When Stannis decided on the punishment for Karhold, he never intended to carry it out himself. He assumed the Dragon Queen would, as before, personally ride a dragon to Karhold.
With three colossal dragons at her command, she possessed the power to raze a city single-handedly.
Therefore, no matter how harsh his punishment might be, Karhold would most likely not resist in the face of the Dragon Queen, and even if it did, resistance would be futile.
What he never expected was that the Dragon Queen would be so adept at delegating responsibility.
When Melisandre proposed sending Ser Richard on this risky mission, Stannis was not particularly willing, but neither did he oppose it.
He did not oppose it because he genuinely believed Karhold had to be punished, to kill one as a warning to a hundred. He was unwilling because he was not foolish enough to think that Richard could, with mere eloquence, incite the people and minor nobles of Karhold to rebel against Count Sigorn.
Thus, Stannis settled for a compromise. He no longer demanded the execution of everyone involved in the sacrifice to the Others. Instead, he only required Richard to deceive Sigorn and his wife into coming to Winterfell, where they would be publicly executed before all the nobles, burned alive as a sacrifice to the Lord of Light.
The task of luring Sigorn and his wife to Winterfell was not dangerous. If Sigorn refused, Richard could simply fly back. At worst, the mission would fail.
Unfortunately, Richard's temperament was ill-suited to such work.
If it had been the Onion Knight instead, he would probably have succeeded in tricking Sigorn into coming to Winterfell.
"My wife has just given birth and cannot endure the hardship of traveling thousands of miles," Sigorn said, his face pale and his tone sincere.
Indeed, Sigorn had received Richard with full honors accorded to a royal envoy.
When Richard proposed taking both husband and wife to Winterfell, Sigorn did not fly into a rage.
"I can leave Karhold with you at once, Ser," Sigorn said softly after explaining his situation, his voice carrying a note of supplication. "But could you allow my wife to remain in the castle to recover?"
If Daenerys had been there, she would have hesitated with a troubled expression, then reluctantly agreed, perhaps even saying, "Your lady wife is frail. Do not frighten her. Explain clearly that the trial in Winterfell will only delay you a few days. Even if His Majesty Stannis punishes you, you will return within three days."
Richard, however, stiffened his expression. A trace of mockery flashed in his eyes as he sneered, "That is not up to you. His Majesty Stannis made it very clear. Both husband and wife are to go to Winterfell together to stand trial."
At these words, the cold restraint hidden deep in Sigorn's gray eyes transformed into undisguised killing intent. "So he truly means to wipe us out completely? I am already willing to die. Why refuse to spare my wife?
"If he will not even spare the last Karstark, then the Thenns will likely face a reckoning as well."
Sigorn's already bloodless face, pale from the loss of his right arm, twisted into something demonic.
Richard froze for a moment and blurted out, "You knew?"
"Heh heh heh." Sigorn chuckled softly. "From the moment I first saw you, I understood my fate.
"Because the way you looked at me was the way one looks at a dead man.
"Still, I thought that as long as my house could be preserved, it did not matter if I alone bore the blame.
"After all, I did what I should not have done. After all, the Dragon Queen is terrifying, and I dared not rebel.
"But now that you intend to exterminate us all, is there any reason left for me to fear her?"
"Fuck!" Richard hurriedly lowered his visor, turned, and bolted for the door.
As he ran, he shouted the name of his wyvern.
The wyvern had been circling in the sky.
Sigorn slowly rose to his feet, a cold smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and followed unhurriedly behind the Knight of the Flaming Heart.
"Skreeee!" Before Richard could burst out of the castle hall, a shrill, piercing cry came from the courtyard.
He immediately realized there was an ambush outside.
With no other choice, he shouted for his wyvern to leave.
Before long, the mournful cries rose higher and drifted farther away.
By the time Richard reached the stone steps outside the door, his wyvern was nowhere to be seen.
The next instant, more than a dozen shield-bearers formed a shield wall and pressed in from all sides. With several heavy thuds, they smashed the sword-swinging knight to the ground.
"I ate your bread," the Knight of the Flaming Heart struggled to raise his head as he was pinned down, glaring furiously at Sigorn.
It was because, in the snow outside the castle, Sigorn had been the first to offer him bread and salt that Richard had agreed to dismount from his wyvern and enter the castle with him.
Sigorn nodded and sighed. "I understand guest right and am willing to abide by it. But guest right does not only bind the host; it also places demands on the guest. One must not harbor ill intent toward the host.
"From the moment you used such clumsy lies to deceive me and Arya into going to Winterfell to die, you forfeited the protection of guest right."
"Killing me will do you no good," Richard said. He did not want to die.
"Tell me. How does Stannis intend to deal with me?"
The pockmarked knight pressed his lips together, stubbornly refusing to speak.
He did not want to die, yet he would not betray his liege.
A blade flashed. The knight's head rolled across the ground, trailing a line of blood. It landed face up, blinked vacantly once, and was dead.
"Chief, you killed him?" A Thenn soldier beside them exclaimed in shock and confusion. "Killing him will enrage the King of the Flaming Heart!"
Clang. Sigorn tossed the bloodstained longsword to the ground, planted his boot on Richard's head, and rolled it half a turn so that the dead, unclosing eyes faced downward.
"Hang the head and the body on the flagpole atop the gate's watchtower," Sigorn said coldly, his eyes flashing.
The Thenn guards around him stood frozen, eyes wide, staring at their chieftain in terror.
Ser James, a bearded knight, stepped forward and said anxiously, "My lord, that will offend Stannis beyond repair."
Ser James was a landed knight and a vassal of Karhold.
"That is exactly my intent."
Sigorn's gaze was dark and distant as he looked down at the town shrouded in darkness beyond the castle walls. His voice was low and steady. "Stannis has only wyverns, and wyverns cannot breathe fire.
"After traveling such great distances, how many wildfire bombs can he carry?
His bombardment will terrify everyone in Karhold, and fear will make the people of the North forget that we Thenns are different.
"Only if the Northmen and the Thenns stand united at my side will we have a chance to endure this long and bitter night."
Ser James was deeply shaken, never having imagined that this wildling count possessed such depth of calculation.
Yet he felt no resentment, for everything Sigorn did now was for the sake of Karhold.
"But what if it draws the Dragon Queen?" he asked worriedly.
"No," Sigorn said firmly, gritting his teeth as a dull ache spread through his right shoulder. "The Dragon Queen has already punished me once. She will not come again, at least not in person."
"Winterfell definitely won't let me off. The only ones capable of carrying out the punishment are dragons. We must be careful," Saigon said. A calculating glint flashed in his eyes as he lowered his head and began issuing instructions to his trusted aides.
To rise from a wildling chieftain to an earl of the North, Saigon was indeed a standout figure in a chaotic age. Just as he had anticipated, Deathwing arrived the following morning.
Unfortunately.
Six days earlier, at Castle Black on the Wall, the Dragon Queen had given Ser Richard a "ticket to Heaven."
The pockmarked knight did not want it, but the Dragon Queen had just bestowed upon him the title of "Demon Hunter," and he could hardly refuse. So he casually hung the "ticket" around his neck.
If some more time had passed, and he had encountered things like bathing or changing his underwear, the pockmarked knight would very likely have tossed away the so-called "Blessing of the Holy Mother" without a second thought.
Fortunately, only six days had passed, and he had not yet had time to bathe.
At the instant Saigon's sword severed his head, the small cloth pouch pressed against his chest grew slightly warm, and a faint golden glow flickered within.
Under normal circumstances, once the "ticket to Heaven" was activated, the Stranger's divine power would operate and automatically carry the pockmarked knight's soul to Heaven.
This was a preset function written into the runes.
Like a return scroll in a game.
Except that what was returned was not the body, but the soul of the deceased.
However, the very first time the "ticket to Heaven" was used, a "system malfunction" occurred. The moment Richard died, his soul was seized by another god of death.
In the end, the "ticket to Heaven" was merely a divine spell of the Stranger, and a very crude and low-level one at that. It was only natural that it could not compete with a death demon who appeared in person.
Yet the failure of the Stranger's divine spell alarmed the Great Black One, who then took the initiative to connect with Daenerys' dragon spirit.
Daenerys transformed into the Stranger and followed the "tether" left by the "ticket to Heaven" on Richard's soul, arriving instantly at Qaho City, a soul projection similar to Kuixi's.
She witnessed the pockmarked knight's tragic fate.
In the gray world of death, Richard's亡魂 was bound by shadowy chains and was about to cross a great river shrouded in gray mist, falling into the clutches of the shadow demon on the opposite bank.
"No, mercy of the Holy Mother, I have an indulgence!" Richard struggled and screamed.
"Stop struggling, Richard. This is your fate!" Suddenly, the segment of shadowy chain wrapped around the pockmarked knight's chest revealed an extremely twisted, grotesquely elongated face.
It was like a rubber doll seized by a naughty child and pulled with all their strength until even the face was stretched out of shape.
But when Richard lowered his head, he immediately recognized the identity of the face.
"Ser Gaudi?" he cried out in disbelief, his eyes wide with terror.
"It's me, Richard. Stop struggling. This is your fate." Gaudi Farlin's eyes were filled with venomous hatred and mockery.
It seemed that the Giant Slayer harbored deep resentment toward his former close friend and took pleasure in witnessing his current predicament.
"Aren't you dead? Slain by a single blow from Greatjon," Richard asked in confusion, his struggles weakening.
"Yes, I'm dead. After the followers of R'hllor die, they all enter His realm. I went there, and my soul was forged into the chain binding your soul," Gaudi Farlin said with a sob.
"How could this be? How could this be?" Richard could not accept such a reality. He shook his head repeatedly, tears streaming down his face as he pleaded, "Gaudi, we've been friends for decades. Hurry and let me go. I'm going to Heaven. I can feel the call from Heaven."
"Go to Heaven?" Gaudi Farlin's gaze turned incomparably venomous. "You actually dare to dream of going to Heaven? If you go to Heaven, what about me? If I don't see you suffer an even more miserable fate, how could I ever be happy?"
Richard felt the chains binding him tighten once more.
"You're not this kind of person. Have you forgotten? We're friends!" the pockmarked knight cried.
"Heh heh heh, your sorrow brings me joy," Gaudi Farlin said with a sinister laugh.
"Heh heh heh, your sorrow brings us joy." A string of malicious laughter echoed from the chains.
Richard focused his gaze, and his scalp instantly went numb. Every segment of the chain revealed a stretched, distorted face, and every single face was familiar to him.
They were all his fallen comrades, or the sacrifices burned to death by the Knight of the Fiery Heart.
Followers of R'hllor were treated the same as sacrifices, all forged into chains of shadow.
"No!"
Richard erupted with the most intense emotions imaginable: despair, grief, and fury.
"Mercy of the Holy Mother!" he howled without cease.
"Ke ke ke, this is my realm of death. I am the master here. No one can save you!" On the far side of the gray-misted river, the shadow demon R'hllor laughed with savage delight.
"Who is it? Who dares intrude upon my divine domain?" Suddenly, the shadow demon's laughter ceased as he roared.
Silently, a series of black ink droplets flew in from the west and landed upon the chains. Each droplet spread out and transformed into a raven.
In the blink of an eye, on the western bank of the surging gray mist, upon the shadow chains between Richard and the bull demon, twenty-seven ravens had landed.
"Caw, caw, caw." In the monochrome gray-white world, the ravens' gray-red glowing eyes were still striking.
Even more striking was how their beaks pecked at the chains, striking sparks of dull gray-gold light.
With a cracking sound, under the gray-gold sparks, the shadow chains rapidly melted open hole after hole, then flickered between solidity and illusion before shattering explosively.
Bang, bang, bang. The chains binding Richard disintegrated segment by segment into black mist, within which twisted, howling human faces could be seen.
"Caw." One raven seized a lock of Richard's hair, flapped its wings once, and vanished instantly from the black-and-white world.
"No!" On the other side of the gray-misted torrent, the shadow demon R'hllor raged furiously, yet was utterly helpless.
(End of Chapter)
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