"Woo...woo...woo..."
On the third night after Arya became the Dragon Queen's "magical test subject," at around one in the morning, three horn blasts sounded from the gate tower of Winterfell.
According to the Night's Watch custom, one blast meant allies, two meant enemies, and three meant White Walkers.
Half a month after the Wall at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea collapsed, and a week after the Dragon Queen began waiting at Winterfell, the army of the dead finally crossed more than three thousand kilometers and arrived beneath Winterfell's walls.
Although it was already one in the morning, the defenders of Winterfell were not in chaos.
In fact, an hour earlier, fully armed soldiers had already begun ascending the walls in succession.
Seen from the sky, upon the vast gray-white land, a hexagonal ring of fire had appeared. It was formed by the torches held by soldiers atop the walls, along with iron braziers burning charcoal or oil.
"Whooo—whooo—" The north wind howled as if tearing at the heart.
It was as though the sky had become a patient with a lung disease, struggling desperately to breathe during an attack, the sound enough to unsettle those on the ground.
The Long Night sky was already dark enough. Now, at this late hour, the flames rising from the braziers stretched almost into a horizontal red line. Standing on the walls and looking down, one could barely see the trench a dozen meters away.
The black canopy of darkness was like a demon that specialized in devouring light and heat, swallowing all the warmth and glow emitted by Winterfell's thousands of torches and hundreds of braziers into an abyssal belly.
At the top of the gate tower, the lookout Ygritte lowered her horn and took several deep breaths, replenishing the air she had just blown out.
Then she unstrapped her longbow from her back, nocked an arrow tipped with dragonglass, and waited quietly for the White Walkers to approach.
She was the lover of the King in the North, a female warrior, and even commanded several hundred wildlings.
She neither wished nor could hide inside Winterfell's castle like Jon's pregnant sister.
She would earn a warrior's glory in battle.
It was she who had sounded the horn moments ago.
When a flaming arrow shot two hundred meters downwind, she saw the sparse ranks of wights shambling forward. That was when she blew the horn.
The waiting felt unusually long, and she could not help glancing from side to side.
At this very moment, though so many companions surrounded her, though she stood within a towering fortress, though Jon was right behind the gate, she felt particularly lonely and helpless.
It was as if Winterfell had become a lone skiff upon a vast ocean.
The skiff now hung quietly upon the dark sea, tranquil to the extreme. Yet visible to the naked eye, ahead rose a monstrous tidal wave, whipped by violent winds and relentless rain, surging toward the tiny boat, ready to crush it.
"Whooo—" The freezing wind seized her, piercing through leather armor and woolen sweater, drilling into her marrow. Her teeth chattered from the cold, and her cloak flapped wildly behind her.
Why are they not here yet? Does it take this long to walk a little over a hundred meters? And the White Walkers and wights' eyes glow blue. The night is so dark. Why can I see nothing?
"Creak—" The sound of the gates opening snapped Ygritte out of her solitary thoughts.
Below, the city gates swung open to either side. The north wind carried gray-white freezing mist into the gate tunnel, causing the firelight and shadows to flicker violently.
Ygritte lowered her head and saw the Dragon Queen in silver breastplate and blue skirt armor raise her right hand slightly. A white-hot fireball the size of an orange slowly rose into the air.
The white light pierced the heavy night fog, reaching a hundred meters away.
"Ah!" A murmur of exclamation came from the section of wall near the gate.
By the glow of the small sun above the Dragon Queen's head, they saw willow-leaf-sized snowflakes swirling in the gale. They saw the thick freezing mist condense into icy rain. And they saw, amid wind and snow, the orderly ranks of the marching dead.
As far as the eye could see, there were wights.
Northern peasants in coarse linen and tattered fur coats, women with loose hair, knights riding tall warhorses, armored lords missing half their faces, rotting corpses with scraps of torn flesh hanging from their cheeks and a few sparse strands of hair atop their skulls, even skeletons stripped to bone.
Direwolves with fur stained red by filthy blood. Livestock dragging cold, rigid entrails across the ground. Shadowcats reduced to mangled flesh.
There were men, and there were beasts.
Their footsteps were exceedingly light, almost leaving no trace upon the snow. But their numbers were simply too great. From the snowfield came a rustling sound like snakes slithering through grass, merging into one continuous, chilling hiss.
Gradually, Ygritte began to see the blue eyes of the White Walkers.
They emitted a faint blue glow, dulled by the dense snowfall and heavy freezing mist.
"Clang, clang, clang, clang." Forty silver-armored shield bearers jogged out of the gate and formed a double-layered curved shield wall upon the flat black earth before the entrance.
The Dragon Queen, Stannis, Jon, and Melisandre walked out together and slowly came to stand at the center of the curved shield wall.
Jon stepped forward first and shouted hoarsely in the ancient tongue, "Where is the Night King? I am Jon Stark, Duke of the North and Warden of the North. Come forth and meet me."
The wights advancing upon Winterfell halted in perfect unison, stopping fifty meters from the walls.
Seeing this, Stannis took a deep breath, lifted his visor, exhaled a cloud of white vapor, and said in a deep voice, "Where is the Night King? I am the one true and lawful king of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Protector of the Seven Kingdoms. I am the one foretold in Asshai to end the Long Night. I am willing to fight you."
The Dragon Queen glanced at the king in the blazing red-heart cloak and muttered, "You might as well call yourself the greatest war god of the Seven Kingdoms."
Stannis's blue eyes turned icy as he stared back expressionlessly.
Dany shrugged, turned toward the darkness, and also spoke in the ancient tongue. "I am the Child of the Era. Where is the Night King?"
"Son of the Epoch? What is that supposed to be?"
It was clearly a very short sentence, so why did it carry such an imposing aura?
Ygritte felt puzzled.
Stannis parted his lips as well, very much wanting to ask: What exactly is this "Son of the Epoch"? Since you have so many titles, why not reveal them all at once?
The red-robed woman's crimson eyes flickered as she gave the Dragon Queen a long, searching look.
With a rustling sound, wherever the white fireball cast its light, the wights directly opposite the city gate could be seen parting to either side, opening a path.
An Other rode a dead horse and slowly advanced to the front ranks of the army of the dead.
The warhorse seemed to have been killed by some beast. Half the flesh of its neck had been gnawed away, leaving only a wrist-thick, ghastly white spine supporting its massive head.
The rider on its back carried a gigantic ice sword, palm-wide and two meters long. It, too, wore a layer of ice armor that shifted in color beneath the flickering firelight.
Its face was lined with deep folds, like a shriveled apple, and its pale, sparse long hair floated in the wind like seaweed.
"Seven hells, that must be the Other King. How terrifying!" Arianne's face turned pale as her right hand unconsciously tightened around the massive oar-shaped blade.
"The Other King doesn't seem that frightening. It's the wights outside, Mother have mercy, there are too many of them. I feel like I'm about to wet myself," said the baby-faced Sand Snake beside her, baring her teeth.
"That's not the Other King," Ygritte could not help reminding them. "Don't lose focus. Try not to expose your heads beyond the battlements, and don't lift your visors either. If an ice sword comes flying—"
Arianne obediently pulled down her visor and turned her head to ask, "How do you know it isn't the Other King?"
Ygritte's brows knotted together. "A feeling. I've seen an Other before. It feels about the same as the one below the walls."
Sure enough, they soon heard the Dragon Queen's clear voice drifting through the wind: "Is your king a coward, not daring to face the foremost God of War of the Seven Kingdoms, the reincarnation of Azor Ahai, the Son of the Prophecy?"
Stannis clenched his jaw.
The Other across from them spoke. "If you wish to see our king, you must first prove the strength of your eliminated race. Hold out until noon tomorrow. If the city has not fallen, our king will appear."
Its voice was like a frozen lake shattering—sharp, high-pitched, piercing—causing an aching sensation in the ears like a saw scraping against teeth.
"Ah, that monster's voice is awful. I feel sick," the baby-faced little Sand Snake cried, clutching her iron helm.
Enduring the stabbing pain in her head, Arianne asked, "Is that magic? How can merely a speaking voice be so terrifying? What is it saying?"
The red-haired woman said softly, "That was also in the ancient tongue. The Other King will only appear at noon tomorrow. That is simply how the Others' voices sound. Didn't your castle receive the raven sent by the red-nosed old man?"
"I—" Arianne had just begun to remark that seeing it in person was far more shocking than hearing about it when a thunderous shout erupted from below the walls.
It was the Dragon Queen's voice.
"You wretched thing! A mere Other King dares to be so arrogant!"
Boom! Under the stunned gazes of all, the ground beneath the Dragon Queen's feet trembled slightly. Then her body shot upward like a cannon, leaping two meters high and clearing the shield wall ahead.
Clad in full heavy armor, she crashed to the ground like a stone pillar, stamping two prints nearly an inch deep into the earth.
Yet her stance was steady and unmoving. The moment she landed, she drew the four-finger-wide white greatsword from her waist.
"Ahhh! Kill! Kill!"
Like an enraged young heifer, she bellowed as she charged toward the mounted Other.
Each step she took was forceful, leaving deep footprints and heavy thuds in the ground.
Alone, she raised her sword and rushed toward an army of millions.
Such fearlessness deeply shocked the ordinary soldiers.
The glowing white fireball still hovered above her head, following her as she sprinted, driving back the darkness for several hundred meters around her.
Because of that, everyone on the city walls could clearly see the terrifying number of wights outside.
They were not packed tightly together. Instead, they stood one or two meters apart, looking somewhat loose. Yet the ranks of wights had no visible edge, seeming to stretch endlessly in all directions.
"How can she be so reckless? Is she charging out alone to seek death?" On the city wall, Jaime did not cheer for the Dragon Queen's bravery. Instead, his face changed drastically, filled with anxiety.
"The Dragon Queen shouldn't have leapt out of the shield wall's protection. Since the other side isn't the Other King, there's no need to risk being surrounded just to strike at the enemy's front ranks," Dickon Tarly said with a frown.
Clinton and Barristan exchanged a glance. After confirming each other's expression, their faces grew calm and untroubled, no longer showing the slightest anxiety.
"Don't worry. This is Her Majesty's fighting style. It's only an Other. Back at the Wall she could cut down several in succession. Now she probably won't even need—"
Old Barristan had been about to say the Queen wouldn't need three moves to kill the mounted Other, but the words changed at the last moment. "If it's single combat, within a hundred moves she will surely take its life. She must let the Other King witness her 'prowess.' That will make what follows much easier."
Jaime failed to grasp the key point in Barristan's words and said excitedly, "This is her style? What were the Ghiscari Alliance of Slaver's Bay and the allied trade city-states even doing?
With such a reckless fighting method, Daenerys has never lost a single battle?"
Aggo frowned and asked Qotho beside him, "What is that knight from the Sunset Lands saying? I heard the Khaleesi's name."
(End of Chapter)
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