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"It is time. Send the order. Have the Watchers begin holding the enemy back."
Lord Rickard was directing his infantry to retreat in good order while trying to see through the heavy rain. The moment he saw the wooden wall collapse, he shouted the order at the top of his lungs.
More than a hundred elite infantry in heavy armor, wielding great hammers, stood nearly seven feet tall and were powerfully built. As soon as they received the order, they moved swiftly behind the rearmost shieldmen and formed ranks.
Watching the mass of wights rushing toward them, they took wooden tubes of potion from inside their clothing, pulled out the stoppers, and drank without hesitation.
Their heartbeats boomed.
The potion took effect quickly. Deep heartbeats sounded together. The already huge elite soldiers swelled again, nearly reaching the inhuman size of the Mountain.
Anyone familiar with the sight could understand what they had drunk from their bloodshot eyes, the thick veins bulging across exposed pale skin, and their brutal posture.
It was a weakened berserker draught.
Qyburn and his berserker draught had been the gift Brynden and Edmure brought Robb when they came to King's Landing for the coronation.
After receiving Crey's raven from King's Landing, Brynden, who had been holding firm, immediately ordered Lord Tytos to take the infantry while Smalljon and Edd led the cavalry to intercept the Brotherhood Without Banners fleeing north.
Without Beric and Thoros, those Brotherhood men were no match for them. The moment the routed men saw Brynden's forces, they abandoned Qyburn and the supply troops as bait and fled in panic.
After Qyburn was taken to Harrenhal, he volunteered an explanation of his research to the officer interrogating him in order to prove his own value.
That officer had seen the members of the Fiery Hand in their berserk state on the battlefield, so he reported the matter to Brynden gravely.
Afterward, Brynden understood Qyburn's importance. When Edmure arrived after hearing the news, the two men brought Qyburn and his research materials south to King's Landing.
These hundred or so men had been selected by Lord Rickard from the nearly forty thousand soldiers left in King's Landing, chosen at Robb's order after Robb received Qyburn.
They were the largest and strongest elite soldiers available.
Lord Rickard did not know why His Grace had given them the strange name of Watchers. He only remembered His Grace smiling after hearing the effects of the berserker draught from the disgraced former maester.
"Interesting. Men made stronger and sent to die in another form. Then call them the Watchers."
At the wall, the battle had already worsened.
The wights that had broken through the wooden wall aimed directly for the Watchers, whose blood and breath burned with vigor.
The Watchers, each of them like a small giant, stood like a solid embankment against a flood, firmly stopping the tide of wights.
Rusty weapons in the wights' hands rang again and again against the Watchers' armor, but they could not break through the well-forged heavy plate.
The great hammers swinging in the Watchers' hands, however, shattered bones and limbs every time they fell.
With the berserker-draught Watchers covering the rear, Lord Rickard's troops smoothly joined Robb's main force and helped defend against the wight army mixed with humans and animals pouring from the cliffs.
With their arrival, Robb, who had been bearing most of the burden at the rear, felt the pressure ease at once.
He kept the whole army in defensive formation and ordered them to retreat toward the bay, while sending the freed Wolfguard to support the Watchers.
Will led the highly mobile Wolfguard swiftly toward the Watchers and hurled every fruit from their ring-shaped pouches.
For a time, among the wights surrounding the Watchers, orange flames from explosive fruits burst apart while sharp ice spikes formed by crystal fruits tore through the dead.
It was worth noting that, perhaps because of the rain, the crystal fruits produced better ice spikes than usual.
Robb, sharing vision with Bloodwind and watching both battlefields at once, noticed it too.
With the fruits thrown by the Wolfguard opening a path, most of the Watchers who still had enough reason left smashed a clear path through the wights before them with two heavy blows and prepared to withdraw.
A few Watchers, excited by the killing, did not want to leave. After other soldiers slapped them hard enough to wake them somewhat, they began retreating as well.
Although the Watchers carried hammers and wore heavy armor, their retreat was not slow at all. The wights that had been delayed one step too long could not catch them.
In front of Hardhome's frozen bay, the Watchers successfully joined Robb's main force.
The wights from both sides joined together as well. Before Robb and the others, they attacked the defensive formation again and again in a fan-shaped surge.
Robb, back atop Bloodwind's head, saw that the moment had come. He sheathed Ice and spread both hands toward the sky ahead.
In Robb's original plan, he would exhaust all his remaining magic during the retreat to condense a thick ice wall and hold the enemy back while they boarded.
But he had just learned that the Night King and the Other commanders could easily shatter the crystal ice he formed with magic. The ice wall's value as an obstacle had therefore become much smaller.
Then, after accidentally noticing the explosion of the crystal fruits thrown by the Wolfguard, a thought came to Robb. He realized how to use the rain controlled by the Night King.
Two streams of white ice mist as thick as buckets blasted from Robb's hands into the sky.
Robb's hands constantly crossed back and forth, so the two streams did not strike only one or two places but spread across the sky ahead.
More and more white mist gathered beneath the gray rain clouds, gradually forming a new white cloud layer.
Feeling that most of his remaining magic had been spent, Robb focused his will. The white cloud before him immediately changed according to his intent.
After the rain falling from the gray cloud was absorbed and condensed by the white cloud, countless icicles, each no longer than a forearm, suddenly fell from high above.
Before the defensive formation retreating toward the bay, a dense rain of ice came down.
These hard icicles, falling from high above and strengthened by Robb's magic, instantly smashed the wights ahead into pieces. Some that escaped being shattered were pierced through and pinned in place.
The Other commanders hidden among the wights could indeed use the blue light in their hands to break these icicles, but the rain of ice kept falling without pause. They could only stand where they were, unable to move.
In this way, the rain of ice falling from the sky forced a barrier between the living and the dead.
"Now! Move!"
Seeing Robb hold back the dead army with such power, Jon and the others shouted for everyone on their side to flee across the frozen sea toward the distant Redwyne fleet.
The Night King, who at some point had ridden down from the cliff, raised his head toward the sky. Then he waved one hand casually. The rain pouring from the gray clouds slowly weakened, and snow began falling again.
The white cloud could no longer absorb water from the gray cloud. After forcing out one last stretch of ice rain, it vanished into the air.
When the ice rain stopped, the tide of wights continued pursuing Robb and the others across the ice.
Robb, already on the ice not far from the Redwyne fleet, looked back and focused his will.
The ice within several yards of Hardhome's shore disappeared at once. Large numbers of wights that had stepped onto it, or could not stop in time, tumbled into the sea.
Even after Robb's side had destroyed many wights, countless dead still stood along Hardhome's shore, staring at them with icy blue eyes. The sight was deeply unsettling.
The Night King rode a dead horse through the wights, which parted by themselves, and came forward. His gaze met Robb's again as Robb looked back from Bloodwind's head.
For an instant, it was as if invisible sparks crackled between them.
Then the Night King seemed to sense something. He suddenly turned toward the cliff where he had stood earlier. A black figure vanished quickly into the snow.
When Robb and the others boarded nearly a hundred ships of the Redwyne fleet in scattered groups, the rescue of Jon and the free folk could be called a complete success.
To prepare for this rescue, Robb had ordered the Redwyne fleet to clear all soldiers from the ships except the necessary sailors. With the dozens of barges added at the last moment, carrying tens of thousands of free folk was not too difficult.
Aboard the Queen of the Arbor, Lord Paxter commanded the crew to leave the waters as quickly as possible, his face ashen.
He had not gone ashore to face the army of wights as Lord Rickard had, but merely seeing their terrible appearance and numbers from afar was enough to make him tremble.
"Robb, do you think the Wall can stop them?"
Standing behind Robb, Jon pushed his wet hair back and asked.
"Of course it can, so long as the Wall does not fall."
Robb did not turn back. He looked toward the receding shore of Hardhome and answered quietly.
"Fall? It will not. Mance said that after we return, he will leave the Horn of Winter in the Night's Watch's keeping."
Jon shook his head with certainty.
"The Horn of Winter. Good. I will go to Castle Black with you this time and have a look."
"Good. Also, in that last fight, I killed a strange dead thing, all white.
"It felt different from the other wights, and its whole body shattered into ice."
Hearing that Robb would return to Castle Black with him, Jon first nodded, then suddenly shifted the topic back to the dead.
"What you killed was an Other. The ones riding dead horses are the same. And not it. He."
Robb understood what Jon meant and corrected him.
"Robb, do you mean the dead riding those horses are not acting on some instinct left from life?
"They are thinking Others?"
Jon understood quickly, grasping Robb's meaning at once.
"Yes. Those countless mindless wights are only their weapons.
"From what I understand, the Others should be thinking magical creatures in human shape, and they have a strict hierarchy as well.
"The one you killed, white all over with no armor or markings, should be an ordinary Other.
"The one I killed wore armor and had something like a round emblem under the neck. He should have been a commander among the Others.
"And the one who traded ice spears with me, the one with an ice crown on his head and a black mark on his neck shaped like a circle over an inverted triangle, should be their king."
Using Jon's question, Robb explained what he had concluded about the Others.
"Gods. If you had not come, I would have become one of the wights.
"What else do you know about them? Tell me all of it."
"They fear weapons made of Valyrian steel and weapons made of obsidian, what you call dragonglass.
"They can raise the corpses of humans and animals, and they possess a kind of magic I have not fully understood.
"Fortunately, they do not seem able to form crystal ice over a large area. Otherwise none of us would have left this time."
On the deck of the Queen of the Arbor, Robb told Jon everything he knew. The Redwyne fleet carried tens of thousands of free folk south toward Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
Outside Castle Black, in a certain hollow.
The wildling band led by Tormund and Ygritte had joined the Thenns led by Styr, and they were discussing a plan of attack.
"We scouted as far as Eastwatch in the east. Every abandoned castle along the Wall now has at least several dozen soldiers guarding it."
Styr, tall, gaunt, bald, and beardless, rubbed the edge of his axe as he reported what he had seen.
"It is the same on our side. Every abandoned castle to the west has men stationed there.
"The moment we attack, they will send signals. Then they will surround us with overwhelming numbers.
"We need to wait for another chance and think carefully about how to take a castle."
Tormund Giantsbane frowned as he answered Styr's report.
"It has been more than a month since Mance lit the fire.
"I listened to your foolish advice and scouted every abandoned castle, and now you tell me to wait longer?
"Listen to me. Tonight we charge straight into Castle Black and open the tunnel gate.
"Once we let the other free folk into the tunnel, these few thousand men cannot stand against our numbers."
Hearing that Tormund wanted to wait again, hot-tempered Styr stood up and roared in anger.
"Your voice is too soft. Shout louder, or the crows in Castle Black will not hear you.
"Hmph. Thenns are nothing but shouting whores."
Ygritte, her red hair bright, had been quietly shaving an arrow shaft. Hearing Styr roar, she frowned and mocked him coldly.
"Whores? Ha. The one who let her crow lover go is the whore, no?"
Styr laughed in rage and stared at Ygritte, striking exactly where it hurt.
"You!"
Ygritte exploded as expected. She drew her bow and aimed at Styr.
The dozen Thenns beside Styr saw their Magnar threatened and stood with savage faces, ready to fight.
Tormund's wildlings did not back down. They rose together and drew weapons, facing the Thenns.
At that moment, Orell, the skinchanger whose eyes had gone entirely white, suddenly returned to himself.
He spoke urgently to the two sides facing each other.
"A countless host is coming from Eastwatch. There are crows among them, and soldiers with the same direwolf mark as the men guarding Castle Black.
"My eagle was killed by an enemy standing on a giant wolf. He is coming this way, and he is very fast."
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