The White Walkers wracked their brains but couldn't figure out that the fire magic within the corpses of the fallen defenders wasn't some miracle from R'hllor, nor the power of a Greenseer. It came instead from an operation Crown Town only began implementing today, with uncertain feasibility and purely a last-minute gamble.
After receiving battle reports from various fronts early that morning, the Command Post used the new intelligence to make a series of decisions. Following the meeting to revise and expand the defense plan before the battle, Maester Qyburn, who was neither a commander nor clerical staff, suddenly brought up a peculiar topic. Since Dragonglass could kill wights, what if it was placed inside a body beforehand? Could it result in a situation where one "kills oneself"? That is, if someone died in battle and was turned into a wight, would the Dragonglass inside them kill their reanimated body?
Undoubtedly, this kind of fantastical brainstorming was more suitable for idle chatter after dinner than the tense atmosphere at the Command Post during such a critical moment. But the idea touched upon a blind spot in everyone's thinking and immediately drew Aegor's attention.
Their enemies defied common sense and rampaged through the Night's Watch's carefully constructed defenses with all manner of unbelievable methods. In a situation like this, one couldn't afford to stick to conventional thinking.
It was, of course, impossible to forcibly insert Dragonglass into the bodies of all soldiers and civilians through surgery or other invasive means. But there was a simpler way. They could swallow it.
The only operational foundry in the industrial district, after finishing its work on the Dragonglass Bombs, immediately switched over to full-capacity production of smooth, pearl-sized Dragonglass beads. These were distributed to all soldiers and civilians at dinnertime, including Giants, with strict orders that everyone must swallow one before the battle.
These round, smooth objects, once ingested through the esophagus, generally wouldn't harm the body. After digestion, they would pass through and be excreted in their original form. The only flaw in the plan was that the beads couldn't remain fixed within the body. But clearly, with the White Walkers capable of capturing a stronghold in under an hour, there was no chance that anyone with normal digestion would excrete them before the battle ended.
Contrary to Qyburn's original idea, swallowing Dragonglass didn't kill the reanimated wight. Instead, it directly interfered with the functioning of cold magic. The countermeasure was simple. Either disembowel the fallen and dig out each bead from the digestive tract or expend more magical energy to first neutralize the fire magic within the Dragonglass before continuing the reanimation ritual.
However, both time and magic were in short supply for the White Walkers. With the Wall still standing and the dragons rushing to the battlefield, those resources had become critically scarce.
One White Walker, horrified, reported this bizarre occurrence to the Night King. Meanwhile, the human hunting squad dispatched from the Command Post, fueled with killing intent and armed with Dragonglass Bombs and Dragonsteel Arrows, had already arrived just one street away.
---
They had originally believed Crown Town was an easy prize, a fat sheep ready for slaughter. Who would've thought that when the fighting started, it turned out to be a heavily armored, nimble fat warrior? There was fat, yes, but swallowing it was nearly impossible.
Even after unleashing their trump card, cold magic, right at the start, the number of wight casualties kept rising steadily by the dozens and then hundreds. In no time, the total losses surpassed a thousand and were climbing toward two thousand, a growth rate that completely exceeded the Night King's initial estimates.
Still, despite the heavy losses, as long as the final number of dead did not exceed the number of living humans in the town who could be turned into soldiers, the battle was not a failure. In fact, considering the number of Giants hiding behind the walls, it might even turn a profit.
As a thinking being, the Night King's value wasn't just that he was the strongest White Walker. Like Aegor was to the Night's Watch, he was the decision-maker and leader, the one who devised counters whenever the living found new ways to resist.
From the Great Gorge defensive line, to the cleared ice fields at Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, to the round-the-clock patrols atop the Wall, to Wildfire, bombs, and all sorts of Dragonglass weapons, the humans' preparations for this war were almost impossibly thorough. Yet the Night King still fulfilled his role, crafting and executing countermeasures one after another. The only thing that left him helpless was the Dragonsteel Arrow, a divine weapon previously unseen, one that was both unbeatable and rich in magical energy. Faced with it, he could think of only one reliable solution: stay hidden and remain outside its range.
Sticking firmly to this strategy, when Melisandre cast a powerful light spell on Aegor's Dragonsteel Arrow earlier, revealing her position, the Night King made no move. He stayed concealed within the sea of wights far from the city wall, watching the enemy desperately try to lure him out, a cold smile on his face.
The first Lightbringer streaked through the air and landed among the wights just ahead of the Night King.
Truthfully, a Red Priestess was a great bait. Killing the last Greenseer in the world was a thought that brought satisfaction. And, after focusing his senses, the Night King discovered something more. The person who fired the arrow wasn't a nameless soldier. He bore a familiar and rare aura, the aura of the cold god's nemesis.
It was the same Night's Watch brother who had caused the first White Walker casualty in the Haunted Forest years ago.
Even with all these temptations bundled together, for the sake of the cold god's greater cause, the Night King resisted the urge to strike.
But when the second Dragonsteel Arrow, blazing with light, shot toward him again, and when his subordinates inside the city reported the strange events they encountered, the strategic meaning of this battle came into question. Only by relying on magic could Crown Town be taken with minimal losses. Only by ending the fight swiftly could Nightfort be captured and the Wall's magic undone before the dragons arrived. But if taking the city meant using large amounts of magic or spending significant time to convert the enchanted corpses, then what was the point of deviating from the original plan to attack here first?
Suddenly, the Night King realized the deeper meaning behind the enemy's seemingly pointless launch of Dragonsteel Arrows in his direction.
Beyond just baiting him into a trap, it was a show of force, a declaration. By wasting these magical weapons capable of killing Cold God Priests, the enemy was sending a message. They had as many of these as they wanted, and the Priests the Night King had sent into the city had walked right into a trap, like sheep into a tiger's den.
Abandoning the Wall to attack Crown Town had been a major strategic blunder. The best course of action now would be to halt the offensive immediately and shift to other, more valuable targets while wight losses were still manageable. However, the eight Priests already inside the city walls had become the biggest obstacle to retreat.
Each Cold God Priest was a precious asset. The number of wights the Night King could control personally was limited. He couldn't afford to lose two-thirds of his high-level subordinates. Otherwise, even if he won on the battlefield in the Gift, the march southward into the rest of Westeros would be fraught with difficulty.
He had to find a way to cover their retreat and help the eight Priests escape Crown Town.
Time and again, a step behind, the Night King finally felt the burning shame and fury of being outmaneuvered. At last, he was overcome with a strong urge to kill. He raised his ice spear, aimed toward the wall, hesitated, then gritted his teeth and lowered it again. If he were to face dragons in the future, this magical weapon formed from his own body was his only true countermeasure. Now was not the time to waste it on a mere mortal in a moment of anger.
He handed the ice spear back to the Priest beside him and instead picked up a fist-sized stone at his feet.
Throwing such an irregular, non-aerodynamic object over this distance was wildly inaccurate. But even if it exposed his location, there was no risk of being hit by those human magical arrows.
He aimed toward the Red Priestess and the first Priest-killer, gathered his full strength, and hurled the stone. At the same time, he gave the command for a full assault.
---
Throwing a stone didn't count as casting a spell, but White Walkers, including the Night King, were beings wholly sustained by magic. Their muscles were formed of magical threads. Any strenuous movement would inevitably cause magical energy to leak out. It was this subtle magical fluctuation that allowed Melisandre to detect the attack instantly.
"Duck!"
The last time she'd faced the Night King, it was Aegor who had shoved her out of the way and saved her. This time, she wouldn't repeat the same mistake. She grabbed the man beside her and yanked him down behind the parapet and a row of shield-bearing soldiers. Aegor, knowing how serious the situation was, immediately cooperated.
Then came a thunderous crash that shook the earth. The enemy's attack slammed into the parapet, shattering an entire block of stone nearly a foot thick, knocking over the nearest shield-bearer. The flying shards struck other nearby shields, producing a clatter of impact.
It was like being shelled by a small-caliber cannon. If the parapet hadn't been there, Aegor had no doubt the strike would have pierced the soldier's shield, his body, and still had force to spare. But there was no time to marvel at the power of the attack or consider whether it had been aimed at him or Melisandre.
He shouted, "Where?"
"A little north of where your second arrow landed, but... gods, it's over a thousand feet away!" Melisandre answered in desperation.
Over a thousand feet. That was more than three hundred meters, well beyond the range of any wooden bow of this era. But hadn't Aegor poured resources into importing and copying high-performance trebuchets for exactly this kind of moment? Hadn't he ordered their crews to prioritize accuracy over distance in training, and even held competitions to test their skills?
The failure of Dragonglass's killing ability against high-level enemies had nearly made those efforts pointless. But now, these two Dragonglass Bombs gave Crown Town's elite artillerymen a chance to shine at last.
After confirming the Night King's location with Bran, Aegor had brought not just master archers like Anguy and Theon to this section of the wall, but also the two best trebuchet teams in the entire Gift.
"Trebuchet, Dragonglass Bomb loaded. Distance, eleven hundred feet. Shorten the fuse."
"In position, ready."
There was no time to explain to Melisandre. Aegor drew the third Lightbringer and held it out to her. "Enchant."
His commanding tone left no room for argument. The Red Priestess obeyed instinctively. A new blinding light ignited atop the wall. Aegor aimed where Melisandre had indicated and loosed his shot without hesitation.
The magical flare once again lit up the area northwest of Crown Town. In its glow, it was plain to see. The wight horde, which had previously held still at the edge of the fire line, had begun swarming toward the city like a flood the moment the Night King launched his attack.
"Is this the direction?"
Melisandre was so nervous she nearly stammered. "A... almost!"
"Aim for where the arrow lands. Light the fuses. Fire!"
Thousands of hours of training had made the trebuchet operators fluid and precise. With two crisp cracks, the arms swung, and two perfectly spherical weapons, identical in size to Dragonglass Bombs but filled with something else, launched into the sky, chasing after the descending flare.
(To be continued.)
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◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)