Chapter 11: Blood and Gold
Chapter 11: Blood and Gold
282 AC, Month of the Maiden
The news of Lyanna Stark's disappearance with Prince Rhaegar sent a tremor through the delicate web of alliances that held the Seven Kingdoms together. To the lords of Westeros, it was a prelude to chaos. To Alaric Blackwood, it was the sounding of a gong, a signal that the curtain was rising on the grand and bloody theatre of war. His meticulously constructed machine in Pentos—the shipping line, the informant network, the burgeoning legion—had been built for this moment. But it was still an untested engine. It had been assembled, but it had not yet been fired in the crucible of conflict.
He knew that to be a credible player when he eventually returned to Westeros, he needed more than just gold and a few ships. He needed a reputation. He needed his private army, the Onyx Legion, to be not just a well-equipped training exercise, but a name spoken with fear and respect in the mercenary markets of Essos. He needed to blood them, to temper their new steel in the heat of real battle. He needed a contract.
The opportunity came, as he had predicted, from the festering wound of the Disputed Lands. The endless, low-grade war between Myr and Tyrosh was a constant source of employment for sellswords, but Alaric was not interested in a conventional campaign. He had no intention of renting out his legion as trench-fillers. He sought a contract that was surgical, high-risk, and obscenely profitable—a contract that would serve as a demonstration of his unique capabilities.
The envoys from Lys arrived on a humid afternoon, their barge a confection of gilded swans and perfumed silks. They were two magisters, brothers named Oro and Lotho, their forked beards dyed a matching shade of lilac, their robes a shimmering silk that seemed to change colour in the light. They were the epitome of Lyseni decadence and subtle cruelty. They requested a meeting not with the head of a mercenary company, but with the director of Blackwood Analytical Services. They had heard the whispers of a new power in Pentos, a "scholar" who had an almost supernatural ability to predict market shifts. They came to buy information, but Alaric intended to sell them a war.
He received them in his study, a room deliberately designed to be as antithetical to Lyseni aesthetics as possible. It was stark, functional, and dominated by the great map. Ser Damon Flowers stood in the corner, a silent, intimidating mountain of blackened steel and scars. Nervo served them a simple, robust Pentoshi wine, not the cloying sweetwaters of Lys.
"We have heard tales of your... prescience, Master Alaric," Oro began, his voice a silken purr. "They say you see patterns that other men miss."
"I see facts," Alaric corrected, his voice flat and cold. He was thirteen now, tall for his age, with a stillness about him that was more unnerving than any overt threat. "The world is full of facts. Most men are too lazy or too stupid to look at them. What facts do you wish to purchase?"
Lotho, the younger and more impatient of the two, leaned forward. "Myr and Tyrosh bleed each other white. This is a fact. We wish to know... who will be the victor."
Alaric gave a faint, dismissive smile. "You ask the wrong question. There will be no victor. Their war is a slow, grinding disease that will weaken them both. The right question is: how can the current situation be exploited for the benefit of Lys? I have already analyzed this. The key to Myr's ability to sustain a long campaign is not its army, but its capacity to wage siege warfare. And the heart of that capacity is a complex of workshops located twenty leagues south of the city, where their master artisans construct the finest trebuchets and siege towers outside of Volantis."
The brothers exchanged a quick, startled glance. The boy was not just informed; he had already done the strategic analysis they had paid their own spymasters a fortune to acquire.
"If that complex were to be... removed," Alaric continued, his voice dropping slightly, "Myr's ability to threaten Tyroshi or Lyseni holdings would be crippled for a decade. The balance of power would shift. Permanently."
"Such an operation would be impossible," Oro countered, though his voice lacked conviction. "The workshops are deep in Myrish territory, protected by a full battalion of their city guard."
"They are protected against a frontal assault from a conventional army," Alaric said. "They are not protected against a surgical strike, executed with speed, brutality, and absolute surprise." He gestured towards the silent figure in the corner. "My associate, Ser Damon, is a specialist in such operations. His company, the Onyx Legion, is at your disposal."
This was the pivot. He had turned their request for information into a pitch for a military contract.
"You have a mercenary company?" Lotho asked, surprised.
"I have a private military solution," Alaric corrected. "The Onyx Legion is not a rabble of sellswords. They are an elite strike force. They can deliver you the Myrish workshops. The facility will be burned to the ground, the siege engines destroyed, and the master artisans... retired. Permanently. The involvement of Lys will be completely deniable."
Now came the price. "The fee for this service," Alaric said, his face a mask of stone, "is fifty thousand golden dragons. Half in advance, half upon successful completion of the contract."
Oro choked on his wine. "Fifty thousand! That is madness! We could hire the Second Sons for a year for that price!"
"The Second Sons would get bogged down in a pointless battle, announce their presence to the entire world, and fail," Alaric stated without heat. "You would be paying for a bloody and public failure. I am selling you a quiet and absolute success. The price is not for the labour of a hundred men. It is for the certainty of the outcome, the strategic victory, and the discretion that I provide. It is non-negotiable."
The negotiation lasted for an hour. The Lyseni brothers postured, threatened, and cajoled. Alaric remained unmoved. He had analyzed their financial position and their political desperation. He knew they needed this, and he knew they could afford it. In the end, they agreed, their faces pale with a mixture of outrage and avaricious excitement. They were paying a king's ransom, but they were buying a kingdom's worth of advantage.
The moment the Lyseni departed, Alaric's entire organization pivoted to war. The study became a command centre. Nervo was tasked with arranging the logistics: securing wagons, mules, and three months of rations. He also handled the banking, ensuring the first payment of twenty-five thousand dragons was securely transferred from the Lyseni accounts at the Iron Bank to Alaric's own.
The bulk of the work, however, fell to Alaric and Ser Damon. For days, they were hunched over maps and intelligence reports from Alaric's network.
"The Myrish have regular patrols on all the main roads," Damon grumbled, his thick finger tracing a route on the map. "And spotter posts on the hills. Getting a hundred men through that without being seen is nigh impossible."
"Then we will not use the roads," Alaric said. He pointed to a vast, dark green expanse on the map. "The Krying Swamps. The Myrish believe them to be impassable."
"They are impassable," Damon countered. "It's a league of mud, quicksand, and fever-flies. Men will sicken and die before we get halfway."
"Not if they have the right equipment," Alaric replied. He unrolled another set of schematics. "Lightweight wooden sectional paths that can be laid over the mud and retrieved. Water purification tablets made from a recipe I acquired from a Qartheen apothecary. An ointment, derived from a Citadel formula, that repels insects. We will not go around their patrols. We will go under them, through a path they believe does not exist."
He then outlined the attack itself. It was a plan of beautiful, brutal complexity. The legion would be split into three forces. 'Alpha', under Ser Damon's personal command, would be the main assault force, tasked with breaching the main workshop. 'Beta' force, a smaller group of the fastest men, would circle around and create a diversion, setting fires in the lumberyard to draw the bulk of the Myrish guard away from the primary target. 'Gamma' force, a small, elite team of ten men, would have the most critical task: to infiltrate the artisans' quarters and eliminate them before they could be evacuated.
"No survivors among the master craftsmen," Alaric stressed, his eyes like chips of ice. "Their knowledge is the true target. The workshops can be rebuilt. A generation of irreplaceable skill cannot."
Damon looked at the boy, at the cold, meticulous detail of his plan for slaughter and destruction, and felt a familiar chill. He was a hardened killer, a man who had seen and done terrible things, but this boy's utter lack of emotion, his view of war as a simple, bloody equation, was something else entirely. It was terrifying. And it was why he knew they would succeed.
Two weeks later, the Onyx Legion marched out of Pentos in the dead of night. They were a terrifying sight. One hundred men clad in identical suits of blackened, serpentine plate. Their faces were hidden behind snarling visors, their movements silent and disciplined. They carried no banners. They sang no marching songs. They were a river of dark steel flowing south into the disputed darkness.
Alaric did not march with them. His place was not on the battlefield. He was the mind, not the hand. He, along with Nervo and a small personal guard, traveled to a fortified villa on the coast that he had leased through Magister Presto, a secure location with a clear view of the sea lanes, where he could manage the operation from a safe distance.
The night of the assault was clear and moonless. Alaric stood on a high balcony, looking south, though the target was a hundred miles away. He held a glass of cool wine, his face impassive. Nervo paced nervously behind him.
"Master, should we not have received word by now?" the factor fretted.
"War does not move at the speed of a merchant's ledger, Nervo," Alaric said calmly. "The plan is in motion. We have accounted for every predictable variable. Now, we simply have to wait for the outcome."
Miles away, Ser Damon Flowers crouched in the mud at the edge of the Krying Swamps. The workshops were a sprawling complex in the valley below, lit by torches and the glow of forges that burned through the night. The air smelled of sawdust and hot metal. His men were in position, silent spectres in the darkness. The Onyx Legion was about to receive its baptism of fire.
He gave the signal. A single, low whistle.
To the west, a sudden bloom of orange lit up the night as Beta force's fire arrows slammed into the vast stacks of seasoned timber. Shouts of alarm echoed through the valley. A horn blared, and Damon watched with satisfaction as fully two-thirds of the Myrish guards rushed towards the diversion.
"Alpha, advance," he growled into the quiet. "Gamma, you know your work. Go."
The main assault was not a chaotic charge, but a disciplined, silent advance. They moved like a single, many-legged beast, their rectangular shields locked together. The remaining Myrish guards, confused and outnumbered, formed a hasty shield wall at the main gate.
The clash was short and brutal. The Myrish spears glanced off the superior Pentoshi-forged plate of the Legion. The Legion did not try to hack their way through. On Damon's command, they thrust forward as one, a solid wall of steel and muscle, shattering the enemy line. Then the short, heavy stabbing swords got to work. It wasn't a battle; it was a slaughter.
Damon led the charge into the main workshop, his greatsword a blur of silvered death. His men flowed in behind him, their efficiency terrifying. They ignored the surviving guards, who broke and fled. They had their orders. They moved to the great trebuchets, massive war machines of timber and iron, and began to systematically destroy them with axes and sledgehammers.
Meanwhile, Gamma force, moving like shadows, had slipped into the artisans' barracks. There were no screams. Only the soft, wet sounds of knives finding their marks in the darkness. Ten minutes later, they emerged, their blades clean. The future of Myrish siegecraft lay dead on their sleeping pallets.
By the time the main Myrish force realised the diversion was a feint and scrambled back to the workshops, it was too late. The Onyx Legion was gone, melting back into the swamps from whence they came, leaving behind a scene of utter devastation. The workshops were a raging inferno, the pride of the Myrish army was a tangled mess of splintered wood and twisted iron, and their most precious asset—their skilled artisans—was completely eliminated.
The news of the Onyx Legion's victory reached Alaric three days later. Ser Damon's report was concise and professional. Mission accomplished. Casualties: three dead, seven wounded. Enemy losses: total.
The second payment from the Lyseni arrived the next day. Alaric's war chest was now overflowing. But more importantly, the reputation of the Onyx Legion was born. The whispers began in the taverns and barracks of the Free Cities: of a new company, clad in black armour, that moved like ghosts and fought like demons. A company that did not do battlefield contracts, but executed impossible missions for princely sums.
Alaric stood before his map, moving a newly carved onyx token, shaped like a snarling serpent, onto the board. His first military victory. It was a flawless, profitable, and terrifyingly effective operation.
His satisfaction was interrupted by Nervo, who entered the study holding a scroll, his face ashen. "Master. A raven. From your agent in the Citadel. The seal was urgent."
Alaric took the scroll. Pate's handwriting was no longer neat. It was a frantic, terrified scrawl.
Master Alaric, a terrible thing has happened. Brandon Stark rode to King's Landing and shouted for the Prince. The King arrested him. Lord Rickard was summoned to court to answer for his son. They... they were executed. The King burned Lord Rickard in his own armour. He made Brandon watch. Now the Mad King has demanded Lord Arryn send him the heads of Lord Stark's second son, Eddard, and Lord Robert Baratheon. The realm holds its breath.
Alaric crushed the scroll in his fist. He looked from his war map of Essos to the great map of Westeros on his wall. The Disputed Lands, Myr, Tyrosh... it all seemed so small now, so petty. The training exercises were over. The real war, the one that truly mattered, had just begun.
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