Chapter 46

"Maester Wolkan" he said in greeting as the Maester came out of the room after finishing his daily teaching classes.

"Lord Bolton." The Maester said and gave a cordial bow "What can I do for you?"

"I'm here to ask you about the status of the clay that I gave you." He said as he glanced at the dozens of teenage boys and girls who had lost their parent in the Greyjoy Rebellion.

They were now learning how to read and write under his Maesters and would work as officials in his city in the future.

After all, the more literate people there are working under him, the easier it'll be for him to run his lands.

"Very well then Lord Bolton. Please come with me." The Maester said and they followed him to another building in a distance where he could see some men working on mud and clay.

"Please follow me my lord." The maester said and he followed the chubby man inside the large room where hundreds of different kinds of bricks were kept on the side.

"We followed your orders and created 25 different bricks from all the clay that you gave us." The maester said and took out a paper kept under on of the bricks.

"We've not yet finished all the work but 19 of the 25 bricks have already been prepared for your inspection." The maester said and gave him the paper which showed which clay belonged to which location.

He turned to Varko who was standing silently in his magically enhanced armor and said "Varko. Try breaking three brick from group and give them a rating from 1 to 10."

The man gave a nod and then went about breaking all the bricks one by one.

A few of them broke easily. Most of them took some effort in his part to do so. And some were rather hard to break with the sword.

By the end of his inspection he didn't need Varko's response as he already knew which bricks was the strongest out of them all.

He looked down on the paper and found that the three bricks belonged to the group that was brought from the bank near Last river, a deep cavern in the Lonely Hills and near the broken branch.

The closest location was the Last River but relations with Karstarks were bad and he didn't want to go to them for anything so that a no go.

After some deliberation, he finally decided that he would use the clay from the banks of the 'Broken Branch' river which fell under the domain of the Hornwoods.

"Use the clay that I brought from the Broken Branch river and discard the rest." He told his Maester "The brick is quite sturdy as it is but it's not sturdy enough. Try making it under different temperatures. You have a moon's worth of time to show me the results." He said and the Maester gave a quick nod before he gave the paper back to the Maester and left the room.