At the stairwell leading from Basement Level One to Basement Level Two in the main keep of Hearthfire City.
The sounds of wights tearing and biting, warriors shouting as they charged, weapons clashing, and the desperate wails of dying humans all drifted down from the main hall above.
"Gods, we should have listened to the Night's Watch and left the North immediately. We could have gone to Winterfell, to the Vale, even to Braavos." Ed Amber closed his eyes and spoke in despair.
He did not even dare turn around, because the underground hall on Basement Level Two was packed with vacant-eyed children and women holding their children's heads as they wept softly.
He felt ashamed and could not bear to look at them.
He was the second son of Greatjon. After his elder brother, Smalljon, died at the Red Wedding, and after his father, Greatjon, was rescued from the Twins by King Aegon, fourteen-year-old Ed became the official heir of Hearthfire City.
He should have been the guardian of Hearthfire City, protecting the people and family within the castle.
And he truly had climbed the walls to fight when the Others ravaged the town outside the city.
His swordsmanship was not exceptional, but with the Umbers' characteristic powerful build and towering stature, he slaughtered wildly among the corpses, swinging his greatsword as limbs flew everywhere.
Yet those severed limbs crawled back toward him, slowly but relentlessly.
Severed hands grabbed at his boots, heads opened their mouths to bite his cloak, and even bodies cut in half, with nothing left but two long legs and half a torso, charged at him and splashed him full in the face with a "pot" of foul-smelling, rotting intestines.
At the time, he slipped to the ground and did not dodge at all, taking the full force of that torrent of filth and heavy guts straight to the face. The sensation made him pass out on the spot.
He was then dragged back to the main keep by guards.
When he awoke again, his twelve-year-old little sister Anna told him through tears that the town had fallen, the walls had fallen, the outer platform of the main keep had fallen, and the wights had already stormed into the castle hall. Basement Level One was the next battlefield, and also the final one.
Because Basement Level Two had no warriors at all, only women, the elderly, and children.
"The hall has fallen! Fall back to the next level, hold the stairway. Ah! Direwolf, no!"
"Fire, use fire! Torches, quickly!"
"Beast! I'll fight you to the death!"
Very soon, Basement Level One was filled with choking black smoke, flickering red light, and thick, freezing mist.
The dead made no sounds. Only human roars and shrill screams echoed through the rooms of Basement Level One.
"My lord, we must make a decision quickly!" the captain of the Hearthfire City guard said sorrowfully as he found Count Ed.
"I am willing to live and die with Hearthfire City," Ed said, gripping his sword hilt with a trembling voice. "But those women and children…"
The guard captain's helmet was gone. His graying brown hair, soaked with blood, sweat, and icy water, clung to his dark, rough scalp. Several bite marks marred his square, hardened face, and nearly half his cheek had been torn away.
Every time he spoke, air leaked through the teeth marks, puffing a string of tiny bubbles through the bloody wounds.
There were also three deep claw marks across the iron armor on his chest, almost enough to tear through the steel.
All these injuries were the work of direwolf wights.
Had they been zombies, he would have long since joined the zombie horde.
Fortunately, wights were very magical, not at all science fiction.
Well, gains and losses came together. Zombies could be killed with a headshot and had no special requirements for weapons, while wights were not afraid of headshots, and ordinary weapons could not deal fatal blows.
"Dying in flames is better than becoming a monster." The guard captain spoke with air leaking from his mouth, revealing the despair and resolve filling his chest.
This so-called final struggle meant starting from Basement Level Two, igniting the entire castle with fire oil, and perishing together with the wights and Others that had entered the keep.
"This is all my fault. I should not have hesitated. When the raven from Castle Black arrived, I should have immediately left Hearthfire Castle by way of the Last River," Ed said, clutching his head in agony.
"Leave by the Last River, my ass. The river's been frozen solid for a long time," the guard captain cursed, spitting out a mouthful of bloody foam.
"Frozen?" Ed Amber asked in confusion. "I remember that just half a month ago, longships were still bringing us large shipments of grain along the Last River."
The Umbers were, after all, an ancient noble house with thousands of years of history. They were accustomed to the North's plain and frugal way of life and had not produced a "Lynesse-style" bride. The family still had a stock of gold, all of which they had spent on buying grain in Braavos. This had been Jon's request, because he understood that the Long Night was real.
"Probably on the day the Wall fell, the Last River formed a thin layer of ice," the guard captain said, his face ashen. He shook his head and sighed. "The North is finished. If the Last River has frozen, do you think the White Knife River at Winterfell, the Weeping Water at the Dreadfort, or the Broken Branch at Hornwood would be any exception? The Starks, the Boltons, they're all finished. No one can escape."
The women behind them who had overheard the conversation could no longer hold back. They broke into loud sobbing, and in no time, the entire castle was drowned in cries.
"Sir Kruse, go make the arrangements," Ed Amber said dully, waving his hand in dejection.
Boom!
A thunderous explosion erupted overhead. The entire underground shook violently as soil slid down through the gaps between the wooden boards in the ceiling.
A violent, scorching blast wave surged down from the stairway leading from Basement Level One to the ground floor. The mass of dead crammed together on the stairs were swept up like scraps of paper in a gale and hurled tumbling into the hall.
For a brief moment, the people in the underground levels experienced ringing in their ears.
"What's going on?" Ed asked, patting his ears and staring at the ceiling in alarm.
Silence followed, with no second explosion.
The guard captain avoided the burning pile of wights and took a few steps out of the Basement Level Two stairwell, craning his head to look toward the entrance of Basement Level One.
When he saw red flames drifting in with the wind, realization struck him. He shouted in wild joy, "Someone has come to rescue us. It's fire oil bombs!"
"So fast? Our raven was sent less than an hour ago. Neither Winterfell nor Castle Black could arrive this quickly," Ed Amber said in confusion.
Confused or not, they gladly accepted the reality.
After the explosion, more than half the wights on Basement Level One inexplicably collapsed. The soldiers of Hearthfire City did not understand why, but their morale surged as they charged forward, hacking and burning.
Ten minutes later, they had cleared all the wights on Basement Level One. Under the protection of three shield-bearers, Ed Amber cautiously climbed out of the stairwell.
The moment he stuck his head out, Ed's entire body stiffened as he stood frozen in place.
"Did you see clearly? What happened up there? Why was only one fire-oil bomb thrown?" the captain of the guards asked anxiously from behind.
"I saw it. Fire, fire everywhere," Ed Amber said blankly.
"There's no danger!" a shield-bearing soldier said, then took the lead and stepped out of the stairwell.
After that, a group of soldiers escorted the young count and filed out in order.
The captain of the guards now understood what Ed had meant earlier.
Yes, fire. Fires everywhere. It was as if a rain of fire had fallen over the entire castle. Platforms, stairways, courtyards, walls, rooftops, everywhere were blazing piles of flame, densely packed, giving off the scorched stench of burning flesh.
They could see clearly now. Every pile of fire was a burning corpse.
Where the wights had once been densely packed, the fires were just as dense now.
The castle was eerily quiet, with only the crackling of burning bodies. Black smoke and red flames filled the entire sky.
In this bitter winter of the coming Long Night, they felt a scorching heat that even summer had never brought.
"Is this all that's left?" Suddenly, a clear female voice came from the direction of the main keep hall.
"Who, who's there?" Ed Amber stood on tiptoe, eyes wide, straining to look, but the raging red flames blocked his view, and he could see nothing.
Earlier, the main keep hall had been packed with wights, even layered across the roof. Now they had all turned into burning torches. The roof had been blown away, corpses were piled like mountains inside the hall, red flames surged four to five meters high, and thick, foul-smelling smoke blotted out the sky.
"Whoosh!" The flames in front of them, like a wall of reeds, seemed to come alive. Like soldiers in formation, they moved aside on their own, opening a broad road two meters wide.
At the end of the road stood a towering throne carved from red iron ore. It had three steps, and including the backrest, it stood two meters tall.
Yet everyone's gaze was drawn instead to the young woman below the throne. She sat lazily on the steps in blue-and-white armor, one hand propping up her forehead.
A longsword lay diagonally on the step beside her. Her visor was raised, revealing a face like an autumn moon. Yet her refined features could not conceal her valiant, commanding presence, a ruler's aura that seemed to look down upon all things.
Well, that air of looking down upon all things was an illusion.
At this moment, the Dragon Queen only felt a bit bored, and somewhat worried about the situation in the North. Sitting on the steps, she thought quietly while absorbing vast amounts of the wights' spiritual essence.
She had no intention at all of shaking with power or unleashing any overwhelming aura.
The people of Hearthfire Castle felt she was imposing only because, amid the blazing red flames before her, there still lay a ferocious black dragon, its eyes half open and half closed, crouched on the ground.
Put a mongrel dog on the back of a giant dragon, and people would think it was the king of dogs.
In an instant, everyone understood the identity of this female ruler.
"The Dragon Queen!" They were both shocked and overjoyed.
With the Dragon Queen's arrival, they were finally saved. But how had she managed, in less than a quarter of an hour, to wipe out the seemingly endless horde of wights that had overrun Hearthfire Castle?
Even though the flames had parted to form a road, Ed Amber and the castle guards could not walk over to thank the Dragon Queen.
The flames still burned around her and the dragon. The stone floor was scorching hot, and the iron swords and armor on the ground were heated until they glowed red. One dragon and one woman felt nothing and remained utterly at ease, but the others could not endure it.
Even standing in a side hall at a distance, they were drenched in sweat, their cheeks flushed red, nearly roasted to the point of fainting.
The great black dragon remained outside, and the Dragon Queen was invited into the underground hall.
By torchlight, Dany saw hundreds of sorrowful, vacant faces.
"These are all who are left," Ed Amber said bitterly. "Hearthfire Castle originally had more than fifteen thousand townsfolk. The town outside the walls fell almost immediately, and the walls could not stop the wights.
"Ordinary swords cannot harm them.
"In less than half an hour, only those of us who hid inside the castle survived."
More than fifty guards, and over four hundred elderly, weak, women, and children.
It was too tragic.
"Tomorrow, a winged dragon unit will come to take you to Winterfell, or somewhere else in the south," Dany sighed.
This was the Long Night.
Not everyone could be as strong as she was. Ordinary people had no dragons and no magic. Facing the tide-like surge of wights, they were like people who could not swim falling into a tsunami. They struggled up a single splash, then were swept away by the waves.
"Your Majesty, it seems you've killed all the wights. Is Hearthfire Castle safe now?"
Hearing that the Dragon Queen planned to send winged dragons to take them away, Ed Amber hesitated.
"Killed them all?" Dany shook her head with a wry smile. "Take a guess. How many wights do you think attacked Hearthfire Castle?"
"Endless, at least forty thousand," Sir Kruse, the captain of the guards, said with certainty.
"Wrong," Dany said, raising two fingers. "Only two."
"Two? Impossible. With so many corpses, how could there be only two?"
The Dragon Queen's words caused a huge uproar in the hall. The way everyone looked at her became very strange. Could it be that such a domineering Dragon Queen did not even know how to count?
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09