Iron and Gold Dragons

Luckily, the iron deposit discovered near New Land Town was not one that would run out after a little digging.

The gods had smiled on him. After lying buried beneath the soil for so long, this land had finally revealed its most important contents when it belonged to him, Dareon Hightower.

In the North or the Vale, it would probably have amounted to nothing more than a report from a subordinate to his lord.

Then the lord, eating his roast leg of lamb, would probably just nod, say, "Oh," and carry on with whatever he had been doing.

Iron ore was not worth much. Besides, once it was dug out, men still had to be organized to haul it to the castle.

Especially with so much land and so few people, labor costs were frighteningly high. Who had the time for that?

In the Reach, however, word of an iron deposit would probably send a large force of cavalry rushing over without another word.

Of course they would. Arrive a moment too late, and someone else might have occupied the place.

Then the ore they dug up would be made into the most splendid armor or longswords, and their own lord or his son would be outshone at next year's tourney in Highgarden.

In the end, they would still be the ones getting scolded.

Now, Darean's domain lay beside the sea, with the viscounty of Sunflower Hall to the east and the lands of Tommen Costayne, Earl of Three Towers, to the northwest.

They were all on the same side.

So, barring uninvited guests from the Summer Sea or certain people across the Redwyne Straits, Darean's domain would not suffer a large-scale attack.

In the "industrial district" planned by the steward-the gathering place for carpenters, masons, smiths, tanners, and other craftsmen-two blast furnaces had already been built to smelt raw iron ore into molten iron.

To prepare for this, the craftsmen had first built a brick kiln. Fortunately, suitable clay was not scarce.

Darean did not know how his people controlled the temperature.

It was enough to leave specialized work to specialists.

The granary was kept separate from the warehouses for other materials, with the two situated on the eastern and western sides of New Land Town.

The purpose was to prevent a fire from spreading from one building to the next and burning all of Darean's reserves to ashes.

After all, aside from poisoning the drinking water, this was currently the most efficient way Darean could think of to halt the domain's construction and development.

Everything was proceeding in an orderly fashion.

Ordinarily, when nobles built castles, they simply conscripted their subjects, and feeding them was payment enough.

After all, the system had originally been designed so that lords provided their subjects with protection, while their subjects performed various services for their lords.

But here in New Land Town, to speed up progress while reducing shirking and corner-cutting, Darean had taken a different approach.

Darean put up a thousand Gold Dragons as rewards to be distributed among workers who worked both quickly and well.

Both the steward and Gerold Hightower had explicitly opposed this.

In their view, giving commoners so much money would only make them waste it on women's bellies or flick it onto tavern serving girls' breasts.

Oh, right. More likely, those gleaming Gold Dragons would be hidden in stinking pigsties.

As for how much it would actually help the overall progress of construction, both men had expressed their doubts.

But Darean had made a rare show of his authority as lord and pushed the policy through with all his strength.

The domain no longer operated on rationing, and private property among the commoners had become sacred and inviolable.

As he saw it, he did not know how much distributing this money would help construction.

But it would certainly breathe life into the domain's economic foundations.

After all, barter was extremely troublesome. Only when money-Gold Dragons, silver stags, and Copper Stars-circulated among the commoners would it gradually stimulate vitality among the people.

With only a thousand or so people, there was no particularly difficult economic model involved.

A great city of hundreds of thousands like Oldtown had long since developed a set of rules governing every level of society.

Here, however, none of that existed.

So far, Darean's approach seemed to be working well.

Construction was progressing faster than anyone had expected. After all, if they worked well, their lord really did pay them.

In all their years, the craftsmen had never encountered such a good thing while doing unpaid labor for a lord.

In the lord's room.

Darean was reading the accounts his subordinates had submitted.

At his insistence, every shipment of supplies entering or leaving the warehouses had to be strictly recorded.

Whether warehouse managers or those withdrawing or depositing supplies, anyone who dared violate the rule would be sent straight back to Oldtown.

It was not that Darean was worried about embezzlement.

In fact, the warehouses were currently filled with bulky, low-value materials such as stone and timber.

The real purpose was to get his subjects into the habit, making it easier for him, as their lord, to know at any time how many resources he could call upon.

After all, the political system in Westeros was truly backward, and many things were simply muddled through.

When a critical moment came, they would be left floundering.

"My lord, I asked the smiths. They said this batch of ore is fairly good quality. The first batch of iron ingots will be ready by tomorrow at the latest."

Nodding in satisfaction, Darean rubbed his chin, where a faint stubble had begun to grow, and smiled at Clyson as he entered.

"That's good news, but we can't make equipment for you just yet. The men responsible for the fields have been asking me for new farming tools for ages."

"We can't keep relying on aid from Oldtown to get by."

"Though we missed the sowing season, all the land around New Land Town is good. Once we clear it and plant the next crop, we'll be able to feed several thousand people."

Taking off his gloves and putting them on the table, Clyson, who had just finished training the recruits, did not seem particularly bothered.

"It's fine, my lord. My lads' equipment hasn't suffered much damage. As for those raw recruits, I'm more worried that those hands of theirs, which only know how to hold a hoe, will cut off their little brothers once they pick up steel swords."

Frowning, Darean glanced at the man and reprimanded him.

"Watch your mouth. This place will be New Land Town one day, perhaps even New Land Port. I don't want my captain of the guard talking about nothing but men's bits or the two lumps of flesh on women's chests every day."

"Oh, damn it, can't you be a little more refined? We Hightowers have a noble bloodline stretching back through the ages!"

Clyson burst out laughing.

"Come off it, my lord. You're simply too young to know what happened before. What do you think the family's current 'captain,' Moryn Tyrell, was like in his twenties?"

"I'll tell you what I heard. When that fellow first came to Oldtown to take command of us, no one could find him for ages. In the end, Lord Leyton dragged him out of a bed at the Rose Brothel!"

With a helpless sigh, Darean gave up on the opportunity to improve his subordinate's bearing.

It really was a case of a crooked beam making the rafters crooked. He himself had previously been a brute who drew his sword and hacked at people at the slightest disagreement.

He could hardly blame Clyson and the soldiers under him for behaving this way.