Chapter 4.1 Shine

Barrowlands had been at one time, thousands of years before the conquest of Aegon I Targaryen, also called Aegon the Conqueror, the area where the Northerners buried their dead.

No real reason was ever found as to why that area was chosen to bury the dead, however, in a certain ancient text it said: "The brightest area of the North, for the dead to bathe in its light, protected from the long winter".

This line that Wolfgang himself had read some years ago, trying to learn as much as possible about his territory and its history, now made a lot of sense to him. The gold veins in his territory were at best gigantic, but unfortunately, at least for the moment, he could not access all of them; many were under the tombs of northerners, and few would be willing to destroy those ancestral sites to access the wealth beneath them.

Nor was it too much of a problem, the gold in the area that was not covered by tombs was also a very considerable area; in fact, it was gigantic, and there seemed to be gold all over the area.

Wolfgang ordered the construction of a road, among the rocks, from Barrowton to the area where the gold mining would begin. It was necessary that horse-drawn wagons could pass through so as not to delay the transport of both the gold and the workers, but there was another problem.... 

Barrowlands had no miners, and although the work may seem simple, some training would be needed, to avoid a mine collapsing on top of them; fortunately there seemed to be enough gold in areas that were not too deep; only requiring removing a layer of rocks, with no more length than a meter, but he would still like to have a group of miners, at least to be able to guide the whole extraction.

What Wolfgang and his two subordinates discovered, was not revealed to anyone else for the moment, he did not want anyone to know about his discovery, at least not before the negotiations that were to come in the future. It would all be so much easier if Lord Manderly had agreed to the compromise, but he hadn't, and although going to his doors again, for different reasons of course, might be a bit humiliating, it was something that had to be done.

"How long until we get to White Harbor?" asked Wolfgang to Beron. Ander was also accompanying them, along with 100 guards, part of House Dustin's professional army.

"There should be...about 30 minutes left," replied the sergeant.

Barrowton was not too far from White Harbor. The group simply had to cross the vast Barrowlands, heading east, and then cross the Camino Real. With that, the group had already traveled 3/5 of the way. Then all that remained was to ride across a large meadow to the port city.

Wolfgang was going with a clear objective, he wanted to get miners for his future gold mines, and White Harbor was the best possible target, at least within reason. It was not really an option to travel to the Westlands; besides, few would be willing to leave their comfortable summer lands to come to the cold north.