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"Heh, now that the Gold Cloaks are under Lord Baelish's temporary command, he's naturally very interested in gold.
But fifty dragons is still not enough. It might not be enough to convince him to promote me."
At the top of the South Tower, outside the Red Keep, Glye stood beside Crey, looking down at the shimmering waters of the Blackwater below the cliff, making his intentions clear.
Awooooooooooo!
Crey had already grown impatient with his persistence and was about to give a perfunctory reply just to end the conversation when he heard the distant, thunderous howl of the wolf.
The four men under Crey, already in position, exchanged glances and immediately drew the daggers from their waists, lunging at Blake, Dax, and the other five Gold Cloaks, who stood frozen in shock at the sound of the howl.
The four prepared men gave them no chance to react. In an instant, their throats were cut, and blood began to spill across the stones of the tower.
"Damn it! Clym, didn't you say coming on duty today was just to let someone pass in secret?
Why are you killing people? How am I supposed to explain this to my superiors?"
By the time Glye understood what was happening, his five men were already lying on the ground. He rushed forward, grabbed Crey's sleeve, and demanded loudly.
"If I've reached the point of killing, it's because I've already thought everything through for you."
Hearing the accusation, Crey replied calmly.
The moment he finished speaking, he twisted sharply, and his dagger slit Glye's throat in a single motion.
"The dead don't need to explain anything."
As Glye clutched his bleeding neck with one hand and pointed at him with the other, Crey shook his head.
Reaching into the man's coat, he retrieved the pouch of gold dragons. Then he shoved Glye off the South Tower.
The body plummeted toward the waters below.
"You two stay here. Clean the bodies and keep watch. You come with me to the south gate of the Red Keep."
After giving the order simply, Crey followed the plan, walking along the wall of the South Tower toward the fortress's southern gate.
...
In King's Landing, in an alley between the Street of Flour and Flea Bottom.
Arya, filthy and foul-smelling, curled beneath an overhang like a common beggar, sleeping.
The day before, a large number of Gold Cloaks and Lannister soldiers had torn through Flea Bottom.
Thinking they had come to capture her, Arya, with her usual agility, had slipped into a filthy sewer and escaped the search.
Awooooooooooo!
A familiar howl tore her awake.
She shook her head, fully alert, then pinched her thigh hard.
The pain told her she wasn't dreaming.
In the next instant, she sprang to her feet and ran toward the source of the sound.
Back in Winterfell, the first time Bloodwind had appeared before them, he had already howled at the sky. Because of that, Arya recognized the sound immediately.
Only this time, the howl was far louder.
...
What is a trump card?
It is an absolute weapon known only to you. A secret, deadly move capable of deciding everything when used at the right moment.
The special armor secretly commissioned for Bloodwind was known only to Robb and the smiths of Winterfell who had forged it.
When the group rested at the Boar's Head Inn near the Crownlands, Robb had personally climbed onto the wagon to calm Bloodwind. In truth, he had taken the opportunity to open the hidden compartment of the special cart, retrieve the armor, and fitted it onto him.
In Robb's plan, once the direwolf, whose attributes already far surpassed those of a normal direwolf, was equipped with that armor, he would become the most lethal hidden weapon of all, second only to dragons and wildfire.
Torrhen and the other two men left at the inn, fearing Bloodwind might lose control without Robb nearby, had never dared to open the main compartment of the wagon. They limited themselves to feeding him at fixed intervals.
And the Lannister soldiers who had surrounded the inn over the past days, although informed that a direwolf was inside, had never been able to clearly see what was there. The special compartment was dark and sealed, and nothing could be distinguished through the small feeding gap. Besides, they themselves had little interest in feeding Bloodwind.
Because of that, when they now saw Bloodwind completely covered in wolf-forged armor, everyone in the courtyard of the small inn stood stunned.
At the front of the special wagon, the two draft horses had been so terrified by Bloodwind's howl that their legs gave out and they collapsed to the ground.
One of them, weaker-willed, foamed at the mouth and lost control of its bowels, nearly dying from sheer terror.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!
Clang! Clang! Clang!
As soon as the enormous armored direwolf steadied himself after the howl, the crossbowmen, snapping out of their shock and panic, pulled their triggers almost at the same time.
Sensing danger, Bloodwind pushed off with his powerful limbs and leapt from the wagon.
Some bolts were easily avoided. The ones that struck him slammed against the metal plates of his armor, producing sharp metallic clangs.
After nearly half a month confined inside a suffocating, dark compartment, and weakened by hunger, the wolf barely finished evading that first volley before immediately assuming the stance of a predator ready to strike.
After firing their first volley and seeing that it had caused no damage, the crossbowmen hurriedly grabbed their windlasses and began reloading.
Bloodwind's armor weighed more than one hundred and eighty kilograms. For a normal wolf, that would have been unimaginable.
But for him, whose attributes had already reached their limits, that weight was entirely within what his body could handle. Aside from a slight reduction in speed, he felt no discomfort.
So while the crossbowmen were still reloading, the wolf did not stand still like a fool.
Encased in armor, he charged forward like a war machine, smashing through a door and bursting into one of the inn's rooms.
His ears twitched twice.
Then he suddenly leapt, his massive wolf head crashing through the ceiling, reaching the legs of a crossbowman positioned on the roof.
His fangs clamped down on the man's legs, and he was dragged down.
"Ah! Ah! Help me! Aaaah..."
On the roof of the inn, the remaining nineteen crossbowmen stared at the hole and heard, from below, a short but utterly desperate scream that silenced them all.
A monstrous shadow burst through the shattered roof once more.
Bloodwind clearly intended to leap onto the roof, but his weight was so great that, as he surged upward, he tore away two sections of the structure, dragging two more crossbowmen down into another room.
"Aaaah!!!"
"No, no! That thing is a monster! Run!"
Hearing the horrific screams echoing from the gaping hole, one of the crossbowmen completely lost his nerve and jumped from the roof into the courtyard below.
Crack!
The fall instantly shattered both his legs, twisting them grotesquely. Even so, he kept screaming as he tried to crawl away with his hands.
The remaining crossbowmen on the roof began to break as well, running frantically toward the ladder.
"Aaaah!!!"
To Bloodwind, the sound of men scrambling and crawling across the roof was a perfect guide.
Another section of the roof exploded apart, and yet another crossbowman was dragged screaming into the darkness below.
"Don't move! That thing is tracking the sound of us moving! Whoever moves dies!"
At that moment, one of the crossbowmen, sharper-minded even in panic, noticed the pattern and shouted.
Hearing him, the survivors froze in place, not daring to move.
That same man rose into a half-crouch, tore a roof tile loose, and threw it about two meters ahead while aiming his already loaded crossbow in that direction.
The massive wolf head burst through the roof, lunging precisely toward where the tile had landed.
He pulled the trigger.
But with debris flying everywhere and blocking his vision, the bolt failed to strike the wolf's eye, hitting only the armor covering its head.
He grabbed the windlass again, reloaded, and repeated the trick, tossing another tile ahead.
A dark shape burst through the roof.
This time, the bolt struck something with a dull, wet sound.
Seeing the hit, he began to smile.
Then the figure he had struck fell back onto the roof.
He looked closer.
It was half a torn body.
One of his companions.
Staring at the mangled remains, he seemed to hear something. Slowly, he lowered his head and looked at his own feet.
Letting out a bitter laugh, he muttered:
"Hah… smart bastard… AAAAAH!!!"
The roof exploded beneath him.
And he vanished.
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