novelraw Chapter 341 341: White Walkers? Let Me See What You Truly Are
Chapter 341 341: White Walkers? Let Me See What You Truly Are
The Fist of the First Men was a hill that rose abruptly within the Haunted Forest. Its western and northern faces were steep and treacherous slopes, and though its eastern side was somewhat gentler, it was only slightly so. This granted an excellent field of vision to those commanding from the summit.
It was precisely because of this natural advantage that the First Men had seized it as early as the Dawn Age, raising a ringfort upon it.
Around the steep and rock-strewn crest ran a chest-high wall of grey stone, and at the foot of the hill a brook flowed past.
Yet though the height afforded a wide view, the summit, exposed to the biting winds, could also be seen from several miles away.
The sudden storm turned sky and earth the same color—howling winds, raging snow, and a temperature that plunged sharply.
The expeditionary host climbed the steep slope and had only just established their defenses halfway up when a staggering figure emerged from the storm.
A pair of glowing blue eyes shone clearly through the wind and snow, within them a cold so piercing it seized the soul.
"Wights!"
"Wights!"
"Form ranks! Form ranks!"
"Do not panic! Do not panic!"
The men of the Night's Watch and the North were the first to react upon seeing the foul thing.
Benjen Stark, as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, shouted and took command at once.
Fortunately, none chosen to stand here were weaklings. Even in the face of this calamity of mankind, Robb Stark and the others still had the courage to take their place at the very front.
"Your king has laid enchantments upon your weapons, so the blades in your hands can easily wound them."
"So long as you do not falter, and no other threat arises, these wights will not be difficult for you to deal with."
While the men stood in tense formation as wave after wave of staggering figures emerged from the storm, Erevi had, at some unknown moment, found herself a stone to sit upon, watching all before her with keen interest.
Seven or eight fireballs floated about her, casting light over a space of at least a dozen square paces and keeping the wind and snow from encroaching in the least.
As her words fell, those who had felt a flicker of fear steadied their hearts.
This mysterious and powerful witch had shown little along the journey. At first, some had even guessed she was some wildling paramour the king had taken.
Yet after she had just burned a path skyward with flame, though it made their hearts pound, it also filled them with confidence.
Moreover, before departing, His Grace had set their weapons alight.
No sooner had Erevi finished speaking than, in less than a minute, the wights—drawn by the scent of the living and the warmth of life—came on like starved hounds upon fresh meat.
The path up the Fist was narrow, and some two hundred men were more than enough to hold it.
So when the wights lunged, it was as though waves had struck a reef, shattering in an instant.
Every man who stood here, if not seasoned by a hundred battles, had at least been hardened by stern training since boyhood.
Once they overcame the fear in their hearts, facing opponents without armor and whose movements were even clumsier than those of common smallfolk, the swords in the hands of these knights and noble lords could be swung six times in a single second.
Thus, in the wind and snow, the glow of their weapons flared into a sweeping blur of light. The White Walkers who rushed upon them seemed to have struck something untouchable.
They burst apart one after another, breaking into ash that scattered across the snow.
No matter where the enchanted blades fell upon their bodies, they could extinguish their "vital spark" in an instant.
And every man who felled a wight could feel it clearly—each time his blade met the enemy, a faint tremor surged outward from the steel.
It was this force that made them fearless beyond compare—if a god stood in their way, they would slay a god; if a demon stood before them, they would cut down a demon.
Behind them, Erevi watched only a few moments before losing interest.
Enchanted weapons already dealt additional harm to spiritual beings and foes of negative affinity. With enemies spread everywhere before them, cutting them down was little different from harvesting wheat.
So after sparing only a fraction of her attention to ensure that no mishap arose, she turned her focus toward the battlefield farther off.
On the other side, amid the raging blizzard, the two blades of light in Kal's hands whirled like the spokes of a windmill.
The tide of wights that surged toward him, seeking to drown him in their numbers, was as though meeting a black hole—falling helplessly, then vanishing into it.
Yet Kal was moving with purpose.
JJ's barking drifted through the wind and snow, scattered and without clear direction.
But to Kal, the meaning was plain.
"There's something big here—come at once!"
Sure enough, as Kal steadily advanced, the foe concealed within the storm seemed to realize it had been exposed.
Just as Kal leapt once more and split another giant wight from crown to heel in a single stroke, a cold spear of ice pierced through the blizzard and shot straight toward his chest.
The smooth ease of cutting through flesh and bone as if slicing melons met, in that instant, a bar of iron.
While still in midair, Kal twisted his body by force, then brought up the greatsword in his left hand and struck at the oncoming spear.
With a resounding clang, the two collided.
Whether through the vast strength that bolstered Kal or the enchantment upon the blade, the icy weapon—described in the original account as unbreakable—snapped beneath his sword.
Yet at the same time, Kal felt a violent shock in his grip, and a notch burst from the edge of the greatsword.
Landing, Kal swept two swift arcs to clear the wights around him before lowering his gaze to the broken spear upon the ground.
The spear of ice shimmered faintly blue, and along the fracture its surface gleamed with a dim reflection.
From it, Kal could sense a thread of magic slowly fading.
And the greatsword in his left hand, which had just struck the spear, not only bore the fresh notch but also showed a faint hidden crack creeping along the blade's spine.
At the sight, Kal could not help but recall what the weapons of the White Walkers did to common iron in the original account.
Their cold could shatter anything it touched—including the steel longswords borne by the Night's Watch.
It seemed, then, that whether his weapon remained intact depended wholly upon the enchantment laid upon it.
As for the material itself, it still could not withstand the magic of the White Walkers.
Yes—after witnessing the broken spear with his own eyes, Kal understood that it was no mere shard of ice. In essence, it was magic, no different from his lightning or Erevi's fireballs.
"Interesting. Truly interesting."
"This is the first time since I came to this world that I have encountered magic in such a formal sense. Before this, it was either charlatans playing at mystery, or tricks unworthy of the name. How could any of that be called magic?"
Seeing that even a weapon personally forged by the master smith Tobho Mott could not endure such a violent clash, Kal lifted his hand, and the greatsword vanished from his grasp.
In the next instant, a curved arc of light swept out once more, and the wights surging in from all sides were cut clean through at the waist, bursting apart into drifting ash.
Seizing the moment, Kal struck his own chest.
The dragon-forged armor, which had until now shown only a muted green hue, began to glow with a hazy white radiance.
[Weapon Enchantment].
Armor counted as a weapon as well.
Amid the raging wind and snow, a figure blazed conspicuously among the wights, like a man-shaped sun.
The next second, thunder boomed. Within a radius of some ten meters, the ground was cleared in an instant by one of Kal's great techniques.
The enchanted Valyrian steel blade Heartsbane in his hand slashed left and right in swift succession, intercepting two spears of ice that had shot silently toward him, one after the other.
This time, however, the spears did not merely snap. They burst apart entirely, shattering into crystalline fragments as the magic within them surged outward and bled away, lending the explosion a strange and fleeting beauty.
"Woof! Woof!"
"Woof!"
The drifting bark sounded once more.
"More than one White Walker, is it?"
The radiant figure, sword in hand, muttered to himself.
"Then I shall seize one first, slice it fine, and see what it is made of."
As his words fell, the luminous figure streaked forward, trailing a tail of light toward the direction from which one of the spears had flown.
Every wight that barred his path was cut down, until Kal's eyes sharpened and he saw ahead a figure mounted upon a mammoth.
The rider upon the dead mammoth was tall of frame, his features gaunt, the skin that showed as pale as milk.
They wore armor as well—plates like reflective shards of ice, shifting in hue with each movement, somewhat akin to the secret armor said to have been worn by the children of the forest.
In this wind and snow, if Kal's eyesight had not long since surpassed that of ordinary men, he might not have noticed it at a glance.
With only one look, Kal recognized that this was something wholly different from a wight.
"A White Walker…"
These beings, made of ice, were strange in form yet beautiful—almost like elves. Those cold blue eyes shone bright as blue stars.
With Kal's glaring, man-shaped blaze appearing, the White Walker astride the mammoth naturally noticed him as well.
After all, it was not blind.
So in the next moment, it lifted a hand, and Kal watched with his own eyes as a spear of ice formed from nothing, appearing in its grasp.
But Kal was no good man, and he had no interest in waiting for his enemy to finish gathering power before offering a fair duel.
So while the White Walker raised its hand and began to build its strength, Kal—quicker to act—only moved a finger, and a bolt of lightning tore into being out of the air, ripping through the wind and snow as it struck toward the White Walker on the mammoth.
Perhaps it had not expected an ambush, or perhaps it had not expected its enemy to move so fast.
The ice spear had only just hardened halfway in its hand when its vision blurred. Before it could do anything at all, the lightning split it, and it was knocked from its seated perch upon the mammoth, tumbling down toward the ground.
The mammoth, too, suffered that unlooked-for blow.
Perhaps it was simply large and strong enough, or perhaps it was not the true target of the lightning.
Even so, it let out a wail and toppled.
Kal had no idea how a mammoth so rotten it no longer had a nose could still make such a sound.
He only knew this: once he had the advantage, he would not relent—he would beat a foe while it was down.
His blade of light swept again and again. Like a man playing at war with a god's hand guiding him, Kal took a few quick strides and carved a path straight through.
His figure had only just flashed past, and the ash he blasted apart had only just begun to melt into the storm—
When he charged forward and reached the point where the mammoth blocked the way, another bolt of lightning struck down from above. The enormous mammoth threw up a black-grey storm of dust, then burst apart and dissolved into the wind and snow as it was swept away.
Behind where the mammoth had fallen lay a creature like ice itself.
"White Walker—taste your grandsire's Brain-Dead Cleave!"
Seeing the White Walker still down on the ground, Kal gripped the two-handed greatsword Heartsbane with both hands and came down in a leaping chop toward the fallen foe.
Deceit or no deceit—whatever tricks it might have—
Kal leapt and brought his blade down.
Plainly, a White Walker was not so frail as the men Kal had faced before.
Seeing the foe so formidable and pressing close once more, the half-formed spear of ice was set crosswise before its chest.
Yet—
With a sharp crack, the ice shattered, and Kal's longsword cleaved straight into the White Walker's shoulder.
Had the creature not tilted its head in time, Kal would have split its skull as well.
Unlike the White Walkers as recorded in the original story, who shattered and perished the instant they were wounded, this one did not die from such a blow. Instead, it threw back its head and howled in pain.
From its throat came a sound like the rending of frozen lakes—shrill and grating.
From the place where Kal's blade had struck, pale blue blood flowed.
More than that—when the radiant sword met the White Walker's flesh of ice, it gave off a fierce hiss, like red-hot iron searing skin.
Its pain was magnified at once.
Its flesh and bone began to melt away swiftly, revealing beneath them milk-white bones like glass, gleaming with a pallid light.
Driven by agony, the White Walker did not waste breath on further shrieking. The instinct to survive overtook it, and it lashed out with a kick toward Kal's belly.
Old strength spent and new strength yet unformed, Kal—who had thought to end it with a single stroke—did not anticipate the blow. He failed to evade in time and was driven back several paces.
The creature's strength was great—far beyond that of any man.
Yet against Kal clad in dragon armor, it served only to shove him. It did nothing more.
Indeed, the White Walker's foot, striking his belly, seemed rather to have plunged into scalding water. A layer of it melted at once, seared away.
Seeing that it still had the power to strike back, Kal answered on instinct. One swift stroke—its head was severed.
It rolled across the ground several times. In the gaunt face, those blue-glowing eyes showed disbelief. Its mouth opened and closed faintly, the light within dimming.
In the next instant, the flesh of ice and the milk-white glasslike bones melted away rapidly, until all that remained was a pool of frigid liquid.
The wind and snow seemed to lessen.
Far off, the barking sounded again.
---
I will post some extra Chapters in Patreon, you can check it out. >> patreon.com/TitoVillar
---