ASOIAF: The Rise of House Ashenblade.

Before FireStorm answered Renly’s summons, Arlan used the remaining quiet for a problem the hearing would not solve.

The coming inquiry made the weakness impossible to ignore. FireStorm could prove its men were organized and lawfully employed, but organization meant little if the first serious fight left half the line holding patched shields and captured blades of different lengths. Cade had been building habits faster than Morton could standardize the armory; Rodrick had made the political point plainly before leaving the council room.

”Elton is trying to describe every armed man here as evidence of rebellion; we cannot answer that by pretending we have no soldiers. We answer it by showing a disciplined household force with records, officers, equipment, and a defensive purpose.”

Cade had agreed for less philosophical reasons.

”A shield wall is only as consistent as its worst shield. If one spear is a foot shorter than the next, the line discovers that fact when someone dies.”

FireStorm’s troops were improving faster than their equipment. Captured swords, locally repaired blades, old leather, system-bought pieces, and mismatched shields could serve a village watch, and they were a poor basis for the disciplined infantry Cade wanted to build.

Arlan entered the locked delivery room alone and opened the Myriad Realms Forging Group.

[Balin Anvil — Dwarven Blacksmith]

Under his current permissions, Balin Anvil of the Ironpeak Mountains listed standardized military work rather than singular weapons. Arlan sent the specification once: fifty hardened-leather infantry sets with swords, spears, and round shields; ten articulated plate harnesses; two heavy axes; two hundred armor-piercing arrowheads; and the tools needed to maintain all of it.

Balin had completed stock available. Immediate delivery cost one hundred twenty gold dragons. Arlan accepted after checking Morton’s military reserve twice. FireStorm could afford the order now, but one hundred twenty dragons still represented roofs, seed, wages, and iron not bought elsewhere.

[Payment received: 120 Gold Dragons]

[Order cleared for immediate delivery]

Pale light formed over the floor, and sealed oak crates appeared one after another until half the room became inaccessible. Arlan inspected the contents before showing anyone else.

The delivery itself created a problem no seller had priced. The crates could not remain in a room whose door admitted only one man at a time, and carrying them into the yard would show every watcher exactly when FireStorm received foreign arms. Arlan brought Morton and Cade inside under separate pretexts. They opened the largest chests, wrapped plate pieces in sacking, and moved the order after dark with kiln carts returning empty from the charcoal sheds. Local guards saw heavy loads and were told they contained military stores; no one was asked to swear ignorance he could not honestly keep.

The leather was thick where it needed to absorb force and flexible at the joints. Swords shared length and balance. Spear shafts were straight, their sockets tight, and the shields were built in layers. Arlan checked the plate knowing a lance could still kill the man wearing it and a heavy axe could leave a dent.

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When Cade and the local smiths measured the first ten trainees, one coat bound across broad shoulders, another hung loose at the waist, and a plate thigh caught above a short man’s knee. Two shield grips suited bare hands but pinched winter gloves. The ash spear shafts had crossed from a drier realm and would need watching in Stormlands damp.

Cade set aside chalk, awls, spare straps, and a fitting board. ”Same weapons,” he said, ”not the same man fifty times.”

The fifty infantry sets would go only to men who passed Cade’s selection. Ten plate harnesses remained in reserve for mounted work, officers, or future household knights who could use them. The two heavy axes suited Bor, though Rodrick prohibited their issue until the wound in his back closed. Arrowheads went to the fletcher; the maintenance chest and fitting board went to the smithy.

That last crate mattered more than it looked, and standard equipment only stayed standard if broken straps were replaced, edges were maintained, shield fittings matched, and nobody improvised repairs with whatever nail happened to be nearby. FireStorm was buying a military system, not merely a pile of attractive steel.

Morton created a separate armory ledger before a single item was issued. Every sword, spear, shield, harness, and tool received an assigned user or storage place. Equipment lost in battle was one matter; equipment quietly walking into a cousin’s shed was another.

The first count failed by two arrowheads. Cade wanted the fletcher searched. Morton counted again and found both pieces fixed beneath the lid by a smear of packing grease. The mistake cost half an hour and embarrassed everyone except Rodrick, who wrote the corrected total beside the first rather than scraping it away. An erased error looked like concealment later; a visible correction showed how the store reached its final number.

Cade then broke one shield deliberately. He braced it against a post, struck the rim with one of the axes reserved for Bor, and split a facing board without tearing the layered backing. The armorer removed three iron clamps of matching size from the maintenance chest and repaired it before supper. The shield remained scarred and usable. Standard issue had earned its first advantage without anyone pretending the wood could not break.

Half an hour later, Cade tested three spears against a balance mark and found their weight close enough that the same drill applied to all. Brienne examined one plate set and identified a shoulder strap that would chafe beneath repeated overhead cuts. A local leatherworker moved the buckle before issue. Bor found the axes. Rodrick, who had finally permitted him out of the infirmary, watched the giant lift one in each hand.

”Do not reopen the wound.” Bor swung once, carefully by his standards and alarmingly by everyone else’s.

”Good axes.”

The recruits had gathered at the edge of the yard. Arlan let them look. ”This equipment does not belong to whoever reaches it first,” he said. ”Tomorrow Cade selects fifty for the Black Armor Army; those men receive fitted kit, higher pay, and household support tied to service. Everyone else remains in training and can compete for reserve places later.” A murmur ran through the men.

”No one buys a place, no one inherits one. No steward’s cousin gets one because he is a steward’s cousin; you earn it.”

Cade stepped onto the platform and pointed toward stretchers, shields, sandbags, and a wagon with one wheel deliberately loosened. ”Then sleep while you can,” he told the recruits. ”Tomorrow is unpleasant.”

Morton locked the unissued plate in a separate cage and gave Cade one key while keeping the other. A training roster could change overnight; an armory count could not depend upon whoever shouted loudest in the morning. The men dismissed from the yard saw equipment waiting, but no open door through which favor could reach it.

Eighty men reported before dawn. Cade placed three boards on the table: load, line, judgment. ”We take fifty,” he said. ”Not fifty-one because someone’s mother cries; not forty-nine because I dislike a man’s face. Fifty who can still be useful when another man becomes a burden.”