GOT: I Plunder Skills — Chapter 422 - But I Never Rode a Dragon

He waved a lazy hand at the two warlocks standing behind him. Their tongues had been cut out. Their eyes were empty.

"Blow it."

"Let the new king from the North have a listen."

Both warlocks began to tremble. Not the shiver of cold , something deeper, something that started in the soul and worked its way outward.

When they looked at the horn, they looked at it the way men look at the thing that is going to kill them.

They had no choice.

One of them, under the weight of Euron's cold stare, shuffled forward. His whole body shook as he wrapped his arms around the Dragon Horn and heaved it up off the deck. He took a long breath. His cracked lips found the mouthpiece.

Wooom , Bwoooom ,

What came out of that horn was not a sound.

It was a volcano's roar. A storm's fury. The shrieking of ten thousand souls burning alive, all of it compressed into a single, world-ending blast.

The shockwave hit the frozen sea like a fist. Every soldier in range — Northmen and Ironborn alike , clapped their hands over their ears and screamed. Blood ran from their eyes, their nostrils, their ears, their mouths.

The ice shattered outward from the horn in every direction. Cracks raced across the surface in wild, spiderweb patterns, spreading faster than a man could run.

And the warlock who had blown it , he got the worst of it.

His chest began to glow. A deep, ugly red, visible through his skin, like someone had lit a forge inside his ribcage. Black smoke poured from his mouth, his nose, his ears. From his eyes. The smell of burning meat rolled across the deck.

His silk robe crumbled to ash. The veins beneath his skin burst one by one. His body swelled, and swelled, and then ,

He exploded.

Flesh. Organs. Fragments of burning bone. All of it sprayed outward in every direction.

The horn kept sounding.

Euron's grin stretched wider. He tilted his face toward the blood misting the air, stuck out his tongue, and caught the drop that landed on his cheek.

"Continue."

One word. Aimed at the warlock still standing.

That warlock had already hit the deck. His legs had given out. There was a spreading wet patch across the front of his trousers.

But Euron's command moved through him like a hook through flesh. He couldn't refuse it. He hauled himself upright, walked to the horn like a dead man walking, and pressed his lips to that same mouthpiece, still radiating its terrible heat.

Wooom , Bwoooom ,

Higher this time. Sharper. More savage. The sound tore across the frozen world like the sky itself was cracking open.

The second warlock burst apart the same way the first had. In the same unbearable agony.

Then the horn fell silent.

But the magic didn't leave. That presence , the weight of domination, the promise of destruction , hung in the frozen air and refused to dissipate.

The world went quiet.

Every Ironborn on every ship tilted their head back and stared at the dark red sky.

Waiting.

Waiting for the three-headed dragon of legend. Waiting for the black death large enough to block out the sun.

None more so than Euron Crow's Eye himself.

He spread his arms wide. Threw his head back. Closed his one mad eye. He looked like a zealot standing in the moment before his god arrived.

He could already see it. The King of the North's dragon, answering the horn's call, dropping out of the sky , then turning its great head and bathing its former master in flame. And him, Euron, climbing onto its back. Becoming the new Dragon King. Burning the entire North to cinders and white ash.

He would ,

One second.

Ten seconds.

One minute.

Nothing.

The sky was empty. That strange dark red haze hung over everything, but beneath it , nothing. No roar. No shadow. Not even a single raven.

Just the cold sea wind, carrying the smell of blood across the dead and silent ice.

The smile died on Euron's face.

Slowly, he opened his eye.

The wild fire in it was going out. Something else was moving in to replace it. Bewilderment. Confusion. A disbelief so total it almost looked like pain.

How?

Impossible.

The Dragon Horn. A relic from the ruins of Valyria itself. The key to binding dragons. The instrument of dominion over the world.

Why hadn't it worked?

He spun around and stared at the horn where it had fallen on the deck, still pulsing with its ominous aura.

The horn was real. He knew that.

The warlocks' deaths were real. He had watched it happen.

The power that had shaken the sea , that was real too.

So where was the dragon? Where was the damned dragon?

Euron's mind was starting to fracture under the weight of it.

Then a voice drifted down from the cliff above.

Lazy. Amused. Not even trying to hide it.

"Heh."

One syllable. Quiet as a knife between the ribs.

Euron's head snapped up.

Lin En was still standing at the cliff's edge, hands in his pockets, watching him. The expression on his face was the one you give a performer who rehearsed all month and still managed to ruin the show.

"Looking for something?"

His voice was pure scorn, not a drop of it concealed.

"Something with three heads, maybe? Wings wider than that sad little ship of yours?"

Euron's pupil contracted to a pinpoint.

"How did you —"

"How did I know?" Lin En finished it for him. "Because I know every card you're holding. Every last one."

He took two steps forward, closer to the cliff's edge, and looked down at the face below him , twisted with shock, with fury, with something that might have been the beginning of real fear.

"I'll admit," Lin En said, "that horn is genuinely impressive. Good power. Loud enough to wake the dead." He paused. "Bit rough on whoever's doing the blowing, though."

He shook his head slowly, the picture of sympathy.

"But you've made a mistake somewhere."

"Who exactly told you that dealing with a pack of small-boat pirates who call themselves wolves of the sea required me to show up on a dragon?"

The silence that followed hit harder than the meteor had.

Euron's mind went completely blank.

He didn't ride a dragon here.

He came to Bear Island , and he didn't bring a dragon.

Euron had spent everything. Two irreplaceable warlocks. His ultimate weapon. His last resort. And his enemy had shown up without so much as a saddle.

It was like preparing a feast to slay a god, and discovering the god had simply stayed home that day.

Absurd.

Farcical.

A humiliation so complete it had no name.

"AAAAHHH —"

The sound that came out of Euron wasn't human. His single eye had gone entirely red. Every muscle in his face was wrong, pulled in directions they weren't meant to go.

He'd been played.

Run in circles, made to perform, made to burn his own men , by this boy from the North.

"I'LL KILL YOU!"

He ripped the sword from his belt and leveled it at the cliff. His roar scattered across the ice.

But what could he actually do?

His ship was locked in frozen water. His fleet was being slaughtered around him. He was a beast in a cage, all rage and no reach, howling at something he couldn't touch.

"Kill me?"

Lin En looked at him the way you look at something you've already finished using.

"Your part's done."

"Now it's my turn."

He raised his hand.

Across the battlefield, every Northman and Ironborn who saw it felt their hearts stutter.

That gesture.

Was another sun about to fall out of the sky?

Euron flinched and looked up instinctively, his eye wide with terror.

But Lin En's hand wasn't aimed at the sky.

He pointed it straight at Euron.

Opened his fingers wide.

And slowly closed them into a fist.

➤ Next: Euron's Countermove — Clash