Along both flanks of the Dragon Gate, the Lannister host stretched as far as the eye could see, advancing in neat ranks.
With the sudden reversal, attacker and defender traded places.
The few clan warriors on Kal's side who had just squeezed through the gate passage barely had time to see what was happening before a rain of arrows from above greeted them head-on.
All around, the surviving men of Gregor Clegane—driven by their own side to fight to the death—burst into a savage fury under the shadow of doom.
The Lannister soldiers still standing had gone blood-mad. Weapons clenched white-knuckled, they hacked at the clan warriors who had broken into the city.
Reckless to the point of not caring for their lives, and better armed than the men Kal had brought, they seized back the gate mouth on momentum alone, retaking what had already been lost.
Pressure spiked.
Flesh and screams came in equal measure.
With every step, more lives fell.
Because of the sudden turn, even Bronn—who moments before had been fighting in a showboating way—could no longer dance.
As comrades dropped one after another, he ducked his head and was driven back, pressing himself into a corner of the wall.
There, together with Jon and the few clan warriors still alive, he struggled to hold against the enemies gone berserk.
Kal had meant to go alone and cut off the head to end the snake, but faced with this, he had to halt.
Watching the Lannister army closing from both sides, a flicker of urgency ran through him. He quickly looked back, taking in the state of his own line at a glance.
He immediately spotted Jon and the others, straining to hold the assault.
Because they stood outside the gate passage, they had all but been forced onto a dead end.
The wall at their backs had become an unscalable barrier—
—the last sigh before their death-dirge.
As his gaze swept past, Kal also noticed the sellsword named Chiggen, the one who had always stuck close to Bronn.
At some point, an arrow had come slanting down from above, punched in at his crown, and burst out from the left side of his neck near the jaw.
He was stone-dead now. His body leaned against the wall, as if someone had dragged him back after he was shot, only for him to give up his last breath there.
Taking in the scene before him, a twist of pain knotted Kal's chest.
He lifted his eyes to the wall above, to Kevan Lannister, who still stared down with a mask of indifference. Two arrows fell for Kal's head; with two quick cuts he shattered both in midair.
He bellowed, "Kevan Lannister! When I come to take your head, it'll hang on the Dragon Gate—the brightest sight there!"
Seeing the enemy counterattack with sheer weight of numbers, Kal couldn't bear to squander the small stock of strength he'd scraped together; even a single death pained him.
All the less did he want Jon Snow and the others to come to harm the moment he left.
Though he could indeed choose to go and take Kevan's head right now, Kal knew it would be useless.
Because for every Lannister before him, there was only one road left to take.
They had no choice.
Succeed—or die.
But Kal was not the same.
In that instant, turmoil surged through his chest; in his heart he cursed that old dog Tywin more times than he could count.
If the Mad King was mad, then when this old bastard decided to throw lives away, he wasn't far off.
So, with no better option, Kal gave up on killing Kevan Lannister first and stayed to hold the gate he had won with such effort.
If he lost what he had just taken, the price he would pay later would be far worse than now.
He had only so much to his name; he could not afford to squander it here.
Thus, under Kevan Lannister's seasoned discipline and polished command, what had begun as a sudden raid turned—without the slightest surprise—into a battle of attack and defense.
Seething, Kal made his choice at once.
In his left hand, the gilded longsword that had once belonged to the Kingslayer bit into Lannister men just fine.
In his right, the two-handed greatsword that had been Gregor Clegane's—now Kal's trophy—unleashed an even more outrageous killing power.
This was a fight to the death; it would end only when one side fell.
Neither side could bear the cost of defeat.
He hacked with both hands, each stroke not hindering the other, and Kal did not feel tired.
His massive frame and unbelievable strength made his fighting here look like something you'd only see in a certain game from his previous life—exaggerated to the point of unreality.
The Mountain's two-handed greatsword, a full 2.0 m long, together with Kal's reach, gave him an attack distance that simply covered everything within a 3 m radius around him.
Alone, he was a meat grinder.
Each swing was like Death's sharp scythe mowing grass.
Heads of the Lannister soldiers who stood before him flew as if they cost nothing, thudding to the ground one after another.
As for the stragglers who slipped through, they couldn't draw breath for even half a heartbeat in that flesh-storm before the shorter gilded longsword punched through their chests.
In moments, gushing blood soaked Kal through, running down the links of his mail to the ground, making him look like a fiend crawling out of seven-layered hell to claim lives.
But in this meat-grinder of a battlefield—men killing mad, eyes red, reason gone—the dread Kal inspired went, for a moment, unnoticed.
Or rather, apart from those whose lives he ended, no one had time to spare him a thought.
Every Lannister soldier wanted to live—to shove the enemy back into the gate passage as fast as possible—only then could they hope to survive the iron rain from above.
And for the mountain clan warriors, only by breaking through the blockade of those frenzied Lannister soldiers and forcing their way into the city could they seize even a sliver of life.
For them, there was no path to retreat.
Even leaving aside how narrow the passage was, with their own people still pressing in, falling back meant being jammed in the gateway to be butchered.
No one was right or wrong.
In this moment, the desire to live drowned out everything.
Yet the desire to live brought only iron and blood, fear and death.
"Hold—hold!"
Assaults rolled in from all sides, and the menace of arrows pressed from overhead.
After Jon Snow and the others were hastily split apart, fewer than twenty of them were driven into this corner.
And those fewer than twenty fell one after another in under 30 seconds.
In the end, only Bronn, Hall, Jon Snow, and two other clan warriors no less formidable were still alive.
All around, Lannister soldiers in fine armor held their spears as thick as wheat in a field.
A bristling forest of shafts swayed like wind-swept stalks, enough to choke the breath.
Pressed to the wall, Bronn snatched up a shield from who knew where and struggled to fend off the onrush; the iron sword in his hand could only flail to little effect.
Shouting as he moved, he relied on his nimble footwork to jink left and right, barely staying alive beneath the stabbing thrusts of two or three spears.
But that was the limit of what he could do.
Three spearpoints swelled in his vision.
With arms already numb and leaden, he threw them up again and managed to knock aside two.
The last one, even as he dropped in a desperate crouch to save his life, still scraped his shoulder and scored the skin of his neck.
A blood-line blossomed, warm crimson soaking his throat.
Before the searing pain even reached him, he saw the spears he'd just batted away draw back again.
And as it truly seemed he would die here—a man who had always sought wealth amid danger, who prided himself on his wits and believed he'd chosen just the right way into this war—Bronn despaired.
But it seemed the goddess of fate chose that moment to stand with him and lift the hem of her skirts.
Those spears that drew back never had the chance to thrust again.
Their owners had their skulls smashed sideways by a giant two-handed sword.
"Get up—don't sit there!"
Forced to make a circuit and shove through the press, Kal reached Jon Snow and the others at the last moment.
He wielded the two-handed greatsword like a cudgel; its edge, already rolled from hewing men, swept sideways and crushed three skulls.
With his other hand, he drove his gilded longsword through a Lannister's neck and had no time to yank it free.
Seeing Jon Snow in equal peril on the other side, Kal suddenly snapped up his right foot and drove a kick into the chest of the Lannister he'd just skewered.
At the blow, the once-fine breastplate—and the chest beneath—collapsed into a dented hollow.
The warrior, who with his armor weighed at least 130 kg, went flying like a kicked cat.
His big body, hurled by that heavy force, flashed past in a blur—
—and crashed into the two Lannister soldiers who were about to finish the fallen Jon Snow, bowling them over.
The crack of snapping bones and tearing sinew was lost in the chaos of the battlefield, drowned beneath desperate roars and the shrill screams that come before death.
...
Jon's weapon had been knocked from his hand; rolling was all he could do to evade the next strike. He had barely turned over—hadn't even managed to stand—when he saw two longswords raised high, chopping down at him.
In the instant he panicked and tried to throw up his hands to block, the two Lannister soldiers about to kill him were smashed flat by a hurled body and did not rise again.
Just then, Hall—who roamed the melee by habit and relied on the speed of his thrusting sword—was faring far better than the pair.
With Kal Stone cutting his way through to break the siege, Hall was the first to be pulled clear.
Seeing his chief snuff the crisis in a heartbeat, he had no time for words.
Hall darted forward and snatched up Pale Justice from the blood-slick mire.
Several fresh nicks marred the blade—dings struck up when Jon had just now parried for his life.
He shoved the weapon into a still-dazed Jon's hands and hauled him to his feet in one heave.
Chest heaving after his brush with death, Jon—pupils slightly blown—stared at the three men tangled together on the ground, howling.
Catching his look, Hall glanced over as well.
As the first man Kal had dragged out, he'd seen it all with brutal clarity.
He had witnessed his chief's inhuman strength on the battlefields of the Riverlands—
—but that had been cavalry fighting.
Seeing it up close, on foot, Kal seemed even more terrifying. Hall's shock sat heavy and unshaken.
The two-handed greatsword wielded one-handed was a child's play-stick in Kal's grip.
Nimble, lethal.
Bloody, merciless.
Whatever armor they wore, Lannister soldiers under that sword were grazed and maimed, touched and slain.
And that single kick that sent a fully armored man flying 5–6 m to bowl over two more—horrifying.
The tangle of feelings lasted only an instant; Hall had no time to dwell.
He noticed where Jon was looking, and his hands moved faster than thought.
His sharp thrusting sword flickered twice—one stroke punched into a man's neck, the next slid through a gap at the side of a breastplate and pierced the heart.
The two who had nearly ended Jon's life choked off their wails for good.
"Don't stare—move! We either get out or stick with the chief!"
In the chaos, Hall—well into his thirties—showed another, steadier side of himself.
He grabbed Jon by the collar and hauled him along like a child, dragging him toward Kal.
As for Kal, once he'd broken Jon and the others out of danger, he had no time for pleasantries.
He turned, blades working in tandem—several swift strokes cut down the foes pressing in again.
He even found a heartbeat to flick his gilded longsword without looking, chopping a few arrows flying for him to splinters.
That fearsome slaughter cleared a patch of open ground for an instant.
He snatched a glance back at Jon, whom Hall had brought over, and at Bronn, who had quickly slipped to his side.
As for the two clan warriors who had been alive moments ago—they had already gone down under the flurry of spears.
"Back under the gate arch! On me—hold the gate!"
He couldn't save everyone; there was no time to hurt for it.
Seeing the line on the other side driven back into the gate passage again, he shouted the order.
At the call, Jon—breath finally returning—snatched up his longsword and plunged back in.
Bronn, relying on his shield, braced in front of them.
Thus, with Kal Stone's unstoppable strength cutting the way, the four of them made it back into the gate passage without much trouble.
At the sudden dimness, Jon—fresh from hell—let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Gasping, he set the nicked blade tip to the ground, bent at the waist, and dry-heaved.
It was a reflex—too much tension, adrenaline spiking and crashing.
When he finally steadied, Jon wiped his mouth.
Instinctively, he lifted his head to look out through the arch.
The Lannister soldiers who had been sweeping in from both flanks now stood before them.
Only now did the rain of arrows from above cease.
With Kal back, every clan warrior who had just rushed out had pulled back into the gate passage.
Those who hadn't returned were bodies on the ground.
The arrows stopped; the world seemed to hit pause.
Outside the arch, the Lannister host formed ranks, staring in silence at the enemies within.
Between the two sides—corpses were piled like a mountain, and blood ran like a river.
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