The ice and wind came first, frantic humans running in to bar the gates leaving their own kind locked out.
Good. More meat. He didn't have time for letting the wights do things naturally to raise the remains. To those on the inside. There was a cloud of mist, silence - and suddenly everyone on the other side were no longer on the side on the living.
Really, he just had to focus a tiny bit, quick clean deaths -instant soldiers in relatively good condition.
The wights descended tearing up the living with what looked like chaos and mayhem.
But they had did have a goal, kill everyone who wasn't Edaline - he would sort it out later.
Several things about Jon's behavior caught his attention - firstly because he really was as flawlessly heroic as Eda described, coming back over and over to face certain death to get more children and women out.
It would almost be a pity to kill him and his shiny ideals.
Secondly, if Jon was coming back for others - Edaline must already be safe in one of the boats.
And the King realized three things in his cold calculating mind and hated them all.
He couldn't sink any of the boats - he didn't know which had Eda and couldn't risk it.
— So he bid the dead to stop at the shore.
If soft human Edaline was truly injured humans needed to care for her.
— Short of raising her as a wight, he had no powers to take pain or heal her.
And last, that burned him most of all:
—Her wretched "brother" really was the best person to keep her safe during this state.
He walked up to the end of the docks completely ignoring the massacre occurring around them.
He stopped at the edge and stared down Jon Snow - the youngest commander of the Night's Watch ever elected, with all the coldness and hatred of winter and thousands of years of solitude.
If Jon possessed even a fraction of the seer gifts his sister or brother did, he would have heard loud and clear in his mind the Night King say - in a voice as cold as the ice falling around him.
"It must be your lucky day little bastard pup, your life just became immensely more valuable to me"
With that, he raised his arms and with one move - his army doubled in size