ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Harlan’s agreement began with money heavy enough that Morton asked two men to help carry it indoors.

The fifty silver stags offered as a deposit were only the beginning. Payment for the first thousand bottles, together with the deposit arrangement, brought the initial total to one thousand two hundred and fifty silver stags according to the bargain recorded at FireStorm’s table; Morton counted the bags twice.

Weeks earlier, the holding had struggled to assemble six silver stags in ready coin. Now polished stags covered part of the scarred table where he had once listed twelve sacks of rye, damaged armor, and an abandoned mine as almost the entirety of House Ashenblade’s useful wealth.

”It is real,” Morton said, sounding offended by the fact.

Harlan smiled. ”Spend enough of it and you’ll stop being surprised.”

The merchant left with the first arrangements for transport and a list of goods FireStorm needed brought back through his contacts. He also left knowing that other black-market buyers had smelled the product and seen the price; his exclusivity would survive only as long as he kept his side of the bargain valuable.

Arlan divided the new income before anyone could begin treating it as treasure to be hoarded.

The first share went toward immediate survival: grain, salt, cloth, firewood where needed, and other winter necessities that FireStorm could not make in sufficient quantity. Each household was to receive additional rye and two copper stars, enough to turn the sudden profit into something visible beyond the lord’s table. Morton objected only long enough to calculate the reserve again, then wrote the household distribution beside each family name.

The second share went to the smithy; iron had to be purchased, farm tools repaired, weapons made serviceable, and additional stills built. The old blacksmith received the figures with both hands on the table and immediately began muttering about copper, charcoal, and how many hours his apprentices could work without becoming useless.

A third share supported the guard. The recent bandit campaign had shown how quickly an armed group collapsed when it lacked formation and equipment, while Gareth’s visit had shown how meaningless thirty brave men would be against a lord’s household force if FireStorm stopped improving. Leather armor, shields, spearheads, arrows, and food for men drilling instead of farming all had to be paid for. FireStorm had attracted displaced young men during the bandit clearances, and Arlan intended to recruit from those willing to accept regular training.

The last share remained in reserve, partly against another Caron move and partly for the next craft Arlan intended to develop once the holding had breathing room. Arlan had already begun setting aside a smaller portion for experiments with the potters and kiln workers; alcohol had broken the immediate blockade, but relying on a single valuable product would leave FireStorm vulnerable to imitation or a targeted seizure of its trade.

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Morton finished writing the divisions and looked up. ”You are giving coin and grain directly to every household?”

”They produced it,” Arlan said. ”And hungry people do not become more loyal because their lord sits on a heavier chest.”

By afternoon, FireStorm looked less like a village that had escaped a blockade and more like one trying to outrun the next crisis. The arrival of so much silver produced no holiday beyond a few startled smiles; Morton had grain allocations to write, the smith had orders to place, and barrels still needed filling if Harlan’s monthly contract was to mean anything.

Harlan’s contacts began moving grain, salt, and iron toward hidden collection points; women worked the fermentation room in shifts. The distillery added two more sets of equipment so one failed vessel would not stop all production; oak barrels multiplied along the cellar wall.

The forge did not cool; hammering continued after sunset, and the added income let the smith replace material instead of choosing which broken tool deserved the last usable scrap of iron. New iron became hoes and repairs first, because fields fed men more reliably than swords did, but the guards also received better-maintained weapons as supplies allowed.

The guard itself expanded from thirty men toward fifty; recruits came mostly from the displaced families gathered during the clearances, men who understood that regular food and a defended home were part of their pay even before coin. Arlan did not count a man as useful merely because he could hold a spear; new recruits drilled until they could move without opening gaps around their neighbors. Arlan kept the same principles used during the bandit campaign: men learned to hold a shield beside another shield, keep spearpoints from tangling, obey a withdrawal, and avoid chasing a broken enemy into ground they had not checked.

In the reclaimed land outside the wall, oxen pulled plows while new families cleared stones. The twenty acres once called wasteland began to shrink beneath labor that FireStorm had not possessed when Michael Watson first opened Arlan’s eyes. Each cleared furrow would make the holding harder to starve.

Red Sun Flame moved toward Rainwood by routes absent from official toll records. Harlan’s men traveled in small groups, took delivery away from the busiest roads, and returned with the iron, salt, and grain that Gareth had tried to deny. FireStorm paid more for secrecy and risk, but the liquor’s margin absorbed the cost. Silver and supplies came back.

Arlan stood on the wall one afternoon with a small flask in hand and watched smoke rise from the distillery beside the older smoke of the smithy. The blockade had not disappeared; House Caron still controlled the nearest major market, the roads, and forces many times larger than FireStorm’s guard.

But the balance had changed; a horn sounded from the watchtower; not the slow call used for a returning cart. The lookout blew the warning pattern and then leaned over the parapet, shouting toward the yard.

A rider came through the gate at speed and dragged his horse to a stop beneath the wall.

”My lord! Gareth Caron is coming.” Arlan set the flask aside.

”How many?”

”One hundred and twenty household men. Ten knights. They are three miles out.” The rider swallowed before continuing.

”He says FireStorm is distilling forbidden liquor, defying Nightsong’s blockade, and trading with smugglers. He means to seal the holding, destroy the spirit, and take you back to Nightsong for trial.”

Below the wall, people stopped working as the warning passed from mouth to mouth. The last time Gareth had approached, he had brought more than three hundred men and left after imposing a blockade; this time he was bringing fewer soldiers.

He was also coming specifically for the thing that had made the blockade fail. Arlan looked toward the western road, where the first distant trace of dust was already rising above the autumn ground; behind him, fifty guards were beginning to assemble.