GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 383 - Routine Ultimatum — Steel and Blood

BOOM!

The dragon slammed into the courtyard and the displaced air exploded outward like a shockwave.

Everyone went sprawling.

Tyrion's wine cup had vanished somewhere, and he himself was plastered flat against the wall, fairly certain his bones were slowly separating from each other.

"Daenerys. Get on."

Lynn vaulted onto the dragon's back first, then reached down and offered her his hand.

She didn't hesitate. With his help, she pulled herself up.

"I'm coming too!" Tyrion half-crawled, half-ran toward them.

Like hell he was going to miss this.

Lynn glanced at him. Said nothing. Pulled him up.

Jorah followed right behind.

"Winter."

The dragon answered with a low rumble. Its wings snapped open and drove down in one enormous beat, and the colossal body surged back into the sky, banking toward Yunkai.

...

Seven days later.

The plains east of the Isle of Yaros.

This had once been rich pastureland, green and well-watered. Now it was churned to mud under hundreds of thousands of trampling feet.

Over two hundred thousand soldiers packed the plain , a dark, heaving mass that stretched to the horizon with no end in sight.

Overseers herded the slaves into formation with leather whips, their lines crooked and uneven. The weapons in their hands were a motley assortment, most of them sharpened wooden stakes and rust-eaten farming tools.

Behind them stood more than a hundred war elephants draped in crude iron plate. The great beasts shifted their weight restlessly, trunks swaying, letting out irritated trumpets.

Further back, rows of massive trebuchets lined the field alongside mercenary companies hired at considerable expense. The regular troops were archers and cavalry , the finest the slave masters' gold could buy.

An impressive force, by any measure.

Grazdan mo Grazdan, Wise Master of Yunkai, stood on an ornate wooden platform carried by slaves and surveyed his army with satisfaction. He raised a simple brass megaphone to his lips and bellowed down at the trembling mass below.

"Lift your heads, my lowly property!"

"Do you see them?" He jabbed a finger toward the horizon. "Those are the rebels of Astapor! They want to take everything from you , to keep you in chains forever!"

"But our great Wise Masters have shown you mercy! They have given you a chance!"

His voice rang with practiced fire.

"Win this battle! Tear them apart!"

"I, Grazdan mo Grazdan, swear by the Harpy of Yunkai!"

"You , and your families — will be granted freedom!"

"Freedom!"

Freedom.

The word hit the numb slaves like a struck match. Something flickered to life in their dull, clouded eyes.

Then Grazdan's tone dropped. Went cold.

"Of course... if anyone dares to take a single step back..."

He flicked his hand at the overseers behind him.

They raised their spears in unison, tips leveled at the backs of the slaves.

"Your fate will be a hundred times worse than dying at the enemy's hands!"

"Now — for your freedom!"

"Fight!!"

The words were barely out of his mouth.

A sound reached them from the far end of the plain.

THUD. THUD. THUD.

Seventy thousand Unsullied advanced in formation , more than thirty massive, perfect steel squares moving as one, shields locked, spears raised. Slow. Relentless.

No battle cries. No roaring.

Just steel and earth.

That silence hit harder than any war cry. The slave army, still buzzing with the promise of freedom, went utterly still.

On the platform, the smiles froze on Grazdan's face and on every slave master beside him.

Then the sky went dark.

A black speck appeared on the distant horizon.

It grew. Fast , impossibly fast.

"Wh — what is that?" A slave master raised a trembling finger toward the sky.

The next second, the roar hit.

A dragon's cry dropped from above the clouds , loud enough to rupture eardrums, to split the world clean in two.

WHOOSH , a vast black shadow swallowed the battlefield.

The wind came next. A howling gale that sent the slave masters' ornate platform lurching and swaying on its poles.

Two hundred thousand men dissolved into chaos.

The war elephants screamed. They ripped their chains free and plunged into their own formations, massive bodies crashing and trampling without mercy. Slaves died under the feet of their own beasts, crushed into the mud before they could even run.

"A dragon , it's a dragon!"

"Gods, save us!"

Panic tore through the army like fire through dry grass.

Winter banked in slow circles above the battlefield. All three heads gazed down in cold silence at the creatures scattering like ants below.

On the dragon's back, Tyrion locked both fists around a scale and held on for his life.

What army? What battle? What the hell is anyone supposed to do against this?

One dragon. That was all it had taken to shatter two hundred thousand men.

Lynn stood at the dragon's neck, robes snapping hard in the wind. He watched the chaos below. Still. Unhurried. He made no unnecessary movement.

He raised one hand.

"Wise Masters of Yunkai. Great Masters of Meereen."

"I am Lynn."

"Your farce ends here."

His voice cut through the screaming and the wind and the thundering elephant hooves. Every figure on that battlefield went still. Every head tilted upward, eyes wide with terror, fixed on the man standing atop the dragon.

"You have ten minutes to decide."

"Lay down your weapons. Kneel and surrender."

A pause.

"Or burn."

➤ Next: Then Let the War Begin