Chapter 30 Slowly Assessing The Situation

  "As long as I tell her the characteristics, as long as anyone enters this area, she can give me clues?"

  "holy shittt!"

  Isn't this the network I want? Then why do I still care about doing optional missions?"

  Originally, Ian only had a rough idea about how to hunt at the Crossroads Inn, and he had not yet figured out how to deal with many specific issues.

  For example, how to find reliable mercenaries, how to keep the mercenaries from talking about the mission, and how to convenience the mercenaries to arrest people here.

  Another example is when they find a guy with very suspicious equipment, how do they identify whether he is a player.

  The point is, when they attack someone suspected of being a player, how can they avoid being discovered by other players and prevent their fight from being seen by other aborigines and spreading the news, leading to a sudden alert? Ian doesn't have a clue about these details yet, he is still thinking about it.

  "Didn't expect a super useful tool to come to my door like this?" Ian looked at Martha, making her hair stand on end.

  "Sir Lucien? About my proposal?"

  "Oh, Martha, my friend," Ian smiled and shook his head, "I think you should be able to help more than just providing clues."

  "A bigger help?" Martha was puzzled.

  "Of course, you can be more helpful to me than you think. You are familiar with the local mercenaries and can recruit a group of skilled individuals for me. You have your own intelligence network that can monitor the entire area and target every strange and suspicious person who checks in or simply passes by. You are the proprietress of the inn. You can add drugs to the food and secretly subdue unsuspecting players to avoid alerting them."

  "You are such a big baby!"

  "Of course, there will be a bigger reward for a bigger help." Ian pushed the golden dragon on the table in front of Martha, and just when Martha reached out to grab it, he covered the golden dragon under his palm. "You just said that as long as anyone enters this area, you can give me clues. I want to know how much exaggeration is in this sentence?"

  "Exaggeration? Do you suspect that I am lying? Oh no, Sir, I'm definitely not lying!"

  "How are you going to do that?"

  "I know a man, 'Black Falcon' Morgan. He has a mercenary group under him, from Harrenhal to Ferry bridge, covering the entire north eastern shore of Eye Lake. The mercenaries and gangsters all have a good relationship with him. If you want to track down someone who has entered this area, ask him to make sure you get the right answer."

  'Black Falcon' Morgan? Ian frowned, this is the second time! First there is the so called ghost of White Wall City. According to Martha, this bandit group has set up its den near White Wall City. They rob families and do all kinds of evil, so the local wealthy knights unite to deal with them. But the knights were worried about not having enough manpower, so they asked her to help recruit some passing foreign knights in the inn to help.

  Obviously, it was a bandit group with certain strength, but it never appeared in the original work. Unexpectedly, here comes another mercenary leader who has great influence on the north shore of Shenyan Lake and is not in the original work. This is a very unusual phenomenon. Because there is only a little over a year left before the War of the Five Kings breaks out.

  It stands to reason that once the war breaks out, it is impossible for such a large scale bandit group and a powerful mercenary leader not to take the lead. But none of them appeared in the original work!

  "Tell me about this Black Falcon."

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Everything."

  "I actually don't know much about him," Martha smiled awkwardly, "He came here seven years ago. When he got here, in a drunken dispute, he killed the twin brothers who originally led the mercenaries in this area with one against two, and then he made a name for himself and became the new leader."

  "That's all?"

  "That's all, Sir, how dare I hide it from you?"

  "Then what's the relationship between you and him?"

  "An ordinary cooperative relationship. He uses my inn as a base for the mercenary team, and I provide them with low cost drinks and food. In exchange for the cost priced drinks and food, they protect my inn from being robbed by thieves."

  Your inn ended up robbed after all, Ian complained. During the War of the Five Kings, Lord Tywin personally came here with an army of 20,000 Lannister troops. He used this inn as his headquarters and hanged you as a token of respect for the Vale.

  Even if your Black Falcon is the King of Heaven, there is no way he can protect your inn in this situation.

  Then Ian thought about it, is it because this guy didn't appear in the original book because he was hanged by Tywin directly? Or was he worried that he would suffer revenge from the Lannister family for standing by and watching Tyrion's kidnapping, so he fled early? If this is the case, it makes sense that such a person does not appear in the original work. After all, with Tywin's personality, he would not go out of his way to mention the mercenaries who were easily hanged or scared away by him.

  Wait, although this Black Falcon is not worth mentioning in front of Tywin, he is still a force that cannot be ignored for the local knights and White Wall City thieves. So why would Sir Wilder rather ask foreign knights for help?

  Why Don't they go to this mercenary leader? Is it because they can't pay? Or is that the bandit group simply work with the Black Falcon mercenary? After all, mercenaries need to have bandits to find work. Otherwise, if there is no war, what will they eat? If this is the case, both doubts can be explained in the same way.

  First, after Black Falcon was hanged (scared away) by Tywin, the Black Falcon mercenary group and the ghosts of White Wall City disappeared at the same time and did not appear in the original work.

  Secondly, because most of the local mercenaries are related to Black Falcon, Sir Wilder emphasized that he must ask "foreign knights" for help to prevent the news of the operation from leaking. But what role does the inn proprietress Martha play in this? While she was cooperating with Black Falcon, she was also helping Sir Wilder recruit people, and neither side suspected her? How can this be?!

  "Sir Lucien?" Seeing Ian's delay in replying, Martha broke out in cold sweat. Hearing Martha's call, Ian broke away from his contemplation, and then he sneered, why dose he care about so many of things? As long as Black Falcon's mercenaries and the intelligence network can be of help to me, I do better not get involved in their secrets.

  "Where can I find this Black Falcon?" he asked.

  "Boss Morgan is in our inn. He arrived this afternoon."

  "So you just said you can give me an answer before noon tomorrow? Can you convince him to do something for me?"

  "This." Martha hesitated, "This may be difficult. He is very arrogant. We can ask him for help, but he..."

  "Let's take a look at this first," Ian interrupted Martha, while slowly moving his right hand away from the golden dragon on the table, "Look at these golden dragons, look at them, I guess you have never seen so much money in your life, right?"

  "Yes, never." Martha's eyes were instantly attracted to these shiny little things like a magnet. Of course, she had never seen so many golden dragons at one time. Although the Crossroads Inn was located on an important traffic road, in this era of underdeveloped transportation, she had few opportunities to entertain nobles here.

  Usually, the people who stay here are a group of poor clanking mercenaries and those traveling businessmen who are searching for money.

  The former spend money generously, but they don't have much money at all, while the latter do have money, but they are reluctant to spend it. As time went by, all the pretty girls went to King's Landing to look for opportunities to make a fortune. There were only a few ruined flowers left in the inn, and the income became even more difficult to describe.

  What? You ask about normal business? How much money can you make from food and drinks in this day and age? This profit also has to pay the taxes of the local lords and support some mercenaries who eat and drink for free. It's good if you don't lose money.