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Crack!
The thick wooden door of the Gatehouse Tower was chopped open by a huge axe, leaving a gap nearly a yard long.
Through that gap, Trogg saw at once the hulking ironborn in heavy armor and a kraken helm.
A spearman standing near the opening drove his weapon straight at Victarion, who was about to break in.
Victarion's thick left hand slipped past the sharp spearhead, grabbed the shaft, and yanked hard toward himself.
The spearman's strength could not contend with his. He was dragged bodily to the gap.
Crack!
As Victarion pulled his opponent in, he raised the huge axe in his right hand and chopped fiercely into the opening.
The already tottering wooden door split in the middle and collapsed.
Victarion's axe did not stop. It bit hard into the spearman's forehead.
The panic on the man's face froze there. The huge axe sank deep into his skull, and blood ran down his cheeks.
"Archers, cover us! Everyone else, prepare to fall back!"
Trogg was not a commander known for his personal strength. He knew very clearly how wide the gap was between himself and the ironborn in the kraken helm.
So he turned and ran up the stairs at once, calling the archers on the roof down to cover the retreat.
Victarion looked like a brute who relied only on raw strength, but he was not that simple.
After chopping open the tower door, he did not charge in alone. Instead, he violently tore his huge axe free from the spearman's head, then pointed the weapon, stained red and white, forward.
"Brothers, charge! The first man to reach the roof may choose his thralls and salt wives!"
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Inspired by Victarion's promise, the ironborn howled like madmen and poured through the open doorway.
Behind them, the ironborn archers raised their bows and sent a volley in after them, suppressing the spearmen inside the tower.
"Ah! Ah!"
Without the door to shield them, several spearmen were struck by arrows and fell screaming.
The others could not help them. They were too busy stabbing desperately at the ironborn who had rushed into the tower.
"Waaah!"
One ironborn with a one-handed axe stepped on the fallen door and the bodies below, then leapt high into the air as if boarding an enemy ship.
His posture was certainly fierce, but the spearmen beneath him only had to raise their spears. The ironborn landed on the points like meat on skewers, his body punched through with bloody holes.
Even so, the ironborn's morale had been driven to its peak. The spearmen at the tower base suffered heavy casualties.
Replacements kept filling the gaps, but the ironborn pressed them back step by step until they were close to the stairway.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The archers from the roof finally arrived. At such close range inside the tower, their shots instantly took several ironborn lives.
Seeing the situation turn bad, the ironborn behind them bent down, lifted pieces of the broken door from the ground, and used them to block the deadly arrows.
The spearmen seized that chance and withdrew up the tower in good order.
Thud, thud, thud!
Arrows kept striking the wooden barrier with dull sounds. The ironborn raised the thick slabs of wood and pressed toward the stairway.
"Move!"
Trogg took the wildfire jars Robb had left in the tower and shouted to the archers at the stairway. Then he hurled the jars at the ironborn carrying the broken door.
Smash!
The jar shattered against the wood, and green liquid splashed across it.
After throwing four wildfire jars in quick succession, Trogg flung several firestones whose tips were already glowing.
One firestone ignited the green liquid on the wood, and that terrifying green flame rose once more in the North.
"Aaaah!"
Before the green fire, the thick timber might as well have been paper. It burned through quickly, then spread to the ironborn behind it.
The burning men dropped the wooden slabs and tried to beat out the wildfire, but the more they struck at it, the more of them caught.
Some of the ironborn in the front had not been touched at first, but when the burning men grabbed at them and shoved in panic, both became green torches.
"Damn it! Wildfire. Fall back! Archers, kill anyone touched by the wildfire!"
Victarion had sailed far and wide and knew wildfire when he saw it. Realizing the tower truly held another trap, he retreated several steps and gave the order to the ironborn archers.
Whoosh, whoosh!
The archers obeyed without mercy, shooting their own burning comrades dead.
Crackle, crackle!
Inside the tower, green flames burned fiercely across timber and corpses. Outside, Victarion ordered the ironborn to throw stones and mud onto the wildfire to help smother it.
At the entrance to the third-floor stairway, Trogg commanded the remaining spearmen to drag every piece of debris they could find into a barricade.
Once the wildfire below went out, this would be their last line of defense.
The timber used by the supply troops to repair the tower had been chosen for strength and resistance to fire, but at the speed wildfire burned, it still would not last long.
Fortunately, Trogg did not have to wait much longer.
"They are here! Reinforcements are here!"
Not long after the wildfire was lit, the archers on the tower roof suddenly cried out in delight.
Inside the tower, Trogg heard them and smiled. The pressure bearing down on him finally eased.
Rumble!
North of the kingsroad, hoofbeats like rolling thunder sounded. More than two thousand cavalry flying the banner of a merman with a trident rushed toward Moat Cailin.
When the thirty-one-thousand-strong northern army had first marched out of Moat Cailin, only a little more than twenty-six thousand had actually left.
Two thousand soldiers had been sent ahead to Deepwood Motte, and one thousand had remained at Torrhen's Square. The remaining two thousand cavalry had stayed in White Harbor, the closest city to Moat Cailin, under the name of House Manderly's riders.
After half a day of riding, those two thousand cavalry finally reached Moat Cailin before it fell.
Led by Ser Marlon Manderly, commander of White Harbor's garrison, they did not split their forces. More than two thousand riders formed a single steel torrent and closed swiftly on the Drunkard's Tower to the left.
The fearsome ironborn excelled at naval battles, fearless boarding actions, and astonishing skill in the water.
Now, on land, they were using their weakness against the strength of two thousand charging cavalry. No matter how high their morale was, it could not save them.
The assault on the Drunkard's Tower had progressed far more slowly than the attack on the Gatehouse Tower. The spearmen inside had not even lit the hidden wildfire.
Faced with the cavalry charge, the ironborn outside the tower had nowhere to dodge. Their faces went pale as the riders hit them.
Strong northern warhorses slammed into the ironborn, and the riders' longswords alternated left and right, harvesting lives.
The ironborn who had looked so savage moments earlier were now cut down like wheat before the scythe.
Before the Gatehouse Tower, Victarion's face turned livid as he watched the enemy cavalry slaughter his men near the Drunkard's Tower.
Rumble!
Just as he was thinking of joining up with the ironborn near the Children's Tower and making one last fight of it, hoofbeats sounded again from the causeway between the three towers.
Victarion turned his stiff neck toward the sound.
On the narrow causeway, a ferocious giant direwolf clad in finely crafted armor painted with the direwolf sigil was carrying a rider with a greatsword straight toward the Gatehouse Tower.
"Gods! A monster!"
"What is dead may never die!"
The ironborn near the Gatehouse Tower panicked at the sight of the giant wolf, taller and far more fearsome than any warhorse.
Men always feared what they could not understand.
"What are you afraid of? Treat it like an oversized horse! If you want to live and go home, then stand your ground!"
Victarion roared at the panicking ironborn, though whether he was trying to give them courage or himself was hard to say.
After that roar, feeling courage return to him, he gripped his huge axe in both hands and charged to meet the wolf.
The moment he drew close, he swept the axe sideways, intending to cut through the wolf's legs.
But the clever beast had already seen his intent. It suddenly lifted both forelegs and reared up, avoiding the sweep.
The giant wolf's raised forepaws came down heavily on Victarion, knocking him flat to the ground.
Crack!
Even in heavy armor, Victarion could not withstand the direwolf's weight. His chest visibly collapsed, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.
Robb sat steadily in the new riding seat built into Bloodwind's wolf armor. Seeing the wildfire burning inside the Gatehouse Tower and knowing he had arrived a little late, anger crossed his face.
"Bloodwind, kill him!"
Awooo!
At Robb's command, Bloodwind opened his jaws and bit down on Victarion's head beneath the wolf's paw.
The bite failed to pierce the hard, well-made kraken helm.
So Bloodwind clamped down on that armored head, dug both paws firmly into Victarion's body, and wrenched sideways with all his strength.
Blood sprayed into the air. Victarion's helmeted head, along with a length of white spine, was torn free by Bloodwind.
After Victarion died, the rest of the battle at Moat Cailin ended under the attacks of the cavalry from north and south. Fewer than fifteen hundred ironborn remained, and they threw down their weapons one after another, kneeling to surrender.
They worshiped the Drowned God and believed the words, "What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger."
Yet before absolute strength, so long as a man still wanted to live, anything could be abandoned.
Mounted on Bloodwind's back, Robb looked over the broad stretch of kneeling ironborn, then turned toward the Sunset Sea.
"Tywin, you are casting a net," he murmured. "So am I. But your net already has a great hole torn through it.
"Mine is ready for the harvest."
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