After Lynd rescued the Tree People and the Stone Giant from the Others, he did not leave. He joined Mance Rayder and others, and together they followed the Tree People to their refuge in Frostfang, a hidden valley in the Frostfang mountains, where dozens of Savage Tribes who had fled from other places were said to have gathered.
On the way, they also encountered other Savage Tribes. Some Savage Tribes joined their team and went to the hidden valley refuge together, while some Savage Tribes planned to go to Hardhome in the east, where there were said to be ships that could bypass the Wall and go south of the Wall.
However, Mance Rayder told the leaders of those Savage Tribes that the ships at Hardhome would never take them anywhere south of the Wall, but only to the slave markets across Across the Narrow Sea.
The leaders of those Savage Tribes did not believe Mance Rayder's words. Even though Gerry, the leader of the Tree People, repeatedly guaranteed that Mance Rayder and others were good crows, they still did not trust anything a crow said.
Lynd had been learning the ancient tongue from the leader of the Tree People during this time, which would facilitate his communication with the Stone Giants. Compared to those complex languages, the ancient tongue was obviously simpler, with most single syllables representing a certain object and without too much complicated grammar.
In just two days, he had learned all the ancient tongue that Gerry knew and could already communicate normally with the Stone Giants.
These Stone Giants, who regarded Lynd as a deity and decided to serve him, all came from an ancient Stone Giant tribe called the Stone People. They lived in the White Wasteland and built a Stone Giant city there.
However, in the very ancient past, the Stone Giant city was destroyed by an Ice Dragon and then hunted by the Others, forcing them to migrate south. Thousands of years later, these twenty-six Stone Giants are the only surviving members of their tribe. To distinguish them from the long-haired Stone Giants Beyond the Wall, the Savage Tribes usually refer to them as Stone Giants.
The leader of these Stone Giants is named Marg, which is a simplified name. The Stone Giants' true names are too long, consisting of more than a dozen words. However, when they decided to serve Lynd, who was regarded as a deity, they added the appellation "gowa" before their names, such as "gowa Marg," meaning Marg of the God.
Lynd was very interested in the history of the Stone Giants, especially about the White Wasteland and the Ice Dragon, so he talked a lot with Marg on the road. Unfortunately, Marg was a Stone Giant born after the Stone Giants migrated to Beyond the Wall and had never been to the White Wasteland. He only knew some things about the White Wasteland from his ancestors, but due to language barriers, most of what he said was fragmented and could not provide useful information.
However, during the conversation, Lynd unexpectedly discovered that Marg was a female Stone Giant. Although he knew from books that male and female Stone Giants Beyond the Wall looked the same, he never imagined that this Stone Giant with a big beard and no female features on his appearance was actually female.
Moreover, among these twenty-six Stone Giants, seventeen were female Stone Giants, and only nine were male Stone Giants, and these nine male Stone Giants were significantly shorter than the other female Stone Giants.
When these Stone Giants saw Glory, whose size was clearly different from that of ordinary Shadow Lynxes, they all called Glory "Taka."
Marg explained that Taka was a mysterious beast that inhabited the White Wasteland, said to grow as large as a Dragon and feed on Dragons. Its most obvious feature was its larger size than a Shadow Lynx.
Lynd felt that Taka might be a variant of Glory, this type of Shadow Lynx, and as for the claim of feeding on Dragons, it might be related to its consumption of vengeful spirit energy containing Dragon souls.
As for eventually growing to the size of a Dragon, looking at Glory's current growth, it seems unlikely to be achieved, after all, Glory would definitely need to devour a large amount of vengeful spirit energy containing Dragon souls to grow, and where is there so much vengeful spirit energy for Glory to devour now?
Moreover, not every type of vengeful spirit energy can promote Glory's growth. For example, the vengeful spirit energy of Summerhall only gave Glory special abilities, so Lynd could only let Glory take its natural course, and it would depend on luck what Glory would eventually grow into.
This mixed team of several Savage Tribes, oath-breaking Night's Watch, and Stone Giants walked very slowly, taking three days to reach a fork in the Milkwater River to the south. Because they did not carry any supplies when they fled, all kinds of provisions could only be obtained by hunting on the road, and coupled with the many wounded in the team, it invisibly slowed down the progress of their journey.
Fortunately, in these three days, they no longer encountered the Others or wights, and the blizzard had completely stopped. Moreover, Lynd also saw the surge of magic from a weirwood carved with a human face. It seemed that the Three-Eyed Raven had begun to recover and was using the weirwood to form a barrier-like environment Beyond the Wall.
In this environment, although the Others would not be harmed, they should be subject to certain restrictions, and their power might even be weakened to the point where even ordinary people could kill them, such as the future Other slayer Samwell Tarly.
"Damn it, the ice has melted!" Standing by the Milkwater River, Gerry looked at the broken pieces of floating ice in front of him, his face a little grim.
"Cut down trees, make rafts," Mance Rayder suggested.
Someone else suggested, "Let the Stone Giants drive piles into the water and make a simple temporary bridge."
As everyone was offering suggestions, Lynd, riding his horse and leading Glory, walked to the riverbank and said to Gerry, Mance Rayder, and the others, "Follow me."
Then, under the bewildered gaze of everyone, Lynd spurred his horse and urged Black Wind onto the river surface.
However, when Black Wind's hooves stepped on the water, they did not sink but solidly stepped on the surface, because the river water beneath its feet had already frozen into a thick layer of ice when it landed, and the ice layer rapidly spread as it moved forward, connecting the floating ice together to form an ice bridge.
Those who had previously seen Lynd slay the Others, as well as the Savage Tribes who joined later, all had unparalleled reverence in their eyes when they witnessed this miraculous scene, and they shouted his name as a deity.
While everyone was still immersed in fervent worship and shouting the name of gowa, the Stone Giants had already stepped onto the ice bridge. The sturdy ice bridge easily bore the weight of the Stone Giants, neither breaking nor sinking.
Seeing this, everyone else also stepped onto the ice bridge and walked towards the opposite bank.
When everyone had crossed the ice bridge, Lynd drew his Greatsword and struck the ice bridge with one blow. The entire ice bridge shattered into countless ice crystals before everyone's eyes and was washed away by the river, as if it had never existed.
In the eyes of Gerry and others, once they crossed the Milkwater River, they would be safe. The Others and wights could not cross the river, and the rest of the journey would be much easier.
Without the worry of being pursued by the Others, the team's pace quickened significantly, and soon they delved deep into the Frostfang mountains. After crossing several hills, they arrived at the entrance of a canyon.
The Savage Tribes' sentries standing at the top of the canyon had already seen them when the team crossed the distant hill, and they blew their horns to notify the people inside the canyon.
When the team reached the canyon entrance, many people were already waiting there. Gerry quickened his pace, walked out of the team, and ran towards the people in front, while the Savage Tribes' leaders waiting there also came to meet Gerry.
These Savage Tribes' leaders included both men and women, and their relationship with Gerry seemed to be good. Upon seeing Gerry, they actively embraced him and then asked him about the migration in their language.
When the team walked in front of them, they saw Mance Rayder and others wearing black cloaks, and their faces immediately showed displeasure, and they shouted a few words at Gerry.
"Mance is a good crow. He has forsaken the crow's oath. Now he is a Free Folk," Gerry said loudly in the common tongue, speaking both to the leaders of those Savage Tribes and to Mance Rayder.
Mance Rayder stepped forward, bowed to the leaders of the Savage Tribes, and skillfully explained his situation in the language of the Savage Tribes.
The faces of the Savage Tribes' leaders also softened a bit. One of the oldest leaders told Mance Rayder and the others to throw away their black cloaks. Mance Rayder did so, and only then did they believe that Mance Rayder and the others were no longer Night's Watch.
Then, they led the team into the canyon, and it was then that they saw Lynd, who was guarded in the middle by the Stone Giant team, and Glory beside Lynd.
Someone immediately whispered to Gerry, asking who Lynd was. In their eyes, Lynd was not a powerful knight, but more like a fool, because he actually wore metal armor in such a cold place. Even if he had a huge beast following him, he was just a fool who had tamed a huge beast.
However, when they heard Gerry's narration about Lynd, each of them looked at Gerry as if he were a fool. What about flying down from a high mountain, like the embodiment of thunder, slaughtering wights and the Others, etc., it all sounded like a hallucination after drinking too much.
However, the tribal leaders who were familiar with the Stone Giants saw how submissive the Stone Giants were towards Lynd, as if treating him as a deity, and they felt that what Gerry said might be true.
The canyon was not very long, taking about five or six minutes to pass through, and on the other side of the canyon was a valley. The valley was surrounded by high mountains, with trees growing in the middle. Small streams formed by melting snow converged in the middle of the valley, forming a small lake. A large number of tents and wooden houses were built haphazardly around the lake, and thousands of Savage Tribes walked around the camp. Among them were more than a dozen long-haired Stone Giants, who were assisting the Savage Tribes in building houses.
Upon seeing the long-haired Stone Giants, the Stone Giants' rock-hard faces all showed expressions of disgust, and the long-haired Stone Giants, upon seeing the Stone Giants, let out provocative roars at them.
However, both sides seemed to stop at expressing their attitudes with expressions and actions and did not intend to directly attack each other.
Seeing that the Stone Giants did not make a move, the Savage Tribes' leaders all breathed a sigh of relief. Then they arranged for the Stone Giants to stay in the rock caves on the edge of the valley, which was an environment the Stone Giants liked very much.
Lynd also rested outside the rock cave with the Stone Giants.
Compared to the long-haired Stone Giants who did not know how to build houses, the Stone Giants were very good at building. Before dark, they had already built a simple pointed-roof house for Lynd and then repaired their own rock caves.
After nightfall, the sentry's horn sounded again, and all the Savage Tribes nervously looked at the canyon exit. It was not until they heard the long and short frequencies of the horn that they relaxed and continued with their work.
After a while, the Savage Tribes' leaders in the canyon welcomed another Savage Tribe. This Savage Tribe had only three or four hundred people, but it was very striking because the leader of this tribe was very special.
The leader of this tribe was a white-haired man riding on a bear, and beside this white-haired man was a normal-sized Shadow Lynx and three wolves.
Such obvious features made Lynd instantly recognize that he should be Varamyr, the famous Shapeshifter among the Beyond the Wall Wildlings.
This Varamyr should be the most powerful Shapeshifter to date. He could control five beasts simultaneously and possess animals or even people, making him simply an enhanced version of Howland Reed.
However, Lynd did not like him, and even disliked this person very much. He was one of the few people Lynd disliked in the world of Ice and Fire.
Because this Varamyr was a kinslayer. When he was very young, simply because he disliked his younger brother, he controlled three dogs to bite his two-year-old brother to death. Moreover, he was an immoral person. Even those who had helped him and treated him would not hesitate to harm them when he needed to, for example, the spearwife who later treated him wanted to save him when the Others arrived, but died due to his treachery.
However, even if he didn't like this person, Lynd had no intention of harming him, provided that he did not provoke him first.
Lynd planned to stay in this valley for two days to learn about these Savage Tribes, and then end this trip Beyond the Wall and return to the Wall.
"Marg, I, two days later, return, Wall, South, you, follow, me?" Lynd suddenly thought whether these Stone Giants would still be willing to follow him when he returned south of the Wall, as the Stone Giants had always lived in the far north, so he asked Marg, the leader of the Stone Giants.
"Stone Giants, follow gowa, South, follow gowa," gowa answered Lynd loudly with a firm expression, and the other Stone Giants also responded loudly.
The Stone Giants' loud roars also attracted the attention of the people in the camp. They all looked over here and, seeing that it was just the Stone Giants roaring, turned their heads back to continue their work.
However, Varamyr, sitting on the bear's back, saw Glory beside Lynd, and his eyes lit up, seemingly having some ideas.
After nightfall, Lynd took out the Dragon Egg and completed its routine maintenance, then decided to rest. The high-intensity battle with the Others a few days ago, coupled with days of travel, had made him a bit tired.
However, Glory, who was resting by the campfire, suddenly stood up from the ground, then walked back and forth in an open space, and occasionally let out threatening growls.
Lynd felt the anxious and aggressive emotions in Glory and was about to possess Glory to comfort him.
And the fur on Glory's body suddenly turned black and emitted that black light. A blurry figure emerged from its body and disappeared instantly.
Almost simultaneously, a piercing scream came from the distant Savage Tribes' camp, followed by Varamyr the Shapeshifter's bear, Shadow Lynx, and three wolves rushing out of Varamyr's tent like mad, attacking everything alive they could see.
The Savage Tribes had no choice but to kill them, and when they entered the tent to check on Varamyr, they only saw Varamyr lying on the ground like an idiot, his eyes blank, and drooling from his mouth.
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