Chapter 10: The Serpent's Fangs - 279 AC

Chapter 10: The Serpent's Fangs - 279 AC

The year 279 AC was a year of iron and salt. The launch of the Vigilance, the first of our three Thorneguard patrol ships, was a grand affair. The entire population of our burgeoning town gathered at the port, their cheers echoing across the water as the sleek, dark-hulled vessel slipped from its cradle and settled into the sea. Her sails, bearing the stark, silver lighthouse of our house, unfurled with a sharp snap in the wind. She was a beautiful, deadly thing, her decks bristling with scorpions and a full complement of marines.

My father, Lord Valerius, stood beside me on the viewing platform, his chest swelled with a pride so immense it was almost a physical presence. For him, this ship was a symbol of our House's ascent, a tangible display of our newfound power and prestige. He saw a warship, a guardian, a projection of Thorne authority onto the waves.

I saw a tool. A scalpel in a world of clumsy broadswords. As I watched the marines, clad in boiled leather jerkins stamped with our sigil, moving about the deck, my mind was not on naval glory, but on efficiency. They were brave men, loyal men, trained in the traditional Westerosi manner of individual combat. They were a rabble, and against a truly disciplined foe, they would break. The Estermont affair had been won with whispers and gold. The next challenge might not be so easily deterred. Wealth attracts predators, and my next phase required the forging of fangs sharp enough to make them think twice.

Later that week, I sought out my father in the solar, a new set of scrolls under my arm. The room smelled faintly of Thorne's Gold and my father's contentment.

"The Vigilance is a fine ship, Father," I began, my tone one of sober reflection. "But a ship is only as strong as the men who serve her. And our ambitions are growing beyond the scope of a simple household guard."

"They are good men," he countered, though without much force. He knew I was leading him somewhere.

"They are," I agreed readily. "But they are trained to defend the walls of a keep, to fight in the shield wall. We are no longer just a keep; we are a center of commerce. We have warehouses filled with goods from across the world, a distillery producing a small fortune in every barrel, and soon, a glassworks that will be the envy of the Free Cities. These are not assets one protects with a feudal levy. They require a professional, standing force."

I laid the scrolls on his desk. They were not designs for a ship or a building, but organizational charts, training regimens, and equipment manifests.

"I propose we expand our household guard into a true standing garrison. Not a levy to be called up in times of war, but a force of professional soldiers, paid and housed by us, trained day in and day out. We have the wealth to equip them with the finest steel, and the port brings a steady stream of men seeking work. We can afford to be selective." I tapped the scroll detailing the command structure. "We need a new Master-at-Arms, a true veteran, someone who has seen real war, not just tourneys."

The memory of Duskendale was a powerful lever, and I used it without shame. "Aerys's madness and Tywin's ruthlessness have shown that the King's Peace is a fragile thing. A lord's greatest strength is his own sword arm. We must sharpen ours."

He saw the logic in it. It appealed to his martial nature and his duty as a lord to protect his people and property. "A standing force would be expensive… but necessary. Who did you have in mind for Master-at-Arms?"

"Ser Malcom Flowers," I answered without hesitation. My network had already vetted him. "A bastard of House Florent, knighted for valour in the Stepstones during the War of the Ninepenny Kings. He's been serving as a captain in a dozen different sellsword companies since. He is old, yes, but he has forgotten more about real combat than most knights ever learn. He can be bought, and his loyalty will be to the coin that pays him, which means it will be to us."

My father agreed. The gold began to flow. New barracks were constructed, a larger training ground was cleared, and Ser Malcom Flowers, a man with a face like a worn boot and eyes that had seen the horrors of war, arrived at Stone's End.

The clash of cultures began immediately. Ser Malcom was a master of the melee, of the shield wall, of the individual charge. He was taken aback when I, a lordling of eighteen, vetoed his entire training philosophy.

"Glory is for songs, Ser Malcom," I told him on the training ground, as he watched his first batch of recruits hack away at pell-mells. "I am not training knights for the tourney ground. I am forging a weapon. The strength of that weapon is not in the individual skill of its parts, but in how they work together."

I introduced concepts that were utterly alien to him. I divided the men into permanent squads of ten, each with a designated leader. I drilled them relentlessly, not just in swordplay, but in formation marching, in coordinated movements, in responding to whistle and hand signals. I had them practice shield-wall advances while squads of archers laid down covering fire, a simple concept of combined arms that was revolutionary in a land where archers were often treated as an afterthought.

Discipline was absolute. Infractions were punished swiftly. Uniformity was paramount. I commissioned new equipment for them all: kettle helms, thick leather jacks reinforced with steel plates, and short, practical stabbing swords and sturdy spears. They looked less like a lord's retinue and more like the soldiers of a professional city-state.

To teach them the dirtier side of combat, I brought in Bronn. While Ser Malcom taught them how to hold a line, Bronn taught them how to break one. He taught them how to fight in the tight confines of an alley or a tavern, how to use a dirk in their off-hand, how to kick a kneecap, how to disarm a foe with a handful of sand to the eyes. The combination was terrifyingly effective. Ser Malcom's discipline and Bronn's lethality were creating a new kind of soldier.

While my army took shape, my intelligence network bore its first fruit. The Weary Traveler in Lannisport was a resounding success. Thorne's Gold was a sensation. The city's merchants and even some of the Lannister household knights had developed a taste for it, finding the local ale and wine suddenly pedestrian. The tavern, with its clean rooms, good security, and our unique spirits, became a popular gathering place. And Jonos and Brella, with their quiet demeanors and sympathetic ears, became the keepers of a thousand secrets.

One night, the message came from Rhys, a conduit for a report from Jonos in Lannisport.

"Success, my lord. The foundation stone works perfectly. Brella held a conversation with a steward of House Lannister in the corner booth for an hour, planning a secret dalliance with a merchant's wife. The tavern was packed. No one heard a word." A pause. "More importantly, we have our first piece of significant intelligence."

I focused, filtering out the whispers of the ring. "Report."

"Lord Farman of Fair Isle," Jonos's thoughts relayed. "He is a proud man, but his silver mines are running thin. He has been putting on a brave face at Casterly Rock, but his steward has been making quiet inquiries at the docks, seeking passage to Tyrosh. He is trying to secure a loan from the Archon, bypassing the Iron Bank and, more importantly, bypassing Lord Tywin."

A slow smile spread across my face in the darkness of my solar. It was perfect. A powerful Western lord, a key bannerman of House Lannister, was in financial distress and acting behind his liege lord's back. It was a weakness, a seam in the lion's pelt. I could not exploit it now, but I filed it away in the vast library of my mind. A desperate lord was a pliable lord. The Lighthouse Network had proven its worth.

The need for absolute loyalty in my new army gnawed at me. Discipline and pay were effective, but I wanted something deeper, more fundamental. The souls from Duskendale, a roaring inferno of power still swirling in my ring, offered a terrible solution. The souls of the Darklyn and Hollard knights were particularly potent, imbued with a fierce, defiant loyalty to their fallen lord. I could repurpose that loyalty.

Under the dark of a new moon, I went to the new barracks. The long, stone building was silent, the two hundred men of my new garrison sleeping within. Placing my hands on the cold foundation stone, I closed my eyes and drew upon the ring. I did not take the souls whole. Instead, I siphoned off a specific emotion, a specific concept: the echo of their unwavering loyalty, their sense of brotherhood and discipline. I wove this ethereal energy into the very stones of the barracks, creating a subtle, pervasive magical field. It was not mind control. It was influence. An aura that would encourage camaraderie, foster discipline, and subtly incline the hearts of the men who lived and trained here towards the source of their strength and security: House Thorne. Me.

The moral calculus of it was monstrous. I was using the virtues of dead men to subliminally bind the living. It was perhaps the most profoundly cynical and manipulative act of magic I had yet performed. The Serpent within me felt no remorse. It felt only satisfaction at a problem elegantly solved.

The proof of my methods came a month later. I staged a mock battle on the training field. I pitted fifty of my new, professional soldiers against a hundred men from our traditional household guard, led by my father's most experienced captain.

The result was a massacre.

The traditional force charged, a roaring, disorganized wave of individual warriors. My men held their ground, a disciplined block of shields and spears. On my signal, a whistle blast, they parted their ranks, allowing the charging men to slam into a secondary, braced line, while squads on the flanks pivoted, enveloping the larger force. Archers, protected behind the lines, rained blunted arrows into the confused mass. The fight was over in minutes. My fifty men had systematically dismantled a force twice their size with minimal simulated losses.

My father watched from the sidelines, his face a mask of stunned disbelief. Ser Malcom stared, his mouth agape, as he witnessed his life's teachings rendered obsolete.

"Gods be good," Lord Valerius murmured, turning to me. "What have you created, Lysander?"

"The future, Father," I said quietly. "A force loyal to us, and us alone. One that can protect what we have built."

My courtship of Elara Penrose, meanwhile, proceeded via raven. I had no time for the traditional pleasantries. Instead, I engaged her mind. My first letter was not a poem, but a detailed geological survey of her father's lands I had commissioned, highlighting the richest veins of silica sand. With it, I included a preliminary schematic for a high-temperature furnace, based on Roman designs.

"Lady Elara," I wrote, "My maester tells me you have a keen interest in the history of your lands. I thought these documents might intrigue you. The potential for a glassworks of unprecedented quality is immense, but the design of the furnace is critical. I would be most interested in your insights."

Her reply was swift and, to my surprise, insightful. She questioned my design, pointing out that the local clay might not withstand the temperatures I proposed and suggested a source of better clay in a neighbouring valley. It was the beginning of an unusual but highly effective correspondence. We were not lovers, but partners in a grand industrial enterprise before we had even met a second time.

I stood on my balcony, overlooking the training ground where my men drilled with a precision that would have been at home in a Terran legion. The first of the Thorneguard, the Vigilance, rode at anchor in the harbour, a symbol of my growing naval power. In my solar, a pin sat on Lannisport, a silent testament to my intelligence network. And in a cellar below, barrels of Thorne's Gold aged, a product that was both a source of immense wealth and a weapon of influence.

Everything was connected. The business funded the army. The army protected the business. The intelligence network guided them both. And my magic, fueled by the ghosts of the past, was the mortar that held it all together. It was a perfect, self-reinforcing cycle of power.

My monologue was no longer a conversation with a ghost of my past self. The Serpent and I were one. The great houses play their game of thrones, squabbling over titles and lands, shackled by honour and tradition. They are the past. I am building the future. An empire not of land, but of systems. An empire of commerce, intelligence, and disciplined force. When the time comes, when the dragons and lions and wolves begin their final, self-destructive dance, I will not be a participant. I will be the board itself, the unseen hand that dictates the outcome. The Tourney at Harrenhal is only two years away. A gathering of all the fools and puppets. It will be an excellent opportunity to take their measure.

I had forged my fangs. And soon, the world would learn to fear the Serpent's bite.