The Training Yard, The Red Keep
With the royal invitations dispatched across the Crownlands and the Stormlands, the Red Keep erupted into a frenzy of activity.
If one were to look down upon the castle from the sky, they would see a dizzying swarm of servants rushing back and forth across the courtyards, frantically preparing the keep for the upcoming feasts and the royal hunt.
However, not everyone was busy with the same kind of work.
Down in the training yard, Gaemon was meticulously occupied with a task he deemed utterly essential: flaying sheep.
It was common knowledge that dragons were obligate carnivores. In the wild, they would catch their prey, roast it alive with their searing breath, and then consume the charred remains. Following this natural instinct, the Dragonkeepers of House Targaryen had always fed the dragons live animals. When the dragons unleashed their fire to cook their meals, they inevitably incinerated the hide, wool, and fur along with the meat and bone.
After watching the feeding process a few times, Gaemon realized this method was a catastrophic waste of resources.
The truth was, dragons couldn't care less whether their food was alive or dead when it was presented to them. During Aegon's Conquest, the three great dragons had frequently feasted on the charred corpses of enemy soldiers scattered across the battlefields. Dead meat was still meat.
Consequently, Gaemon ordered that before any livestock was presented to the dragons, the animals must be slaughtered and their hides completely stripped. The dragons would still get their meat and bone, but the valuable wool and skins would be saved.
In Westeros, where the technology to mass-produce wood-pulp paper did not exist, the written word was staggeringly expensive. Everyday writing relied primarily on cheap papyrus or incredibly costly parchment (treated animal skin). While high-quality silk or paper from Yi Ti existed, they had to be imported from the far edges of the known world, making them prohibitively expensive for almost everyone.
A single, thick book made of fine parchment was a treasure. Because cheap papyrus was brittle and prone to falling apart when bound into a codex, serious books were almost exclusively written on parchment. To put the cost into perspective, a finely illuminated copy of The Seven-Pointed Star written on vellum could easily cost enough gold dragons to purchase a sizable manse in King's Landing.
Because of this astronomical cost, a noble house's library was often its most heavily guarded and prized possession. A large library wasn't just a symbol of education; it was a glaring display of immense wealth.
House Targaryen fed hundreds, sometimes thousands, of sheep to their dragons every single year. By simply skinning the animals before they were incinerated, Gaemon was sitting on a literal gold mine of parchment.
The sheer financial potential made his heart race.
To secure this windfall, Gaemon had gone straight to King Jaehaerys and pitched the idea. The King had laughed, seeing no harm in it. As long as the boy didn't disrupt the dragons' feeding schedule or agitate the beasts, Gaemon was free to claim the ruined hides and do with them as he pleased.
Armed with royal permission, Gaemon didn't waste a second. He immediately formed a ten-man team within the Red Keep specifically dedicated to butchering and flaying the dragon fodder.
He didn't pick these ten boys at random. Over the past few years, he had been secretly observing the various noble wards and squires training in the yard. He specifically targeted second sons. Since they had no lands or titles to inherit, their families had pulled every string available to send them to the Red Keep, desperately hoping the boys might catch the eye of the royal family and secure a knighthood or a court position.
Gaemon had evaluated their character, work ethic, and loyalty from the shadows. The ten boys he selected were the ones who had passed his silent tests.
For the boys chosen, it was a massive victory. They had spent their days sweating in the yard and running errands for the royal family, all in the faint hope of being noticed. Now, their chance had arrived.
Sure, the prince had only drafted them to skin sheep, not to serve as his sworn swords or political advisors. But the actual task didn't matter. What mattered was that they were now working directly for Prince Gaemon. They had his attention. If they proved themselves competent and trustworthy with the bloody work, it could easily be the stepping stone to a vastly brighter future.
Gaemon gave his newly formed crew a grand, albeit confusing, title: The Order of the Golden Fleece.
The name meant absolutely nothing to the Westerosi nobles, but to Gaemon, it carried the weight of history. In his past life, the Order of the Golden Fleece had been one of the most prestigious and elite chivalric orders in existence, composed of kings and legendary knights. By giving his butchers the name, he was setting a quiet expectation: he intended for this small crew to one day mirror the legendary glory of the original order.
Gaemon split the ten boys into two squads of five and ordered them to elect their own squad leaders. He didn't care if they settled the matter through a democratic vote or by beating each other senseless with wooden swords in the yard; he just wanted natural leaders to rise to the top.
However they managed it, they eventually presented Gaemon with his two captains.
Because the entire group was young, the two leaders were only thirteen and fourteen years old. One was Jon Connington, a second son from Griffin's Roost in the Stormlands. The other was Amber Karstark, a towering second son from the freezing North.
Both boys were exceptionally large for their age. Amber Karstark had already reached the height of a grown man, standing roughly five-foot-ten. Jon Connington was slightly shorter, sitting at about five-foot-seven, but he made up for his lack of size with a sharp, tactical mind.
While Amber commanded through sheer physical presence, Jon proved to be an excellent manager. In the daily competitions Gaemon set up, Jon's squad consistently came out on top.
The "competitions" were simple. Every afternoon, the two squads raced to see who could perfectly skin their quota of sheep the fastest. The squad that finished first—without ruining the hides—was rewarded with extra cuts of fresh mutton for their evening meal.
Furthermore, whichever squad won the most daily races by the end of the month was granted a highly coveted prize: extra time off.
Gaemon ran the Order of the Golden Fleece with absolute, ruthless military discipline, completely ripping off the modern training regimens he remembered from his past life. Their days were a grueling gauntlet of physical conditioning, marching drills, standing at attention, knightly weapon training, and mandatory reading and writing lessons.
Because their schedule was so physically and mentally exhausting, "free time" was the most precious commodity in the world to them. Driven by the promise of rest, both squads fought like rabid dogs during the daily skinning competitions, refusing to give an inch until the last sheep was flayed.