The next morning.
Clear skies, with a cool north wind.
The golden rays of the rising sun scattered the cold white fog shrouding Meereen and revealed a flat expanse of black soil about to be stained with blood.
"Woooo" The first horn sounded at the gate of the coalition's crude encampment.
"Woo woo woo" Horn calls rose and fell throughout the camp. The warriors hurriedly swallowed the last bite of roasted bread wrapped around fried bacon, extinguished the bonfires before them, wiped their mouths, snatched up the spears, swords, or shields that had been tucked beneath their backsides, and ran toward their assigned battalions.
"Woo woo woo" Urgent horns sounded atop the walls of Meereen, warning the city's defenders that a dense mass of coalition soldiers was advancing toward the gates.
Battle was on the verge of erupting.
At the same time, five hundred meters south of Meereen, inside a fifty-meter-deep tunnel as wide as an urban subway passage, thousands of torches sizzled and crackled, casting a hot and filthy red light into the endless darkness.
The dwarf loosened the crossbow clenched in his right hand, grabbed a corner of his cloak, wiped the oil and sweat from his fingers, then reached toward the stock again. Halfway there, he hesitated, lifted the visor of his helm, and opened his mouth to take in several deep breaths.
"Cough cough cough." He inhaled sharply only to draw in a bellyful of scorching smoke from the whale-oil torches. The dwarf bent double, hacking violently as tears and snot streamed down his face.
"I told you not to come, but you refused to listen. Now that you are about to enter battle, suddenly you know fear?" the long-nosed king on the nearby war elephant growled in a low voice.
"I am not afraid" He began to argue, then gave a bitter smile and shook his head. "Fine, I am afraid. Who knows what is waiting for us above ground."
Hearing this, the long-nosed king fell silent.
Since the Dragon Queen had discovered the tunnel entrance, it was impossible she had not prepared a response.
So what would be waiting for them?
Staring at the long serpentine formation of elephant cavalry ahead, the long-nosed king murmured bleakly, "Plenty of men will die soon, but we are at the very rear. The danger to us is small."
"Fine, we will stay as far back as possible." The dwarf turned and glanced at the pitch-black tunnel behind him. Exhaling deeply, he said to the servant controlling the elephant, "Cadillac, take a few steps back."
The servant, blond and blue-eyed, barely into his twenties, was about one meter sixty tall, and his long horse-shaped face covered with freckles took up nearly twenty-five centimeters of that height.
"My lord, we are already at the very back." The horse-faced servant looked confused.
The dwarf gripped his crossbow again, his single eye flicking toward the new father beside him. "Retreat a few more steps. The smoke is thick up ahead. I cannot breathe well."
"Oh!"
"Boom!" A deafening explosion suddenly burst from the front.
A moment later came a steam-whistle roar, "Aaaaargh!"
The great battle had begun. Jenny had sent the dragon-worms tunneling upward to break the surface.
"Woo woo woo" The horn of attack sounded from the front ranks.
The elephants, fed potions by Maester Martaris to harden them against draconic terror, were nearly immune to the dragon-worms' pressure. Even with the burrowing creatures so close ahead, they advanced at a forced trot under the prodding of their riders.
"Leo, stay with me!" the long-nosed king shouted, guiding his elephant forward at a slow run.
"Cadillac, you are my squire. You must obey my every word. I will guarantee your bright future, understand?" the dwarf whispered to his charioteer.
From the moment they entered the tunnel, Cadillac had become his squire. After these many days together, the dwarf was confident he had won the youth over completely, just as he once had with Bronn and Podrick.
"I will do whatever you say." The horse-faced young man nodded.
The dwarf exhaled and lifted his crossbow with practiced ease. In Cadillac's horrified stare, he took aim at the new father's back.
"Boom… hummmmm."
Suddenly, the earth trembled softly and a muffled sound seemed to rise from the planet's depths.
It was as if someone plucked the C string of a giant cello in the earth's core—low, deep, layered, fading away slowly.
"What is happening? An earthquake?" Forgetting his murderous intent, the dwarf held onto the saddle and stared around, alarmed.
"AAAHHHHH!" Terrified screams erupted from the front ranks.
"The river is rising. A flood, a great flood is coming! Ahhh, it is dark, the sky is dark!" Elephant soldiers shrieked in panic.
"What flood? What darkness?" The dwarf at the rear could not make it out and shouted, "What is happening up there? What is the Dragon Queen doing?"
The blazing white sun rose to the midpoint of the sky, draping the land and city in a warm golden haze. The sky was washed clean and blue, flawless and cloudless. Five enormous dragons—black, green, white, gold, and red—soared freely, striking vivid silhouettes against the heavens.
Four of the fully grown dragons were wrapped in belly plates forged from full-tile steel, reflecting blinding white light. Only the little red, small as a foal, remained bare-scaled.
A blurry figure could be seen standing majestically on the black dragon's back, wearing blue-and-white armor. The Dragon Queen held a bright white greatsword in her left hand and a dark red broad blade in her right.
Fully armed and eager to strike.
The barren black earth stretched far and wide. Soldiers in armor of every color swarmed forward like ants, forming a vast living tapestry as they slowly but relentlessly closed in on Meereen.
On the city walls, Unsullied in gray-brown armor raised white banners, drew short swords, and lifted shields. Beneath the walls, cloaks with black wings on blue cloth marked the Free Wings arrayed into a massive ballista formation. Longbowmen stood before them, siege arbalests were cranked, and catapults were loaded with jars of flaming oil.
Dozens of wyverns perched like bats atop the massive Great Pyramid.
Horns blared, war drums thundered, hundreds of thousands of soldiers roared, armored warriors clashed as they ran, and cavalry hooves pounded the earth.
The scent of blood and smoke filled the air beneath the walls of Meereen.
The birds flying over the distant mountains, the mongrel dogs in the city, and the fish swimming in the water all grew inexplicably restless at that moment.
"Boom, boom." To the south of Meereen, a massive city wall fifteen meters high and five meters thick suddenly collapsed, plunging into the endless depths below.
Three dragon-worms bored halfway out from behind the wall, rearing up and unleashing savage roars toward the city.
Jeni more than fulfilled her promise. Not only did she break through the city gate, she directly destroyed a thirty-meter stretch of wall, and the dragon-worms even managed to push into the city itself.
"Rumble, rumble." The sound of heavy bodies running echoed from underground.
"Roar."
It was war elephants.The first elephant soldier burst out of a tunnel and entered southern Meereen, raising its trunk and trumpeting loudly in the streets.
"Roar."
"Roar."
One giant elephant after another charged wildly through the streets, meeting no opposition. Literally speaking, half of the southern city was empty. There were no defenders and no civilians, so the elephants naturally had no enemies as they flaunted their might.
"Break Meereen and capture the Dragon Queen alive!" The elephant troops in the south were completely unaware of anything amiss and shouted in excitement.
"Ten thousand victories, ten thousand victories!" The roars of the elephants and dragon-worms carried to the north of the city, and tens of thousands of allied soldiers responded with frenzied shouts.
"Skree." A black dragon roared in the sky.
"Skree, skree, skreeeeee."
The wyvern flock perched on the pyramid took off as one, carrying deadly spear crates as they flew toward the south of the city.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.No sooner had the wyverns departed than the flat muddy ground north of the city suddenly bulged up into four enormous mounds, each about thirty meters apart. Moving as fast as a running man, the mounds sped toward the walls of Meereen.
The scene was somewhat like the ninja earth-escape techniques in Tsui Hark's wuxia films, except that those ninjas moved in straight lines, and the earth would sink back down after they passed.
The dragon-worms were different. Their entire bodies radiated searing heat. Wherever they burrowed, vast clouds of scorched, foul-smelling steam billowed upward. The raised mounds never subsided, instead forming four S-shaped "ridges" across the flat battlefield.
Because the dragon-worm mounds appeared so suddenly and spread so quickly, many allied soldiers could not react in time and were lifted high into the air.
Being lifted alone was not too bad; at most, they would lose their footing and fall to the ground.
But the reason the dragon-worms did not dig deep tunnels and instead traveled just beneath the surface was that the northern side of the city was full of rice paddies. Digging too deep would mean being flooded by groundwater.
Moreover, the dragon-worms' bodies were extremely hot, exuding waves of heat. Their blazing magical power baked the wet, soft mud, evaporating enormous amounts of white steam mixed with a scorched stench.
Yes, the eels, loaches, snakehead fish, and insects in the paddies were all roasted into charcoal, still wrapped in mud.
The soldiers around the mounds were as if they had been blasted at close range by a gigantic pressure cooker. One after another, they clutched their faces, their skin scalded and ruined, rolling on the ground and wailing.
By sheer bad luck, the Windblown Company, which held high a blue-and-white swallow-tailed banner, was directly rammed by one of the dragon-worms.
The white-haired, white-bearded warrior-poet Danzo de Han was leading his brothers in a headlong charge when his body suddenly lifted, his steps faltered, and he fell face-first onto the bulging mound of earth.
Then the soft mud beneath him heated rapidly, instantly drying and hardening into solid clods before cracking apart, like a pressure cooker whose blocked valve was suddenly forced open.
Large volumes of scalding steam blasted out at high speed through the cracks, engulfing Danzo completely.
His armor and helmet blocked nearly all of the steam, but even a barbuta helmet has eye slits. His eyes were boiled and steamed to ruin in the vapor.
Danzo was still a commander with strong defenses. Other soldiers wearing only leather armor had their entire skin turn red and blister, then clawed the blisters open with their own hands. They looked like prawns that had been steamed and then crushed underfoot, a truly miserable sight.
Yet it was also highly morale-boosting.
Although some allies were injured by mistake, the sheer momentum of the dragon-worms' underground charge was terrifying. They were like four massive torpedoes racing toward Meereen, that "aircraft carrier."
The allied soldiers shouted in unison, "Long live the dragon-worms! Break Meereen!"
"You are stubborn and blind. You will suffer divine punishment!" the great black dragon roared.
The allied army fell silent for a moment, then erupted again with loud cries. "Victory to the alliance! Break Meereen! Capture Daenerys alive!"
Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble.Gradually, some people heard what seemed like rolling thunder coming from the east, or like countless troops galloping along a river toward the battlefield.
Bang.Before the four dragon-worms could reach the walls of Meereen, the river dike two kilometers east of the city suddenly collapsed, as if another dragon-worm were burrowing there.
"Moo."From the breach in the dike, a black shadow as massive as a mountain slowly surfaced. Aquatic plants and mud obscured its form. Only a cry like that of a Kui ox rang out, full of unrestrained exhilaration.
Crash, crash, crash.Like the Milky Way falling from the heavens to the mortal world, a deluge like a sky-pouring waterfall surged out from beneath the "mountain," endless and relentless.
In the sunlight, the churning spray flashed with crystalline brilliance, and above the bellowing "mountain," a seven-colored rainbow arched across the sky.
Boom.The current was too swift and the volume too great. What poured out from the broken dike was not a flood, but a tsunami.
In an instant, it was as if the battlefield of Meereen had been paused. All the soldiers, whether of the alliance or the Mother of Dragons' guard, let their weapon-bearing arms hang limply and stared up at the surging waves.
As far as the eye could see, everything glittered with splashing water. The allied soldiers beneath the city walls were like mucus in a flushed latrine, swept into the rushing torrent in an instant, leaving not the slightest trace behind.
Watching the battle from the hills, Jeni's face turned ashen. Her eyes burned with fury as she stared at the "mountain" bobbing amid the floodwaters, and she almost spat out a name through clenched teeth, syllable by syllable: "The Old Man of the River."
(End of Chapter)
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