Chapter 117: Recasting the Westerlands

Arthur moved next to food. Wars were won with courage only in songs. In the world everyone was cursed to inhabit, they were won with grain, carts, boots, fodder, iron, and men willing to pretend their commanders understood mud.

The Westerlands had lost too many young men. Fields had gone untilled. Villages had given horses, wagons, smiths, sons, and coin until some had nothing left to give but resentment. If he rebuilt only the army, he would rule a sword without a hand to hold it. The land had to breathe again.

He ordered twenty thousand Battanian Peasants brought through the system at thirty dinars each. Six hundred thousand gone. They would be settled in river valleys, hill farms, abandoned holdings, and lands left half-used by war and neglect. They would plant wheat, barley, grapes, olives where the soil allowed, and whatever else could be coaxed from stubborn earth by people who had apparently made agriculture into a form of quiet warfare.

Irrigation canals would be dug. Ten major lines first, with smaller channels to follow. Fifty granaries. Twenty workshops for tools. Seed loans. Oxen where they could be found, bought, bred, or borrowed with enough armed politeness to become convincing. The system’s assistance would shorten what years might otherwise demand, but it would not make stone move itself. Men would still have to sweat. Convenient miracles remained unavailable, as usual.

Another one hundred and fifty thousand dinars were committed to waterworks, granaries, and farm tools.

Then craftsmen. Five thousand carpenters, masons, smiths’ apprentices, wheelwrights, coopers, miners, and other useful hands, at an estimated fifty dinars apiece. Two hundred and fifty thousand more. Workshops in Lannisport and Casterly Rock would be repaired and expanded. Forges would be restored. Sawmills built near woodland. Mining works strengthened where gold and iron could still be drawn safely. He allocated another hundred thousand for tools, timber, ore, charcoal, bellows, carts, and every other dull necessity without which grand plans became expensive prayers.

Trade came next. Fifty thousand dinars to dredge the channel at Lannisport, repair quays, and begin construction of medium merchant vessels better suited to western waters, all of it under Flio’s management.

In a tower cell above the sea, Jaime Lannister remained where the war had left him, watched, fed, and unanswered. Arthur had not yet decided what the Kingslayer was worth, and a coin of that weight was not spent merely to tidy a ledger. Trade with the Riverlands would be reopened and protected. The North would need timber, grain, iron, nails, rope, wool, and every tool required to rebuild what the dead had broken. Neutral cities across the Narrow Sea would be courted for grain, books, skilled labor, medicines, and materials the west could not easily produce.

The number fell below nothing.

Wealth: -300,000 dinars.

The system displayed the deficit warning with the serene cruelty of a maester noting that a patient’s fever had become “interesting.”

Arthur exhaled.

It was a gamble. No, worse. It was a series of gambles tied together and set on fire. He was spending coin he had, coin he expected, credit he would need to create, trust he would have to earn, and authority he would have to defend with blood if some lord decided grief made a fine opportunity.

Diana and Alwin stood nearby, writing as fast as human hands allowed. Both had gone pale. Diana recovered first, because she had learned that Arthur’s madness usually came with a ledger attached.

“My lord,” Alwin said carefully, “the treasury cannot sustain this. Not with the expected revenues of the next two years, not after the pensions, not with the mines declining. Land, housing, seed, tools, command, settlement rights, disputes with old holders... this could ignite unrest.”

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“Unrest already exists,” Arthur said. “It is sitting in every hall where a chair is empty and every field where a son is buried in the north. If we do nothing, it curdles. If we take slowly, it rots. The families of the dead need compensation. The wounded need land or pensions. The idle need work. The hungry need grain. The frightened need proof that tomorrow has been planned by someone not entirely asleep.”

Alwin closed his mouth. Sensible of him.

Arthur turned to Diana. “You will oversee the Westerlands Revival Decree in my name. First, the worst-struck lands are exempt from taxes for one year. Second, newly reclaimed fields go first to families of the fallen, rent- and tax-free for three years. Third, refugees, retired soldiers, wounded men, widows, and their households are to be settled in the new reclamation zones. Seed loans, farm tools, and three years of grain support where necessary. Fourth, work-for-pay on canals, roads, granaries, docks, and workshops. Hire local smallfolk first. Pay in coin where we can, grain where we must, and written credit only when unavoidable.”

Diana nodded, already writing.

“Fifth,” Arthur continued, “the Merit Field system. Service in the Bannermen Guard earns land grants, mining shares, or workshop shares according to service and wounds taken. If men bleed for the west, the west will not reward them with speeches and a ditch.”

“Some lords will resist,” Alwin said.

“Some lords resist weather,” Arthur replied. “It has rarely mattered to the rain.”

Diana’s mouth twitched. Alwin wisely pretended not to see.

Arthur faced him. “You will handle the nobles and merchant houses. Tell them plainly: the war is ended, and another age is beginning whether they approve or not. Those willing to invest in new farms, workshops, roads, ships, and trade routes will receive tax privileges and limited charters. Those unwilling may keep their coin and their silence. Those who obstruct reconstruction will discover that I have returned from fighting the dead with very little patience for the living behaving stupidly.”

This time Alwin did not argue.

“Send trade invitations,” Arthur said. “To the Riverlands. To the Vale. To Dorne. To the North, though they have little to spare and much to need. Across the Narrow Sea as well. Braavos, Pentos, and any merchant willing to sell grain, timber, iron, medicine, skilled labor, or books without asking how many crowns will exist next year.”

“What of the south?” Diana asked.

Arthur’s eyes moved to the map. King’s Landing. Dragonstone. The Reach. Dorne. The Vale. The Iron Islands. All the old names, all the old appetites.

“Watch all of it. The Reach first. Euron’s remnants second. King’s Landing always. Strengthen the Golden Tooth, Pheasant Hall, and the coast. Send scouts to Dragonstone and King’s Landing. I want reports on Cersei, Daenerys, Euron, the Tyrells, Dorne, and Littlefinger.”

“The War of the Dragon and the Lion,” Alwin murmured.

Arthur gave him a tired look. “Do not give it a pretty name. Pretty names encourage men to die for ugly reasons.”

Alwin dipped his head.

Arthur’s voice softened, though only a little. “Jon Snow and Arya Stark are to be saved at any cost. They are friends. They are also sparks, and I have grown very tired of watching sparks go out. Inform me the moment Arya wakes. As for Jon, Maester Luwin and every physician in reach will use every method they know. If a septon, red priest, hedge witch, or grandmother with suspicious tea can help, I will hear of it.”

“Yes, my lord,” Diana said.

She and Alwin bowed and withdrew, carrying orders that would send half the Westerlands into motion before dawn. When the door closed, the study became very quiet.

Arthur walked to the window and pushed it open. Night wind entered, warmer than the north and still colder than he wanted. Below Casterly Rock, the harbor lights of Lannisport flickered along the water. Farther inland, scattered village lamps pricked the dark like embers under ash.

South, war clouds were gathering. North, the dead were gone but the graves remained. Around him, the west waited, wounded and hungry, uncertain whether its lord had returned with salvation or merely a more expensive form of doom.

The deficit glowed in his mind.

Arthur almost laughed.

“Greenseer,” he murmured into the night, “you told me to gather sparks. Very well. We will begin with farms, roads, granaries, soldiers, and coin we do not have. Because apparently dawn is built by accountants after fools bleed for it.”

The wind answered with the distant sound of waves.

He rested his hands on the stone sill and looked out over the lights of the Rock and the city below. Small lights. Fragile lights. Not so different from the flames that had burned on the Wall, from the voices that had risen against the Night King, from Viserion’s last ember fading into peace.

The war against the dead had ended.

The war to keep the living alive had begun, and it promised to be longer, meaner, and far less grateful.