Sneaky Hunter fled through the tall green and the short green, his skin and fur shifting and changing with lies. But Sneaky Hunter was bad at hiding; he moved too quickly, he breathed too loudly, he stepped too heavily. You had to be blind and deaf and dumb to miss him as he failed to sneak through the short green under the tall green, sending forest rats and sneaky crawlers and winged tasties scurrying away as he stomped around with his huge feet. For a moment Best Huntress clicked her beak in annoyance. Big Sister could be pretty dumb at times. How did she miss the wind ruffling Sneaky Hunter's false fur under the falser lie of not having a fur? How did she miss his body-glow not matching the lie of his false body? And now Big Sister was wounded, the Sneaky Hunter only scared off by Dumb Dog's metal claw, and Best Huntress needed to fly after him.
So she swooped in silently from branch to branch, stopped behind thickets of leaves on the tall greens, Sneaky Hunter becoming prey without ever realizing. He turned to look many times but did not see her once, for she was Best Huntress, unnoticeable and deadly in all greens. But Sneaky Hunter was big and fat and ugly, with metal spikes and poison fangs under the lies of his body, so she did not approach. To be Best Huntress was to understand risks and opportunities. Let Sneaky Hunter think he had snuck away cleanly until it was time to strike. One turn of the Big Light In The Sky or many, opportunity would arrive and Sneaky Hunter will have forgotten. And when he did? Then would he answer for harming Big Sis.
Through the tall greens, over or under them she flew, never falling behind, never getting lost, never revealing her presence. For unlike Sneaky Hunter and lots and lots of others, Best Huntress remembered. She always did, from every single flight she had ever flown, to every word that had been spoken near her, to the direction of home and every home. Sneaky Hunter met other two-legs, lied, put on the faces of other two-legs, lied some more, then reached the giant stone nest that was many many nests. He greeted the guards with a lie, then took many, many trails of stone among the stone nests, using another lie every other turn until he finally reached the edge of the giant lake where the hollow logs the two-legs used instead of learning to swim were gathered. Not that Best Huntress had a problem with that; using hollow longs was smart because swimming was horrible. It was slow and cold and the water weighed down her feathers so that she could barely take off. Not as bad as tar swamps though.
Big Sis reached out from lots and lots and lots of wingbeats away, halfway as far as a daily hunt, somehow stretching through the greens and rocks and streams and stone nests to touch Best Huntress like a mother taking a chick under her wing. Best Huntress barely remembered Mother now, when she lived in an island far far away to the East that even on wings it would take several turns of the Big Light In The Sky to reach. She did not know how she knew of an island she'd never been to or why she remembered how long a trip she'd never made was. She remembered the hated Six-Legs that ate Mother though, and how Big Sis had slain it with nought but a small metal fang. For both the reaching and the killing Big Sis was Big Sis and always would be and not just because of the honeyed strips of crispy pork she fed Best Huntress.
"Did you find him?" Big Sis asked with those words the two-legs liked to use instead of proper communication. How could they communicate when saying so little, without using their eyes and not-beaks and body? Maybe they couldn't; maybe that was why they lived so packed together despite killing each other all the time for it like any raptor would do in their place. Maybe they were mighty enough to think they did not need to, which just made them stupid. Big Sis was different... at least a little. She said a lot more when she reached out than just words, sending images and emotions and thoughts. Like now that Best Huntress saw her prey's true face wrapped in the stolen scales as Big Sis had last seen him, that she picked Big Sis' fury at being attacked and under it... badly hidden but still obvious was the lingering pain and hints of fear.
Best Huntress did not respond in words. Speaking was not just dumb, it was something the hated ravens did, those the two-legs in their stone towers had trained like dogs. Best Huntress could make the scratches two-legs sometimes used instead of speech, but why bother when thoughts and images was so much easier? She reached out to Big Sis, that giant body-glow that was like a hundred Sneaky Hunters combined, the even bigger shadow behind it that reached not just to Best Huntress but several other birds and two legs. There she sent the image of Sneaky Hunter getting onto one of the hollow logs and felt Big Sis deflating like a young owl drenched for the first time.
"Ugh, he will get away. At least it's not a Braavosi ship, not that it means much," Big Sis muttered in disappointment, fumbled mentally at several ideas before letting them go. "Forget him, Featherball, and get some food and sleep. I want to send some messages back to Westeros tomorrow or the day after, so get a nice long rest. At least one of us should."
And then the connection dimmed, which meant Best Huntress was free to be as furious as she wanted. How dare some random two-legs hunter try to hunt her Big Sis! And Big Sis was still hurt enough she did not feel like hunting him down and tearing him to bits? Silly Big Sis, if you did not punish the aggressive hunters, more of them would get bold! That was a simple matter of threat and reputation even most two-legs understood!
Hooting in annoyance, Best Huntress dive-bombed the fish-gatherers and took an eight-legs for late dinner. Basking in the two-legs' dismayed shouts for the tribute and recognition of Best Huntress' superiority, she settled on a nearby stone nest to eat as the Big Light In The Sky began its journey. Occasional looks towards the hollow log Sneaky Hunter had climbed into confirmed what Best Huntress knew of two-legs laziness; it would take half the turn for them to even depart, and many turns to reach wherever they were going. Such was the fate of silly creatures that tread water instead of ruling the skies. But if they took that long... and Big Sis had more important missions for her in another turn or two... then Sneaky Hunter would get away?!
Best Huntress bit into her eight-legs with fury. Then she thought of the problem. Then she claimed another eight legs, dodging the fish-gatherer's clumsy and slow attempts to catch her with ease. Then she thought of the problem some more between bites of delicious fishy meat. As she had guessed, the Big Light was high in the sky by the time the hollow log with her prey finally departed. She reached out with her mind to Big Sis to see if she had changed her mind, but the vast shadow of Big Sis's mind was curled inside her dimming body-glow. Big Sis was asleep, too exhausted from her injury for Best Huntress to want to bother. The tendrils to other birds and two-legs were just faint lines, all but one too faint to follow. Not that Best Huntress could have done anything with them if she had; she was not Big Sis. That one line was still strong though, like a straight trail cutting through the tall greens.
Where Best Huntress was like Big Sis the most was in wanting to poke at anything that drew the eye. Yes, they both liked to slay their enemies in big numbers and gruesome ways, they both claimed whatever they took a shine to if they could, they both wanted to fly even if Big Sis did not have wings yet, but poking new things was the best. Besides, Best Huntress wanted to see if some two-legs had a solution to her problem. They were clever like that, despite their dumbness. So she reached out through that line that was oh so open and inviting.
On the other end she found the shadow of a two-legs so much smaller than Big Sis, smaller than even Best Huntress herself, curled inside a body-glow that was large, yet feeble. Its shadow was torn, a piece of it missing, and the body-glow was leaking like an open wound, dripping little by little into the connection with Big Sis, keeping it open despite both of them sleeping. Best Huntress was linked with Big Sis too, but nothing like that. Her connection widened when she or Big Sis reached out, became small when neither did for a time, and was only a faint line when both slept or turned away from it. This connection looked like it was wide open despite both Big Sis and this two-legs being asleep.
Curious for why that was, Best Huntress reached deeper and saw... images. A small, weak two-legs with too much bright fake-fur and even brighter bits of metal. Useless metal too, not like the metal fangs and claws and spikes many two-legs had. A weak two-legs, despite being older than both Best Huntress and Big Sis and... an image of Big Sis abruptly came to Best Huntress' mind, of Big Sis burning stone in her bare hands, of cackling madly as she stabbed other two-legs. Well, Big Sis had done both things and they were good so why... ah! Best Huntress understood now! This was Big Sis' pet! Not the Dumb Dog that was useful with its fangs and fur of metal, or the annoying fox that did clever things with those word-scratches for Big Sis, but the useless one Big Sis kept around only because he had lots and lots of stuff. The one that was scared of Big Sis all the time but pretending otherwise.
Best Huntress clicked her beak in anticipation as she gathered a thought, an image that was more lie than truth, and shoved it down the connection to the cowardly two-legs. His dream of Big Sis shifted into the image Best Huntress had sent; a scale-skinned long-tooth from home, one that was many many wingspans long. That had scales of metal and teeth like the metal claws of two-legs and breathed fire. A long-tooth that even Best Huntress would be wary of that seemingly charged at the sleeping two-legs' shadow and chomped down with its fiery maw. The shadow shuddered and flailed and the two-legs woke up screaming. Best Huntress hooted derisively and flew off, both sated and pleased and ready to test a new idea.
She remembered the stone nest that was not a nest, the place where Big Sis often went to burn rocks and make fangs of metal and stranger things that glittered. Best Huntress remembered all, which was why she was Best Huntress. And she remembered shiny things, like the scared two-legs had, and fire, like the scared two-legs was so afraid of. She flew there through the small cave two-legs called a chimney and found many many many of Big Sis' toys. She did not know what most of the toys did because Big Sis never said and they were her toys. But she remembered one toy well, because it had been fun. So she looked around carefully and.... there! It had been exactly like that, only smaller. Best Huntress tilted her head to look at the toy from a better angle and considered prodding Big Sis... but decided against it. Big Sis needed to rest... and if she slept she couldn't say "no".
Best Huntress barely managed to get out through the small cave in the roof and climbed higher and higher with effort. Oh how she missed Big Sis's shadow hugs that made her tireless - not that she'd ever tell Big Sis that. She had a big enough head as it was. For now, her own strong wings would suffice, no matter how tiring this trip might be. Was she not growing mightier every day? Soon she'd rule the skies! So up she climbed with steady beats of her wings and taking advantage of updrafts, leaving the many stone nests behind as she flew over the giant lake.
The Big Light was sinking below the horizon as water spread in every direction, but upon that water were hollow logs, tiny with distance of many hundreds of wing-beats. But Best Huntress' eyes were sharp, as sharp as any bird that had ever flown above the swamps of her birth except for maybe Mother's. Sharper and further reaching still, now that Big Sis had taken her under her wing much like her body was stronger, her beak and talons sharper, her mind sharper. Some of that was just growing up and eating well, but Best Huntress knew there was more to it - unlike most two-legs she wasn't too dumb to see what was before her eyes.
As the Big Light hid behind the horizon and the many Small Lights shone in the sky, Best Huntress felt the Great Lines growing... brighter? It was not quite sight for they weren't really visible; they were like body-glows except vast, bigger than even Big Sis and they spread out everywhere. It was the Great Lines that helped Best Huntress know where she was going and it was them she followed now in the direction a certain hollow log had gone. It did not take long after that; the welcoming embrace of darkness had just given everyone relief from the too-bright Big Light In The Sky when she spotted the hollow log Sneaky Hunter had climbed into in the distance.
Best Huntress flew closer and closer, her wings straining against the heaviness of her cargo. She flew up to the hollow log, too fast and quiet for the blind, deaf and dumb two-legs to notice, and eyed the hollow log carefully. Her quarry was not on the top, but Best Huntress knew of the nests below, the nests that had openings on the hollow log's sides for air to flow and for two-legs to look out of. Not all the nests did but the better ones did and Best Huntress soon found Sneaky Hunter sleeping in one of them. So she clicked her beak in satisfaction, dragged her cargo a few dozen wing beats over the ship, then let it fall.
Purple fire burst all over the hollow log, splashing at dozens of two-legs and biting deeply into the woods before anyone could do anything. None but Big Sis could stop it now and Big Sis was far too many hundreds of wing-beats away. Not that she would; Big Sis liked to hunt hollow logs with her flames and always felt better afterwards. She'd be happy and healthy and play with Best Huntress again!
xxxx
A hundred and fifty miles to the south-west, on the southernmost tip of the island of Lys, a certain sorceress abruptly woke up.
"WHAT THE FUCK, FEATHERBALL?"
The surge of dozens of lives consumed by flames ignited by my blood dragged me out of an uneasy sleep, my heart beating like a drum and the lingering ache from the injury mere inches from it making it hard to breathe. My vision was drawn to the North like iron filings to a magnet, over plantations and pleasure gardens, the city of Lys and its sapphire beaches, coming to a stop against a vaguely familiar vessel consumed by amethyst fire faster than its crew could jump overboard.
The firebomb that had failed to destroy the Ironborn longship had been the first attempt I'd ever made, its construction rushed as enemies approached and I was already exhausted by other magic. Its flames had only reached as far as the blood spilled in its breaking and while they had burned fiercely, they had been partially washed away by enough water, its remnants smothered by sand. The one Featherball had taken had been a project two weeks in the making, an attempt at the creation of something closer to true wildfire in power. The bomb itself was larger too, for Lys was the home of some fairly large tropical birds that could have been used in its delivery and Featherball herself had grown over the past months. The result was not akin to wildfire though. The flames writhed like living snakes, the ignition spell backed by blood spilled again and again over many days biting into wood as if it were gasoline-soaked paper. The conflagration actively spread out to everything that would burn, tongues of fire leaping out after the crew that jumped overboard, fire that was not quenched by water but burned under it like a magnesium flare.
Not everyone died as the ship burned. Crewmen that had been standing the furthest from the flames jumped before the magic could reach them. Passengers from belowdecks that realized what was happening quickly enough to react crashed through windows. A few even tried to cut their way through the ship's planks with swords and axes instead of getting closer to the flames, two of them even succeeding. And the figure of an ageing merchant wrapped in silks burst through the glass window of a cabin just under where the firebomb had hit, mere heartbeats ahead of the rapidly disintegrating ceiling collapsing into a rain of fire. As he broke through the window the fire surged and exploded outwards, swallowing him from the waist down.
For a moment as I watched through Feahterball's eyes, I thought he was dead like the rest. Then his figure twisted, silks melting away to reveal a full-body suit of pebbly black leather, leather against which the flames kissed but failed to stick properly because it would not rightly burn. The assassin splashed into the sea with a hiss of steam and unlike all others that did so he did not die. Dragonhide. It had to be what his suit was made of, nothing else made sense. Even the hide of a young dragon was fire-resistant and given how it had bounced Jorah's sword in their brief scuffle, this world's dragons were not the easily killed things of the television series but akin to the books where even a dragon too small to ride could shrug off multiple powerful axe blows. Yet though it had saved him from the flames, it did not allow the assassin to escape in truth.
My would-be killer swam away from the crumbling ship with all speed but little of the frantic motions and obvious terror of all other survivors. His strokes were even, measured, at a pacing of an experienced swimmer. Even with the ship dozens of miles from shore, there was still a chance he could reach it and live. That chance was snuffed out as Featherball swooped in from behind, my mind's shadow her only cargo as she dropped onto the man's neck in total silence. Talons almost as long as my fingers tore into the soft flesh just below the man's skull, rending skin, muscle and sinew at over five hundred pounds per square inch. The assassin screamed and flailed but Featherball had already flown away.
A minute later he was gone, swallowed by the ocean. A few more minutes after that, a torrent of torn vitality much deeper and denser than that of any man's I'd sensed before flowed into my body. More raw power than I'd absorbed at once at any time in the past, even during the ritual sacrifice that had helped make Keera's dagger, mixed in with the dozens of deaths from the ship and carried me through the next milestone and most of the way into the next. Even that much was just a distant echo of the assassin's death for I was not truly present, had never intended to kill him then and there, had not held the murder weapon in my hand. It was at that moment that I understood the temptation and why the Undying had tried to consume Daenerys instead of teaching them, if even the echo of a magical death could give so very much.
Yet whatever the gains, the cost remained; terrible, undeniable. This had not been a ship of slavers preying on the innocent. It had not been even a military galley full of mercenaries for the brewing war. It had been a cog full of merchants and other passengers traveling between cities. A ship I had chosen not to attack, because the only weapon I had that would have worked against the assassin had been the one Featherball actually used. Now my body was fit to bursting with vitality stolen from civilians and while few of the merchants of Lys could be said to be innocent, they still were very far from my intended quarry. Worse, the assassin had died. He could not be followed to see who he would inform of his failure and where, or whether he'd been a Faceless Man as some of the evidence implied rather than a magic-user of another faction with access to similar tools.
For the first time in a very long while I wished I could take the whole series of events back...
xxxxFour days. That's how long it took the injury in my chest to heal fully, for my magic to stop responding sluggishly like some sickly beast of burden hollowed out by starvation. The six-inch-deep hole through my sternum was gone, muscles already knit together almost like new, the splinters where the crossbow bolt had scraped against ribs removed and the crack into the bone refilled even if still tender. A pale mark of newly grown skin the size of a silver star itched abominably between my breasts but I did not dare push my recovery any faster lest I invite disaster. The rings I had removed the night before, letting my recovering magic and the extra vitality from the destroyed ship's crew take up the slack, but some damage was already done.
I held up my arms against a beam of morning light coming through the open window of the ancient overseer's tower in the old quarry turned training camp. A cacophony of yells, shouted orders, laughter and complains, the sounds of hundreds of feet moving in a hurry and heavy loads being dumped into wagons and the occasional clang of metal came through the opening, but I ignored the din of the Dread Company as they prepared for departure in favor of evaluating the changes.
My arms were paler. Valyrian skin tended towards lighter tones to begin with and mine was lighter than most, but now my arms looked like they were made out of polished alabaster. Some of it was due even the tiniest scrape or flaw having been erased from two days of intense magical healing but not all; the skin lightened the closer one looked to my hands, said hands themselves appearing almost bleached. Not was skin pigmentation the only discrepancy; my fingers were longer, spindlier even as the finger bones were thicker and denser, with the meat over them thinner and tougher. My nails were thicker too, only just enough to notice, but hard enough to gouge wood with ease and trying them against a cheap breastplate had produced a horrible nails-on-blackboard sound and left scrapes into the iron.
It was not normal. Not in the way I was just better than most people but in the way some Targaryens had been born with draconic features, mutations that had killed most such babies at birth or even earlier. Magic warping flesh was nothing new; the Valyrians had tried their hand at biomancy for millennia both in Valyria itself and the infamous flesh-pits of Gogossos. After the Doom random mutations had become more common; there were entire cities populated by mutants and monsters close to the Valyrian peninsula and in the Smoking Sea itself magical corruption had been so intense a single brief visit had doomed Aerea and hurt even Balerion. Yet despite knowing all this, having read about both accidental mutants and mages that had misused magic being turned into things like the Undying, I had not expected something like that to happen.
I flexed my fingers, clenching my fists so hard they should have creaked but didn't. Then I punched the wall with all my strength, stone chips sent flying. That would have cracked a knuckle or two a few days before, but whatever wearing that many healing rings at once had done to my arms had left them more yielding than bone should be. Objectively speaking, the mutation was beneficial and barely noticeable to boot. Subjectively, I'd tried to heal the hell out of a sudden change to my body I'd never asked for... but all my attempts had failed. There simply wasn't anything to heal there; if I wanted the changes reverted I'd have to flesh-shape them manually, mutating myself back to how I used to be.
I kicked a chair, shattering it into kindling against the wall. It did not help fix my arms but it did wonders for my mood. So what if my arms were a bit more goth? They still worked as well as they ever had, better even. Instead of whining about it, I focused on more important matters. With the entirety of Lys on high alert, the loss of another ship had already been noticed. Wherever that cog had been going it had been expected and when it did not arrive, fleet patrols and Lys-affiliated pirate groups exploded into action even more than before. Back in the city the Golden Company's extravagant fees had been paid, several other mercenary companies were being hired and even our brand new and entirely untested group had received several offers despite such a grandiose and tryhard name as "The Dread Company".
Tregar's men were already bringing Jorah's old ship to the small harbor below the old quarry. Having a ship to our name at all had contributed to receiving those employment offers and after some deliberation I'd messaged him via parrot to accept the one for escort duty through the villages of Laesar, Tolessis and Saelys in the Disputed Lands. Those three settlements were Lysene holdings on minor rivers going through many square miles of plantations up the mainland coast and significant suppliers of both food and cash crops for the city. Being close to the edge of the wastelands where warbands from all three rival cities had roamed and clashed since the Doom, they were also prime targets for Tyroshi forces that would want to cut Lysene supply lines in the coming war... but that was not why I'd accepted the assignment.
No, that had been the second mercenary company to take up a contract in the area. A company as small as or even smaller than our own Dread Company, one with very bad reputation that had only been hired because of the rapidly devolving situation. The Brave Companions, whose standard was a black goat with bloody horns on a white field. The Brave Companions who rode zorses for their ferocity and bloodthirst. The Brave Companions who'd recently had thirty of their number desert to parts unknown, to hear them tell it to their employers, a story much different than the one spoken of in their own command tent where little birds had overheard.
Half the power surge from my recent milestone going into divination made seeing and hearing through animal spies so much easier. Sharing senses, even split many ways between birds, wights and the lasting links to Tregar and Featherball was easier, the dreamlike quality of the animal senses my human brain could not quite parse clearer, reviewing past memories faster. The same quality increase followed into my awareness of other forms of magic, everything about my surroundings sharpening in definition even where I was not looking as long as I was holding on Greensight or what little Elementalism I could manage. It might not be enough to defeat the glamour of Faceless Men yet, but at least I would never again discount or miss odd details that could warn of hidden enemies.
But the other half? What skills or tricks would be needed for meeting men that were neither brave nor companions? My hands almost itched for the power to curse their whole camp, to set their blood on fire or tear their minds out of their skulls... and for that alone I turned away from overt magic. Instead I reached for something more subtle yet still deadly, the dull lead glow of the seventh Flame. As in more than a dozen times before, visions of distant times and places flooded my mind, a torrent of memories from other people. Some of those people were dancing, others were dueling in the streets, others still flitted from shadow to shadow with such ease it seemed supernatural. A plump middle-aged man altered his voice, gait, smell, and overall appearance, employing different wardrobes, make-up and wigs, to become an old woman, a young beggar, a whore down on her luck. A skinny boy with freckles and red hair shoots arrows over misty moors, his fleeing targets so far away they were but distant specks. But one of the visions was not like the others.
It began with a tall, dark-skinned man, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, looming over a slip of a girl that could not be older than twelve, pale skinned and red-haired. Bronze braziers burned around them and a man was chained to a stone bench with bonds of black iron between them. One of the man's feet wore a boot still. The other had been stripped of boot and sock and skin, the toes missing from the bloody stump entirely. Then in the vision the large man spoke to the girl;
"The bones remember. The strongest glamors are built of such things. A dead man's boots, a hank of hair, a bag of fingerbones. With whispered words and prayer, a man's shadow can be drawn forth from such and draped about another like a cloak. The wearer's essence does not change, only his seeming. Remember and repeat in the Heart of Fire, whence flame and shadow spring, and yours will be a thousand faces and one."
The visions faded and with them the skill of those that had been shown took root in my mind. I knew tricks of silent tread and unseen egress, of both dancing and fighting with speed and boldness and the grace of a cat, of shooting arrows as far as any man, of mundane disguises so good they were also supernatural. Last but not least, of weaving glamour like the Faceless Men, not necessarily through wearing faces but by anchoring the magic to items of identity and personal significance.
My other magics eagerly slotted into that knowledge. Sorcery allowed me to both guess identity from the slightest drop of blood but also fashion it from the same, but also to spill blood for secrecy, to add it into the making of objects or marking of places to make them less noticeable either to those whose blood had been spilled, or to their opposites. Fire and glamour merged to make light, illumination that was neither flame nor illusion but producing light directly. Necromancy touched on glamours only lightly, letting me keep my wights almost perfectly lifelike. Greensight merged with glamours to bar the minds of others, an intangible barrier that would bar one passage to a single individual or specific small group as if the passage did not exist. More links tried to grow but ultimately failed, their sources too faint to sustain a connection. I felt like there were more synergies to discover - far more - but those still lay in the future for either when my skills grew or more sacrifices could be made for growth.
The next week or two promised to be very interesting...
The week before our departure for the Disputed Lands was a frantic jumble of activities. Armies needed a ridiculous amount and variety of supplies. Even a small mercenary company such as ours needed food, weapons, ammunition, armor, tents, clothing, tools and utility items, consumables such as nails, rope, wooden planks, tools for weapon maintenance, sewing, camping and similar activities. The one thing we didn't need was extensive medical supplies, including alcohol for disinfecting both injuries and drinkable water thanks to magical healing. There was also no need for the various foul-smelling oils that somewhat protected from the many types of dangerous insects present in the humid coasts of southern Essos thanks to the insect-repellent enchanted spikes I'd cobbled together for the slaughterhouses; if they could keep the open-air butchering areas bloodfly-free, they could certainly do the same for a company on the march and giving them only to team leaders served as additional incentive for the rank and file not to desert mid-campaign.
Unfortunately, all the other supplies would still be needed and with Lynesse going through the basics of magic someone had do confirm everything was there, properly packed and ready for transport. That was how I found myself in House Ormollen's main warehouse in the middle of the night, looking into why some of the orders have yet to be delivered. And because most of the merchants and intermediaries we'd contracted with were not aware of who I was and why not keeping to the terms of their contract was a very bad idea, I'd had to talk to people with more visible conventional authority in such circles.
"You woke me up in the hour of the wolf because a shipment of dragon peppers was late?" Tregar Ormollen asked, his voice rising in incredulity, indignation warring with sleepiness in his face.
"We're leaving in a week and they're important," I shot back, checking against the records that the several tons of hard-tack and the thousands of jars of preserved foodstuffs were all there.
"How in all the Hells are dragon peppers important?" the merchant prince hissed. "You're going on a military campaign, not a Dornish orgy!"
"Dragon peppers last many months when properly preserved," I told him, scowling as I opened the crate labelled 'water flasks' and found it full of waterskins. "Also, they prevent Sailor's Bane."
"What?" Apparently, he was still asleep because he blinked stupidly at me instead of grasping the problem.
"Sailor's Bane? You know, the disease of bleeding gums, loosened teeth and bleeding under your skin?" I opened the next few crates, only one of which contained the actual flasks we'd ordered. "One of the most pervasive problems in both long sea voyages and military campaigns?"
"I know what Sailor's Bane is!" He almost shouted before sighing and pinching his nose. "You're saying dragon peppers cure it?"
"Not just cure it. One tiny dragon pepper a day and Sailor's Bane will never be an issue - along with slight improvements to overall health." I kicked the crate of waterskins that were not supposed to be there. The wood split with an audible crack. "I'd rather not waste time and magic healing its symptoms every week when a pound of the things will keep a soldier safe for months." I pointed at the now cracked crate. "Now what the hell are those and where are the rest of the metal water flasks we ordered?"
"What's wrong with waterskins now?" the merchant prince who'd never had to drink from anything as pedestrian as a waterskin demanded.
"Water will go bad in them if the weather is warm, they're easily punctured, they're impossible to clean properly without damaging them and they stink," I punctuated every point by dredging up bad experiences with the things from my days in the Neck and sent them down the connection to his mind, causing him to wince.
"All right! All right! You made your point; waterskins bad, metal flasks good," he grumbled and winced, rubbing his temples as if he could scour the taste of slimy water from his memory. "They are very expensive though."
"Tell you what, Tregar. If you can drink from the same waterskin for a month, feel free to skip on ordering the next batch of metal flasks," I offered in a sing-song tone, an offer he wisely decided not to take me up on. "I didn't think so." I turned around, picked up one of the storage jars, checked the seal on the lid and nodded. At least the bronze cap fit properly to every jar I'd checked so far. I could have made far better jars myself had the war preparations not been accelerated but with time running out we'd had to subcontract to a Myrish merchant. "At least this batch is going to keep for our first campaign," I muttered.
"Yes, about that," Tregar looked up from the second copy of the summarized orders ledger. "Why did you order six tons of baked groundnuts and had the entire House's kitchen staff salt them and ground them to paste? Is this another hidden medicine like dragon peppers? Do they cure sweating sickness or something?"
"The paste lasts half a year or more if properly preserved," I told him. "It also is two to three times as nourishing as dried meat, five times more nourishing than hardtack, is a lot easier to eat than either since it doesn't need chewing, and slightly improves overall health, strength and toughness because it's an extremely healthy food overall. It was used as food for sick people in ancient times," 19th and early 20th century Earth actually "and for an army on the march it's very valuable both for its medicinal effects and being able to feed more people for the same weight." By the time the explanation came to an end, the merchant prince was gaping at me. He took several seconds to recover the ability to speak, several more to think of the right words.
"If it is that effective why do we not know of it?" he demanded. "Why do we not know about the dragon peppers either?"
"Because no noble or merchant ever thought of 'wasting' expensive delicacies on soldiers?" I shrugged. "If anyone comes asking, they are for alchemical rituals. I'd rather not spread such knowledge to other sell-sword companies or enemy armies just yet."
Technological advantages combined with magic was how I planned my troops to have entirely disproportionate impact in the field compared to their numbers, but for that edge to be maintained all the various tricks that had come from future knowledge rather than sorcery needed to be limited to our side. Given how both nobility and merchants lacked familiarity with or care about military logistics they shouldn't incorporate the subtle and numerous such measures I would be using for at least the first few campaigns but eventually they'd wise up. For when that happened, I was planning for the more magical side of troop improvement to have hit its stride.
Whether it would work only time would tell...
xxxx
Lynesse held the rabbit over the obsidian cup by the ears and cut through its throat with a single slice of her new dagger's black blade. That was something she hadn't been capable of a month before, but constant practice and thousands of similar sacrifices had made her moves steady and efficient if not yet truly skilled. Blood spilled into the cup as the rabbit kicked frantically for the handful of seconds it took to bleed out, then slowed, then died, most of its life-force drawn into the spilled blood by both the nature of the ritual killing and the minor enchantment I had added to the cup.
Most, but not all. Some of the small animal's life-force escaped to the environment, a smaller portion clinging to all the physical vessels of the ritual; the cup, the dagger, Lynesse herself. With how small the animal was the difference was barely noticeable even for someone as strong in Sorcery as I was and looking specifically for such things. Yet just as even a single drop of water at a time will eventually fill even the largest of containers, Lynesse and her dagger hummed with potential - more potential than they had a month before.
The youngest daughter of House Hightower threw the rabbit carcass at the pile of other such carcasses without even looking, then walked up to the three-foot-tall obsidian pillar holding up an even blacker and shinier basin of silicon carbide with iron impurities. Magical fire burned in said basin, the heat from the dancing flames making Lynesse sweat. She poured the cntents of the cup into the fire, the blood sizzling and igniting like petrol instead of something with not the smallest percentage of flammable materials. Eerie illumination filled the room as the flames rose higher and higher, purple dancing with hints of green... slightly more green than it had had before Lynesse poured the blood in.
Martin the butcher approached the pile of carcasses in total silence, picking up the couple dozen small bodies almost reverently before depositing them in a bloody burlap sack, putting said bag on his back and walking away. Lynesse set the now empty cup down then settled on the floor to watch the dancing flames and the play of strange lights all around us. For about a minute nothing broke the silence but the crackle of fire over sizzling blood, the hiss of melting minerals under my hands and the bubbling of escaping air as I pushed my latest experiment into the fiercely glowing, almost blindlingly white molten stone. Then...
"This man... he is not right in the head," Lynesse's mutter broke the near-silence for the first time in a good long while. "He stares and refuses to look away when I catch him at it no matter what I say." She fiddled with her sacrificial dagger, the gleaming blade of meteoric iron idly scraping against her nails. "Not like a man stares at a woman, no." She shook her head. "More like a starving beast staring at a slice of freshly cut meat."
"Martin has enough discipline to not make a nuisance of himself," which was more than I could say for a great many men. Less than a week since the assassination attempt and I was back to my full complement of wights. None of them exceptional warriors perhaps, but there had been enough rapist scum in the streets of Lys to get a dozen fair warriors among those my bird spies had witnessed plying their despicable trade and subsequently killed with claws dipped in poison. "He knows that should he act out in any way I deem inappropriate he might very well suffer a fate more terrible than most people could imagine. Plus unlike most we could get as helpers, he has a certain respect for magic."
"Tis not respect but twisted devotion," Lynesse argued, her pretty face twisting into a scowl. "Why do we even need a man such as he?"
"Fanatics can be useful if handled carefully," I told the physically older but mentally much younger woman. "Plus we need someone to collect the rabbits. My time is way too valuable for that and I doubt you'd want to hadle them more than you already are," I told my apprentice. At the same time I pushed the sheet I'd extended my strongest fire-resistance spell over around the molten mineral at nearly twice the melting point of iron. The combined effort for the heating, stone-shaping and protection spells was exhausting, but unlike the first time I'd worked with silicon carbide I still had the power of multiple human sacrifices surging through my body and mind.
"Why do we even need rabbits?" the delicate-looking, exceptionally pretty blonde demanded with a shudder. "You've had me kill hundreds of the things every day."
"Before I could use magic to any significant extent, I spent five years hunting and sacrificing my kills," I explained as the sheet I kept pushing into the molten silicon carbide stopped hissing. Ah, we were finally getting somewhere. "Blood and flame can be sources of power, but how meaningful the offerings are to the aspiring sorceress still matters. Unfortunately, we do not have years for you to build up your abilities so quantity will have to become a quality of its own."
"But rabbits? Handling them is so..." she grasped for the right word then gave up and said what really was in her mind "...undignified."
"Still far better and cleaner than chickens," I said and Lynesse shuddered prettily, obviously not having forgotten the chicken incident. "Besides, we need the glue."
"What do rabbits have to do with glue?" the former noble whined. "They're just food and peasant food at that."
"On the contrary, they can be used to make one of the strongest known glues." Stronger than many modern glues back on Earth, in fact. "A glue so strong it can crush rock and crystal as it hardens, yet be easily softened and applied with the proper techniques. It's useful in several types of weapons as well as armor."
"You mean those rawhides they were carving up in the next building over?" Lynesse scoffed. "Proper armor is plate, or at least mail. Hide is for wildlings and those savages in the Mountains of the Moon. Not even the Ironborn use it."
"You'd be surprised at the effectiveness of properly hardened leather," I countered. "I'm not going to pretend it's as effective as proper plate, but plate was impossible to get at large numbers at only a couple of months' notice. But leather? If proper techniques are used it can be better than mail."
"It will fail at the first arrow, let alone spear thusts," Lynesse insisted. "You'll be skewered like wild boars."
"Considering I've hunted boars that would brutally slay the average archer while mostly ignoring their shots, that's not much of a threat." I pulled the now much darker and a bit heavier sheet out of its molten mineral bath and poked it. It felt like poking one of those granite tiles for luxury bathrooms but when I pressed harder it began to ever so slightly flex. Promising.
"Those unnatural beasts in the Neck do not count," Lynesse argued and in the privacy of my mind I agreed she had a point. Not that I'd ever tell her. "Your men will desert in droves if you just put them in leather."
"As opposed to peasant levies that are lucky if they get arming doublets?" I shot back snidely, because the quality of mass-conscripted Westerosi armies was often abysmal. "But if you don't believe me, here." I threw one of the test pieces at her. It clacked on the floor like hardened wood. "Test it for yourself."
"This..." Lynesse picked up the hard, solid tile of properly hardened rawhide and examined it closely. "This is not leather..."
"That's because it's hardened rawhide. Tanning actually weakens hide by a lot. Trying to harden tanned material is not going to produce the best results." Not that Westeros knew how to do proper leather hardening anywhere outside the Neck. The majority of the seven kingdoms had been using mail and plate for so many thousands of years that other types of armor had largely fallen by the wayside. "What you're holding is rawhide bathed in warm animal glue for long enough that the glue fills all the pores and other gaps in the hide, resulting in a material almost as tough as iron that can be far more easily shaped. You could take that piece you're holding and chop through a wooden log with it." Of course, quite a bit of testing had gone into finding the strongest easily available hide then combine it with the strongest animal glue, which proved to be aurochs hide and rabbit glue respectively. Then more tests for which temperatures and treatment processes produced the strongest bonding without weakening the hide. Both the butchers and the leatherworkers had been quite enthusiastic with the end result.
"That's... impossible," Lynesse said when her dagger scraped ineffectually against the half-inch-thick tile and I laughed.
"Your husband failed to cut through it in a single blow with both his sword and a rondel dagger. At that thickness even crossbow bolts barely penetrated." Which meant that worn over a gambeson it would be adequate protection against most things short of lance strikes from a charging knight. "It should be good enough against the typical sell-sword." That said I leeched the heat out of my latest experiment, cooling it back to room temperature until I had a black-brown tile with a rippled pattern. It was heavy, heavier than the hardened hide had been by a considerable margin. But there were compensations.
"Is that more hardened rawhide?" Lynesse asked, looking at the tile dubiously. "Was the bath of molten stone some magical ritual to make it harder?"
"From a certain point of view," I quipped then I picked up the rondel dagger we had for testing purposes in a two-handed grip, then brought it down on the experimental material with as much force as I could muster. There was a very loud crack and the steel blade shattered, with only a small dent carved into the black-brown surface. Promising indeed... as soon as I made producing it less than prohibitively costly in time and effort.
"...that looked as strong as steel plate," my apprentice commented.
"Lynesse?"
"Yes?" she asked, waiting for me to impart the next bit of esoteric lore or show some miraculous new magic.
"The flames in the brazier are dropping low," I pointed out. "It's time for the next rabbit."