Wight attack at Castle Black

The wight attack at Castle Black is the first direct assault by the undead on the Night's Watch in living memory, shattering the long-held belief that the Others and their servants are only legends and forcing the Watch to confront a supernatural threat that cannot be fought with ordinary steel or courage alone.

The Night of the Attack

Jon Snow woke in his cell in Hardin's Tower to find Ghost scratching at the door, his hackles raised. The direwolf had gone mad, baring his fangs in a silent snarl, and the room was bitterly cold. When Jon opened the door, he found the guard sprawled on the steps, his head twisted completely around. The man was dead, killed without a sound. Ghost slid past him up the stairs, and Jon heard the soft scrape of a boot on stone and the sound of a latch turning from above—from the Lord Commander's chambers. He took the dead guard's sword and followed.

The Wight in Mormont's Solar

Inside the solar, the darkness was absolute. Jon saw a shadow sliding toward the inner door to Mormont's sleeping cell, a man-shape all in black, but beneath its hood its eyes shone with an icy blue radiance. Ghost leapt, and man and wolf went down together, rolling and smashing into furniture. Jon ripped down a curtain to let in the moonlight and saw black hands buried in white fur, swollen dark fingers tightening around Ghost's throat. He brought the longsword down with all his weight, shearing through sleeve and skin and bone, yet the sound was wrong, and the smell that engulfed him was queer and cold. The severed arm and hand fell to the floor, black fingers wriggling in a pool of moonlight.

When the hooded man lifted his pale moon face, Jon recognized him: Othor, one of Benjen Stark's rangers, whose corpse they had found in the haunted forest only that morning. Jon slashed at him without hesitation, cutting him open to the bone, but the corpse felt nothing. The severed arm crawled up Jon's leg, ripping at wool and flesh, and he had to pry the fingers off with the point of his sword. The wight slammed into him, knocking him off his feet, and jammed its black corpse fingers into his mouth, choking him. Its face was against his own, frost covering its eyes, sparkling blue.

The Rescue and the Fire

Lord Commander Mormont, woken by the noise, appeared in the doorway of his sleeping cell with an oil lamp in hand. The severed, fingerless arm was wriggling toward him across the floor. Jon kicked it away, snatched the lamp, and flung it into the puddled drapes he had ripped from the window. The oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. He grabbed a fistful of burning cloth and whipped it at the wight, praying as the flames smothered the corpse. The fire consumed Othor's body as if his flesh were candle wax and his bones old dry wood; whatever demonic force had driven him was driven out by the flames.

Aftermath and Significance

The attack left Mormont's tower gutted on the upper floors, but it also destroyed Othor's murderous corpse. The other wight, the one-handed thing that had once been the ranger Jafer Flowers, had been cut to pieces by a dozen swords, but not before it slew Ser Jaremy Rykker and four other men. Ser Jaremy had hacked its head off, yet died when the headless corpse pulled his own dagger from its sheath and buried it in his bowels. Strength and courage did not avail against foemen who would not fall because they were already dead. The attack proved that the dead could rise and walk, that they could kill, and that fire—not steel—was the only sure weapon against them. It forced Mormont to recognize that the Long Night had come before and that the Night's Watch must remember, and it set the stage for the great ranging beyond the Wall.