NOVEL NEXT Chapter 5: Northern Gold
Late 266 Winter - Early 269 Spring
Fall lasted a full year, but Alysa's status of not pregnant didn't last a month after she recovered. Milf-dom hit her like a truck, and my formerly willowy wife thiccened up. She even smelled sexy, like someone sprayed her with some Estee Milf. As the future Lord of Bear Island it wasn't hard to find a smallfolk girl who lost her bastard son to come work for me as Milk Tits - I mean a wetnurse - for Ulfric, which freed Alsya up for the kind of miscreant behavior that saw us become parents twice over within a year.
I blame her for it fully. How can I be held responsible for my choices when every time we're in a room together all my brain blood is in my boner?
As she swole up in the warm and cozy interior of Rockhall, I went to work in the deadly cold outside it. Winter is a down time for the fishermen as the freezing of large chunks of the bay and the dangers of free floating ice to their nets and small boats keeps them bound to the chilly shorelines of our island and mostly consuming the smoked harvest of the fall, but the activities of the woodsmen increase greatly, especially in the first half year after the season has properly set in.
Due to the whimsical and deadly length of the coldest season, the grizzly population of Bear Island fatten themselves up to a far greater degree than those of earth, feasting on the abundant honey, berries, leeks, onions, mushrooms, nuts, dandelions, grasses, and deer. Fall is their most aggressive season, followed by a peaceful winter. Not only do the bears grow more fat, they hibernate more deeply.
Whereas their Earthly counterparts are capable of rousing in an instant in response to sounds around them, those of Bear Island slumber far more deeply to further cut the drain on their reserves that must see them through multiple years. They will not wake unless subjected to injurious pain.
At their fattest and most vulnerable the dangerous beasts transitioned into cash crops, for there is nothing like bear grease. It lubes, it waterproofs, it conditions, it moisturizes, treats rashes, burns, and arthritis, puts shine in your hair, makes great soap, burns without smoke, and fries your food. The efficacy and versatility of this one substance greatly outweighs the toll on human lives lost to bear attacks many fold.
As such the taking of bears in Winter is strictly regulated, and it is only legal to take mature males. Any hunter known to take females or juveniles during this season is sent to the Wall. The bear grease game is that serious.
I had all four of my dogs pulling the sled on this hunt, and they did so with ease. Wolves aren't the only thing bigger in the frozen hell north of the Wall, and thousands of years of warfare with the men of the Frozen Shore had seen their dogs brought to the Island and bred to our lines. Those dogs were the full equals of Dire Wolves in size and though my pack lost some of that size in favor of greater domestication they still maintained a height with Irish Wolfhounds and a tremendous athleticism. Pulling me, my gear, and a giant dead bear on the sled posed no problem for them.
The dogs barked thunderously when they scented the prey and begun digging up the snow around the roots of a towering pine tree, revealing the den. Using a lantern I confirmed our findings then lined up a spear strike, putting my weight behind it to drive the weapon through the ribs and into the heart and lungs. Much easier than going for the neck thicker than a strongman's thigh and hitting the only major bleeder running through it the size of a pencil, or trying for the head and sliding off that dense skull.
I wrenched the spear free and retreated as the bear roused quickly due to the pain, but it was sluggish from both deep sleep and injury and collapsed back down into its den to breath its last.
Not wanting to process it here I tied up its front paws to get the dogs to help drag it out and pull it onto the sled. It takes a big bear to weigh a ton, and this fatty almost made it. The elder male likely weighed over eight hundred pounds before the fall bulk. With diligent knife work and tedious grinding I can get a bit less than a pint of grease per pound of fat, meaning big daddy brown stretched out on my sled will yield about a hundred fifty gallons of sweet liquid Northern Gold™.
By the powers vested in me as a lord of the realm I declare it TradeMarked and will defend my brand with copious violence.
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I managed to take bears of lesser size during the season, sealing many clay jars full of the most valuable product of the island though many hours of difficult labor. The work kept me busy through out Alysa's second pregnancy, cutting and grinding cold slabs of fat a foot thick in some cases.
It filled me with now small amount of schadenfreude that my steel knifes where oiled with the grease of bears that received this treatment prior. I may need to soon carve out a new storeroom for my collection of hides unless I find a means to profitably divest myself of them soon.
At least I have no shortage of materials to keep me in new clothes every time my outfits get too tight. I started packing on contractile tissue like its on clearance sale, filling out the extra wide frame of my my shoulders and hips as winter and puberty both deepen.
This time around when the baby came there was no trip to the village and the keep to get a midwife and the maester. A blizzard blew down from the Frozen Shore across the increasingly frozen bay, one of the terrible winter storms whipping both sea and sky into a lethal frenzy.
So it was just me, Brigette, and Milk Tits - I mean Brandy, the wetnurse.
It was time to put to use my education in Westerosi medicine, which I found quite advanced considering the general technology of the setting. In some cases almost twentieth century in quality, but quite fourteenth in others. I finished with my prepwork as I timed the contractions and when the conditions were ideal Brigette and Milk Tits - I mean Brandy, the wetnurse - helped pull Alysa's legs up to her shoulders and I settled in for a traumatizing sight.
"Push." I told her as I grit my teeth against the horrors of the birthing process and all of a sudden I was holding a baby boy.
My face twitched as I looked into my hands and despite the incredulity second son remained.
"Um… good work everyone." I announced as I cut the cord, still in shock at what just happened.
"What?" Alysa asked from the birthing bed.
"That's it. Here's Galmar." I shrugged and tied off the cord before washing off my son and handing him to her as he began his first cries.
Alysa looked at our second son as I left to go get Ulfric from his crib. I returned my oldest in one hand and a naked sword in the other just after the babe calmed down.
"You're my second son, Galmar." I declared as I threw the sword on the ground, freaking the newborn out, "When I die, you will not inherit my lands. Your future will be made by your manly will, and be kept by cold steel in hand. Never forget this, boy."
If my words for the first son caused Alysa headache, my words for the second were a damn aneurysm.
"He'll never know it unless we tell him about this later, and I just don't think my heart can bear revealing to him how over-dramatic his father is." Alysa scoffed as she stroked the soft fuzz on Galmar's little head, "And we are waiting longer for the next one."
"Sure thing, love." I agreed, knowing that I'd be on top of her as soon as she healed up and she'd be happier for it.
Winter lasted two years beginning in the final months of 266 and ending in the final months of 268. Spring came to my home and found me with three sons. The numbers speak for themself. By the laws of math, the D is too good. She can't get enough.
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Alysa is the kind of woman who asks what the fuck the swans did to you when you are swearing to avenge a murderous insult to God.
I thought I would get to the next plot point in this chapter, but upon my second pass of the chapter, much like the last, it grew as I added and fleshed out scenes. It has been unexpectedly satisfying writing a character that is building his path bit by bit rather than declaring it in the first chapter. It's a bit counter to my nature and experiences in real life, but good for my writing.