GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 384 - Then Let the War Begin

The proclamation rang out across a battlefield already trembling on the edge of chaos.

Two hundred thousand slave soldiers, a mass of bodies and weapons and noise, went still.

All of them looked up, eyes wide with dread, staring at the man standing on the dragon's back against the sky.

Fear moved through them like a tide.

But at the far end of fear, there is always madness.

"Bastard!"

On the ornate viewing platform, the fat face of Grazdan mo Ghraz, Wise Master of Yunkai, had gone purple , twisted beyond recognition by rage and humiliation.

"Who does he think he is?!"

"A barbarian on a monster! Daring to point his finger at us — the great descendants of Old Ghis!"

Surrender?

Kneel before some Westerosi?

That was worse than death.

"Archers!"

Grazdan ripped the jeweled scimitar from his belt, a decorative piece never meant for war, and jabbed it at the sky.

"Shoot! Fill them with arrows! Every last one!"

The other slave masters caught up quickly, their faces twisting with the same fury. Lynn's calm, condescending tone had reached all of them.

"Yes! Shoot them down!"

"Let this arrogant fool understand — this is Slaver's Bay. He doesn't get to run wild here!"

The orders cascaded down through the ranks.

"Loose!"

Tens of thousands of arrows screamed into the air at once, WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH, a black mass so dense it swallowed the light. For one moment, the entire sky seemed to go dark.

The storm of arrows crested and fell , a descending wall of death aimed straight at the Unsullied formation below.

"Mad!" On the dragon's back, Tyrion yelped and threw himself behind Lynn. "These idiots have gone completely mad!"

Daenerys seized a fistful of Lynn's robe, knuckles white.

On the ground, the Unsullied didn't move.

Not a step. Not a flinch. Not a single face turned away.

They waited.

Then Grey Worm's voice cut through the roar of incoming arrows, followed by the commanders of every formation.

"Raise shields!"

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

The crashes came in rapid succession, uniform, thunderous, disciplined. Seventy thousand kite shields snapped upward as one, locking together into a seamless dome of steel.

CLANG CLANG CLANG CLANG. The arrows hit.

Tens of thousands of them, hammering the shield wall in a single rolling wave , and producing nothing louder than the sound of hail on an iron roof.

Crisp. Feeble. Empty.

No screams.

No casualties.

When the last arrow fell, silence followed.

The shield wall came down slowly. Seventy thousand Unsullied swept the shafts from their shields with the butts of their spears, then stood exactly where they had stood before , still, straight, untouched.

The battlefield went deathly quiet.

The snarling triumph on the slave masters' faces curdled and froze.

They stared.

This... how?

That was tens of thousands of arrows.

On the dragon's back, Lynn looked down at the open, disbelieving faces below.

He shook his head slowly.

He had given them a chance. They had thrown it away. There was nothing left to discuss.

"It seems you've made your choice."

"Then let it be as you wish."

"Begin."

He closed his eyes.

An invisible force unfolded from him, vast, pressurized, spreading outward like the leading edge of a storm until it swept across the entire battlefield. An ancient chant rose in his mind, worn smooth by centuries, syllables that had no place in any living tongue.

The language of Old Valyria.

The language that commanded fire.

The next instant, everything changed.

At the tip of every spear held by every Unsullied soldier, a small flame blinked into existence. Fingernail-sized. Orange-red. Wrong, somehow , too still, too deliberate.

Then it hit.

WHOMP!

The flames exploded upward as though oil had been poured straight onto the source.

Orange-red became white-gold in a single heartbeat.

One meter.

Two meters.

Three meters.

In the span of a few breaths, seventy thousand steel spears had become seventy thousand pillars of fire. The heat bent the air around them, warping the world in rippling waves.

Not just the slave masters this time.

The conscripted slaves standing in their ranks. The battle-hardened mercenaries who had survived a dozen campaigns. Every single one of them was struck dumb.

Weapons clattered to the ground in ones and twos, then all at once.

They looked at what stood before them , seventy thousand soldiers holding fire, still and silent, like an army summoned from the depths of some burning hell , and their minds simply stopped.

Morale. Courage. The will to fight.

All of it burned away.

"This... this is..."

On the dragon's back, Tyrion's jaw hung open wide enough to swallow his fist. Whatever words he'd been reaching for were gone entirely.

Jorah Mormont stood with the same blank, hollow look on his face.

Only Daenerys was different.

She watched Lynn's back — the set of his shoulders, the stillness of him , and her violet eyes held no uncertainty at all. Only adoration. Only something fiercer than adoration, something that had no softer name.

This was her man.

A true god.

At the head of the formation, Grey Worm felt it through the shaft of his spear , that terrifying, living power roaring up through his palms, setting his blood alight.

He raised the flaming spear above his head.

Drew breath.

And gave the Unsullied their first battle cry.

"Forward!"