Bryn looked around. Lowering his voice, he spoke so quietly that only the two of them could hear him:
"Lord Suleiman... are you planning to take actual control of these mountains?"
Suleiman didn't answer. He merely turned his head and smiled at Bryn in the moonlight. His guess was right.
If he could control them, the rugged, towering Mountains of the Moon would hinder any army's movements. Even if the war went badly in the future, Lion's Den and the High Mountains would be his only refuge. People could build military forts in strategic locations among the mountains and establish actual control. Any large army would be ground down in terrain like this.
But to Bryn, that smile, though wordless, contained ambition, trust, and an invitation. It meant Suleiman had already come to regard him as one of his own.
That smile was worth a thousand words.
A spark flared in Bryn's eyes. All those years spent evading the nobles who hunted him in the mountains and dealing with the Wildlings had turned his experience into something invaluable.
His voice brimmed with confidence, born of an absolute familiarity with this land. He smiled proudly. "Then, my lord, you've come to the right man."
"The Mountains of the Moon stretch far and wide. The deeper you go, the thicker the fog gets. Outsiders lose their way in no time, and in the end, they either starve to death,
get captured by the Wildlings, or wind up as a beast's dinner."
"But my nine brothers and I have traveled nearly every part of these mountains just to stay alive. We left markers and traces everywhere."
Bryn pointed toward the distant, towering mountains, their dark forms shrouded in mist.
"I know where the cleanest water is, where we can grow crops for food,