293AC
"To be quite frank, I expected more resistance."
There was a certain… disappointment, in the "defense" of great gallows. A few militiamen, who surrender immediately upon the first grenade knocking their makeshift barricade apart, and around twenty pirates holed up in a tavern with crossbows.
They surrendered on the condition that they wouldn't be executed, despite their captain's protest.
I did not intend to extend the same offer to him, not after he stabbed one of my men's eyes out with a dagger.
No, he would serve as a demonstration.
But that was the executioner's job, not mine. I wasn't some Stark to waste his time on that nonsense.
No, my job was grandstanding, especially now that I had four-hundred men and a dozen cannon on the ground. A pretty potent ward against assassination.
My men had pulled a few tables out of the formerly occupied inn for me to stand on in the muddy town square, above the obviously long-abused cobblestones.
"Gather the townspeople here. I don't need all of them, but enough that word will get around."
"Yes your grace."
I smiled as the men scattered, turning to Ser Willias of Seabrush. A small landed knight from Cracklaw point, who had lungs, not unlike bellows.
"Can you read Ser Willias?"
"Well enough, Your Grace."
"Good." I withdrew a sheet of parchment I had been storing on top of my ammunition pouch. "I need you to read this out for the townsfolk once I've spoken a bit. It's the terms of their integration into the kingdom of the Narrow Sea."
"There's a kingdom of the narrow sea your grace?"
"As of now. Yes." I chuckled. "My father may have been denied Storms End for his line, but I'll be damped if my own descendants end up with only Dragonstone to their name.
The knight nodded at that, looking a little shaken. He nodded, however, and I handed him the parchment.
Which of course made him widen his eyes further. "Er… ahh… some of these words I do not know your grace."
"Well given that I've coined a good number of them myself I'm not surprised. Just pronounce them phonetically."
"You ah, you're granting the small folk land, your grace?"
"In small parcels yes. There are no great lords in the stepstones, and a great deal of unused territory." I chuckled at the look on his face. "Oh come now, I've been given them houses in Dragonstone, what's the harm in elevating them to Yeoman here?" I clamped a hand on his shoulder. "Come now, just read the paper, and don't bother thinking too much about the contents, I need your voice today."
"Uh-of course, your grace, just give me a moment."
I smiled cheerfully as I nodded. "Certainly, it'll take some time for the square to fill as it is." I watched the townsfolk only now beginning to trickle in. "A proclamation requires an audience at least."