"Waaah! Your Majesty, you've finally come to save me!"Sam sobbed, a long icicle-like strand of snot hanging from his nose. His lips were pale from the cold, and his hoarse voice came out in thin wisps of breath.
"I've flown over this place several times. Why didn't you think to raise your hand and call out?"Dany showed no sympathy—instead, she scolded him loudly.
She had ridden Little White and flown two sweeps ten kilometers east and west along the base of the Wall near Nightfort, but found no sign of him.
Then she expanded the search, twenty kilometers in total, which delayed her by over an hour—still no trace.
Just as she was about to give up and let the White Walkers take him, the guy suddenly appeared on a hillside four kilometers east of Nightfort. That rocky slope was a good two to three hundred meters away from the Wall's edge.
If not for Little White's sharp eyes spotting a barely visible trail of footprints on the snow-dusted jagged rocks, she might've overlooked him completely.
Rubbing his frost-covered brows, Sam said aggrievedly, "I thought you'd abandoned me, so I decided to walk east, back to Castle Black."
Dany glared at him. "Didn't you see the dragon in the sky? I was flying almost at ground level—even a blind man could've seen me!"
"I kept looking up at the sky, waited so long, so long… until I just couldn't lift my head anymore," Sam muttered with a trace of complaint.
To be fair, his complaint wasn't without reason. Anyone who sticks their neck out in sub-zero mountain winds for over an hour would go numb from the cold—and harbor some resentment.
"Besides, I didn't dare walk too close to the Wall! Just now, didn't you see it? The Wall cracked—chunks of ice fell down and almost crushed me."
"Oh, right. Your Majesty… did you have anything to do with the Wall collapsing?"His beady gray eyes were filled with suspicion. "Does it have to do with the Black Gate?"
"Yes," Dany admitted freely.
"Because you kept going in and out of the Black Gate, exhausting the Wall's magical power and causing the outer ice layer to collapse. You're the culprit, the root of this disaster!" she declared solemnly, full of conviction, almost jabbing a finger into Sam's chubby face.
"M-me?"Sam's red, frostbitten face turned pale, and his small eyes filled with fear.
"Of course. Luckily, I recharged the magical array inside the Wall in time. Did you see the red light on the surface?"
"I did—it looked like it was on fire. The cracks on the Wall were slowly healing."Sam nodded miserably.
"That was my fire-based magic and the dragon's. I saved the Wall and cleaned up the mess you made. From now on, never mention the Black Gate to anyone again. Never take anyone down the well or try to pass through it."Dany gave her stern warning.
"I won't, never again. Actually… I didn't even break my vow. You found the Black Gate—I never revealed its secret."Sam swore repeatedly.
Dany was overthinking things.
When Little White flew back to Nightfort with Sam dangling from a rope, not even fully landed yet, they saw a large group of people below—dozens of torches, a mixed group of Stag Party knights and Night's Watch brothers, all searching the area.
At the kitchen, which had become the center of the activity, Melisandre, Stannis, and several brothers of the Night's Watch were climbing out of the well one by one.
"Damn it! The Red Woman found out the secret of the Song of Wind," Dany's expression darkened.
"Skreeee—"Little White let out a cry, drawing attention from the knights below. They pulled their horses back, clearing space for the dragon to land.
"Ugh!"Sam, still hanging on the rope, tripped over a rock and crashed to the ground.
"What took you so long?"Barristan came over to ask.
"Fatty wandered off. He was hundreds of meters from the Wall and was planning to walk back to Castle Black. We almost couldn't find him."
Dany jumped off the dragon and approached Barristan, asking in a low voice, "Do they know about the Black Gate?"
At first, seeing Stannis come up from the well, she had feared the secret was out.
But now that her mind was clearer, she realized: if the Black Gate had opened, the Red Woman and the others wouldn't have climbed back up the well—they'd already be on the other side of the Wall.
"They don't know. We just said some rat-faced cook came out of the well. Stannis didn't believe it, and a few Night's Watch brothers went down, but the Black Gate didn't reappear."
"What happened earlier with the Wall?"Stannis shouted from afar.
Dany was still thinking of how to talk her way out of it when the sobbing, rope-burned Sam groaned and sat up, then blurted out with a tearful face, "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to."
"What? You?"Stannis was stunned. Behind him, Melisandre, Jon, Red Pomegranate, Cotter, and the rest were just as shocked.
Everyone turned their eyes toward the guilty-looking Sam.
"It was me. I triggered a magical mechanism on the Wall, which consumed a large amount of magic and caused the ice to crack."Sam hung his head, sniffling.
"Gods, Sam, what have you done?"Jon was shocked.
"The Wall collapsed. Chunks of ice fell. Several brothers on night watch died tonight—do you know that?"Red Pomegranate rebuked him furiously.
"Waaah… I'm sorry."Sam wept in shame.
The Dragon Queen immediately stepped forward, patted his shoulder, and declared with great responsibility,"Don't blame him—it was I who forced Sam to come to Nightfort.
I was worried there might be secret tunnels here beyond the Night's Watch's control. Before leaving, I wanted to eliminate any hidden threats."
Receiving a grateful, teary-eyed look from Sam, she continued,"The matter of the tunnel is… complicated, not easily explained for now. But the magical array suppressing evil inside the Wall did have a problem.
However, there's no need to worry—I've already recharged the array. The firelight you saw on the Wall's surface came from my magic and the dragon's flame."
"I knew it,"Melisandre nodded."I guessed those red lights were your doing."
"Thank the Queen for acting."
"The dragon's magic is truly vast. It looked like the whole Wall had caught fire."
The crowd was full of praise.
Even the Red Woman acknowledged the Dragon Queen's deed, so no one doubted her.
"Where's the magical mechanism located?"Stannis asked.
"To protect the Wall, I can't tell anyone."Dany replied with righteous conviction.
Stannis stared at her for a long while, jaw clenched, then turned to Sam."You say it."
"I swore an oath—I can't."Sam shook his head rapidly and looked pleadingly toward Dany.
"You all go ahead and talk."Dany, showing zero sympathy, tossed Sam over to Stannis to be interrogated, then turned to look around."Where's the old man?"
"He's still looking for the Mad Axe."
"Ugh…"Dany's mouth twitched. "Still not giving up? Doesn't he get tired?"
"Maybe it's not a hallucination. We also found the wraiths of the Seventy-Nine Sentinels,"Barristan said solemnly.
"You're not joking?" Dany put away her casual demeanor and asked suspiciously, "Darkfyre didn't alert me."
"Because they were all too weak to put up a fight. I cut them down one by one—from the steps at the base of the Wall all the way to the top. Seventy-nine wraiths, all shattered with a single sword strike each. Easier than slaughtering chickens."
Afterward, Dany followed the White Knight up the Wall.
Unlike Castle Black, where wooden steps were nailed into the ice wall, Nightfort had stairways carved directly into the ice.
Even though the place had been abandoned for two hundred years and had suffered from the recent wall-cracking incident, the ice steps remained mostly intact. Well, not exactly intact—some steps had lost their edges due to snowfall and had become slippery slopes.
At the top, a dozen people were leaning over the edge of the battlement, peering down.
"By the Red God, those are the Seventy-Nine Sentinels!" Gawdi Green exclaimed in awe.
"Her Majesty the Queen is here," Urma announced, stepping forward to bow.
(Latest novels first posted at Six9 Book Bar!)
Seeing the Dragon Queen approach, the crowd immediately made way for her, offering the best vantage point.
Crouching by the battlements, craning her neck to look down, she could faintly see—through a layer of fallen ice—a human head. No, not just one, but a row of about a dozen. In some spots, shoulders draped in black wool could be seen.
"Seven Hells!" Dany shuddered at the thought of the Seventy-Nine Sentinels' story and cursed, "Why not just kill them properly? What's with all the theatrics? Now we've got vengeful spirits on our hands."
Long ago, seventy-nine members of the Night's Watch deserted together. After they were captured, their black brothers dug seventy-nine pits on the far side of the Wall, stuffed the deserters into them alive, then sealed them with ice—preserving them like frozen meat to this day.
When the ice layer recently cracked, the ice encasing the corpses shattered and fell, releasing the bodies—and their lingering spirits.
"The undead were weak, hardly a real threat." The White Knight, who had slain a demigod rat chef and seventy-nine wraiths that night, spoke with solid confidence.
"The Night's Watch doesn't wield Valyrian steel," Dany retorted.
Then she ordered a few brothers of the Night's Watch to tie ropes around their waists, lower themselves from the battlements, and use longswords to pry open the remaining ice, removing the remaining fifty or so corpses and tossing them off the Wall.
Earlier, when the ice initially collapsed, over twenty bodies had already fallen down with it.
Then Little White flew to the other side and burned all the corpses to ash.
"If the White Walkers came and resurrected the Seventy-Nine Sentinels, climbing straight up the battlements—that would be hilarious, wouldn't it?" Dany explained.
After dealing with the ice corpses, Dany landed on Little White behind Aemon. He was patrolling near the command tower with Darkfyre.
"Old man, time to go."
"Mad Axe still hasn't been found," the old maester said.
"You've got dragons with you. Think he dares to show his face? There's no one else here. Let him wander." Dany said, seated on the dragon's back.
Just then, Jon stood on a crumbling wall near the kitchen, waving at her from a distance and calling out, "Queen Daenerys, could you come over for a moment?"
Dany slid off the dragon again and walked over to ask, "What is it?"
"King Stannis wants to requisition the Nightfort," said the Red Pomegranate steward.
Stannis said sternly, "My men need a place to garrison. This place is big and has been unoccupied for years."
"The Nightfort is too special. Pick another place," Dany frowned.
"Precisely because it's special, it needs to be guarded," Stannis insisted.
Dany gave him a long look and asked bluntly, "You're trying to find the magical core of the Wall, aren't you?"
Stannis didn't flinch. Meeting her gaze, he said firmly, "We must protect it. It's our joint responsibility.
The best option is for you to stay here. With dragons guarding it, we'd all be reassured. But if you insist on leaving, then let me stay."
After a moment of silence, Dany turned to Jon and asked, "Have you been to the bottom of the well?"
"Yeah."
"Did you notice anything unusual?" Dany lowered her gaze.
"Unusual?" Jon shook his head, puzzled. "I didn't see anything. Is the rat cook real?"
A flicker of doubt flashed in Dany's eyes. She nodded and said to Stannis, "The rat cook is real. The Nightfort seems to harbor many monsters."
"And there's still Mad Axe. No one knows where he's hiding. Moving in recklessly is dangerous," Maester Aemon interjected.
Stannis furrowed his brow and remained silent.
The Red Pomegranate steward questioned, "Isn't the rat cook just a legend? The Nightfort was abandoned only two hundred years ago, but the rat cook's story dates back several thousand years. The Night's Watch never saw him before that."
Dany thought for a moment and began walking toward the kitchen, saying as she went, "I remember we kept a rat leg. Let me show you—what the—FUCK!"
"Sam, what are you eating?"
There was once a tale of seventy-nine members of the Night's Watch who fled south together and became bandits. One of them was the son of a Riverlands noble—he resembled Jon a little. Having heard countless heroic stories about the Watch, the boy had once volunteered at a young age to don black and defend Westeros.
But he couldn't bear it and fled home with seventy-eight companions.
By the traditions of the Seven Kingdoms, any lord could arrest and sentence deserters from the Night's Watch.
The earl didn't kill his own son, but he also didn't protect him. He arrested them all and sent them back to the Wall.
As punishment, holes were carved into the Wall, each deserter placed into one—armed with a spear and a horn at his waist.
Then the holes were filled with ice and snow, sealing them alive inside.
The Lord Commander of the Night's Watch believed that since they abandoned their post in life, they must continue to serve in death.
Before he died, the earl of the Riverlands ordered his men to take him to the Wall and dress him in black, so he could stand beside the son he had personally condemned to death.
(End of Chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09