Game of Thrones: The Impaler of the Blue Fork

Chapter 64 - Seafront City

Otto Hohenzollern smelled the scent of Seafront City half a day before he saw it.

First came the saltiness. Strong, astringent, clinging to the back of the tongue, refusing to dissipate. Not the freshwater fishiness of the Blue Fork River—that kind he'd been smelling for three years and was no longer bothered by. This salt was evaporated by the sun hundreds of miles off the coast of Ironman Bay; it was completely different.

Then there's the char. A thick, chewable mixture of grease, pine, tar, and canvas. Someone burned many boats, or many boats were burned. The two possibilities are indistinguishable in smell.

Finally, there was blood. Cold, rusty, buried beneath salt and burnt flesh. Otto didn't need to recognize it—after the Ironborn's night raid on Bluefork, he'd smelled it mixed with quicklime, bubbling pink, on the log rafts beneath the stone tower.

An old soldier in the ranks behind me muttered something under his breath, it was hard to hear, but he was probably cursing the smell. Someone next to him nudged him, and he fell silent.

The ruts on the official road suddenly deepened in the last few miles. The tracks left by heavily loaded oxcarts were new and dense, stretching outwards from Haijiang City. The first oxcart slowly approached from the opposite direction. The driver, a man in his forties, had half a stalk of hay in his mouth, his eyes fixed on the ox's rump. A coarse linen cloth covered the cart, but not completely—a bare ankle was exposed, pale, stiff, and with curled toes. The driver gave the ox a jolt, and it creaked and groaned past.

A large, dark patch of burlap on the second cart was soaked through, hanging down the edge of the cart and sticky in the sun. A greenbottle fly perched on it, rubbed its front legs, flew up, and then landed back down.

Gareth remained silent.

Since joining the team from the haystack, this fence knight's mouth has never stopped—he talks while walking, while eating dry rations, and while lying on the ground and talking to the sky when he rests.

He stopped talking after the second oxcart passed. He shut his mouth on his own.

As the city walls rose above the horizon, Otto's gaze was first drawn to the distant mudflats. Large, blackened pieces of ship planks lay scattered on the receding tide, broken masts jutting into the mud and sand, entangled with half-torn sails—the grey-green base with dark patterns—the paint scheme of an ironclad longship. Scattered among the large wrecks were smaller, more irregular objects. Crows landed and rose, rose and fell.

Otto paused. He scanned the area from left to right: the wreckage of the mudflats, the overturned hulls of longships in the harbor, the scorched black marks on the western section of the city wall that stretched from the crenellations to the waist, and a dozen or so armored soldiers standing in two rows at the city gate with their spears pointed forward.

This happened a few hours ago. It's still steaming.

The last time he traveled this road was three years ago. Seventeen, five hunters, went to Earl Jason Mellist to ask for a piece of unwanted wasteland. They waited in the side hall for nearly an hour, no one poured him a cup of hot ale, and the steward looked at him like he was a wild dog crawling out of a mud puddle. Now he returned with eleven armored men. But he thought he was back in time for a battle, not just the tail end of one.

The soldier at the city gate who received the document had newly calloused hands, and his fingernails were stained with a mixture of rust and dried blood. He glanced at the sealing wax, then looked up.

"Sir Hohenzollern. The Count is waiting in the main hall." He gestured with his chin towards a young soldier behind him. "Take them there."

There was an indelible smell in the doorway—the stench of blood mixed with the alkaline odor seeping from the stone walls after water had been splashed on them. A long drag mark lay on the ground, its end stained with a few dark red drops, blurred by footsteps.

Gareth walked through the doorway with his head down. He didn't look up at the slit, nor did he glance at the walls. He had done these three things every time he passed through a new place in the past two days, and he did each one very loudly.

A row of wounded soldiers sat at the base of the north wall. A young soldier pressed his left arm, the blood beneath the cloth staining his entire forearm, his face as white as wax. An older soldier next to him was whispering something.

A woman emerged from a side alley carrying a basin of water. She walked around the row of wounded soldiers and knelt down in front of the last one. She soaked a cloth and wiped the blood from the man's hand. The man's hand was trembling. She didn't speak. The water in the basin turned a pale pink.

A pile of scrap metal, half a person's height, stood outside the blacksmith's shop—cracked shields, chipped swords, and deformed helmets. The blacksmith squatted down, rummaging through the metal, then turned over a round shield with a half-foot-deep gash, glanced at it, shook his head, and tossed it behind him. Two apprentices were pumping the bellows, the hammering rapid and incessant, not the rhythm of their usual repairs.

Further in, there were corpses laid out against the wall. A clerk squatted down, lifting a canvas to glance at a face, muttering a name, while someone next to him marked it in a book. When he reached a certain name, the clerk stopped. He looked at it a few more times. His fingers gripped the edge of the canvas for a few moments, then he squeezed the edge again before releasing it as he closed the canvas.

Otto walked through these things without stopping. The Ironborn, who came from the sea, were intercepted on the mudflats; the city walls remained intact, and the battle was fought outside the city.

The ten soldiers behind him remained silent, but their pace quickened slightly compared to before entering the city. They had spent three years pushing shield walls in the Blue Fork Valley, enduring Torun's whips and bone whistles. But the pile of scrap iron half a person high in the blacksmith's shop and the row of canvases at the base of the wall were faster than any training.

The pine resin torches in the main hall had been burning all day without being replaced; the flames were low and the light was yellowish. The smell of pine resin smoke, the dryness of salt frost, and the sweat trapped inside the armor all day—a sour, salty, with a underlying sense of bloodshed.

Earl Jason Mellist sat in a high-backed stone chair. His armor was still on.

Several fresh scratches on the plate armor gleamed in the firelight, and a long horizontal scratch ran down his chest. His right forearm was wrapped in bandages, loosely, with a patch of dark red seeping through—wet and still oozing. His temples were mostly white, and the lines on his face looked as if etched deep by the salt winds. His shoulders and back still possessed the thickness of someone who had worn armor their entire life.

Patrick stood to the right. He was also fully armored. A layer of steel had been shaved off the edge of his shoulder armor, revealing the unpainted iron underneath. He was thinner than when he was seen at the tournament three years ago, and his eye sockets were deeper.

Otto knelt on one knee before the stone bench. The sound of his knee hitting the stone floor echoed through the hall.

"grown ups."

"stand up."

Earl Jason looked at him for a few moments.

"You saw it on the way."

"Yes, sir."

"Tiemin arrived before dawn this morning." He picked up the tin cup on the handrail and took a sip—it was water, not wine. The bottom of the cup tapped against the stone handrail.

"More than twenty longboats gathered at the mouth of the bay at nightfall and set sail for the mudflats before dawn. Baron's eldest son, Rodrik Greyjoy, led the way."

It paused for a moment.

"That kid, fully armored and carrying two axes, didn't slow down as he raced through the sea. Even when the waves were waist-high, he kept pushing forward. His bodyguards followed behind, riding the crests of the waves upwards."

Patrick's breathing became slightly heavier.

"I led my men out of the city and intercepted him on the mudflats. When the sand is wet, neither side can stand steadily, so it's just hacking and slashing. When he charged at me, half of my shield was broken."

Earl Jason looked at the torch as he said this.

"His axe went past here—" He gestured with his chin to the long gash on his chest, "I stepped half a step to the side. My sword went through a gap in his shoulder armor. The tide was rising just as he fell, and the blood was barely visible after a couple of splashes. The men behind him saw him fall and backed away."

He spoke very softly. But the bandage on his forearm was still seeping through.

Otto waits.

Earl Jason turned his gaze away from the torch.

"Baron's eldest son is dead. But the Ironborn fleet remains. He burned Lannister Harbor when he started the war; all the Lannister ships were destroyed, and there is currently no navy on the west coast. The king has issued a summons, and all the lords of the realm are to assemble westward."

Patrick picked up, his pace quickening: "Stannis Baratheon is assembling the royal fleet on the east coast, intending to deal with the Ironborn ships from the sea. He'll have to circle around from the east, which will take time. We'll get there on land first, and then cross to Pyke Island once the sea route is cleared."

Earl Jason nodded. "I'll stay behind at Seafront City. I'll send Trick with his men south to join the King's army. Your men will be incorporated into that."

"Ten warriors, and one knight picked up along the way."

Patrick glanced at him. "A knight?"

"The Fence Knight. He can fight."

Patrick didn't press the matter. His father's forearm was still bleeding, and he himself was missing a piece from his shoulder armor.

A few moments of silence followed. Then, from afar, came the sound of hammering, urgent and rapid.

Earl Jason spoke again.

"Your classmate mentioned something in his letter. You've practiced a fighting style for use in narrow spaces."

Illion's Raven. Otto made a mental note of it. He knew Jason would see it when he had Illion write those things down. But Jason chose to bring it up today.

"A three-person corner lock set, for adults. Used in passageways and corridors."

Jason didn't ask for details. He only said one sentence:

"Those bridges and covered walkways in Park City, everyone who's been there says, couldn't have been built by simply throwing lives into them."

"Yes, sir."

"Go and rest. We'll leave with Patrick tomorrow morning."

The barracks were located at the foot of the north wall of the outer city. They were stone houses, covered with straw. There was a newly cut notch in the door panel, and a broken arrow shaft was nailed to the edge of the door frame; it had been half-pulled out but left there.

The ten men entered the barracks but didn't collapse and sleep as they had during their rest stops the previous days. Some stood at the entrance, gazing out for a long time at the row of canvas sheets along the north wall. Others sat on straw mats, touching their armor plates one by one. In a corner, someone was sharpening the tip of their hook-and-sickle spear with a whetstone, their movements much slower than usual.

Gareth sat against the corner of the wall, his old sword across his knees, his hand resting motionless on the scabbard. He hadn't uttered a single word since entering the city.

Otto sat on a stone bench at the back, with his back against the wall.

He's calculating.

This isn't about today. Today's events are over—Jason won, he missed it, and the eleven men were essentially invisible. No need to dwell on it.

He was calculating the later part.

The allied forces assembled on land, waiting for Stannis to circle around from the east and destroy the Ironborn ships at sea. There was a period of waiting in between—tens of thousands of men camped together, the vassal troops drilled, ate, and awaited orders. Then they crossed the sea. Then to Pyke.

Jason once said, "You can't fill a hole by throwing people's lives into it."

During those three years in Bluefork Valley, he built what he considered to be a formidable structure. A phalanx, scythes, bone whistles, backless formations, iron laws, and white salt. In that valley, these things were the best they could do—enough to hold off twenty Ironborn skirmishers, enough to send Blackwood's cavalry stumbling in the mud, enough to send Sir Harold arriving with twenty pounds of oil and leaving empty-handed.

Today, as he entered Haijiang City, he saw a completely different scale. The city wall was more than ten times higher than his own rammed earth wall. Jason went out of the city to meet the hundreds of soldiers behind him, while thousands remained inside. Otto's entire territory seemed too small to fit even into a corner of Haijiang City.

What are eleven people in a real war?

But this problem becomes another problem when you turn it around.

Tens of thousands of allied troops advanced to Pike. The castle was built on a rocky pillar in the sea, and the only way to pass was a covered walkway between the bridges, barely wide enough for a few people to walk abreast. In such a place, there is no difference between ten thousand and ten—you can't cram ten thousand people into a four-person-wide corridor. But the difference between ten people who know how to fight in narrow places and ten thousand who don't is the difference between walking out and being carried out.

Someone will definitely go in first. And then many will die inside. The corridor isn't a flat-ground charge—only three or four people stand side by side, with the Ironborn's shield wall and axes in front, a stone wall behind, and more waiting around the corner. You can't push it open from the front, you can't go around it, thick armor is useless, and numbers are useless.

Then someone will find that they can't fill it in.

Otto didn't intend to wait until that time to make others remember him.

He planned to reveal the equipment right there in the assembly camp. Tens of thousands of people were encamped there, with people training every day and others watching. Eleven men practicing that silent, unspoken system behind the shield wall, controlled by bone whistles and touch—the quiet itself was jarring amidst the shouts of tens of thousands.

Once enough corpses have piled up in front of the corridor entrance to Pike City, he won't need anyone to tell him it's time to move in. He'll lead his men to that entrance himself.

The calculation is clear. What he saw in Haijiang City was not just the scale of war—he saw a bottleneck that even tens of thousands of people could not fill.

The problem is, this key has never been tried on a real lock. It's been spun on the training field, spun in the snow, but the opponent isn't a true Iron Man. What if the first spin goes off-target? What if the tactile signals can't reach the real blood and sweat?

He dismissed the thought. What couldn't be calculated wasn't worth spending time on tonight. What could be calculated had already been calculated.

There were still lights in the distance, towards the mudflats. Someone was walking on the shallows with a torch. The light flickered and then went out.

Gareth stood up in the corner. He walked to the barracks gate and looked out. He didn't come over to speak, he just stood there. Waves came from afar, one after another, then receded.

After a long time, he said something. His voice was very low, as if it were just leaking from his mouth.

"Those on the beach were still alive this morning."

Otto did not answer.

After a while, Gareth turned his head. The light from outside illuminated half of his face.

"I don't get seasick," he suddenly changed the subject. "I've been on a caravan once. But I can't swim."

"Even the Iron Man doesn't expect you to be a swimmer."

Gareth thought for a moment, then smiled. That smile was shorter than any he'd ever smiled on the road.

He turned back and looked around for a while, then went back to the straw mat and lay down. The old sword lay beside him, and his outer robe covered his upper body. This time, he didn't snore within a few breaths like before—his breathing was uneven for a long time.

Otto did not lie down.

Eleven people breathed varying degrees of pressure. Someone turned over, the straw rustling. The man sharpening his gun had stopped sometime ago. In the distance, the waves crashed. The last flicker of light in the direction of the mudflats went out.

We'll depart tomorrow. Heading south by land. We'll join the King's army. Once the sea route is open, we'll cross the sea.

Then there's that corridor.

Otto did not remove his armor. He leaned against the stone wall and closed his eyes.