Battle of the Fist of the First Men

Lord Commander Jeor Mormont gathered a column of three hundred brothers, the largest the Night's Watch had sent beyond the Wall in a long time, to look for the vanished wildlings and, if possible, find Benjen Stark. Two-thirds came from Castle Black; the rest, from the garrison at the Shadow Tower.

Finding trace of neither, Mormont refused to turn back empty-handed. He chose an old ring-shaped ruin atop a hill, the Fist of the First Men, and turned it into a fixed camp from which to send out scouting parties in different directions. From there he also hoped to block any wildling advance on the Wall.

Inside the camp another danger was brewing, closer to home. Chett and a knot of disgruntled brothers plotted to kill Mormont and his officers so they could desert without being hunted. The plot came to nothing: the cold, and whatever came down that night, got there first.

Thoren Smallwood's party had just returned to the Fist, and the brothers were waiting on word from the other scouting groups to decide what to do about the wildlings, when the attack came: hundreds of wights surged out of the dark against the camp. Ordinary arrows passed through them without slowing them down; only fire, once Mormont ordered the shafts lit, checked their advance a little.

No one in the Watch had trained for anything like it. Mormont chose to break the ring on horseback before they were fully surrounded, ordering the brothers down in a wedge along the one slope gentle enough to attempt it, the southern one, which was also where the enemy massed thickest. They were already at a gallop by the time they reached the circular wall.

The descent was a confused slaughter: horses stumbling, riders thrown, torches spinning through the air while axes and swords cut through bodies that kept moving even when split in two. The wights did not shy from the horses; the riders rode them down and trampled them, and even fallen they kept clawing at stirrups and legs. Dywen was one of the few who made it down leading pack horses loaded with food, oil, and torches.

Of the brothers who fought at the Fist, most died that night. Only sixty-four made it out of the camp.

Mormont led them south with no food and no supplies, the Others and their wights pressing the rearguard through the dead of winter. Of those sixty-four, forty-four reached Craster's Keep alive; twelve of them badly wounded.