Bolton Lands 291 AC
The morning broke cold and colorless, the sort of pale Northern dawn that blurred frost and sky into the same bleached steel. Domeric had slept lightly—habit now, not out of paranoia, but because every breath of winter wind against the stones of the Dreadfort sounded like a reminder of how fragile his plans remained.
By the time the sun scraped its way over the horizon, he was already mounted, gloved, cloaked, and surrounded by a small retinue. Steelshanks Walton rode on his right, stiff-backed and quiet. Two of the Qohorik natives rode further behind, whispering to one another in harsh, breathy consonants. Maester Coleman rode a stout mule and looked as if he regretted every moment of this unconventional excursion.
The servants stared as the procession passed through the outer gates. Boltons did not normally ride out to see their people. Boltons summoned. Commanded. Punished.
Domeric felt their eyes.Good, he thought. Let them look. Let them wonder. Let them adjust to this new kind of Bolton.
——————-
The Kale Marsh Hamlet
The first stop was the Kale Marsh hamlet, a little more than eight sod-roofed huts, a collapsing longhouse, and one miserable smithy that coughed smoke like a dying hearth.
The air stank of wet rot and standing water. Children peered from behind reed-woven fences; older men and women bowed stiffly when he dismounted.
"Lord Bolton," a graybeard muttered, "we did not expect—"
"Because no one ever comes here if not rarely," Domeric finished for him. "I know."
The village elder blinked as if slapped in the face with his answer.
Coleman dismounted with difficulty, consulting the neat stack of parchment Domeric had ordered drafted. Census forms. Lists of labor outputs. Crop yields of the last five years. These were concepts no Northern peasant had ever encountered.
Domeric had begun walking the village slowly.He noted everything.The mud that never dried.The half-rotted fence around the goat pens.
The old woman's weaving loom missing two tension bars.The smith's cracked anvil.
The way two fields lay untouched,abandoned because a flood six years ago had salted the soil.
And with every observation he thought of possible resolutions and plans for the shoddy village.
"I see you raise goats and not sheep?"
"Yes m'lord, most of our sheep were stolen many moons ago and the little we had remaining were sold or traded for grain and now only goats remain"
Goats were generally cheaper than sheep in medieval times, largely because sheep were highly valued for their wool in the extensive medieval wool trade. So it was no surprise they were stolen.
And goats, though very useful for poor and independent farmers, were considered a "poor man's beast" and their meat was often consumed by the lower echelons of society.
"How many goats survived last winter?" Domeric asked.
"Eleven, m'lord," the elder said. "We had over several dozen."
"And the harvest?"
"A third of what it were before the marsh rose."
Domeric turned to Coleman.
"Mark this village for drainage ditches. We will the marsh water redirected. And see that you get a better anvil for that smith before the week's end."
The maester merely nodded doing as he was told , no protests today on coin and resources needed for such tasks he learned his lesson in protesting against domeric.
The villagers stared at Domeric as if he'd said a word they had never heard before.
Hope. A new hope.
—— ——- ——- ——— ——-
Dead Heatherfields
The next day was worse.The Heatherfields had once produced purple heather so thick the air smelled sweet months after harvest. Now the land was barren—patches of grey soil, stunted shrubs, and a single windmill leaning like a drunkard.
"Blight," said a farmer with hands like bark.
"It Came four years ago. Killed half the fields. Then wolves took the sheep we couldn't feed."
"Show me," Domeric said.
They walked the dead fields together. His boots sank into the wasted soil. He crouched, running the earth between his fingers. Dry. Acidic. Lifeless.
He asked questions. Dozens.
The farmer answered all, bewildered, as if interrogated by a maester.
Two of his essosi entourages took notes furiously. They would later compare soil samples, discuss a form of slash-and-burn recovery, then propose two crop strains that might survive Northern winters.Domeric even thought of natural animal waste as fertilizers for recovering the soil's nutrients.
He remained silent and thought for a long time, staring over land that once fed five hundred mouths.
He could almost see it once more. The vision of improvement. Fields divided into efficient thirds, crop rotations, a rebuilt windmill grinding grain day and night. Slow yes but long-term and outstandingly beneficial.
"Your lordship," the farmer said hesitantly, "is there… is there anything that can be done?"
"Yes," Domeric said simply. "But not quickly. And not without enough labor of course ."
The farmer bowed his head.
"Then tell us where to begin."
—- —— —— —— —— —-
By the third day, word had spread.
When Domeric's retinue reached Bluerun, the villagers were already waiting near the well. Not fearful this time.
Curious.
Young men with their tools at their belts. Women with children tucked close. Even the old and infirm had dragged themselves out to see the Bolton heir who traveled with books and parchments.
Bluerun was larger—thirty households, a mill, a small timber-cutting operation, and an old sept converted into a storage barn.Domeric moved like a statesman.
He inspected the mill,The waterwheel was warped. The gears were misaligned.
The grain hopper had a crack so wide he could put three fingers in it. He spoke to the miller, a stout woman named Branna.
"Who built this?"
"My grandfather, m'lord 20 winters ago I believe."
"And who maintains it?"
She shrugged. "Whoever has time."
Domeric almost sighed.Medieval inefficiency always found a way to disappoint him in so many ways.
"Maester," he said, "I want a list of every able-bodied carpenter in the domain. We will hire them. Full wages. The Dreadfort will repay the village for the lost milling time."
Branna blinked. "M'lord… you can't mean to rebuild the mill?"
"Why not, isn't it my duty to make sure my land and its people are taken care of?" The young lord asked.
She stammered. "No lord ever bothered."
"Well I will"
—-—— —— ——
The fourth day took them deeper into the forests.
Frostholt was a logging holdfast, rough and hardy. Men here wore thick beards and thick coats, women carried axes as easily as baskets, and the air smelled of pine and fresh-cut timber.
The holdfast master, Edric Pike, met lord Bolton with a wary nod.
"I hadn't expected you to come out here so far in these parts lord Bolton," he said bluntly.
"Well in these times anything is to be expected and I am here to take account of my lands to which so far I am rather disappointed," Domeric replied.
Pike wanted to grunt but held himself from eliciting disrespect to his overlord. He merely nodded in agreement.
Domeric walked their lumber yards, inspected their drying sheds, noted how they wasted almost twenty percent of their wood due to poor cutting angles and green-timber rot.
He noted it all and thought back and how he could have all this improved upon with his specialists back at the dreadfort.
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