Remeber Not to Ask
Mid 278 Summer
I didn't have the acting chops to keep Elia from noticing the immediate chilling of our relationship after she rejected my proposal. You'd think being as silent and stoic as I often am that it'd be easy to hide my disappointment, but over half of all communication is nonverbal, and I'd never taken the time to learn to fake those. Too busy being a sailor, merchant, warrior, lord to take levels in mummer.
Not that I didn't understand. I'd made no deception about my role in life as a brutal warlord who keeps his harem of slave - ahem, thrall - women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen full time. Turns out a lack of outright rejection is not evidence of joyous acceptance. Sometimes a woman hears that you are a savage enforcer of the patriarchy and thinks, 'Hey, he may not be husband material, but he can probably fuck like loaded ship on rough water.' Who can blame a woman for thinking that about me? I certainly can't.
Despite my understanding, everything between us felt different. Even the fucking felt different. Less intimate, more athletic, and with a pullout finish. It was an abrupt transition for the worse that left me longing for the hope now absent. Despite that, the fornication was exquisite and I still enjoyed the favor of her family, ensuring the profitability of my visits to Dorne. Something I greatly appreciated as usually fathering a bastard on a noblewoman is an easy way to get over her family's unceasing enmity. You've got to enjoy the silver linings where you find them.
I had many things to keep me from the maudlin path. Trade, tourneys, training, governance, my harem of concubines and the hamlet of my offspring. This year specifically I wrote up my war diary for use in planning a brief and brutal invasion of the Lands Beyond the Wall by the Lords of the North in 279. Everyone - even the half Ibb savages of Skagos - wanted to put the hurt on the Wildings next year, emboldened by my successes. Rickard had me detailing the strategy and tactics of my campaigns so he could make informed choices about how to conduct this great raid.
Unlike the great men who came before me, I couldn't just blatantly write a narrative of perilous adventure and self aggrandizement. Not when I had nobles from four other families available for verification. So I produced a dry and detailed accounting of my genocide of the Wildlings, making sure that all who read of my efforts understood it to be the tedious and laborious labor that I treat it as. Hard work, but rewarding and meaningful.
Controlling the economics of the coming venture was far more important than mitigating risks. Truth is, unless the Others kick things off twenty years early and attack with full force then there isn't anything in the 'True North' that can stop a force as large as what Rickard wants to assemble. We'll have the manpower to defeat everything with ease even with just a half muster of The North's combat capacity.
The real risk is that we crash the fur market by idiots selling everything we take all at once. I sit on a great stockpile of goods taken beyond the wall, enough to last me past my middle years if I wasn't constantly expanding my ventures. I know better than to just dump my supply for quick coin today, but the same can not be said about my primarily illiterate peers. Hopefully they would all have Grey Rats with enough knowledge and influence to stop them from crashing the most lucrative of my markets.
Because I don't believe in them at all, I worked with Wyman to convince Rickard that we'd need to have trade procedures in place before the raid even kicked off, explaining how the a few desperate people dumping their supply to the south and Essos all at once would leave all of us out in the cold. Ultimately we settled on flow of goods where Houses like Stark, Manderly, Bolton, and Mormont - and boy are people shocked to understand that Mormont now trucks with names like those - will take on the trade goods of other Houses for a fair price, and hold the items to sell in the long term.
We all had the funds to tighten the belt in return for sustained profit later, and in truth the fair price we managed to come to for different things would still see us all well rewarded for our trouble, just not to the level of flat out bending our more impoverished peers over. Personally, I'd make my money anyways as the FedEx of The North, so it didn't bother me too much, Manderly either, and since Stark and Bolton were both suffering equally they shrugged and moved on to other things.
I spent the rest of the year on auto pilot, stacking gold and silver from floor to ceiling in my Rockhall vaults from trade and professional sports, expanding my skills as a warrior and sailor, and trying to pass that knowledge down to my horde of children whenever I interacted with them. With any luck, someone might someday take some of the load carrying this Northwestern Trade Federation off my back.
It's a quiet hope of mine, and maybe foolish, but somewhere out there… I believe there is someone capable of learning to be better.
___________________GREEN DREAM OF A WILD BOY_____________________________
People thought that Brandon Stark was a wild boy, the Wild Wolf. Brandon knew that Jorah Mormont was the only real wild man in The North, and that meant he was the only real wild man in Westeros. The Lord of Bear Island was a living breathing rallying cry to reject modernity and return to the Age of Heroes. He proved that Destiny is just a whore with a fat ass, and if you have hands strong enough you can keep those cheeks in your grasp and make her your bitch.
Months at sea with the man, working as a member of his crew, made Brandon feel like more of a man than any warm and wet cunt ever made him feel. This life Jorah lived somehow married responsibility and duty to risk and adventure. Not for the first time the Wild Wolf damned Brandon the Burner for torching the Northern Fleets in the most retarded display of impotent rage ever in the history of The North and likely the world. He also damned the Starks in between for never biting the leather and parting with the gold to rebuild what was lost.
Sailing is fucking tight is the long and short of Brandon's experience on the sea.
The small folk who crewed the Great Sea Bear were veteran sailors and campaigners. Rough, tough, and strong. These men adorned their wives with silver and boasted of their taking of Salt Wives and thralls, of slaying giant beasts, and killing every wildling man they ever saw. Brandon never thought he'd ever feel envious of small folk before he met these men, but years of being dragged to greatness by a heroic figure like Jorah Mormont will allow the sheep to rise up as wolves.
How much greater would a natural born wolf be in that environment?
If Brandon could change just one thing about Jorah Mormont, it would be the evil red axe the man carried on his belt. An unnatural thing, that double headed felling axe, said to be stained in the blood of the gods. The sight of it made his eyes itch, but the older lord would not part with it, even in his sleep, especially in his sleep.
When questioned about it Jorah looked down on him with those unnaturally green eyes - cursed eyes from the rumors - and asked, "Do you pray, boy?"
Though not particularly frequent in his trips to the godswood, Brandon grew up praying at the Heart Tree in Winterfell and later in Barrowtown.
"Then add this to your prayers." Jorah spoke softly, as softly as a man with a voice like a rockslide can, "Pray for the strength to do as I did, should the gods ever speak to you. For there is not a single benevolent god in this world, boy. Remember that."
Brandon wished he remembered not to ask.
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My kids are getting more demanding of my time. It makes it a whole lot harder to write a chapter that isn't coming along easy when you are so tired from being a dad.
Despite that I think I did alright on this one on all fronts except a timely delivery. I wanted to get the fallout with Elia correct. I needed to show that she mattered, but that Jorah has too much inner strength for romantic disappointment to slow him down. Its a misconception that the level of love in a relationship is directly proportional to the depression after its loss. In fact, I'd say huge displays of self destructive sadness are an indication of lacking character and grit. Dealing with disappointment with grace and dignity is an underappreciated quality these days, and that needs to stop. Bring back grace and dignity.
You can support me and my family at
ko - fi . com / jmanm