Chapter 167

The Night's Watch brothers, all disarmed, followed the gray-cloaked guardsman who had vouched for them through the gates of the Red Keep. To Aegor’s surprise, their destination wasn’t the Tower of the Hand as he had anticipated. Instead, they stopped in a small square along the path leading to Maegor’s Holdfast, where none other than Eddard Stark awaited them.

As Hand of the King, Eddard had many pressing matters to attend to that day. Leaving his office was not something he did lightly. He hoped these men of the Night’s Watch, who claimed to have brought him a "wight," weren’t wasting his time. If they were, Eddard Stark was prepared to show them that even his patience had limits.

“Lord Hand.” The Night’s Watch brothers greeted him with respect, bowing slightly.

Eddard nodded curtly in acknowledgment, sparing no words. His attention was immediately drawn to the reinforced wooden cage mounted on the cart. Without hesitation, he stepped closer to inspect the creature inside.
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The wight, devoid of fatigue and without the cunning of its White Walker masters, lashed out relentlessly at the closest warm body it could sense. It thrashed against the cage with such ferocity that the entire cart shook. Were it not for the sturdy ropes securing the cage and the calm demeanor of the elderly draft horse pulling the cart, the journey from the River Gate to the Red Keep would have likely ended in disaster.

“This is a wight?” Eddard Stark was a man of reason, an educated highborn of the North, with a critical mind tempered by years of war. His skepticism was natural. Like Tyrion before him, he questioned, “It looks more like a madman afflicted with some disease.”

This doubt was easy enough to address. It only required a reenactment of the "wight demonstration" performed earlier outside the gate. Unfortunately, the Night’s Watch had been stripped of their weapons upon entry.

Luckily, the gray-cloaked guardsman who had witnessed the earlier demonstration stepped forward. “My lord, the black brothers showed us at the gate—this man cannot be killed.”

Eddard, ever the pragmatist, said no more. He extended his hand, requesting the guard’s steel sword, and after a glance at the Night’s Watchmen, he spoke evenly: “If I stab this man and he dies…”

“Then do with us as you see fit,” Ser Alliser Thorne replied without hesitation.

(If this thing is still alive, killing it would be a mercy.) With that thought, Eddard made his decision. Wasting no time, he drove the blade precisely into the wight’s chest, aiming for its heart.

The blade slid in cleanly, and when Eddard pulled it free, the weapon was coated with a translucent, greasy fluid. A foul stench wafted from the substance, though what it was, no one could say.

Eddard inspected the blade and turned his gaze back to the caged figure. Despite the fatal blow, the creature remained just as animated as before, clawing and gnashing at the air as though nothing had happened. The somber lines of Eddard’s face deepened as he stood there, silent and unmoving, lost in thought.
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“Perhaps there’s a disease that can make a man impervious to mortal wounds,” Ser Alliser added, sensing Eddard’s lingering doubt. “But there is one trait of the wight that no living man could possess: even if you cut off a limb, it will continue to move.”

“Cut off a limb?” Eddard raised an eyebrow.

“Any limb,” Alliser clarified. “Even its head. Sever it from the body, and it will still writhe until it completely rots. The arm sticking out of the cage there? That would make a fine demonstration. One for the Hand of the King, and one for King Robert.”

Eddard said nothing, but his actions spoke for him. With a practiced motion, he raised the sword and brought it down cleanly on the wight’s outstretched arm. The severed limb fell to the ground with a dull thud.

Returning the sword to the guardsman, Eddard bent down and picked up the dismembered arm. To his surprise, the fingers curled and flexed, grasping at the air as though it still sought to cling to life. The sight was as unnatural as it was disturbing.

Eddard was no stranger to severed limbs—he had seen plenty on the battlefield. But dismembered appendages that continued to move with deliberate strength, as though guided by purpose, were an entirely different matter. As he examined the arm more closely, the hand suddenly gripped his forearm. Eddard tried to shake it loose, but the grasp was unnervingly strong.

A nearby guard, startled, drew his dagger and pried the wight’s fingers open, freeing Eddard from its grip. Though the moment wasn’t truly perilous, the sheer unnaturalness of the situation darkened Eddard’s already grim expression.

“This is a wight,” Eddard murmured, his voice low and cold. “And there are thousands of these things beyond the Wall?”

His thoughts immediately turned to the North. The Stark bannermen, the smallfolk of the Gift, the scattered villages dotting the vast wilderness—if these creatures swarmed south, the North would bear the brunt of the invasion. “Why has the Night’s Watch discovered this only recently?”

“They’ve only appeared in the past year,” Ser Alliser explained solemnly. “The wights followed the White Walkers’ return. And it’s not just men—they can raise wolves, bears, any creature that dies. Every corpse beyond the Wall adds to their numbers.”

Faced with undeniable proof, Eddard could no longer dismiss the threat. His tone shifted, becoming resolute. “Is there no way to kill these creatures? Surely the Night’s Watch has found something.”

“There is a way,” Ser Alliser replied gravely. “They burn. The fluid coating their bodies makes them highly flammable. Once ignited, they burn quickly and completely, leaving nothing behind. Fire is the most effective weapon against them. However, the same cannot be said for their masters, the White Walkers. Aegor killed one with a dragonglass dagger, and that has been confirmed by our rangers, who have successfully used dragonglass-tipped arrows. Dragonglass is effective against the White Walkers, but its use against wights is far more limited.”

Eddard’s gaze shifted to Aegor. From the moment the young man had followed Benjen Stark to Winterfell, claiming to have slain a White Walker, Eddard had thought him a liar. Over time, he had come to see Aegor as clever and resourceful, but his deep-seated distrust had never fully faded.

Had he misjudged him? Was Aegor truly a “White Walker slayer”?
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“What do you mean by ‘limited’?” Aegor interjected, his curiosity piqued. “Can dragonglass kill wights or not?”

“It can, but only if it strikes a vital point,” said Domi, a ranger who had seen wights firsthand. “Hitting the head or chest usually works, but we’ve found that larger wights—like giants or bears—don’t go down so easily, even with a hit to the head. Wights commanded by White Walkers are even harder to kill. On the other hand, flaming arrows almost always kill wights in one shot. Fire is the most reliable method.”

“But flaming arrows are impractical outside of a siege,” Alliser added with a shrug. “In open battle, you’d need to light them individually before firing. That’s impossible in the chaos of a skirmish. Still, I have here a letter from Lord Commander Mormont, addressed to you and King Robert. He instructed me to deliver it only after you’ve seen the wight, to avoid any ‘raven misunderstandings’ due to the maesters’ disbelief in wights and White Walkers.”

Eddard took the letter and began to read, his brow furrowing deeply as his eyes scanned the page. Nearby, Jaqen H’ghar requested the still-moving severed arm from one of Eddard’s guards, studying it with an expression of fascination and disbelief. Aegor, meanwhile, fell silent, lost in thought.
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So dragonglass worked against wights, but only under certain conditions? The revelation unsettled Aegor. He had spent the entire morning rushing to meet the escort team and had had no time to discuss these findings with them. Now, as he listened, he recalled the conversations he’d had on Dragonstone with Melisandre, where they had discussed the nature of White Walkers.

White Walkers were almost entirely constructs of magic, impervious to physical harm but vulnerable to specific countermeasures. Wights, by contrast, were corporeal—animated corpses infused with necromantic ice magic that linked them to their masters.

Wights had no vital points, yet dragonglass sometimes worked. Aegor theorized that the magic within the dragonglass might disrupt the ice magic binding the wight to its master. This would explain why larger wights, or those near White Walkers, were harder to kill—they had more magic sustaining them or a nearby source replenishing it.

If his theory was correct, it raised two alarming questions. First, could this captive wight, far from the lands of eternal winter and its master, eventually exhaust its magic and collapse into a lifeless corpse? And second, could wights “killed” with dragonglass beyond the Wall be reanimated by the White Walkers again?

As these troubling thoughts churned in his mind, a booming voice interrupted his reverie. Barristan Selmy approached swiftly, his expression urgent. “Eddard, I’ve been looking for you. What are you doing here?”