Chapter 8.2 Swordmanship

The discussion ended, and Wolfgang walked out of his office to his room, where a young woman with long brown hair and a beautiful face was resting with a smile.

"Wynafryd" said the boy as he gently caressed her face, to wake her up, and the woman gently opened her eyes.

"Sweetheart" the girl whispered, and smiled brightly at him.

It had only been a few months ago that it had finally been their wedding. The original idea was to wait until they were both sixteen, but circumstances made both Wolfgang and Wylis want to move the date up as much as possible, and just a week shy of Wynafryd's fourteenth onomastic, the wedding took place.

Wolfgang wanted to secure an heir quickly, to leave even less choice for Wyman Manderly, who would simply have to accept the changes in his household.

"It is time to get up, you must finish reading those books" Wolfgang commented, referring to books both written by him and brought by Qyburn from the Citadel. They were on economics, administration and a bit of everything in general. Wolfgang didn't want his wife to be totally useless, but apparently it would be a difficult task.

"Give me a few more minutes" muttered the girl in a yawn. "I'm too tired."

Wolfgang simply gave a sigh, and let her rest a while longer, he couldn't waste that much time either.

Already outside the castle Wolfgang was dressed in his armor, and two people stood in front of him, Beron and Ser Morrent.

"I'm surprised you have time for this, Beron."

"And who is to blame for that?" commented Beron with a smile. 

Following the steady increase in the number of House Dustin's army, Beron had stopped training with Wolfgang and Ser Morrent had replaced him. The professional army now numbered 13,000 soldiers, all training constantly, and Beron was the senior commander, so he was spending a lot of his valuable time.

"But are you sure about this?" the sergeant asked. "I heard you defeated Ser Morrent, but the two of you at the same time will be a real challenge."

"I won't be able to tell unless I try," Wolfgang replied, and unsheathed a dull sword. Several soldiers looked around; they were at the training camp after all.

The camp was new, and was built halfway between Barrowton and Barrowdock. The 13,000 soldiers were here, along with about 5,000 other people doing different jobs; from cleaning to cooking.

There were also two large schools in the camp, only different from the children's, as they were only trying to imbue loyalty into the minds of the soldiers, not teach them other things.

Wolfgang thought about further increasing the number of the army, but in the end decided against it. 13,000 soldiers active all the time was a significant expenditure of gold, fortunately they were paid with labor points, but still the goods to be sold in exchange for labor points had to be procured with golden dragons.

Wolfgang could no longer provide for his own farmers, so he bought mainly from House Ryswell and Manderly, who had much larger arable meadows.

"Then we begin" Beron muttered, and glanced sidelong at Ser Morrent, who nodded.

The duo quickly rounded on Wolfgang Dustin, who only smiled in response. Beron charged quickly, forcing Wolfgang to focus his attention on him, but as if flowing with water, the young man brushed his sword against the enemy's, and deflected it back without expending force.

Ser Morrent seized the opportunity, and also charged at Wolfgang, but with the deflection made to Beron the young man was prepared to block Ser Morrent, and it was a real hammer blow. The knight was extremely strong, and Wolfgang knew it, but he was not weak either. He resisted steadily, without retreating a single step, which did not surprise Morrent at all.

Without wasting any time the young Dustin approached an elusive Beron, who tried to make a lunge, and passed by the side of the sword, forcefully grabbing his arm and putting him in a headlock.

"Ah!" cried Beron in pain, and dropped his sword. It was nothing serious, but a jerk that caused him to have to drop the weapon. Now unarmed, and confused, Wolfgang quickly headbutted the man and swung his sword across the fact, feigning murder.

Morrent tried to act quickly, but Beron was already down. The duo traded attacks for a few minutes, but in the end Wolfgang Dustin emerged victorious.

"How did you improve so much?" asked Beron, still with surprise on his face.

"I'm still just as good, it's just that I have an adult, or nearly adult, body now."

"By the way," commented Ser Morrent. "Where's that snot Amon? He hasn't been here for training in a while."

"He was in my office this morning, but he left for Barrowdock."

"Barrowdock?" asked Beron.

"The port city, though small, has spread out quite a bit. The guard can't cope," Wolfgang replied. In both Barrowton and Barrowdock there was a city guard, to ensure order. This is also a reason why the army stayed at 13,000 men and no more, because there was the guard. There were 1,000 men in Barrowton and 500 in Barrowdock, but the latter was a town built from scratch, with almost only migrants, so more order was required.

The Gestapo, the secret police under Amon's command, helped quite a bit with order in Barrowton, but they had no presence in the port city. Amon would go about changing that, as well as doing a sweep on spies.

"My mother sent me a letter asking for help keeping order there."

Barbrey Dustin was the one Wolfgang had put in charge of Barrowdock.

With the creation of a new town, major changes had to be made to the work point system. The dog tag created by Wolfgang could now only be used to buy real estate. For all other things, such as buying tools or food, tokens had been created that served as coins. This meant the end of the use of golden dragons in the territory of House Dustin, but not only House Dustin. House Ryswell had adopted the same system.

To avoid possible fraud, of someone spending the same money several times, as the point records of each one could not be updated between different cities, this was the only possible solution.

Real estate did not have this problem, because if fraud was detected, it was simple to restore the property back to the State. With movable property it was not so simple.

At last Wolfgang was back in his office, after a good training that had left him in the good eyes of all his soldiers. Already with so much time to train the army, it was no longer simply creating organized forces, they were also individually skilled, but they lacked a taste of blood, they were not real soldiers yet.

However, as he entered the place, Qyburn was waiting for him, his face complicated.

"What is it?"

"It's a letter."

"From the Citadel?"

"The Tyrells."