The Glory of the Seven Gods of Ice and Fire

Chapter 169 The Night Watchman is Different Now than Before
The Wall, a high wall standing in the far north, separates the Kingdom of Westeros from the land of the wildlings. It stretches from the Frostfang Mountains in the west to the Bay of Seals in the east.

Due to the huge scale of this wall, there has always been debate about what it was built against. For thousands of years, this high wall was used to fight against the wildlings outside the Great Wall. However, using such a tall wall to fight against the wildlings would be an overkill.

In the legend of Westeros, the Great Wall was built to fight against the White Walkers who almost turned Westeros into a kingdom of the dead, but these supernatural creatures have not appeared in people's sight for thousands of years.

Therefore, to this day, even the most superstitious people believe that White Walkers are just scary things in legends, things that parents use to scare their children.

Under such circumstances, the Night's Watch was declining, and people became increasingly indifferent to it, especially south of the Marsh Neck: since the Wall only existed to help the Northerners fight against the wildlings, what did this have to do with them, the Southerners?

As a result, the South became increasingly indifferent to joining the Night's Watch, and their resentment towards the Night's Watch became increasingly stronger, especially as the Southerners' impression of the Night's Watch became increasingly that of losers in crime and political struggles - to the Southerners, the Great Wall had become a place to harbor scum.

As for the North, the people of the North have a favorable impression of the Legion because of its achievements in resisting the wildlings. The Northern Lords donated resources to the Legion for this reason. In addition, there is the influence of culture. The ancestors still retain the tradition of voluntarily joining the Night's Watch. The stronger the culture of the ancestors, the better their impression of the Night's Watch - and the North has a large number of ancestors.

So, the further north you go, the better people's attitude towards the Night's Watch becomes.

At a time when people's hearts and forms have changed, the decline of the Night's Watch is inevitable, and the reputation of the Legion is getting worse and worse as it accommodates more and more scum.

In recent years, this legion, which once had tens of thousands of soldiers, has declined to less than a thousand people, and cannot even complete the task of defending against wildling raiders. As a result, the donated lands provided by the Night's Watch for food and fodder have suffered intensive harassment from the wildlings, and the local population has been lost. The Night's Watch is powerless to do anything about it and is unable to change the status quo.

However, as the saying goes, everything has its limits. After declining to such a horrible level, everyone thought that the demise of the Night's Watch was only a matter of time, but it was at this moment that the Legion's turn for the better came.

With the beginning of the Eastern Crusade, the arrival of a large number of prisoners and exiles from the East, as well as the support of the Lords of the Holy War - this is the name of the nobles who rose in the expedition - mainly the one favored by the Seven Gods, the Night's Watch ushered in an unprecedented expansion.

Today, the legion's strength has expanded to four thousand people, a size that the Night's Watch has not seen in hundreds of years. The warehouses are also filled to the brim with supplies, with all kinds of armor and equipment available.

So, very rarely, this originally lifeless legion now showed a thriving trend.

Although many of these reinforcements were exiled, there was a world of difference between joining an organization with no future or one that was on the rise.

"The night is coming, and I shall watch from now on, until I die. I shall take no wife, no land, no son. I shall wear no crown, no honor. I shall do my duty, live or die. I am a sword in the dark, a sentinel on the wall, a fire to keep out the cold, a light to bring the dawn, a horn to wake the sleepers, a shield to protect the realm. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come."

In the newly built Church of the Seven Gods, under the leadership of Brother Celeda, a group of volunteer recruits are taking the oath of the Night Watch in front of the seven statues. What is noteworthy is that these Night Watchmen all have a seven-pointed star necklace around their necks, which represents their loyalty to their faith.

The Night Watch monk who usually drinks heavily is now in a completely different spirit than before. After all, in the domain belonging to the old gods, the power of the new gods is growing stronger and stronger. This is a great victory.

Brother Celeda was delighted by the expeditions and miracles in the East, but as a criminal exiled to the Great Wall, he could not leave the wall at all and could only continue to spend the rest of his life beneath this cold high wall.

However, with the increase in the number of believers of the Seven Gods, and the emergence of missionaries brave enough to cross the Great Wall and preach in the tribes outside the Wall, his thoughts have changed. This has made him one of the most enthusiastic and positive people in the Night's Watch. He now firmly believes that the Seven Gods are watching here, and every believer should devote himself to the cause of the Seven Gods.

"It's those Seven Gods followers again. Sooner or later, the Great Wall will become their world."

Not far away, Ser Alliser looked at the sworn followers of the Seven and complained, "There are pagans from the East and so many followers of the Seven. We old folks have to step aside completely. I wonder when Mormont will replace all his staff with these new people."

The Night's Watchmen around Alliser agreed. These people were brothers who joined the Night's Watch at the same time as Alliser or even earlier. The old ones had complaints about the influx of so many newcomers with clear backgrounds. They felt they were being excluded and impacted.

Unfortunately, their complaints are of no use, because these new talents now make up the majority of the Night's Watch and can only blame themselves for their seniority.

Now, everyone is in the Black Castle. Compared with the shaky and poorly maintained fortress in the past, the Black Castle has undergone large-scale renovations. It is much more majestic than before, and a large number of barracks have been added. The Black Castle is now a large fortress with two thousand soldiers.

However, because the number of people increased so quickly, even so, more than half of the night watchmen had to live in tents and shiver in the winter. Many people were even woken up by the cold at night, and their condition during the day was extremely bad.

The Legion's top brass has also noticed this situation, and they have sent people to clean up the Nightfort - the former main fortress of the Legion, which was forced to be abandoned due to the reduction of the Legion's manpower.

However, the Nightfort is a massive fortress, and cleaning it up enough for use would require an extraordinary amount of energy and time. But the thing the Night's Watch has the most is time. There are many fortresses along the Great Wall that have been abandoned for hundreds of years, but they were all cleaned out after the Night's Watch had sufficient manpower.

Now, with the growing strength of the Night's Watch, the once difficult to contain the wildling raids have been solved. After a hundred years, the Great Wall has once again become an impregnable fortress for the wildlings.

Without the wildling raiders, the Gift Land became safe immediately. In the past, the wildling raids had caused the residents of the Gift Land to migrate southward, but now they were back - the tax revenue of the Gift Land was lower than that of ordinary northern territories.

This did not cause dissatisfaction among the lords of the North. The problem of the North has always been too many people, not too few people. Each territory has a population level. If it exceeds this level, then when winter comes, all the people above the level will be gone. Although the North has been experiencing a net outflow of population over the years, as the people of the North have completely relaxed their child-rearing policy, the population loss problem does not seem to be a big problem.

In order to ensure that the rapidly growing Night's Watch would not starve to death, the Northern nobles even collectively relocated a group of people.

The biggest beneficiaries of the once again abundant population of the Gifted Land are the ordinary soldiers of the Night's Watch, who no longer have to face the embarrassment of having to go to Mole's Town to dig for treasure.

As for the top leaders, they have finally become more or less self-sufficient in food and grass. In the past, to put it bluntly, the Night's Watch could only go to the Northern Lords for food to survive. If the Northern Lords became nervous at any time, the Night's Watch would have to starve.

Even the town of Houguan has been revived because of this. However, the people living there now are not people from the North, but "contract laborers" purchased by the Legion.

As the resources in the hands of the Legion became increasingly abundant, the Legion's top brass held a meeting to decide how the money should be used. In the Great Wall, gold and silver did not mean much; the key was how to spend the money.

The final result of the discussion among the top leaders of the Legion was to go to the East to purchase "contract laborers" and sign contracts with these laborers to restore nature after working for a certain number of years. In this way, they would restore the dilapidated infrastructure and population of the donated land.

The Legion actually played a little trick here. After these people worked on the donated land for so long and obtained the land from the Legion, it was not so easy for them to leave when they were free - and this was indeed the case. Among the first batch of contract laborers, most of them chose to stay on the donated land.

"Haha, Jon, Alliser and his gang are complaining again, but there's nothing they can do." A tall young man who joined the Night's Watch at the same time as Jon walked up to Jon Snow. The bastard of Winterfell was feeding his wolf, while his friend Samwell was watching the northern beast carefully, as if he was afraid that the wolf would pounce on him.

"Stop complaining about Elisha's gang, Grenn. He is just a mouth for the old officers to express their opinions. Watch your words, Grenn. They are not just mouths like Elisha."

Jon warned his comrades who were training with him that as a man who grew up under the strange gaze of Lady Catherine of Winterfell, Jon had long developed the habit of observing people's words and expressions, which allowed him to immediately realize the situation here after arriving at the Night's Watch.

The old group of Night's Watch called themselves the Pure Ones because they were pure Westeros people and had nothing to do with Essos, which was across the Narrow Sea and had never had any connection with Westeros.

As for the new faction, it is divided into the Eastern Faction and the Seven Gods Faction. The former is composed of the exiled elites of the Free Trade Cities, while the latter is composed of those devout believers of the Seven Gods.

Those Orientals had great resentment towards the Great Wall. Among them were many Eastern nobles and wealthy people, and they were also the ones with the most deserters. However, after discovering that they could not escape from the northern border at all, these Orientals could only guard the Great Wall honestly.

However, they are also independent and will never accept any non-Essos people into their small group. As for the infighting among the Westeros people, these people just stand by and watch coldly.

It is precisely this attitude that makes these Orientals, who should have been very conspicuous, appear insignificant in the current internal conflicts of the Night's Watch.

Jon was not surprised at all about the bad things happening within the Night's Watch. Where there are people, there are disputes. He did not feel disappointed with the Night's Watch because of this.

In fact, the current condition of the Night's Watch is better than he expected. On the way to the Wall, when he saw those so-called recruits who were actually prisoners, his expectations for the Night's Watch were shattered. But after arriving at the Black Castle, he found that there are still many good people here - especially among those who believe in the Seven Gods.

These devout believers formed their own mutual aid society within the legion. During their rest time, they would organize activities and develop believers. Jon longed for that kind of happy atmosphere.

For the first time, because of these good people, Jon's faith in his father began to waver. Should he abandon the old gods and worship the new gods? At that time, some of the first batch of comrades who received training had chosen to convert to the Seven Gods.

However, when he saw Ghost, this thought immediately disappeared from his mind. Jon touched his wolf, and Ghost licked his palm, which made Jon involuntarily smile.

It was good as it was now, Jon thought, why bother thinking about all that mess?
"Jon Snow, the old bear wants to see you."

A voice suddenly sounded and Jon stood up immediately. He was Old Bear's clerk. When Old Bear gave an order, he had to arrive.

After handing his wolf to Sam to take care of and scaring Sam, Jon immediately ran to the Lord Commander's tower and found the tall Lord Commander standing in the courtyard. The rangers and stewards were busy saddled the horses and prepared supplies.
"Jon, get your equipment immediately, we'll be setting off soon." Jeor Mormont was a majestic old man, and his voice was like a whip, driving Jon to action.

After training in the Night's Watch, Jon had long learned to follow orders instead of asking questions immediately.

Soon, he and other officers prepared everything the commander-in-chief needed, and the team set off.

In the past, the commander-in-chief would be accompanied by dozens of people at most when he traveled, but now, there are nearly a hundred rangers behind Old Xiong alone. In the past, this was more than one-tenth of the entire legion.

Seeing this team, all the people in black on the road bowed respectfully to the commander-in-chief, and Jon finally had the opportunity to ask Old Bear what was going on.

"Lord Hugo has sent us reinforcements and supplies." Old Xiong's tone was full of joy. "They are now looking at the East Sea. There is news from there that the reinforcements Lord Hugo has sent this time are large in scale. I must welcome them in person."

Jon immediately understood why Old Bear was in such a hurry to set off. During this period, the rangers sent to the other side of the Wall had frequently disappeared, and there were signs that the wildlings were gathering, not to mention some eyewitness reports of moving dead bodies. This put a lot of pressure on the Night's Watch. Old Bear wrote letters for help to many people, but he didn't expect that the one who arrived the fastest was the one on the other side of the Narrow Sea.

Hugo Tollett, this is the noble name Jon has heard most often since he came to the Wall. The believers of the Seven Gods pronounce this name as if it were a god, and even the brother with the most vicious mouth has to say a few good words when mentioning him.

Jon became very interested in this man and wanted to meet this legendary figure in poetry.

However, he also knew that he was just thinking about it. As a bastard serving on the Wall, it was unlikely for him to meet that person even if he had Stark blood in his veins.

Soon, the Night's Watch set foot on the new road that the Legion had built along the Great Wall in recent years. After traveling for a while, they arrived at the Night's Watch's external port, which was also the largest external port in the Gift, Eastwatch.

The first thing Jon saw was the tiny spark of the new lighthouse over the East Sea. He knew that although the light was small, it was the way to life for the ships sailing on the sea.

Donghaiwang also appeared in everyone's sight soon. Compared with the past, this port has been expanded a lot, and there are many more ships on the pier. After receiving assistance, the Night's Watch fleet has also expanded a lot. The Night's Watch fleet can now complete the blockade of smuggling outside the Great Wall.

However, now on the pier of Donghaiwang, the most eye-catching things are the large ships with seven-pointed stars painted on their sails. Teams of soldiers are walking out of the ships and lining up on the dock. Beside them, laborers are busy carrying down large and small bags of things.

Volunteers were guarding the prisoners. There were so many exiles this time that they had to keep an eye on these guys. Jon was dumbfounded. This was the first time he saw so many prisoners joining the Legion.

The commander-in-chief's troops rode straight into the harbor. The Night's Watch soldiers and sailors hurriedly made way. The commander of Eastwatch was Cotter Pyke, a bastard from the Iron Islands. He personally reined in the commander-in-chief's horse. The old bear jumped off the horse with an agility that was not in line with an old man. Jon and others naturally followed closely behind.

Watching Old Bear greeting Carter, Jon looked at the reinforcements coming from Andas.

Those were neatly arranged knights. It was the first time Jon had seen so many knights. However, the knights were clearly divided into two groups. One group wore uniform seven-pointed star cloaks, and the other group had various emblems on their bodies. The former exuded a sense of disciplined beauty, while the latter made young people like Jon yearn for it.

Jon has been in the Night's Watch for so long, wearing all black, all uniforms. He is a little tired of the uniforms. As a young man, he wants to show his own characteristics.

So, Jon's attention was drawn to the coats of arms. As a bastard of Winterfell, Jon knew most of the coats of arms of Westeros, but he didn't recognize many of them - not even the style.

After seeing the arrival of the Night's Watch Commander-in-Chief, these reinforcements that came from afar also responded. Two people walked out from those knights. One was a knight wearing a seven-pointed star cloak. Jon felt that if Sansa were here, she would probably scream, because this man was too consistent with the appearance of those heroic knights in the poems. The other one was very thin, and his face was listless, giving people a very negative feeling - there is no doubt that these two people are the leaders of this team.

(End of this chapter)