Chapter 21: Laying the Foundation of the Serpent

Chapter 21: Laying the Foundation of the Serpent

284 AC, Month of the Maiden

The war was over, but for Alaric Blackwood, the true campaign was just beginning. While the new king, Robert Baratheon, celebrated his victory with a kingdom-wide tour of tournaments and taverns, and the great lords returned to their ancient seats to lick their wounds and count their dead, Alaric descended upon his new domain with the focused, terrifying intensity of a master architect beginning his magnum opus. He had won the land. Now he had to forge it into a weapon.

His new province, the Blackwater March, was a sprawling, disjointed territory of rugged coastline, thick woods, and sullen, impoverished villages. It was a land that had been bled dry by the war, its former lords either dead on the Trident or attainted for their loyalty to the Targaryens. The smallfolk were wary, the remaining landed knights were resentful, and the very earth seemed exhausted. To any other lord, it would be a lifetime's work just to restore order. To Alaric, it was a blank canvas.

His first act as Lord Paramount was a grand tour, not of courts and castles, but of the raw material of his new power. At the head of the full Onyx Legion, he marched through his domain. It was a tour of intimidation and assessment. The sight of the silent, black-clad legionaries moving with perfect discipline through their lands was a stark message to the resentful local gentry: the old order was gone. A new, far more formidable power had arrived.

He visited the castles of the attainted lords—the crumbling sea-stack of Stonedance, the damp fortress of Sharp Point. He did not occupy them. He had Prometheus conduct detailed structural and resource analyses.

<> his internal companion noted. <>

"Issue the order," Alaric commanded Ser Damon. "Stonedance is to be dismantled. Every usable stone, every iron hinge, every oak beam is to be catalogued by Nervo's men and transported to the peninsula. Its history is over. Its future is as the foundation of my own."

This became his policy. He systematically tore down the symbols of the old, failed houses, repurposing their very substance for his new capital. It was a ruthless, efficient, and deeply symbolic act. He was not just building over the past; he was grinding it into the mortar of his own future.

The site he had chosen for his seat of power was a windswept peninsula of black rock that jutted into the southern end of Blackwater Bay. It formed a natural deep-water harbour, shielded from the storms of the Narrow Sea. He named the site Serpent's Head, and the city that would rise there, a name that spoke of his origins and his ambition: Blackport.

The fortress he designed was unlike anything in Westeros. While the lords of his homeland built tall, proud keeps with high, thin walls, Alaric, guided by Prometheus's vast library of historical and architectural knowledge, planned a monster of defensive engineering.

"A single high wall is a single point of failure," he explained to the master engineer he had poached from Myr, a man named Petyr, showing him the complex schematics. "We will build in layers, like an onion. Three concentric walls, each one higher than the one before it, so that the defenders on the inner walls can fire over the heads of the men on the outer walls." He was describing the Theodosian Walls of Constantinople, a design that had held a city for a thousand years.

"The castle itself, the Serpent's Head Keep, will not be a tower," he continued, pointing to the heart of the design. "It will be a Citadel, a low, sprawling complex of interconnected buildings and courtyards, built into the very rock of the peninsula. Its strength will not be in height, which is a vulnerability to modern siege engines, but in depth and complexity."

He planned for things other Westerosi lords never considered. A massive, sealed cistern and aqueduct system, based on Roman designs, to ensure a clean, inexhaustible water supply. A sewer system to maintain sanitation and prevent the spread of disease during a siege. A gridded street layout for the city of Blackport to ensure the rapid movement of troops and prevent the chaos of firetraps like Flea Bottom. The harbour would be protected by a great sea-chain, a concept he borrowed from the Golden Horn.

To build this dream, he unleashed his fortune. He hired thousands of labourers, offering fair, prompt wages and, more importantly, a daily ration of bread from his own granaries. While the rest of the kingdom was tightening its belt, the Blackwater March became a beacon of prosperity. Masons from the Vale, engineers from Myr, shipwrights from Tyrosh—they all flocked to Blackport, drawn by the promise of gold and the chance to work on the most ambitious construction project in a generation. The Onyx Legion, when not drilling, provided the security, their brutal but impartial enforcement of Alaric's law making the construction site the safest place in the southern Crownlands.

With the foundation of his capital laid, Alaric turned his attention to the people. He summoned the forty-odd landed knights and petty lords of his new domain to a great council at his temporary headquarters in a requisitioned inn. They came sullenly, resentfully, expecting the usual demands of a new overlord. Alaric gave them something else entirely.

"My lords," he began, standing before them, a map of the province displayed behind him. "You are sworn to me. Your loyalty is not a matter for debate. However, I am not a Targaryen king who demands fealty without reason. I am a businessman. And I am offering you a new contract."

He proceeded to outline his vision. He explained that their old, traditional land-based incomes were inefficient. He had Nervo, now his Lord Treasurer, present a detailed survey of the entire province.

"Ser Cortnay," he said, addressing a grizzled old knight. "Your lands produce fine wool, but you sell it raw to merchants from King's Landing for a pittance. I will fund the construction of a weaving mill on your land. You will produce finished cloth, which is worth five times as much. My ships will transport it to the Free Cities. We will share the profits. You will be ten times richer under my rule than you were under Aerys's."

To another lord whose lands were forested, he offered a contract to supply the lumber for his new fleet, at a guaranteed price that was double the market rate. To a third with quarries, he offered the contract for the stone for his city. He went through them one by one, analyzing their assets and offering them a partnership in his new, ruthlessly efficient economic model. He was not asking for their love. He was buying their greed.

"Your success is my success," he concluded. "A rich vassal pays more taxes. A prosperous province is a strong province. Serve me well, be efficient, be loyal, and you will all grow wealthy beyond your imagining. Defy me, cheat me, or cling to your old, inefficient ways, and I will replace you. The choice is yours."

They left the council not as resentful vassals, but as ambitious, motivated partners in a grand new enterprise. He had transformed his province into a corporation, and made them all junior executives.

His knowledge of the future was his most powerful, and most secret, asset. He used it with a surgeon's precision. One evening, he was reviewing his correspondence, which included a regular, coded message from his agent in the Citadel, Pate.

Master Alaric, the letter read. I have secured the texts you requested. The treatise on Valyrian stoneworking was difficult to acquire. Archmaester Marwyn's chambers are still sealed, but I... borrowed... a key. I have also been listening, as you asked. The talk at court is of the King's marriage to the Lannister girl, Cersei. But the maesters whisper of other things. They say the Iron Islands are growing restless under their new lord, Balon Greyjoy. They say he speaks of the 'Old Way'.

Alaric smiled. Balon Greyjoy. The foolish, ambitious kraken would launch his rebellion in five years. A rebellion that would require the King to command a massive fleet and army. An army that would need to be transported. A fleet that would need timber for repairs and new ships.

He immediately dictated a new set of orders to Nervo. "I want our agents in the North and the Westerlands to begin securing long-term timber contracts. I want them to buy entire forests if they can. We will pay a premium now. In five years, when the Greyjoys are burning every ship on the western coast, timber will be worth more than gold. We will be the sole supplier for the Royal Fleet's war effort."

He was hedging against a future war only he could see, a move of such breathtaking foresight that it would be mistaken for genius, when it was simply memory. This was the true power of his reincarnation: not just knowledge of the plot, but the ability to use a thousand years of his old world's economic and historical knowledge to master this one.

A year passed. Then another. The Blackwater March was transformed. The city of Blackport rose from the rock, a marvel of modern engineering and bustling trade. Its tax-free policies had made it a magnet for merchants, and its harbour was crowded with ships from all over the world. The fields of the province were green and productive, its roads safe and well-maintained. The Onyx Legion, now three hundred strong and based in the partially completed fortress of Oldstones, was the most feared and respected fighting force in the south.

Alaric, now a young man of sixteen, ruled his domain from a temporary manse in Blackport. He was a remote, almost mythical figure to his people. They knew him as the Lord who had brought them peace and prosperity, the boy-maester who had built a city from nothing. They did not know the cold, calculating mind that saw them all as pieces on a cyvasse board.

He stood one evening on the high, unfinished battlements of the Serpent's Head Keep, the wind from the sea whipping his black cloak around him. Below him, the lights of his city twinkled like a fallen constellation. The sound of hammers on stone still echoed, the sound of his ambition taking physical form. His province was secure. His wealth was multiplying daily. His army was loyal and strong. He had laid the foundation.

Ser Damon Flowers joined him, his heavy plate clanking softly. "It is a marvel, my lord," the knight said, his voice rough with an emotion that sounded almost like reverence. "What you've built here. I've served a dozen lords. They spent their lives squabbling over a few acres of mud. You... you have built a kingdom."

"It is a start, Ser Damon," Alaric replied, his eyes not on the city, but on the dark, empty sea. "A fortress is a necessity. An army is a tool. A prosperous domain is an engine. But these are all just means to an end."

"And what is the end, my lord?" Damon asked quietly.

Alaric was silent for a long moment, the wind tearing at his words. "A fortress can be besieged. An army can be defeated. An engine can run out of fuel. The only thing that endures, the only true power in this world, is a dynasty."

He had built his fortress. He had built his army. He had built his wealth. He had secured his power base. Now, his cold, analytical gaze turned to the next, most critical phase of his grand design. He needed an heir. He needed a wife. He needed to forge the political alliances through marriage that would secure his new House for a thousand years. The game of commerce and construction was ending. The game of bloodlines and succession was about to begin.