Along this inconspicuous stretch of the city wall stood many heavyweight figures. They had originally planned to watch the great battle against the Night King.
Besides several senior commanders of Winterfell, Qotho, Aggo, and Rakharo had also come.
However, the two bloodriders did not understand the Westerosi tongue and could not converse with the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms, so they remained silent.
Only the name "Daenerys" was so piercing that Aggo recognized it.
Qotho could barely understand the Common Tongue, but like old Barristan and Clinton, he understood the Dragon Queen's true intentions. Thus, his expression remained calm, neither anxious nor angry.
After briefly explaining to the two Dothraki, Qotho raised his voice in Westerosi and said, "All of you, watch quietly. The Night King has not appeared yet. The situation has changed. The Queen has other arrangements. With a dragon present, she will not come to harm."
This explanation did not justify the Dragon Queen's seemingly reckless behavior. Several northern knights muttered in low voices, "Does she rely entirely on dragons to fight her wars? It seems the Ghiscari and the world's allied forces are nothing special. When Aegon conquered the Seven Kingdoms with fully grown dragons, he still failed to take Dorne."
A piercing shriek that cut through wind and snow suddenly rose from below the wall, forcing everyone who heard it to clutch their ears and frown. The murmurs about the Dragon Queen ceased.
Holding their heads, they focused their gaze downward and saw two greatswords clashing together, a white blade against a broad ice sword. After a brief contest of strength, rider and foe passed one another.
The Dragon Queen had already charged before the White Walker knight, and the White Walker had not relied on superior numbers.
One woman and one wight. Infantry against cavalry. It was like a knightly joust, charging back and forth, round after round.
Frosty mist swirled around them. When sword struck sword, there were no sparks, only shrill, soul-piercing screeches that seemed to tear through eardrums.
Jaime's face showed shock as he murmured, "The Dragon Queen's swordsmanship has truly reached the pinnacle. It seems the quality of the tournament at the Honeywine was even greater than the songs describe.
"Her strength and speed surpass most knights, though she is still inferior to the White Walker. Her impact is also far weaker than that of a knight mounted on a wight warhorse.
"And yet they are evenly matched, with her slightly holding the upper hand, solely because her swordsmanship far surpasses that of the White Walker. She may even be approaching the level of the Sword of the Morning in his prime."
A sharp intake of breath rose from the surrounding noble knights. "Ser, that is a bit exaggerated, is it not? The one below is only an ordinary White Walker, not the Night King."
"If you do not believe me, you may ask Ser Barristan," Jaime said calmly.
Barristan's expression was peculiar.
"Perhaps Arthur Dayne was not as skilled as Her Majesty the Queen."
His voice was low and reluctant, yet the nobles of the Seven Kingdoms around him, including Jaime, looked at him differently. Had even the just and fearless Barristan learned to flatter?
"Ser, have you forgotten the swordsmanship rankings recorded in the White Book? The Dragon Queen has only reached the level of lifting the heavy as if it were light and the light as if it were heavy. She is still half a step away from transcendent mastery. How could she surpass Ser Dayne?" Jaime frowned.
In those years among the six sworn brothers, the White Bull, Gerold Hightower, had been Jaime's guide; the fearless Barristan had been his spiritual mentor; and the Sword of the Morning had been both his instructor in swordplay and the idol he had admired since childhood.
Therefore, Jaime was particularly displeased with Barristan's seemingly fawning words. With a single remark of praise, the upright integrity of Barristan and the unrivaled swordsmanship of Dayne both seemed diminished.
"Good! Long live the Queen! Long live the Dragon Queen!" A thunderous wave of cheers suddenly erupted from the city wall.
At the center of the battlefield, after forty rounds of heart-stirring "knightly charges," the Dragon Queen finally seized a flaw in her enemy's defense. With a powerful strike, she smashed the wight's crystalline ice armor at the chest and knocked it from its horse.
In an instant, her sword flashed like lightning, swiftly severing the fallen White Walker's sword hand. Her silver high boots pressed down upon its neck, and the tip of her greatsword rested against its forehead.
"Night King, come out!" she shouted into the depths of the night from within the encirclement of wights.
A rumbling thunder answered her.
Countless hooves pounded. Thousands of troops surged forward. Like a tidal wave, the sea of corpses swept toward her. From all six walls of Winterfell, horns blared simultaneously, signaling the enemy's assault.
The Battle of Winterfell had officially begun.
A massive black shadow rose from behind the gate, soaring over Ygritte and the others. Dragonfire burst forth.
A torrent of flame, forty or fifty meters long, cascaded down like a crimson waterfall toward the Dragon Queen's position.
With a single stroke, she split open the skull of the White Walker beneath her boot. Without any other movement, she merely gazed coldly at the swarming horde of wights.
The red cascade of flame descended upon her head as though striking a reef ten meters in diameter. The fiery current splashed outward, forming a vast bowl of flame around her. The charging wights were like moths rushing into fire. Their tattered garments ignited, their hair burned away, their skin melted, and their bones blazed like dry kindling.
Jaime let out a long breath of relief. Turning back, he looked at Qotho with complicated eyes. "You were right. The Dragon Queen has a dragon. She will never come to harm."
The massive black shadow circled above Winterfell. Its voice boomed like thunder, resounding across the castle and carrying for miles around.
"The Night King hides cowardly within his army of wights, refusing the challenge of Stannis, the greatest war god of the Seven Kingdoms.
"It arrogantly calls us 'a race soon to vanish.' It claims Winterfell cannot endure even a single day, and that mankind has no right to challenge it.
"Now it sends its feeble dead to storm our walls.
"Now I ask you to tell those shards of ice that our blades are already thirsting for battle!"
"Long live the dragon! Long live the Grand Protector! Our blades thirst for battle!" Tens of thousands of warriors raised their dragontooth sabers and dragonglass spears, shouting with earth-shaking fervor.
"All troops, prepare to meet the enemy! The gods are with you. I am with you. The Dragon Queen is with you. The greatest God of War of the Seven Kingdoms, the greatest Archmage in the world, the God King R'hllor is with you. The King in the North and all the kings of the Seven Kingdoms are with you."
After saying this, the great black dragon let out a furious roar with the loudest voice and most overwhelming draconic might: "The living shall never surrender!"
"Kill the Others, go to heaven! Kill, kill, kill!" The cheer squad took the stage.
"Kill the Others, go to heaven! Kill, kill, kill!" On the walls, tens of thousands of defenders facing the wights for the first time were completely fired up.
Each of them wished they could imitate the Dragon Queen, leap down from the walls, and charge howling toward the vast army of the dead.
Stannis, the Red Woman, and Jon retreated to the city gate. Like the other commanders, they spread out along the walls, leading from the front and directing the soldiers to hold the line steady.
Dany also returned behind the Unsullied shield wall, while the white dragon remained farther back at the gate. Its long neck stretched into the gate passage, occasionally supplying the Dragon Queen with dragonflame.
Yes, the Dragon Queen did not retreat into the city. She did not climb the walls, nor did she close the gates. Alone, she held up a sphere of dragonflame and shot streak after streak of fire toward the densely charging wights.
From the dragonflame sphere flew no longer writhing fire serpents, but horizontal lines of fire, more than ten meters long and as thick as chopsticks, each one intercepting a swath of dead men rushing forward with mouths agape.
If the wights wore no leather armor or plate, then upon striking the line of fire, their corpses would ignite and burn into a heap of flaming, melting fat.
Their skin was far too easy to set alight.
If a wight had been a knight in life, its flammable skin protected by iron armor, Dany could simply split off a fire serpent from the flaming sphere and wash its face with it.
The Dragon Queen had intended to lure more wights by opening the gate, thereby easing the pressure on other sections of the wall.
Yet when the battle truly began, facing a fully prepared Winterfell, even a million wights were not so terrifying.
In barely half an hour, she found herself with spare time. She even had a high-backed reclining chair and a small tea table brought over. She sat in the chair, her longsword planted to the left of it. On the tea table, a red clay stove burned brightly, and rolls of mutton and a pot of spicy stew simmered in a red oil broth.
Twenty meters before her rose an arc-shaped ring of fire, formed entirely from wight corpses ignited by dragonflame.
Whether they were lightning-swift shadow lynx wights, towering and ferocious giant bear wights, or direwolf wights lurking in the shadows preparing a surging strike, before the Dragon Queen they were no different from ordinary wights. At most, one line of fire became a fire serpent, and one serpent became two or three.
Even the most cunning forest wolf wights could not approach Dany, for before her stood two layers of Valyrian steel shield walls.
Not only did Dany hold the gate alone against countless foes, but the others on the walls also fought with ease.
The baby-faced Sand Snake, looking down from above, thrust her spear swiftly. The spearhead, stained with pitch-black blood, pierced straight into the eye socket of a wight knight climbing the wooden ladder below.
With a dull thud, the wight stiffened, then its entire body collapsed like a robot whose power had been cut, tumbling from the ladder.
It rolled all the way down the twenty-four-meter ladder, knocking into a string of wights climbing up behind it.
But this wight knight, bearing the sigil of House Umber on its chest, had been a true knight. Helmet, breastplate, iron gauntlets, gorget, greaves, iron boots, all complete.
Its barbute helmet left only narrow eye slits. Though the baby-faced Sand Snake's spear technique was as superb as her late father's, dragonglass was brittle and hard. Before the spearhead could be withdrawn from the skull cavity through the eye socket, it snapped into two.
She tossed the broken spear to her sister behind her and took another with a brand-new spearhead handed over by her eldest sister. She panted heavily, her forehead beaded with sweat despite the cold, yet her expression was one of fierce excitement.
"Hahaha! I've already stabbed sixty wights, fifteen of them armored knights with swords. I never thought killing the Others would be this easy!" She lifted her visor and laughed.
The tall, dark-skinned Obara threw the spear with the broken tip into a wooden crate and said eagerly, "Obella, you've been fighting nearly an hour. It's freezing and you're drenched in sweat. You must be tired. Take a rest and let me go."
"No, I'm not tired. I want to kill a hundred. These wights are as stupid as geese in a field. There's no real danger." The baby-faced girl leaned her head past the crenellation, examining the wights on her ladder.
"Don't stick your head out! If you're tired, fall back at once. The Others are not geese!" On the other side, Ygritte, the red-haired woman who guarded another ladder, shouted a warning.
She commanded this stretch of wall. Several Sand Snakes, including Princess Arianne, were under her authority.
It had nothing to do with rank or status. Ygritte had killed Others before. She had joined the Dragon Queen's suicide squad and once been surrounded by a vast army of wights. She had the most experience fighting them.
"Don't worry, I already understand those dead men's tricks—ah—"
The porcelain-doll-like fourteen-year-old Sand Snake was still waving with a grin when suddenly a piercing shriek tore through the night. An icicle shot like a meteor from below the wall and, before anyone could react, drove straight into her eye socket.
Her small body flew sideways four or five meters like a goose struck through by a heavy crossbow bolt, crashing into her eldest sister and toppling the wooden rack of dragonglass spears.
"Obella, no!" The Dornish princess and the nearby Sand Snakes wailed in grief.
"Burn the ladders! Quickly, throw the wildfire bombs!" Ygritte's face changed drastically as she shouted sharply.
The wind howled even more fiercely. Frosty mist surged up along this section of the wall like a tide. Several gray shadows leapt from the wight horde, sprang onto the ladders, and moved as swiftly as fleeting light and shadow.
(End of Chapter)
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