Night Raid

"Woooo—"

A deep horn blast tore through the stillness of the night.

It also roused Samwell, who had not been asleep to begin with.

He sprang up from the ground and shouted:

"Form ranks! Form ranks!"

After a brief moment of panic, the recruits quickly formed up around Samwell.

Discipline and order had been the core of Samwell's training for the past four months.

Through constant emphasis and repetition, they had finally seeped into the recruits' blood, becoming as instinctive as muscle memory.

Under the hazy moonlight, Samwell could already make out dark figures appearing in the passage leading in and out of the valley.

The Wildlings had taken the bait, just as expected.

Once they heard the horn, the Wildlings knew they had been discovered. They no longer bothered concealing their intentions and began letting out strange howls:

"Awooo! Awooo—"

For a moment, the howls echoed throughout the valley, startling countless beasts and birds from their sleep.

They also left everyone in the camp pale with alarm—

There were too many Wildlings!

Hidden by the darkness, no one could tell exactly how many there were. But judging by the noise and momentum, there had to be several thousand!

Could they really hold against such overwhelming numbers?

Standing atop a small mound at the valley entrance, Samwell watched the dense mass of shadows charge toward him like madmen. Yet his heart was strangely calm.

So calm that even he was surprised.

Calmness in the face of great events.

It was a state of mind he had longed for but never attained in his previous life.

Yet after transmigrating, he had somehow mastered it for no apparent reason.

Before deciding to kill Carter last time, he had hesitated. Even after killing him, he had felt lingering fear, panic, and even nausea.

But when he faced Carter hanging upside down before him, he had been utterly calm. Even when Todd Flowers roared and charged at him, he had not hesitated to kill in order to establish his authority.

This time was the same.

Before the battle, he had tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He had worried that Todd might truly betray him, worried that he had misjudged the number of Wildlings, worried that his four months of military training had been nothing but a joke, worried that he would die miserably on some nameless little mound before he ever got to join this Game of Thrones...

But when the black tide of Wildlings truly surged toward him, Samwell suddenly became free of all distractions.

All hesitation, worry, and fear had fallen away. Only one thought remained in his mind—fight to the death!

"Release!"

At Samwell's command, the soldiers shoved the boulders and logs they had prepared down the mound.

Rumble—rumble—

Driven by gravity and momentum, boulders and logs rolled down the slope, smashing heavily into the Wildlings who had just rushed into the valley entrance.

In an instant, blood and flesh flew as screams rang out without end.

This opening blow crushed the Wildlings' arrogance and gave the nervous recruits facing battle for the first time a moment to catch their breath.

"Raise shields!" Samwell's voice rang out again.

The soldiers in the front row reflexively raised their massive wooden shields before them, their eyes fixed anxiously on the charging Wildlings.

Under the moonlight, they could now clearly see the Wildlings' savage faces.

Fear was unavoidable, but they did not move.

Their comrades stood behind them, and so did their lord.

For more than four months, Samwell had not taught them complicated fighting techniques. He had only made them repeat the simplest, most basic combat movements, with one sole requirement: they had to be orderly, they had to act as one, and they had to obey commands!

Countless tedious repetitions had formed muscle memory in these soldiers. No matter how nervous or afraid they were, once they heard a command, they would instinctively carry out the tactical movement.

In single combat, every one of these recruits had fatal flaws. Their movements were stiff, their reactions sluggish, and their methods rigid and monotonous... But once arranged in formation, they became terrifying killing machines!

Perhaps even Samwell himself did not fully understand what an army capable of obeying every command, moving in unison, and maintaining order truly meant in an age of cold weapons.

And tonight, deep within the Red Mountains, this fledgling army would reveal its bloody fangs for the first time.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Many recruits in the front row shut their eyes, planted their feet firmly, and desperately withstood the Wildlings' first charge.

Fortunately, the wooden shields did not break.

That was hardly surprising.

Though wooden shields were not especially sturdy, the Wildlings' weapons were even worse.

Living in the Red Mountains, they had no access to advanced smelting techniques. Iron weapons were few and far between; most wielded primitive weapons such as stone hammers, wooden spears, and animal teeth.

Moreover, they were attacking uphill, greatly weakening their striking force.

Samwell watched everything with an icy gaze and gave his second command:

"Thrust spears!"

Swish! Swish! Swish!

The spearmen behind the shield-bearers immediately thrust their long spears through the gaps between the wooden shields!

Stab! Stab! Stab!

The sounds of spearpoints piercing flesh rose one after another.

After several rounds of thrusts, the Wildling force that had rushed into the valley thinned considerably.

"Draw blades!"

At Samwell's third command, the soldiers in the last row drew their long blades, passed through the ranks of spearmen and shield-bearers, and hacked at the still-screaming Wildlings.

After a round of finishing strikes, before the next wave of Wildlings could charge in, the swordsmen immediately withdrew back into formation. The shield-bearers raised their shields once more to meet the next assault.

And so the cycle repeated.

After several rounds, Samwell saw fatigue beginning to show on the soldiers' faces and ordered:

"First group, fall back! Second group, replace them!"

Because the terrain at the valley entrance was narrow, Samwell had long ago divided his soldiers into three groups to rotate through the fighting.

Naturally, every group had exactly the same troop composition and tactical arrangement.

Raise shields, thrust spears, draw blades...

Monotonous, repetitive, and utterly dull.

But also utterly effective.

Not long after the battle began, the slope at the valley entrance was already carpeted with Wildling corpses.

Even these recruits facing battle for the first time were astonished by the casualties they had inflicted.

Of course, it was their first battle. They were bound to be nervous and make mistakes. Yet even so, the Wildlings found it difficult to inflict much damage on them, for they were protected by leather armor as well.

Superior equipment, favorable terrain, seamless coordination, sound tactical arrangements, and Samwell's calm command on the field—through repeated rotations and slaughter after slaughter, the recruits grew more skilled and more confident.

Blood stained their bodies red and washed away their youthful inexperience.

The steps for a recruit to become a veteran were really that simple—survive a battle, kill an enemy, and live through it.

The hundred-odd recruits Samwell had conscripted from the Mander River docks were undergoing just such a transformation.

As time passed, their movements became increasingly unified, increasingly concise and efficient.

No matter how fearlessly the Wildlings charged, they could never shake this seemingly thin line of defense. They could only leave corpse after corpse at the valley entrance.

The thick stench of blood filled the entire valley. Under Samwell's command, the soldiers on the mound seemed to have fused into a machine born solely for slaughter.

Life was its fuel, blood its lubricant, and the enemy's fear its greatest glory.