Florian and Florian's smithy had grown in leaps and bounds over the past two months. Where once the two smiths had worked alone on custom orders from nobles and had four helpers for grunt work, now two dozen people toiled under the gimlet stare of the gruffer of the two Florian brothers. The smithy itself had been considerably expanded, three secondary forges built in a half-open style while some of the surrounding forest at the city's southern edge had been cleared for new storage and a small watermill running off one of the streams coming down from the nearby forested hills. The mill powered both the air pumps to the main forge and, when needed, the new wire-drawer. Mail armor needed a lot of chain links and the Florian brothers had recently gained well over a hundred new clients.
"Good morrow, Florian," I greeted the more outgoing twin as I entered the main building where he was working on a very familiar piece of mail. Then because I couldn't help myself I added; "Jed said it's ready. Can I see?"
"Good morror, lady Be-" the white-haired Lyseni smith trailed off as he looked up at me in surprise and dismay. "No! Not another growth spurt!" he blurted, eyes wide.
"I am the right age for it," I shot back primly and he winced... because it meant more work for him. "Good news is, I'm fairly confident it's the last one. I'm taller than both my parents ever were now and the last month was more about bulk than height." It was the truth, from a certain point of view. What my awareness of my own body through Sorcery could tell was that the tipping point of growth in size outpacing growth in strength had been reached and if no agility was to be lost, any improvements would come through quality and magical enhancement more than further growth.
"Lass, I've seen weeds sprout slower than you," the smith commented with a sigh and handed over a glove of fine metal links over layers of padding and leather in resignation. The underside of the fingers was not covered in steel to offer a better grip and allow for fine manipulation, while steel plating had been added over the joints, a thicker bar just over the knuckles and another plate over the back of the hand. All in all it was a very finely made brigantine gauntlet, like all of Florian's personal projects. "Well, what are you waiting for? Put it on!"
As eager as the smith to test his latest work, I did just that and immediately found the glove fitting my hand snugly. I closed my fist, the brigantine flexing with a creak and only a little bit of tightness over my fingers. The glove was a hair smaller than a perfect fit, but still perfectly serviceable. "You were right," I admitted to the experienced smith. "If we'd gone for plate or even mail it would have been a waste but this will do for now."
"There's a reason most young squires don't get proper plate until they're knighted and fully grown to boot," he told me while retrieving more pieces of brigantine for me to wear. "Not unless they have the wealth and time to waste on getting a new suit twice a year. You will be limited to armor types where perfect fitting is less important for mobility, my lady."
"Fine," I grumbled. If it couldn't be done then it couldn't be done. "What about the other projects?"
"Some successes, some failures," the smith told me, then we both blinked as something exploded in one of the smaller forges followed by loud cursing from Florian's twin as he emptied a bucket of water on one of the aides whose apron had caught on fire.
"That's one of the failures, I take it?" I asked sotto voce.
"The young are always reckless," the older man shot back with a judgemental stare. "It doesn't help that mine and my brother's blood is pure but theirs is not. Especially when they try to copy how we do things despite being told not to." . Some of the Florian brothers' success came from the minor gifts of their heritage. They might not be able to handle molten metal or rock as I could, or even open flame, but could shrug off sparks and what had to be an oppressive heat from the smithy did not seem to bother them much. Teenagers trying to copy them... yeah, I could see how that could lead to issues.
We got into one of the secure storage rooms, a thick iron-bound door and windowless walls protecting the contents much like a medieval bank vault did money - and for similar reasons. More expensive materials like silver, gold and even gems were kept in strongboxes here, as well as finished custom orders for nobles and merchant princes such as silvered armor and weapons, gem-adorned helmets and golden breastplates. In a corner of the storeroom inside a plain-looking strongbox were pieces of almost normal-looking mail and even plate. Compared to every other piece around them they were not just plain-looking but downright scruffy, the metal as dull as plain iron and with a slight brownish tint as if from the first touches of rust.
"You did make it work, then?" I asked, even more eager than I'd been to put on my first set of armor. I picked one of the metal pieces that looked more like cast iron than steel, an oddly patterned breastplate. The cool to the touch metal plate didn't look like much but I knew better. Just the fact that the pieces were kept here meant Florian had been successful.
"If by 'work' you mean it took thrice the effort and five times the fuel to forge them then yes," he said sourly. "It would take forever to make enough for the whole sell-sword company. Not unless we brought in more hands... but I thought you wanted them kept secret?"
"For now," I told him then held the breastplate over the lit torch Florian was using for light. It wasn't necessary, but the Florian brothers were far less sanguine about overt displays of magic than my greater strength or heat resistance. After a good three minutes over the torch I pulled the plate back and touched it; the metal had only begun to warm up. "Did you test it?"
"From dawn to dusk under the sun. It never heated much, not even at midday." The older smith shook his head in incredulity. "Only time I saw the like was in a sword of Valyrian steel. Never thought I'd forge something out of legend but now..."
"Valyrian steel would shrug off the flame of dragons," I snorted in response. "This is just steel with a tiny bit of magic, even your little forge can melt it and it isn't much stronger either." In fact it was just a weaker version of the heat-resistance spell I'd used to catch flowers in molten quartz. A small sacrifice of my blood in the crucible had let me infuse the spell permanently as the steel formed, much like I'd made permanent glowing crystals and that healing artifact for Lord Manderly.
"A tiny bit of magic is still magic," Florian told me with an air of trying to explain some complex meaning to someone that wasn't getting it. "The stuff of legends and you use it for armor that won't heat up in the sun!"
"Wearing plate under the sun sucks. The only army in the Disputed Lands that does it is the Golden Company and only for their knights. Even they limit their infantry to lighter gear, and even lighter armor can be uncomfortable on a warm day." I put the breastplate back in the strongbox. "A company that could wear plate without being worn down by heat or losing time to put it on and off between fights would near double in effectiveness."
"Maybe, but it'll have three times the cost and my brother and I can't make enough for your men." He crossed his arms. "We can have six suits ready by the end of the year, maybe twice as many if the older apprentices shape up. You'll need ten times as many craftsmen to get anything done."
"You're right... but this city is home to forty companies and even more independent sell-swords. An army of craftsmen is needed to service them..." I mused as I thought the problem over. My problem was that I'd been thinking too small. The time, resources and logistics of setting up a new sellsword company from the ground-up were proving a massive investment, even with the backing of a certain merchant prince. Both my magic here and technology back on Earth had made most projects go by far more quickly than even the most skilled people on Martin's world could manage on their own so I'd greatly miscalculated on what would be needed to shape a couple hundred men into a professional fighting unit. No wonder kings and lords expected everyone to bring their own arms rather than providing them themselves. "Do you know of any smiths that had to retire due to injury or illness? Preferably skilled ones."
"Neither I nor my brother are ones for gossip, lady Belaerys," the older man said, settling back into a more formal tone. "Our smithy is here at the edge of the city for a reason. Your highborn contacts would know more, perhaps?" he suggested.
"Fair enough." If the man wanted to remain as uninvolved as possible, that was the kind of decision I could respect. His suggestion also had merit; other than another smith the ones more likely to know of the kind of people I was looking for would be one of their more important clients, someone who brought a lot of business to many smithies. Since quartermasters of rival mercenary companies were unlikely to offer help, there was only one contact that would work. Closing my eyes for a minute I focused beyond the storage room, beyond Florian's smithy and into the city proper. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the more talkative Florian brother.
"Now let's talk about the other projects..."
xxxx
In one of the grandest mansions in the city of Lys, a sprawling seaside complex of marble and granite that would have made a resort by itself, a crowd of workers, sailors, servants, artisans and specialists scurried around like a kicked ant colony despite the relatively early hour. Dozens of types of merchandise were loaded to or unloaded from carts and wagons, from grains and pottery, to spices, cosmetics and precious metals. Many of the wagons came from the harbor where Lysene ships carried merchandise from every corner of the world, while just as many delivered their loads to the many businesses and workshops of the city. Supervisors and quartermasters carefully catalogued and tallied tons of cargo every hour, their accounts carefully copied by scribes and sent in bundles of reports to higher-ups. Children too young for proper work served as runners, taking back reports or summary lists and bringing in new orders at an almost frenetic pace.
It was organized chaos at its best and worst, a major merchant House going all-out to take advantage of golden opportunities... or preparing for great disasters. The mere fact that such a mansion had been converted into a business headquarters was... not quite unheard of in the history of Lys but it spoke of luxury taking a second or even third place behind volume of activity and efficiency. Not since the rise and fall of House Rogare had such a thing been witnessed and for the more laid-back Lyseni seeing it it would have been cause for worry... if such worries had not already been spreading in the high society of Lys the Lovely.
As the ultimate organizer and director of the entire merchant House's activity, Tregar Ormollen was a very busy man and the changes in his appearance showed it. His once lustrous, perfectly combed white-gold hair looked a bit disheveled these past few months, his golden skin ever so slightly paler than normal, his elaborate silken robes adorned with topaz and diamond replaced by high quality but more mundane work clothes as he toiled for longer hours than any merchant prince had in living memory.
In many ways, he'd never felt so alive and powerful. His House and businesses were making more profits than ever before, undercutting the deals of their rivals, buying out floundering businesses owned by people dangerously close to defaulting on their debts, predicting the rising needs of the city's mobilizing sellsword companies well ahead of anyone else and, most importantly, not losing any of their ships and people to the recent attacks. It was the power that came from having spies inside rival merchant Houses without anyone being able to see them as spies at all, from knowing when the next ship that went out to raid and plunder would not be returning and who would be hit the most by the loss.
It had become clear to all the merchant princes now that the city of Lys was under attack. A raider or slaver galley lost every week might not mean much against the total Lysene fleet of over a thousand, but after several months of such attacks the impact to both the economy and the city's prestige was beginning to be felt. As it became more and more certain through the inability of anyone's spies to find either witnesses or survivors in other ports that the attacks happened in the open sea and the ships were being destroyed rather than reappearing elsewhere under the control of pirates or rival merchants, the Council of Magisters had decided this was a concerted effort from a rival polity to undermine their city. As usual, Myr and Tyrosh were the primary suspects, with Braavos a strong contender due to the nature of the vessels lost and the recent Braavosi advances down the river Rhoyne. And if their enemies were undermining their city, Lys had to retaliate or risk falling behind in both power and influence - thus the recent mobilization of multiple sell-sword companies.
But behind his great successes, the gains of House Ormollen and easy victories over several rivals, the expansion of their operations despite their abandonment of the slave trade, Tregar also lived in fear. Fear of the ultimate source of the attacks pushing towards a war. Fear of the spider at the heart of the unseen spy network that brought him the proprietary information that so greatly had advanced House Ormollen's finances. Fear of the eyes upon him every hour of every day and his inability to do anything about them despite his increasing power and wealth. For Tregar Ormollen had found there were powers greater than wealth, subtler than knives in the dark, more terrible than death or his worst nightmares.
"Kra! You got mail!" the parrot in the golden-plated cage next to his desk said, breaking him out of his brooding. "Kra! Find smiths who retired due to injury or disease. Kra! Send them by the staging grounds. Kra! Be discreet!" The bird ruffled its feathers then twisted its head in that way that Tregar had always found disconcerting, once, twice, three times. "Kra! Feed the bird! Feed the bird! Pineapple! Rice! Bacon!"
The merchant prince scowled angrily at the winged menace, then froze as amusement that was not his own blossomed at the back of his mind. That! That was the reason that Tregar could not be happy for all his gains of power and wealth, for all the new and expanding business. His first true error in well over a decade and perhaps the greatest in his life had changed said life and Tregar's place in the world irrevocably. But how could he have known? How could he have guessed that the young Valyrian gem merchant who had seemed such an easy target, who had only ever been seen with a pair of guards, had in reality been the sorceress behind these new upheavals? Instead of Tregar gaining a new influx of wealth or perhaps another pawn and bedwarmer grateful for her life being saved from poison through Tregar's generous help, he had become the pawn in turn. For the first time in his very privileged life he knew how it felt to be in chains not of the body, but of the mind.
As the amusement of his distant mistress turned to satisfaction, the merchant prince fearfully turned back to his work of running House Ormollen, of doing as he had been bid. If he did not she would know and he would be punished. If he made plans to escape or warn others she would know as well, and the punishment would be worse. He had only needed to see the sorceresse's walking dead guards, witness a severed hand still moving only once to understand what his fate would be if he opposed her, and Tregar had no desire to walk the world as a soulless inhuman thing forever barred from the afterlife. For his good service he'd been promised he could still live in luxury and die as a man in the end and he had no desire to risk either now that he knew such things for the great privileges they were...
As one of the wealthiest Houses of Lys, House Ormollen had many lands to their name across the island and beyond. Like the vast majority of the most beautiful resort in the world, Ormollen lands included beautifully landscaped waterfronts, pristine-seeming but in reality carefully curated forests where rare herbs were grown, plantations and fields to produce exquisite quality foodstuffs for the rich or to export abroad. The rocky, barren, weatherworn strip of land in the southwestern point of the island was not one of them.
The place was a dry, hot, hilly area two miles long and half a mile across where once grey and pink granite had been quarried when the city was being built but, due to being nearly eighty miles away from the city proper had long since been abandoned in favor of imported construction material after the city's completion. Spiky shrubs and tufts of weeds sprouted from cracks in the rock, gravel crunched underfoot, south winds howling over the cliffs leading to the ancient port below hurled sand and dust all around, and old storage buildings scraped down to bare stone had been left unattended for centuries. All in all it was a largely useless place to the beauty-worshipping Lyseni, a patch of land that produced nothing of worth far from anywhere the locals travelled. In short it was the perfect place to gather and train a mercenary company undisturbed.
As the sun peeked over the horizon, sunlight shone down on row upon row of near-identical tents, six lines of five tents each. Groups of six men came out of every tent, four of them putting on pieces of light armor appropriate for the terrain and rising heat, the other two busying themselves with packing up, snuffing out and burying campfires still lit after the night, striking tents and generally going through all the business of preparing a camp to march. While two thirds of the men picked up training weapons and went through morning drills under the gimlet eye of older warriors, the remaining third packed everything into two-wheeled, two-handled small wagons, two for each tent. Then they grabbed said carts by the handle and started pulling them along as they started lapping the drilling field at the pace set by the older warriors - around one hundred and sixteen beats a minute, each step roughly thirty inches.
The wight picked up the handles of the cart I'd been sitting on once more, then started running down the broken road at a marathon runner's pace with the tireless, implacable gait of the undead. With the strength of three men and no need to eat, drink, rest, or even breathe, the only reason we had not made the trip from the city in less than five hours had been the dismal state of the road. I'd spent most of those five hours spying on the city, flitting from bird to bird and rat to rat, dogs, cats, even the occasional elephant. All creatures I'd warged before and easy to return to, without any other wargs around to contest me, the work of a few minutes to slip my mind's shadow into their own and pick up their memories. It was a strain to do so from such a distance but I had been improving... and there wasn't much else to do during the trip.
Of the two tents' worth of men - a dozen total - standing guard instead of participating in the training or camp activities, only three noticed my approach in the early morning light. Their eyes widened and they stood upright, almost at attention; though that had not been one of the concepts I'd introduced, it was almost universal where powerful people and hapless underlings were involved.
"Don't bother," I told the guy about to wake up his fellow soldiers sleeping on their posts, my voice bridging the span of a couple hundred yards and causing him to flinch. "You all messed up enough overnight to earn an extra hour of training." His shoulders slumped as he knew very well arguing wouldn't get him anywhere. The last two times there had been complaints I'd just recited all the times those guards had abandoned their post as well as the reasons for it. Nothing like the woman handing out the paychecks knowing when you went AWOL for a handjob to promote discipline out of sheer embarrassment. "Report yourselves to your line leader after your guard shift is over."
"Yes, my lady," the guard muttered as I leaped off the wagon, gravel crunching under my armoured boots. I also picked up my spear, strapped my unstrung bow to my back, a full quiver over my right hip and marched towards the drilling ground.
Two months. That was how long the majority of the soldiers I'd personally recruited had spent in this training camp away from the luxuries of the city, under the harsh training conditions I had intentionally designed. In the beginning I had thought to spend more time with the men, to have the training done closer to the city proper. Unfortunately, the reality of medieval armies and the quality of the men available meant that such training was not going to work, not with the men drinking and whoring every night. Every one of the veteran recruits had signed up for a year after being healed but not even the prospect of restored health and magical healing had stopped a lifetime of poor discipline from causing problems.
Thus... boot camp. Some ideas cribbed from modern military training, lots from the Roman legions, with some extras only possible through magic sprinkled in for flavor. The removal of temptations by moving the camp to the remotest place in the island combined with increasingly harsh - for medieval sell swords - training and privacy violations through animal spies had led to other problems... problems like the one I'd need to address today, but in general things were improving.
Standing a bit away from the drilling recruits and going through sword-fighting forms they could not hope to match while keeping an eye on them was the burly, sweaty form of Jorah Mormont. Even without his plate and with months to get used to the different climate the man was huffing and red in the face, but he persevered. At nine and thirty years old, the former lord of Bear Island was older than the average age of recruits even with them being all veterans and far from his cold, windy home near the Bay of Ice, yet he persevered. He was still in better shape than most of them, though the difference was not nearly as much as between knights and levies back on Westeros, and his pride would not allow him to prove less capable than "mercenary rabble" any more than it had let him admit his marriage or financial problems. At least this time said character flaw was pushing him to improve rather than dragging him down.
"Lady Belaerys," he greeted me without stopping his practice, going through the motions of a parry from high guard then turning into a lunge that to most observers would seem like a blur of speed. Whatever else the man might be, at least he wasn't slow. "What news from the city?"
"I'll be bringing another batch of recruits for you to evaluate next week." Gone were the days of sending individual soldiers to the camp, and not just because the distance from the city had increased. "Your wife is also settling into her position of running Ormollen's finances. She is quite talented." The wielding of wealth in meaningful contribution to her husband's work also kept the woman both relatively happy and out of trouble while I thought how to best introduce her to magic. Two months and I still wasn't sure how to start training someone with zero magical experience; none of the memories gained from my visions had been about true beginners.
Jorah grunted in displeasure as his next lunge went an inch or two off his imaginary opponent's head. A barely noticeable slip to me, a completely ruined move against an opponent in armour with few gaps to exploit. That the man was obviously displeased about the distance from his wife only made the slip worse in his mind. Tough. If he wanted idyllic married life he should never have gone for a woman so far above his station he could not support her lifestyle nor ruined his lordship by selling people into slavery.
"Any news on your end?" I asked, more to engage him in conversation than anything.
"We got another batch of troublemakers," he grunted after another parry, this one from low guard that evolved into a half-swording pommel strike against a shadow opponent's helmet. "Toreo caught them planning an outing to the nearest town the day before yesterday," he said, referring to one of the 'line leaders', leutenant equivalents in charge of thirty men each. "He's had them on extra drills since then but they've only gotten worse." The six most disciplined, most competent veterans among the first hundred had been awarded the rank after the first two chaotic weeks full of dismal yet expected conduct; that decision had paid off ever since. Unfortunately, it was far from a fix to all our problems.
"Tell me about our new mischief makers," I asked as I stood to face him, spear raised in challenge. He raised an eyebrow, then frowned when he noticed he was looking up at me. My four-inch 'growth spurts' put me at nearly half a foot taller than the exiled lord now when before we had been very nearly even. He still outweighed me by a good seventy pounds, the solidity of adulthood, his sex and a lifetime of training and war giving him an advantage over my more slender youthful frame. But that advantage wasn't what he thought it was and more than just the newer recruits needed a wake-up call.
The lunge was slow, half-hearted and came at my center of mass rather than my throat or head. Held in a two-handed grip, my spear shot out in a lightning fast sweep in response, knocking the lighter weapon way off-course and the exiled knight out of balance. Using the momentum shift of that impact I circled the spear up faster than he could respond, rapping him over the head with the flat of the spear tip just hard enough to stagger. Then I drew the spear back and thrust once, twice, both times holding back so the tip just kissed his neck as he flailed, not piercing his leather gorget.
"Tell me about our troublemakers," I asked again as he gaped, pretending nothing unusual had happened. I did not drop my guard and started stepping sideways. Somewhat belatedly he turned to match me, his expression suddenly far less dismissive than before.
"Moreo and Drako are passable archers but barely adequate with a sword or spear," he said then thrust at my head far faster than he had before. I went for a two-handed high block, then slammed his sword aside as I transitioned to a rotating parry, then we both pulled back. Jorah's intense scrutiny continued, his frown turning contemplative.
"Fredo and Lotho are fair spearmen and know some dagger work but otherwise unimpressive. All four of them are followers." He went for an offensive parry from middle guard, a textbook perfect maneuver of getting a spearman's weapon out of the way before closing the distance. Unfortunately for him, I used the momentum of his strike to rotate my spear around his sword, turning his offensive parry into my defensive parry before bouncing off his weapon to interpose the spearhead exactly where his head would have gone if he hadn't aborted his follow-up attempt to close the distance.
"The real problem is Silvio," he said before trying for another rapid advance into my reach. It failed when I parried his sword upwards before tying it into a rotational disarm. He shortened his grip to go for enough leverage to turn the contest against me and grunted when instead of easily repositioning my longer weapon he barely managed to stop the maneuver. His scowl turned into wide-eyed incredulity and he hastily disengaged to re-evaluate the situation. "The man is almost as good with a sword as I am and his friend Gert is not bad either. Both are young enough to let their skill go to their heads." Totally unlike him for sure, though our spar was disabusing him of that way of thinking. Jorah was more skilled than I was, even considerably so, and knew how to use a sword against spearmen. What was getting to him was that he was slower despite having the smaller weapon and that the insurmountable strength advantage he had expected was a tiny edge only barely worth mentioning. Add to that the climate he had yet to adapt to and his lacking his usual plate armour while my armour was heavier than his leathers and his eyes widened further at the realization he was not winning this spar. He stepped back and lowered his weapon and I matched him with a small smile.
"Ever been to the Neck, my lady?" he asked, though it was not really a question.
"For a bit over half a decade," I told him with a nod. "Do you think our troublemakers are fixable?"
"Maybe..." he mused, looking me up and down contemplatively. "Silvio and Gert have the arrogance of the young. You cured their pox, did you not?" I nodded. They hadn't been at risk of dying or anything, but no company would take in sick recruits for obvious reasons. "That's part of the problem. They have yet to suffer injury in battle like almost everyone else here. It has made them cocky."
"That is fine, Jorah," I told him, happy to have confirmed he had noticed the same issue my animal spies had and was right as to it's cause. It meant he was taking his job seriously, even if he had not afforded me the same courtesy till now. "Arrogance is fixable, especially with a healer around. Gather everyone to the main training area, will you? The men could do with some entertainment..."
The ancient quarry at the end of the two miles long hilly area was a broad, shallow bowl cut into the rock of the barren hill overlooking the small, ancient harbor in the bay below. Crumbling storage buildings and a long-abandoned plinth tower that had once served as the overseer's residence still stood not far from where the last half-cut boulders still stood after centuries from the quarry's abandonment. Stubborn tufts of weeds sprouted between piles of gravel and what little soil the wind and rain had brought in over many, many years. It was one of the very few places in all of Lys that was not pretty, but the nearly two hundred sell-swords in my service did not seem to mind. After all, what they did was ugly too, and after more than a decade in that line of work most of them did not sweat the rugged terrain and rising heat. The few that did... this whole charade would be about them soon enough.
My escort separated from me, the two "guards" and one "worker" carefully pulling the loaded rickshaw down the quarry and towards the old overseer's tower. It would not do to stumble on a rock and tumble down the shallow incline. Not that the three wights would be overtly bothered by it; it would just spoil the surprises in store for undisciplined mercenaries. Said mercenaries only spared some brief looks for what they saw as a trio of overpaid escorts stupid enough to wear full-cover armor and helmets under the summer sun, even if the armor was mostly leather and thin mail. No, almost everyone's eyes were locked on me. Many looked with cautious calculation or surprise, others with thinly disguised and very inappropriate interest, quite a few even showed some respect. Every man here had been healed by me more than once, both from injuries or sickness that had ruined their prospects as sell-swords and from training accidents since in my weekly rounds. Their stares and attitude were very different from the merchants back in the city proper, though not quite as serious or fearful as Captain Sathmanes' crew. All of them knew I was a sorceress, but all they had seen from me was healing and spying birds; enough for a smart man to be wary but not much of the true extent of my magic that would have given even the younger and less cautious among them pause.
Jorah Mormont escorted me down to the lower portion of the quarry where he stood by my side as I planted my spear on the ground and looked up at the men that now sat on the natural amphitheater formed by the quarry's shape. The middle-aged knight looked at the sell-swords, both older veterans and younger men that had just been unlucky enough to be injured or get sick at their first campaign but not so unlucky as to die, his stare lingering at some of our problem children. Subtle, he was not. Then again, he was not meant to be.
"What are you planning?" he whispered heedlessly, and he was lucky the din from dozens of conversations and horseplay between the soldiers covered the sound of his words. Had the man never been to an amphitheater before? Because he seemed to think that a couple dozen yards of distance and keeping mostly quiet would be enough not to be overheard.
"A short training exercise," I shot back. "And a lesson against overconfidence."
"Take care, my lady," he told me in what he probably thought was a solemn and worried tone but came across as a little patronizing, despite our earlier sparring. "These men are killers born and bred, and what honor they had they gave up for coin." Which was hilariously ironic of him to say, but nobody had blamed Jorah Mormont of self-reflection. "They won't easily take orders from those they don't respect."
"Ah, but they respect coin, do they not?" And with that I pulled my spear a foot up before ramming it butt-first against the rocky ground. The steel-capped end struck stone not with the clang of metal but with a hollow boom that immediately brought all conversations to an abrupt halt as the men's attention was caught like iron filings to a magnet. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from where my spear had struck, faint tendrils of smoke rising from the surge of sorcery that had cracked the ground to a couple of feet in several directions. By itself my first foray into Elementalism would let me stir a weak breeze or send a few rocks rolling downhill from a distance, but just as its synergy with Greensight let me whisper through the air or hear as well as most animals when focused, in tandem with Pyromancy and the Valyrians' stone-shaping it let me channel bursts of magic through solids much faster than before to cause tremors and cracks. I was still far from bringing down even a small building, let alone the cataclysmic applications of such magic in legend but you know what they said; Rome was not burned down in a day.
"Two months," I said once everyone's attention was on me. "That's how long it has been since the first among you were recruited by me. Since then, through the work of Knight Mormont," the man winced at that title but did not speak since giving him even that much was a courtesy he hardly deserved "and the resources of both myself and House Ormollen, a hundred and eighty more of you have been given healing, new gear and training. Jorah Mormont tells me you are progressing well and will soon be ready for field duties." Excited mutters came up at that but subsided as I continued. "In those same two months, the number of Lysene ships that have disappeared with all hands have increased to seven and the merchant Houses are in turmoil. Myrish sell-swords and Tyroshi pirates have taken advantage of this to press the forces of the city of Lys in both sea and the Disputed Lands. There is talk of war - and more than just talk. Are you ready to fight?"
Dozens of men were quick to shout their readiness, to yell, to leap off their rocky seats as the prospect of the coming war fired them up. Not all of them or even most; many of the older men seemed more pensive, even disquieted by this turn of events. The more experienced soldiers among them, veterans of many battles and maybe even previous active phases of the endless war for the Disputed Lands could tell even better than I that our new company lacked cohesion. All of them had fought before, yes, but they had not fought together and they had not fought in the different, more organized ways I had introduced. Many of them were uncertain if those same changes would prove useful in the field or were the demands of a leader that had no idea about how wars were fought. Whispers my little birds had picked up many times before were repeated now.
"Enthusiasm is great," I told them once the initial furor had begun to subside, "but it is no substitute for either experience or discipline. Before Prince Ormollen and I will even consider sending you to battle, we must be able to trust your skills." Also, their ability to follow orders, but that only would come with loyalty and respect... qualities my healing alone was proving insufficient to win over. "To that end, I've had my guards prepare a small test of your abilities and skills, to see if you're truly ready."
"We can handle any test you can throw at us!" a twenty-something man with short-cropped silver hair, bright blue eyes, a square jaw and enough muscle in his frame to make young lasses in the pillow houses swoon. His name was Silvio and he was the troublemaker Jorah had warned me about. Unfortunately for him, however pretty his face I felt no urge to swoon. My increasing abilities in Sorcery letting me handle several puberty-related issues might have something to do with that, though I liked to think it was more due to his being an arrogant toerag. That several other men on the younger end among the sell-swords immediately joined him in his boasting added to my annoyance. On the other hand, they were doing exactly as I'd wanted them to, so it was time to up the stakes.
"I am very glad to hear that master Silvio," I said, because the man fancied himself a blademaster. "Since you're so eager to prove your mettle, you can lead the first group in this exercise."
"Everything for the beautiful lady," the dandy said to much whistling and catcalls, eliminating any shred of pity I felt for him and what was about to happen.
"My three guards have taken up position inside the old tower," I said, pointing towards the abandoned overseer's residence. "A sellsword company must be capable of taking guarded locations from the enemy, whether they are war camps, mining outposts, or some random village in the Disputed Lands.. Now this tower is not much of a fortified position," several men laughed and gesticulated at the crumbling ruin with derision "but I am told many places out in the battlefield won't be much better. The purpose of the exercise is to take it from my guards - or rather to take the supplies we brought over from the city. There's a crate of still-fresh lemon cakes for dessert and another crate of sausages among them. The team who manages to win first will get a double serving of both in tonight's feast."
There was more yelling and boasting and a surge of new interest from quite a few men who had seen the test as either a joke or too much work before the prize was announced. For the two months the men had been out in the wilderness, food had been limited to bisquits, dried meat and hard cheese, plus a small amount of bottled fruit and vegetables. I'd initially wanted to offer them better food but both Tregar and Jorah had argued against it on the thought that if the men were not conditioned to foodstuffs available during campaign, there would be serious problems once we marched out. Their reasoning had been sound so I'd limited myself to using future knowledge to provide a slightly more balanced diet that would preserve their strength and help reduce diseases. Both Jorah and Tregar had known about bottling and similar preservation techniques which, in retrospect, I should have expected given the whacky seasons of this world though since rarely were soldiers provided with bottled greens on campaign, my future knowledge had at least been good for proper nutrition. Thus an offer of meats and desserts was almost as enticing as gold to these soldiers.
"Yes, yes, you're all excited for tonight's feast. But rewards must be earned with displays of skill," I warned them all, just so nobody could later complain they were not warned to take this seriously. At least some of them still wouldn't, but that was not my problem, was it? "To be fair and since my three guards have both the defensive position and some time to prepare, any leaders among you that want to make an attempt can gather a maximum of nine other people to help them in their raid. You can try it with less, and the smaller team will go first, but no less than five. You will also have to convince your fellow sell-swords to follow you in this yourselves. If you can't get at least five others to trust your leadership..." I shrugged. "...then were you really as good as you thought?"
Those terms put the fox among the henhouse as a hundred and eighty men started milling around like a kicked anthill. Six to ten men to assault a crumbling tower defended by three guards given less than an hour to prepare, with the old ruin not even having a proper gate to barricade? It looked like their success depended more on being able to form teams for the assault rather than any actual difficulty in the assault itself... and that, of course, was the trap.
"An interesting ploy," Jorah commented as we waited for the teams to form. "You want to know the men's opinions about each other without asking them, don't you?"
"Among other things," I agreed somewhat noncommitally. "Dividing them in groups of six was not only a matter of housing and training rotation. They must learn to fight in those teams, rely on their teammates and support each other. And teams require leaders."
"That's... very different than what we do in Westeros," Jorah mused. "Our formations were larger and..." he frowned as he searched for the right word, "...looser."
"That's because nine out of ten men in your armies were levies," I shot back. "Not untrained conscripts mind you, from everything I could find most in the last few wars were self-trained, self-equipped volunteers or even veterans from earlier wars but they were not professional soldiers either. Even your men-at-arms were the retinue of various lords rather than members of an army." I gestured at the men that were gathering into small teams now, mostly with other people from their own tent or friends from before they'd been recruited. "These men were put into small groups that lived together, trained together, marched together. They were given the same arms, trained in the same tactics, wore the same armor, ate the same food. Even after only two months they are more tightly knit than your levies back home. By the time we're ready for deployment in another few months they'll have started thinking like members of an army rather than individuals and be far more capable of working together."
"You don't think they're ready now?" Jorah asked incredulously. "They've spent as much time together as any levies before a battle and they were all veterans of at least one battle before they were recruited. This is better than any lord back home could reasonably expect from mere infantry."
"Just wait until the first attempt on the tower. It should be hilarious." Jorah's disparaging comment about infantry on the other hand was not. I was beginning to see that for all he was a lord and had been in war before, the position of Captain did not quite fit the man's skillset... at least not one for professional infantry. Hopefully he would improve with time.
It didn't take much longer for some teams to form. Not everyone joined the rush to form raid groups. In fact, several of the older, more clear-headed veterans sat back and observed while the younger men jockeyed for position. They could smell a trap when one was put before them because while the challenge seemed easy at face value there were quite a few details missing, details any veteran worth his salt would want to know before engaging in a fight. From some whispers I could pick up in the wind, none of them knew who my guards were or how well they could fight and if I was rich enough to pay for a whole sell-sword company, wouldn't I also pay for the best men possible for my personal guard? They weren't exactly wrong about the opposition's fighting ability, though that had less to do with how much I could pay and more with the guards no longer being human. And that was hardly the only problem the more eager men were about to face.
To nobody's great surprise, Silvio's group was the first to form and as he'd settled for only six people, his was the smallest team and would go first. He'd brought all of his friends along just as he'd been meant to, all relatively young men with just enough skill to be dangerous but too much arrogance and not enough discipline to be competent. Fredo and Lotho were armed with the standard spear, which wasn't going to work for them very well. Moreo and Drako had settled for their more familiar bows which was better, but they only had clubs as sidearms. Even if they got into the tower they'd be hilariously ineffective. At least Silvio and his friend Gert had their swords, daggers and small shields, but two out of six were not going to be enough. Well... that was why they were still in training; to learn and get rid of bad habits.
"May I ask for your favour, my lady?" the silver-haired dandy asked as he gave me a bow with an elaborate flourish, a 'winsome' smile and a saucy wink. I resisted the temptation of turning his sword hot enough to burn him through his glove, but it was a near thing.
"That would not be fair to the rest of the men now, would it?" I instead told him with as much feigned sweetness as I could muster, which wasn't very much. Then I gave him a smirk that seemed more friendly than it really was. "But if you return from the field victorious you'll get a special reward." He was so very special, after all.
"As the fair lady requests, we shall be victorious in her name!" he yelled to more whistling and catcalls and I carefully noted who made the least... respectful suggestions. Featherball was on her way back with a half-pound box of special powder from the Neck and it would have those guys' names on it.
Silvio and his band of merry men marched on the crumbling tower in the open with nary a thought for cover, hidden approaches, blind spots or even proper caution. They set their sights on the tower's wide-open entrance and made straight for it on the thought that with no gate, no barricades or other prepared defenses it would be just three guards against six skilled sellswords and those were numbers much in their favor.
The first number that wasn't in their favor was that they needed a good twenty seconds to cross a hundred yards even at a hurried pace, and they were not really hurrying. The second was two of the three guards peeking over the crumbling wall in the tower's third floor, aiming the business end of loaded crossbows at them and pulling the trigger. Wooden bolts flying at three hundred feet per second hurt like a bitch even when blunted, as Moreo and Lotho found out. The two men folded around the bolts that struck them center-mass with screams of pain, their weapons falling from suddenly nerveless fingers as they toppled to the ground. The shock of being shot at and the sudden downing of two of their comrades made the other four momentarily stop. Apparently, they had not expected to be shot at in a training exercise.
That was a mistake, because the pair of guards at the top of the tower dropped the first pair of crossbows, picked up two more pre-loaded and drawn ones, aimed and fired. Silvio yelled at the others to charge as soon as he saw the second pair coming up and to his credit managed to get the others moving, getting one shot to miss. The other struck Drako in the leg, sending him screaming face-first at the ground and probably cracking his leg in the process. I winced. Mending bones was magically expensive, even with my increased facility with Sorcery.
Half his team already down, Silvio still charged at the tower either because he could not accept defeat or because he'd realized that turning his back on crossbowmen would be stupid. This proved the only halfway good decision he made because when my guards picked up and shot the third pair of pre-loaded crossbows, one blunted bolt shattered against his raised shield and the other went wide. Three men kept charging at the tower without further potshots taken at them not because they'd done something right but because I'd thought it unfair to preload more crossbows than the attacking team had men. A modicum of fairness would go a long way into proving just how badly prepared these guys had been for such an assault, even if a charge towards a supposedly fortified position across open ground had already proven their very painful lack of tactical acumen.
Silvio and Gert ran through the open entrance to the tower... only to be met by a wooden pole wrapped in rags to further blunt the impact swung from beside the entrance by the largest and strongest of the three wights. Said guard could not have seen the men approaching to time its swing but I had and as I was mentally connected to it said swing was timed perfectly. It was also powerful enough to launch the two swordsmen straight back out of the tower and another fifteen feet away, where they lay groaning on the ground.
Fredo gamely charged on with his spear, possibly too shocked to truly grasp the rapidly changing situation. He launched himself spear-first at the enemy that had just whacked his friends like baseballs, correctly guessing that the wight couldn't pull back the wooden pole for another swing quickly. Well, a mortal man couldn't have; a tireless wight with three times that much strength was perfectly capable of it but I was paying at least a nod to fairness there. Of course, what a mortal man was perfectly capable of and thus the wight did was step up to the spearman while wearing full plate. Because of course the guards were expecting the attack and had had enough time to prepare, so Fredo's spear bounced ineffectually off four millimeters of steel breastplate. He was just an above-average spearman, after all, not a superhuman like the Red Viper. At which point the wight engaged the more lightly armored man in hand-to-hand, a fight nobody short of the Mountain or maybe Robert Baratheon could have won.
"Let us all thank Master Silvio for showing us precisely what not to do against fortified positions and prepared enemies, no matter how outnumbered," I said in the ominous silence that followed, one interrupted only by the groans of the injured. "Now I'll be healing ser Gert of his cracked ribs before they do bad things to his lungs, so the rest of you can discuss tactics and think of different approaches to this exercise but don't worry!" I smiled widely at the no longer eager soldiers. "Attempts at the tower will continue until a team succeeds, or all teams formed are too injured to continue."
Spare the rod, spoil the sell-sword.
It turned out that a whole field of injured soldiers could make a significant amount of noise. Almost everyone in the company had tried the tower gauntlet, and many of those that survived with light injuries the first time made repeat attempts with latter groups. The first few groups had been almost as overconfident as Silvio and his friends, though they at least tried better tactics than charging in the open. The initial groups were also small, only six or seven men to maximise the 'glory' of their victory. In fact, after an initial slight increase in numbers and caution after Silvio's defeat, the fifth to seventh teams were only at the minimum size on the belief that those that went before them had worn the defenders down. Said defenders being wights that had not been the case, but it took another three failures for the rest of the company to realize the test would be an actual challenge.
From then on, the size of the attacking groups quickly rose to the maximum of ten and when that only increased their humiliation at continuing defeats the sellswords started to organize beyond individual groups. Those yet to make an attempt discussed tactics or sharply interrogated anyone that had faced the defenders in melee about said defenders' skills, strength and tactics for the small portion of those few fights that did continue inside the tower. The experienced mercenaries quickly understood that while their foes' skills were not insurmountable, their sheer power and ability to move despite wearing heavy plate was beyond any of them and anyone trying to grapple with them even at two to one advantage would be summarily defeated.
Tactics changed towards cautious approaches, using blind-spots and taking advantage of the terrain and the weaknesses in the tower's construction to attack from angles and in ways most defenders would not really expect, trying to catch the three guards out of position or force them to split their attention and ranged firepower over multiple directions. Even ladders were used in an attempt to scale the back of the tower from the hill behind it and thus avoid having to approach openly or face crossbow fire. Unfortunately for that one team, while they did manage to get on the tower trying to get inside it by climbing down the small staircase to the roof proved... problematic. They had been forced to descend single-file against a trio of wights with pre-loaded crossbows and more heavily armed and armored than any of the attackers had been. The resulting curb-stomp was almost as bad a loss as Silvio's team had... but it also let everyone know that the guards had some way to observe the attackers' approach without being seen doing so and could intercept approaches that relied on stealth and deception.
In the end, the only team that managed to 'conquer' the tower was the last one. Faced with repeated defeats, the most experienced members of the company stopped trying to hog all the glory, stopped trying to team up with their friends, and started working together. The ten most skilled soldiers among the least injured were put together in a team and followed a plan made by every leader who had managed to get into the tower before. They knew the opposition, they knew the terrain, they knew the tactics and weapons the enemy could use. Instead of charging ahead, trying to play tricks, or relying on personal heroics, the last team advanced under cover of large shields. By the time they reached the tower's entrance, only one of them had taken any significant injury. Then they used those same shields to push back against the wight guards and engage them with maces and hammers instead of lighter weapons. The wights could still have defeated them all - blunt force trauma was near useless against the walking dead - but I had them feign unconsciousness after enough hits to bring down mortal opponents.
"One hundred and seven injured. This is a mess," Jorah grumbled with a shake of his head. "Back in Westeros any such undisciplined gloryhounds would have faced severe punishment for such a failure."
"They took the tower, Jorah," I countered. "Undisciplined? Yes. Gloryhouds? Absolutely. But not incapable of improvement when it's hammered into them." The two of us approached the improvised medical tents where the few uninjured soldiers as well as the sergeants that had not taken part in the test were helping the more beat up of their fellows take care of their injuries. The basics of first aid had been part of the training for the past few months, because magic or no, I wouldn't be able to get to every wounded man immediately in the battles to come and if first aid could help them or delayed their deaths long enough for me to arrive... that was a win in my book.
"They still are not ready, my lady," the ageing knight insisted, his words almost swallowed by the cacophony of shouts, curses, complaints and th occasional gasp or scream of pain. "If we take this sorry lot in the field tomorrow they will hardly do any better than levies."
"Harsh... but not entirely inaccurate." If the wights had not been holding back, if the weapons hadn't been blunted... this exercise would have been a blood bath. Yet it was not nearly as bad as Jorah's pessimism and disdain would have me believe. The men faced three enemies in many ways each as dangerous as the Mountain that Rides yet managed to eke out a marginal win in the end. No levies would have ever done that. No green soldiers or untested sell-swords either; for all their uncouth manners and even worse stench, each and every one of them was a battle-hardened veteran. "A good thing we won't take them to the field tomorrow, but given a couple more months they will be adapting to the new ways of fighting and be all the better for it."
"If you say so, my lady," Jorah muttered under his breath. He probably had not meant me to hear, but being borderline superhuman in quite a few ways had its perks. I walked ahead of him into the medical tent, most of the injured completely ignoring me and their caretakers hardly throwing me any glances either. The painfully loud crack of my spear striking the ground and causing a spider-web of cracks through the hard-packed earth cut off all complaints, shouts and curses as if by a knife and gave me everyone's undivided attention. Delving into elementalism was worth every iota of life-force invested just for that.
"Now that I have your ears," which was more literal than some of the guys would have liked, given the amount of wincing and head-shaking happening all around "let me first congratulate you for your first successful operation. The test was not meant to be easy. In fact, I expected none of you to succeed before tomorrow or the day after, after you had some time to think through your early mistakes and try again both freshly rested and wiser." Those words were received with mutters and uncertainty and more than a few thoughtful frowns. "So consider me impressed at your tenacity and adaptability... and yourselves warned of your overconfidence and lack of discipline. I will be healing you this evening, and tomorrow the ten of you who emerged victorious will be handsomely rewarded."
This got more cheers, tired victory yells and a few painful grunts that could have meant anything until...
"What about them fuckers?" a short, stocky guy from the fifth group demanded. "I ain't seen them around."
"Yeah, we beat them good," a lanky, middle-aged guy from the last group grunted in satisfaction as one of the sergeants set his dislocated shoulder. "Did ye heal them already?" Everyone in the company had some experience with my healing abilities - some of them more than once - but it was good to get confirmation of the men's growing faith in my healing in the face of the first mock battle.
"Why Ulhan, do you want to congratulate them for a lesson well-taught?" I jokingly asked and some of the soldiers chuckled.
"More to smash their faces in with a mace," he grunted with cause, his shattered leg stretched out on the cot before him. It was one of the worst injuries and would have been a difficult reconstruction job back on Earth, with months of slow recovery as the best prognosis. "Say... we didn't kill them, did we?" he asked tentatively, suddenly apprehensive.
"No. No you did not." Ulhan's concern faded into relief and for a moment there was an urge to command the wights to come forth into the tent and remove their helmets. "They are already as healthy as they ever were," I lied, thinking of all the problems such a revelation would cause. Would these hardened mercenaries try to run away screaming despite their injuries, or take the dead in stride and just cry foul on the whole exercise having been a setup, I wondered.
Then I shrugged and started mentally preparing myself for some long and tedious magic use. The use of wights as psychological weapons could always be tested later...
xxxx
Reassembling the pieces of shattered bone by hand as if Ulhan's leg was one big grisly, bloody, somewhat frustrating jigsaw puzzle, I reached into his body with my magic once again. Had this been the first time I'd seen a shattered leg the sight might have been slightly disturbing but even back on Earth it would be barely worth a mention, let alone after my years in the Neck. The greatest difficulty and time-waster was in assembling the pieces properly while the rest of the mess provided a very unstable and slippery environment. Thus I had resorted to applications of Sorcery after attaching each piece, jump-starting the healing process and ensuring they would stay in place.
Back in the Neck, my healing abilities had not been enough to heal bone quickly without significant expenditure of life-force. After my latest foray into pest control though, my influence over the human body had increased. Not to the point of sculpting flesh with ease as was possible with rituals, but each repeated 'push' into blood and flesh and bone made subsequent pushes that much easier. Humans had an inherent significance, a metaphysical weight that translated as resistance to magic. It was something I'd seen before many times but until I saw it in a vision it had never occurred to me to use tiny quick spells to push at that resistance, with each minor success making the target's body that much more receptive to further influence. It was, in some ways, like heating up and hammering a piece of iron; the more you worked at it, the easier shaping it became. Was that why healing or even altering myself was so much easier?
I did not know, and the experimentation was fascinating. Ulhan was unconscious, minor spells taking care of both his pain and his bleeding, and working on his body was... magic would never stop being awesome, and learning how to bypass someone's inherent resistance was as interesting as the other discovery. The more I worked on the guy, the more my Pyromancy could pick up his warmth like it had in countless sacrificial animals before. The more I pushed Sorcery in him, the more I could both feel and affect his body at a microscopic, not quite biological level; metabolism, the flow of blood, the shadow of his mind... all could be ever so slightly pushed. Working slowly, pushing with my magic one tiny step at a time let me apply bigger changes than trying to work hastily. The magic of this world was not all flashy spells cast in six seconds or less; the majority of its applications were slow and subtle... or building up over time until they could burst to great effect.
It was this twinning of Pyromancy and Sorcery when used during healing that had me stumble on what Melisandre and Thoros in the books had called "life-fire". When using those magics in combination, I could sense a metaphysical representation of Ulhan's life, health and potential as a vision of a lit pyre. The size of the fire-pit in the vision was Ulhan's presence, his metaphysical weight. The fuel in the pit was... life-force for lack of another word, or maybe potential was a more apt description. What he could do, what he could be, both physically and magically. The actual flames? Those were a representation of his condition. The healthier he was, the brighter the flames were, the more injured, the lower and cooler.
The simplest way to make him healthy would be to just force the flames to light up, much like dimming them had put him into a deep sleep. Snuff them out completely and he would die without a wound, force them to burn brightly? He'd probably walk around despite mortal wounds. Affecting the flames was easy enough with him lying before me and with my hands in firm contact. I could probably make him to live again like Thoros had Berric Dondarrion... but that would not fix his injuries. Permanent harm, wounds that couldn't be fixed by just adjusting the flame... they reduced the fuel in the vision. Pushing magic into him to heal such injuries or improve what was already there? It very slowly increased that representation of potential.
The broken leg was the fourth time I'd worked on this man, the sell-sword having been somewhat unlucky when it came to injuries. For two of those, when I'd recruited him and again when I'd been experimenting after the destruction of the first slaver ship I'd pushed life-force into him, increasing his own by a small margin. Now those alterations could be felt, their impact measured more easily that I could see them clearly in a visual representation. As I pulled on a long-dead slaver's stolen life and pushed it into my magic beyond mere healing, I saw that pyre improve. What was but a little campfire roared higher, a noticeable but temporary increase, but also the fire-pit became a little bit wider and deeper, a few more branches added to the flames. Not much, maybe a ten percent difference all-around.
It was between what I had done with Keera's amulet and with healing the Old Man with that huge bog-fire. The addition was directly on Ulhan rather than an external artifact, but unlike the temporary boost that promoted recovery, it was very much permanent. A small, lasting change into everything he was, by making him a little bit more of himself.
I couldn't wait to see what the tangible benfits would be during tomorrow' training...
Somewhere in a great dark sea, there was a ship. It sailed forth, its Captain unaware of the danger quickly approaching. A storm rose across the horizon, the howl of winds, the salty tang of waves crashing against each other, the crackle of lightning and roar of thunder. The Captain and crew were skilled, their ship was newly built and strong, they sailed on unafraid of the storm. But the storm was not the threat.
A great beast rose from the abyss, a shadow of terror, grasping limbs of terrible force hidden from human eyes. The horror coiled around the ship and its crew, surrounding its chosen prey from all sides, getting closer and closer and closer, dozens upon dozens of eyes watching until the appointed hour. When the sun's disc had long since disappeared below the horizon, when the crew had sailed the ship through the storm and won, the eyes approached ever closer. Before the sun could rise anew, the new day could banish the shadows, when the tired crew rested in what they believed was safety after celebrating their survival... it was then that the great beast struck.
Unseen hands reached out and grasped the ship, invisible yet smouldering with baleful fire. They coiled through strange angles and distant places, somehow touching the ship from within, not as a foe from beyond but as stowaways that had always been there. Dozens of places across the lower deck and holds burst into flames hungry not for wood but for the life-fire of the living. By the time the crew reacted the entire ship was firmly in the claws of the beast, doomed beyond the effort of mortal men to save. Many among the crew jumped off the heavily smoking vessel, but the great dark sea was not their salvation. It, too, was filled with tentacles, and though they were of a different sort, not of flame but of sibilantly approaching death, the hunger was the same. The waters churned as--
Another titanic beast's croak cut through the world, sea and ship and strange tentacles flickering and fading into mist. There was a strange dissonance, a sensation of falling, or being pulled rapidly awake for a moment before the world righted itself again.
Somewhere in a great dark forest, there was a trade caravan. Men and beasts of burden and carts laden with all sorts of goods, slowly moving through the narrow road cutting through the vibrant, too-colourful jungle. Insects buzzed, birds trilled, trees groaned under the weight of fruit and the breeze was heavy with the heady smells of summer and sea, the tang of salt, the sweetness of fruit, the savoury smell of fish roasted over an open flame. The place was less true jungle and more plantation, far more orderly that wild woods and lacking both the thick, almost impassable undergrowth of tropical rainforests as well as the parasitic growths over the trees. It was a place long since tamed by man, turned away from the hidden threats of tropical wilderness and towards man's idea of paradise. The trees, the bountiful fruit, the shade and running water, the lack of predators... it all added up to a place many would give much to spend their lives in.
Yet there was something strange about the forest. Some instinctive wariness, some hidden warning niggling in the back of travellers' minds. In that quiet place something felt off, something did not quite fit that image of paradise, and the brightly clothed men of the trade caravan knew it. They appeared to be happy, making merry with songs and dancing steps and dining on the forest's bounty, but there was a sharpness there that did not fit. Something had them much more tense than they appeared to be, their eyes scanning their surroundings until--
The titanic beast croaked again in greater annoyance and the world shattered. Caravan, jungle, road, smells of fruit and roasting fish and an approaching storm breaking like so many soap bubbles as the beast clicked and clacked and beat wings that reached from horizon to horizon, scattering the entire world to the corners of the firmament...
xxxxI was fairly sure I was more awake than not, a state of affairs that greatly annoyed me. The cause and culprit of said state was a very large bird croaking and clicking her beak far too close to my ear, so I turned around, drew the sheets over my head and tried to recapture that dream of a pleasant tropical paradise.
Unfortunately, the intruder to my bedchambers would not be dissuaded. She very loudly and insistently flapped her wings all over what parts of my head still peeked through the sheets, giving me a faceful of feathers. Not the soft, ticklish things used as pillow fillings, no. These were long, rigid and fairly hard feathers, usually found in the wings of large raptor birds. My response was to turn around again, retreat under the sheets completely, and try to recapture Nirvana.
"Five more minutes," I muttered, keeping my voice low because every loud noise felt like a maul being wielded against my head by a particularly irate Baratheon. Come on, the sun had not even fully risen yet! A girl needed her beauty sleep!
Either I'd said that out loud or someone had good enough hearing and low enough respect for privacy to listen in on my thoughts, because the next thing I knew was the sheets being pulled off me, quickly followed by...
"OW! I'm awake!" I yelped, sitting upright posthaste. Then I yelped again, jumped off the bed entirely and glared at the winged menace that was the bane of my existence. "Did you have to bite me in the ass?" I demanded, rubbing the aforementioned bit of my anatomy, trying to infuse it with a touch of Sorcery and making my headache worse in the process. What had possessed past-Flann to heal over a hundred soldiers in a row?
Featherball tilted her head upside-down just because she could, hooted derisively, then flew off to the top of the closet where she turned my back to me, settled down and prepared to sleep for the day.
"If you were going off to sleep right away why did you wake me up?!" I grumbled. Getting no reply from the feathered menace, I reached out with my mind's shadow, trying to look at her condition through our Greensight bond. Just making the attempt sent another spike of pain through my head. Along with the dryness in my mouth and the odd hypersensitivity it reminded me of nothing so much as my university days all those decades ago - specifically, trying to solve physics problems during a major hangover.
A dozen healings in one day. That had been my prior record without drawing upon at least an animal sacrifice, if one discounted minor things like scrapes, bruises, or a bit of fatigue. Past-Flann's reasoning had been a need both to push my limits and test the kind of healing the company might require after a real battle so since the impromptu exercise had created a large number of injuries, why not do it then and there? Wincing again, I quickly concluded past-Flann was an idiot.
Picking up a change of clothes, several vials of oils, my favourite sandalwood-scented soap, and a couple of the fluffiest towels within easy reach, I shambled towards the bathroom like some fake-wight reject from the Game of Thrones television series, all stiff and ungainly and only just awake enough to moan about brains. It had been a very good thing that I'd managed to crawl back to the city and House Ormollen before crashing the night before, because had I been caught outside some random street urchin would have robbed me blind then stabbed me with a rusty shiv. That would have been the most embarrassing death on Planetos since Aerion Targaryen.
The good thing about freeloading on one of the richest men in Lys was proper semi-modern baths with actual plumbing, soaps, cosmetics, the works. The bath houses might have offered even more advanced set-ups but House Ormollen offered nearly the same level of luxury as a private room literally next door to my very secure and wight-guarded bedroom. Sadly, the water was still cold - or as cold as it ever got in Lys - because there hadn't been time to get the servants to warm it up and nobody else in the house had told them to draw a bath either.
Since using up all of Tregar's warm water wasn't something that would happen this time, I consoled myself with trying out all his custom-made shampoos and bath oils... all sixty-seven handmade and carefully matched pairs of them. It turned out a very soothing pair of hours, filled up not with plans of world domination but making animal shapes out of multi-coloured bath foam...
...OK, there were some bits of world domination between making three mountain shapes and the giant dragon perching on top of them. The soldiers needed more meat and fruit rations because chronic malnutrition was the most prevalent and hard to fix issue with all of them. Jorah needed to get back to the Florian brothers' smithy to get his new suit of magically cool armor properly fitted. I needed to check up with Lynesse and look into our logistics, catch up with Tregar's import of small or flawed gems and see how easy they were to fuse into bigger, far more expensive stones. Dig up even more dirt on other Lysene Houses through animal spies, maybe get in contact with Salhador Saan and his fleet.
The more pressing issue probably was looking into how a proper focus could be made. Dragons might be able to wield their innate magic as easily as they breathed, but I was already hitting a point where my power was outpacing my body's ability to handle it. Melisandre could offload the strain into enchanted rubies, maybe I could do the same?
But first, the proper shampoo mix to produce black bubbles had to be found. One couldn't make a proper effigy of Ancalagon the Black with pink foam!
xxxxFeatherball was left in my room to rest after her long flight back from Winterfell, because unlike some people and not-people I actually respected others' naptime and/or beauty sleep. The long bath had left me feeling somewhat refreshed, the apocalyptic hangover was banished back to the teleological chapters of the Seven-Pointed Star whence it had come, and with my armor fully cleaned and properly polished by House Ormollen servants, I was ready to brave the open, paradisial vistas of Lys the Lovely once again.
Said vistas seemed to be a lot more crowded than before, every street in the waterfront and trade districts so full of people that the press was more like that of a modern metropolis than any pre-industrial city, however large. And most of the crowd were not traders, no; they were young men and women, the former bearing arms and armor of many different kinds, the latter sporting elaborate yet revealing dresses, far too much perfume and very broad smiles. Both types were out not in the dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands, but the tens of thousands. It was as if every young sell-sword or aspiring sell-sword in the entire city had decided to visit the waterfront at the same time, with twice their number of pleasure slaves and escorts for hire following in their wake. All of them paid very little attention to each other, everyone's eyes turned towards the harbor...
...a harbor that had nearly a hundred more ships this morning than it had had the night before. Each and every one of those ships sported a banner of cloth-of-gold, with no designs or devices. From them descended soldiers of all types, from infantry in brightly polished if light to medium armor with spears and shields, to fully armored knights in their horses, to smaller companies of crossbowmen and archers. Officers openly wore jewelled swords, inlaid armor, heavy torcs, and fine silks. Many wore a lord's ransom in golden arm rings, all of them wore breastplates with a golden shine, either due to bronze inlays of varying extent or actual gold plating.
Then the crowd broke ranks, pulling back to allow the largest animal I'd ever seen to pass through. It was a towering beast thirteen feet tall at the shoulder, with thick skin over its quadruped grey-black form, and from its dimensions and how the road minutely shook at its passage it had to weigh twenty-two, maybe twenty-three thousand pounds by itself. On top of that mass was attached a platform of sturdy wood with golden filigree, a crew of five crossbowmen sitting in it, with a decently-sized scorpion built into it. It was a war elephant about twice as large as the ones Hannibal had used against Rome and it was not alone; half a dozen similar beasts followed after it in this street alone, with three other similar groups marching through the streets beyond.
The Golden Company had come to Lys...