"This is an ill omen. Snow in the Riverlands before the leaves have even finished falling."
Brother John frowned, his eyes tracing the white flakes that drifted through the gray morning. It was supposed to be the peak of the autumn harvest, yet the sky had seen fit to drape the land in a thin, mocking veil of white. By noon, the sun would melt it into a cold, muddy slurry, but the message was clear.
Winter is breathing down our necks, John thought, unease creeping through him like poison ivy.
The rains had already drowned the first planting. The marauding Mummers and Lannister lions had burned the second. Now, a premature frost threatened the third. If the cold held, the Riverlands would become a charnel house. The smallfolk would not just be hungry; they would be ghosts.
Fortunately, the eleven manors of the Gods Eye Alliance had seen a swifter recovery. Their fields of potatoes, pumpkins, and beets had yielded enough to offer a glimmer of hope. But that hope was being eaten away. Refugees were pouring in like a tidal wave, fleeing the scorched earth of the North and the West.
John knew the math. The Alliance's stores were a bloated pig's bladder—stretched to the limit and ready to burst. If they didn't stop the influx, the Golden Dawn would be crushed under the sheer weight of the mouths it tried to feed.
"We must alert Aldric," John muttered, hardening his heart. "If we have to bar the roads and set up pikes at the border, so be it. We cannot feed the world if we starve ourselves."
He mounted the small, docile donkey Aldric had gifted him in the North and rode toward the riverside workshops, two silent guards flanking him.
The workshop district was unrecognizable. It had doubled in size since John first set up the hydraulic forge. Under the direction of the master smith Balin and the head carpenters, Robin and Walter, massive timber frames had risen. Hundreds of apprentices moved through the haze of sawdust and coal smoke.
Plows and hoes were stacked high, but so were bags of refined white sugar and sacks of the strange, gray Cement Aldric had pioneered.
A company of guards in black brigandines patrolled the perimeter. They were led by Aldric's third apprentice, Gendry. The boy looked less like a smith and more like a soldier now, his eyes sharp and soot-rimmed.
"Where is the Lightbringer?" John asked.
"The forge area, Brother," a guard replied. "He hasn't left the pits for two days."
John found Aldric standing before a stone tower nearly twice the height of a man. His face was smeared with ash, his hair disheveled, but his eyes burned with a feverish, golden intensity.
"What is this monstrosity, Aldric?" John asked.
"A blast furnace," Aldric replied, gesturing to the glowing brick structure. "Balin found iron ore in the hills upstream. I'm building two of these. We've used up the iron we took from the Mummers, and buying ingots from the merchants is bleeding our treasury. If we smelt our own, every man in the Alliance will be encased in steel."
"Why not build it at the mine?" John pressed. "Save the haulage?"
"I won't scatter my strength to guard a hole in the ground," Aldric said simply. "If the mine falls, it's just a hole. If this district falls, the Dawn dies. I keep the fire close."
Aldric wiped a streak of grease from his brow. "Now, why have you come to this pit of soot?"
"Two thousand more refugees this week," John said. "The rate is accelerating."
"Good. We need hands."
"We need bread!" John snapped. "You set the tax at two parts in ten—half what the Great Lords demand. You feed every stray dog that wanders in. If the frost kills the crop, these people won't be 'hands.' They'll be a mob. They'll eat us."
Aldric scratched his head, looking weary. "The harvest was decent..."
"It won't last. The snow fell yesterday. If it stays cold, the River-lords will bar their gates and watch the smallfolk rot. They only care about the land; they can always find new peasants in the spring. We are the only target for the starving."
Aldric's expression turned cold.
"John, I'm thinking of a different way to live," Aldric said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous register. "In my home, we have a saying: When the world ends, if your neighbor has the grain and you have the spear, your neighbor's granary is yours. Since these lords won't live and die with their people, they have no reason to keep their heads. The nobility is a luxury we can no longer afford."
John felt a shiver. "You'd march on the Lords?"
"People are the only asset that matters," Aldric stated. "If they trust us, we do not turn them away. We plant winter-wheat. We buy from the Reach. And if they won't sell... we find another way. I refuse to believe there is no path to survival."
"I have another task for you," Aldric said, crouching to draw in the dirt with a twig. "I need you to oversee the construction of the War-Wagons."
"Wagons?" John asked, looking at the sketch.
"Mobile walls," Aldric explained. "We lack heavy horse, and our boys are sons of soil. They cannot out-charge a Tyrell knight. But they don't have to. I'm building a vehicle pulled by a single horse with detachable armored panels. Five wagons, linked end-to-end, to form a pentagonal fortress in the middle of a field."
He pointed to the diagram. "Each wagon holds a ten-man squad. Heavy steel-armed crossbows for the distance, pikes for the close. While the knights are busy hacking at wood they can't break, our light cavalry will swing around the flank and harvest the light infantry. We bring the castle to the battlefield."
John, the master carpenter, saw the stress points immediately. "The frames must be thicker than a merchant's cart. Iron rims for the wheels, or they'll snap. And we need firing ports... ladders for the pikemen to thrust from the top."
"Exactly," Aldric said. "And armor. To prevent the fire-arrows from catching, we need water-storage and rawhide coverings. I need you to lead this, John. Gendry is too young to coordinate the materials and the men, and the soldiers are getting arrogant. They think being a Sunwalker makes them gods. I need you to show them that the wagon is their skin."
John sighed, looking at the sketch of the mobile slaughterhouse. "You're giving me a lot of work, Aldric."
"I'm giving you the future," Aldric corrected.
He turned to his guard, Clark. "Tell Brother Kerry to prepare the promotion ceremony for tomorrow night. I want the candidates to feel the weight of their new sun. And tell Greme to summon the Alliance lords. The day after tomorrow, we have a council. We aren't just surviving anymore. We are expanding."
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