Shadow Tower exploded.
It literally exploded.
The fire from the blast was visible for miles, and the shockwave traveled eastward along the Wall, triggering a partial collapse of ice and shaking loose dozens of tons of unstable debris from the surface.
The explosion destroyed the first and second levels of the stairway at Shadow Tower, more than ten meters in total. Lamp oil stored in advance on the third-level platform was also ignited, burning fiercely and dangerously. Meanwhile, Cotter Pyke, known as the Disfigured, stood on the fifth-level platform, forty meters above, tearfully leading his men in a retreat toward the top of the Wall while simultaneously demolishing the stairs behind them.
There was little suspense left in the battle at the Great Gorge and the western end of the Wall, which was nearing its conclusion. However, the battle at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, over a hundred miles away at the Wall's easternmost point, had also reached a similar stage.
…
The Eastwatch-by-the-Sea garrison had lost one man atop the Wall and most of the ice-removal team the moment the ice storm swept through. They had also failed to receive reinforcements from the Night's Watch soldiers retreating from the Great Gorge, leaving them with fewer combatants than Shadow Tower. Fortunately, the force of wights crossing the frozen sea on the eastern front was also weaker, totaling less than twenty thousand, only a fifth of the Night King's main force. They also lacked heavy siege beasts like mammoths and giants. As a result, this evenly matched battle had started earlier than the one at Shadow Tower but lasted longer. When the two White Walkers leading the eastern force could no longer tolerate the ongoing loss of wights, they used magic to destroy the garrison's wildfire defenses. The wights then climbed the Wall and began attacking the fortress with difficulty.
The same heavy snow was falling, and firelight blazed everywhere. Most of the wights attacking from the east had been transformed from humans. As the Night's Watch were familiar with their strength, these creatures couldn't gain the upper hand even after breaching the walls. Reinforcements from the Beacon Tower and Black Sable Hall had arrived one after another, joining the fray. The fighting within the fortress walls was brutal and deadlocked, so much so that many Commanders felt that if they just pushed harder, they could still retake the fortress.
The soldiers of the book retrieval team, who had arrived less than a day earlier and were loyal to the Dragon Queen, after wandering aimlessly at first, eventually found the local Chief Logistics officer. Half-begging, half-looting, they managed to get hold of Dragonglass spears and arrows. Now, they were following the Red Priest Moqorro through the chaotic alleyways of the fortress when they suddenly ran into Cotter Pyke, who was charging toward the stairs with a dozen soldiers.
"Commander!" Moqorro shouted. "I've located two servants of the cold god, the White Walkers you spoke of. Bring your men and follow me, we can hunt them together!"
"I'm on a more important mission. I don't have time to go hunting with you, priest!" Cotter roared. If Moqorro hadn't been tall and imposing, with dozens of Unsullied standing behind him, the ill-tempered Cotter would have shoved him aside and continued on his way. "Get out of my way!"
Just moments earlier, Cotter Pyke, like many of his men, had entertained the illusion that the fortress could be retaken. He had even led several counterattacks. However, though a single wight wasn't difficult to kill when using the proper weapons, their endless numbers continued pressing in, slowly and relentlessly overtaking the fortress. In areas under the heaviest assault, the defensive line had already shrunk to the middle of the stronghold, only two or three hundred meters from the stairs.
After a hard fight that had left him injured, Cotter finally came to his senses, remembering the crucial part of the plan—destroying the stairs. He immediately led a team toward the Wall, which led to this confrontation with Moqorro.
"Unless those two White Walkers are killed, everything else will be meaningless! If you're determined to retreat, at least hand over the lightbringers and let me handle it!" Moqorro said, refusing to back down. He raised his right hand, conjuring a floating flame in his palm to show he wasn't just a charlatan. "I know we only met today, but I have a way to help you reclaim the fortress and save the brothers who still live. Please, trust me!"
This irrefutable display of magic made Cotter pause. After a moment, he turned to Aen Emmett, who was carrying the fortress's Dragonglass arrows. "Aen, take two reliable brothers and follow this red-robed fellow. Take a blast bomb with you. Remember, I'll be on the third-level platform of the stairs. If I see wights before I see you, I'll ignite the stairs. Don't blame me when you reach the Seven Hells."
"Yes, sir!"
Aen Emmett, Commander of the Eastwatch Rangers, had long been frustrated. Though armed with legendary weapons capable of killing White Walkers, he hadn't even found his target all night. Now, with Cotter's permission, his spirits lifted. He immediately took two of his best men and joined Moqorro's group.
The two parties separated. One rushed toward the stairs leading to the Wall, while the other, moving against the stream of retreating personnel, cut south through the chaos toward the outer wall.
The wights were swarming toward the stairs leading up the Wall. The White Walker hunting party chose an alternate route, avoiding the main force, cutting a bloody path through burning buildings and alleys. Because of their route, they encountered fewer enemies. Wights animated by White Walkers were slightly stronger in endurance, speed, and strength than when alive. But with proper weapons and no overwhelming numbers, they were manageable. In the narrow, chaotic spaces between buildings, the real danger was not their strength, but the uncertainty. Wights could emerge from any corner, passage, or rooftop, striking unexpectedly.
However, with a high-ranking Red Priest leading them, these obstacles were far less threatening.
As a servant of R'hllor, Moqorro was skilled in fire magic and had an acute sense for wights powered by cold magic. He could detect them from afar. Under his guidance, the group bypassed large enemy clusters and eliminated smaller threats. In every clash, the Unsullied armed with Dragonglass spears dispatched the wights with ease, as if stabbing practice dummies. If one ever slipped through, Moqorro handled it effortlessly.
Unlike what most might expect, Moqorro didn't blast the wights apart or turn them into fireballs, although he could. That kind of magic was wasteful. His actual method was to release concentrated fire-attribute impacts that pierced the wight's body, disrupting the cold magic within and severing the White Walkers' control. The wights then returned to being nothing more than corpses.
His way of killing wights was the same in principle as Dragonglass, only without the obsidian medium and with a slightly shorter range.
So what onlookers saw was Moqorro raising a hand, snapping his fingers, or sometimes not moving at all, and the wights that had suddenly appeared from the shadows, about to cause harm, would simply drop like sacks of meat.
The Red Priest's magic was not suppressed at the Wall. This was the final battle. There was no need to hold back.
Fighting and moving like this, they reached the outer passage leading up to the Wall. The guards had long retreated, but the wights, after climbing the Wall, had jumped straight into the fortress and hadn't bothered looking for ways back down. The path was empty, blocked only by burning wights and the corpses of Night's Watch brothers who had fallen and might rise again at any moment.
This was the perimeter of the fortress—the first place to fall—yet the enemy was nowhere in sight. They cautiously peered over the top of the wall. Sure enough, aside from charred remains still smoking and a few twitching body parts below, the once-dense sea of corpses had vanished. Partly because the attacking force from this direction was just over ten thousand, but more importantly, it meant the entire group of wights had already surged into the fortress.
"Lord Priest, are you sure the White Walkers are outside the Wall? Wouldn't they follow their forces into the stronghold?"
"No, they're also wary of being ambushed in such a complex environment. Most likely, they'll stay outside and wait until the fortress is fully captured and all living men are dead before coming in to claim the spoils."
Though he spoke confidently, Moqorro was only guessing. He had used his magical senses to locate the White Walkers earlier when they had expended energy to snuff out the flames outside the Wall. But unless the White Walkers were casting spells, they barely showed up in his senses. Whether they had moved since then, he didn't know. Still, it was better to try their luck than search aimlessly.
Staying low behind the battlements, they followed Moqorro. Each breath emerged as a puff of white mist. After moving several hundred meters, Moqorro stopped, crouched low behind the Wall, and ordered an Unsullied beside him in Valyrian, "This is the place. Look outside. Do you see anything unusual?"
The Unsullied frowned. What exactly counted as "unusual"? Since following Daenerys from across the Narrow Sea, everything in Westeros had been strange to him, especially after arriving at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. He didn't even know what a White Walker looked like. How was he supposed to report something unusual?
Still, trained to obey, he did as he was told. Straightening up, he leaned over the battlement to look.
In the pitch black, something sliced through the air. In the next instant, his entire head—helmet and all—burst into a mist of blood, as if struck by a massive sniper bolt. His corpse slumped over the wall, and hot blood splashed across Moqorro's face.
(To be continued.)