บท 128: Chapter 128 - Artican Trade in Westeros 55 (Oldtown 05).
[Chapter Size: 3000 Words.]
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Pessoa Thrid POV
Westeros, 295 AC.
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"Let's go! Wipe out all enemy forces and take the city!!" Jon exclaimed at the forefront, his voice echoing throughout the place. The giants continued to clear a path, leaving a trail of dead behind them, while the rest of the group did not lag as the Oldtown soldiers began to retreat, trying to escape the claws of the birds, killing some and even hitting their own comrades in the attempt to flee from the situation.
They were quickly struck down by Artican soldiers, relieving them of their misery. Jon was at the front, advancing where the giants could not reach, quickly reaping lives.
The numerical advantage seemed insignificant compared to what they were now facing, while at the main gate, the Artican soldiers swiftly began to dominate the area. Jon could see all this as he expanded his vision over the city.
"Take control of all the western area and head to the west gate!!" Jon shouted as some wargs waited for his command.
The warg quickly relayed the orders to the group. They followed, fiercely battling against the men who were trying to keep the animals at bay.
"What is this?! How are these animals attacking us?!" the men exclaimed as they tried to free themselves from dogs, cats, and other small animals biting them.
"They are coming!!" the soldiers shouted as the Artican soldiers continued to advance through the streets near the dominated gate.
Some soldiers tried to resist, but the Articans quickly proved their superiority, passing by frightened citizens and creating a path of fallen people through the area.
Rick Hightower (OC), the brother of Lord Hightower in Highgarden, was having a difficult time with smoke rising from three points in the city, while he was near one due to the high tower being close to the harbor.
"What should we do, father?" his son murmured, scared, as the screams of both people and even animals could be heard outside the walls.
"We should negotiate with them, do not open the gate and wait for them to appear; from what I've heard, the city's soldiers are falling quickly..." He spoke with frustration and a tone of defeat due to everything that was happening.
"My lord... ships are arriving at the harbor!" one of the men said as he kept watch over the harbor and came to report.
"The city will be taken, there's nothing more to be done about it..." He admitted, still trying to understand how they were losing so quickly to this group they had planned to dominate.
The ships quickly arrived at the harbor, while the other 200 soldiers maintained the dominated area, preventing enemy forces from approaching the harbor. The fire arrows that breached their defense and were thrown at those ships were quickly extinguished, and now with the reinforcement of another 4500 soldiers, there was no hope for the soldiers to keep the city against the Articans.
"Let's go!!" Tormund emerged from one of the ships as everyone followed him, starting to drive all the soldiers from the harbor.
The citizens could only try to hide in the more distant parts of the city. There was a river running through the middle of the city that separated the two sides with a bridge. However, there was conflict on both sides, while her city was on the right side of the city center, the north gate on the other side of the river. At the harbor, both sides were dominated, with part of the ship heading west to control the region.
Most of the population moved to the north of the right side, where the great sept was, hoping to find protection. Some septons who did not attend the meeting began to gather people, praying that the group of savages would leave the city and that the Seven would protect them.
Until that moment, with smoke at the north and south gates of the city, people were already aware of what was happening there and knew that Jon Artican had massacred all the Grand Maesters and septons along with the High Septon. The entire city was in panic over this, and seeing animals attacking their soldiers didn't help much as people continued trying to hide.
Jon and his group continued fighting against the soldiers, gaining ground as the soldiers retreated, lost due to not having any command in the midst of chaos and not knowing what was happening in the city at that moment.
The soldiers at the harbor began to enter the city, starting to eliminate all the soldiers who tried to stop them, and as they approached the citadel, the chaos continued with the soldiers themselves feeling surrounded on all sides.
It was no longer a fight, with the giants handling the attacks while the Artican archers killed anyone on top of the buildings, and it didn't take long to eliminate all the resisting forces on that side.
Jon was drenched in blood, having eliminated 60% of the enemy forces without stopping until the rest surrendered, seeing that they could no longer fight with them.
"It seems it's over..." Jon commented while looking at all the blood-strewn streets, whether it be from men or animals.
"My king, what should we do with the surrendered men?" A royal guard approached.
"Keep them all in an open place where they can be held, any attempt at disobedience, eliminate it," Jon said.
"What should we do about the Hightower?" He spoke of the great tower where the Hightower family resided.
"I saw that some ships are surrounding them; keep it that way, I want a siege ready to destroy that place, for now let's keep it that way, and I want all Artican soldiers to spread out on all the streets blocking the way to the citadel, also send 2,000 forces to assist the 1,000 soldiers dominating the eastern area of the city," Jon ordered and the soldier quickly left to execute all the king's orders.
Jon turned to a man organizing everything in the army with wargs. "Tell me, what are our losses?" Jon asked.
"My king... we lost 190 soldiers... 138 men, 51 dwarves, and one giant..." He spoke with a sad tone.
"We couldn't have won this without losing our allies... but it's okay... I want them treated as heroes when we return to Artica. Keep their bodies on ice so they do not decompose until we return to the kingdom," Jon requested and the men nodded.
They had eliminated more than 2,500 soldiers, so it was a crushing victory when they had lost only 190 soldiers, but Jon still felt a bit sad about his men dying there.
After sighing a bit, he returned to his intense gaze and quickly resumed giving orders, "I want a large group with me in the citadel, while the other men keep tending to the city, there's no reason for us to completely dominate the city, leave the eastern side without going to dominate them and for now let's head to the citadel again," Jon instructed.
They headed to the citadel after that, Jon had a great interest in what it could provide and finally the moment to plunder the place had arrived.
They quickly returned while there were many maesters at the location and as soon as they saw the Artican group returning among the bodies of city soldiers, they began to run from there in desperation.
"What should we do, my king?" The soldier asked looking at the location.
"I want you to look in every corner of this place and investigate it, I'm looking with the rats, but I can't access all areas," Jon said and the men nodded entering the place with him.
They quickly began to scour all areas of the citadel, while Jon headed to the great library, which occupied the entire hollow part of the structure.
"I wonder how many books there must be here... maybe 1 million of them... maybe more," Jon commented softly as he surveyed all the shelves, keeping a greedy look and a smile.
"Is there no one else to face here?!" Suddenly, a sound emerged behind Jon, and he turned, wondering what the hell Tormund was doing there.
Tormund approached with a dissatisfied face and Jon turned back to him. "The fight is already over, Tormund. We are finishing dominating this area and the only fights happening are in the west. So, it will be over soon. Just stay quiet," Jon said calmly.
"But this was too easy. I thought the southerners would defend their cities more stoutly," he murmured, and Jon ignored him as other groups of soldiers approached.
"My king, we've checked every place in the building. There are no more hidden guards and those we found along with the maesters are being taken to join the others," a guard reported to the group.
"That's good. I want at least 1,000 men here inside to start collecting all the books from this place," Jon ordered.
"Yes, let's do that!" The men quickly organized before they started entering the citadel and began to take books from the first shelves and carry them outside.
Jon looked satisfied as he watched his men start the looting of the largest library in Westeros, or perhaps the world, which soon would be surpassed by the library in Artica.
They continued this until a man emerged from one of the walls, scared. "What are you doing? What madness is this?" A lord dressed in maester's robes with chains and links on his chest, exclaimed, terrified after seeing the men looting the entire place.
"It seems we missed one," a royal guard commented, displeased.
Jon looked at the man, who practically begged as he approached him. "As you can see, master, we are looting the place," Jon stated the obvious to the man as he looked on in terror.
"Why are you doing this? Why are you being so cruel?" He demanded, not wanting the citadel to be looted, as he had spent his life here, he loved this place.
"You tried to kill my men until a moment ago, tried to control my people. So, don't come at me with that. I'm just doing what you asked for. Didn't you want me to be a monster? Well, here I am. Besides, our country needs books and we've found such a large source here," Jon said unashamedly.
The man seemed quite shaken by this, but royal guards took him away, while the Articans began to climb ladders and remove all the books from the highest shelves.
A particular book seemed to catch Jon's attention from one of the shelves among those hundreds of thousands of books. "Why does that book bother me so much?" Jon murmured, feeling a strange premonition about it.
He didn't ask anyone to fetch the book; instead, a red eagle entered through the window he had requested and it went to the spot, dozens of meters off the ground. It flapped its wings in front of the book, while grabbing it with its talons, trying to do so without damaging it. The red eagle brought it to Jon a moment later, as he looked at the cover of the book with his premonition growing even stronger.
"The diary of High Septon Maynard?" Jon read aloud and raised an eyebrow. "Why is this book drawing so much of my attention?" But he stopped murmuring and stored the book away, as he needed to do other things now.
"Let's look at this later," he commented and started to move to one side while calling some guards with him. They headed to the ground floor again, but through another side of the citadel, as Jon and his men emerged in a secret place descending to a staircase that led to the basement.
"What is this, my king?" A royal guard commented after passing through a large open door, entering a rather large area with chairs and little sunlight coming from above.
"This is the vault of the place. It seems that here, those archmaesters held secret meetings," Jon commented.
"What do they have in the vault?" A guard murmured.
"I still don't know, but it seems to be quite valuable things..." He commented, Jon had seen some of the memories of some small animals from there, but he couldn't enter or see what was inside.
They passed the location where the maesters held secret meetings, and moving forward, there was a large door, like a vault, all reinforced.
Jon examined that door as they reached it. "Can we get a giant in here?" Jon asked. After all, he alone couldn't break down that door.
"Can't we destroy it, my king?" A royal guard asked.
"No, there's a strong smell of wildfire in the air... there's a concentration of it on the other side, although it's not as pure as the kind we manufacture..." Jon, as an experienced alchemist, commented. "However, that doesn't stop us from destroying one of the walls to allow our giants to pass a few meters above..." Jon said.
"Let's fetch the wildfire from the ships, my king." Jon heard his man and nodded.
"Alright, bring sand and also carts so we can take the things here and discreetly carry them to my ship," Jon requested.
The man nodded and left, while they waited for a while, with the citadel becoming increasingly devoid of books and taking them to the ship, as the preparations were finally made and they placed the wildfire on one of the walls before blowing it up without affecting the large structure of the citadel.
"After blowing up the wall, four giants managed to enter the place. They tied the door with steel rope and strapped it onto the shoulders of the giants. As they quickly forced it to move by pulling the ropes at that spot, the door began to dent due to the force of the four-meter-tall men, and with a loud bang, the door burst open, falling forward.
"That's good. Now let's see what they keep in there," Jon commented, moving forward with some men.
It didn't take long for them to emerge into an area full of books, gold, treasures, artifacts, chemicals, and even other things he hadn't expected to find there.
"There's gold, but there are many more valuable things here," Jon said, eyes wide as he surveyed the meticulously organized space.
"Be careful with the torches. There's wildfire here," Jon warned again as they tried not to touch anything with the torches that could explode.
"Take all the gold and books. I want you to keep a separate place for me to analyze later. Put it on a ship that goes directly to mine, at the harbor," Jon requested, and the men nodded, starting to remove everything they could through the opening they had created in the wall.
"I want you to throw sand on the explosive liquid. We can't risk keeping this wildfire stored down here," he also said while his men began to bring it.
He moved further ahead and began to see even more valuable things. There were hidden Valyrian steel weapons. "This is interesting... maybe they use this to produce the links that study magic..." Jon commented, pleased, wondering if Westeros knew that the maesters kept this with them, after all, there were quite decent swords among them, although most were daggers and small blades.
Now that he could have a good stock of this metal, he would create new swords for Artica. His gaze continued forward and he found something he didn't expect to have on this trip: there were dragon eggs, at least 12 of them, all neatly organized in a corner. Jon approached them and touched them. Even though they were still beautiful and colorful, they seemed at the same time like pure rocks, deadened by time. But as soon as he touched them, he felt the warmth and cracked a smile.
"They're alive, just waiting to be awakened," Jon murmured, excited. After all, what were the chances that he could have more dragons? Eragon would not be alone anymore, there was also that dragon in Skagos, but he didn't know how to deal with it.
"My lord, we found an entrance downstairs, with a staircase," a guard pulled Jon from his thoughts as he approached.
Jon looked at him curiously, then turned back to the others. "I want you to also securely store and transport the dragon eggs. Keep them out of sight and place them along with all the belongings we removed from this room," Jon ordered.
The men quickly began to follow the order, while he followed his royal guard who had found a passage with a staircase leading down.
They proceeded, being careful not to ignite anything with the torch, and followed to an entrance with a door, fortunately open and unlocked. As they opened it, they found another kind of laboratory, but what shocked him to the core.
"These bastards! How dare they? How did they manage this?" Jon murmured with as much rage as a roar from Eragon at that moment. There were several stretchers in front of him, filled with dead bodies, but with their bodies opened up, appearing to be studying them.
"My king, they are people from..." the royal guard commented.
"They're from north of the wall," Jon completed his sentence with a continuous tone of anger. "Somehow brought here and they're still Wargs." Jon immediately felt it, furiously upset with those maesters. It seemed they were collecting Wargs from north of the wall, which wasn't so hard, seeing they could hire any smuggler to raid tribes and groups and bring them here for study.
"Either way, they're dead. Let's just make sure nothing more comes of this," Jon said, and his royal guard nodded.
"What should we do?" the guard asked.
"My inclination is to blow this place up, but we can't be so radical, not this time," Jon admitted. "Let's just finish looting the place and go," he said in the end, since he still had to deal with Lord Hightower's brother.
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