Chapter 10: Interrogation and Self-Defense
"So, you brought back two broken swords just to prove that you and Gared aren't deserters, but heroes who slew a white walker?" After listening to Egger's account of the entire northern patrol, Lord Commander Mormont stared at him with a grim expression, as if searching his face and eyes for any evidence of a lie.
Egger took a breath. "I won't claim to be a hero, for ten days ago I did indeed flee the site of the battle. I neither rescued Ser Waymar Royce nor recovered his body. However, I believe that returning to the Wall to deliver a vital warning of their appearance is far more important and meaningful than throwing my life away against them."
"Dragonglass can indeed kill the Others; many legends record as much." The now-blind Maester Aemon shakily toyed with the homemade Dragonglass dagger Egger had handed over, clearly intrigued by his claim. "If I recall correctly, you are a foreigner who only recently began learning the script of Westeros. How are you so familiar with these legends?"
"Similar legends circulate in my homeland as well. In the past, I always dismissed them as mere myths—until chance brought me here, and I laid eyes upon the Wall..."
The wight horse the Other had ridden still carried the oats intended for fodder. After slaying the creature, Egger had recovered his own spooked horse a few hundred meters away. After feeding it the oats and taking a short rest, he had led the horse back to the Wall with the heavily wounded Gared slung over its back.
Now, he sat in a meeting room warmed to a spring-like temperature by a hearth, facing the high-ranking officers of the Night's Watch for the first time. In the year since he'd been forced into the black, he had tried everything to get the attention of the leadership; now he finally had it, albeit as a suspected deserter under interrogation. "Maester Aemon, you are a man of great learning, so you must understand one principle: if legends from vastly different places contain similar accounts of an ancient event, that event is likely based in truth. The Others exist, and they have returned."
The blind old man nodded. While he couldn't be certain of exactly what had transpired, the latter half of the soldier's statement rang true to him.
"Hmph. If you ask me, he simply gave himself a scratch and found something to snap the swords on to avoid punishment—creating a false image of a hard-fought battle," sneered Alliser Thorne, the master-at-arms, from the side. "This fellow was slippery during training, slacking off at every opportunity. He killed a white walker? Even assuming such things exist?"
Egger did not argue. The master-at-arms wasn't necessarily targeting him out of malice; as a testing engineer who had done technical work before his transmigration, Egger wasn't exactly frail, but he was certainly more pampered than many of the nobles in this world, let alone the commoners born into the Watch. When he first arrived at the Wall, he had struggled with the high-intensity training and slacked off frequently. Though he eventually passed his qualifications, he had undoubtedly left a poor impression on Alliser Thorne.
Then again, the knight—forced into the Watch after the fall of the Targaryen dynasty—was a cynical, bitter, and unsympathetic man. His tone and condescending manner made him disliked by almost every brother in the Watch; Egger could have trained until his lungs burst and still never earned his favor.
"Ser Alliser, have you seen broken swords before?"
"More than you've seen good ones."
"Then please, look at the break points of these two swords I brought back." Though the master-at-arms was his superior, Egger was now a Ranger, and his fate was not for Alliser to decide. He didn't plan on being overly polite. "The swords of the Watch are made of steel. The characteristic of steel is toughness; it isn't brittle like glass or ice. No matter how much force or speed is used to snap a steel blade, there will always be deformation at the break. But that isn't the case here. I went through the trouble of bringing back every shard and both halves of the blades. If you lords piece them together, you will find they fit perfectly back into a complete sword. Without close inspection, you can't even tell where the breaks are."
Commander Mormont raised an eyebrow and followed Egger's suggestion, fitting the pieces together. It was exactly as Egger said. Aside from a few tiny nicks at the edge where shards were lost, the sword remained straight and sharp, looking as though it had never been shattered.
"How is this possible?" the Lord Commander asked, intrigued.
Extreme cold reduces the bonding force between metal atoms, increasing rigidity and brittleness. Simply put, the colder it gets, the less stress and deformation it can withstand. Of course, he couldn't explain this to a group of "ancients" who had never studied physics. Besides, in this cursed magical world, who could guarantee their knowledge was absolute?
"The legends say the white walkers use ice magic; the steel was frozen until it shattered," Egger offered an explanation suited to the setting. "I cannot know the exact cause, but I can promise that no matter who you find or what method you use, you cannot break a similar steel sword in this manner. Lord Commander, you can show these to the First Builder, the First Steward, or Donal Noye, the armorer. If anyone can replicate a break like this in a steel blade, you may treat me as a deserter."
Donal Noye: the one-armed blacksmith of Castle Black. Formerly a personal smith and soldier for House Baratheon, he joined the Black Shirts after losing an arm during the Siege of Storm's End. Before that, he had followed Stannis Baratheon across the Seven Kingdoms, tasted the finest foods, sampled women from every region, and fought in hundreds of battles. It was said he forged the warhammer Robert used to kill Rhaegar Targaryen at the Trident. In the original plot, he would die fighting the Giant King "Mag the Mighty" in the tunnels beneath the Wall—a legendary figure.
Excluding the recent slaying of a white walker, Egger's past held nothing noteworthy. However, he had been a materials testing specialist before his transmigration, and his old office had been right next to a room full of metal property testing equipment, including impact testers. He couldn't compete with Donal Noye in smithing, but when it came to theoretical knowledge of metallic materials, all the smiths in this world combined weren't his match.
To make steel shatter like that, one would need a temperature of at least minus 200 degrees Celsius. In the modern world he came from, only expensive specialized equipment could provide such conditions. A medieval-level smith could easily produce temperatures of two hundred or even two thousand degrees above zero, but two hundred below? They'd have better luck catching an Other and asking it for a demonstration.
Egger's firm expression and confident speech moved the officers behind the long table. They were all of noble birth, but Egger wasn't some backwater peasant. He was a soldier of the Watch; these lords might decide his life or death, but they wouldn't intimidate him with their nobility.
"I sent men to examine the wound on Gared's chest," Maester Aemon broke the silence. "It is most strange. The wound was caused by a sharp object, yet it shows typical symptoms of severe frostbite, localized only to the immediate area of the injury. It took several men half a day just to debride the necrotic tissue. I do not know if Donal can break a sword like this, but I know I cannot replicate a wound like that."
Of the three men with the power to decide, one had tilted toward belief. Egger kept his face neutral, but inside he breathed a massive sigh of relief. No matter the era or location, men of learning and vision were always easier to communicate with. His life, in all likelihood, was saved.
The Lord Commander glanced at the silent First Ranger beside him. "Benjen, he is one of yours. What do you think?"
The head of all Rangers and the only member of House Stark in the Night's Watch looked up. The gaunt but sharp-eyed man had been studying the evidence Egger brought back from start to finish. Hearing the Commander's question, he knew it was time to weigh in.
"We are the Night's Watch, guardians of the northernmost realm," the brother of the Warden of the North began. "Yet regarding the vast, unknown lands beyond the Wall, we truly know little more than the Southrons. I have never seen a white walker, but I would not presume to say they do not exist. Seeing is believing. In a few days, I will personally lead a party of veteran Rangers north to search for Ser Waymar and the creature Egger describes. As for now..."
Under Egger's intense gaze, Benjen paused before delivering his verdict: "The most pressing matter is to inform Ser Waymar's family of his disappearance and find a way to provide them with an accounting. As for Egger, place him in a cell. When I ride north for the next patrol, he will lead the way. Whether his words are true or false, he will have to prove it himself."
...
He was to lead the way, exactly as Gared had predicted.
Egger felt a quiet surge of admiration for the veteran's foresight as two black-clad brothers helped him up and led him out of the room. Just before the door closed, he heard the final words exchanged between Maester Aemon and Benjen Stark: "Before you lead your men north, there is a matter to attend to. A raven brings word: the Hand is dead, and the King is on his way north. Lord Eddard requests you find time to return to Winterfell to join him in the welcome."
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