NOVEL NEXT Chapter 4: A Chummy Fall
Late 265 Summer - Mid 266 Fall
It took ninety days and thirteen people falling through the docks to muster the collective willpower to replace them. It was my superbowl. After the difficult demolition work, people looked at me like a god descended onto the earth when I revealed all my prepared materials for the project. I Ikea'd them, and they loved me for it.
With everything measured, cut, and ready for install we smashed the schedule and delivered the project smoothly and under budget. Five star reviews for the people of fishing village attached to Mormont Keep. Would build again.
Alysa was now far enough along for it to be socially acceptable to publicly announce her pregnancy, so there was much back slapping and raised mugs for me everywhere I went. Personally I was perturbed. Alysa had been the exact fit I needed in a wife. Relaxed, even keeled, and witty. It didn't much matter to me that she wasn't turning heads and dropping jaws everywhere we went. I like her.
And canonically Jorah + Alysa = three horrific miscarriages and a dead wife within ten years.
Each day a heavier and heavier weight pressed down in my stomach, and people noticed. Thank God the white raven arrived from the Citadel to announce the end of summer, as it provided enough of a distraction for no one to ask me about my dour mood. We were all in a dour mood now.
Were once was an island full of drunk imbeciles doing just enough to get by, now existed an almost bee hive like mentality of constant work as the smallfolk did everything in their power to insulate their homes, stack firewood, and stockpile supplies for an unknowable amount of famine condition time.
It was damn impressive.
The multiyear long summers and winters are an environmental disaster. Can you imagine if every handful of years Earth experienced an Ice Age? How many people in the modern world are living on edge just one catastrophe away from death? The fact that human culture has advanced in Westeros to the point it has is astonishing.
As much as I may bag on them in my mind, the people of the North have a supreme capacity for rugged survival under the worst of conditions. We have agrarian communities millenia old who have produced enough storable food that we have survived every hellish winter that has come. It's beyond belief. The idea that I could tell these people to rotate four specific crops in order and everything will be alright is infantile, and arrogant. I'm supposed to tell a guy whose family has maintained the production of a piece of land for eight thousand years how to farm because I read it in a history book, and it's just going to work. Because obviously all the factors in soil capacity and the nutrient exchange of plants on two different planets with differing environmental conditions are exactly the same, despite materials science being wildly different.
TLDR, the food production on Westeros is not to be fucked with.
To distract from my growing unease, I threw myself into the creation of watchtowers around the island with communication flags and alarm horns atop. By assigning different flags for different locations around the coast of the island and different enemy forces we enabled rapid emergency response from Mormont Keep.
The system soon proved itself when the Wildlings also discovered the end of summer and the men of the Frozen Shore chose to raid south for richer targets than they could hunt and gather. Using the horns and flags meant that we could ride out and arrive in almost the amount of time it would have taken for a rider to get help prior.
We responded to three such alerts during the year long fall though the biggest was the first and it came in broad daylight.
My father and I were in the middle of a spar when the lookout's horn blared. Everyone in the yard traded blunt steel swords for live weapons and mounted up at the stables. After confirming the situation we rode out on the path with fifty armed and armored men, passing small hamlets until we came to the first proper fishing village.
We encountered the first of the Wildlings attacking the hamlets outside of the second major village along the east side bank of the natural harbor of the island. Men and a few women covered in walrus hides wielding wood and stone weapons engaged in combat with the small folk who them with spears in hand. This prevented us from simply riding the Wildings down, but these front runners didn't slow us down much on our path to the village and the hundreds of raiders who descended on it from primitive boats.
We road into the thick of combat and I jammed a winged spear into the roaring mouth of a man trying and failing to intimidate us with his battle cry. What came after hardly felt like real combat, more akin to slaughtering wild animals. The men of the Frozen Shore had no armor, or weapons capable of doing much harm to those wearing it besides heavy stones tied to sticks. Unwieldy and easy to evade.
After leaving my spear in the man I drew my side sword and quickly cut down all the savages I encountered. They fought with unrefined technique, and relied on toughness and aggression, attempting to grapple with us as much as possible due to the ineffectiveness of their weapons. With quick hands I kept the cuts coming, preventing the Wildlings I faced from closing the distance safely, never making the mistake of commiting to a thrust that would see my sword bound however briefly in the torso of its victim. At one point a clever girl tried to circle to my shield side and grab onto it, but I punched out and popped her in the mouth while my sword swung and took the arm off my other opponent. When I finished the pair off I could no longer see and living foes except those fleeing to their poorly crafted vessels. A few men from the village were already hacking the boats with axes meaning none of the Wildlings escaped, and I didn't stop the slaying of the handful that tried to surrender.
I found my way to my father, who sat atop a wood bench in front of the headman's house nursing an ugly bruise on his head. While an older woman fussed over him.
"Begone wench, it's just a bruise." he ordered with a growl.
"Picked the wrong cut?" I asked and he spat on the ground.
"It happens." he snorted.
"Not if you chose to block, or dodge." I shrugged.
"Those are the kind of moves for little boys who'd rather be hiding behind their mother's skirts." Jeor sneered, "Handle the clean up, Jorah. I've got better things to do."
Like feel every ounce of that headache.
I bit back the response and found the biggest rally point for everyone glad they survived the attack.
"Alright, people." I announced, drumming the flat of my sword on my shield, "Take all the Wildlings down to the shore and chop 'em up. Chum the waters. I want fat fish for the winter."
At first everyone seemed stunned by what I said, then one of the more clever warriors from the Keep shouted, 'YEAAAHHH!' and everyone else joined him.
Little did I know 'Chum the Waters' would become an unofficial slogan of House Mormont, and one more darkly popular than 'Here We Stand'.
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Despite keeping my hands busy, the final weeks of Alysa's pregnancy had me freaking out. This late in the game miscarriages are absolutely brutal to the point they can drive women insane, and as such it was driving me insane… but it didn't happen. Instead, one stormy evening we were sitting in Rockhall - something Alysa now did pretty much all day every day due to the watermelon she was smuggling in her tummy - and she went into labor.
I ran out to get the local midwife and Maester Lyle from the keep, something they both bitched about and it was a bitch and a half getting everyone back to Rockhall even with the paved path I'd made as rain drops fat as grapes slapped us coming in sideways on the howling wind. At least the frequent lightning illuminated the path almost more brightly than daylight. We arrived windblown and wet, but got down to business and after six hours of contractions Alysa was finally dialated enough to start pushing and fifteen minutes later I was handed my new son.
Ten months of ever increasing dread and I damn near chucked my son against the wall. Pulling in my frayed nerves and trying to become once again the man in the body of a twelve year old, I looked at Maester Lyle and asked:
"Are his nuts supposed to be that big?"
Lyle, a genial man in his forties, chuckled, "It gave me quite the fright when I first saw them on you, but it all turned out well in the end. I'm sure you're son is perfectly fine."
My testicles were that big when I was born? I don't remember, my younger years are lost beneath the fog of war and I am happy for it.
"But, Lyle… those nuts are sensational." I said, causing the man's body to heave with giggles, "To a bear, those nuts are a sack lunch."
"He has large testicles. Get over it!" Alysa shouted from the bed, looking absolutely exhausted, "Could the pair of you stop being little boys and name him already?"
We composed ourselves slowly and I thought about it for the first time without the weight of impending disaster holding me down. I wanted my kid to have a badass name, but not one of the lame ones from the north with all the damn Bran's and Jon's. I considered my plans for the future and the current surroundings before I nodded. I had it.
"This is Ulfric." I declared, "Ulfric Stormcloak Mormont."
I gave our son back to Alysa who popped a tit in his mouth and signed, "I am trying my hardest to think of a more pretentious name than that, and I am failing. It's making me sad."
Lyle breaking out into giggles again was a second arrow to my heart. I wanted to collapse from this overkill.
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First kills and first son in one chapter. Progress.
We also got to see another way in which my personal views of Westeros diverge from the typical wank fic. I believe that the smallfolk employ best practices in regards to farming given their technological level. They'd have too in order to produce enough to survive all the catastrophic winters they get hit with.
Jorah is not a tech savant who can remember every design of every major agrarian equipment milestone from history class. He will have to improve the situation by taking advantage of what's already there.
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