GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 387 - The Liberator
Grey Worm's words echoed in the ears of Kraznys and the slave masters around him.
"No... no..."
Kraznys's body trembled violently.
He wanted to beg. Wanted to run.
But he was so terrified he couldn't move a single finger.
On the dragon's back, Lynn looked down at the snowfield below, now a one-sided slaughterhouse, and decided this farce had gone on long enough.
He raised his hand gently.
Then lowered it.
The howling wind died without warning.
The blizzard vanished. Every last flake, gone in an instant.
The bone-deep cold that could freeze a man's soul was replaced by the sweltering, salt-damp heat of Slaver's Bay. The grey sky split open, and the scorching sun reclaimed it.
The storm was over.
As light swept back across the land, every survivor on the battlefield froze at what they saw.
Corpses.
Endless corpses.
The entire plain was carpeted in severed limbs, shredded entrails, and pooled blood , a red so deep it looked black in places.
And standing across that blood-soaked carpet, thousands of Wights. Still as statues, blue flames burning in hollow eye sockets. Some still gnawed at the limbs in their hands. Others held their killing postures, frozen mid-lunge.
Time had stopped.
The tens of thousands of surviving slave soldiers stared at this scene with empty minds. They had just crawled out of that death field on their hands and knees, climbing over the bodies of men who had been marching beside them minutes ago.
"Run — run!"
No one knew who broke first.
A single, desperate scream. A man turned and bolted.
That was all it took.
The crowd ignited.
The surviving soldiers threw down their weapons and ran screaming , crying, wailing, shoving each other aside, fleeing back the way they'd come. They didn't care about anything anymore. They just wanted distance between themselves and this cursed, reeking place.
But they had barely covered any ground.
An enormous black shadow fell from the sky.
Winter came down like a collapsing mountain, landing directly in their path with world-ending force.
BOOM!
The earth lurched.
Hundreds of running men were hurled off their feet by the shockwave. Dust erupted in all directions, a choking wall of it.
When it settled, they saw what was standing in front of them.
One head. Two heads. Three heads.
Savage dragon skulls. Pupils burning like molten rock. Claws long enough to cut a man in half.
The dragon.
Despair hit them like a physical blow.
A dragon in front. Wights behind.
There was nowhere to go.
One man's legs gave out. THUD. He dropped to his knees, his wooden stick clattering against the ground.
Then the second. The third. THUD. THUD. THUD.
It spread like a wave. Tens of thousands of slave soldiers let their weapons fall and collapsed to the earth, one after another, until the whole field was a black mass of kneeling men. No more screaming. No more running. They pressed their foreheads to the dirt, bodies shaking with a fear too deep for sound, and waited for whatever was coming.
On the dragon's back, Tyrion and Jorah Mormont stared down at the kneeling mass below. The despair rolling off the crowd was a physical thing. Both men felt their hearts seize.
This was what power beyond human reckoning actually looked like.
Faced with it, there was no choice. There was only kneeling.
"If my father could see this..." Tyrion muttered quietly. "Would he fight? Or would he kneel on the spot and hand over Casterly Rock?" He paused. "Probably the latter."
Lynn stood on the foremost head of the dragon.
He looked down at the creatures kneeling below him like scattered insects. His face was unreadable.
When he spoke, his voice carried across the whole silent plain.
"Raise your heads."
Every kneeling slave flinched.
They didn't dare disobey. Trembling, slowly, they lifted their faces , and stared up at the man on the dragon's back.
"I am not your enemy."
Lynn's voice was calm. Completely calm.
"Your enemies are the slave masters. The ones who treated you like cattle and drove you here to die."
"They promised you freedom."
He paused.
"That was a lie."
"Now I am giving you a real choice."
Lynn spread his arms wide, as though he meant to embrace the whole world.
"I came here to liberate Slaver's Bay."
"Every slave — free."
"Every slave master who put chains on them — made to pay in blood."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water.
Liberate Slaver's Bay?
Set free?
Was this real?
The slaves couldn't make sense of what they were hearing. A middle-aged man with mud caked across his face looked up instinctively at the sun, then back at the motionless Wights in the distance. He pinched his own arm , hard. The pain made him grimace.
Not a dream.
"Your freedom will not come from nothing," Lynn said.
He looked at the faces below him, every one of them tangled with confusion and disbelief.
"If you want it, you have to take it with your own hands."
"I need an army."
"An army that will conquer this continent."
"Will you fight for your own freedom?"
Fight for your own freedom.
The words struck every man on that field like a thunderclap , cracking open something that had been sealed shut for years, maybe for their entire lives.
They looked at the man on the dragon. They looked at the vast, motionless army of Wights behind him. Then they looked toward the distant wall of steel and fire , the Unsullied, standing in perfect formation.
Something blazed to life in their chests. Something none of them had ever felt before.
Lynn said nothing more.
He raised his hand and waved it, once, gently.
Behind him, every one of the tens of thousands of Wights straightened simultaneously and went still. In the distance, the Unsullied phalanx halted as one.
The world held its breath.
Every eye on the battlefield turned to the kneeling slaves.
Waiting.
Waiting for them to choose.
Near the front, a young slave slowly lifted his head. He was the boy from before , the one the overseer had shoved a wooden stick into his hands. His face was still streaked with dried tears. But his eyes were different now. The numbness was gone. The hollow despair was gone.
He looked up at Lynn on the dragon's back.
His lips began to move.
➤ Next: Attack on Yunkai