nownovels Chapter 2: The Contract of Seafront City
Chapter 2: The Contract of Seafront City
Salt spray hit my face.
The smell is fine and fishy, the smell of seawater and dead fish fermenting together in Whispering Bay.
The afternoon sun scorched the limestone wall, causing a thin layer of white film to adhere to the stone surface. It would disperse when the wind came and gather again when the wind went.
Otto Hohenzollern paused outside the main gate of the Seafront city, waiting for some of the salt mist to dissipate from his nostrils before going inside.
He had five people with him.
These five men were the core members of the hunters who had followed him into the mountains and raided deserters' huts in the dark over the past three months. They wore no armor, carried no banners, and stood on the stone slabs of the seafront city, like five withered tree stumps straightened by the wind—inconspicuous, but steadfast.
The steward did not immediately take them to see the Earl.
There was no hot beer or sign of hospitality in the side hall, only a cold, hard stone bench and a half-open carved wooden door. The steward said the Earl was in a military council and told them to wait.
Otto sat on the bench for almost an hour.
He showed neither anxiety nor feigned indifference. Leaning against the stone wall, he watched through the half-open wooden door as people came and went in the courtyard—laborers laden with arrow shafts and timber, granary servants pushing wooden chests of black bread, and soldiers carrying leather ropes toward the city wall. The blacksmith's hammer struck from dawn till dusk, its sound carrying a steady urgency; he wasn't forging new goods, but repairing old ones, repairing quickly and in large quantities.
On the other side of the dock, the crossbow winch emitted the dry, grating sound characteristic of stretching leather.
This city isn't preparing for war; it's patching up its weaknesses.
Otto slowly laid bare what he saw—Seafront City was short of manpower, food, and time. The seas of the Iron Islands were never truly calm, and Jason Mellist had been circling in this constant gap for over a decade. Such a man didn't need anyone to tell him where the problem lay; he only needed something that could shrink a specific problem.
When the steward came to fetch him, the afternoon sun was already slanting.
The hall was lit with pine resin torches, their aroma thick and mingling with the dry salt frost on the stone walls.
Earl Jason Mellist sat on a high-backed stone chair. He was around forty years old, with graying temples and broad shoulders—the kind of frame one would expect from someone who wore armor year-round. Beside him stood a maester wearing brass chains, scrutinizing Otto's worn-out chainmail with a critical eye.
Otto knelt on one knee in front of the stone chair, his right hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
"Lord Jason Mellist, I am Otto Hohenzollern, a descendant of a fallen knight. My first act upon arriving today is to apologize to you."
The clerks in the hall stopped writing.
The scholar's gaze shifted from the chainmail to his face.
"Apologize?" Earl Jason narrowed his eyes. "I heard from the headman that you wiped out several bandit dens for him. Are you trying to tell me you're a law-abiding rebel?"
"No, sir. I want to tell you that the men I trained are just outside the hall."
Otto raised his head, his expression as if he were presenting an account.
"They are your people, who eat the grains that grow on your land. I give them to you, along with the sword left to me by my father. If you take them in as a militia, they will be your shield; if you deem it too much to ask, you may disband them on the spot."
The only sound in the hall was the crackling of the charcoal fire.
He placed his transgression, along with its consequences, entirely in the earl's hands. Punish him, and he would die; the lord would gain nothing. Make it his own, and the lord would gain a border guard with its own provisions and weapons, without spending a single copper coin. Two options, one useful, one useless.
The count tapped his fingers twice on the armrest of the stone chair.
"You killed bandits and protected my people. The headman has already reported it. Now I want to hear you tell me yourself—why did you come?"
Otto remained silent for a moment.
"My father, Albrecht Hohenzollern, was a native of the Riverlands. In his youth, he was a proletarian knight. During the war, his manor was burned down, and he fled with my mother to Braavos, across the Narrow Sea. There, he joined the Second Sons, specializing in training new recruits in drill and swordsmanship. Later, he worked for the Iron Treasury and served as a bodyguard for wealthy merchants."
He paused.
"His greatest wish in life was to return. To return to the Riverlands. He said the name Hohenzollern might not be worth much in the Blue Fork region, but his roots were here. He saved money, taught me accounting, taught me how to lead troops, all so that one day he could return, build a respectable family, erect a stone house, and fly his own flag."
He raised his right hand, his thumb rubbing the iron ring on his index finger engraved with a two-headed black eagle. The movement was subtle and not at all theatrical.
"Bravos's attic was too damp; his lungs failed. The night before he left, he patted my shoulder with the spine of his sword by my bedside. There was no sanctuary, no spectators, just a dying old man and a chipped longsword."
Otto looked at the Count.
"He asked me to come back and build him a house. So I came back."
The scholar adjusted his glasses, leaned down and whispered that there was no record of such a branch in the Riverlands genealogy, and that the river bend was too close to the Frey family's ranch, a mess that could cause border friction at any time.
"That's because the family depicted on the paper is completely dead, and the survivors haven't even crawled out of the mud yet."
Otto ignored the scholar and spoke only to the count.
"My lord, you don't need a family tree so fine it could be used as firewood. Since that place is a mess, what you really need is someone who can be nailed to that riverbank for you. Give me the poorest, most chaotic, and most unwanted wasteland. I'll provide the money and grain myself, using my father's savings to recruit refugees to clear the land and build walls. If no crops have grown there in a year, you can take the land back. If you don't want my allegiance, my five men will also belong to you, and I'll leave the river region immediately."
Earl Jason gazed at the seventeen-year-old boy below for a long time.
That river bend was a gap between the Melist family and the outer border, inconspicuous in normal times, but the first to be stabbed when trouble struck. He needed an outpost, someone who could hold the line for Haijiang City in the event of a border conflict. The man before him had offered his neck up, on the condition of a piece of unwanted wasteland.
"A year of tax exemption. In the first year, I won't take a single grain of wheat from your field."
The count paused, his tone suddenly turning sharp.
"But in Westeros, the true rent for land isn't wheat, it's blood. When the summons tolls in Seafront, I want you to come to me with ten spearmen and three hard-bowmen. If you can't control your vagrants, if they cross the border to plunder, or if you can't even handle those Frey bastards—I will personally lead my heavy cavalry to raze your camp and hang you on the banks of the Bluefork."
"Did you understand?"
"It couldn't be fairer, sir."
The oath was taken after that.
Otto knelt on one knee, his right hand on the hilt of his sword, and looked directly up at the Count. He did not use the flowery language he had used in the sanctuary:
"Otto Hohenzollern, today, as a knight, I kneel before you, surrendering my sword and my life. I do not promise victory, but I promise to fight to the death. I do not promise to revere your name, but I promise that my interests will be aligned with those of the Seafront. All your enemies will be my enemies. All your commands will be carried out by me."
He paused for a moment, then added the last sentence:
"With this iron in my hand, I swear an oath to my immortal soul: until the mountains are worn down, the seas dry up and the rocks crumble, if I break this oath, may the Lord forsake me in darkness."
The old clerk from Haijiang City paused his pen above the parchment, and after a long while, a single ink dot appeared. For thirty years, he had recorded all sorts of oaths. He had never seen a seventeen-year-old boy swear in this way—not an oath, but a contract, only the contract used the format of an oath.
Count Jason stood up and patted Otto's shoulder heavily with his calloused hand.
"I accept the deal. Rise, knight of Hohenzollern."
It was evening when we left Haijiang City.
The wind from Whispering Bay swept across the sea, carrying a salty smell that was less pronounced than in the afternoon, but still present, mixed with the fishy stench of the mudflats exposed after the tide receded, and felt slightly damp and cool against the skin.
Otto tucked the land deed into his arms.
The parchment, when folded, was only two fingers wide, but the sealing wax seal with a purple background and silver eagle was pressed deeply into the opening, the wax surface smooth and without a single crack.
Five hunters waited outside the city gate, automatically forming a line. Otto hadn't given the order; they had done it themselves. He noticed this, said nothing, mounted his horse, turned it around, and headed west.
The official road stretched for thirty li in the twilight, leading to a section of the Blue Fork River upstream that didn't even have an official name on the map. The ruts on the road cast clear shadows in the last rays of the setting sun, then the light went out, and the road became a gray trail, disappearing into the woods ahead.
His father used up his last strength in that attic in Braavos, saying he would go back, build a stone house, and fly his own flag.
The stone house isn't there yet. The flag isn't there yet.
Now there is a parchment covered with sealing wax, a piece of wasteland that no one wants, and the thirty-mile official road leading to that wasteland.
The evening breeze drifted out from the roadside bushes, carrying the unique scent of wild grass dampened by the night dew—softer than the afternoon's salt mist, fainter than decaying leaves, a damp and cool scent that defied description, as if this riverine land was speaking in its own way in the darkness, uttering a sentence that Otto hadn't quite heard.
The horses' hooves pounded on the official road with a deep, resonant sound.
Otto did not turn around.