“I need sellswords willing to fight for me, and farmers with some muscle to spare.
Any man with the nerve for it can earn himself some coin.”
“Sellswords who bring their own arms, six silver a day.
Farmers willing to take up a blade, two silver a day.
And for those who only want to lend their backs, no fighting required, half a silver a day.”
“The work should run three to five days.
Extra reward for anyone who distinguishes himself.
I need twenty or thirty men, no more.
Any who want in can come.
Those who do well, I may keep on longer.”
The room broke into cheers at that.
“M’lord, might I have a word?”
Willem spoke up again just then, and there was something complicated in the look he gave Erwin.
Erwin nodded and rose, walking out toward the door.
Willem glanced once back at Griff, then followed.
The two of them stopped beneath a tree seven or eight paces from the inn.
“M’lord, forgive my bluntness.
Griff’s a cunning man, and a greedy one.
He’s not to be trusted.”
Erwin showed no surprise at that.
The moment he’d heard Griff claim he’d served with a company of some name in Essos, he’d already had the man’s measure.
Anyone who’d followed the show knew of them.
The Brave Companions, the Bloody Mummers, some called them, an infamous free company out of Essos, built up mostly of criminals and exiles, every one of them cruel and strange in his own particular way.
Erwin had no love for the bearded man on that account.
What he didn’t know yet was why Willem had gone out of his way to warn him.
“There’s more, m’lord.
Anyone can hear from your speech you’re not from these parts.
Griff named ten silver stags a day straight off, knowing full well you don’t know the going rate here.
Men like us, hired hands at the bottom of the trade, two or three silver stags a day is more than fair.”
“And that coin of yours, m’lord, bigger than any silver stag I’ve ever seen.
Two a day would already be handsome pay for it.
What you offered was far too much.
I didn’t want to raise it in front of the others and turn their want of coin into hate for me.
But I couldn’t stand by and watch you cheated either, so I asked you out here to say it plain.”
Erwin looked the man over again with new interest.
This one was worth watching.
Truth was, Erwin hadn’t known the local rates at all.
He’d wanted to test something the moment he walked in, whether the coin in his pack, coin from a world that wasn’t this one, would spend here at all.
That was the whole reason he’d tossed down that first silver coin, just to see if it would buy him anything.
What he hadn’t expected was how well it spent.
Better than well.
And with a few million more gold coins still sitting in that same pack, he was, by the standards of this continent, wealthy enough to buy half of it outright, if he ever managed to walk in openly as a man with a name and a claim to it.
Hmm…
provided he found himself a legitimate lordly identity first.
As for Griff’s price, Erwin had simply been trying not to look like an easy mark, so he’d cut the number roughly in half and offered six silver.
Even that, it turned out, was too generous.
And this man in front of him, willing to speak up and risk nothing for it, was at least honest.
Worth trusting.
“Can you read?
Write?
Keep accounts?”
Willem blinked, clearly not expecting the question, then his eyes went bright with something close to excitement.
“I can, m’lord!
I learned my letters as a boy!”
“Good.”
Erwin tossed him a coin.
“You’re my quartermaster now, and my second in command until I say otherwise.
Do as I said, round up twenty to thirty men, fighters and farmers both, and a few wagons besides.
We leave as early as tomorrow morning.
Every coin spent gets written down clean.
If you come up short, find me.”
“At once, m’lord!
Though…
should their wages come down some, to a more reasonable sum?”
“No need.
When I, Erwin Augustus, give my word, it’s good as gold.
I don’t take it back.”
“At once, m’lord.” Willem bowed at the waist.
“From today, Willem Storm serves you, m’lord Augustus.
If I may be so bold, where do you hail from?
Or could you tell me something of your house, so I might speak of you and your name properly to others?”
Erwin nodded.
“I come from a distant land in the east, farther still than Asshai at the edge of the world.
The Holy Empire, it’s called.
My father is a Great Lord, his lands wider than any of the Seven Kingdoms put together, and our house older and prouder than any name in Westeros.”
“But I am a second son.
No claim on my father’s title or his lands.
So I took a few thousand of his finest men and more coin than I could ever spend, and set out to see the world.
A storm caught us at sea.
I lost my men and my household in it, and washed up here alone.
That’s the whole of it.”
Out here, a man’s name was whatever he chose to call himself.
From the moment Erwin understood where he’d landed, in this world of ice and fire, he’d already been turning over how to give himself a name that would carry weight and shine.
He saw no reason to give up his own name.
Erwin would sound foreign enough here that no one would ever place it, and plain enough that no one would question it either.
What he needed was a surname to go with it, something with some weight to it.
He settled on Augustus, a name that carried centuries of crowns and conquest behind it back where he came from.
If he was inventing a dynasty out of nothing, he figured he might as well borrow one that already knew how to look the part.
As for the rest, the Great Lord’s second son, the ancient house going back generations, none of it was real.
If pressed, Erwin might have admitted where he’d lifted the shape of it from: Augustus, more or less, a man who’d turned a fractured republic into an empire that swallowed the known world and somehow called the result peace.
Borrowing that much shine for a father he’d invented on the spot seemed only fair.
The thousands of soldiers, the fortune beyond counting, the storm that had scattered them, all of it said one thing without saying it outright.
I have men.
I have coin.
Don’t mistake me for easy prey.
He might look like one lone man standing in a tavern, but he wanted every one of them thinking twice before crossing him, weighing the cost of an army that might come looking for the man who’d wronged him.
And any man loyal enough to follow him now, he had no intention of shorting.
The image he wanted was simple.
A lord fallen on hard times, perhaps, but never a lord without teeth.
That was how a man built a following.
“Come on, then.
Let’s go back in.”
Erwin allowed himself one satisfied glance at the wonder still written on Willem’s face, then turned and walked back toward the inn.
Willem stood a moment longer where he was, and whatever was going through his head just then, it showed plainly enough.
A Great Lord’s second son.
Thousands of soldiers.
Wealth beyond counting.
A great man, without question.
Follow him, and maybe a sellsword’s rough, wandering life was finally behind him.
Maybe, if the fates were kind, a lordship of his own waited somewhere down that road.
He looked down at the coin in his hand, and his eyes went brighter still.
A gold coin unlike any he’d ever seen, finer in its make and heavier in the hand than any gold dragon he’d handled before.
Seemed he’d wagered right after all.
With that thought, Willem hurried after Erwin into the inn.
The two of them walked back through the door together, and every eye in the room turned toward them once more.