regent should.
"Before we do is there anyone that doubts the witness statements as dictated by Lord Commander Mormont?" Tywin checked.
"If there weren't also letters of verification by both Lord Beric Dondarrion and Ser Damion Lannister I might still have some doubts" Renly told the group, "But the notion that they are all playing a cruel jape at our expense seems implausible. Even setting aside the testimonials of other men of the Night's Watch that survived the battle at the Fist of the First Men we have received."
"With more yet to come I'm informed" Grand Maester Pycelle announced. "The additional maester I assigned to Castle Black to assist maester Aemon can only transcribe their witness statements so fast and the number of ravens at his disposal is itself far from unlimited."
"I imagine the ravens have to rest for some time before setting out on such a long return flight" Octavian surmised.
"Indeed, Your Grace" Pycelle confirmed. "Unfortunately the scarcity of large castles, towns and cities in the North, along with its sheer size, limits our capacity to get an excess number of messages to their destinations" he said. "In the South we can utilise many more indirect routes if necessary. For example, if we did not have enough ravens trained to fly all the way from King's Landing to Old Town we could, if required by circumstances, have a message carried first to Ashford, then to Highgarden and thence onto Old Town, the note carried by a different raven for each leg of the journey."
"Slower than the direct route but still far swifter than a chain of dispatch riders could ever manage nonetheless" Tywin noted. "Not that dispatch riders would be much use in the North once the snows arrived in earnest in any case though I'm sure."
Stark nodded. "Once the drifts are higher than a man's head riding through them becomes tricky" he remarked with some wry northern understatement. "Additional maesters and ravens at the wall will be required to ensure the swift handling of all communications in future Grand Maester. Please see to it" he requested.
Pycelle nodded. He would wait until later before making sure the Crown would be covering the additional expense incurred, doing so at the moment would incur a scathing glare from Tywin Lannister at the very least.
"Is it too much to hope for that we know any more about these White Walkers or what they want?" the Master of Coin, Lord Petyr Baelish, inquired.
Pycelle pursed his lips. "Most of what we know, or think we know, is gleaned from stories passed down by our ancestors but at least some of it seems to be verified by recent events, My Lord" the Grand Maester told him. "Old books of legend kept in the citadel, along with others housed in the Library at Castle Black, tell that they were invulnerable to the bronze swords and spearheads of the First Men, and unfortunately from the recent accounts that also seems to be the case for modern steel" he said. "Fortunately there are several mentions of their weakness to obsidian weapons, though referred to as 'dragonglass' in the stories, which have also been borne out" he added in a more upbeat manner.
"Can you perhaps give us any particular examples from your researches?" Tywin Lannister requested.
"I can, Lord Hand" Pycelle confirmed. "There is, for instance, an intriguing reference that after the Long Night the Children of the Forest agreed to supply the Night's Watch with a hundred dragonglass blades each year" he said. "It is of course said that the Children solely employed obsidian weapons, that being the reason why the bronze of the First Men gave the latter such an advantage in battle against them in earlier wars, but I must wonder if the reason the Children continued to use obsidian even after they learned of its inferiority was that they were more fearful of the White Walkers than they ever were men" he suggested.
Octavian looked thoughtful as he pondered Pycelle's words. "If we're indulging in speculation then perhaps the reason why the Pact which ended the long war between the Children of the Forest and the First Men was agreed was a mutual realisation that the White Walkers were the greater threat to both of them" he theorised. "Perhaps the Long Night that occurred later was not the first White Walker invasion but merely the largest and most destructive."
"As a young boy I was told stories that the White Walkers brought winter with them but perhaps it was the reverse" Eddard Stark himself wondered aloud. "They could only venture so far south of the Lands of Always Winter when it was cold enough to do so and had to retreat when summer came."
"Meaning perhaps that in only the very longest and coldest winters could they go about their diabolical business" Tywin supposed. "It may have been a cyclical thing. Every few decades, or centuries, Westeros would suffer a long, cold winter and the White Walkers would march south and slaughter everyone in their path" he said, "a cycle that only ended due to them suffering a catastrophic defeat to an alliance of the First Men and the Children that they barely survived."
"And then a colossal fortification was raised to prevent them trying another invasion after they licked their wounds and recovered their losses" Ser Barristan suggested, running with the theory.
"This would be completely idle speculation on my own part" Octavian added for himself. "But if they are perhaps like dragons, by which I mean they can live for centuries or more but as a result don't produce many offspring, it could take a very long time for them to recover from a particularly massive drop in population following a particularly destructive war" he said. "There must be some reason why it's taken them literally thousands of years to make their presence known again. Perhaps that is it?"
"If Craster's wives, or should I say daughters are to be believed the White Walkers turned his sons into their own kind" Tywin pointed out. "Though it appears they did not actually witness this occurring themselves."
"I for one would certainly be dubious of that without more evidence grandfather" Octavian cautioned. "Firstly, how would they know, and secondly if the White Walkers could increase their numbers so easily why haven't we seen them again before now?" he asked rhetorically. "Isn't it more likely that they were taken as human sacrifices of some kind? Valyrian magic seems to have been based upon it, as does the arcane practices of other groups."
Varys looked uncomfortable. "The king may be right" he spoke up, voice uncharacteristically shaky. "Where I hail from in Essos not all mystics, sorcerers and warlocks are charlatans" he told the group. "Blood sacrifice, human sacrifice, is a means to acquire powers and abilities that cannot be obtained otherwise. Recall that the Old Gods of Westeros, the religion of the Children of the Forest later adopted by the First Men, required blood sacrifices themselves and it took the coming of the Andals to end the practice."
"The White Walkers wouldn't even be unique in the world today for practicing child sacrifice" Renly noted with distaste. "We've all heard the stories that the Qohorik are known to offer up their own children to the Black Goat in the direst of times."
Pycelle nodded. "The efforts they went to in order to prevent Maester Pol learning how they are the only people still able to replicate Valyrian metalworking techniques is telling" he remarked. "Although my Order is usually sceptical of mystical explanations, preferring more grounded ones, there has always been the stench of foul blood magics in their crafts" he said. "On that note other stories about the White Walkers speak of them wielding unbreakable swords of crystal ice which were so cold that metal swords shattered against them."
"At least we know dragonglass can kill them" Eddard Stark stated with evident relief. "I know that it can be obtained from both Skagos and Dragonstone so we're going to want to exploit those sources forthwith. As a material it might be too brittle to make swords from but arrowpoints and spearpoints can be made, as well as more daggers such as the one Lord Randyll Tarly's son used of course."
Tywin turned to the Master of Ships. "Lord Tyrell, given that House Tarly is one of your own principal vassals perhaps you can congratulate Lord Randyll for his son's achievement on behalf of the Small Council" he requested. "With the Lord Regent's agreement of course" he added, looking to Eddard Stark for a nod of approval which he received.
"Perhaps it's unsurprising that the only man in thousands of years to bring down a White Walker is the son of the man that handed my father his only battlefield defeat during his rebellion against the Mad King" Octavian remarked. "The apple tends not to fall too far from the tree" he observed, wondering why it seemed that both Varys and Littlefinger were now holding back laughter. "Do we know of any other weaknesses the foe may have, Grand Maester?" he asked Pycelle, ignoring the mirth of the spymaster and the schemer, clearly a private joke they shared.
"According to more than one account fire dismays them, which may be because of them preferring the cold, but given that burning corpses prevents them being raised as Wights there may be more to it than that" Pycelle replied.
Octavian looked a little smug, this was hardly his least favoured expression. "That is why I was almost late to the Small Council" he told the others. "Whilst at the Guildhall of the Alchemist's Guild earlier I ended up in a fascinating conversation with Lord Wisdom Hallyne as to how wildfire thickens and becomes safer to handle when cold. He believes this will make it less hazardous to use as trebuchet ammunition up at the Wall than it would be here although we would still wish to manufacture the substance there because it's never going to be suitable for long-distance transportation."
"You went to the Alchemist's Guild to order them to produce wildfire to fight the White Walkers with without talking to either myself as Hand or the Lord Protector first?" Tywin responded coldly, narrowing himself. "You're not in charge yet. Please remember that, Your Grace" he chided.
Octavian blinked. "Oh no, you misunderstand grandfather" he told Tywin. "That was merely an incidental conversation I had, I didn't go there to order the Guild to produce wildfire, I was there to ask their advice on a thought I had and if they could perhaps give it some more thought themselves and collect some samples for future experimentation."
"What thought, Your Grace?" Eddard Stark queried.
"Oh, it's just that I wondered if, given that the White Walkers are vulnerable to obsidian, perhaps they could be choked or poisoned by the volcanic ash that also spews from the fire below" Octavian told him. "Or blinded by it perhaps, given that they do seemingly have eyes."
Renly raised his eyebrows. "It's an interesting notion but how would we ever test it?" he asked.
"Throw a sack of pit-sand from a volcano over a White Walker and see what he does" Octavian suggested. "If it works then it's something other than wildfire to load the trebuchets with."
"I suspect the crews actually manning the trebuchets would prefer handling the pit-sand to jars of wildfire but I suspect the White Walkers and Wight would be more concerned about being incinerated than choked or poisoned" Renly opined. "It's inventive though, I'll give you that nephew" he praised Octavian.
It was inventive alright, though not in the way the man believed, Octavian thought to himself. If he could get the Alchemist's Guild playing around with volcanic ash from various sources, along with lime as another 'possible means to blind a White Walker', he could stumble them into inventing concrete which would make Octavian's plans for various civil engineering projects far more viable. It should be less suspicious than 'King Joffrey' suddenly discovering something like that which would have been the alternative if not for this conveniently timed demonic invasion.
"Another account of the Long Night also mentions that the White Walkers cannot stand against dragonsteel, explicitly mentioning a so-called 'last hero' that cut down many with such a sword" Pycelle told the Small Council.
"Dragonsteel? That's… perplexing" Octavian remarked, frowning.
Mace Tyrell smiled, finally he grasped something immediately that the annoying overly-intelligent youth did not. "I believe by that they mean Valyrian Steel, Your Grace" he explained, feeling very proud of himself.
Octavian tried and failed to resist rolling his eyes. "No, Lord Tyrell. The perplexing issue is that the Long Night took place in the Bronze Age before iron or steel was being made" he pointed out. "More fundamentally this was six to eight thousand years ago, depending on which maester's chronology you favour, not that it matters because in either case the Valyrian's were still nought but shepherds with neither dragons nor an inkling of how to make their famous steel as yet."
Once again Mace Tyrell wised he had kept his mouth shut as his mother advised him to do as much as possible.
"There was one steel sword in the world at that time" Eddard Stark felt the need to remind everyone. "It's still around today and I've held it myself" he said. "Dawn, the ancestral sword of House Dayne."
"Forged from a fallen star supposedly" Tywin recalled. "If some people believed that flaming meteors were dragons in the sky that could explain the name, assuming there is any validity to the tale" he said doubtfully.
Eddard Stark leaned forward. "When Lord Beric returns from the North we might wish to talk to his squire about the blade hanging above his mantle at Starfall."
"We're going to be flinging an awful lot of things at these White Walkers to see what kills them most effectively I suspect" Renly surmised. "If we're going to be keeping a book on what ends up working best I'll wager a hundred gold dragons on wildfire."
Unsurprisingly nobody bet any money on volcanic pit-sand to be the weapon that brought the White Walkers low that day, but in the years ahead a great deal of money was made from selling it ready-mixed with lime.
Notes:
Note from the Author:
The Roman Republic, and later the Empire, was able to get an awful lot of impressive civil engineering done thanks to concrete. Their recipe utilised Pozzolana (volcanic ash or 'pit-sand') mixed with Lime (from limestone) for the cement and it was (and is) incredibly tough and long-lasting. Look at the Pantheon Dome, the Fort of Portus Adurni or the breakwaters of Caesarea Maritima for just three examples of what you can do with the stuff.
Octavian isn't omniscient so he doesn't know that it's true Caster's sons are turned into White Walkers like we do. Thinking they're simple human sacrifices used to generate magics is in line with what he's heard of such things.
Skagos exports a certain amount of obsidian blades as trade, Dragonstone basically sits upon a mountain of the stuff (the still active volcano Dragonmont).
Wildfire becoming thicker and more viscous when cold is canon. Given how unstable it is this is very much a good thing (it should be less likely to accidentally kill you in the frozen north).
The Long Night far predates Valyrian Steel (or the Westerosi Iron Age for that matter) so records of 'Dragonsteel' killing White Walkers is rather odd. Unless they meant Dawn of course. That isn't to say that Valyrian steel doesn't kill White Walkers, it does in the show after all, but how would anybody know that before it's invention? Well unless Bran or Bloodraven was sending messages back in time... which is possible I suppose.