Chapter 95

A year later. 14 years old

"What is the status of the roads?" he asked while sitting at the head of the table with his small council. Not that there was anything 'small' about it as there were 24 people in it.

Head of the Glassmakers, Head of Education, Head of Infrastructure and Roads, Head of Steel Industry, Head of mining operations, Head of the Department of Law and Justice, General Bronn, General Karsi, Admiral Muron, Head of The Trading Fleet, his regent and aunt Lady Barbrey, Maester Wolkan, Spymistress Lyra , CEO Celly being just some of the many members of the small councils sitting in front of him.

"The road going down south have connected all the major villages specified by you and have finally reached Castle Hornwood. The road going North have crossed the Last River where the construction of the bridge have finally ended. The name of the bridge have yet to be decided." The Head of Infrastructure and Roads said "The road have split up from there and the road to Northwest leading to Last Heart from there has already started. The construction of the road going to North East to Karhold has been halted because we've yet to gain permission from Lord Karstark."

"I see. Stop the construction of the road going to Karhold. Put all the resources and men power in building the road to Last Hearth." He said in his Lordly voice "What about the Road to the East and West."

"The Road from Dreadfort to Bolton Port has already been completed. So now we're focusing on building the roads to the nearby Silver and iron mines." The man replied "The road to West has been halted due to it reaching White Knife. A stone bridge is currently under construction. The work would continue once the bridge has been finished."

He nodded and then turned to face his his regent and Aunt Lady Barbrey Dustin "Auntie. The newest survey for the population of the Lands of Bolton have been completed I assume."

His aunt nodded back at him and took out a folder from her purse and started reading the information in it. "The population of your lands have shown a steady increase in the last year. The number of people living in your lands have crossed the 900,000 mark and now sits at about 921,000 people."

"40,000 of the increased population is due to the immigrants from other lands coming for work while 6,300 are the new born children."

He hummed as she finished the rest of her report and thought about the amount of people that he could arm based on the population.

Depending on the level of prosperity in his lands, he could easily create a standing army of 2% from the total population. So a population of 900,000 should be able to give him an army of 18,000 men.

Compared to him, the other lords would hardly be able to raise an army of 0.5% of their total population due to the low level of prosperity and lack of food which resulted in the North raising an army of 25,000 men from it's population of 5 million people in the last two wars.

Still, right now he only had enough training facilities to train 9,000 men who were divided in two Legions between General Bronn and General Karsi. With 1000 more men being train as horse archers by a Dothraki blood rider who chose to embrace the life of a mercenary instead of trying to avenge his khal when his khal died.

The problem was that he could not make such a large standing army without scaring the crap out of the other lords in the North. Which was understandable.

Despite his betrothal to Lady Sansa Stark, Ned Stark had still forbade him from increasing the size of his standing army anymore once it reached the 3000 mark.

That Ned Stark even allowed him to create a standing army of 3000 men was a huge surprise in and of itself. But he still had to hide most of his men most of the time.

So creating another legion at this point would be more counterproductive than anything.

Still, there are more than 1 ways to increase the size of his army.