Chapter 1.3 Barrowton

Beron looked with a steady face at the 256 soldiers in front of him. He, as the figure under Wolfgang Dustin's direct orders, took turns training a different group of 256 soldiers every day. The rest of the days it was his own officers who had the task.

The faces of the soldiers were serious, but in their eyes a happy tone could be seen. For a couple of months now their diet had changed for the better; they were eating meat, though not daily of course, rather weekly. 

This was due to the improvement of the economic situation in their lord's lands. In addition, they were eating other, stranger foods that they were not used to; some tastier than others.

This was simply Wolfgang ordering to give them a balanced and nutritious diet that would allow them to get the most out of the physical exercises he had instructed Beron himself. Although not as skilled with their weapons, these soldiers were noted for their orderliness and physical ability. This meant they were not an elite force per se by any stretch of the imagination, but... under the right command, they could do a lot of damage.

"Salute!" shouted Beron, and all the soldiers raised their right arm straight up in synchronized fashion, and lowered it a second later. 

It was a salute Wolfgang had taught them, and Beron agreed with the idea; it would give the soldiers their own identity, make it part of their culture.

"Forward!" the order shouted again, and continued to give them complex orders, reinforcing and perfecting the, already very good, timing of their actions. Each soldier had a rectangular shield of considerable dimensions, a steel sword hanging from his waist, and a spear, which were the most irregular, most being made of wood with only a metal tip; the budget had already been spent. The armor also seemed irregular, but that was a matter more particular to this group.

Wolfgang had had armor made to match each other, for each soldier, and the group that Beron was currently training was one of the few that remained to be armed, however, the armor was of course chainmail, as House Dustin could not afford to arm his soldiers with plate armor, such as the Lannister soldiers wore.

With all these expenses, Wolfgang had used up much of the savings of the former House Dustin, however, he now had more generous income, so little by little the treasury would be replenished again.

"Freeze!" shouted Beron again, as the soldiers performed what Wolfgang called the turtle formation, protecting all enemy arrow holes. Beron bent down a little, and picked up a piece of dirt from the ground, and threw it into the formation. Then he threw another, and another, and another. "Whoever has dirt on his body when the formation is broken up will be severely punished!" he exclaimed again, and waited for a while, without giving another order, still throwing pieces of dirt, making sure to aim at every possible position.

Time passed, and the arms of quite a few soldiers were shaking. Having those heavy shields up for hours was certainly tiring. Beron took advantage of every hint of fatigue to throw the earth in that direction, affecting not only those who seemed to be unable to do so, but also others, because of their comrades. He was instilling teamwork and coordination in the minds of these soldiers.

He was on the outskirts of the Barrowton, in the so-called training camps, which had been set up a few years ago when the training began, but Beron noticed something; they were slowly being swallowed up by the urban sprawl.

Just a couple of dozen meters away there was already a group of people building a house. Their master, Wolfgang, had done some pretty extensive urban planning, with straight streets and neat houses; each one the same as the last.

In the end, Wolfgang had to keep expanding the farming areas, in order to feed both the farmers themselves and now the city builders, but by the same token, the pace of construction was not too fast; in fact, it was a bit insufficient to meet the current demand. There was also the problem of materials; furs were traded for food to various Northern houses, mainly House Ryswell, while timber was traded to mainly House Glover.

Barrowton and Barrowlands, as some of the southernmost lands in the North, has always been among the most populated areas, making House Dustin one of the most powerful in the North. Before all the innovations began, the lands of House Dustin had 800,000 people, more than the direct lands under the Starks, which had 600,000, or those of the Boltons, with 500,000. Only the lands belonging to House Manderly were above, with almost 1,200,000 people; which also gave them the largest army in the North.

However, after a few years, there were 175,000 people living in and around Barrowton alone, while in the rest of the territory there were about 700,000 more people, giving a total population of 875,000. Of the new population, almost all were young, energetic men in search of opportunity, who came to work hard.

On every house that was built, a flag stood out, surviving the cold wind that pushed it around; it was the coat of arms of the Dustin House. Originally this was composed of two crossed bronze axes, with a crown above them, on a yellow background, but in Wolfgang's opinion this logo was too complex for the common people to remember. However, House Dustin, as an ancestral house of the North, had too much importance to change its coat of arms suddenly, so in the end the only change was to paint the bronze axe completely dark, and to add below the crown a strange black symbol, called a swastika.

Every building was required to hang a flag with the Dustin crest, and they also had to leave a space on their walls to hang the scrolls that the Lord ordered to be hung; there were them in almost every house.

Beron approached one of them, a small sarcastic smile on his face. "Your lands need you! Help work the fields!" he read, in a whisper, and saw the illustration of a strong, northern-looking man, with a shovel in his hand and a tired look, but with a family, evidently his own, eating vegetables and meat with a smile.

There was another next to it, "Help the Lord build your home!" and there appeared an illustration of a northern man holding tightly a wooden house, in which the same family was sheltering from the cold with a smile. On all the scrolls was the crest of House Dustin plainly displayed.

Beron did not doubt that, if he were an adult, his master would have ordered to design himself in each illustration, and Beron knew several of the future projects, which could not be realized at present for lack of money.

The so-called schools, for example, where he sought to teach basic knowledge to all the children of his lands, including the peasants, as well as to feed them. At the same time he would teach them loyalty to House Dustin and, above all, to him, to try to mold their minds into good Northerners in the future, as he liked to refer to his populace.

'But these are all ideas of the future, we have enough on our plate for the moment' were the man's thoughts, and he returned to the training camp.