Chapter 60

“Reborn amidst salt and smoke? What is he, a ham?” - Renly Baratheon to Melisandre of Asshai

The Last Hearth
Five days later...
The fighting was very thick by this point, as was the smoke. The fray was extremely intense, even if most of it was still about volleys of fiery tipped and dragonglass tipped arrows shot by a variety of archers against the Dead. The Ironborn were busy hurling their wildfire to help even the odds as well, and the Night King began to feel real desperation. He had not waited centuries for some kind of rare metal or strange fire to throw him back. He had a war to fight, to end all daylight and all warmth, and to usher in the cold and darkness.

Even so, the Night King persisted in his assaults, reviving whatever enemy slain he could find quite regularly, as the foe didn’t always have time to burn the carcasses. He had many thousands of wights and White Walkers to throw at the adversary, so the numbers still favored him at the present, but he could sense that the balance could well tilt against him far too easily. The Living were every bit as obstinate as the Dead. The most that he could do was to seek gaps and weaknesses in their lines and pounce on them. These often turned out to be traps, though, and he began to factor that awareness into his plans. It was very important to play the long game if one was to prevail in the end ... and he was definitely playing for keeps.

It was at that moment that Martyn Hill covered himself in glory, slaying not just a wight, but a White Walker with his brand new Valyrian steel sword that he found. He wasn’t sure who once owned the blade, but it wasn’t important. It was his now and he happily used it to cut down the White Walker with prejudice. Martyn Hill proved to be a real menace, in fact, slicing through ten wights to avenge three of his sworn brothers, all three being fellow former Lannister troops. The crow from the Westerlands definitely showed his mettle, in spite of his junior status with the Night’s Watch.

“Martyn Hill, my friend, you are outdoing yourself. At this rate, maybe you’ll be the next Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Or at least the next First Ranger. Very solid work, my man!” Dolorous Edd, as Eddison Tollett, the current Lord Commander, was known, told the former Lannister man.

Hill could well prove to be one of the great heroes of the Battle of Last Hearth, which increasingly was the battleground as even the wildfire couldn’t hold back the Dead forever. The Bay of Seals was mostly overrun, with scorched earth behind the wall of the wights and White Walkers created by the Army of the Dead. The Ironborn managed to harry them more than a little, but they hadn’t been able to divert them enough to stop the juggernaut just yet.

That was, however, when Yara, of the House Greyjoy, the Bottomless, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Iron Islands, decided that it was time to go for broke. She landed every last troop that she had with her onto the shore of the Bay of Seals, risking it all to achieve her glory in victory. Lord Darren Haerrd, her Hand and Master of Ships, as well as Master of War, charged in at her side, laying every wight waste that he could strike down with his battle-axe. When he cleft a White Walker himself and thus killed every wight controlled by it, the impact on the battlefield was unmistakable. Some of the enemy’s cohesion seemed to fail it for the moment.

The next moment, though, was one that truly stunned everyone. Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides, towered above even the White Walkers, and showed it by smashing three of them in strikingly quick succession. His great sword cut so many wights down that he left a real gap in the lines. What Clegane didn’t count on was the way that two more White Walkers engulfed him with more wights of their own. Six of them got into a critically weakened part of his armor and pried the rest apart. He stood, exposed, to the enemy’s cold breath, and soon, he fell to their spears.

The wights climbed all over Clegane, and not even he could withstand their corruption. When he arose, he was already dead ... and Dead. Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides, was now a wight himself, albeit a much larger and more powerful one than usual. Grey Worm, who had just now arrived, along with his deputy, Cat Piss, and a Dothraki captain named Raqqo, was about to order that several of his troops and the Dothraki take on the Mountain, when another man stepped forward to engage the Mountain.

It was none other than Sandor Clegane, the Hound, Gregor’s own younger brother. Wielding a pair of steel blades that scraped the Mountain more than once, the Hound angered the undead Mountain just as he had once infuriated the living. In any case, Sandor struck a serious nerve with his elder brother’s now polluted monstrosity of a walking corpse, taunting and tormenting the giant of a man with his every parry and thrust. He couldn’t slay the man outright with his own arms of choice, but he could distract and frustrate the Mountain at every turn, keeping him off balance.

Furious, the Mountain began wildly slashing at the Hound, losing his cool and his sense of strategy. Every slash exposed him to risk, and his armor was far from repaired. It was this fact that Lord Gendry Baratheon counted on, his warhammer delivering a punch from another angle that staggered the man, even if he couldn’t kill him as a wight. The Hound smiled, pulling out the dragonglass dagger that someone had slipped inside his clothes that morning. He drove it right into the Mountain’s now vulnerable chest and the gigantic knight collapsed, shattering into broken pieces of decayed flesh as well as bone.

Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides, was dead once and for all. May he roast in all Seven Hells at once, Sandor thought as he put the dagger back and lit the blaze himself to burn away the carcass, just in case. Seven curses upon even the very memory of his elder brother, the bully, the raper, the murderer, and the brute. The great battle of the Cleganes was over at last. Then Sandor rushed to get as far away from the flames as humanly possible.

Seconds later, both Cat Piss and Raqqo fell, both of them to White Walkers rather than wights. Grey Worm rushed to burn their bodies, in the process burning himself a little as well. He winced at the pain, as he cut more of the enemy down and was saved three times by a former Sparrow named Hugar Forrester due to the weakness caused by that agony. Forrester slew six more wights and then fell as well, one of the White Walkers slicing him open with a heavy hatchet.

Grey Worm barely had time to think of such things before he, too, was sliced and diced, his left arm severed entirely from his body. Not one to even think of such things, Grey Worm stood his ground and cut down more foes with his spear, tipped as it was with dragonglass now. He led sixteen Unsullied, eight Dothraki, and four Sparrows in a charge deep into the enemy’s ranks, ignoring the pain and loss of blood caused by his gaping wound.

By the time that he had inflicted some twenty-five losses personally, his body was crucially weakened and he went into shock, convulsions racking him as he lost consciousness. Of the company that he led into that particular attack, only two Sparrows and four Unsullied survived. The rest were slain, especially the Dothraki, who had fought with a Berzerk kind of courage. Grey Worm’s cold body was quickly attended by the nearest available maester, but there was no saving the man. The captain of the Unsullied, the Master of War, and Lord of the Dreadfort, was dead, slain in battle.

“Grey Worm ... my sweet, sweet Grey Worm,” Missandei mourned the great love of her love, eunuch soldier though he was, as he was cremated before her very eyes, “let us meet again, in the next world, if we at all can. There you will be whole and intact, as you should be.”

“He was a true friend, a true subject, a true brother, a true lover, and most of all, a true soldier. I will never see anyone like him again. Never,” Daenerys Targaryen told everyone in her own brief remarks over the loss of her great Unsullied general.

“Well, he shall be avenged, Khaleesi,” Ser Jorah Mormont assured his Queen.

“Yes, he shall,” Dany shouted, climbing Drogon to fly above the enemy.

“Indeed,” Jon Snow declared as he rode into battle with Ghost running ahead of him, the royal direwolf charging ahead of the King of Westeros.

By now, Ser Jaime Lannister rode out into the enemy ranks and cut down as many wights as he could. He had his Valyrian steel blade, a new one reforged from the same steel as Widow’s Wail. He had named it Sapphire, for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to anyone else. It was a bit more obvious when some noticed his reaction to the presence of Brienne of Tarth on the battlefield. She was from an island known as the “Sapphire Isle,” after all.

More than once, both Jaime and Brienne defended each other on the field, slaughtering plenty of the White Walkers as well as the wights, even as one time, Alys Karstark fended off an attack on both of them. This prompted her new husband, Sandor Clegane, the very same Hound, to strike down any wight or White Walker who dared to assail her. They fought this enemy with inhuman ferocity and courage, as said foe was scarcely human at all. The battle was fully joined now, as proven by the way that Gendry smashed plenty of the enemy’s defenses with his warhammer alone.

“You’re certainly your father’s son,” Davos conceded as he himself arrived on the scene, Salladhor Saan at his side, along with his eldest son, Devan.

“Where are Stannis and Steffon?” Gendry wondered as they struck down yet more wights together.

“Stannis is in charge of the ships and is keeping watch in case of that ... and keeping an eye on my wife and mistress, as well his little brother, Steffon. Steffon is like to become a maester or perhaps a Kingsguard in time, though it’s far from clear,” Davos reassured Gendry while they fought more wights and watched how Ser Jorah cut a swathe through the Dead.

Just then, before they could burn more of their slain, the Night King played his trump card again and revived yet more of these, adding to his depleted ranks and sowing chaos behind their lines. Dany, furious, began roasting as many White Walkers as she could to weaken the Dead. He turned his wrath toward her, throwing his ice spear at each of her dragons in turn. It really was a desperate, crucial moment. Many had already perished by now, and Yara was wounded, though she would clearly live. The new Dothraki commander, Dazzo, didn’t last more than a few minutes before he fell as well, as was true of the Unsullied captain, Rat Hair.