Chapter 28

“Seven Hells! They’re making another attempt!” one of the Night’s Watch, an Earic Flowers from the Reach, warned Cotter Pyke, rousing him from his slumber early in the predawn chill of the great maritime castle of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.

“That soon? Either the Night King is more resourceful than I knew, or else he’s just more attempt to get around or capture Eastwatch now. Get a party of men together as quickly as you can, under Ragnar Slait, Sandor Clegane, Theon Greyjoy, and Lord Beric Dondarrion. Add yourself to that mix as well. I need no fewer than five men, no more than eight. And Earic, if you don’t survive this, just remember, I respect you more than you know, even if you are a known bugger,” Pyke assured the famously homosexual Reach bastard, reputedly a former lover to Ser Loras Tyrell, of his admiration.

Earic grinned, even though he personally adored Cotter in ways that the Ironborn commander could not reciprocate. He understood why. Cotter wasn’t his first lover by any means. Earic had actually slept with Renly Baratheon, with Olyvar, with Ser Loras, and with Prince Oberyn Martell. He was never intimate with any women ... except Ellaria Sand a couple of times when drunk. He had ended up on the Wall relatively recently, largely to escape the Faith Militant during the High Sparrow’s reign of holy terror.

Still, he had taken to battle with shocking raw talent for a lifelong catamite ... No one questioned his manhood or courage anymore these days. His mettle had been tested, tried, and proven. Earic Flowers, despite his effeminate name and reputation, was very much a soldier and a man. The softer life of a trollop was almost forgotten with astonishing speed, so wholly had he given himself to his new vocation as a sworn brother of the Night’s Watch.

“They’re forming up with amazing efficiency, given that they’re all dead,” Theon muttered as he bit down on a very hasty breakfast of pickled eel ... there was little else to grab in such a rush.

“Aye, that they are, the rotten bastards,” the Hound acknowledged as he tore off a bit of badly overcooked chicken himself.

Thankfully, there was some mulled wine to make it more tolerable, though they were rapidly running low on that supply as well. Seven Hells, few things were more civilized than mulled wine, and what a blessed warmth it gave one on an accursed, frostbitten Winter’s morn! As for Ragnar Slait, he had to take a very quick piss, and that was when the arrow caught him, right in the groin, poor fellow that he was. It pierced his sack and one of his balls, something rather uncomfortably familiar to Theon in particular.

Maddened by pain and rage, Slait threw himself onto one of the approaching boats used by the wights and caught the blade thrown to him in a rush by Beric Dondarrion. Lord Beric shuddered as he thought the extreme agony faced by Slait, yet the man soldiered on like a true warrior of the North and sworn brother of the Night’s Watch. Slashing through the wights, he was utterly reckless as he burned their oars and sails to the best ability of the blinding, searing pain.

Such was the torment that Ragnar endured that when the fire caught his own flesh, he welcomed that as a relief next to the horrors of the arrow tip in his genitals. By now, the arrow itself had broken off, of course, but the point still lodged in his sack was true suffering on a level that few experienced in their entire lives. That he fought on with all of that pain and torture in this uneven combat was a true testament to his hardiness as a man of the North.