Chapter 8: Military Development of House Tarth (2)
Both Patrik and Emil are really important members of Galladon's special units as well. Patrik received welfare of the speed aura for 11 years and welfare of the strength aura for 10 years. Over time his reflexes gained tremendous improvements and he was a natural archer from birth. Therefore, he was assigned as the leader of a special unit at the start, the Eagle Hunters.
Unsurprisingly, this combat unit consists of 100 orphans who was each gifted one of the cubs created by Silver and different female eagles from the coastal region of Tarth. They all grew up together with those cubs and learned how to use their scouting and sounds as a weapon on the battlefield, preferably in small scale skirmishes or forest fights. Having wasted tens of thousands of arrows they were all fed into elite hunters of the Seven Kingdoms.
Those long-range snipers and scouts fitted perfectly together with the last special unit Galladon designed, the Wolf Scouts. Just like their name suggests, they consisted of a total of 200 young children, many of them from normal families of Tarth. Each of them was gifted a young wolf pup at a very young age, training and raising them together with their comrades. Galladon insisted on using people from the island of Tarth in this unit, because this could more closely connect him to many families and therefore stronger control the regional population.
Furthermore, having the people of Tarth slowly connect with the growing number of wolves would make sure that no panic would arise once they accidently encountered a wolf in the forest. By having close family members interact with wolves all day they slowly learned how to treat and respect those animals and how to live together with them.
Most people on the island of Tarth slowly connected with the wolves and even admired them greatly, after understanding how they influenced the regional ecosystem. Most farmers were extremely grateful that they kept the wild boars away from their farms, reducing the destruction done by them by a huge margin.
The Wolf Scouts were mostly equipped with leather armor, steel swords and small crossbows. After increased intelligence and strengthened memory by his auras, Galladon wrote down a design drawing for a repeated crossbow, which was afterwards built by the concentrated efforts of many blacksmiths and woodworkers. This repeated crossbow can fire up to ten consecutive arrows but is only able to hit accurately within a range of 10 meters.
Any farther distance and the current precision of the parts for the crossbow simply won't keep up. Galladon already introduced new measurements like meter, centimeter, etc. and produced simple measurement tools, but they will still need further innovation and experiments to produce precision parts. Overall, the technical abilities of Tarth are improving at a gradual speed every year, thanks to the constantly improving memory of Galladon. He is writing down new books from his previous life every year, making them free for all members of the industrial park in the middle of the island.
The combat effectiveness of the Wolf Scouts was heavily increased thanks to this investment in equipment and weapons. Especially in close combat the attack power of steel swords and crossbows combined with the sense and ferociousness of wolves formed a terrifying combat power. If you stack this up with the long-distance coverage of the Eagle Hunters you have the strongest combination of Special Forces in all the Seven Kingdoms, no doubt.
Nevertheless, the combined forces of guards, eagle hunter and wolf scouts only added up to a total of 350 people. They were trained by Galladon according to the standards of his military training of his past life, fed with high grade ingredients and experienced the consumption of many materials, such as arrows and swords. In a real large-scale battle with tens of thousands of people, they would certainly be a lethal sword, but couldn't decide a war by themselves. Every casualty would hurt House Tarth a lot and waste years of training and investment. Therefore, Galladon never planned to let them participate in frontal large-scale battles and burn their strength for the purpose of others.
Over the years he used them in fighting pirates on the southeast coast of Tarth and for his own self-protection. They gained a lot of combat experience, especially in the last few years, because the Tarth Honey and the large interests behind Sapphire Honey Wine tempted many pirates from the Stepstones to invade Tarth secretly. Even some mercenary teams from the Disputed Lands tried to invade the south coast a few times.
They were secretly supported by large merchants of the Free States, like Myr and Lys, because Tarth Honey grew in price over time. Only after losing hundreds of people in the deep forests of Tarth did they stop their blatant behavior, resulting in further price increases from House Tarth.
Those three special units were more than enough to completely assure his own safety and the safety of the coast of Tarth. This freed up his father, Selwyn Tarth, to focus on the construction of the navy to secure their safety of the territorial waters and trade routes.
Galladon still offered additional help because the navy was the most important part of Tarth's military structure. If the navy was properly formed and had high combat effectiveness, House Tarth could rely on their battleships and navy soldiers to comfortably watch the changes on the continent of Westeros in the next few decades. The navy wouldn't raise the upper limit of House Tarth in the future but would firmly secure the lower limit and be the final security line for the prosperity of the family.
Luckily for Selwyn Tarth there were still two people integrated into the intelligence aura for many years and personally trained in basic education by Galladon since they were very young. They made up for great talents in fleet commanding and battle planning. Selwyn gathered those two talents together with experienced captains and sailors from House Tarth and combined them into a naval think tank, responsible for the defense of the whole island.
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