Chapter 96

"Varamyr." He said and the greatest warg within his ranks rose his head to look at him.

"Hmm…?"

"How many direwolves do we have without our ranks now?" he asked.

The warg scratched his head and closed his eyes for a moment before replying "14 adult ones. 43 pups and… 4 more were born last month."

He nodded "What about the Weirwood bows and the Ironwood arrows I'd given to the Giants. Are they working as they should?" he asked.

At this, Varamyr's face took a decidedly savage grin and he snarled "Better. Much much better."

He raised and eyebrow at that. It seems like he needed to go and see the training of the Giant Archers if Varamyr was so impressed by them.

Truth be told, he had even known that there were archers among the giants and only found out about them when Ygritte told him about it.

Even after that, he had thought the concept to be strange as Giants have rather bad eyesight. Still, he could see the merit in that idea and thus gave a few enchanted giant sized Weirwood bow and Ironwood arrow to the Giants, not really knowing what to expect from them.

But if Varamyr's reaction was any indication then he might gain another lethal weapon in his arsenal very soon.

He nodded and turned to look at Mocqo, a dothraki bloodrider who chose to embrace the life of a mercenary after the death of his Khal. A fairly recent addition to his forces.

"Mocqo. How goes the training of the Horse Archer regiment?" he asked.

Mocqo stopped leering at General Karsi and frowned for a moment before replying in broken Westerosi language "It… not good."

Knowing that talking in the common language would take too long, he spoke in fluent Dothraki "What is the problem?"

"The problem…" Mocqo scrunched his eyebrows "The problem is simple. Your people are shit at riding horses." He said with the uncharacteristic bluntness that he only ever hears from Walton, the head of his personal guards and the Security Chief of Dreadfort.

"Then make them better at it." He replied with bluntness in Dothraki "Those are your men now. If they don't know something then it falls on you to teach them. I don't want to hear your complains Mocqo. That is not why I hired you. I want results." He said, using his magic to slightly intemidate the man. And although the Dothraki didn't show any outward sign of being affected by him, a brief use of legilimency told him that the man was still afraid of ever going against him.

He then turned to the rest of the men who looked slightly confused at the use of dothraki language and continued.

"Admiral Muron. What of our war fleet?"

Muron shrugged at his question. "Nothing much. After the defeat they suffered at our hands, the Ibbenese have kept their heads down. The pirates from Sisterton have mostly been eradicated. But they pirates. The scum will return sooner or later. And then we'll have to make another sweep to kill them once again." He said without any care. Not that he himself felt anything for the pirates.

There was a time when he would have tried to empathized with the pirates and would have tried to understand why they did what they did. But years as the head of the Auror department had taught him that some people were just not worth saving.

True, not all pirates are bad. In fact, some of them even have their own families in the Free Cities. But does this make all the crimes they committed any less forgivable.

No, time and experience had taught him to harden his hard and give the correct order instead of being benevolent when it was required of him.

With that said, the battle against the Ibbenese for the Whaling rights of the Shivering Sea could have been averted with small compromises. But the Shivering Sea didn't belong to Ibbenese and they had been the one who had attacked his ships at first.

So a compromised had been reached. After he and Muron broke their war fleet and burned their ship yard before they could launch an attack on them.

They still had to fight the remaining Ibbenese ships but it was not a very hard task and he had left Muron to it.

The Ibbenese didn't attack his ships anymore.

He nodded in Muron's direction and got up from his seat, the Small Council standing up with him.

"That'll be all for today. You're all dismissed." He said and his subordinates bowed to him before leaving the room.

All except for his aunt, Maester Wolkan, Spy Mistress Lyra and his CEO Celly.

The true small council with whom he shared almost all of his plans regarding the future of his people and the few people whom he trusted the most aside from his two sworn shields who were stil quietly standing behind him in their full armor.

His spy mistress took out a folder filled with reports from inside a bottomless bag that he had given her as a gift in her birthday and gave it to him.

"It seems you were right to be cautious. The Magisters of Myr are planning something. They're gathering men and gold and forming a coalition. It seems like they intend to attack our ships in the sea by either hiring pirates or camouflaging their own ships as pirates. They might have other plans for us but so far I've yet to find any."

"I see." He said, looking pensively at the file in his hands as his mind already started coming up with various ways in which he could divert or destroy this potential threat to his people. "Any ideas on how to deal with this?" he asked them to see if they had any better ideas.

And so the meeting continued for two more hours after which he got too tired to continue the meeting and dismissed them so that he could go to his room and sleep in his soft and velvety bed.