Pulling a heavy, coarse wool hood over my silver hair, I pulled the dark brown folds tight around my jaw to hide my Valyrian features.
I looked down at my expensive velvet doublet and silk tunic, making sure they were entirely hidden beneath the drab traveler’s mantle.
Beside me, Ser Humfrey the Mummer had traded his pristine white wool cloak for a tattered, oil-stained coat of drab brown wool that looked as though it had been salvaged from the corpse of a hedge knight.
The heavy fabric draped awkwardly over the sharp contours of his polished steel chestplate, but from a distance, he looked like nothing more than an oversized, scarred sellsword serving as an escort for a highborn bastard child.
Initial objections from the Kingsguard had been swift and stern.
Ser Humfrey had balked at the foolish notion of taking the King’s five-year-old son out into the unwashed, lawless chaos of the lower streets.
It had taken ten minutes of my relentless, persuasive nagging, combined with a subtle threat to sneak over the castle walls on my own, to break his resolve.
In the end, the white knight had relented.
There was no active war in the realm, no Dornish assassin squads prowling the muddy alleys of Aegon’s High Hill today, and Ser Humfrey possessed supreme confidence in his ability to split a man from collarbone to navel with his broadsword if anything went wrong.
The wooden gates of the Aegonfort loomed above us, constructed from massive pine logs bound with heavy iron bands.
The guards stationed at the post were not the grand, disciplined warriors of the famous City Watch.
The Gold Cloaks did not exist yet in this era, but looking at the current gate garrison, the need for a proper police force was blindingly obvious.
The men-at-arms lounging beside the portcullis wore mismatched leather doublets and greasy iron caps, leaning lazily against their spears as though they were paid to nap on their feet.
Their posture was atrocious, their weapons were spotted with orange rust, and they lacked any semblance of military discipline.
With a quick nod from Ser Humfrey, two gate guards grunted, leaning their heavy shoulders against the oak winches to push the heavy gate open just wide enough for us to slip through.
We stepped out onto the gravel outer path, and the wooden gate slammed shut behind us with a dull, heavy thump that reverberated in the hollows of my ears.
That was it.
I was officially outside the walls of the Aegonfort.
Aside from my dragon flights atop Vhagar between Dragonstone and the mainland, this was the very first time my leather boots had ever touched the soil of the capital.
Reaching up, I pushed a stray lock of silver hair out of my eyes and stood upon the grassy crest of Aegon’s High Hill, taking in the sweeping vista of the fledgling city stretching out beneath my boots.
The sight before me was a chaotic, disorganized mess.
Down below, sprawled across the rolling hills and muddy riverbanks, stood the wild, undisciplined settlement of King’s Landing.
It was not a true city yet, but rather a swollen boomtown that had erupted like a fungus around the base of the fort.
Thousands of crude wooden longhouses, wattle-and-daub shacks, thatch-roofed taverns, canvas tents, and makeshift timber shops were crammed together in complete, lawless anarchy.
There were no paved stone streets, no grand arcades, and no urban planning whatsoever.
The thoroughfares were merely twisting, uneven dirt tracks churned into deep brown troughs of mud by the constant passage of oxen, draft horses, heavy timber wagons, and thousands of unwashed feet.
I shuddered to imagine the horrifying, slippery nightmare these steep slopes became whenever a summer downpour drenched the bay.
There were no outer stone walls protecting the settlement either.
The sprawling wooden camps simply trickled off into the tall, wild grasses of the countryside before cutting off abruptly near the treeline.
Despite its primitive, chaotic appearance, the settlement was teeming with an astonishing density of human life.
From my high vantage point, the people looked like an endless colony of ants, pushing, shoving, and shouting as they went about their daily labor.
The collective noise rising from the lower tracks was overwhelming, a loud, ceaseless hum of shouting merchants, barking dogs, crying infants, and clattering iron wagon wheels that echoed all the way up the hillside.
I shifted my gaze across the horizon, looking toward the two other prominent hills rising in the distance.
To the west stood the high, grassy slopes that would eventually be named Visenya’s Hill, where the grand Sept of Baelor would one day dominate the skyline.
To the south rose the hill of Rhaenys, where the massive, dragon-filled dome of the Dragonpit would eventually sit.
At this point in history, however, both hills were virtually empty, dotted only with a few scattered sheep pens, goat herds, and solitary wooden huts sitting in the wild grass.
Disappointed by the barren hills, I turned my attention toward the muddy banks of the Blackwater Rush.
The riverfront was a dense, chaotic tangle of crude pine piers, rickety wooden docks, and floating timber wharves jutting out into the deep, dark water.
Dozens of massive trading vessels were anchored in the bay or lashed to the docks.
I spotted heavy merchant cogs from Pentos, Tyrosh, and Myr sitting side by side with Westerosi trading galleys, longships from the Vale, and flat-bottomed river barges down from the Reach.
The air blowing off the river was heavy with a thick, pungent mixture of salt spray, rotting seaweed, fried fish, wet timber, and sweet pine tar, so potent I could smell the sharp tang from all the way up the hill.
The docks were undoubtedly the most vibrant, economically productive district in the entire town, packed with muscle-bound sailors, dockworkers carrying wooden crates, and loud hawkers shouting prices in half a dozen Essosi dialects.
Overall, my impression of the capital was thoroughly lukewarm.
King’s Landing, you are a complete, muddy disappointment.
I am going to have to rebuild this entire fuckass city from the ground up when I take power.
Suddenly, an interesting realization struck my brain.
Where was the legendary, stomach-churning smell that King’s Landing was universally famous for in the history books?
The infamous stench of human waste, rotting offal, and stagnant sewage was surprisingly absent.
Of course, the air smelled of wet mud, horse dung, and unwashed peasant bodies, but the overwhelming, city-wide reek had not materialized yet.
That was because the population, while large, was still spread across open fields rather than trapped inside towering stone tenement buildings.
I made a firm mental vow that I would personally oversee the construction of a proper, Roman-style aqueduct and subterranean stone sewer system before this city grew into a half-million-person cesspool.
My nose would not suffer for the rest of my natural life.
My attention shifted away from the riverfront toward the vast cluster of camps and wooden structures sitting directly at the eastern foot of Aegon’s High Hill.
A thick, greasy haze of dark black smoke hung over that entire lower district, drifting upward like storm clouds to coat the timber roofs in dark soot.
Even from high up the slope, I could hear the rhythmic, metallic ring of iron hammers striking anvils.
Dozens of open-air wooden sheds, fitted with squat stone chimneys and roaring hearths, were clustered tightly together along the muddy tracks.
My purple eyes glinted with genuine excitement beneath my wool hood.
A dedicated blacksmithing district!
Now that was thoroughly cool.
As a man who possessed a deep, modern interest in historical weaponry, metallurgy, and engineering, I was not going to pass up an opportunity to inspect medieval metalworking up close.
“If you have satisfied your curiosity and finished admiring the city, my prince, we may proceed,” Ser Humfrey’s quiet, raspy voice broke into my thoughts.
I threw a sharp, cocky smirk over my shoulder at the disguised knight.
“Aye, Ser Humfrey.
Let us descend and see what the city holds for us.” We began our trek down the steep, slippery slopes of Aegon’s High Hill.
I had to watch my footing carefully, as my five-year-old boots slipped occasionally on the loose gravel and dry dirt, but my broad frame and low center of gravity kept me upright.
Within ten minutes, we had successfully navigated the hill and stepped onto the outer perimeter of the blacksmith district.
The sudden transition into the dense crowd was almost overwhelming.
The sheer volume of human noise, combined with the suffocating heat radiating from the open forge fires, hit me like a solid wall.
Hundreds of people were packed tightly into the narrow dirt alleyways, ducking under low wooden awnings and stepping around deep mud puddles.
The smallfolk of the fledgling city were a rough, ragged lot.
Most of them wore simple, faded tunics of coarse grey or brown wool, patched at the elbows and stained with dark grease.
Sweat-drenched sailors with silver hoops in their ears brushed shoulders with dirty peasant women carrying baskets of turnips, while mud-splattered beggar boys darted through the gaps in the crowd like feral cats.
Everyone was pushing, shoving, and jostling against one another in a desperate, frantic hurry.
Several burly sailors and drunken teamsters attempted to shove past me as I walked down the center of the track, but they failed miserably.
Ser Humfrey moved like an invisible, unstoppable wall beside me.
Without ever drawing his sword or raising his voice, the Kingsguard knight used his broad shoulders, heavy iron-clad elbows, and sheer physical presence to subtly deflect oncoming bodies, clearing a smooth, uninterrupted path through the chaos for my broad five-year-old frame.
Spotting an oversized wooden smithy with a massive stone chimney spewing thick grey smoke, I turned on my heel and stepped beneath its low timber lintel.
The moment I crossed the threshold, I was greeted by an intense, blistering wave of hot air flowing all around me, smelling heavily of glowing charcoal, singed leather, and hot iron.
The interior of the smithy was a dark, cavernous space, lit primarily by the bright, fiery orange glow of two massive hearth forges glowing in the center of the room.
Massive leather bellows, operated by a young, soot-stained apprentice pulling on a heavy wooden lever, pumped continuous streams of oxygen into the burning charcoal, sending towering gouts of orange sparks dancing toward the soot-blackened rafters.
Three muscle-bound blacksmiths, clad in thick, scarred leather hide aprons over bare, sweat-glistening torsos, were hard at work.
The air vibrated with the deafening, rhythmic clang of heavy iron hammers slamming onto iron anvils.
Narrowing my dark purple eyes, I folded my arms over my chest and walked around the perimeter of the shop, watching the metalworkers with interest.
Ser Humphrey hovered directly behind my left shoulder, his hand resting casually under his brown coat near the pommel of his broadsword, his brown eyes scanning the shadowy corners of the forge.
My attention was caught by a tall, barrel-chested blacksmith who was forging a brand-new steel broadsword from scratch.
The man was working over a glowing anvil, holding a long, glowing orange bar of steel in a pair of heavy iron tongs.
The ambient heat radiating from the metal was hot enough to singe my eyebrows, yet the smith seemed immune to the temperature, his face dripping with sweat as his heavy ball-peen hammer fell upon the hot metal with precise, thunderous strikes.
The air splattered and sputtered, showering the earthen floor in bright yellow sparks as the smith hammered the glowing bar, gradually flattening and tapering the metal into the rough shape of a double-edged blade.
I stood quietly in the shadows, watching every single step of his forging process with a critical eye.
As the minutes ticked by, my initial intrigue slowly transformed into a deep, frustrated frown.
The blacksmithing techniques practiced in this forge were simultaneously vastly better yet infinitely worse than what my modern, educated mind had expected.
The smith possessed immense physical strength and muscle memory, yet his actual metallurgical science was riddled with glaring, catastrophic errors.
As I observed his work, I identified three massive, critical mistakes that the blacksmith committed in rapid succession.
The first error occurred during the folding phase.
The smith was attempting to forge-weld multiple layers of iron and low-carbon steel together to create a stronger blade.
However, as he heated the metal in the forge, a thick layer of dark iron oxide, or scale, formed on the white-hot surface.
Instead of throwing clean quartz sand or flux over the red-hot metal to dissolve the oxide scale before hammering, the smith simply pulled the bar directly out of the coals and slammed his hammer onto the uncleaned metal.
By failing to use sand or flux, he trapped dark, glass-like slag inclusions directly inside the welded steel core.
Those hidden slag pockets created permanent, invisible structural weak spots along the entire length of the blade.
The second mistake was even more appalling.
After hammering the blade into its final geometry, the blacksmith brought the steel back up to a bright cherry-red heat in the hearth.
He then pulled the blade out of the fire with his tongs and plunged it straight into a wooden trough filled with freezing cold river water.
A massive cloud of white steam exploded into the air with a violent, hissing roar.
The sudden, brutal thermal shock hardened the outer edge of the steel, but the rapid cooling created microscopic, invisible stress fractures deep inside the molecular structure of the metal.
The blade looked fine to the naked eye, but the internal steel was riddled with micro-cracks.
The very first time a knight swung that sword full-force against a heavy oak shield or steel chestplate, the blade would shatter like glass.
Finally, to complete his trifecta of metallurgical disaster, the smith pulled the blackened blade out of the water trough, wiped the moisture off with a filthy rag, tossed it onto a wooden table, and called it a day.
He skipped the crucial tempering pass entirely!
He made zero attempt to gently reheat the hard, brittle steel over a low flame to relieve the internal physical stress and grant the metal necessary flex and spring memory.
Without tempering, the sword was nothing more than a glorified, overly brittle iron stick that was as brittle as glass.
I stood in the dusty corner, staring at the finished broadsword resting on the workbench, letting out a long, disappointed sigh.
The three errors were so glaringly obvious to my understanding of metallurgy that it took every ounce of my willpower not to walk over to the blacksmith, then again, I was never a Redditor who liked correcting people over their mistakes.
Then again, upon deeper reflection, perhaps the smith was cutting corners on purpose.
Perhaps the man who had commissioned this particular sword was low on coin, prompting the smith to skip time-consuming steps like tempering and fluxing to save money on charcoal.
Or perhaps the master blacksmith simply didn’t know any better.
Regardless of his reasons, I was certainly not going to march up to a sweaty, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound muscle-bound blacksmith as a five-year-old child and try to play the arrogant smartass.
Telling a master metalworker that his sword was useless garbage was a fantastic way to get a heavy iron tongs thrown at my head.
I would keep my superior metallurgical secrets to myself for now.
Turning away from the roaring forge, I signaled to Ser Humfrey, and we stepped out of the hot, soot-choked smithy back into the open dirt alleyway.
The cool sea breeze blowing off the Blackwater Rush hit my flushed face like a splash of cold water, washing away the suffocating heat of the forge fires.
I took a long, deep breath of the fresh air, pulling my dark wool hood slightly lower over my silver locks.
I paused beside a wooden hitching post, leaning my broad back against the timber while watching the chaotic flow of smallfolk, hawkers, and sailors passing through the muddy street.
A sly, amused grin spread across my face beneath the shadows of my hood.
Heh, would you look at that?
I had successfully slipped out of the Aegonfort, traversed through the most chaotic district of the capital, inspected a medieval smithy, and survived the entire morning without a single assassination attempt on my life.
I was single-handedly breaking all of the fanfiction stereotypes in existence.
Where were the hidden poison daggers?
Where were the shadowy mercenaries springing from the rooftops?
The plot armor is strong with this one, indeed.
Hopefully, I hadn’t just jinxed my own existence by thinking those exact thoughts.
Just then, I felt something brush past me.