GOT: The Great — Chapter 283 - Taking Kaho
When Harold stepped aside to clear the way, Drogo did not move.
He sat in the dragon saddle, one hand gripping the reins, eyes fixed on the open gate behind Harold.
"Please, come in," Harold said again.
Drogo still did not move. He was thinking.
The combat boost the Dragon Bond gave him, measured against Balerion's full size, amounted to roughly 1/200 of the whole.
He knew combat power didn't work by simple division like that.
What the Dragon Bond was giving him right now was still negligible, and he wasn't stupid enough to think he could walk alone into an unfamiliar castle and come out unscathed.
The three dragons were still outside the walls. If someone put a knife in him inside the gatehouse tunnel, the dragons couldn't squeeze in to save him.
Walking in alone was no different from walking into a tiger's den.
He tugged the reins.
Drogon let out a low rumble, pulled his front claws free from the snow, and spread his massive wings. A cloud of snow spun up around him.
Viserion and Rhaegal took to the sky alongside him. All three swept past the city gate, and the wind from their wings sent the white flag on the battlements into a wild frenzy.
Harold stepped back, his hands rising instinctively to shield his face.
By the time he lowered his arms, the three dragons had already crossed the walls and were flying toward the forests surrounding Kaho.
"Your Grace!" Harold called after them, but the dragons were already gone.
Drogo rode Drogon in a wide circle above the forest. "Dracarys."
Drogon opened his mouth.
Dragon flame poured down over the treetops — a black-red waterfall crashing into the woods.
The instant fire touched pine needles, the whole forest went up as if someone had doused it in oil.
Flames leapt from tree to tree, crown to crown. Thick smoke rolled skyward with embers tumbling through it.
Pine resin burst in the heat, snapping and popping like firecrackers going off deep in the woods.
Rhaegal and Viserion split left and right, spraying fire along the forest's edges.
Each dragon took its own section. Together they set the entire southern and western forest around Kaho ablaze.
Three great arcs of firelight stretched across the snowfield. Black smoke surged up from the treetops and blotted out half the sky.
Drogo looked back from dragonback and was satisfied.
First: a warning to Kaho. Let them see clearly that dragonfire could burn through a whole forest in a few breaths, burning down a city would be even less of an effort.
Second: it marked direction for the wildling army still threading through the trees. Follow the firelight, and they wouldn't end up going in circles.
Third — he knew he had to find something to do.
The fact that he didn't dare enter the city was real enough. But he couldn't just sit outside the gate doing nothing. That would be the same as telling Harold outright: I'm afraid.
The fire burned for a day and a night.
The following afternoon, the undergrowth beyond the fire line began to stir.
First came heavy footsteps, far heavier than any horse, each impact shaking loose small cascades of snow from the branches above.
Then the undergrowth parted. From within it stepped the thick leg of a mammoth, wrapped in dark-brown shaggy fur matted with ice fragments and dead twigs.
A giant rode the mammoth's back, a black steel pipe slung across his shoulder.
Behind that giant came a second. Then a third.
As they emerged from behind the smoldering tree line, the still-smoking trunks framed their silhouettes from behind.
Then came the skinchangers.
A woman wrapped in grey wolf hide walked in the middle of the column. Her eyes were pale yellow, pupils running in vertical slits.
At her side walked a brown bear, its shoulder standing higher than the top of her head, rolling with each loping step, its nose pressed to the ground, snuffling through the snow.
Behind her came a boar. Its shoulder blade stood higher than Tormund Giantsbane's waist. Its tusks were as long as a man's arm, curved upward in a wide arc, tips worn white from grinding.
It shouldered its way out of the forest with white breath steaming from its nostrils, and someone rode on its back as well.
The wildlings of the various tribes followed, spilling out of the forest one after another.
The Frozen Shore came first, they walked barefoot across the snow and moved more steadily than any of the other tribes.
Next came the cave dwellers, faces smeared with grey-white mud. They were said to have carried the habit out of the caves with them; coating their skin warded off frostbite.
Then the Thenns, who marched last. Their formation was sharper and more orderly than any of the other tribes. They even paused briefly at the edge of the burned woodland and dressed their ranks before continuing.
The last one out was Tormund Giantsbane. One side of his beard had been blackened by smoke. His hammer rested across his shoulder. His stride was unhurried.
The battlements were packed with archers.
Harold Karstark stood in the gatehouse tower, fingertips pressed against the stone face of the crenellations.
Yesterday he had watched with his own eyes as Drogo flew into a sudden fury and spent an entire day burning the forest around Kaho. He still hadn't figured out what he'd said to offend him.
Today he was watching a vast column of wildlings emerge from behind the burning tree line, one after another, without end.
The mammoths' footsteps grew louder. The snow on the ground trembled faintly with each impact.
One giant walked to within 20 yards of the wall and stopped. He drove the steel pipe off his shoulder straight down into the ground with a single heavy thud.
Several young archers on the battlements began to shake.
Harold took a deep breath and shouted down to Drogo, who sat on dragonback below.
"We only want to surrender! Unconditional surrender!"
His voice was 3 pitches higher than yesterday, his throat cracking. He repeated himself immediately, as if afraid the wind from the dragon's wings might swallow his words whole.
"Unconditional surrender — no conditions whatsoever!"
He had prepared a few conditions in his head: the Karstark family would keep their swords, their kin would be left unharmed, the sept inside the castle would not be touched.
After watching the giant drive that steel pipe into the ground, he swallowed every one of those conditions back down.
"Pull all your archers off the walls," Drogo called up to the gatehouse tower. "Open the gates. You and your family come out through the gate and kneel in the snow."
Harold's body stiffened for a moment.
"I'll do it," he said after a brief silence. "I'll do it."
The archers withdrew from the battlements.
A moment later, the gate was pulled open from within and Harold walked out.
Behind him came several women and children, and one maester with a full head of white hair.
Harold knelt in the snow, his knees sinking down through the surface layer.
Tormund Giantsbane stood at the front of the wildling army, arms folded across his chest, head tilted as he watched.
His expression was strange, neither triumph nor pity.
Drogo swung down from dragonback and walked to stand before Harold.
He looked down at the old lord kneeling in the snow, then reached out and placed his hand on Harold's shoulder.
"I accept the surrender of Kaho."
Tormund raised his hammer once and roared. The wildlings behind him roared with him.
The giants roared too, their voices pressing down over every other sound like thunder rolling in from a distance.
Before entering Kaho, Drogo turned to face the wildling army.
"Kaho surrendered. You cannot loot it the way you looted Last Hearth."
"But I will have Kaho hand over one-third of its goods as compensation for you."
"We get to share things even without a fight?" someone shouted.
"Even without a fight," Drogo said.
"That's a fine deal!" another voice called out, and laughter rippled through the crowd.
Tormund drove his hammer into the ground. The laughter gradually died. He looked at Drogo and gave a single nod.
"We agree."
The people of Kaho lined both sides of the street and watched the army pour in through the gate.
➤ Next: The Giant Is Not As Smart As Hodor