The small castle sat like a stubborn iron nail driven into the crevice of the hills.
Solomon's army had been besieging it for three days. They had not launched a single assault, choosing instead to encircle it like a pack of patient wolves.
Standing in his makeshift, open-air command post, Solomon gazed up at the sturdy stone walls. The keep belonged to an old, relatively wealthy landed knight sworn to House Lege.
He hadn't ordered a storming of the walls. He had simply cut off the water supply and waited. A massive number of panicked commoners had fled into the keep when the siege began. It was mathematically obvious that the knight's granaries could not possibly sustain that many mouths for long. All Solomon needed to do was wait. In war, waiting was the cheapest, most devastating weapon available.
Yet, looking at the stout little keep, Solomon's eye twitched slightly in annoyance. "It is absolutely absurd."
"How is it that every single minor lord in the Riverlands has a castle built ten times better than the Reekfort?"
In the distance, several riders approached at a hard gallop. As they drew near, Olivier swung gracefully from his saddle before his horse had fully stopped.
Olivier clutched a thick ledger tightly to his chest. The heavy exhaustion of the past few days had been completely overwritten by a feverish, irrepressible excitement. Though the steward fundamentally disapproved of stripping a noble house bare, he could not deny the sheer, intoxicating magnitude of the harvest.
His voice was hoarse, but vibrating with suppressed joy. "My Lord!"
"The inventory of Willowbrook's wealth is complete!"
Solomon turned around, gesturing for the steward to sit and rest.
Olivier refused the seat. He practically threw the ledger open, his finger flying down the columns of cramped ink.
"Various gold and silver chalices, jewelry, and luxury goods... conservatively estimated at roughly three thousand Golden Dragons."
"One thousand five hundred and twenty-seven spears. Eight hundred and sixty-four swords and assorted martial weapons."
"Six hundred and nine sets of ringmail... and... My Lord, between the surrendered garrison and the battlefield salvage... we have secured exactly thirty-seven full suits of plate armor!"
Olivier's breathing grew ragged. As a man who had managed the accounts of great lords, he knew exactly how much wealth this represented. Through this single, brutal campaign, Solomon had practically seized a mountain of gold.
"The harvested grain is piled as high as a small hill. Forty-three heads of cattle, six hundred and seventy-two pigs and sheep, and over three thousand four hundred chickens and ducks."
"We even stripped the fields of over six thousand iron farming implements. Tables, chairs, iron pots... My Lord, we truly left them nothing but the bare stone."
Solomon listened quietly. A dark thought crossed his mind: Perhaps I should just become a warlord permanently. Why break my back farming the land like a peasant when I can just take what I need? No wonder everyone in this world constantly wages war.
Olivier finally snapped the ledger shut, adding his final, most crucial report. "And there are the people, My Lord."
"Over two thousand one hundred refugees have formally agreed to migrate to your lands. Among them, there are over seven hundred able-bodied men capable of bearing arms."
Solomon forced his voice to remain perfectly level, hiding the immense satisfaction blooming in his chest. "Excellent."
"Settle the new arrivals in the vacant villages left behind by our own smallfolk who moved into the mountains."
"Take the grain they harvested from the Lege fields and distribute it evenly among them. The farming tools, the pigs, the sheep, and the fowl—divide them equally per household."
"As for the cattle, distribute them evenly among the villages to be held as communal property for plowing the fields."
He paused, considering the strategic necessity of developing the deep valleys of the Lion's Den to ensure absolute, defensible control over his territory.
"Tell Evelyn: prioritize the allocation of the public lands deep in the mountains for these new arrivals."
The excitement on Olivier's face instantly froze. He had no issue with allocating the land, but giving away the massive hoard of grain, tools, and livestock completely for free offended his sensibilities as a steward.
He spoke with extreme caution. "My Lord... I believe that is highly ill-advised."
"We have already granted them fertile land and the absolute protection of your army. That is a monumental, life-saving blessing."
"You should require them to use whatever meager copper and silver they managed to save to purchase the grain, the livestock, and the tools from the castle stores."
"By doing so, we immediately replenish the war chest, and we force them to immediately return to hard labor to rebuild their wealth."
Solomon looked at him, his dark eyes utterly devoid of ripples. He knew Olivier's advice was economically sound in a traditional sense. But it would entirely shatter the "savior" persona he had meticulously crafted—a persona that was currently buying him a loyalty no amount of Golden Dragons could ever purchase.
This was exactly why he had opened the Willowbrook granaries to feed the starving, executed the opportunistic bandits in front of the crowds, and offered the refugees a genuine choice between following him or safe passage out.
The smallfolk didn't understand the complex, Machiavellian machinations of noble politics. They only knew that Solomon had started the fire. But by acting completely counter to the brutal, scavenging nature of every other Westerosi lord, he had engineered a miraculous psychological pivot.
"I gave them my word, Olivier. I promised them that whatever they harvested with their own hands belonged to them."
"You must understand this. These people have chosen to place their absolute faith in me."
"That fanatical trust is worth infinitely more than whatever miserable coppers you could squeeze out of their pockets."
Olivier opened his mouth to argue, but found he had absolutely no counter. He lowered his head. "Yes, My Lord."
Solomon said no more. He walked toward the edge of the camp, looking down at his soldiers. They were huddled around campfires in groups of three and four, boiling oat porridge and methodically sharpening their weapons. Their faces were etched with the heavy exhaustion and deep irritation of a three-day siege.
Solomon stepped up onto a high rock outcropping. His voice boomed across the encampment. "BROTHERS!!!"
Every head snapped up. Thousands of eyes locked onto Solomon as he raised his arm, pointing a stiff finger directly at the silent, besieged stone keep.
Seeing he had their absolute attention, his voice skyrocketed into a deafening roar.
"THE MOMENT THE GATES OF THAT CASTLE ARE BROKEN!!!"
"EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF WEALTH AND PROPERTY INSIDE WILL BE DISTRIBUTED EVENLY AMONG YOU!!!"
"BUT HEAR MY COMMAND! ONCE THE WALLS ARE BREACHED, YOU ARE NOT TO HARM A SINGLE UNARMED CIVILIAN INSIDE!!!"
The silence lasted for only a fraction of a second.
Then, the encampment exploded. A fanatical, earth-shattering roar tore from the throats of a thousand men, threatening to rip the very sky apart.
The exhaustion and the irritation of the siege vanished instantly. In the eyes of every single soldier, a ravenous, predatory fire of pure greed was ignited.
"LONG LIVE LORD SOLOMON!!!"
"LONG LIVE THE BLACK LION!!!"
In that single moment, the morale of the army hit an absolute, terrifying zenith.
Olivier hurried up the rock behind Solomon, his face the color of spoiled milk. He grabbed the young lord's arm, whispering frantically, his voice shaking with genuine panic. "My Lord, I beg of you, be careful!"
"Please reconsider this precedent, My Lord!"
Solomon turned his head slightly, waiting for the steward to finish.
"Once these simple farmers become accustomed to growing rich off the spoils of war, they will forget who they truly are!"
"They will forget that they are peasants! They will forget that they have fields waiting for the plow!"
Olivier was practically pleading. He had already seen the terrifying shift in the army's culture. These men fought because they wanted land; they wanted enough land to rent out to others so they could live off the taxes and escape the backbreaking labor of the fields forever.
And the psychological rot was becoming blatant. When the campaign began, these conscripted farmers spoke only of their crops, weeping over leaving their homes and worrying about their harvests. Now, around the campfires, they spoke only of the fastest way to gut an armored man, exactly where to thrust a spear to bypass chainmail, and how to sever a head with a single stroke.
In Olivier's eyes, these men were rapidly becoming indistinguishable from the Ironborn reavers, or the wildling hordes—perhaps even worse. Yet, their fundamental role in society was supposed to be agricultural production.
"They will wake up every single morning praying for war! Because war makes them rich overnight!"
"Peace will only bore them. Peace will make them resent the plow!"
"And how many wars can Westeros truly provide them before the realm bleeds dry?!"
"If you continue this, My Lord, you will eventually destroy your own domain."
Solomon did not answer him. He simply turned his gaze back down to the roaring, fanatical soldiers below.
He saw the newly integrated refugees—men who had been terrified, weeping farmers just two days ago—now gripping their spears tightly, their eyes flashing with the exact same ravenous, bloodthirsty hunger as his hardened veterans.
He knew exactly what Olivier was afraid of. And he knew exactly what his soldiers were hungering for.
But Solomon did not see "rejoicing at the sound of war" as a problem. It was the exact psychological state he needed his people to achieve, because he knew with absolute certainty that the true wars were only just beginning.
Yes, he had burned their lands and forced them into exile. But by publicly maintaining discipline, providing them with food, and strictly forbidding the slaughter of innocents—at least, openly—he appeared incredibly civilized compared to the rabid, scavenging native lords of Westeros.
And this rabid hunger for war among his populace was precisely what he was trying to forge. He was preparing for the future. He needed the distribution of "war spoils" to become a permanent, institutionalized system—an ironclad social contract where following the Black Lion into battle guaranteed generational wealth.
War was the most brutal, agonizing test of the human soul. Humans were not beasts; killing another human being placed an immense psychological burden on a normal, empathetic person, often enough to drive them mad.
Solomon intended to strip that empathy away entirely. He wanted to turn every single peasant under his command into a starving wolf. He wanted them to realize that they were not fighting for some ethereal concept of knightly honor, nor were they bleeding for a distant, uncaring high lord.
They were fighting exclusively for themselves. For the gold in their pockets. For the elevation of their families.
In truth, Solomon was still not entirely satisfied. He wanted to push this militarized society even further. He wanted to reach a state where his people looked upon an approaching war the way a starving wolf looks at fresh meat. He wanted to forge a culture where a father sending off his son, a brother sending off his sibling, or a wife sending off her husband would all say the exact same parting words:
"If you cannot bring back the severed head of an enemy, do not bother coming back at all."
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