Game of Thrones: Viserys the Three-Headed Dragon

"dragon!"

"It's a dragon!"

When the idle sailors, travelers and vendors gathered near the reception hotel and sat in the open space on the street looking at the castle intently, they burst out in exclamation. Even the old man couldn't help but look up at the castle on the mountain in the distance and saw a star in the sky. A small dragon the size of a giant eagle, circling with wings spread out.

Someone said: "Is it too small?"

Someone sneered: "There was already a little one, a new one, right? After the earthquake in Longshan, it's hard to see His Majesty the Dragon King's dragon."

"Dragon Mountain shook?"

"A few days ago, Longshan suddenly made a loud rumble, and it seemed like Longshan was about to collapse. You don't know how loud the sound was at that time, it was like thunder."

"Ah? Then why are you just like normal people and not afraid?"

"His Majesty the Dragon King sent someone to say that it was the sound made by his dragons building a nest and digging mountains in the Dragon Mountain. Now that his dragon nest has been built, that will never happen again. So you can't see the big giant dragons." Dragon. Unless you are lucky, you can sometimes meet His Majesty the Dragon King calling his dragon back to the castle, and you can still see it occasionally."

"Wow, it flew back."

The little dragon only circled in the sky for a few times, then flew back to the castle and disappeared without a trace. The crowd then burst into sounds of disappointment.

These travelers who have nothing to do and look at the castle in the open area are now a norm on Dragonstone Island, and the locals are not surprised. At first, the town guard wanted to control them, but after they were driven away from one place, these people would gather in another place, and some of them were right next to the dock's own boat parking area, so they couldn't control them at all.

There were definitely spies and other scouts of the false king among them, but this kind of thing was better than being sparse, so they simply designated an area to gather, and there were local vendors setting up stalls to sell things.

The old man also came to join in the fun.

He disembarked from Illyrio's ship yesterday, and as an ordinary member of the ship was first arranged to be received elsewhere. Someone arranged for meals and accommodation. He was nominally an "ordinary guard" accompanying the ship, because Illyrio specifically took care of him. In this case, I was also assigned a private room in a town hotel, so I didn't have to sleep in a bunk with the sailors or others or in the cabin of the ship at the dock.

Because he was an "ordinary guard", he was not able to go to the castle with Illyrio for the banquet. He only had a sumptuous dinner in the town below.

Today, Illyrio's ship remains in port, and all of their visitors are free to roam the town.

If someone who is not particularly familiar sees the old man.

Unexpectedly, the white-haired old man walking around in the town of Dragonstone now leaning on a long hardwood cane is Barristan Selmy, the legendary figure of the Seven Kingdoms and the Kingsguard, known as "Barlistan the Fearless". .

This Barristan is considered a living legend in the Seven Kingdoms. He is the eldest son of Lord Leonor Selmy of the Harvest Hall. At the age of sixteen, he anonymously participated in the Winter Tourney held in King's Landing and defeated the "short" Prince Duncan and the captain of the Kingsguard, Sir "Tall" Duncan. , was made a knight by King Aegon V himself.

During the Battle of the Nine Copper Kings, he rushed alone among the members of the Golden Company and successfully killed the last Blackfire "Vicious" Maris one-on-one, ending the rebellion of the pretender to the Blackfire throne.

At the age of twenty-three, Jaehaerys II put on the white robe for him under the recommendation of Captain Gerold Hightower of the Kingsguard.

After the death of Jaehaerys II, Barristan continued to serve the successor King Aerys II Targaryen in the Kingsguard. During the rebellion in Duskendale, Aerys II was taken hostage and imprisoned in Duskendale for half a year. Tywin, who was the Hand of the King at the time, originally planned to attack the city by force, but Barristan proposed to go alone to rescue the king, and Tywin decided to give him a day.

Barristan acted boldly, disguised himself as a masked beggar, and approached Brown Castle; before being discovered, he assassinated the guards on the wall, found his way to the dungeon, and rescued the king. He was discovered while leading the king away, and Barristan killed a group of guards who came to stop him and the master of Brown Keep in Duskendale. He and the king ran to the stable, slashing and killing, and then fled Duskendale on horseback with an arrow in their chests.

During the Usurper's War, Prime Minister Jon Connington was defeated at the Battle of the Bell. Ser Barristan, along with Ser Jonnotho Darry, rallied the remnants of Connington's forces. At the Battle of the Trident, he suffered multiple wounds from arrows, spears, and swords. Roose Bolton thought he should have slit his throat, but Robert Baratheon called for his maesters to heal him. After the Usurper's War, which brought an end to the Targaryen dynasty, despite his bravery in fighting for the Targaryens, King Robert Baratheon pardoned him and appointed him Captain of the Kingsguard.

But after Robert died. Joffrey used his old age as an excuse to order him to take off his white robes and withdraw from the Kingsguard. But it was actually because Cersei wanted Jaime to be captain of the Iron Guard, and Joffrey wanted his dog Sandor Clegane to wear the white robe.

When Joffrey ordered him to be captured and questioned for the death of King Robert, he killed the Goldcloaks who came to capture him.

Later, Barristan escaped from the city. He could have returned to Harvest Hall, where his family would have accepted him without hesitation, but Barristan did not want Joffrey to anger them, so Barristan sold his armor and dressed up as an ordinary person. people.

He lets his beard grow and joins the ranks of other citizens of King's Landing who are trying to stay away from the war.

He was among the crowd witnessing the beheading of Lord Eddard Stark. Afterwards, he prayed for Eddard Stark in the Great Sept of Baelor, thanking the gods that he had been dismissed.

All of this forced Barristan to reevaluate his years as Captain of Robert's Kingsguard. In the end, he felt that he had done an extremely bad and unforgivable job in Robert's service. He believed that Robert was a good knight, but not a good king, and Barristan felt that he should find the real king and swear allegiance to him. This idea led Barristan to finally sail across the narrow sea to Pentos.

Because he had heard the intelligence about Viserys from King Robert.

He found Illyrio in Pentos, but it happened to be the time when Viserys disappeared, and he had to wait for news of Viserys from the Governor of Pentos.

And this wait lasted until Viserys conquered Dragonstone, and countless rumors about the Dragon King spread to Pentos. When Grolai, the commander of Viserys's first fleet, went to Pentos to meet the "Dragon King's Minister of Finance", he finally came to the vicinity of the king he wanted to observe.

By this time, Barristan was no longer sure whether he was still qualified to serve Viserys, and he didn't know how Viserys would view him.

Barristan heard about the Dragon King's treatment of the guards of Dragonstone Castle.

It is said that when the king held a funeral for the dead, and when the things agreed with the soldiers who attended the funeral were completed, if he opened his mouth to surrender, those people would definitely be willing to swear allegiance. But the fact is that the Dragon King did not surrender any of those who surrendered, and he has kept them in the black prison until now. I don't know what he is planning.

Like all travelers who came to Dragonstone during this period, Barristan saw the dragon in the designated gathering area of ​​the town, and then went to see the tombs of the dead on both sides of the attack on Dragonstone in the rumor.

The cemetery is in the Dragonstone Cemetery. Many people came to see the story to see if it was true or not. There were even people selling flowers outside the cemetery.

Barristan walked into the cemetery. The more than 100 new tombs were shocking. For a war, the number of casualties was not large in the war Barristan had experienced, but when so many new tombstones were placed together, he still felt sad.

After most wars, unless there were relatives or nobles collecting the bodies of the defeated army on the battlefield, almost no one would deal with them specifically.

If there was a church near the battlefield, gravediggers would sometimes be sent out, but gravediggers usually could not deal with so many bodies, and the battlefield was chaotic, so gravediggers often faced danger. Many times, the bodies on the battlefield could only be eaten by wild beasts or rotted, and finally turned into piles of bones in the wild.

Even in a small battle like Dragonstone where only more than 100 people died, the bodies of the defeated were usually either burned or buried randomly, and they would not be handled as decently as they are now.

Barristan looked at the tombstones, which were all the names of the dead and their places of origin, not the soldiers or subjects of any king.

Even the tombs of the victors were not ostentatious, and Viserys did not write about any tombstones in a big way. The tombstones of the victors were all engraved with a pattern of dragon scales, and at the front of the tombstones was a monument in the shape of a giant dragon head.

On it was the "Dragonstone Monument" in the Common Language and Valyrian, which was said to be written by Viserys himself, and below it was a line of small words, "The victims that Viserys Targaryen will always remember rest here."

It is said that these dead were foreign soldiers brought back by Viserys from Essos in the east. These people had no descendants to inherit the rewards, so he added mourning honors in this way.

Walking in the cemetery, Barristan suddenly wanted to know what the king thought of the war? What did he think of the dead on both sides of the war?

After leaving the cemetery, Barristan came to the most novel street for the management of island affairs on Dragonstone today.

At first, this place was just the bell tower, armory, training ground and a warehouse of the castle owner of the town guard. Now, except for the guard part, those warehouses have been changed to various affairs departments managed on the island.

The largest warehouse has been changed into the accounting, port, taxation and customs offices under the jurisdiction of the financial department. Dragonstone Island under the rule of the Dragon King has legally recovered the tax rights of the tax farmers and established its own tax collection team. Many of the heavy taxes and levies imposed by the lords during the war will be more stringent when they are handed over to the tax farmers. The Dragon King strictly prohibits all kinds of heavy taxes and levies, rectifies taxation, and specifically removes legal taxes from the laws and regulations for the newly established tax department to collect according to the law - although most of the tax officials are still the same people as before, the big taxes have not changed.

However, what has changed is actually the affairs officer system quietly promoted by Viserys, which has gone the furthest in the Ministry of Finance, and many people in this world don't even notice it. A group of affairs officers who are not yet called civil servants have filled the various functions of the department and are doing things according to Viserys's rules. Although they are very immature in Viserys' eyes now, he believes that after becoming familiar with the business in the near future, they can be transformed into secretaries of ministers and supervisors at any time to free up their positions for nobles and politicians to work. These affairs officers will become "humble social tools" and work hard to "implement the will of the ministers."

Next to the finance office is the office of the legal arbitration department. Because the king does not have a minister of justice now, when something needs legal arbitration, people always go to the castle to find the lord or the acting city lord, but most of the things are fragmentary and trivial. The functions of this agency have not been completely clarified. At present, it is aimed at handling those trivial events and the preliminary trial of some important cases. Because Dragonstone is currently stable, their main task is to assist the finance department in managing taxes and adjudicating taxes. Because there is no problem yet, Viserys is not sure whether the legal department can do the same thing as the finance department.

There is also the so-called reception.

Dragonstone is not big enough, and the government affairs of a small town are not troublesome at all. But Viserys needs a test field to try to implement the civil service system he understands in Westeros, and make changes while doing it until this system that has been deformed in his hands meets his ruling needs. Dragonstone is undoubtedly now serving as an experimental product.

However, Barristan had no way of understanding Viserys's purpose behind doing all this. He just came to visit with curiosity to see what these new things looked like, whether they were harsh or good.

However, Barristan just joined in the fun. He didn't even know how the financial affairs of the Seven Kingdoms were run before, let alone now.

What he understood was the army and knights. Here, Barristan saw many free riders and hired knights from other places queuing up at the reception set up on Dragonstone Island, trying to see the king. But Barristan saw that many of these people were taken to a temporary military camp built on a flat land outside the town. According to his prediction, these people might be reorganized into temporary troops and serve as scouts, vanguards or light cavalry in wartime. Because even those of them who have their own horses are not of noble origin, if they are not desperate, they can wait for a better time to join the army in order to survive.

Barristan knew very well that many of those who were willing to enter the military camp for reorganization did so because they did not have to pay for their own and their horses' food.

Barristan watched here for a while. Although he had a clear understanding of the affairs of these free riders and hedge knights, he himself was also very confused. He felt that it would be difficult for him to seek an audience with Viserys by normal means. Illyrio promised to introduce him, but he refused.

Barristan didn't know whether he was a traitor in Viserys' eyes. He had sworn to be loyal to Targaryen until death and became King Targaryen's Kingsguard. The glorious deeds that people spread about him could not cover up the fact that he had served Baratheon. If the Dragon King rejected him with this reason, how should he deal with it?

Barristan actually planned to take a quick look, but when he was reading the notice of the reward for the treatment of the Blackwater River issued by the Dragon King at the notice board of the affairs management street, he suddenly heard footsteps approaching softly, which made him clench his hardwood crutches.

There were not many people at the notice board. After all, there were no portraits to be seen here like the list of criminals in the town center, and literacy was considered a scarce talent not only in Dragonstone but also in the Seven Kingdoms.

Although Barristan was old, he felt that his ears were still very sharp. He never thought that in a place like Dragonstone, he would be approached by someone on the street within four or five body lengths before he noticed.

Barristan turned his head and saw that the person who came was an ordinary-looking middle-aged man. He did not carry a sword and his clothes looked like a decent person. The man was concentrating on the recruitment information of the Dragonstone Castle Affairs Officer on the notice board beside Barristan.

Not long after, the man quickly turned around and left, walking towards the office of the affairs department of Dragonstone.

Barristan looked at the man's back as he left, but he saw that his steps were light.

He turned his head and looked at the notice board. It said that Dragonstone Castle was urgently recruiting affairs officers who could read and write, and he suddenly became interested. It is said that affairs officers have the opportunity to meet the Dragon King himself in the castle.