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One hundred?
Fight ten?
And they want us to pick our strongest hundred ourselves?
The advantage is ours!
Ser Gerold Grafton's old, wrinkled face twitched violently with sheer shock.
He had lived over seventy years. He had attended countless tourneys and witnessed countless duels.
But he had never heard anything so absurd, so utterly outrageous. Such a suicidal demand!
This wasn't arrogance anymore.
This was an insult.
A naked humiliation of the entire knightly class of the Vale.
Who does he think he is?
A warrior descended from the heavens?
The legendary God of War himself?
Even the bravest heroes of legend wouldn't dare claim they could face ten knights at once!
And the fight only needs to last until a single candle burns down?
If a hundred men lined up for Lynn to kill one by one, how long would that even take?
This wasn't a battle. This was a farce, start to finish.
The most vicious mockery a Wildling from beyond the Wall could devise!
"You... you're certain?"
Ser Marq Arryn's voice was trembling.
He half-suspected the thin air at the Eyrie's height had frozen Lynn's brain solid.
The Vale nobles behind him wore expressions that ran the full range.
Some had gone red in the face, burning with humiliation.
Others had a sharp gleam in their eyes, hearts pounding with a wild, sudden thought.
What if...
What if Lynn wasn't joking?
What if he was truly willing to pull his army back over a duel he was guaranteed to lose?
Then this... wasn't this manna from heaven?
Served right to their lips by the Seven themselves.
"I keep my word."
Lynn's expression was calm. His gaze swept slowly across every face in the garden, taking each one in.
Then it settled on the black-cloaked figures standing behind him, still as statues.
The Vale knights' eyes followed.
Only now did they take a proper look at these nine "helpers" Lynn had brought.
One of the White Walkers was disguised as Petyr and didn't count.
Black cloaks covered the rest from head to foot, hiding their forms completely. No faces visible. No weapons visible.
What the knights didn't know was that these dead men had been exceptionally powerful fighters in life. Death had just left them a little withered.
All the knights could see were slender builds that couldn't possibly belong to formidable warriors.
They looked more like... some kind of mysterious maesters. Or simply a group of malnourished servants.
These nine, alongside Lynn, against a hundred fully armed, battle-hardened Vale knights?
Madness.
The world had gone completely mad.
"Good!"
Ser Gerold Grafton slammed his greatsword back into the ground with a crash that rang across the garden.
Those cloudy old eyes blazed with a light they hadn't held in years.
"I, on behalf of every knight in the Vale of Arryn, accept your challenge!"
"We will not merely pick a hundred!"
"We will release Bronze Yohn!"
"We will gather every last one of the Vale's finest warriors right here!"
"Three days!"
The old knight thrust up three fingers, his voice shaking with excitement.
"We need only three days!"
"Three days from now, right here in the Moon Garden!"
"Let the Seven bear witness to how the Vale defends its honor!"
"Good."
Lynn nodded. The smile on his face was impossible to read.
"Then I'll be imposing on the Eyrie for those three days."
"I hope you can have enough cattle and sheep ready for my dragon."
"She has a foul temper and eats nothing but meat. If she goes hungry, she gets angry, and even I can't hold her back."
"If a few people happen to go missing, don't say I didn't warn you."
With that, Lynn turned his back on the Vale folk and their varied expressions and walked into the castle at a leisurely pace.
The ten black-cloaked figures, "Petyr" among them, followed without a sound.
Only when their silhouettes had vanished completely into the castle's shadow did the Moon Garden erupt.
"We've won! We've already won!"
"Seven bless us! This is a miracle!"
"Send ravens! Send ravens to everyone! Have them all come and witness this victory!"
Nobles threw their arms around each other. Knights hammered their shields with excitement.
The terror of the dragon looming over them, the humiliation of Littlefinger's exposure , in this moment, all of it was forgotten.
They could already picture it: three days from now, Lynn skulking out of the Vale with his monsters, defeated and disgraced.
Ser Marq Arryn watched the frenzy before him. His lips moved. Whatever he meant to say, it came out as nothing but a long, slow sigh.
Something about this didn't feel right.
And things didn't seem nearly as simple as everyone believed.
That young man called Lynn. His eyes had been too calm.
Too calm for someone standing on the edge of losing everything.
...
Meanwhile, beyond the Bloody Gate.
The Mountains of the Moon stretched endlessly, a dragon's spine of stone that sealed the Vale from the outside world.
The Bloody Gate was the only throat in that natural wall.
Two square towers of massive stone stood guard on either side of the narrow mountain pass. Between them hung a gate of steel and heavy timber, thick enough to stop an army.
For a thousand years, this fortress had seen countless wars. No enemy had ever broken through from the front.
Today, the garrison felt they were losing their minds.
Three days ago, the legendary Wildling army appeared on the far side of the mountains. Since then, the nightmare hadn't stopped.
These Wildlings didn't fight by any rules.
No assault. No formal challenge.
By day, they vanished into the mountain forests without a trace.
Come nightfall, they transformed entirely, endlessly inventive.
WHOOSH ,
A flaming arrow trailed fire across the dark sky and landed precisely at the feet of a dozing sentry.
The man jolted awake and nearly pitched off the wall.
"Hey! You little bastards up there! Your grandpa's back to keep you warm!"
Tormund's unmistakable bellow rose from the dark forest below, followed by a burst of shameless laughter.
"Got the nerve? Come out! Fight your grandpa with real steel!"
"What kind of skill is hiding behind a stone wall?"
The commander on the wall went livid. He had no answer.
Charge out?
Not a chance.
The gods only knew how many monsters were lurking in that black forest.
And Lady Lysa and Ser Nestor's orders were absolute: hold fast. No reckless moves until the main force returned.
"Ignore them! Tighten the watch!"
The commander ground his teeth and gave the order.
But that was only the beginning.
The harassment ran the entire night without a break.
One moment, volleys of fire arrows blanketed the sky. They weren't lethal, but they made the whole Bloody Gate look like it was about to go up in flames, sending everyone scrambling with water buckets.
The next moment, horrible sounds poured out of the forest. Wolf howls. Ghostly wails. Someone even mimicked a woman's screaming, spreading unease and revulsion through the garrison.
The worst of it: they had somehow gotten hold of a pile of cattle and sheep dung and slung it up onto the walls from a distance, coating everything in filth and stench.
"Damn it all!"
Tormund cursed as he stomped out of the trees, kicking a stone out of his path.
"This is supposed to be war? I've had more fun swatting flies off a woman's backside!"
He looked over at Mance Rayder, who was leaning against a tree trunk, unhurried, running a cloth along his longsword.
"I'm asking you, former King-Beyond-the-Wall — are we really just going to keep this up?"
Mance didn't even lift his eyes.
"These are Lynn's orders. You follow them. Unless you want to make Lord Lynn angry?"
"Orders? To hell with his orders!"
Tormund spat on the ground.
"He told us to pin down the Vale men. But the Vale men are sitting in their shell like turtles. They won't come out!"
"We're out here acting like fishwives, and he's up in the Eyrie enjoying himself!"
"No! I'm done!"
Tormund shot to his feet. Those big, round eyes of his locked onto the massive shape sitting in the clearing not far away.
The Frost Giant.
It sat motionless in an open patch of ground, a silent iceberg of a thing. Its eyes burned blue, fixed with idle curiosity on the direction of the Bloody Gate.
A reckless idea snapped into shape in Tormund's mind.
"Hey! Big fella!"
He waved at the Frost Giant.
"Can we work something out?"
"Nothing better to do anyway — why not go stretch your legs a bit?"
The Frost Giant's head turned slowly. It looked down at Tormund, tiny as an ant below it. A faint confusion stirred in those blue eyes.
"See those two stone pillars over there?"
Tormund pointed toward the distant Bloody Gate.
"Go on over. And just... give it a little tap."
"Tormund! Have you lost your mind?!"
Mance Rayder was on his feet, his face all astonishment. "Lynn's order is harassment! Not assaulting the gate!"
"I'm not assaulting anything!"
Tormund spread his hands, the picture of innocence.
"I'm just letting it test the feel. What if the gate isn't as solid as they think?"
"You—"
Mance opened his mouth to say more.
Too late.
The Frost Giant had clearly taken an interest in Tormund's proposal.
It let out a low rumble and began to rise.
The earth shuddered the moment it left the ground.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The fifteen-meter behemoth took its heavy steps forward, moving toward the fortress that looked almost quaint compared to its size.
On the walls of the Bloody Gate, chaos erupted instantly.
"What — what in the hells is that thing?!"
"A giant! It's a giant!"
"Don't be absurd! No giant is that big!"
"Weren't they not attacking?!"
Panic spiked to its peak in seconds.
The commander watched the thing approaching like a walking mountain range. His legs were shaking.
"Loose! All archers, loose! Shoot it down!"
WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH ,
A dense storm of arrows poured onto the Frost Giant like a swarm of locusts.
The arrows that could punch through leather armor struck the giant's body, formed from ancient, primordial ice, and produced a series of light, crisp clinks.
Then they bounced off and dropped to the ground.
Not a single white scratch.
"It's useless! Quickly — get word to Ser Nestor!"
The commander screamed it in desperation.
But it was already too late.
The Frost Giant stood before the Bloody Gate.
It lowered its head. Those blue-burning eyes examined the "toy" blocking its path with quiet curiosity.
Then, under the horrified, despairing stares of every man on the wall ,
It slowly raised its right fist.
A fist larger than a hillock. Pure ice and pure force.
"No, !"
The commander on the wall screamed the last, most helpless cry of his life.
The Frost Giant didn't seem to put much into it.
Its motion carried almost a childlike ease.
The fist came down gently on the gate they called impregnable.
No earth-shattering boom.
Only a single sound, deep and flat, the kind that reaches into your chest and stops your heart mid-beat.
Thud.
Time slowed.
The wall of masonry and steel and heavy timber met that hill-sized fist, and in the same instant , crumpled inward like paper. Twisted. Then shattered, piece by piece.
Next came the two square towers holding the gate.
Spiderweb cracks raced up through the ancient stonework from the base, spreading at a speed the eye could follow.
CRACK , RUMBLE ,
A thousand-year fortress. The strongest gateway in Westeros.
It collapsed under a single punch.
Stone exploded. Dust billowed into the sky. The entire valley shook.
When the dust cleared ,
The Bloody Gate was gone.
Nothing remained but a field of rubble and a passage that lay wide open.
In the forest, Mance Rayder stood with his mouth hanging open, staring at the scene before him. His longsword slipped from his fingers and clanged against the ground.
Tormund, the one responsible for all of this, wore the same blank, stunned look.
He had only wanted it to give the thing a tap.
Who could have known that this creature's idea of a "gentle tap" was that?
On the ruins, the Frost Giant withdrew its fist and scratched its head with a vague, puzzled air.
It seemed like... it had broken the toy.
➤ Next: The Bloody Gate Is Gone