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Far away on the continent of Essos lay a red land of low hills, wind-scoured plains, and dry riverbeds.
It was called the Red Waste. The air across the entire wasteland was dry, the trees were sparse, and aside from scattered patches of grass, there was no sign of life.
Jorah Mormont, who had not slept all night and looked worn with exhaustion, slowly walked toward the burned-out pyre ahead.
Three bloodriders moved with him. Drogo's khalasar had already split apart, and the eyes of the remaining people followed them toward the center of the pyre.
Amid the blackened ash, a naked woman with silver-gold hair sat cross-legged with her head lowered. Hearing the sounds around her, she raised her head.
Ash covered her face, yet her unmatched beauty remained clear. Her luminous purple eyes calmly watched Jorah and the three bloodriders.
Two creatures that looked like winged lizards lay weakly in her bare arms. Another, visibly stronger, climbed out over her right shoulder.
Newborn dragons.
Jorah, utterly shocked, recognized the three lizard-like creatures in an instant. He dropped to one knee before Daenerys Targaryen and said, "Blood of my blood."
"Hiss!"
Hearing him, Daenerys silently stood. On her small, upright naked body, one hatchling wrapped its wings around her left leg, one coiled around her left hand, and the strongest perched on her right shoulder, spreading its wings and growling softly.
As that young dragon gave a low growl that already carried a hint of majesty, every remaining member of the khalasar knelt sincerely before the Mother of Dragons, the woman unburnt by flame who had birthed dragons.
Above their heads, a red comet dragged its long tail across the blue sky, declaring that the world from this day on would be different.
On the Narrow Sea, a fleet flying the banner of the fiery stag was sailing toward Storm's End in Shipbreaker Bay.
Inside the flagship, a stern-faced man with a powerful build and only a thin line of black hair left on his head turned to the beautiful woman beside him. She wore a red robe, had red eyes, and copper-red hair.
"Renly has nearly a hundred thousand men. Are you certain I can win?"
"Of course, Your Grace Stannis. You are the one chosen by my lord. In my lord's revelation, I have already seen the death of the false king Renly Baratheon."
The red-robed beauty smiled with her heart-shaped face and answered.
"Good." Stannis did not smile at her words. He seemed to remember something and continued asking, "And what of what you said before? What revelation does that thing in the sky represent?"
"It is my lord's sign that he will help you clear away the false kings. I can feel something awakening within my body."
The red-robed woman lifted her eyes toward the deck, as if seeing the red comet in the sky above, and spoke with a deeper meaning in her voice.
In the Riverlands, along an unnamed stretch of the river road.
"Thoros, are you certain those beasts will take this road?"
Beric, hiding in the woods on both sides of the road with more than fifty smallfolk armed with all manner of weapons, turned and asked Thoros behind him.
"Gulp. They will. The Mountain is occupying Harrenhal to rest for now. This cavalry patrol just looted the town ahead. They will certainly bring their plunder and prisoners to him."
Thoros first uncorked his wineskin and took a hard drink, then explained to Beric.
"Good. I hope there are not many of them this time. I do not matter.
"But I do not want too many of these brothers who just joined us to die. After all, they are not like me..."
Beric turned to look at the dozens of male smallfolk who had joined him because their homes had been destroyed, their kin killed, or for other reasons. He spoke quietly to Thoros.
"Beric, you should value your life. My lord granted you a miracle, yes, but that does not mean you will rise again next time."
Hearing Beric speak that way, Thoros felt that he was taking his own life too lightly and reminded him in the same low voice.
"I know... They are here."
Beric was answering when he saw, at the road ahead, a patrol of nearly thirty Lannister cavalry escorting several transport wagons toward the ambush.
The wagons held supplies, but also captured smallfolk. The prisoners in the barred wagon cages included men, women, old people, and children.
The Lannister cavalry advanced boldly, unaware of the ambush hidden in the trees ahead.
Or perhaps, ever since the Mountain had killed the bastard who often attacked their scattered cavalry, they had not been attacked again. Their vigilance had long since loosened.
The leader of this Lannister patrol was Burton Crakehall, younger brother of Lord Roland Crakehall of Crakehall in the Westerlands.
As a man specifically chosen by the Mountain, Burton was also broad, powerful, and thickset.
Whoosh, whoosh!
Just as the Lannister riders reached the ambush point, seven or eight arrows struck at them.
The archers were smallfolk hunters, and the bows in their hands were not finely made war bows.
Aside from one arrow that accurately struck a cavalryman in the right eye and sent him falling from his horse, the others failed to pierce the riders' well-made armor. Some bounced away, while others hung limply from the plates.
"Ambush!"
Burton reacted with a loud shout. His right hand drew the round-headed mace at his waist, and he urged his horse toward Beric and the others as they rushed from the trees.
He swung the mace and smashed it into the right side of a smallfolk man's face. The man had been wielding a sickle, and blood sprayed everywhere.
The blow sent the man straight to the ground. Half his face had been torn away by the spikes on the mace head.
Beric, to the left of Burton's horse, seized the chance and chopped his longsword hard into the horse's left leg.
The warhorse screamed as its leg was severed, taking Burton down with it.
Beric wanted to move forward and check Burton, but another cavalryman entangled him.
While he fought to kill that rider, Beric unexpectedly noticed Thoros staring blankly at the flaming sword in his own hand.
"Thoros, what are you doing?"
After dragging the rider from his horse and cutting his throat, Beric shouted at Thoros.
Hearing Beric's shout, Thoros snapped out of his daze. He immediately charged forward with the flaming sword to help.
Beric and his men, though nearly twice the number of the Lannister cavalry, fought with great difficulty.
If not for one hunter with decent aim who kept shooting Lannister riders, the ambush they had launched might have become a trap that killed them instead.
Beric, with two light wounds, had just finished off a Lannister rider when he looked up to assess the field. He discovered that Burton, who had fallen from his horse earlier, was not dead. The man was killing one smallfolk after another with his mace.
Their eyes met.
Then both charged at each other.
This time, one exchange decided the outcome.
Burton's round-headed iron mace smashed heavily into the right side of Beric's head. A shattered eye fell with the blood, and the right side of Beric's skull was crushed.
Beric's longsword thrust up from below, drove deep through Burton's chin, and pierced straight into his head.
The two men died together.
With Burton gone, the surviving Lannister riders lost their core and were quickly killed by Thoros and the others.
When the fighting ended, Thoros dropped the flaming sword in his hand and ran to Beric at once.
He pulled the round-headed mace from Beric's head and immediately began reciting the prayer from last time.
"My lord, the Lord of Light, let your light shine upon this man..."
On a prison wagon full of captives, an old man with gray-white hair and a face lined with wrinkles noticed what Thoros was doing.
He did not understand it at all, but confusion filling his wise blue eyes.
As Thoros prayed, the shattered right side of Beric's head rapidly healed. Only after the right eye socket restored itself did it become clear that the eye within had not returned, leaving a frightening black hollow.
"Hah!"
Beric, dead for the second time, suddenly sat upright. He had been resurrected again by Thoros's prayer.
Creak!
Inside the prison wagon, the old man saw Beric return from death and gripped the bars tightly with both hands. Besides disbelief, his eyes showed a hunger for knowledge that burned like flame. Winterfell, the inner castle.
In his room, Bran kept his eyes tightly closed. He felt as if he were inside an incredibly vivid dream.
He dreamed that he had become a direwolf, running freely through the godswood. The wolf lifted its head and looked at the red comet in the sky, then swiftly ran to the little lake in the godswood.
By the clear, still water, it saw itself. It was Summer.
Just as Bran woke from the dream and opened his eyes, in Winterfell's kennels, the separate wolf dens temporarily converted for Nymeria and Lady each held a captured large gray wolf with them.
Drawn by the scent released by the she-wolves in heat, the two large gray wolves could no longer wait and moved forward to mate.
As the mating neared its end, faint red mist began rising from Nymeria and Lady.
The mist seemed affected by something. It churned constantly, and the eyes of Nymeria and Lady gradually turned blood-red.
Awooo!
Whine, whine...
Once the mating ended, the two direwolves suddenly turned and bit the gray wolves' throats. In both dens, the gray wolves lost their lives amid miserable low whimpers.
Then Nymeria and Lady began tearing into their bodies.
At the Wall, Castle Black.
Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, watched the busy rangers prepare horses, weapons, dried food, and other necessary supplies.
They would pass beyond the Wall to search for Benjen Stark and investigate the mystery of the wildlings' disappearance, to see what exactly was brewing, or already happening, out there.
Jon, who had wanted to go south and join Robb's army, had been talked down by his brothers of the Night's Watch, including Sam. Maester Aemon and Lord Commander Jeor had both spoken with him at length.
Creak, creak!
The iron gate at the base of the Wall opened. Jon turned to look around. Sam, Dolorous Edd, Grenn, and the other brothers close to him all looked nervous.
Among the nearly three hundred other brothers of the Watch, some were just as nervous, while others were calm. Among the recruits Yoren had brought back from King's Landing, two strange-looking strong men had also joined this ranging.
One was called Biter. His tongue had been cut out, so he could not speak and could only make hissing sounds. The other was Rorge. His body was covered in black hair, and he had no nose.
When Rorge first arrived at Castle Black, his filthy mouth had made him very easy to hate. After Jon gave him a proper beating, he had become much more obedient.
Still, Rorge, who often kept company with Biter, feared and hated Jon and the others.
"Move out!"
At Lord Commander Jeor's order, the patrol of nearly three hundred men rode through the passage beneath the Wall in a long, orderly line.
Hot Pie, the plump boy assigned to work in Castle Black's kitchens, watched their backs and thought silently about how many of them would ever return to Castle Black.
Far beyond the Wall, in the far north, deep within the vast Haunted Forest, a huge and flourishing weirwood grew on a hillside. Beneath that hill lay a complex system of caves.
In one broad cave, an old man with white hair was embedded among countless tangled weirwood roots. His exposed skin was completely pale, his body skeletal, and his clothes ragged.
The weirwood roots passed through his thighs and emerged from his shoulders.
Dark red leaves grew from his bones, and gray mushrooms occupied his forehead. A thin root crept down his cheek from one empty eye socket and burrowed into his neck.
The white-haired old man, who looked more corpse than living person, suddenly opened his remaining eye. It was blood-red and deeply unsettling.
"Great Three-Eyed Crow, what is happening outside?"
In the corner of the cave, a small humanoid creature with dark skin and a beautiful face wore clothing woven from leaves, with bark strips as leggings. She opened her mouth and asked in the common tongue of Westeros.
"Puh!"
The Three-Eyed Crow, bound in the weirwood roots, first spat a mouthful of blood. Then he answered weakly.
"All the heart trees south of the Wall have withered and died. It was done by those ignorant humans sent by the one who destroys the future.
"Leaf, you must warn the other children of the forest. In the not too distant future, war will come here."
Seeing the Three-Eyed Crow spit blood again, the child of the forest named Leaf immediately spoke with concern. "I will warn them.
"But the grave wound you suffered last time has not recovered, and now every heart tree south of the Wall has withered away and died.
"If this continues, you, who have long since exceeded the lifespan of mortal men, may..."
"Do not worry about me. The time for my departure has not yet come.
"Now, I can feel that something outside has changed. The power within my body is awakening."
The Three-Eyed Crow spoke slowly, and his blood-red eye slowly closed.
"Besides, I have already chosen the next Three-Eyed Crow."
On the Sunset Sea, the five-hundred-foot Great Kraken rode the wind and waves.
Robb, feeling restless, came onto the Great Kraken's deck with Bloodwind, who was sending him the same irritable thoughts. At a glance, he saw the red comet hanging in the sky.
'The red comet.'
'Then Daenerys Targaryen has already been reborn from the flames with three dragons?'
Understanding what the red comet represented, Robb instantly had that thought.
As he considered the future, red mist flickered around his body, and the desire for blood and killing in his mind gradually rose.
'I am about to lose control? How is that possible?'
'After Bloodwind's last slaughter, I only had fifty-three blood pact points. That is nowhere near the threshold.'
'Damn it. Nymeria and Lady are not at my side, so I cannot spend the points on them.'
Feeling that he was about to lose control, Robb hurriedly turned his gaze to Bloodwind beside him.
Name: Bloodwind. Contractor: Robb Stark.
Physique: 30. Speed: 30. Strength: 30.
Pack: Psychic Direwolf (6).
Wolf Pack: War Wolf: Nymeria. Servant Wolf: Lady.
Blood Pact Points: 53.
'Hm? The blood pact has changed again.'
'Pack can be increased too?'
'Add points. Quickly!'
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