Game of Thrones: Path of the Hungry Bear

Mid 289 Summer Robert

King Robert felt another flash of joy as his hammer pulped another head on the battlefield beneath the walls of Yunkai. The slave soldiers fought fiercely, but their lacking equipment meant they posed little threat to a strong force of Westerosi knights, even without the power of their horses. The Unsullied surprised the King, the eunuch boy soldiers fought with ferocity and great discipline, and Robert felt a great shame that they would never feel the just rewards for their incredible courage. They deserved better. 

He fought with fury, but this one a purely righteous thing. Westeros was better off with him absent. Instead of burdening the kingdoms with his expensive tourneys and feasting, Robert felt so alive out here in far flung Essos, living out his boyhood dream as a warrior hero. What the King saw in Astapor shook him to his core. He thought he knew evil -that hated Rhaeghar and mad Aerys were great embodiments of it - but what he saw in Astapor, people butchered and mutilated in the streets, sold like cattle. He discovered the true face of evil that day, and found the last Targaryens falling short of its all consuming malevolence. 

Robert fought for glory, and he fought for riches. He fought for wine and wenches too. As he swung his hammer again and again, he fought to end the sick practices that made the slave men who he laid low this day. His forces followed him all the way to the dusty yellow brick wall, bringing a battering ram up to the crumbling fortification. The steel clad spike housed in a roofed cart rolled up and the men aimed it at as good a joint as any to start smashing, and just as Jorah claimed, the wall came crumbling down before the afternoon shadows started stretching. 

They didn't need brave men to charge the gap, as the people on the other side of the wall had little strength of arms to resist, but they sent in the Unsullied anyway, the lads charging without fear. Robert followed behind in the wake of their bloodshed as the boy soldiers set about their task of cleansing the city of slaver filth. He felt a little at ease at the sight of a young boy run through on an Unsullied spear, but steeled himself. A little evil now to prevent a lot of evil in the future. 

The sack lasted three days, and once more Robert marveled at the wealth gathered for future transport back to Westeros. The hordes built up in Astapor and Yunkai would see even the lowest of smallfolk following them on this great campaign richer than they could make in half a lifetime, and Meereen - the last of the cities on this year's chopping block - was far greater than the size of both its sister cities combined. 

Once again, it took the host a week to pacify the city and the outskirts, and without Jorah and his men handling these people the sudden arrival of freedom would prove disastrous. Once they established a new order, they needed only half a day to arrive at Meereen, the last and greatest of the Three Great Slaver Cities.

Their main force camped outside the great gate to the city while smaller units traveled the countryside putting down the various Great Masters that feed and supply the city. Despite slave soldiers serving as the cornerstone of Meereen's economy, the Great Masters sealed their city tightly, and refused to come out, their spokesman shouting the city's demands from atop its high walls. 

They hoped to settle the matter with a battle of champions, sending out a man atop a white charge, but Jorah just put an arrow in the bastard. Both sides settled in for what looked to be a long siege, but the Lord of Bear Island led his men into the sewers that night and before long they had half the city rioting and the gates thrown open. 

Robert had the army waiting and ready, and they poured into the city. The Great Masters of Meereen fought fiercely, unlike the decadent Wise and Good Masters. They kept to a martial tradition. Eventually they pushed the Great Masters into their terraced pyramids, and once again Jorah strategically tore down their defenses and the Unsullied flooded in, giddy to slaughter and completely uncaring of death. When King Robert ascended the Great Pyramid of Meereen after days of fighting all across the city, it looked more like a charnel house than a palace. 

It took a much greater time sink to pacify and restore order in Meereen, as unlike the former cities hovering around a hundred thousand inhabitants, Meereen had a population similar to King's Landing, and this was apparently nearing half of its former apex. Robert looked out over a city that once housed a million people, over eight hundred thousand slaves, and marveled at the sheer scale and cruelty. 

The King's gaze turned to the mastermind of this brilliant lighting fast war, and it didn't take a genius to notice that he fared far worse than the rest of the Northmen in this army, despite his long history with places like Dorne. Jorah Mormont moved with a pained tension, like his whole body felt tender and sore, and often sported a white knuckled grip on the red axe he keeps at his side while the other hand throws back horns of mead and wine. Robert didn't spite a man his drink, but he had standing orders to speak out if anyone notices the Lord of Bear Island throwing back Milk of the Poppy. 

King Robert prayed that Jorah Mormont survives what ails him to gods that probably want the man dead. 

Late 289 Summer Me

Robert's concern for my health didn't stop him from dumping the responsibility of reorganizing our conquests onto me while the man luxuriated in wine and women. He added me to his Small Council as Master of Colonies, essentially making me the Hand of the King in territories held outside the Seven Kingdoms. My role as nation builder was enough honor and duty to crush a man. Fortunately, I am a god. 

Also fortunately, our host came with enough second, third, and forth sons from noble and knightly houses that I didn't need to uplift the locals to positions of authority outside of the Unsullied, who only lost a little more than two thousand men after sacking the Three Great Slaver Cities, the heaviest loss ratio of any of our divisions by far. For their valor (and competence), I gave gold cloaks, and divided them. Two out of every three remained in Meereen as the new City Watch, and the other third went half to Yunkai and the other half home to Astapor for the same. They appointed their own Captains, and were tasked with recruiting and training new units. Just not to the extremes of their own cruel creation. 

Concerning the governance of these cities, I disappointed many a greedy prospective lord when instead of giving them out whole to a single lord each, I divided each city into districts and granted those to a single lord, moving the ex slave population around so that each new lord ruled over roughly ten thousand people. Each new lord swore to me to uphold the King's Peace and Law in these new territories outside of Westeros, and to each other they swore oaths of good will and to foster the general welfare. Forty city lords in Meereen, and eight in Astapor and Yunkai each formed a city council, given legislative and judicial authority, with the executive lying with me through my position on Robert's Small Council. 

As for the plantations, mines, and other resources outside the city walls, each was given to new knightly houses formed by second and third sons much like the new city lords. Each swore oaths to the city itself rather than to a specific lord within, many understanding the position much like that of a maester, only martial and inheritable. With that in place I created both a shareholder government and a managerial class, a blend of Westeros and Essos governing familiar to both and cooperative in nature. Each man is free to tax his population has he sees fit, but the city itself takes its due for a common treasury for public works and projects. 

While I completed this work, my ships moved back and forth moving people and goods to and from Slaver's Bay, The Free Cities, and Westeros. A pronounced chilling of relations came from those in the middle of that equation. There could have been problems with various captains 'going pirate' to attack my ships, but I posit: he who increases mind controlled krakens, decreases problems. Violently. 

While many chose to remain in the former Slaver Cities - a curious phenomena to cleave to home even if home is the setting of your suffering - many chose to travel to Westeros for a new start at life in a land untainted by millennia of slavery. I still find the distinction between thralldom and slavery hilarious. 

When the time came, Robert returned to Westeros, but not on the Great Sea Bear, I sailed on past New Ghis and the Red Waste to the Straights of Qarth, and onto the ancient Queen of Cities, a title I gladly give them. Qarth is the kind of fantasy city I have longed to see with my real eyes, to experience in the flesh. Grand, not just in scale, but in grandeur. Rich, not just in resources, but in ideas and creativity. King's Landing is a nest of vipers fighting over squalor, Quarth is nests of vipers jockeying for the spots of sunlight amidst mountains of wealth and culture casting long and dark shadows in which ancient secrets and cabals thrive.

Its enough to make a complete mockery of the oh so desperate Game of Thrones that so many live and die for back in Westeros, that a single merchant prince in this one city lives in a palace larger than a market town filled with all the luxuries of the world, and that he has twelve more rivals within his own faction that compete for prestige and power with two more factions just as if not more so rich and powerful. We, the warlords of Westeros who command the greatest warriors in the world and have sacked ancient cities and stormed many castles, were left completely overwhelmed by just the sight of this city's wonderous triple perimeter walls. How easily the greatest port in the world swallowed up our feared warships. 

I relished every sight. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Updates will slow down now that my kids' raw energy has broken Grandma's will to live. Once again, a big thanks to 4REEESEARCH for his continued support of me and my family. You too can support us at:

ko-fi.com/jmanm