The battle for Moat Cailin had begun with a thunderous clash of divine elements, and now it descended into the bloody chaos of mortals—and those who were more than mortal.
High above, the sky had become a frantic melee. The 50 Giant Eagle riders were proving to be a nightmare for the Targaryen dragons. They were a swarm of razor-sharp talons and rune-tipped lances, impossibly fast and agile. They did not engage in suicidal charges against the dragons' armored hides; they employed systematic, harassing tactics.
A squadron of ten eagles would converge on a single dragon, their riders launching enchanted bolts aimed at eyes and wing membranes, while the eagles themselves, creatures of ancient, primal cunning, would rake their massive talons across the softer scales of the dragons' underbellies.
Vhagar, the bronze queen, roared in ancient fury as an eagle rider, with a suicidal burst of speed, managed to drive a lance deep into the webbing of her left wing, forcing her into a clumsy, lopsided flight pattern.
King Aenys, astride the silver Starfyre, was finding the situation intolerable. His dragon, bred for speed, was being outmaneuvered by the sheer number of attackers. Feathers and scales fell like rain. The dragons were irritated, their rage making them sloppy, their fiery breath snapping at empty air as the eagles dived and weaved.
On the battlements, Edric Stark watched the sky war with a cold, calculating gaze. He saw the dragons' frustration. He saw the disarray in the Targaryen air support. He knew this was the moment to fracture their leadership.
His voice, amplified by the same wind magic his enemies now claimed, cut across the din of the lower battlefield, aimed directly at the embattled King in the sky.
"AENYS TARGARYEN! MAEGOR! You come to our homes with fire and blood, yet you hide behind your beasts like cowards! I am Edric Stark, heir to the North! Send me your champion, or are the Dragon-Lords nothing but fearful children?"
The challenge hung in the air, a direct assault on Targaryen pride.
Aenys, struggling to control Starfyre, ignored it, screaming at his son Aegon to coordinate their fire.
But Maegor, astride the Black Dread, heard it. His head snapped toward the wall, his violet eyes locking onto the lone, ice-blue figure of Edric. Maegor's rage was a physical thing, a furnace of Valyrian superiority and fury. To be called a coward was an offense that would not stand.
"Balerion! Down!" he roared, not asking, but commanding.
The Black Dread, perhaps sensing his rider's bloodlust, folded his wings and descended, ignoring the eagles that scattered before his terrifying approach. He leveled out, a living shadow skimming perhaps fifty feet above the muddy ground in front of the Moat.
"I will tear the ice from your bones!" Maegor bellowed.
He did not wait for Balerion to land. In a move of shocking, superhuman athleticism, Maegor Targaryen, clad in full Valyrian plate armor, leaped from the back of his moving dragon.
He plummeted, a black meteor, and landed on the swampy ground with a sound like a thunderclap. The earth cracked under his sabatons. He rose to his full, terrifying height, drawing his own Valyrian steel blade, his other hand already crackling with the fire magic Visenya had perfected.
"I am Maegor Targaryen," he snarled, his voice a low rumble. "And I accept your challenge."
Seeing his half-brother leap to his potential death, Aenys screamed in frustration. "Maegor! You fool! To the sky, Aegon! To the sky! Get us clear of this swarm!"
Aenys and Aegon, on Starfyre and the wounded Vhagar, pumped their dragons' wings, climbing desperately. They soared higher and higher, punching through the clouds into the thin, freezing altitude where the air was too sparse for the eagles to maneuver effectively.
As predicted, the speed of the eagle riders began to decrease, their non-magical mounts struggling for lift.
"Now!" Aenys shrieked. "All of you! Hunt them down!"
The other five dragons, piloted by Aenys's and Maegor's magically trained children, saw their opening. They surged upward, joining their King. The sky war had now shifted to the dragons' favor. It became a high-altitude hunt, a deadly game of cat and mouse as the eight dragons, now coordinated, began to burn the eagle squadrons one by one from the sky.
While the kings and princes dueled in the sky and on the ground, the true war of armies had reached its breaking point.
The 100,000-man army of the Six Kingdoms charged, their war cries a deafening wall of sound. Spearheading this massive wave were the 800 Dragon Knights, their enhanced bodies moving with terrifying speed through the sucking mud of the causeway.
They reached the main gate of Moat Cailin.
The Dragon Knights did not falter. They brought forth a massive tree stump, a battering ram that required fifty normal men to carry, but was now held by six of their number.
On the walls, the Northern archers loosed volley after volley. Spears and arrows, many tipped with ice or lightning by the magicians, rained from the top.
But the elite guard of the Dragon Knights moved in. They formed a testudo—a shell of massive, rune-etched shields—over the ram team. The arrows and spears shattered against their magically-warded defense, their enhanced strength holding the line without yielding an inch.
At the head of this iron shell, his greathelm shaped like a snarling stag, was Ser Raymont Baratheon, the leader of the Dragon Knights. He was a mountain of a man, embodying the fury of his house, and wielding a warhammer so large it looked less like a weapon and more like a tool of demolition.
He watched the ram, wielded by his strongest knights, slam against the gate.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
The gate shuddered, the enchantments on it flaring with blue light, but it held.
"Pathetic!" Raymont roared, his voice booming even through his helm. "You strike like children! Put your blood into it!"
The Dragon Knights roared and slammed the ram again, this time with the full, explosive force of their ritual-enhanced muscles.
CRACK.
A sound like a breaking bone echoed from the gate. A deep, agonizing creak of the hinges sang through the air.
Ser Raymont grinned, a feral expression of triumph. "It's broken! Stand aside!"
He shoved his own knights away from the ram and stepped forward, lifting his massive warhammer. "The King wants a door!" he bellowed. "I will give him one!"
He swung the hammer.
The first blow struck the center of the gate, and the magical runes protecting it flared and died.
The second blow shattered the massive, iron crossbar.
The third and fourth blows caved in the ironwood, sending splinters the size of lances flying inward.
"ONE MORE!" Raymont roared, putting every ounce of his Baratheon fury and superhuman strength into the final, consecutive blow.
KRA-KOOM!
The entire gate did not just open; it disintegrated, exploding inward in a shower of black wood and shattered iron. The way into the North was open.
"CHARGE!" Raymont bellowed, the first to step through the smoking breach. "SLAY THEM ALL! FOR THE DRAGON!"
The Dragon Knights and the vanguard of the Southron army surged forward, a tide of steel pouring into the dark, tunnel-like gatehouse of Moat Cailin.
But what waited for them was not a phalanx of Northern spearmen.
What waited was a trap.
The moment Ser Raymont and the first three hundred Dragon Knights were inside the gatehouse, the 300 magicians from the Broken Tower acted as one. They had been waiting for this exact moment, their energy pooled, their incantations prepared.
They did not throw fire or ice. They commanded the very ground the fortress was built.
A barrage of Water and Earth spells was unleashed.
From the ceiling and walls of the gatehouse tunnel, pressurized Water Magic did not just drip; it erupted. Geysers of freezing, filthy swamp water blasted the charging knights, blinding them and stealing their footing.
Simultaneously, the Earth Magic struck. The solid stone floor of the gatehouse, the very ground Ser Raymont stood on, turned to liquid. The stone and dirt walls sloughed off, dissolving into a thick, churning slurry.
It was an instant, localized landslide contained within a tunnel. A tidal wave of liquid earth and swamp water formed in the gatehouse, a suffocating, colossal weight of mud.
Ser Raymont Baratheon, for all his superhuman strength, had no enemy to hit. He raised his warhammer, only to feel the ground vanish beneath him. He and his men were picked up by the torrent, their immense strength useless against the sheer tonnage of the magical mudslide.
The mud had nowhere to go but out.
The charging Targaryen army watched in horror as the great breach they had just created vomited.
A massive wave of brown mud exploded outward from the gate, flushing Ser Raymont and his entire vanguard back out onto the causeway. They were thrown like discarded toys, crashing into the ranks of the men charging behind them.
But it didn't stop. The magicians poured more power, and the mud wave rolled over them, a devastating, suffocating tide that instantly created a new, impassable swamp at the foot of the wall.
Men screamed as they were buried. The Dragon Knights, weighed down by their heavy plate armor, sank instantly. Their enhanced strength only allowed them to struggle for a few agonizing moments longer before the thick, heavy mud filled their helms and lungs.
Ser Raymont Baratheon, the mountain of a man, the one who had shattered the unbreachable gate, died not by a sword, but by suffocation, drowned in the very earth he had sought to conquer. Hundreds of the Six Kingdoms' finest soldiers and most of their elite Dragon Knights were dead in an instant, their bodies lost in a churning, artificial swamp.
The charge stopped. The entire 100,000-man army faltered, staring in abject terror at the new, bubbling bog where their vanguard had been.
Then, before their eyes, the magicians performed their final act.
The earth-wielders in the Broken Tower raised their hands. The liquid mud in the breach itself stopped flowing. It began to grind, to harden, to rise. Stone and earth, drawn from the foundations, magically compacted and reformed.
A new wall of solid, crude rock grew from the ground up, sealing the gap Ser Raymont had made. In less than a minute, the breach was gone, replaced by a solid, unscalable slab of newly-formed granite, entombing the last few Dragon Knights who had been caught inside.
The gate was shut.
On the battlements, Torrhen Stark looked down at the silent, muddy tomb of his enemies, then turned his gaze to the center of the field.
There, isolated from both armies, Maegor Targaryen stood alone, his fiery magic crackling in his hand. He had watched the entire horrifying trap unfold, his expression unreadable.
He looked up at Edric Stark, who was already walking down the steps of the embankment to meet him on the field.
The armies were at a stalemate. The sky was a war of its own. But the true battle, the duel of champions, of Fire versus Ice, was about to begin.