Along the 500-kilometer Wall, there were nineteen castles. The 998th Lord Commander, Jon Snow, had put seventeen of them into operation.
After Alliser Thorne took office, he only reassigned personnel and supplies among those same seventeen castles and did not make any major changes.
The Wall began collapsing from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea and spread westward for thirty kilometers. Beyond that point, its condition improved steadily. By the time it reached the westernmost Shadow Tower, only a few massive cracks had appeared in the structure, and on the front and back sides, one glacier the size of a lake had fallen from each side.
If the army of the Others had not swept along the Wall, the Night's Watch could have preserved at least eighty percent of its forces.
Even with the Others leading wights to clear out the castles south of the Wall along the way, several thousand members of the Night's Watch still survived.
Some of them had already been on duty atop the Wall, some had received warnings from Castle Black, and others, seeing the overwhelming size of the Others' army, had retreated to the Wall on their own initiative.
In short, when the Dragon Queen arrived at Castle Black once again, several thousand Night's Watch brothers on the western Wall were struggling to make their way toward Castle Black.
Well, the top of the Wall had broad passageways that could be used to transport supplies and to allow large forces to march.
However, those walkways were covered in a thick layer of ice. At this moment, the ice surface was cracking, and chunks of ice were constantly breaking apart, with people falling through from time to time. As a result, the Night's Watch moved very slowly and with great hesitation.
"If Your Majesty truly can repair the Wall, it would be best to inform the Night's Watch members traveling on it,"
Dr. Pylos suggested. "Some of them may be crawling through large fissures in the ice. If those cracks suddenly close, it could accidentally kill quite a few brothers."
This was not groundless worry. If Night's Watch members were moving within the cracks of the ice and the surface suddenly healed, there was an overwhelming chance they would be buried inside.
Thus, while ravens flew along the Wall to notify the Night's Watch who were relocating toward Castle Black, Dany found herself with a long stretch of free time.
However, she did not rest. Little Green finally located the Night's Watch's sea vessel in Seal Bay.
"There are still survivors beneath the worm tunnels at Eastwatch," Dany said to Stannis. "Have the wyverns take a group of people over there and dig them out."
"Even if we know the Night King will go to Winterfell, we still cannot give up the search," Stannis replied.
"At this moment, the army of the Others is scattered, and the Night King's personal guard is at its weakest. If we encounter him, there will be no need to wait for the great battle at Winterfell."
"Leave this task to others. You should conserve your strength and prepare to challenge the Night King."
Stannis had barely rested over the past two days. His sunken eye sockets were ringed with dark circles, and his cheekbones and square jaw stood out sharply beneath his thin skin.
"Who?" A glint flashed through his weary, dull blue eyes. "Who are you sending to search for the Others? Could it be a skinchanger?"
"The king of the skinchangers."
"The King-Beyond-the-Wall?"
"You don't know about the Three-Eyed Raven?" Dany asked in surprise.
Seeing the genuine blankness on his face, she reminded him, "The greenseer."
"I know the greenseers. They are servants of the Cold God. You are actually cooperating with the Cold God?" Stannis ground his teeth.
"Stannis, let me tell you a secret," Dany said, putting on a serious expression and speaking solemnly. "Actually, you are not the biological son of Steffon Baratheon. You were picked up from a pile of garbage by the roadside."
"What?" The topic shifted so abruptly that Stannis froze for a long moment before reacting, then flew into a rage. "Are you insulting me?"
Dany shook her head. "If I say that, do you believe it?"
"Obviously, you don't," she continued without waiting for his answer. "What I say is not necessarily true, so why do you believe everything Melisandre says?"
Stannis stood stunned again for a moment, then frowned. "What are you trying to say?"
"What I'm saying is that Melisandre is not an omniscient god who knows everything. Nor is she a noble and virtuous great knight who never lies or deceives."
Stannis said coldly, "You were the one who said earlier that wherever I go, I should take her with me."
"Sigh, you really don't understand even a bit of the art of kingship, yet you're single-mindedly fighting for the Iron Throne," Dany sighed. She stepped a little closer to her cousin and lowered her voice.
"A true king must maintain suspicion toward everyone, especially a sorceress of unknown origin.
"At the same time, a king must know how to command every force that can be used. Witches and sorceresses are not trustworthy, but their power is undeniably real.
"You should use her like a dog, drive her like an old ox, and guard against her like a treacherous wolf."
"Are you trying to drive a wedge between her and me?" A sharp glint flashed in Stannis's eyes as he sneered with sudden understanding. "I see now. You fear her power."
"I'm demonstrating to you how a true king deals with enemies. Didn't I just say it? A king must know how to control every force that can be controlled. I am simply using your hand to deal with her," Dany said, smiling as well, her smile full of pride.
"You think I would let you control me?" Stannis looked as if he had been deeply insulted, his face ashen.
"If you don't listen, you're a fool. If you act foolishly, I'm happy. If you wisely follow my advice and Melisandre suffers for it, I'm also happy. So now you understand the gap between you and me, don't you?"
"You're delusional!" Stannis snorted coldly and turned to leave.
"Do you know the true meaning of the Asshai prophecy?" Dany asked leisurely.
Stannis stopped but did not turn around. "You won't trick me. Melisandre already told me that Jon Stark is merely the false prophesied son in a vision."
"Do you know the secret of Jon Stark's resurrection?" Dany lowered her voice and explained everything about Jon being used as a vessel for R'hllor's reincarnation.
"You're lying to me!" Stannis's face turned pale, his voice trembling.
"On what grounds do you think the Lord of Light would be so selflessly loving as to help a mortal become a savior?
Or rather, would you help a pig become the King of the Seven Kingdoms?
Gods are all the same, not a single one of them is any good!
In their eyes, mortals are no different from pigs and dogs, to be toyed with, slaughtered, or sacrificed at will," Dany sighed softly.
For a brief moment, Stannis was dazed.
"I don't believe it," he said through clenched teeth.
"You may choose not to believe it, but you must remember this and stay vigilant. I was once R'hllor's target as well, so I truly hope you can escape the tragic fate He has already designed for you."
By the grace of heaven, Dany finally spoke a rare, sincere truth.
Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.
The sky was dim, the snowfields gray-white. The north wind howled, and turbid waves churned.
Across a thousand mountains, no birds flew; along ten thousand paths, no human tracks remained. There was not the slightest trace of living beings.
"Skreee!" A clear, piercing dragon's roar rang out from the western sky.
Big Black, clad in silver belly-guard armor, beat its wings and stirred up a vast spray of snow as it landed on a glacier three stories high amid the ruins.
"Skree, skree!" Soon after, ten more winged dragons descended onto a flatter stretch of snow in front of Big Black.
"Woooo…" A low, urgent horn call passed through thick layers of earth and ice, reaching everyone's ears.
Amid the raging waves and furious winds, the sound was indistinct, almost like an illusion.
Ulmer hurriedly leapt down from the bear's winged dragon, ran toward where the sound came from, brushed away the snow, and pressed his ear against the cold, scattered stones.
After listening for a moment, he said in delight, "It's a horn. Someone really did survive."
Yes, a day later, the Great Bear and Garths finally arrived as well. On the way, they had gone two hundred kilometers south of Eastwatch to pick up Ulmer from the ship at sea.
With Little Green and Little White left in the sky as sentries, Dany was not worried about White Walkers surrounding her people.
Thus, her actions were extremely unrestrained. She directly controlled a dragonflame fireball the size of a basketball, sizzling as it burned through the solid ice and accumulated snow on the ground.
The former Eastwatch castle was completely buried beneath the collapsed Wall. The Wall itself was composed of sixty percent ice and forty percent stone. Besides Dany burning away the ice and snow, people still had to chisel rock and dig earth.
So now, Jorah, Garths, the fat eunuch Bevos, and Quaithe stood around Dany as guards, while more than twenty Night's Watchmen brought by Stannis's winged dragons began working busily.
The reason Dany personally involved herself in this matter was mainly because Eastwatch stored sixty percent of the supplies of the entire Night's Watch.
The stakes were too high for her not to come in person.
The grain, furs, and iron ingots she had Jero Dayne transport, along with the supplies sent by the lords of the Seven Kingdoms, all went by sea, with more than eighty percent delivered to Eastwatch.
Even Jon, after receiving a loan of five million gold dragons from the Iron Bank, immediately spent it all on grain. Seventy percent was sent to Winterfell, and thirty percent was donated to the Night's Watch.
Of course, the grain previously borrowed from the Night's Watch was not counted as part of that thirty percent donation.
Despite Jon having once broken his Night's Watch vows, he had not forgotten his promise to them. Once he took Winterfell and became King in the North, he would support the Wall with the full strength of the North.
"About how many wights are there?" Sheltered behind a towering glacier that blocked the biting north wind, Dany casually chatted with Ulmer while controlling the dragonflame fireball to burn out pits in the ground.
Recalling what he had seen on the Wall that day, the old ranger could not help shuddering. Trembling, he said, "Endless, packed so tightly, like an ocean of the dead."
"How many exactly? You know how to estimate troop numbers on a battlefield, don't you?" the Great Bear asked with a frown.
"At least a million," Ulmer replied.
"A million?" Garths Hightower said in disbelief. "Are there really that many people beyond the Wall?"
"Even the bones buried in the ground crawled out, along with wild beasts." In the red glow of the fireball, terror flickered in Ulmer's old eyes.
"Then it's more than a million," Dany said with certainty.
"The North is finished. It definitely can't hold, and Winterfell won't be able to stop a million wights either." The Great Bear's face turned deathly pale.
Dany's eyes flashed as she asked again, "Besides the dead, what else did you see that day?"
"I saw tornadoes, a sun that suddenly lit up, and a huge flock of ravens. The strangest thing was King Stannis's fool. He was singing some odd song, something like 'There are treasures beneath the Wall, I know it, everyone come and seize them, I know it.' Then he was actually stepping on the waves. It seemed like he could control the sea."
"You're talking about Patchface? Are you sure? He's just a fool. He can control the sea?" Pockmarked Richard said in astonishment from the edge of the pit.
"That's right, it was him. The presence he gave off back then…" Ulmer frowned, as if searching for the right words.
"Like this?" Divine power surged within Dany, and tangible cyan light shot out from her violet eyes.
Ulmer shuddered and nodded repeatedly. "Yes, exactly like that. Just one look made people feel fear and reverence."
"A god who can control the sea. Shit, that clown is actually the Drowned God!" Dany gaped in shock.
She had seen Patchface before. The last time she resurrected Jon, Shireen and Selyse, Stannis's wife, had already moved to the King's Tower at Castle Black.
Patchface, with a face that looked like it was covered in mosaic tiles, had been right beside Shireen, hopping and jumping about, a complete clown.
She had sensed nothing unusual about him at all. Who would have thought…
But then again, before mortals, was the Drowned God really willing to lower himself so far as to play the fool?
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09