From the Meraxes Wall to the Vhagar Wall, from the Grand Theater of Gohor to Dragon Square, beneath the city gates named after the kings of House Targaryen, speeches echoed throughout the city.
Each gathering was larger than the last.
Each crowd more passionate than the one before.
Over the years, Gohor had gradually developed its own unspoken hierarchy of prestige.
At the top stood the hundred thousand people Viserys had brought east when House Targaryen first settled here.
Anyone from that original group who was still alive considered themselves the Dragon King's most loyal subjects.
Sometimes that loyalty had been born more from circumstance than choice.
Even so, they had marched beside House Targaryen through every great battle.
The Battle of the Smoking Sea.
The Battle of Shipbreaker Bay.
The conquest of Gohor.
The defense against the Dothraki.
Next came those who had joined before the war against the combined forces of Pentos and Braavos.
Including the people brought from Dragonstone, Driftmark, and Claw Isle, that group numbered roughly three hundred thousand.
Below them came those who had settled in Gohor before the Dothraki invasion.
Although they lacked the distinction of having fought alongside the Dragon King in his earliest wars, their loyalty was no less sincere.
Viserys's generous land reforms and light taxation had earned their wholehearted support.
Whenever Viserys called for reserve troops, newly organized reserve regiments were immediately recognized by his mysterious gift.
Not long ago, Gohor had annexed Pentos.
Viserys had declared every outstanding debt null and void.
After confiscating the wealth of the former governors, the Old Crab proudly reported that the royal treasury had never been healthier.
Viserys simply waved a hand and ordered bread distributed to the poor.
The Pentoshi, newly brought under his rule, had no desire to see those greedy governors return.
Including the surrounding territories, Pentos added nearly a million people to his realm.
The population under Viserys's rule had nearly doubled overnight.
Of course, some of the speakers at these rallies had been planted by Viserys himself.
But without years of benevolent rule to support their words, such efforts would never have achieved this level of success.
As a result, Gohor's recruitment offices overflowed with volunteers.
Originally, Viserys had planned to enlist only fifty thousand new soldiers in the first wave.
Before recruitment was even halfway complete, twice that number had already volunteered.
Some families even tried to send children only seven or eight years old into the army.
In the end, the total was fixed at seventy thousand recruits.
Together with the existing standing army, Gohor now fielded one hundred thousand regular troops.
Including the Dothraki cavalry, the total reached one hundred and thirty thousand.
In Pentos, Viserys also recruited more than forty thousand auxiliary soldiers.
As for the Golden Company and the Windblown under the Ragged Prince, most of their mercenaries had already departed.
A small number of battle-hungry men, however, decided they wanted to experience what it felt like to stand against the entire world.
Believing their lives were worth little anyway, they enlisted under Viserys.
There were only around three hundred such men.
Viserys assigned them to patrol duty.
Dark clouds of war gathered over Gohor.
At any moment, they might unleash destruction upon the city.
Before that storm arrived, however... Viserys decided to create problems of his own for the Free Cities.
....
The crack of a whip echoed through a mine.
A slave master with bright blue-dyed hair pressed his boot onto a miner's head while holding a sheet of paper covered with drawings.
His voice trembled with anger. "Where did you get this?"
The paper was a pamphlet.
It contained four simple illustrations.
In the first, a slave master forced slaves to labor.
In the second, a dragon descended from the sky and incinerated the richly dressed slave masters with dragonfire.
In the third, the dragon bit through the slaves' chains.
In the fourth, the freed slaves smiled.
Considering the miserable literacy rate of the world, Viserys had chosen pictures instead of words to convey his message.
No one answered.
The slave master's hands shook with rage. "No one wants to admit it?"
The whip lashed downward again.
It struck the shirtless slave beneath his feet.
The man's body was covered with wounds. He no longer possessed the strength even to scream.
"Speak!"
"Who gave you these?"
Deep down, the slave master already knew the answer.
Gohor.
Over the past two years, not only Braavos but the other Free Cities had also tried to master the printing press.
Yet the true difficulty lay far beyond constructing the machine itself.
The metal type.
The ink.
The paper.
Each required techniques they had yet to reproduce.
They could produce crude printed pages.
Nothing approaching the quality of the pamphlet in his hand.
"From today onward!"
"Each of you will mine another hundred pounds of ore every day!"
"If you fail to meet your quota, you won't eat. You won't rest."
War was approaching.
Thanks to Viserys's policies, the market price of slaves had risen sharply.
However furious the slave master might be, he no longer dared slaughter slaves indiscriminately as he once had.
Collective punishment was the furthest he was willing to go.
Just then, an elderly slave slowly stepped forward. The movement made the slave master's eyelid twitch.
"You?"
"You know who made these?"
Years of experience had taught him one lesson.
The older a slave became... The easier he usually was to control.
Their spirits had long since been broken. Years of endless labor had stripped away every dream of freedom.
A bowl of salty broth made from the bones discarded by their masters had become life's greatest reward.
"The Dragonlord..."
The old miner's voice echoed through the tunnel.
"...is coming to free us."
For a moment, the slave master thought he had misheard.
"The Dragonlord's dragons will burn every one of you alive!"
For the first time in decades, the old miner stood upright before his master.
He seemed like a pillar holding up the heavens.
"Kill him!"
"Kill him!"
"Cut him into pieces!"
The slave master screamed hysterically at his guards.
Yet the old miner's eyes held no trace of fear.
Instead...
He laughed.
His laughter thundered through the mine as though it might bring the entire tunnel crashing down.
Scenes like this unfolded across nearly every slave city.
In the mines of Tyrosh.
The plantations and pleasure houses of Lys.
The slave factories of Myr.
The docks of Volantis.
Countless pamphlets drifted through the streets like falling snow. Each bore the same simple comic.
This was the propaganda bomb Viserys had prepared long ago.
Originally, it had been intended as a reserve measure.
If he found himself fighting Robert in Westeros while the greedy slave cities tried to stab him in the back...
These pamphlets would throw their societies into chaos.
Although this was not the moment Viserys had originally intended to ignite that spark...
The effect was proving exactly the same.
Within Gohor, the message was simple.
Defend your home.
Beyond its borders, the message was even simpler.
Free the slaves.
The abolition of slavery would not only become the great deed that earned Viserys his divinity.
It would also forge a new legitimacy for House Targaryen.
Since war could no longer be avoided... He intended to extract every possible advantage from it.
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