The Aftermath

Suleiman did not answer the soldiers' cries.

He was exhausted.

He had to make sure the battle was truly over.

Suleiman gripped the railing of the wooden wall.

He looked out.

The cold, raging river swallowed

the Wildlings who, only moments earlier, had been fighting desperately against him and his men.

The Wildlings waved their weapons, struggling in the water.

They drove their weapons into the mud, trying to keep from being swept away.

But the swift current easily sapped their strength.

It carried them away or dragged them straight beneath the water.

Some Wildlings had managed to climb to higher ground and stand on rocks.

But they were soon submerged by the steadily rising water.

The entire valley had become a vast floodplain.

"Soldiers! Throw your spears! Archers! Loose!" Suleiman stood on high ground, continuing to issue orders with an impassive face. "Shoot anyone still thrashing in the water! Every last one!"

"Yes!" The soldiers, drenched in blood, gritted their teeth and showed no mercy.

The flood swept across the battlefield, carrying away blood, bodies, everything.

Suleiman's soldiers, firing mercilessly from high ground, took away the Wildlings' last hope of survival.

"It's over, Lord Suleiman." Roslyn stood beside him, watching him struggle to stay upright. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and her voice was hoarse.

Suleiman said nothing. He simply stared down below.

The prolonged tension and fierce fighting had finally come to an end.

An indescribable weariness surged through him like a tide.

It swept over his whole body.

"Good work, Lushen! Good work, brothers!" Suleiman said quietly.

His body swayed. The scene before him began to blur, and he fell backward.

He thought he would hit the hard wooden planks, but the expected pain never came.

A pair of strong arms caught him in time.

Roslyn had caught him.

Suleiman fell into a deep sleep.

Bronn limped toward Suleiman.

"Shing!"

"Protect Lord Suleiman!" Roslyn immediately tensed, warily watching Bronn.

The soldiers drew their longswords and pointed them at him.

Bronn was covered in blood, limping, his clothes and armor in tatters.

His face and body were covered in wounds of all sizes, some still oozing blood.

His bloodshot eyes belonged to a wounded, lone wolf, and held an indescribably complicated emotion.

He looked as if he had returned from hell!

He approached one slow, heavy step at a time.

His strength and appearance put immense pressure on the soldiers.

But none of them backed down.

When a man is about to die, he speaks the truth.

As Suleiman faced death, he had told them, "Brothers! To die alongside you is an honor for me, Suleiman!"

He had proven himself.

Not as a nobleman.

Bronn ignored them, his gaze fixed on Suleiman the entire time.

The soldiers around him began breathing faster, tightening their grips on their weapons.

Though this mercenary had contributed greatly in the earlier battle, if he had not held that door shut,

buying them precious time to reach the gate, the battle might have turned out very differently.

Bronn bared his teeth, stained red with blood. His smile looked worse than a grimace.

He looked more like a demon just returned from hell!

He slowly raised the longsword in his hand. Its blade was caked with dried blood and mud.

As the soldiers watched tensely, Bronn suddenly drove the sword hard into the plank in front of him.

"Thud!"

The blade sank halfway in, the lower half quivering in the wood.

"Tell—Su—lei—man!" Bronn gritted his teeth. "I want payment for every one of your lives! His included!"

"Or this isn't over!"

With that, he suddenly yanked a dagger from a nearby soldier.

He vaulted over the railing and leaped into the water.

He moved so quickly that the soldier whose belt he had taken the dagger from only realized what had happened afterward.

No one knew what he was trying to do.

The soldiers crowded around the wooden railing, puzzled.

But their confusion lasted only a moment.

Blood-red stains soon surfaced on the water, along with several Wildling heads rising from the bloody current.

The soldiers couldn't tell Wildlings apart.

But they could see that these heads seemed to belong to the tallest and strongest of them.

With the short dagger clenched in his teeth, Bronn slowly swam back, gripping the Wildling heads by their hair with both hands.

Then he climbed the wooden wall and threw the heads down in front of the soldiers.

He kicked one of the heads toward a soldier.

"Tell Suleiman!" Bronn tossed the dagger back to the soldier. "I killed all three Wildling clan chiefs!"

"Don't leave out a single word!!!"

The High Mountain Clans' Wildling camp outside Valleydeep Town.

Timett Son of Timett stared fixedly at the Wildlings trying to scale the city walls.

One after another, they were knocked down by the defenders above.

He was growing impatient.

He felt as if he was running out of time.

He had originally planned to slowly replenish his supplies with Wildling bands scattered across the countryside, raiding for food.

Then he would starve the Flatlanders behind those stone walls to death.

But one raiding party after another had gone missing.

Of course, he knew that Flatlander troops must be hunting them.

The first to disappear had been several Burned Men bands.

But he couldn't afford to let that happen. He had to keep the various tribes together.

Until they took that damned stone city wall!

Yet the divided tribes had still given their enemy an opening!

His warriors were few! Exhausted! Wounded all over!

Timett Son of Timett gripped the sword at his waist, staring intently at Valleydeep Town!

The castle was like a nail driven into the boundary between the mountains and the plains.

If they all went around it, then the moment something went wrong,

they would be unable to return to the High Mountains.

This place was the coffin nail trapping his tribe!

He had a terrible premonition.

It made him deeply, deeply uneasy.

He didn't know where this damned unease came from.

He thought of the three tribes that had gone out to raid.

They seemed to have vanished without a trace!

He could be sure those fools were done for!

"This isn't what those damned Flatlanders in Valleydeep told me!" Timett Son of Timett drew the sword at his waist and shouted angrily.

"I told you from the start, Timett Son of Timett! You can't trust them!" Chella daughter of Chek from the Black Ears Tribe said darkly. "Flatlanders are all deceitful, treacherous, and vicious!"

"They were even willing to provide us with supplies so we could raid their own people!"

"Can you trust people like that?!"

Chella daughter of Chek's words only made Timett Son of Timett angrier.

Leaving aside the elderly and children who had not joined the raids, along with the warriors left behind in the High Mountains,

the missing members of the High Mountain Clans amounted to nearly half their tribes!

The High Mountain Clans had always been few in number!

If those who had vanished were already dead,

then they had lost half their people this time!

All of them were adults in their prime!

To wipe out more than five hundred of their people without a single one returning,

the Flatlanders must have had at least a thousand elite warriors to do it! Perhaps even knights in iron armor!

And yet those Flatlanders in the valley had told him

that all the Flatlanders on the plains had gone to fight the Free Folk coming from across the sea!

"Arghhh—!!" Timett Son of Timett drew his longsword and slashed at a nearby tree. "Lies! Lies from beginning to end!"

The tree snapped in two!