Chapter 426: Hunting the Others!
The Shadow Tower blew up.
It blew up in the most literal sense possible.
The flash of the explosion was clearly visible for several miles, and the resulting shockwave traveled eastward along the Wall's icy face, triggering minor icequakes along a long stretch of its length. Dozens of tons of loose ice fragments shook off the surface like sloughing skin.
This blast destroyed the first and second levels of the Shadow Tower's staircase—a section roughly fifteen meters high. On the third-level platform, pre-positioned lamp oil had ignited into a swaying inferno... and at the forty-meter height of the fifth platform, Qhorin Halfhand led his men in a tearful retreat toward the summit, methodically sabotaging the remaining stairs behind them.
The struggle at the Great Gorge and the western end of the Wall was drawing to a close, but a hundred miles away at the Wall's easternmost tip, the battle for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea was reaching a similar climax.
...
The Eastwatch garrison had suffered heavily the moment the ice storm struck, losing a lookout on the Wall and most of the de-icing crews. Unlike the Shadow Tower, they had no massive influx of reinforcements from the gorge line, leaving their combat personnel slightly fewer in number. Fortunately, the eastern column of wights crossing the frozen sea was a budget force: numbering less than twenty thousand—only a fifth of the Night King's main host—and lacking heavy siege engines like mammoths or giants.
Consequently, while this evenly matched struggle had begun earlier than the fight at the Shadow Tower, it lasted longer. It wasn't until the two leading White Walkers, unable to endure the mounting losses of wights, intervened with magic to shatter the wildfire defense lines that the dead finally scaled the walls and forced their way into the fortress.
The same heavy snow fell; the same fires raged. The wights attacking from the east were mostly transformed humans. As basic infantry, the Night's Watch was intimately familiar with their capabilities. Even after breaking through the walls, the dead failed to achieve a crushing advantage. As reinforcements from the Beacon Tower and Sable Hall arrived and entered the fray, the battle within the fortress turned into a fierce, grinding stalemate. Many commanders began to feel that, with one more push, they might actually reclaim the keep.
Among them were the soldiers of the book-retrieval team, loyal to the Dragon Queen, who had arrived less than a day prior. After a period of confused wandering, they had managed to find the local quartermaster and—half-pleading, half-looting—equipped themselves with dragonglass spears and arrows. Now, amidst the chaos, they followed the Red Priest Moqorro through the narrow alleys, intercepting Cotter Pyke as he hurried toward the stairs with a dozen men.
"Lord Commander!" Moqorro shouted. "I have located two servants of the Great Other... what you call the Others. Lead your men with me, and we can hunt them down together!"
"I'm on a more important mission, Priest! I don't have time for a hunt!" Cotter roared. Had the Red Priest not been so tall and imposing, backed by dozens of Unsullied, the hot-tempered commander would have shoved him aside. "Get out of the way!"
Moments ago, Cotter Pyke had shared the illusion that the fortress could be retaken, even leading several counter-charges. But while a single wight was manageable against dragonglass, the never-ending stream of them was slowly and relentlessly consuming the keep. In the most heavily contested areas, the defense lines had shrunk to the center of the fortress, barely three hundred yards from the stairs.
Only then, after having his fill of slaughter and being bloodied himself, did Cotter snap back to reality. Remembering the critical protocol requirement to destroy the stairs, he had gathered a squad and rushed toward the Wall, leading to this confrontation with Moqorro.
"Unless you kill those two Others, everything you do is in vain! If you insist on retreating, give us the Lightbringers and let me deal with them!" Moqorro stood his ground, extending his right hand to manifest a hovering ball of flame as proof of his power. "I know we have just met, but I have a way to help you reclaim this keep and save the lives of the brothers still living. Trust me!"
This undeniable display of magic stunned Cotter. He paused and looked at Iron Emmett, who was carrying the castle's dragonsteel arrows. "Emmett, take two reliable men and follow this red-cloaked fellow. Take a bomb with you! Remember, I'll be on the third-level platform. If wights appear in my sight before you do, I'm lighting the stairs. Don't blame me in hell for not waiting!"
"Yes, sir!"
As a skilled warrior equipped with a divine weapon meant to kill Others, Iron Emmett had spent the entire night without even knowing where his targets were. Having been granted permission by Cotter, his spirits surged, and he quickly joined Moqorro's party with two of his best men.
The two groups parted ways. One headed toward the stairs against the Wall, while the other pushed south against the flow of fleeing personnel, toward the nearest section of the outer wall.
The wights' main objective was the stairs. The Other-hunting squad navigated through winding alleys, carving a bloody path through the burning structures. Because of Moqorro's guidance, they encountered few enemies. Wights resurrected by Others were slightly stronger, faster, and more durable than in life, but against humans armed with counter-weapons, they were manageable without overwhelming numbers. However, in the cramped urban environment, their true terror was their unpredictability—springing from shadows, corners, or rooftops to cause sudden casualties.
But these difficulties vanished with a high-ranking Priest of R'hllor leading the way.
As a servant of R'hllor, Moqorro was preternaturally sensitive to the cold magic controlling the wights. He could sense them from afar. Under his warning, the squad bypassed large groups and annihilated small ones. Every time they engaged, the Unsullied used their dragonglass spears with mechanical precision, dropping every wight that approached. Any that slipped through were handled effortlessly by Moqorro.
Unlike what many might imagine, the Red Priest did not use spells to pop the wights or turn them into fireballs—though he could, it was a waste of magic. Instead, he released pulses of pure fire-aspected sorcery. These pulses pierced the wights, instantly dispelling or neutralizing the cold magic within, severing the link to the Others and turning them back into cold, lifeless corpses.
The principle was identical to dragonglass, just without the obsidian medium and with a shorter range.
To the onlookers, it looked as if Moqorro simply gestured or snapped his fingers—sometimes without moving at all—and wights lunging from the shadows would collapse like empty sacks. The Red Priest was not suppressed by magic at the Wall; this was the Great War, and he had no reason to conserve his power.
Fighting and running, they reached the access ramp to the wall. The defenders had already evacuated, but fortunately, after climbing the wall, the wights jumped straight down into the fortress rather than searching for the ramps. Their path was empty, save for burning wights and the corpses of Night's Watchmen waiting to be turned.
They were at the outer perimeter, the first place to fall, yet the enemy was nowhere to be seen. Peeking over the battlements, they saw that the mountain of corpses and the sea of enemies had vanished. This was partly because the force attacking Eastwatch was smaller, but it also meant that every wight outside had already swarmed into the fortress!
"Priest, are you sure they're outside? Wouldn't they follow their minions in?"
"No. They fear ambush in complex environments. They will likely stay outside until the wights have occupied the fortress and cleared the remaining humans, then enter to claim their prize."
Though he spoke with conviction, Moqorro was guessing. He found enemies through magical resonance, but when they weren't casting spells, Others were not particularly obvious to his senses. He had only pinned their location when they expended massive energy to extinguish the fires earlier. Whether they had moved since then, he could not be certain.
Still, trying their luck at the last known location was better than giving up.
The group crouched behind the merlons, following Moqorro. With every step, they exhaled clouds of white mist. After several hundred yards, Moqorro stopped. Crouching, he ordered an Unsullied in Valyrian: "This is the place. Look out there. See anything unusual?"
The Unsullied frowned. What qualified as unusual? To those who had followed the Mother of Dragons from across the Narrow Sea, everything since setting foot in Westeros was unusual. He didn't even know what an Other looked like—how was he supposed to report?
Despite his thoughts, instinct made him obey. He straightened his back and peered over the edge.
In the pitch blackness, a whistling sound cut through the air toward his face. In the next second, his entire head—helmet and all—was obliterated into a red mist as if struck by a high-caliber sniper round. The headless corpse slumped over, spraying hot blood across Moqorro's face.
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