Chapter 431: The Final Battle? (Part I)
The latest news from the ravens at Greyguard arrived: the wight army had not attacked the fortress; they had bypassed it entirely, giving it a wide berth.
Initially, everyone—Egger included—assumed the enemy was skipping this last stronghold to strike directly at the Nightfort. However, the situation was vastly different from when they were outside the Wall. This time, the Others employed no magic to harm the skinchangers' birds or prevent observation. As dawn broke, large-scale aerial reconnaissance quickly proved the commanders wrong: by midday, traces of the sea of corpses were spotted northwest of Queenscrown.
Perhaps they knew their movements could not be hidden, or perhaps they relished inciting terror in the living from miles away. Under the dim sunlight filtering through heavy clouds, the overwhelming tide of death was a soul-shaking sight.
Because the civilian evacuation rate had reached 100%, the wights had passed through countless villages without increasing their numbers, save for the few thousand soldiers slain during the previous night's sieges. However, because different types of wights moved at varying speeds and the Night King refused to divide his forces, the view from the sky was haunting. The sea of corpses moved across the snowy plains of the Gift toward Queenscrown like a leisurely stroll, stretching into a long, narrow column miles deep—a series of undulating waves formed as the vanguard frequently paused for the rear to catch up.
The dead in transit were not as densely packed or maddened as they were during an assault. Yet, spread out for ease of movement, the sheer scale of the occupied ground made them look like migrating herbivores on the Serengeti—an endless, overwhelming force that inspired a different kind of despair.
The town's alarm bells rang frantically. The already taut atmosphere snapped to a state of extreme tension. Soldiers and residents scrambled across battlements and between buildings. Upon reaching the outskirts of Queenscrown, the wights did not attack immediately. Instead, they slowly extended their left and right wings like a gaping maw, enveloping the town until they formed a massive black ring, completely encircling it. Though spread thin into a narrow black line, the majesty of their formation—stretching to the horizon in both directions—chilled the hearts of all who watched from the walls.
...
The Night King was waiting for nightfall. This battle differed from the assaults on the Shadow Tower and Sentinel Stand. His tactical objective was not the swift capture of a specific target, but the total annihilation of every resident in Queenscrown—including over a hundred giants—to convert them into puppets. He sought to swell his ranks, resolve any threat to his rear, and then march north to take the Nightfort and the Wall in one fell swoop, even without the use of magic!
To minimize his own losses, no conditions were more favorable than a night battle. The cover of darkness and the bonus of terror could double the casualty ratio of the living against the dead.
For the humans, the good news was that while it was still light, Queenscrown had time to relay the newly revised defense protocols to every grassroots officer and resident. The bad news: nightfall was only two hours away.
Under Egger's questioning, persuasion, and the weight of his supreme authority, Bran Stark—now a sworn brother of the Night's Watch—finally revealed a new piece of information: he could command a murder of crows to pinpoint the approximate location of the Night King and the Others even if they weren't casting spells—provided the enemy didn't use magic to strike the crows down.
Fortunately, with the protection of the Wall nearby, that condition was tentatively met.
Under the cover of various birds controlled by skinchangers from different tribes, large ravens—untamed but similar in size to messenger birds—circled above the wight army. Their milky white eyes scanned and sensed the enemy's formation repeatedly.
"Still nothing?" Inside the keep, Egger asked impatiently after watching Bran control the birds for nearly an hour.
"I found the Night King long ago, to our northwest. But I've discovered another troubling situation, so I searched a bit longer." Bran opened his eyes. "The Night King is not huddled with his lieutenants. He has distributed the Others evenly around every side of Queenscrown."
"That is bad news." Egger took a deep breath. "So, once the battle begins, the pressure on the other sides of Queenscrown will be no less than where the Night King is? Perhaps even greater?"
"Exactly."
"Understood." Egger nodded solemnly; at least the new protocol had accounted for this. "But a man cannot be in two places at once. This war can only be won by slaying the Night King. I have no choice; I must face that damned King of the Others myself. I'm leaving the keep. Use the crows to guide me to the wall closest to the Night King."
...
The snow began to thicken, and the temperature seemed to drop several degrees with the arrival of the Others. The sun, which had spent less than ten hours barely illuminating the world from behind the clouds, sank helplessly below the horizon. As darkness gathered, cooking smoke rose across the town. Judging that the battle would break out after dark, Egger had ordered meals to be served an hour early so the garrison could eat in shifts, ensuring no one fought on an empty stomach.
Finally, the heavenly gods pulled the veil of night from east to west. The wight army, standing solemnly a mile away, merged with the dark sky. As invisible killing intent and a biting chill permeated the air, some soldiers—trying to bolster their courage—calmly made bets on when the dead would finally charge.
The answer came immediately.
As the last sliver of twilight vanished from the western sky, the wight army did not waste a single minute. The general offensive began.
...
Amidst the shrill blast of horns, beneath the walls of a town holding nearly a third of the Gift's population, a war between man and ghost began—a conflict of unprecedented scale and intensity.
Since Queenscrown was not connected to other forts via the ice wall, reinforcements were impossible once the battle began. Therefore, the town had stockpiled war supplies exceeding its population ratio. An abundance of wildfire allowed them to use flame for defense more lavishly. The moment the tide of corpses moved toward the walls, two lines of fire were ignited by fire-arrows, forming a blazing welcome. But this time, the enemy's decisiveness caught the defenders off guard. Without any preamble, the Others—now familiar with human tactics—played their trump card at the very first moment.
Since magic would be difficult to use when attacking the Nightfort anyway, there was no point in hoarding it. The Night King made a bold, correct decision: he committed every priest with sufficient reserves to the assault on Queenscrown, trading magical depletion for reduced casualties among the wights!
Consequently, the defenders around the perimeter were shocked to find that in the three directions facing the main gates, the fire simply would not ignite!
The revised protocol had mentioned this possibility, but even the authors had treated it as a supplemental "worst-case" entry. No one expected it to happen in the very first minute of the war.
"We've tried several times! It won't light!"
"Stop whining, we can hear you! Follow the protocol—bombs! Get all the bombs here now!"
No longer did wights charge into fire to die. The tidal wave of the dead surged through the magical gaps in the fire wall with clear purpose. Escorted by front-line wight-elephants and wight-giants, they slammed heavily into the gates.
Rumble!
The gate-sealing fortifications, built over the last day and night, stood the test. Amidst impacts that made the earth tremble, the wooden doors were soon smashed or knocked loose, but the solid supports behind them—made of stone, mud, and frozen ice—held the leaning doors firmly. The wight-elephants and giants crushed their own skulls and shoulders against the barriers without breaching them. Finally, under the Night King's direction, they changed tactics. They crouched where they stood, forming a ladder of flesh to help the other wights reach the top of the wall!
Since the fire could not burn, the wights struck down by dragonglass arrows merely fell to the base of the wall rather than being reduced to ash and shrinking in volume. Their fallen bodies reinforced the sloping ramp. The walls were less than ten meters high; even though the defenders began throwing bombs according to the protocol, it only slowed the "ramp-building" speed. Within minutes, the sections of the wall near the three gates were leveled by ramps of flesh. Fast units like wight-wolves and wight-bears, waiting in the rear, immediately sprinted up the slopes and swarmed the battlements.
Under the massive weight of numbers, the front-line defenders facing the gaps in the fire were quickly roared over and submerged by the dead.
Had they been on the Wall, the defenders would have sounded the retreat, abandoned the wall, and fled to the summit via the stairs. But Queenscrown stood in the middle of the open wilderness. Though the inner keep's walls were higher and thicker, it was but a fragile reef before a sea of wights. The defenders had nowhere to go. They had no choice but to throw themselves at the enemy, hoping that the reserves and reinforcements moving along the wall from unbreached sections could retake the gaps through a bloody struggle, holding until the enemy's magic failed and the wildfire could be relit.
Queenscrown was a town, far larger than any purely military outpost along the Wall. Due to its size, if the commander held all reserves at a single point, the wall could be breached for ages before help arrived. Thus, Egger had established three subordinate command posts in an equilateral triangle. Each held a formidable reserve force, including giants, and was equipped with two or three marksmen capable of using Lightbringer. They were each responsible for a third of the wall, forming a reliable second and third line of insurance with the central keep.
No one expected the second line of insurance to be triggered less than ten minutes into the fight. But Egger's hand-picked commanders performed their duties faithfully. The moment sections of the wall fell, they responded correctly: sending large reinforcements to the breach to join the front-line troops from both sides, surrounding the wights on the wall from three directions, vowing to drive the ghost-things back from the heights.
The defense protocol operated like a brand-new, precision watch—perfectly responding to every enemy move with Plan 1, Plan 2, or Plan N. On this battlefield, unforeseen situations might occur, but unplanned ones were impossible... yet only Egger knew the truth. With wildfire—their greatest advantage—facing selective failure, even if the protocol worked perfectly to the final chapter of Inner Keep Defense and Last Stand in the Command Hall, even if every dragonglass bomb killed a hundred wights, the war would eventually end with the dead drowning them all.
Egger loathed individual heroism and clutch victories; influenced by his own culture, he preferred to win through overwhelming momentum, leaving the enemy no hope. But the cold magic displayed by the enemy had shattered his beautiful vision. The Others had finally forced him to a point where he had to use the final plan.
The only hope for victory now was to use the two Dragonsteel (Valyrian Steel) Bombs—each costing ten Lightbringer arrows to manufacture—to kill the Night King. He had to end this war by his own hand, like a true Prince That Was Promised slaying his "fated rival."
However, the fulfillment of the prophecy faced a problem:
The moment the siege began, Melisandre sensed the precise locations of eight spellcasting enemies. Unfortunately, according to her, none of these eight sources was particularly different or stronger than the others; most were likely ordinary Others. Furthermore, none of those eight was outside the northwest wall where he currently sat.
Had the Greenseer Bran deceived them, or provided false intel due to limited ability?
Or was it because he was the Child of Prophecy, and therefore didn't need a precise location—just throwing it at random would strike the mark?
Or, most likely: was the enemy hiding within the dark, teeming sea of corpses for their own safety, leaving him with nowhere to look and no way to strike?
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