Chapter 17: Tyrion Lannister
The music and revelry were left behind in the hall as Egger stepped out. The cold wind brushed his face, and the empty courtyard was exceptionally quiet. Guards on the inner wall battlements pulled their cloaks tight against the chill. The ranger looked around, spotted the silhouette of the youth, and walked toward him.
"Boy." A strange voice spoke up. Egger couldn't see the speaker, but he knew his memory hadn't failed him; this step was the right one. "Is that a wolf by your side?"
"A direwolf," Jon turned toward the voice. He also saw Egger coming through the door and quickly turned his head back, hiding his tears from them. "Its name is Ghost. What are you doing up there? Why aren't you inside at the feast?"
Egger rounded the pillar by the door and, following the direction of Jon's instinctive gaze, saw Tyrion Lannister. The dwarf was sitting on a protruding ledge above the hall's entrance, looking down at the two of them. If he stayed perfectly still, he might have passed for a gargoyle.
"It's too hot and noisy inside, and I've had a bit much to drink," the dwarf answered Jon's question. "I learned long ago that it's considered poor manners to vomit on one's own brother. May I come closer for a look at your wolf?"
Jon hesitated for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Can you get down by yourself, or should I fetch a ladder?"
"Go on, you think so little of me?" the little man said. He pushed off with both hands and tumbled into the air. He deftly tucked his body mid-flight, landed lightly on his hands, and sprang to his feet with a backflip.
The little direwolf instinctively retreated a few paces. Even Egger had to admit that, given his proportions, Tyrion's feat was quite impressive.
The dwarf brushed the dust from his clothes and smiled. "I fear I've given your wolf a fright. My apologies."
"He isn't frightened," Jon said, leaning down to call him. "Ghost, come here. Come, that's a good boy."
The cub trotted over and affectionately rubbed its snout against Jon's cheek, yet remained wary of Tyrion Lannister. When the dwarf reached out to touch him, Ghost immediately recoiled, baring his teeth in a silent snarl. "A bit shy, isn't he?" the Lannister remarked.
"Ghost, sit," Jon commanded. "There, stay still." He looked up at Tyrion. "You can touch him now. He won't move unless I tell him to. I'm training him."
"I see." Tyrion scratched the snow-white fur between Ghost's ears. "Good wolf."
...
Egger stood to the side, searching for a way to interject and grab the dwarf's attention quickly. As Tyrion fell silent while rubbing the wolf's head, Egger finally seized his opening. "Jon... I hope I may call you that, but I must tell you: your uncle doesn't want you to join for your own good."
"For my own good?" The boy was still resentful. "If he wanted what was best for me, he should have kept his brother in line years ago so I wouldn't have been born into this world!"
"Ah..." Nearby, Tyrion overheard the exchange. He tilted his oversized head, a look of realization dawning on his face. He looked Jon up and down. "You are Ned Stark's bastard. You want to be a Crow, and Benjen refused you?"
Tyrion had deduced the situation from a single line of dialogue—his mind was undeniably fast. Unfortunately, his words were like salt in a wound. Jon bit his lip and stood up, and his wolf moved away from Tyrion's touch at the same moment.
"Ugh... if I've offended you, my apologies," the little Lannister said, immediately realizing his slip. "But why... isn't the Wall a place that ignores birth and values ability? A fine place to dispose of—er, I mean, settle a bastard?"
"Once you see the sprawling tent cities of a hundred thousand wildlings gathered to storm the Wall; giants tall enough to rip a man in half with their bare hands; pale Others with glowing blue eyes piercing your brothers with swords of ice; and men who, once killed and cooled, stand back up again... you won't think it's such a 'fine' place."
"An intriguing summary." Tyrion stood up as well, turning his gaze toward Egger. "First, let me be clear: I respect the Night's Watch. I admire your sacrifice in guarding the realm... though I would never take that vow of yours myself, I do admire you."
The dwarf paused before continuing, "However, I don't believe those tales of giants and wights and monsters. The only difference between us and the wildlings is that when the Wall went up, they happened to be on the north side of it."
"Lord Tyrion, have you ever been to the Wall? Do you realize that the Wall is the largest structure ever built by mankind?"
"That is an established fact." Tyrion shrugged. "Not only the largest, but undoubtedly the most useless."
"The most useless structure?" Egger fought the urge to snort with disdain. The dwarf before him might be friendly and easy to talk to, but in a world with zero concept of equality, the gap in their status was vast. On their first day of meeting, caution was best. "Does my Lord realize exactly how massive the Wall is?"
Tyrion gave Egger an odd look, finding the ranger's manner of speech peculiar. "A hundred leagues long, seven hundred feet high, and wide enough at the top for twelve armored knights to ride abreast... as for exactly how wide that is, I couldn't say."
Egger nodded. "Correct. Those are the official figures from the master builders. But I wager my Lord has never seen a wall a hundred leagues long, nor a building seven hundred feet high. The Hightower in Oldtown is tall, but it pales in comparison to the Wall. You should see it for yourself one day. But even if you don't, I can provide a more intuitive calculation to help you understand what kind of structure it is." Egger spoke with absolute certainty. "Seven hundred feet high, with a width roughly a tenth of its height—let's assume it's seventy feet wide. Before us is the inner wall of Winterfell; its highest point is a hundred feet, and it's about ten feet thick. I've heard my Lord is exceptionally clever, so do you know what it means if the Wall is seven times higher and seven times thicker than the walls of Winterfell?"
What did it mean? Tyrion furrowed his brow. He was rarely stumped. He thought for a moment and understood the man's point. "It means that to build the same length of the Wall as a Winterfell wall, the former requires seven times seven—forty-nine times—the material."
"My Lord's intellect lives up to its reputation," Egger offered a subtle bit of flattery. "Now, the Wall is a hundred leagues long. What does that mean?"
...
The dwarf's frown deepened. Jon Snow stood by, completely bewildered by the calculations and unable to interject. In swordplay and riding, he was likely better than both men combined, but in mathematics, he was no match for Tyrion, let alone Egger, who had received a higher education in another world.
"Allow me to tell you, my Lord. It means that if you tore down the Wall and rebuilt it to the height of Winterfell's inner walls, it would stretch for five thousand leagues. That length could easily encircle the entire North or wall off the Kingsroad and its fields from King's Landing to Winterfell. The weight of the Wall is greater than the fortifications of every city in Westeros combined."
"But the Wall is made of giant blocks of ice," the dwarf calculated roughly, realizing the ranger wasn't talking nonsense, but he still argued stubbornly. "Winterfell's walls are built of stone."
"The weight of stone is roughly double that of ice for the same volume, but considering the gap in engineering difficulty and labor between building a seven-hundred-foot wall and a hundred-foot one, I suggest we call it even." Egger's mind whirled as he steered the conversation back to his intended path. "My Lord just said the only difference between us and the wildlings is which side of the Wall we stand on. I agree. Using your logic, could I say the only difference between Northmen and Southrons is which side of the Neck they stand on?"
"Most Northmen have the blood of the First Men in their veins." The bastard had long forgotten his grievance over his uncle's "insult" in the hall. Feeling like a fool listening to the pair, he finally found a chance to jump in.
"'First Men' simply means the first humans to reach Westeros. It isn't an independent race, nor is it older than any other people," Tyrion corrected Jon's misconceptions. "Biologically, the First Men are very close to the Andals or the Rhoynar; there is no essential difference. So, 'First Men blood' is practically meaningless. It's less about blood and more about heritage and cultural belief."
"Agreed," Egger concurred. "Lord Tyrion, I've read the records. The Wall wasn't built in a single generation. Eight thousand years ago, Brandon the Builder only laid the stone foundations for Winterfell and the Wall. That staggering height of seven hundred feet was achieved over decades and centuries by thousands of Night's Watch builders slowly stacking massive blocks of ice from the frozen lakes of the Haunted Forest."
"The Wall isn't made entirely of ice?" Tyrion raised an eyebrow. "It seems my reading wasn't thorough enough... though it makes sense."
"It matters little what it's made of," Egger said dismissively. "I am a soldier, but I know that if a defensive fortification of this magnitude were built at the Neck, no army of the southern lords could ever threaten the North. Yet the Builder chose to place it at the furthest northern reaches... Even if the first generation of builders were mad, why did their descendants continue the project? Is it that Northmen are inherently defective in the head, or is there another reason?"
"Hmm..." The dwarf rubbed his chin.
"Furthermore," Egger continued without pause, "Records state that at the height of the Watch, Castle Black alone housed five thousand soldiers. The entire night's watch fighting force exceeded ten thousand, not counting servants... That was eight thousand years ago. Whether north or south of the Wall, the population was far smaller than today. There might have been fewer wildlings in the north than there were brothers in the Watch. What, then, drove the Northmen to build and continuously heighten a wall while maintaining such a massive standing army to guard it?"
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