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The Night's Watch truly did have a fleet stationed at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, small in number perhaps, but respectable enough to be called a navy.
Don't be surprised. The Watch does engage in trade too.
Without it, if they had to rely solely on the lords of the North for supplies, they would have starved long ago.
This fleet's daily duties included sweeping the Bay of Seals for wildling smugglers who might slip across by boat and trading with several of the great city-states across the Narrow Sea.
Most of the profits naturally went straight to Castle Black, but Eastwatch, as the harbor and the base of operations, still managed to drink deeply from the leftovers.
Because of that, life at Eastwatch was noticeably better than at the Shadow Tower. The difference was plain to see.
After all, without a bit of wealth, they could never afford to maintain a fleet like this.
Warships are expensive...
Even the lesser nobility of Westeros would never dare dream of owning one.
First, they simply didn't have the means. There were plenty of coastal lords across the realm, yet few possessed a port large or deep enough to serve as a proper naval base.
And even if they did, building such a fleet from nothing would ruin any house below the rank of a great lord. A single seaworthy ship capable of withstanding the storms would be enough to bankrupt them.
Besides, a fleet couldn't be made of merchant vessels alone. You needed warships to guard them, and that was another fortune spent.
So, throughout all Westeros, only a handful of houses could boast a fleet of their own.
As for Eastwatch, it was a barren land with little to offer, yet the fact that it still held a functioning fleet spoke of past glory, the lingering inheritance of an age when their forebears had prospered.
In the days when the Night's Watch was at its height, tens of thousands of men had been stationed along the Wall. Naturally, the Eastwatch fleet had been established during that same flourishing age.
Here, decay came slowly. The damp cold kept the timber from rotting too fast, and the seas were rarely rough enough to batter the hulls apart. As a result, many of their ships were older than most of the men now serving aboard them.
Today was one of the fleet's routine days at sea, a scheduled sweep along the Bay of Seals.
The fat-bellied merchant ships were bound for Essos to haul back supplies, while the Watch's sailors took to the waves to hunt down any wildling rafts or canoes daring enough to venture into their waters, turning them over and letting the icy sea drag their crews down to the Old Gods.
Eight longships in total raised their sails and glided slowly out from the port of Eastwatch.
Each ship was large enough to carry a proper fighting crew, far from the pitiful handfuls now seen on the black-hulled vessels of the Watch.
These were relics from another age. In those days, the garrison at Eastwatch had numbered close to a thousand at the very least.
But now, after years of civil war ravaging the Seven Kingdoms, the flow of recruits to the Wall had all but ceased. With two disastrous expeditions beyond it in recent years, the numbers at Eastwatch had dwindled to a perilously thin level.
So this time, when the eight ships set out to sea, each carried no more than twenty men in total, counting both sailors and fighting brothers alike.
Most of them served in more than one role.
Fortunately, apart from the biting cold, the Bay of Seals was not an unpleasant place to sail.
Under the command of Cotter Pyke, the fleet pushed steadily toward the northwest waters beyond Eastwatch.
The longships had shallow drafts, but even so, they could not hug the coast too closely, or risk running aground.
If a ship were to ground itself in this kind of cold, it would soon freeze fast in place, trapped under a growing crust of ice until it became part of the shoreline.
To avoid that, they kept their distance from land, yet never lost sight of it.
They knew the wildlings' shipbuilding skills were little better than those of fishermen.
Any vessel they made was barely more than a canoe.
If they tried to cross the open sea, it would be suicide, so they always kept close to the shallows, creeping southward along the coast.
Both sides understood this game perfectly well.
Lord Commander Jeor Mormont had sent word claiming the wildlings beyond the Wall were no longer a threat, yet Cotter Pyke had his doubts.
And so, he continued these routine patrols, stubbornly, perhaps even superstitiously.
Before long, he would come to realize how fortunate he was to have made what he would soon call a cursed decision.
…
The lookout, a sailor named Gaspar, wiped the half-melted frost from his eyelashes.
Snow was still falling, heavy and constant. Whenever the flakes that clung to his brows began to melt, the water froze again as soon as it slid down his cheeks.
Since that strange sleep that had fallen over the Wall some time ago, the temperature around Eastwatch had been dropping faster than anyone could remember.
According to the maester stationed there, the cold had already reached what should be considered true winter.
And yet, the Citadel had sent no white ravens to confirm that winter had come.
Perhaps the South was still too warm for those scholars buried in their towers of parchment to feel what the North was truly suffering.
The maester at Eastwatch had sent reports by raven to the Citadel more than once, but each message had vanished without answer, swallowed by silence.
In the end, they could only hold their tongues and pretend that it was still autumn.
After all, since the founding of the Citadel, it had always been the order of things for the maesters to announce each turning of the seasons to every lord across Westeros. Until their white raven arrived, no one, no matter how bitter the cold, would dare claim that the next season had begun.
At that moment, Gaspar was squinting into the dense curtain of falling snow, straining his eyes to see what lay beyond the warship's hull.
Sailing these waters required constant vigilance. Though the waves were not rough, hidden icebergs could appear at any time.
Their ships were made of timber, not iron. If one of them struck an iceberg, there would be no survivors. The ship would shatter, the men would freeze, and the sea would swallow them whole.
That was why the lookout could never relax, not for even a heartbeat. Gaspar had to keep his eyes fixed on the waters in every direction. The moment he spotted danger; he needed to ring the signal bell for the helmsman below.
But gods, this job was hell. Gaspar felt like his face had long since gone numb. He could no longer feel his nose.
Every time he went out on one of these patrols, his face and fingers suffered another round of frostbite.
Fortunately, the Night's Watch had plenty of experience with such things. They knew how to treat frozen flesh, how to keep it from turning black or falling away.
He let out a sharp sneeze and tucked himself a little deeper behind the wooden screen that shielded him from the wind.
Peering out again at the blue-black sea that stretched in every direction, Gaspar decided that things looked calm enough for now. He tugged his hood lower and thought about taking a quick nap.
Men like him had learned to wake up on their own, their bodies tuned by habit to rouse after just the right amount of time.
But just as he was about to close his eyes, something caught his attention.
A faint, milky haze was spreading over the water ahead, rising like a ghost from the waves.
What was that?
It was snowing, yes, but snowflakes always left gaps between them. This was different — the white mist ahead was thick, solid, unnatural.
And worse, it was growing fast.
The speed of it sent a jolt of fear through him. Sleep vanished at once. He grabbed the signal rope and yanked hard.
"Clang... clang..."
The deep toll of the bell echoed across the deck, waking every man on board.
Everyone knew that sound. It was the signal for danger — the lookout's warning of an approaching threat.
The brothers of the Watch instantly stopped their idle talk and leapt into motion, taking up their positions with practiced speed.
Cotter Pyke happened to be aboard this very ship. His voice boomed over the howling wind, shaking loose the snow piled on the sails.
"Gaspar! What did you see, boy?"
But no answer came from the top of the mast.
Men looked up at one another, confused and uneasy. No one knew what had happened up at the lookout post.
Had that lazy bastard fallen asleep and rung the alarm by accident?
If that were true, then the boy was as good as dead. Cotter Pyke was an ironborn, and on his ship, there was no forgiveness for that kind of mistake.
Some of the men were already smirking to themselves, half amused at the poor fool's coming fate.
But before anyone could speak, Cotter Pyke was already climbing. He grabbed the rope ladder and hauled himself upward, his movements quick and angry.
When he reached the top, he found Gaspar still standing there, staring straight ahead. His eyes were so wide they looked as if they might pop from his skull.
Cotter Pyke lifted his hand, ready to slap him awake, but before he could, he caught a faint murmur from the sailor's lips.
"What are you muttering about, boy?"
He barked the words right in Gaspar's ear. The roar jolted the lookout from his trance. Gaspar turned his head slowly toward him, his lips pale and bluish, trembling from cold and terror.
Then he raised a shaking hand and pointed toward the sea ahead.
His voice cracked, thin and hoarse, carrying a note of despair.
"Captain… is… is that a ship?"
Cotter Pyke frowned and turned to look where the boy was pointing.
The moment his eyes focused on the horizon, he froze.
A vast wall of white fog was rolling toward them, thick and heavy as if it were solid, swallowing the sea as it came. It looked like a moving Wall, bearing down upon them with the weight of winter itself.
And inside that fog, half veiled and half revealed, loomed the dark outline of a colossal ship.
Its sails were black as pitch, its shadow enormous — at least four or five times larger than their own warship.
Gaspar hadn't been seeing things. The lookout was right.
Cotter Pyke's mind stayed clear, even when every instinct screamed at him to run. His nerves, tempered by a lifetime on the sea, kept him steady.
He snatched at the rope bell and yanked hard.
"Clang... clang..."
The deep sound rolled through the ship once more.
Without wasting another heartbeat, Cotter Pyke swung himself down the rope ladder, sliding fast enough to burn his palms.
He landed on deck before the bell's echo had faded and bellowed orders with the force of a storm.
"All sails up! Starboard side forward! Send word to the ships behind us — prepare for engagement!"
The small-statured commander from the Iron Islands looked half-mad, his voice cracking through the wind like a whip.
Only then did the rest of the sailors begin to see what he had seen.
That wall of white was surging toward them, swallowing sea and sky alike.
Gasps burst from every mouth on deck. The men stared at the oncoming whiteness with wide eyes, fear tightening their throats. Each of them could sense it now. Something was terribly wrong.
"What is that thing?"
The question came from one of the younger sailors, his teeth chattering as he spoke.
Another man, equally pale and trembling, managed a shaky reply.
"I... I don't know."
From where they stood, that wall of mist looked like a second Wall. Its sheer size and unnatural weight pressed down on them until even the air felt heavy.
"Is it... the god of cold?" someone whispered, his voice barely audible above the sea wind.
Cotter Pyke swallowed hard. Even he, with all his years at sea, could not stop the chill that crept through his chest. Faced with such a sight, who wouldn't be afraid?
But he also knew one thing. If they kept staring, if they kept waiting and whispering, then before that fog even reached them, their courage would already be gone.
So, he forced himself to move.
Straightening his back, Cotter Pyke strode to the bow. He drew his long sword and raised it high, the steel catching what little light remained before the mist swallowed it.
"Enough staring!" he roared. "Hold the helm steady! Keep the lines tight! Let's see what kind of monster hides in that fog!"
His voice cracked across the deck like a whip. The crew flinched but obeyed.
Behind him, the seven ships of the fleet received the order and moved quickly into formation. Their masts rose through the snow-filled air like black spears, banners snapping in the wind as they followed Cotter Pyke's flagship into the unknown.
They were soldiers of the Seven Kingdoms, trained for battle and hardened by years at sea. Even under fear, their discipline held.
All eyes were fixed ahead as the flagship plunged first into the heart of the mist.
The world vanished.
Everything turned white. Then, all at once, a surge of unbearable cold slammed into them.
It was sharper than any wind they had ever felt, colder than the waters of Bay of Seals in the dead of winter.
Cotter Pyke gasped, realizing that he wasn't breathing air anymore. Each breath felt like he was drawing shards of ice into his lungs.
Every inhale burned, every exhale tore at his chest.
Around him, the others felt the same. Their skin ached, their joints stiffened, their breath came out as clouds of frozen vapor.
"Where is it?" Cotter Pyke muttered to Gaspar, who had climbed down from the mast and now stood beside him, sword in hand.
"I don't know, Captain... Wait, why's it gone dark?"
Before he could finish the sentence, the light around them vanished.
It was as if someone had snuffed out the world's last lantern. The entire ship was swallowed by a shadow so vast it felt alive.
Gaspar's breath hitched as he heard his captain's voice, that was colder than the sea itself.
"It's here..." Cotter Pyke said. "Right beside us."
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[CHAPTER END]
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