Chapter 189

Axel Arryn.

Watching a region flourish under your hand is a joy for any lord, and I was no exception to that rule. Only the strongest region in the realm deserved my rule, and my own standards for that were, admittedly, set rather high. In our world, ambitions scale roughly in proportion to the effort poured into them, but standing squarely in that path lies an endless bureaucracy, spawned by Melkor himself and tenderly nursed along by Sauron ever since. I held no illusions about ever being rid of that particular indignity, but I had at least hoped it might ease off for a while. It hadn't. If anything, there was more of it than before.

People have a habit of hoping for the best. I'd looked forward to the Riverlands campaign with real optimism. Earn some coin, kill a few men, put my modernized army through its paces, plunder a handful of houses that had irritated me since the day I was named Robert's Hand, and then, leaving competent men in charge, largely wash my hands of regional business and bureaucracy for a while. That, at least, had been the hope. To my considerable disappointment, the workload had only grown, and now here I sat, together with two scribes, dictating my final orders of the day.

"...and in light of this, the land up to the Argela hills belongs rightfully to House Byrd. House Bigglestone holds no claim to it whatsoever, having forfeited any such right back during the Second Blackfyre Rebellion. Got all that down?" A nod came back within ten seconds. "Add a small note at the bottom, something to make sure Lord Bigglestone doesn't get any more clever ideas, you know the sort of thing I mean. Where were we?"

"'Render aid to Lord Desmond of Gulltown,'" my scribe answered promptly.

"Right. Politely ask Andar not to be so tight fisted with funds. Add that I'll make it up to him afterward, keep the letter mildly irritated in tone, but don't overdo it." A short nod followed, and the scribe set to work weaving his usual magic.

Long ago I'd come to a simple realization: if I didn't want to work myself into an early grave buried under endless paperwork, I needed to hand off some of my responsibilities to others. Plenty of men had wanted the job, considerably fewer had met my standards for it, and only four had ever passed every test I set and proven their loyalty besides. As for the rest who hadn't made the cut... may the Seven have mercy on what's left of them.

"Mm hm... good... excellent..."

"You may go."

I sometimes envied the pair of them, honestly. Lucky men, to have such a merciful lord, letting his subordinates rest while he kept grinding away at the work himself. My own generosity surprised even me on occasion. Looking over the mountain of reports that had piled up while I was busy sacking some castle or another, a certain hopelessness settled over me. Everyone worked to the limit of what they could manage, and my beloved scribes had simply stopped being able to keep pace with the volume of tasks I kept piling on them. Unfortunately, one couldn't simply hand a post of that responsibility to just anyone. Paranoia wouldn't allow it. Bring in the third scribe with me here too? Eyris back at the Eyrie would howl louder than ever, the man was a soldier, not an administrator. The fourth had died during the purge Rotten Fish carried out in the middle of that uprising. Which left me chronically short of the people I actually needed, as usual.

Tonight I still had to approve rewards for the men who'd distinguished themselves, and the longer this war dragged on, the thornier that particular problem became. My army had been storming every nearby castle with real enthusiasm, capturing highborn prisoners and cutting down the last stubborn remnants of the river lords, and naturally, such service deserved proper reward, if only to keep my soldiers' morale from flagging. One might think, with millions of gold coins at my disposal, I could simply throw money at the problem, but doing that would leave the knights of the Vale absurdly wealthy by the campaign's end, trigger inflation, and gut the value of both the coin and my own labor alike. So I made a point of keeping rewards more grounded: horses, swords, armor, small villages, knighthoods, appointments. It worked well enough, and I was never stingy when it came to rewards genuinely earned.

"My lord, a guest has arrived at camp with a company of men. Calls himself the Old Griffin, and requests an audience." I knew well enough about the Lannisters' dealings with the Golden Company, which made this rather surprising.

"Bring him in." What could the disgraced Connington possibly want from me?