"After receiving news of the Wall's collapse, I couldn't eat or sleep. Sure enough, a few days later, the watchtowers I had set up outside the town spotted signs of the wights.
When we left the Wall, the commander did not allow the Thenn to take any dragonglass weapons with them. We only brought out a small number of dragonglass daggers from beyond the Wall.
At first, I did my best to organize a defense, but there were simply too many wights. Having dealt with them for years beyond the Wall, I knew that if we confronted them head-on, Karhold would inevitably fall."
"That was my son, my newborn son, my only son!" Sigorn cried out hoarsely. "Do you think I was willing to offer him to the Others?
If there had been even the slightest chance to resist, I would have gladly been a hero, but I'm not!
I'm not you. I'm not the child of prophecy. I can't fight them, and I can't be a hero.
I'm useless and cowardly, but I still have a responsibility to protect my people and the folk of this land."
"Chieftain!" the Thenn guards cried out in grief.
"Count!" The castle servants, stable hands, kitchen workers, and other Northmen who rushed over all shouted emotionally, their eyes red.
In just half a year, he had won over the hearts of the North as a wildling from beyond the Wall. This Sigorn was no simple man.
Dany frowned and swept her gaze over the crowd. "Do you know what he has done?"
"Everyone in Karhold knows," a bearded knight said solemnly. "In order to make the Others withdraw, the Count offered his only son as a sacrifice to the Cold God."
The knight's words caused no stir in the crowd. Clearly, this was an open secret in Karhold.
"You do have nerve," Dany mocked. "You even dare to make public such a deadly secret just to win people's hearts."
Count Thenn gave a bleak smile. "It couldn't be hidden. You wouldn't think the Cold God's appetite was so small that it would be satisfied with just a count's son, would you?
This was only the first time.
One in a thousand. For every thousand subjects, one male infant must be offered.
From now on, every year we must sacrifice more than ten male infants to the Cold God, unless I can offer up another son.
A count's son, of noble blood, is more useful to them."
"Gasp." Grey Worm, who was usually steady, could not help but change color. "If other castles follow this example, the Others will only grow more numerous. Humanity will never end the Long Night."
The Dragon Queen said coldly, "Offering sacrifices to the Others is a grave crime of betraying humanity. You deserve death!"
"I…" Sigorn raised his head, only to be overwhelmed again by the dragon's might in Dany's purple eyes while she was in her dragon-soul state. "I am guilty, but I had no choice!"
"You had no choice, he had no choice, and then the whole world will be ruled by the Others and plunged into eternal ice. At that time, you truly will have no choice left, only death!"
With that, Dany raised her sword to strike.
Clang, clang, clang. A series of swords being drawn rang out around her.
"Release the Count!" Wildling guards and Northern knights alike drew their blades and advanced on the Dragon Queen. Farther away, crossbowmen watched her intently.
"You dare draw swords on me?" Dany swept her gaze around them. "Ignorant fools."
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The enormous fireball hovering ten meters in the air suddenly spun, shooting out streams of bright red fire-serpents, each as thick as a thumb and as long as an arm.
Each fire-serpent found a soldier aiming a sword or crossbow at the Dragon Queen. Not one was missed. All were scorched by dragonfire.
"Ahhh!" In the blink of an eye, thirty or forty soldiers were howling and rolling on the ground, their heads ablaze.
It looked a bit like Ghost Rider from a Marvel movie.
The sight of human candles was too horrifying. The knights and soldiers who had been a beat slower seemed as if their sword hilts had burned their hands, and they hastily let go.
Then, one by one, they stared wide-eyed at the Dragon Queen with the same look they would give the Others.
No, even when they had seen the Others yesterday, their eyes had not held this level of fear and rejection.
"No, please don't, Your Majesty. Spare us!" A brown-haired girl in a golden fox-fur cloak stumbled out of the castle, ran to Sigorn's side, and knelt, weeping bitterly.
"Your Majesty, mercy, compassion. If there were any way to live, we would not offer sacrifices to the Others. That was my son!"
She was a tall, slender young woman, with the long face and gray eyes typical of the Starks.
She seemed ill. Her eyes were dull, her face pale as snow, her breathing weak, and her voice faint.
Dany immediately guessed who she was. She was Alys, the only daughter of the Karstark who had been beheaded by Robb, and Sigorn's wife.
"What you have done is to cut off other people's path to survival, to cut off the future of all humanity," the Dragon Queen said, resolute and cold.
Thud, thud, thud. The Countess knelt. Her knight knelt. The group of guards led by that knight knelt as well. Farther away, the servants and common folk of Karhold, staring at the Dragon Queen in terror, also forced themselves to overcome their fear of the demon dragon and came forward to kneel behind the Count and Countess.
"Mercy! Compassion!" Hundreds, then thousands of people cried out together, their terrified eyes wide as they looked at the Dragon Queen.
At this moment, the Dragon Queen was no different from the Others who had besieged the city yesterday. Both were enemies who disturbed their fragile peace and whom they could not afford to provoke.
"You people really…" For the first time, Dany's expression changed.
"Dragon Queen, if the Count does not give up the young lord, we will all die. We don't want to die! My child is so small, only two years old. He hasn't even seen summer yet!" a middle-aged woman wailed.
Her cry was like flipping a switch. A cascade of sobs, pleas, and even reproaches followed, forming a tsunami of words and emotion that engulfed the Dragon Queen in an instant.
"There were so many wights, endless as far as the eye could see. The Count wanted to resist too, but he couldn't win! We don't want to die. If we don't offer sacrifices to the Cold God, what else can we do?"
"Your Majesty, please show mercy. If you kill the Count, what will we do the next time the Others come?"
"Your Majesty, you have dragons. You are powerful. But why didn't you come yesterday? If you had, we wouldn't have needed to sacrifice anyone to the Others!"
"What use is it to kill the Count now? If you kill him, can you save all of us?
If you can't, we'll still have to offer sacrifices to the Others.
Or maybe you could just kill all of us and be done with it. Once we're dead, there will be no Others and no Long Night!"
"You have the time and energy to torment our little Karhold. Why not go kill the King of the Others sooner? End the Long Night, drive them away, and then we won't have to sacrifice people to monsters anymore!"
Dany's face was taut, her heart filled with anger, fury, and helplessness.
If these unruly people were not punished, the so-called united front against the Others might become a one-woman show.
But how should she punish them?
Was she really supposed to wipe out Karhold?
The castle was connected to the settlement outside. The total population was likely over ten thousand, most of them civilians, many of them women and children. Was she supposed to burn them all to death?
In theory, at this moment, she really should have mounted her dragon and burned all of Karhold.
Kill ten thousand to warn a hundred.
If one Karhold provided ten sacrifices a year, how many Karholds were there in the North?
And how many in all of Westeros?
If this were allowed to continue, it would be impossible to kill off the Others even in ten years.
If the Others were not wiped out, how could the Long Night ever end?
Yet she could not bring herself to do it.
At this moment, Dany had to admit helplessly that she still lacked a certain decisiveness.
Perhaps, compared to decisiveness, what she lacked even more was a "Westerosi maester."
The maesters of Slaver's Bay were useless. She needed a maester from Westeros itself.
In the end, this kind of dirty, exhausting work should never have fallen to her. Coming to Karhold this time had been foolish from the start.
"Hah!" A flash of sword light, and Sigorn's right arm was severed cleanly at the elbow.
"Ah!" Sigorn howled in agony. Alys and the surrounding soldiers and servants cried out in shock.
"I am not the King in the North, nor the King of the Seven Kingdoms. I have no authority to execute a count. But House Stark and the Iron Throne will surely give the realm's righteous warriors who fight the Others an answer."
Leaving behind this face-saving rhetoric, the Dragon Queen extinguished the fireball, spread her flaming wings, and leapt into the dark sky.
"Are we really just letting them off like this?" Garth said unwillingly.
They returned empty-handed. The Dragon Queen was stifled, and the followers who had traveled thousands of miles with her were just as frustrated.
"What do you think we should do?" Dany asked in return.
After a moment of silence, Garth said hoarsely, "Kill one to warn a hundred. We have no choice!"
"You want the Queen to ride her dragon and burn Karhold?" the Great Bear said excitedly. "That would make her hated by all the Northmen. We wouldn't even dare live in Winterfell anymore."
"In extraordinary times, extraordinary measures are required. Back when Oldtown was struck by the grey plague, didn't my great-grandfather order his soldiers to kill everyone who tried to flee, to prevent the disease from spreading across the Seven Kingdoms?
Men, women, even infants in their mothers' arms, no exceptions.
The facts proved that his order was cruel, but absolutely correct.
The plague was contained within Oldtown. Even though half the city died, not a single case appeared in the surrounding cities."
Garth spoke slowly, with a faint note of pride in his voice.
Dany was numb. Your ancestor did make the right choice, but why don't you mention how he ended up?
"This is the North. We should follow the customs of our hosts," the Dragon Queen said in a low voice.
They did not immediately return to Winterfell, but instead went to the nearby Shivering Sea to hunt a whale.
Big Black, Little White, and Little Green, the three giant dragons, dove into the sea together. After more than half an hour, they finally found an adult humpback whale.
There was no other reason. The winged dragons were hungry, and Winterfell lacked enough fresh meat to sustain them.
After their fill, the forty winged dragons split into two groups. One group carried the Unsullied in iron armor back to Winterfell, while the other flew to Dragonstone.
In addition to dragonglass weapons, they also needed to airlift a batch of wildfire bombs enhanced with Tyrion's oil.
Barristan would represent the Dragon Queen in demanding a shipment of wildfire from King's Landing, at least one hundred tons.
Although Dany was unwilling to commit much manpower to the decisive battle at Winterfell, she truly did her utmost to arm the Northmen.
Meanwhile, Sansa left Winterfell at the same time as the Dragon Queen. With her belly swollen, she flew all the way to the Vale. Instead of seeking out the Stag King at once, she first went to the Northern camp to meet Illyrio alone.
Yes, the main force of the Stag King had already marched to the Bloody Gate and successfully taken control of the Vale's capital.
In theory, the two thousand Northern cavalry were his subordinates and had followed him there, while Illyrio had remained under the "protection" of the Northern cavalry.
"Aegon has gone to heaven," Sansa said, her expression complicated as she looked at the disheveled fat man before her.
The chambers that had once belonged to King Aegon and Queen Sansa were now occupied by the Stag King, his wife, and his daughter. Sansa was receiving the fat merchant in a guest room of a side hall.
His condition was terrible. His spirit was listless, his clothes unclean. His once rosy, greasy face now looked like a dried Red Fuji apple. Only when he heard the name "Aegon" did a flicker of life return to his dull eyes.
(End of chapter)
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