> AN/ I hope you guys are enjoying the story so far. Much more to go. On our earth, the days are irregular in the polar regions. That is not mentioned in ASOIAF. Do I assume it doesn't happen, and that their world is round? Or do I go with the flow, and let the sun rise and set like it does in the books and show?
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> Chapter 9: Thenns.
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> (Age 17)
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> Some of the free-folk looked at me and my passing herd with fear. Others looked at me with awe. It was the children that watched me with utter adoration. Here I was, with a sparse beard, and in control of 22 of the biggest and fiercest beasts in the north.
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> Direwolf packs ran from my clan with their tails between their legs.
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> If you were a betting man, you would bet that a giant, who was 20 feet tall, would be stronger than one of my snowbears, who averaged 15 feet tall. You would be betting wrong, however. Wild Snowbears did not eat like my bears did. They weren't constantly moving like my bears, either.
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> I lost Fang as I chased down the Weeper's warband like a pack of rats. They ambushed me, and filled Fang full of spears. If I'd been on his back like I usually was, I'd be dead. But I'd taken to riding on a mammoth calf in recent months.
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> I say calf, because he was 2 years old, but he was still massive.
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> Fang's grandson was my new breeding sire for the snowbears. He took the name Fang in my mind as he reached his grand-sire's bulky size and surpassed it. 18 feet tall on his hind legs, with claws as sharp as razors. He was as quick as an oiled river-snake and twice as strong.
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> My biggest problem with him, was fitting Fang's well-worn steel armor to his frame. My constant repairs to sleds, equipment, and armor lent itself well to my burgeoning leather-working and metal-smithing skills.
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> My mammoth skins pulled 8 sleds laden with smoked tubers I'd gathered so far for my trip north. I had no idea how long the trip would take, and kept preparing for it as I sought to slake my thirst for vengeance upon the Weeper.
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> His warband of 1,000 contained at least 400 warriors, and I sought to kill them all. Usually a tough proposition, but the crows kept watch on their hunting and scouting parties, and I made sure they met the snowbears whenever they strayed out of sight of the main warband.
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> I wanted none to escape.
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> They were slowly starving as they raided village after village in their flight from my wrath. They tired themselves on small village warriors and stole their food stores while I nipped at their heels to keep them moving. I wanted to make the Weeper suffer. As he made my sisters suffer, surely, before he killed them.
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> Some free-folk began to flee from the thundering of my mammoth herd as I kept to the warband's trail. I was growing a reputation to be feared now. Veranyr Spearsgiant was a name of a known warrior now. None dared to challenge me for my herd of mammoths. None dared to refuse me anymore.
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> The free-folk take what is theirs by force. I had the greatest force in the north. Enough to bully even the largest warbands. As the Weeper had learned. 1,000 people is no protection against 26 snowbears that never stopped, and moved with the intelligence and cunning of a sneaky man.
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> The Weeper fled north, into the lands of the Thenn.
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> I stopped at the border of the Thenn lands and let the warband flee. I wasn't strong enough to face the Thenn yet. I needed even more skins. The Thenn numbered in the thousands, and all were armed with bronze weapons. Some even had bronze plate armor. I would lose that fight if it came to it.
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> I turned back to the Antler River.
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> It was a short, year long, winter. All I could do was prepare for my journey, and get used to the cold I would face in the Lands of Always Winter.
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> To my great disappointment, no one ever took me up on the trade of 2 mammoths for 1 Giant infant. I ran into a couple of Cave Giants on my travels across the north, but I never managed to find an infant among their corpses.
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> The Antler River clans were new to me. A great many spoke the old tongue, like the Thenns did. I made an effort to learn a few words of the ancient language. The people were as excited to meet me as the people along the Milkwater were.
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> My legend spread.
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> There were rumors that Mance had declared himself the King-Beyond-The-Wall, and was raising an army in hopes of crushing the wall. I knew how prone the free-folk were to fight, and knew it would take him a lifetime to gather even half the north under him.
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> It was no real threat to my ambitions.
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> I had a goal I need to accomplish sooner, rather than later.
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> I spent a year on the Antler River, gathering strength, breeding my skins, and smoking tubers and meat for provisions for my trip north. I traded with the Antler River clans, tribes, and villages. They wanted what I had, and I wanted what they had.
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> Nimble fingers, able to hunt the woods for tubers, and smoke them. I was only willing to trade for smoked tubers and pemmican smoked meat.
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> This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
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> Pemmican was made with meat smoked dry, and then crushed into meat powder. It was then mixed with berries and dried until it was as hard as a rock. I traded 20 mammoths for 10 mammoth loads of pemmican meat and smoked tubers.
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> I gathered another 10 mammoth loads of smoked tubers by myself over a year's time. The snowbears were good at sniffing the tubers out from beneath the snow. I traded a mammoth for a massive copper pot and practiced boiling snow into water with frozen mammoth dung as my only fuel.
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> I practiced moving through thick snow, and digging a shelter into the snow quickly at night. I think I was the only free-folk that really roamed the wilds in the depth of winter. I took to the cold as a long lost friend, and didn't so much as lose an ear.
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> When the winter ended, I knew it was time to head north once more.
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> My skins were as powerful as they were going to get. 25 almost full-grown mammoths, 25 adult snowbears, and a mostly grown Giantess. Vera pushed 20 feet of muscle and bone. No one doubted she was a giant any longer.
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> I kept 40 of the adult mammoths I couldn't warg into as food for the snowbears, once the sleds of pemmican ran low.
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> I traveled up into the Thenn lands for the first time.
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> (Age 18)
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> There are two ways into the Lands of Always Winter. To head north from the east of the Frostfangs, or from the west. As I was already on the east side, and at the northern tip pf the Antler River, I decided to go from the east and follow the coast of the Shivering Sea as far as it goes.
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> I Needed to pass through the lands of the Thenn on my way North. And if I happened upon the Weeper's men on the way...
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> I had a dozen crows scouting for the lost warband that had fled this way more than a year ago. I didn't see the Weepers men for the day's distance I had the birds scout out every morning.
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> I stopped every night for the first week, well before the sun set, and collected enough frozen dung to warm up a pot of snow. Vera hauled buckets of snow into the massive copper pot, while I dug into the snow and made a shelter for the night.
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> When you dug a little burrow in the snow, and filled in the entrance, it trapped the heat in. Digging the ceiling into a dome shape trapped the heat even better. making a small fire, to melt the ceiling into ice, trapped the heat completely.
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> I looked up into the glittering ice ceiling of my shelter, with my head resting upon Fang I's pelt as I looked through the eyes of the crow scouts. 4,000 or so bronze armored spearmen were a day's march away. This was the Thenn army. Not every fighting man they had, by a long shot.
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> It was there standing army. The warriors that did nothing but fight, and train to fight. They had no ears, as they had all lost theirs to either the cold or a knife. Some missed fingers, toes, and noses to the cold. They rarely left the sheltered valleys they lived in, but it was the coldest place in the world when they did.
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> I chuckled.
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> So this was it.
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> The army sent to kill me.
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> 4,000 men coated in plate bronze, marching in lockstep, with massive spears leaned on their shoulders. Not much I could do but run, if I wanted to keep my life. Any sane man would have run. Any smart man would have a plan.
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> But I was a sneak. I had plans within plans within plans. I made a few more burrows and let the snowbears and mammoths rest and eat well to recover from the last week's grueling pace.
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> When the sun came up, I dressed the Fang II and the other biggest 7 snowbears in their steel armor, and the others in their leather armor. Good luck trying to thrust a spear through 8 thick layers of leather.
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> The mammoths were not all warrior-trained beasts of war, but, 25 of them were mentally controlled. 40 could be made to stampede in a devastating charge, with 25 of the worlds most viscous and intelligent snowbears. Then the 25 mammoths would turn around and come back either alone, or with the 40 other enraged beasts.
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> I really wasn't afraid of 4,000 men. Their formations would shatter, and I could chase them down at my leisure. Mammoths and armored snowbears would be very vulnerable in low numbers. But with the 50 beasts at my control, I could have them support each other.
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> It wasn't like the 4 snowbear vs 100 horsemen from years ago. 40 snowbears would crush 1,000 horsemen. 65 mammoths and 25 snowbears would crush 4,000 bronze armored Thenns. That's 45 Thenns for every beast to kill.
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> That was not counting my copper armored Giantess. She wielded a 20 foot spear carved from a single oak tree, tipped with a steel sword. Woe be to her husband's enemies.
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> But that was only if my plans failed.
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> I waited for the Thenns in a large plain of snow along the coast of the Shivering Sea. Their outriders rode reindeer and I allowed them to catch sight of my herd and return to tell the tale. The crows showed they would be here soon.