Reform

295 AC, the North, Sea Dragon Point, Flint's Finger Castle.

The calendar reckoning that began with Aegon's first year originated with House Targaryen, the former royal house of the Seven Kingdoms. Westeros had used it ever since Aegon I, the founding dragon king.

Westeros consisted of the North, the Iron Islands, the Riverlands, the Westerlands, the Vale, the Reach, the Stormlands, Dorne, and the Crownlands. The name "Seven Kingdoms" dated back to before Aegon I's War of Conquest and represented seven powerful kingdoms and their ruling houses.

The Seven Kingdoms comprised three main peoples: the First Men, the Andals, and the Rhoynar. The North, where Eddard lived, was populated primarily by the First Men, who worshipped the Old Gods, an ancient faith dating back to the Age of Heroes in Westeros.

Unlike followers of the Seven, the mainstream faith in Westeros, northerners generally prayed and swore oaths beneath a strange, great tree called a heart tree. Heart trees were weirwoods, a species unique to Westeros, but only a weirwood with a face carved into it was a heart tree.

Weirwoods were deciduous trees with white trunks and blood-colored, hand-shaped leaves. Their sap was blood-red, and rumor had it that, so long as a weirwood was not cut down, it could keep growing forever.

Since heart trees resembled some sort of dreadful monster lurking aboveground, those in the south had suffered terrible destruction during the invasions of the First Men and the Andals. Later, however, for some unknown reason, the heart trees in many castles had been preserved.

In the council hall of Flint's Finger Castle, Eddard's lordly seat directly faced the enormous weirwood in the castle godswood. A sea breeze swept past, sending its hand-shaped leaves rustling down. On a breeze that seemed almost coincidental, one weirwood leaf blew toward Eddard.

At the sight of this wondrous scene, Eddard reached out as though compelled by some unseen force, and the weirwood leaf drifted gently into his palm.

"Uh..."

Looking at his subordinates below the seat, whose jaws had nearly dropped, Eddard did not know what to say for a moment. Maester Albert, however, noticed his predicament.

"Ahem. All right, let us hear Lord Eddard's arrangements for the castle's future work!"

Maester Albert addressed the gathering with a clipboard in his hand. A rough paper scroll was clipped to it: the castle renovation plan Eddard had prepared from the outset. Maester Albert would present it, and if anyone had questions, Eddard would explain.

"First, the matter of taxation..."

With Eddard's signal, Maester Albert began speaking to the gathering. At the mention of this topic, everyone instinctively turned toward the tax collector, Beris. Seeing all their eyes on him, Beris grew so frantic that he nearly dropped to his knees.

"M-my lord, I... I have always been loyal to House Flint. I have never..."

"All right, all right. I will continue to trust you, just as my father did. Do not worry. I merely want to reform the tax system, not suggest that you have done anything poorly."

Eddard waved a hand, cutting off the tax collector's pleas, and stated his intentions outright. Hearing this, the man gave Eddard a somewhat puzzled look.

"Er... my lord! Forgive me, but I do not quite understand what you mean. I... personally think we have done a very good job of collecting t-taxes..." After weighing his words, he seemed to make up his mind about something, then spoke plainly.

"I... I think the tax policy in our lands is already quite good. R-raising taxes could very well drive people away..."

The tax collector Beris did not know Eddard's temperament very well.

Although Eddard had signaled for him to continue, he still feared that some careless choice of words might anger him. "Hmm... you may have misunderstood me. I only want to reform the tax system, not raise taxes outright. I have a fairly clear idea of how many gold dragons the thirty thousand or so people in these lands can bring me. I will not kill a laying hen for its eggs."

Westeros used copper pennies, copper halfpennies, copper stars, silver stags, and gold dragons as its main currencies. These different currencies were not freely interchangeable in trade; ordinarily, each was used for its own purchases. Whether a territory made money was also measured by its income in gold dragons and silver stags.

Generally speaking, these currencies were roughly equivalent to one yuan, ten yuan, a hundred yuan, a thousand yuan, ten thousand yuan, and a hundred thousand yuan in China on Blue Star. Of course, this was merely a rough comparison, since prices were influenced by all manner of factors.

As a modern man with knowledge from Blue Star, Eddard understood that money was merely a symbol of value. The true way to generate vast wealth was to increase his lands' productivity. In any era, warfare and construction had always relied on hard cash, so Eddard's foremost task now was to make money.

The North's trade goods were primarily wool, leather, and timber. Areas closer to the south, such as Flint's Finger, mostly traded in sea salt, wool, grain, and leather. Moreover, the Western Mountains in Sea Dragon Point produced very little ore, barely enough even for local needs, and could not bring Eddard any additional wealth.

The Sea Dragon Point peninsula was higher in the west and lower in the east. Although its western mountains were not particularly tall, they were exceptionally steep, with glacial lakes of every size scattered densely among them. In some respects, Sea Dragon Point resembled the Korean Peninsula near China on Blue Star.

There were also several dormant volcanoes here. Some elderly hunters had boasted in taverns that they had seen volcanoes erupt in their youth. During the Dawn Age, this had been home to the Children of the Forest and the giants, the original inhabitants of Westeros.

According to ancient legends, the Children of the Forest had summoned towering waves from the Sunset Sea to resist the invasion of the First Men, turning the Neck, a vast forest connecting northern and southern Westeros, into a marsh. This prevented the First Men in the south from invading the north, leaving them no choice in the end but to enter into the Pact with the Children of the Forest and swear to live together on the continent.

In certain folk tales and unofficial histories, Sea Dragon Point had once been an enormous volcanic mountain range. It was the spells of the Children of the Forest that had made it barren and eerie.

According to Maester Albert's research and deductions, the western mountains contained rich mineral deposits. Their terrain was simply too complex and steep, which was why plans to develop them had remained shelved.

The year before Eddard's father in this world died, several hunters had discovered a mineral vein in a mountain range roughly 160 kilometers from Flint's Finger Castle. Afterward, House Flint had sent Rickard "Scar" to establish a mining site and dig shafts. To make transporting the ore easier, House Flint had even spent a considerable sum on a cargo ship specifically for that purpose.

At present, what Eddard lacked most was grain, and population was another major problem. Only close to ten thousand residents lived near his castle; the rest were scattered across the vast wilderness of Sea Dragon Point. Since House Flint's lands lay close to the Neck, most of the land to the south and east consisted of saline soil and marshes, leaving very little suitable for cultivation.

Eddard planned to replace the traditional system in which subjects delivered grain and money as taxes with one in which House Flint dispatched officials to collect monetary and grain taxes. This would both help Eddard learn about the surrounding area and strengthen his influence over it.

After Eddard said this, the tax collector Beris gave him a rather peculiar look. Though the movement was slight, Eddard still caught his expression. He knew perfectly well what the fellow was considering, so he spoke outright.

"In one month's time, I will begin building roads leading from the castle to other places. I will also lay out new plots of land and granaries. It is time House Flint changed. The old days of huddling in our castle with our treasure and grain to withstand winter are long gone. I want to build a city like White Harbor and show our kinsmen at Widow's Watch and the great houses of the North what House Flint can do."

Eddard's declaration echoed in everyone's ears. Their thoughts upon hearing it differed: some felt gratified, while others thought his ideas fanciful. None of this, however, was what Eddard needed to consider, for the things he intended to do were entirely beyond these fellows' imagination.

House Flint's fief contained three main settlements: Farm Town, Pasture Town, and Salt Spear Town. Pasture Town lay near the western mountains, Farm Town lay to the south, and Salt Spear Town stood near Salt Spear Strand, serving as a way station and boundary between the Neck and House Flint's lands.

The changing seasons in this world were extremely erratic. Though spring, summer, autumn, and winter existed, these seasons persisted for extended periods. It was currently the long summer, which meant it was summer all the time.

After Robert's Rebellion, summer had continued uninterrupted in Westeros. This was precisely what had given the continent's people a chance to recover after the war, since crops could be planted and harvested continuously during this period.

Eddard intended to seize this opportunity to build up House Flint quickly, so he could secure greater benefits in the wars to come. All of this would begin with tax reform.

Although having the residents, mayors, and other such people from the other towns come to pay their taxes would spare Eddard a great deal of trouble, it would also imperceptibly weaken his influence over the surrounding area. In some remote places beyond his reach, officials might even line their own pockets.

Northerners might be forthright by nature, but when glittering gold dragons were involved, Eddard would not assume everyone would dutifully collect taxes for him.

"You will handle the rest. If you do not have enough people, recruit some. Ask Maester Albert about the specific requirements."

Upon hearing Eddard's orders, the tax collector Beris nodded to him, while a different sort of thought arose in his mind. He did not know why, but he felt this place might undergo earth-shattering changes because of Eddard's arrival.

"Second, the matter of the army. Lord Eddard wishes to establish a new force, a Household Guard belonging to him alone..."

Maester Albert's next words caused an uproar among the gathering. Some even began discussing it in low voices. Eddard's idea was entirely different from that of the nobles of Westeros, who seldom maintained organized units of professional soldiers.

In wartime, nobles generally relied on knights, mercenaries, and levied peasants. Although the North had no system of knighthood, its nobles, great and small, and their guards filled much the same role as knights.

Much of the North was wilderness, and it had many herders. Combined with its people's fierce temperament, this made recruiting large numbers of cavalry quite easy. Though they were not as powerful as the knights of the south, those knights could not compare to them in numbers or courage.

Eddard's idea was simple: establish a force of around a hundred men, primarily infantry. Later, he would equip them with all manner of weapons. He had yet to attempt making gunpowder weapons, but whether he succeeded or not, these things needed people to operate them, making it especially important to train a powerful force loyal to him.

Eddard already had around fifteen guards, all left to him by his father in this world. Most were members of subordinate families who had grown up in the castle, so their loyalty was not something he needed to worry about.

Eddard ultimately entrusted this matter to the Captain of the Guards, Arthur Stone. This bastard from the Vale, a man in his thirties, had a specialized training method that could quickly teach people the basics of using shortswords and spears. He had also demonstrated his Rising Sword Technique before Eddard, and it looked very practical.

Afterward, Eddard publicly announced that he would establish workshops. His idea was simple: build his own handicraft workshops outside the castle. Glass, ceramics, precision machinery, and medicines all needed their foundations laid early so they could bring him handsome returns later.

Eddard also intended to establish a farm and a commercial estate of his own on the wasteland near the castle. These were not ideas unique to him, but things southern lords had been doing all along. The most famous example was House Redwyne of the Arbor, off the southwestern corner of Westeros. Their wine estates were renowned throughout the world, and their wine was not only worth its weight in gold in Westeros, but equally famous and expensive in Essos to the east.

"All right, these are the plans I have drawn up to transform our lands. I hope everyone will put their energy into them. After all, the better our lands fare, the more all of you stand to benefit!"

Looking at his subordinates, who were utterly stunned by his plans, Eddard spoke with some pride.