Spring thunder?
That was the first thought of the more quick-witted among them.
In the short spring that arrived between the end of every Winter and the beginning of Summer, warm, humid air would collide fiercely with lingering cold currents. This clash gave rise to powerful vertical convection, forming cumulonimbus clouds and leading to bursts of thunder.
Of course, the lords of the Reach did not fully understand the meteorological science behind it, but through personal experience, they had grasped a basic pattern: once thunder began, Summer was not far behind.
At present, although temperatures had risen slightly to around freezing, thunder...
Wasn't it a bit early?
Their hesitation and confusion lasted only a few seconds before reality struck—this was no weather phenomenon. After all, thunder did not bring with it panicked shouts, tumbling horses, or screams of pain.
---
Thanks to its proximity to King's Landing, the Blackwater River was one of the most well-known rivers in the Seven Kingdoms. In truth, however, its length, depth, and width were far inferior to the Trident and the Mander. It didn't even rank among the top three rivers on the continent. If not for the advantage of being situated farther south, where rainfall was more plentiful, giving it a somewhat deeper and faster flow, it likely wouldn't surpass several of the rivers in the North.
Even so, for a medium-sized river—and even during the dry winter season—its width near the Long Night Industrial Park, close to the mouth of the bay, still exceeded one hundred meters. Add to that its soft, muddy, unstable riverbanks, and the hundred-meter buffer that the southern army camp maintained from the water to avoid the threat of enemy ballistas and trebuchets...
It could be said that the South army camp was entirely beyond the effective range of the first-generation artillery deployed by the North bank.
But "effective range" is not a hard physical limit. It is a man-made concept, one that only matters when both power and accuracy are required. Aegor's current goal was not precision bombardment, but simply to lob shells into the South army's camp to cause chaos.
With that as the objective, what mattered was not effective range, but maximum range.
How different were the two?
It's difficult to generalize, but one extreme example suffices: a pistol with an effective range of fifty meters is normally fired at targets within a few meters or perhaps a dozen. But if one raises it at a steep angle and fires into the air with a tailwind, the bullet could travel as far as a thousand meters and still strike some unlucky soul.
By the standard of maximum range, the entire South army camp was well within the artillery's reach.
Accuracy? With sixty to seventy thousand people gathered in one place, even blind shots would land somewhere useful.
Power? In this era of wooden palisades and steel armor, with no concrete or armored vehicles, an iron ball fired from a thousand meters—even near the end of its arc—was still more than enough to punch through tents and splinter bones.
When Aegor captured Winterfell, his army had only five cannons. During his stay in the Northern capital, Crown Town had cast a fresh batch to bolster his forces. Now, the Gift army had twenty cannons, fourteen of which were operational. The remaining six were not damaged but idle, due to a shortage of trained artillerymen. That issue hadn't become a major obstacle yet, but once Blackwall Keep was fully transformed into a military manufacturing base, a new problem would emerge: too many cannons, too few men.
But that was a matter for another day.
Now, the first volley from the fourteen cannons resounded like thunder. Fourteen shells flew nearly a thousand meters, landing erratically across several hundred meters within the South army's camp. Of those: nine landed in open ground, two were fired too low and struck the wooden palisade, one knocked over a pot of soup, one hit a gambling tent and startled its occupants, and one struck the roof of a temporary stable, panicking several dozen horses inside.
Because of the high firing angle, the cannonballs didn't achieve the ideal "skipping" effect upon impact. Instead, they plunged directly into the mud. Clods of dirt and woodchips were thrown into the air. Scalding soup splashed everywhere, burning several people. The panicked horses added further chaos, tying down handlers and nearby soldiers alike.
With such a densely packed camp, it could almost be called divine luck that not a single person was killed in the first round of shelling. The brief chaos caused by the impacts slowly died down, like ripples fading across a pond. Silence fell over the camp. Outside of those near the impact sites frantically investigating the cause, most of the South camp was still dazed, unsure what had just happened. Many believed it had simply been an unusually loud explosion.
Everyone waited, hoping that orders from above would explain it away as a fluke. Or else they waited for the sound to return and shatter their brief illusion.
Amid this slow, confused response, the second barrage began.
This volley was no longer synchronized. Shots rang out sporadically over a dozen seconds, with nearly half a minute between the first and last cannon. This wasn't due to a breakdown in coordination, but because Aegor had already ordered the second wave to switch to rapid, independent firing. The skill and experience among the fourteen artillery crews varied greatly, and attempting to maintain unified volleys would only highlight the weakest link and reduce overall firepower. Since they were blindly firing at a massive target, there was no need for precision. It served better as training, allowing each crew to perform to the best of their ability.
As it happened, from a psychological standpoint, scattered and unpredictable explosions had a greater impact than uniform volleys.
---
The goddess of fortune does not smile on the same place twice. With such a dense concentration of people in the camp, and shell impact points constantly shifting with wind and barrel drift, disaster struck soon enough. A cannonball slammed directly into the wooden platform of the wedding stage, while a knight from Honeyholt, running nearby, happened to "catch" one mid-stride—shattering his arm in the process.
At last, stunned silence turned to outright terror.
The soldiers of the Riverlands and the Golden Company were not as well-trained as the Unsullied, but they were not cowards who would crumble at the first blow. However, in a camp this large, there were many untrained personnel—laborers, merchants, servants, and wedding guests. The panic that spread from just a few injured or dead quickly snowballed. Layer by layer, it was amplified by screams and fleeing civilians. A stampede was about to erupt.
The Hand of the King finally responded, shouting at the top of his lungs.
"Nobody move!"
"Guards, escort Her Grace and the Queen to safety! The rest will evacuate in order!" he bellowed in the momentary lull before the third round of shelling.
"Lords with troops, rally your personal guards and patrol the camp! Maintain order! Anyone who panics, screams, or disobeys orders is to be executed on the spot!"
Jon Connington didn't stop. "Lord Mace, send word to Lord Tarly. Move the Riverlands army to the southern flank of the camp. Deploy all scouts and closely watch the Dornish army. If they attack, they must be stopped!"
"Messengers, go to every dragon-hunting ballista team. Have them ready their bolts and fire the moment the dragon appears!"
"Harry Strickland, gather the Golden Company at the Blackwater. Prevent the Unsullied and the Gift army from crossing at all costs!"
Jon Connington didn't know what that thunderous weapon was called, whether it was alchemy, magic, or some new machine. He only understood one thing: the enemy now had a means of striking the southern bank from the north.
And more importantly, if the situation were reversed—if he possessed such a long-range weapon—he would never waste it on merely making noise and disrupting a wedding.
Daenerys and Aegor were not finished.
The confrontation between the two Targaryens had skipped all preamble and moved directly from broken negotiations to a decisive clash.
(To be continued.)
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