New chapter!
Thanks for all the support!
x “If I gave you enough meat and one month, could you train a hundred dockworkers into that?” Carter shifted under Todd’s stare.
He had trained temporary levies before.
He knew exactly how hard it was to turn laborers into anything resembling soldiers.
Still, after a moment, he lifted his chin.
“So what?
They would still break at the first charge.
Give me six or seven trained men, and I could scatter the lot of them.” Todd did not bother answering.
He remembered what Carter had said when Samwell first recruited the dockworkers: that with sword and armor, he alone could drive a hundred of them into the river.
One month later, he needed six or seven men.
By the time they reached the Red Mountains, Todd wondered how many trained soldiers Carter would need before he felt certain.
In truth, Todd wanted to ask Ser Samwell about his training methods.
He hesitated only because the techniques might be secrets of House Tarly, and such secrets were not offered freely to bastards named Flowers.
So he watched.
And as he watched, he noticed something else.
Ser Samwell himself was changing.
When they left Highgarden, the young knight had been so fat that mounting a horse looked like a battle.
A month later he was still fat, but the worst softness had begun to leave him.
During the first drills, he had mostly commanded from the side.
When he joined the exercises, he tired quickly and looked close to collapse.
Now he could complete the full session beside the recruits.
The speed of it was startling.
Todd’s suspicion hardened.
The reputation of a useless wastrel had been a mask.
The fat, perhaps, had been a mask as well.
Ser Samwell was not learning; he was recovering.
The thought made his mouth tighten.
Training lasted until noon.
That had become the rhythm of the march.
Drill through the morning, eat, rest for two hours, then travel at an almost leisurely pace until dusk.
After camp was raised and supper eaten, there would be more training by night.
Because of it, a month had passed and they had not covered half the distance they should have.
Todd had urged a faster march more than once.
Samwell refused every time.
The “timid” chartered knight insisted that he would not enter the Red Mountains until the recruits could at least hold a shield wall without panicking.
“He is just afraid to go,” Carter complained at Todd’s side.
“He will drag this out until the coin runs dry, then claim he had no choice but to abandon the settlement.
Lord Tarly’s cowardly waste of a son, exactly as promised.” Todd said nothing.
Carter glanced at him.
“Ser Todd, are you truly going to keep watching?” “What would you have me do?
Put a sword to his throat and force him south?” Carter lowered his voice.
“That would work.” Todd turned his head and narrowed his eyes.
The squire coughed.
“I mean only to frighten him a little.
Enough to make him obey.” Todd looked away.
He did not agree.
He did not forbid it either.
Smoke rose from the campfires, thick with the smell of meat.
The recruits sat on the ground after training, exhausted and grinning.
Meat had that effect on hungry men.
For most of them, the past month had begun to feel unreal.
They had expected hardship, danger, and the long misery of a march into poor country.
Instead, this was the best food many of them had eaten in their lives.
The training was brutal, but dockworkers already knew brutal labor.
Meat every day made pain easier to forgive.
More and more, they believed following Lord Greenhand south had been the wisest decision they had ever made.
Lord Greenhand himself was less cheerful.
It was not the money, though the settlement funds had indeed thinned badly.
Samwell trusted the Tyrells not to watch the expedition fail for lack of a few more dragons.
They had sent a hundred elite soldiers with him.
They would not choke over provisions.
The problem was his status panel.
After more than a month of effort, it had changed.
[Status] Name: Samwell Greenhand Title: Chartered Knight Domain: None Vassals: None Strength: 1.22 Agility: 0.73 Spirit: 1.12 Strength and Agility had both risen sharply.
Strength had improved fastest, helped by the gold-tailed shrimp.
Helped, and dearly paid for.
Half his money troubles came from feeding the recruits meat.
The other half came from feeding himself everything Gavin could find.
Gold-tailed shrimp, whenever available, were purchased no matter the price.
In each town they passed, Samwell had Gavin search the markets for anything unusual in the hope of finding another food that affected his attributes.
So far, nothing.
He had eaten his way through strange cheeses, bitter roots, smoked river eels, snails, lizards, and pale grubs that turned his stomach.
None of them changed the panel.
Worse, gold-tailed shrimp had begun to lose effect.
He remembered the moment clearly.
Once Strength reached 1.20, the next shrimp did nothing.
Only after eating a second did the number rise to 1.21.
The final 0.01 had come from three hard days of drilling.
That change hurt.
It also told him what to expect.
The higher an attribute rose, the harder it would be to push further.
Shortcuts would weaken.
Training would slow.
Agility had grown quickly only because it had started so low.
His increasing strength helped, and losing weight made his body move more freely.
That would not last forever either.
Spirit had not changed at all.
Samwell was not yet desperate to raise it.
Daenerys Targaryen’s three dragons had not even hatched.
The stranger side of the world still slept, and a higher Spirit might do him little good for now.
Strength and Agility would keep him alive sooner.
Food is fuel, he told himself.
He was eating with a purpose.
Then he forced down another bite of something Gavin had bought from a market woman who swore it was edible.
The flavor rolled over his tongue in waves of bitterness, sour oil, and mud.
Samwell stared blankly ahead and kept chewing.
Then his eyes lit.
“Gavin!” The boy hurried over.
“My lord?” Samwell held up a blade of wild grass, silver-white from root to tip.
“What is this called?” His voice was sharper than he intended.
The panel had just changed.
Spirit had risen by 0.01.
It was not Strength.
It was not Agility.
Yet any food that could raise Spirit was not something he could ignore.
Gavin squinted at the plant.
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS TheDevotedReader I hope you enjoyed this chapter.