Ice and Fire: Conquering the World Starting from the Wall

"It's less about service and more about being tricked by an old friend, my good Your Majesty."

Sarado stood up briskly and complained in fluent Common:

"Davos found me when he was still the Onion Knight and persuaded me to serve his king, providing a fleet to attack King's Landing and reclaim the Iron Throne."

"But their war was lost, and all I got in the end was a fine piece of parchment, thin, with the handwritten signature of the Prime Minister Allister Florence and the King's seal."

"Later, Stannis had the Scarlet Witch burn Allister to death. It is said that Allister became a traitor, and then Davos became the Prime Minister."

Davos persuaded me to continue supplying ships for his king, promising me gold and jewels. But I never saw the promised treasure; all I received was a magnificent royal deed.

Salado kept complaining, and Lynn couldn't get a word in edgewise.

"The King's new prime minister advised me to remain loyal, pointing out that if I easily abandoned Stannis's cause, I would be throwing away any hope of winning compensation."

I must stand firmly with Stannis until he reclaims the Iron Throne, or I will gain nothing.

Listen to this! This is hardly the kind of talk a former prime minister would say. Even the shrewdest businessman wouldn't be this shrewd.

"But can the king's decree be eaten? Can parchment and wax seals with stag prints quench thirst? My good Majesty, I haven't received a single copper coin yet, but have spent quite a bit, and I still have to endure the bone-chilling northern sea winds..."

Can you call this serving Stannis? I'm just a poor captain hoping for some compensation.

He finally finished his final statement, then looked at Lynn with a cunning glint in his eyes, awaiting the final verdict.

Lynn hadn't expected that this pirate from Ries would be so glib.

Perhaps in addition to his primary job as a pirate, he also engaged in business or lending money on the side.

"I see," Lynn nodded approvingly. "So what do you want me to do? Let you and your ship leave?"

Before Salado could show any joy, Lynn immediately asked:

"Tormond says you claim to be the Prince of the Narrow Sea and the Governor of Blackwater Bay, what's that all about?"

The pirate captain's face immediately turned bitter. He deeply regretted his arrogant boasting, which had led him to hand over his weakness.

As everyone knows, only the most ruthless pirates who roam the high seas dare to call themselves princes of a certain sea area.

Blackwater Bay is located between King's Landing and Dragonstone. It would be impossible for someone to become the governor of Blackwater Bay without the king's personal appointment, and this king obviously could not be the newly crowned Tommen.

Seeing that the pirate captain, who was trying to deceive him, had stopped using his smooth talk, Lynn turned to Tormund and said:

"Put this lying pirate captain and all his men under guard, especially the captain and first mate; they must be kept in solitary confinement."

"Then we selected some ordinary sailors who were willing to serve us and arranged for the walrus people to learn how to drive ships."

The savages don't know how to build or operate boats. Only the people of the frozen coast can use inflatable sealskin rafts to fish or hunt, and they can swim and dive, barely making them comparable to crew members.

Upon hearing this, Salado immediately knelt down again, begging Lynn for mercy and offering to buy the ships with gold.

"Forget about the ship. Keep your gold to redeem yourselves, and the same goes for your men."

"A pirate who helped the enemy attack me... Hmph! If he can't come up with a sum that satisfies me—the acting commander-in-chief of the Night's Watch was complaining to me the other day about being short-handed, you should have heard of them, right?"

"Perhaps donning black is your destiny."

Lynn issued a chilling threat.

Pirates these days deserve to die. They not only rape and plunder at sea, but also participate in the bloody and cruel slave trade, causing countless ordinary people to lose their families and lives.

Compared to the pirates' heinous acts, the weeping men and the likes of the clown shirt seemed less repulsive.

Tormund chuckled:

"May I strip him of his clothes and hat? Fat Sam told me in your letter that you told me to treat prisoners kindly, and I've been holding back!"

Lynn waved his hand, indicating that this was a one-time exception and that all future spoils would be confiscated.

Salado's already fair skin turned even whiter after hearing this.

He had assumed that the wildlings of Westeros treated him with courtesy because they were not as savage as legend had it.

It now appears that the prisoners were not mistreated these past few days simply because of an instruction in the king's letter.

Salado wanted to try to argue for himself again, but Tormund silenced him with his fist.

Then the giants began trying to drive the mammoths into the sea.

This was no easy task. Mammoths were just as afraid of seawater as they were of fire. It usually took three or four giants to drag and pull a mammoth into the cabin. Lynn was so impressed that he wanted to use his shapeshifting abilities to help them.

A large flat-bottomed boat can carry four mammoths; any more and they'll fight. So the fleet needs to make more than ten trips to transport all the mammoths.

When they were halfway there, soldiers abandoned by Stannis began to receive the news and started arriving from the north.

Because Carter Parker's ship was not big enough to carry all the men, it was impossible to bring horses. As a result, everyone who came to join him had a mount, but both the men and the horses were extremely thin.

Most of them were cavalry, and a few were infantry and longbowmen who survived the battle with the ghouls.

Lynn ordered them to surrender their weapons, and the men and horses separated and waited on the side until a whole ship was ready before crossing the bay together.

These men are all trained professional cavalrymen who will be incorporated into Hamma's forces to build a truly formidable heavy cavalry unit for Lynn.

The only regret is that most of the captured heavy armor was divided up by the Senn's Guard, and even the horse armor was dismantled and converted into armor for human wear to equip the Oath of Gods. So we need to start collecting armor again.

When the mercenary knight Drake arrived with the last group of men, the total number of defeated soldiers who surrendered to Lynn reached exactly 330.

Aside from those taken away by Carter, the once formidable Iron Lions now has only this many men left.

"Your Majesty," Drake said, reining in his horse and puffing out white breath as he addressed Lynn, "this is the last batch; there are still a dozen or so who are unwilling to come."

Lynn asked in surprise, "Are they stupid enough to wait for Stannis to come and pick them up?"

"No, Your Majesty."

Drake said with a sorrowful expression:

"They said Stannis was unreliable, but they were unwilling to surrender to the Wildling King."

Rather than lose their honor, they would rather fight the White Walkers to the death and then return as the dead to collect their debts from the living.

Lynn was speechless for a moment; sometimes he really couldn't understand the thought process of people in this era.

Oh well, let them be. We already have so many ghouls, what's a dozen more?

After the last mammoth was herded onto the flat-bottomed transport ship, Lynn also boarded one of them.

Instead of boarding the ship, Qi Xue flew across the bay on his own.

By the time Lynn successfully boarded the pier, it had already landed on a tower.

Three months after hatching, it finally arrived south of the Great Wall of Despair.