Game of Thrones: The Impaler of the Blue Fork

Chapter 43: The Blind Spot Underwater and the Long Winter of Decay

The autumn waters of the Blue Fork River are so cold they can freeze a person's bones.

A torrent of muddy, yellow water cascaded down from upstream. Deep in the riverbed, there was no light. Torren, holding his breath, gripped the rough, calloused wood of the Twin Towers patrol boat with his calloused hands. The force of the current was like that of a mad boar, desperately trying to tear him from the hull.

He swung his short-handled iron hammer in his right hand, striking the wide steel chisel wedged into the gap in the ship's planks. Swinging the hammer underwater significantly reduced its power. Each strike was frantically draining the last breath from his lungs.

Not far to the right, an old soldier nicknamed "Black Fish Head" was chiseling at another leak. But a rusty nail suddenly broke off, and the outward-curving hardwood splinter, like a crocodile's tooth, got stuck in the old soldier's left wrist, which he was using for leverage.

The veteran thrashed about underwater, bubbles escaping from his tightly closed lips. The splinter tightened, his struggles weakened, and his body began to convulse uncontrollably. Within fifteen breaths, his eyes bulged, and copious amounts of yellow fluid flooded his mouth and nose. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth, and his hands slowly fell limp; he drowned in the deep water outside the hold.

No one pulled him out. If he just opened his mouth and exhaled that breath, everyone underwater would have to feed the fish.

"Snap!"

A dull cracking sound came from the heavy planks of the ship in front of Torun. The icy river water, as if finding an outlet, howled and poured into the cabin.

But this tiny noise startled the soldiers in the hold who were used to dealing with water all year round.

"Yellow Tooth" Wald didn't run to the spacious deck. The moment the water reached his ankles, he grabbed a cast iron short sword and, along with three or four tough guys sleeping in the lower deck, headed straight for the leak.

As Toren broke through the baseboard and, biting his dagger, crawled through the gap, a cold, sharp blade darted across the water like a venomous snake in the darkness.

In the waist-deep, muddy water, spears and shields became burdens that made even turning around difficult.

Toren dodged the blade, grabbed the mercenary's hair with his left hand, and plunged the dagger he had been holding in his mouth into the man's neck with his right. But to his left, a Hohenzollern quartermaster responsible for bringing up the rear slipped and stepped on the wet, mossy hold floor.

Yellowtooth Wald seized the opportunity. He pounced like a wild dog, his short sword plunging diagonally into the centurion's ribs without resistance, piercing straight through his internal organs.

The captain let out a piercing scream, and his blood stained the rising water in the hold a glaring dark red.

"Kill these bastards!" Wald roared in chest-deep water.

Toren didn't look at his fallen brother. He drew the tattered battle axe with a wooden handle wrapped in rags from his waist and, taking advantage of the ship's tilt, lunged at Wald from above.

The axe blade smashed the hilt of the short sword Wald used to parry, and then cleaved half of his jaw open. Wald fell backward into the surging river water, half his head smeared together. Without any hesitation, Toren nailed the machete, wrapped in tattered cloth, to the supporting pillar of the ship's hull.

He stripped the uniform off the dead sergeant and put the red and black armor pieces he had picked up a few days earlier over the gradually cooling corpse.

The boat began to capsize violently to starboard. The water was over our heads.

Early morning. The heavy rain finally stopped, and the sky began to lighten with a pale, fish-belly glow.

The north wind swept across the mudflats, freezing the reeds until a layer of ghastly white frost formed on their leaves. Along the edge of the shallow waters of the inner bay, numerous pieces of broken planks, empty wine barrels, and more than thirty bloated corpses floated.

Blackfish Brinden stood on the muddy ground at the edge of the mudflats. His tall, chestnut warhorse snorted behind him. The old knight's eagle eyes, which had seen through countless conspiracies, swept coldly across the murky water.

He saw the broken axe firmly nailed to the driftwood, wrapped in tattered cloth from the Blackwood family; he also saw the mangled face of Yellowtooth Wald, who had been dragged ashore; and the swollen, deformed corpses of routed soldiers in the hold.

Otto stood beside him. The rough linen bandages still bound his left arm tightly to his chest. His face was pale, but his back remained straight in the cold wind.

The blackfish crushed half a paddle at its feet, its voice like sandpaper scraping against cast iron.

"But in Duke Horst's records, it's just enough to shut up the Frey family's foul mouth that wants to make a fuss. The Twins' dogs had their necks bitten off during the Red Fork's nighttime looting frenzy, and their boats were buried at the bottom of the sea. This unsolved case is enough for old Walder to smash several wooden tables in the Twin Towers."

Otto watched as Blackfish mounted his horse and spoke, his voice carrying the chill of the earth.

"Now that the trouble has been washed away by the water, when will the charter be hung on this stone tower? Lord Brynden, the Riverrun contract shouldn't be delayed even longer than this autumn rain."

The black fish looked down at the nineteen-year-old and coldly tightened the leather reins.

"The Duke's seal is never transferred in private. To confer a baronship and designate a defensive territory, one must go through the deliberations of the maesters and the wrangling of the vassals in the council hall of Riverrun. You must smooth over all those obstacles one by one."

The warhorse pawed restlessly at the muddy ground.

"From here to Riverrun, even a fast horse would take four days and four nights. By the time I return to the hall, the Duke will have finalized the legal code, and the official envoy's entourage will have already made its way to this river bend along the main road."

Blackfish pulled his hood down further.

"You'll have to endure at least a month and a half of the Frey family's hatred and the interrogation from the Sea Frontier City. I hope your gray walls don't let in a draft, little knight."

The chestnut warhorse galloped away, kicking up dust, and soon disappeared into the howling north wind.

Otto stood on the mudflats.

Forty-eight days. In this secluded valley, time became a torture instrument even more dull and heavy than the iron-willed swords and axes.

The real disaster didn't begin with the enemy's bugle call, but with the mold at the bottom of the granary.

Ten days after the Blackfish left, the temperature plummeted. Although it wasn't yet the dead of winter, the continuous, damp, and toxic autumn rains had turned the Hohenzollern territory into a sealed fermentation vat.

Colorful, poisonous mushrooms began to grow on the wood. The old oats that were originally stored in the dry well, despite the quicklime that isolated them from the groundwater, could not withstand the pervasive moisture in the air, and the hundreds of pounds of oats on the outside formed a sour, foul-smelling hard lump.

Even more fatal was the disruption of food supplies.

Old Walder Frey was furious because an entire ship full of people had died. Instead of sending troops, he directly blocked the flow of refugees and merchants along the northern waterways.

Earl Jason of Seafront City was no fool. He keenly sensed the stench of Otto wagging his tail at the Tully family. In order to control this disobedient dog, he used "autumn defense preparations" as a pretext to completely cut off the official road supplying Otto with cheap wrought iron and coarse grain.

The once satiating settlement of 450 people has become a rusty file due to the high daily food rations consumed without any income.

By the thirtieth day, the atmosphere within the gray stone walls had been pushed to the brink of explosion.

Inside the isolation shed for wounded soldiers, the stench was even stronger than that of a latrine.

The steward, Pollifer, stood before the iron pot of porridge, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling like leaves. He stared at the grain reserves recorded on the wooden board; the line representing the bottom line had been pierced. If the ration of one pound per person per day continued, the entire territory would descend into cannibalism in less than half a month.

Pollifer glanced at the wooden barrel next to him that held waste, gritted his teeth, grabbed two large handfuls of fine slag mixed with dry mud and even some moldy sawdust, and without hesitation threw them into the iron pot that was specially made for severely injured and disabled farmers.

"Lord Pollifer... why is my stomach getting more and more bloated the more I drink this porridge? I can't poop... it hurts..."

The feverish soldiers lay on damp straw mats, their bellies swollen like sheepskin drums about to be pounded open. The moldy wheat, mixed with white clay and mud, was indigestible and stuck tightly in their stomachs.

Within five days, four severely wounded militiamen, who were already struggling for their lives, died, their bellies swollen like drums, vomiting yellow fluid.

When Otto examined the body as it was being carried out of the south gate, he saw the abdomen that was swollen like a drum.

He did not hang Pollifer from the stake.

Evening of the forty-third day.

A light drizzle mixed with snow began to fall from the sky.

Instructor Torun, accompanied by a dozen or so veterans clad in armored suits, kicked open the longhouse door. These old soldiers, who usually treated military orders as gospel, now had a fierce, hungry glint in their eyes.

Several sores formed on the soles of their feet, and green mold grew on the hemp clothing beneath their fish-scale armor.

Toren's hand was pressed tightly on the hilt of his sword, the broken blade scraping against the scabbard with a piercing sound. He stared at Otto, who was sitting in the main seat arranging his knives.

"My lord! Our brothers fought alongside you, risking their lives underwater and battling halberdiers in the mud, not to starve to death inside these stone walls!"

Toren's voice was rough, carrying a sense of desperate urgency.

"Even the mice won't eat the oats in the storeroom. But in that cellar, there are those three huge chests of silver we've painstakingly smuggled! Open the cellar, let us bribe the smugglers in Braavos for some food to survive. If we don't even see a hot piece of meat today, the brothers will have torn down the black eagle flag on the wall tomorrow morning to make a fire for warmth!"

Polliver was so frightened that he huddled behind the stone pillar, barely daring to breathe.

Otto did not stand up. Prolonged salt deprivation had given his skin an unhealthy, deathly gray hue. His eyes, however, resembled two black iron nails submerged in ice water.

"Draw your sword."

Otto uttered only two words, casually tossing the whetstone on the table.

One of the most hot-tempered quartermasters beside Toren, unable to tolerate such contempt, roared and drew half a broadsword: "Who do you think you are! You're nothing but a broken knight weaned off by the Sea Frontier City..."

Before he could finish speaking...

Otto, like a bowstring taut for months, didn't draw his sword. Instead, he grabbed the heavy cast-iron wine jug on the table and lunged forward.

Before the centurion could even raise his sword, Otto had already slammed into his arms, ignoring the broadsword that sliced ​​open his thigh. The cast-iron flask, carrying the force of his entire charge, smashed into the lower half of the centurion's face.

A sharp, tooth-cracking sound, like bone breaking.

The sergeant's four or five blood-stained molars, along with his shattered jawbone, were smashed onto the dirty stone floor. He screamed in agony, clutching his face as he collapsed, blood gushing out.

Otto did not retreat; he faced Toren and the remaining bewildered old soldiers. His abdomen heaved, and his right hand still held the blood-dripping iron kettle.

"Gouge out those eyeballs and take a good look. What are you standing on!"

Otto let out a hoarse growl, like a trapped animal guarding its food.

"If we touch that dark silver, the Frey family can use the pretext of breach of contract to send their army through this gate tomorrow! The city of Haijiang will then use this to solidify my crime of amassing wealth through military force—a capital offense! The foundation I built with my life isn't meant to feed you bunch of scoundrels who only care about a meal or two!"

"Anyone who dares to utter a single word about the cellar again, I'll make soup out of their intestines first!"

Toren swallowed hard, loosened his grip on the sword, and dragged his wailing second-in-command out of the longhouse.

But that last breath had been worn down to a thread.

On the morning of the forty-eighth day.

The autumn chill was biting. The soil was frozen solid, like cracked iron plates. A thick fog blocked the entire riverbed.

Otto sat atop the ruins, his lips frozen purple. The blood-grooved dagger in his hand rested on his lap, unsharpened for days. The four hundred-odd men inside the city walls were starving; they had even secretly cut the hemp ropes used for flood control to boil water for sustenance.

Just at the last moment when the desperate situation was about to close.

"Thump—! Thump—!"

The broken bronze bell at the top of the watchtower was struck as if by a madwoman.

The riverbed was shrouded in a thick fog.

A large, three-story sailing ship with a huge draft and equipped with rams and heavy crossbows on both sides, parted the water mist.

A group of heavily armored knights, clad in magnificent and imposing scale armor and bearing bright red and blue wavy markings on their chests, stood like a row of cold iron pillars on both sides of the bulwark.

At the very top of the mainmast, a huge, two-tone flag of leaping silver trout billowed violently in the cold autumn wind.

The official envoy ship of Riverrun finally docked at the log bridge stained with dried, dark blood.

Otto Hohenzollern slowly straightened up, supporting himself with his numb left leg.

Snow and wind are coming.