-x-x-x- Chapter 13 -x-x-x-

I had been right about Sandor, letting him take his brothers head (even if the official story was that I had done it, couldn't have my future general branded a Kinslayer) had earned me his fanatical loyalty and as I watched him spar with Nash (the best of the squad with a blade) it was easy to tell that he could easily become a legend. While not quite as massive as his brother had been at the same age, he still stood as tall as most full grown men and had muscles enough to wrestle a bear even as a boy of thirteen. More importantly, he was fast in a way that few others ever manage - I should know, the same trait is what made me such a deadly swordsmen.

After a few more moments of watching I decided it was time to get back to teaching and so the stick in my hand whacked out and smacked Sandor's left leg as he again overextended in a strike.

"Footwork Sandor. You move your left leg too far forward when you block and it leads to you overextending your counter strike afterwords. It will also cause you to likely twist your ankle if the ground is less than solid." I explained, even as he kept fighting. That was the result of the extra whacks he earned the first time he stopped sparring to listen to me, he had to be able to fight so naturally that it required no thought.

Eventually I tapped in, replacing Nash, and began to fight just a bit beyond Sandor's level until, eventually, even his phenomenal stamina would no longer allow him to continue.

I gave him a few minutes to recover, and waved over a servant with water and hearty food, before taking him with me as I went to see how the other five members of my squad were coming with their task.

On the fields outside The Resting Lion, it just wouldn't do to refer to the fortress that guarded Casterly Rock as the little lion regardless of what I privately thought, a hundred men in a ten by ten square stumbled around as each was attached to his companions by a foot long wooden dowel with an eye on the end threaded through the leather belts each man wore. Each also carried an eight foot tall wooden staff in their right hand.

Cody was riding a horse beside them and calling out direction changes and march speed every so often. The first step of building a solid pike square was absolute movement discipline after all, they had to be able to march across a battlefield while maintaining perfect formation and able to respond to commands in an instant. The Red Cloaks were a professional force as far as Westeros counted such things, but that generally just meant that they wouldn't be routed easily, would obey orders from their officers without much complaining, were decently equipped, and were in good enough shape to march twenty miles a day and fight at the end.

That wasn't even close to good enough for a proper professional military, much less one whose primary infantry element would be pikemen. And so here we were, with the first five companies of future pikemen being marched back and forth around fields for ten hours a day under the direction of my men, I figured another two or three weeks and they would have it down well enough to move beyond the training wheels and even onto the more advanced maneuvers.

Riding up to Cody I said "How are they doing today?"

Looking from the men to me he said "They're getting there my lord, but the direction and speed changes are still too sloppy. I think we should make the schedule though."

I gave a nod, "Good, have you identified the twenty most level headed and intelligent?"

Cody hesitated for a while but eventually gave a nod "Aye, at least I've identified the twenty I think would make the best line captains and seconds."

"Then starting tomorrow, divide them up into their Line's and make the captains and seconds responsible for their discipline and conduct.", I said.

After receiving a salute from the man I gave him a nod, said "Keep up the good work Cody.", and headed off to check on the other four groups.

As we were riding I looked over at Sandor and said "What do you think about this?"

The teen shrugged and said "Don't know enough to have an opinion, Ser. But you seem to think a lot of men with long, pointy, sticks will change the face of war and you've learned a lot more than me about combat so I figure that you're probably right."

He paused for a second and then said " 'Course it could just get us routed the first time we face an enemy on the field and given that I'm your squire, I'll probably end up dead before I have time to do much but curse you out for having such a damn fool idea in the first place."

I chuckled, respectful of social rank he was not. "Careful there Sandor, if anyone else had been around to hear you say that then I would have no choice to discipline you."

"Aye my lord." he said, accepting the subtle rebuke with ease.

A glance at the sky after I had finished inspecting the rest of the troops showed that it was about time to be heading back, I still had the officers class to teach tonight.

While others could teach them to read, write, and perform what I considered basic arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) along with ensuring they memorized the various data packages on the realms noble houses and its various cities that I had had prepared; I was still the only one with the knowledge to teach them much of the military strategy and tactics that the army I envisioned would use.

For my infantry officers I had drawn from the various bastards and second (or lower) sons from minor houses who were already Red Cloak's. Given that I planned to have an initial core of twenty thousand pike men divided into five Brigades each of four thousand men, which were in turn made up of eight Regiments of five hundred, each Regiment being made up of five Companies of a hundred men each; I was going to need four hundred officers as Company Commander's and seconds, eighty to serve as Regimental officers, ten to serve as Brigade officers, and a handful to command the whole thing.

That added up to approximately five hundred officers that I needed to train up in time, so I had selected the twenty who seemed most promising and started teaching them. In time they would go on to teach the rest, but for now I needed to start from scratch for my military academy.

Still, it would be worth it in the end.

Besides the pikemen I had also gone and drafted some of the better woodsmen and hunters into training up a scout force. My plans called for a thousand scouts but that would take a while, at the moment a bare fifty were undergoing the training.

All in all, I was pleased with how the remodel of my army was going even if it would take at least two years before it really started to show results. The one sour spot was that I didn't even have a half qualified base to work from if I wanted to build a solid logistics and supply core, and as any competent military officer from Earth would have told you if you but asked - logistics is what wins wars.

In the end I had actually resorted to drafting some of the Rock's servants, picked the brains of several Lannisport merchants, and had the servants run through conditioning courses before sending them out into the world to learn what it was like to move goods around. I could do things like introduce standardized sizes for uniforms and boots, set standards for how much food & water each man needed (and of what quality) every day, decree a standardized supply crate and supply wagon, and so on but I simply didn't have the knowledge to figure out how long it would take to move goods around the territory of Westeros on the kind of scale my army would demand. So I delegated the task to my people and set them to empirically figuring out the answers.

The Rock's foundries, and artisans, were already hard at work producing the gear we would need for the first Regiment. Even if the Smith's had screamed unholy murder when I ordered them to produce shovels out of castle forged steel and then blue them - and hadn't that been a pleasant surprise to find. In truth they were basically entrenching tools but they had an opening so that you could lock in a shaft and it was designed to mate perfectly with the pike staffs of the men.

Those pike's were four sections of wood four feet in length and capped in metal screws, allowing the men to screw the sections together (along with the screw on pike head) for a four, eight, twelve, or sixteen foot pike. Screw one of those sections into the entrenching tool and each man also had a proper shovel, a must given that I had gleefully cribbed from the Roman Legion's and demanded that a proper walled camp be thrown up every night.

The men's armor would be clothe gambeson's with leather reinforcements over critical areas save for the steel pauldrons and helmets. In truth, the men's armor was being behind a thicket of pikes, but they still needed some defense against arrow volleys so they got pauldrons and a helmet that looked more like a sun hat than anything else. It was absolute shit against anyone in melee range but the extra broad brim would effectively shield them from plunging fire and the padded leather under hat that would go over their standard issue leather baseball cap and be secured by a chin strap should also cut down on concussions.

No, the army was coming along quite nicely.

'and that's quite a good thing, the navy might be more important in the long run but we are still at least six months away from having a design ready for prototype production and probably a year away from being ready to start serial production. Until then, I'm going to have to rely on the army to deal with any military issues and I doubt the other lords will be pleased with me once Robert makes it back to the capital tomorrow or the day after and they learn about the bank he has chartered.'

The meeting with Robert have occurred two days after he returned from his hunting trip and after he was solidly buzzed on fine booze. We had been in my Solar along with Tyrion and Kevan, sharing an after supper drink, when I had said "Your Grace, my brother here came to me with an idea that I think you would quite like to see made reality."

"Oh?" he had questioned with a raised eyebrow, turning to examine Tyrion.

The dwarf gave a firm nod, reached into his pocket for something, and flicked it through the air at Robert as he said "I have Your Grace." Robert snapped the object out of the air without seeming to even look at it, his left hand flashing forward almost faster than a snake could strike, before beginning to examine the coin he had caught as Tyrion continued speaking "It seems to me your grace that with the fall of the Dragons and the rise of the Stags, calling our coin the Dragon was foolish. So how do you like the Golden Stag?"

The coin Robert was now looking at was the first one of its type and I had started one of the Rock's jewelers on it barely a day after I first mentioned the Bank to Tyrion. It contained twenty five grams of gold mixed with one gram of silver and one gram of copper, making it slightly purer than what the mint in King's Landing produced. One face had a raised, crowned, stag with its front hooves resting on a dragon's skull while the other face had Lannister sigil raised from it.

"Why the hole?" was the first thing Robert said, talking about the small hole through the mouth of the dragon and between the lion's legs.

"It let's you easily pass a string or leather cord through a bunch of them, so you can carry then more securely." Tyrion explained before saying "I trust you like the design?"

Robert gave a booming laugh "Like it? I love it!"

Smoothly taking the reigns from Tyrion I said "Then how would you like to see it on every golden coin in the realm?"

The hunger was plain in his voice as Robert said "How?"

"Back when my father was Hand, he wanted to establish a bank here in Westeros. He feared the power of the Iron Bank I think.

"Still, the idea would have been good for the realm but the Mad Dragon was already fearful of fathers influence and so wouldn't let a bank be formed. That would probably have been the end of the idea but Tyrion", I nodded at my brother here, "came to me shortly after father died and suggested that with a sane and competent King on the throne we might be able to honor our father by making his project a reality. He proposed that we establish the Bank of Westeros and offer much the same services that the Iron Bank offers but I had my own inspiration."

I gave a nod and pointed at the coin Robert was still gleefully glancing at every few seconds "The vaults of my House overflow with gold and every year we send great treasure fleets to King's Landing filled with the gold needed to pay the Westerland's taxes. Protecting those shipments is one of the primary reasons that we have the Lannister fleet, but it is still a nightmare to secure against pirates.

"Once in King's Landing, the crown pays its servants at the Royal Mint to turn that gold into coinage where it is then used to cover the crowns expenses.

"Now my thought was, why not just mint the coins here at Casterly Rock and establish an account for the Iron Throne at our bank. The coin gets to save the money it would spend minting the coins while we get to save the cost of transporting all that gold to King's Landing every year, instead we would just move the coins into the Throne's vault where it could then be used to pay its expenses."

Robert mumbled, "I hate counting coppers." under his breath before saying, at a more normal volume, "So how would people get paid then? If the coin's here at the Rock then how does it pay a merchant for his Arbor Gold at the Red Keep?"

I gave a nod acknowledging the question, "A fair question, and there are three answers depending upon the circumstance and the merchant. Ideally, the merchant would also have an account with the bank and so the Master of Coin could just order the money taken from the crown's vault and moved to the merchant's vault.

"The merchant could also be given a signed note from the crown that instructs the Bank to give him the authorized funds when he presents the note at one of the Bank's branches.

"Or the crown could just pay him in coin and whenever your vaults run a little low the Bank would just transfer some coin to you to fill them back up."

The king grunted, "And you think people will accept this?"

I gave a firm nod "Yes, Your Grace. At least they will if we have the crowns support, and we are prepared to be generous in exchange for having that support."

Robert looked at each of us, his eyes resting on the silent Kevan for a long moment, before ending on me and saying "How generous, and exactly what support would you want?"

"In exchange for having exclusive authority to issue coinage, we would bare the expense of issuing that coinage. More broadly, what we would like is for the crown to agree to enforce the terms of any contract between the Bank and another subject of the crown." I said, holding up a hand to stop him from saying anything as his mouth opened to reply.

"Imagine that Lord Hightower borrowed a hundred thousand dragons from us and then refused to pay. Would the Tyrell's force their bannermen to honor his word? And what do we do if they don't? Do I march the Red Cloaks into the Reach to collect payment by force?

"No, if this is to work then it would need to be established that the Crown would use its authority to enforce the agreed upon terms on the bank and its customers. In exchange for this, the crown would be paid a silver for every contract signed and witnessed."

Robert grunted "A fair point, you can't ever trust those Flowers. Seems a bit weighted in your favor though, a silver per contract is low."

I gave a small nod "Perhaps a bit, but the real benefit to the crown would be the Bank's commitment to extend the crown up to a hundred thousand golden stag's in loans each year upon request AND that any loan from the bank to the throne will have a ten year term with an interest rate of three percent per year. Although we would also have to require that the Bank have right of first refusal on any attempt of the crowns to borrow funds from other sources."

Robert cocked his head to the side and squinted quizzically "Doesn't the Iron Bank charge a percent of the unpaid principal every month? And send a Faceless Man after you if you miss a few too many?"

"Indeed they do, Your Grace." spoke Kevan for the first time.

Robert smiled then and gave me a nod "Now that's more like it then, a more than fair price for the crowns guarantee.

"Kevan's the Master of Laws so have him draw up the papers. I bet Jon's going to be so happy, he's already on about me wasting too much money. Well now I'll be saving it instead."

It took effort to keep my face straight as I said "I'm sure, Your Grace."

The next day the contracts had been signed and the Royal Charter for the Bank of Westeros granted. Robert had actually read through all of the documents carefully, to my mild shock, but either hadn't cared about all of the little proviso's that served my interests or simply hadn't caught onto their import.

I wonder what the Faith would think about the copper Star being replaced with the copper Falcon. And what Ned would think about the Silver Wolf, what with it's direwolf running across a snowpacked field under the bows of a weirwood tree. And what Robert would say if the Septon's bitched to him about it given the smile on his faith when he got to that bit, I think he liked the honor being due his father figure and best friend.

Kevan had promised to write me with everyone's reactions, it would be interesting to hear what Stannis made of his brother returning with half the Lannister fleet as our contribution to helping him take Dragonstone.

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