The winter proved merciful.
It lasted but a single year.
Though the fields lay buried beneath snow and ice, Winterfell did not fall into idleness.
The King’s command had already gone forth before the first heavy snows, and throughout the winter men remained hard at work.
Across the Crown’s lands, laborers were gathered to raise new granaries and storehouses wherever they were needed.
Each was built according to Brandon’s instructions, for a greater harvest was of little worth if there was nowhere fit to keep it.
Timber from the Wolfswood was felled, stone was hauled from nearby quarries, and before winter’s end the new buildings stood ready to receive the harvests yet to come.
When summer finally returned, the kingdom stirred to life once more.
The ploughs were brought out.
Oxen were harnessed.
Men returned to the fields.
The first and second fields were worked according to Brandon’s designs.
Lentils, peas, potatoes, barley, rye, and winter wheat were planted in their proper order, each field prepared for the crop that was meant to grow upon it.
The third field remained untouched by the plough.
Instead, it served its purpose as pasture.
The sheep wandered freely across the resting land, cropping the grasses that had grown during the previous year.
Their numbers, however, were still too few.
Though every village upon the Crown’s lands had received breeding pairs from the royal flocks, such things could not be rushed.
Most of the animals were breeding ewes, and until they produced lambs the fields could not be grazed as fully as Brandon had envisioned.
Kingdoms were not transformed in a single harvest.
Nor in a single year.
The hay gathered from the resting fields was carefully cut and carried away before it could spoil.
Following Brandon’s orders, every bundle beyond immediate need was stacked within the newly raised storehouses, where it would remain dry against whatever winter might next descend upon the realm.
Brandon himself did not spend those months merely riding between fields.
Whenever his duties allowed, he buried himself in study.
The knowledge granted by his boon held answers to countless questions, and among them he found a method for making charcoal.
Unlike ordinary firewood, charcoal burned hotter, longer, and with far less smoke.
It was no small improvement.
Brandon ordered several charcoal kilns to be constructed upon the outskirts of Winter Town, where timber could be brought easily from the surrounding forests.
Skilled woodsmen and charcoal burners were gathered for the task, and before long the first blackened heaps emerged from the earthen kilns.
The charcoal was first distributed among the households of the Crown’s lands.
Whatever remained found eager buyers among smiths, brewers, bakers, and merchants alike, all of whom quickly discovered its worth.
Yet Brandon’s interest did not end with the charcoal itself.
He instructed that the ashes left behind were not to be thrown away.
Instead, they were to be gathered carefully and carried to the storehouses beside the fields.
There they would remain until the time came to prepare the land for another planting, when the ash would be scattered across the earth before the plough passed over it.
Many of the stewards questioned the purpose.
Brandon merely told them the land would reward those who returned to it a portion of what had been taken. This story is hosted at g.com.
That answer seemed enough.
By the height of summer, the reforms begun only a few years before had become an ordinary sight across the Crown’s lands.
Fields turned in careful order.
Storehouses filled with hay.
Sheep grazing where grain had once grown.
Charcoal burning within hearths that had known only firewood before.
Each change was small when viewed alone.
Together, they marked the beginning of a kingdom slowly learning to draw more from the land without asking more of it.
Brandon looked upon the fields from horseback as the summer wind swept across the young crops.
There was still much to do.
Iron.
Roads.
Glass.
Better mills.
Stronger ploughs.
Each would come in its own time.
For now, however, he allowed himself the smallest of smiles.
The first seeds of change had taken root.