A foot stepped right on Lynn's shoulder. Light weight, but enough to shake the snow off his visor. Suddenly he could see everything.
Sparse pine woods. Dozens of wights swarming a handful of Thenn warriors in bronze-scale armor and round helms.
Lynn knew wights from Bloodraven's memories, but knowing and seeing were two different things. These things were faster and meaner than any zombie he'd ever imagined. They looked like dried corpses, weapons mostly rusty broken blades, but they moved like predators.
One wight took a two-handed greatsword straight to the skull. Head split open, but it kept stabbing with a half-rotted knife, guts spilling out, no hesitation.
Harder to kill than the movies ever showed.
The bronze-scale armor held. The Thenn yanked his sword free from another wight and hacked the first one in half at the waist.
"Form a circle!" the tall, lean swordsman barked, kicking the upper half of the wight away.
The Thenns backed against a big tree and locked shields.
No one dead yet, but every man was bleeding. Their breath puffed out in long white clouds.
Farther back, more wights were coming—fresher ones, still fleshy, better weapons. Slower, though. The cold stiffened new joints and the bodies were heavier.
The "light" wights fell back. The White Walker directing them knew they couldn't finish the job. Time to let the fresh dead take over.
The Thenn leader understood too.
"I'll kill the white ghost. You run!"
His roar carried clearly.
It was their only shot. Wights had no minds of their own; the Walker had to control them. Kill or distract the Walker and the dead might lose coordination long enough for the rest to break free.
The leader didn't waste words. He pointed his greatsword straight toward Lynn's hiding spot and charged.
Wights tried to block him. He ignored defense, bulled through, taking fresh cuts.
Lynn froze. For a second he thought the man had mistaken him for a Walker.
Before he could react, a pale shape dropped silently from the fallen tree right behind him and landed two meters in front.
It was slender as a blade, skin milk-white, armor made of ice that caught the snow's pale gleam and the faint green of pine needles. Its feet barely dimpled the powder.
Left hand held a thick ice shield. Right hand gripped a thin ice sword glowing faint, unnatural blue.
The White Walker had been standing on the log right above my head the whole time.
Lynn's blood turned to ice.
Why didn't it see me?
White Walkers sensed living warmth, right? Or so the memories said.
None of the wights or the Walker had noticed him. What made him different from the Thenns?
The suit.
The sealed spacesuit hid his heat signature. That had to be it. The Walkers hunted by body heat, not "life aura."
But the dragon was right there, hotter than any human. The metal-coated thermal blanket in the box blocked heat like it was designed to.
A thunderous battle cry snapped him out of it.
The greatsword rose and crashed down on the ice shield. Ice crystals sprayed. The Walker's legs sank a little into the snow.
The Thenn roared again, swung even harder. This time shards of his own blade flew with the ice.
Frost had crawled up the steel between strikes.
He didn't notice. Third swing—shield and sword shattered together. Fragments peppered Lynn's suit.
The Thenn stared at the naked hilt in his hand, gray eyes blank.
The Walker moved like drifting snow—light, graceful, deadly. Its sword flashed blue lightning.
One clean cut. The Thenn's hand-axe and his neck both parted.
The helmeted head thumped into the snow. A fountain of blood shot up, froze into red ice beads before it hit the ground.
From first swing to decapitation, the whole thing lasted maybe four heartbeats.
The Walker picked up the head, tossed the helm aside, and lifted the bald, earless skull high—taunting the surviving Thenns.
A sound like cracking ice came from its throat. Even Bloodraven's vast knowledge had no translation for it.
The last of the fight went out of the Thenns. A couple dropped their weapons. The rest just stared, stunned, at their god-like chief dying in seconds.
That was when Lynn moved.
He was gambling.
Gambling the Walker couldn't sense him. Gambling the snow sliding off his suit would be lost in the noise. Gambling that Valyrian steel really was the "dragonsteel" the legends said could kill White Walkers.
In front of the shocked Thenns, a figure in pale armor rose from the snow like a ghost king. Helmet flashing rainbow glints in the weak light. The long, lethal sword in his hand drove straight through the Walker's neck and out its open mouth.
The ice armor and sword melted like dew. Pale smoke rose from the wound.
Lynn saw faint blue blood well up and run down Dark Sister's blade toward the dragon-wing hilt. Not sure one thrust was enough, he twisted the sword hard.
Fear? Not today.
If he didn't kill this thing now, he'd never make it out of the Haunted Forest. If he saved even one or two Thenns, his odds of surviving went way up.
The Walker crumpled forward, twitching and shrinking with every spasm until it simply melted into the snow.
The surrounding wights went haywire.
Lynn felt the sword growing warm, fighting the frost on the blood that kept freezing and thawing along the blade.
A sharp hiss. The baby dragon had crawled out of its box. It spread its wings, wobbled a few red steps through the snow, then flapped up to Lynn's shoulder.
First came smoke. Then a jet of white-hot flame twice the dragon's own length shot from its mouth.
When the dragonfire hit Dark Sister, the Walker's blood flashed into steam.