The rise of the Dragon Queen caused global sea trade to shrink rapidly, yet her massive project worth sixty million gold dragons made the grain market flourish like never before.
Thus, along both banks of the Little Rhoyne River, vast numbers of farmers began to appear. On lands that once grew cotton, castor beans, and hemp stalks, they now sowed wheat and soybeans.
Once the farmland was fully planted, the estate lords organized peasants to burn the hillsides and reclaim new fields.
It could be said that while Slaver's Bay was undergoing an agricultural Great Leap Forward, the Rhoyne River valley in western Essos was experiencing a smaller leap.
Among those taking part in this great wave of land reclamation was the Andal, Denzel. He even left his homeland with his family, sent by his master five hundred kilometers away to the Little Rhoyne as a long-term laborer.
Because of his skill in farming and rich experience, his master needed him to help reclaim newly purchased wasteland.
Before the age of fifteen, Denzel had been a herdsboy in the Hall of Harvests, tending cattle and plow-oxen for Count Astane.
The Hall of Harvests lay in fertile land perfect for farming, the granary of the Stormlands. The sigil of House Selmy—three golden stalks of wheat—told the whole story. From as early as he could remember, Denzel had been raised to be a farmer.
If nothing unexpected had happened, he should now be driving oxen to plow the Count's land, sowing the last winter wheat before the snows came.
But though he was a skilled hand at handling oxen, he never truly liked the work.
The boy dreamed instead of sailing ships across the seas, venturing to Jade Sea ports, to the Isle of Ib, to Yi Ti, to see the wonders of distant lands.
At fifteen, when his contract with Count Astane was fulfilled, he did not follow the wish of his late father to marry a farmer's daughter, settle down as a good farmer, and continue tilling the Selmy fields.
Instead, he went to King's Landing, entered the employ of a Pentoshi merchant, and became a sailor aboard the Soaring Pentoshi, a trading vessel.
For two years he sailed happily aboard her, visiting Braavos, Gulltown, White Harbor, Oldtown, Myr—cities he had never seen before.
But everything changed two years ago.
When the Dragon Queen seized Slaver's Bay, half the trade in the Summer Sea collapsed overnight.
Put simply, the Dragon Queen's conquest triggered a terrifying economic crisis across the known world.
With East–West trade reduced, the shipping and purchasing volumes of the cities along the Narrow Sea dropped drastically.
The Soaring Pentoshi was nothing more than a coastal flat-bottomed cargo ship, the equivalent of a carter at sea.
Without goods coming from the East, and with fewer Western wares to send eastward, the carter had nothing to do. Denzel lost his livelihood.
At that time, he happened to meet a girl he loved. So he settled honestly in Pentos.
He wanted to buy a house, but without one, her parents would not agree to give him their daughter.
Unfortunately, house prices were sky-high. A sixty-square-meter cottage outside the city walls cost the equivalent of thirty years of his wages.
Of course, he did not have thirty years of wages saved. His only option was to borrow from the Bank of Pentos—just as all Pentoshi freedmen must, whether for homes or for daily life.
Soon, Denzel discovered a grim truth: what he and his wife earned was often less than the cost of their basic needs.
To eat, they had to borrow more.
Thus, their debt grew day by day, with no hope of escape.
Later, he met a fellow countryman, a maester of economics from Oldtown, who finally explained the truth to him.
After losing its war against Braavos, Pentos had all but become a half-colony of the Braavosi.
And a half-colony must sign unequal treaties.
Beyond the military restrictions—no more than twenty warships, no hiring of sellswords, no contracts with free companies, and no army larger than the city guard—Pentos was also forbidden to keep slaves.
Yet the city's rulers needed slaves. They were the cheapest labor, the most obedient, and they held value.
So the rulers devised a way to turn freedmen into slaves: they deliberately raised the prices of necessities, reduced wages, and forced the people into debt to the trade princes who ruled the city.
Those who owed debts had no choice but to work for their masters.
Such men were called "free slaves" (this is how the original author Martin set it up, reflecting America). In name they were free, but in essence no different from slaves.
Denzel became one of these free slaves, bound to Illyrio, one of the trade princes.
Even before the Dragon Queen's plan to purchase sixty million gold dragons' worth of grain, Illyrio had begun expanding his grain holdings. Afterwards, he bought even more land and hired countless farmers to reclaim it.
By this time, from Pentos to the Little Rhoyne—over five hundred kilometers—Illyrio's estates sprawled, connected conveniently by the Valyrian Road.
Two years as a free slave taught Denzel that there was little to fear. His life was no different than it had been as a Westerosi freedman.
He continued to farm for his master, who in turn paid him enough to live on.
It was the same everywhere.
Since that was the case, he settled down just like the tens of thousands of other free slaves in the city.
Even news of the Dragon Queen—"Breaker of Chains," "Mhysa," "the Liberator of Slaves"—did not stir him much. After all, he was not a slave. How could she possibly liberate him?
Perhaps, he thought, he would live his entire life only ever hearing her stories, never once intersecting with her fate.
Until this day.
Around eight in the morning, the sun was bright, the air mild, the northwest wind soft as a lover's touch.
Denzel wore a gray linen tunic and shorts, his large bare feet planted in the earth, his exposed skin tanned dark like old leather from the sun.
He was driving a glossy black ox, turning over moist, soft black soil.
His wife and mother-in-law followed behind, each carrying a green gourd ladle filled with soybeans, dropping seeds into the furrow left by the snowy plow blade.
"Whoosh—" Suddenly the light dimmed overhead, as if a great shadow fell, accompanied by the sound of rushing air.
"Moo—" The steady old ox, calmer than any hound, suddenly froze, its hind legs buckling as it collapsed in the mud.
Before Denzel could even cry out in anger, his wife screamed at the top of her lungs, "Dragon—!"
"Dragon?" Denzel jolted, looking up. Sure enough, he saw a black and a green dragon, like two sharp blades, slashing across the blue sky.
They moved so fast that they left two clear trails through the white clouds.
"Dragons! True dragons! Targaryen—this must be Targaryen! The Dragon Queen. It must be Queen Daenerys herself riding above, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Protector of the Realm…"
For some reason, a surge of excitement suddenly welled up inside Denzel, and he lost his composure, shouting at his wife and mother-in-law.
It seemed as though he wanted to tell them, "Do you see that? That is the Queen of the Andals! I am also an Andal, once a Westerosi."
But his mother-in-law didn't think any more highly of him just because her son-in-law had the faintest of connections—separated by thousands of miles—to the Dragon Queen. She only kept urging him on:
"No matter who is on that dragon, it has nothing to do with you or with us. Hurry up and pull the old ox back on its feet. We still have seven or eight acres of land waiting for us to work on!"
His mother-in-law was wrong. The Dragon Queen's arrival this time truly had something to do with them.
Barely a quarter of an hour later, the black dragon flew back.
And then they were stunned on the spot. Just as the street minstrels sang, the Dragon Queen's black dragon really could speak!
"Farmers employed by Governor Illyrio Mopatis, immediately take your oxen and horses and follow the Valyrian stone road to the river mouth."
"Farmers not employed by Illyrio, if you wish to earn a golden sun coin, you may also go."
The dragon's voice rumbled like thunder tearing through the sky, carrying clearly for miles around.
Denzel was still dazed, unsure whether he should obey the dragon's words.
Just then, he saw the estate steward, drenched in sweat, riding a mule at full gallop along the field ridge, shouting:"Head to the West Crossing immediately! Everyone, men and women, young and old. If you don't arrive within half an hour, your wages will be docked!"
What else could Denzel do?He quickly dismantled the plow blade behind the old ox, then led the animal and jogged toward the West Crossing with his wife and mother-in-law.
On the way, they encountered many others driving cattle, riding horses, stewards, and even mercenaries.
Yes, the little mercenary band that guarded the estate.
A grand procession of more than a hundred people.
"Why are we going to the West Crossing?" his wife asked, her calloused hand gripping his arm.
"Maybe to cross the river, to reach Qohor on the other side," Denzel guessed uncertainly.
He truly couldn't make sense of it. Aside from a statue of a dragon-bodied, human-headed figure and waist-high weeds, the crossing had no ferries at all—the riverbanks were already connected by a stone bridge.
But he was wrong again. They did not cross the river. Instead, they stopped near that statue of the Dragon Queen.
"Look, a knight," his wife said, pointing to a fully armored man in the middle of the crowd.
Denzel trembled. The knight wore a white iron helm adorned with seven-colored feathers, fine white enamel armor across his chest, and a wide, creamy-white cloak as bright as snow, gleaming with the hopeful light of a maiden's heart. Was this not the legendary White Knight of song and story?
Once more, he was thrilled.
His former master, Ser Ember of Harvest Hall, had an uncle—none other than Barristan, the legendary White Knight hailed as "the Paragon of Westerosi Knighthood."
Later, Denzel heard from the steward that this White Knight was Jorah Mormont.
This man he also knew of, for the reputation of the "Lord of Bear Island whose wife ran away with another" was too infamous. Everyone knew the tale.
And it wasn't just Illyrio's steward who had come. Every nearby estate, without exception, had brought their people, ropes, and carts.
It was said that whenever the Dragon Queen visited an estate on dragonback, the terrifying "Deathwing" and the "Great Protector of Light" roared out: "Do as I say, for I am the Great Protector of Light. Disobey, and Deathwing shall descend upon you."
What choice did the stewards have?
Denzel looked around. He saw only Ser Mormont and another weathered, middle-aged knight called Ser Clinton. In the sky there was only a single green dragon. The black dragon and the Dragon Queen herself were nowhere in sight.
But he had no time to ponder further. Three to four hundred people arrived in succession, and the crowd split into two groups. The White Knight led one group to the estate to dismantle houses for bricks, to build a "fortress" (a forge) on the Valyrian road. Ser Clinton commanded others to move the sphinx statue, which had the head of a woman and the body of a dragon.
Thick hemp ropes were tied around the statue, the ropes running through pulleys on a giant wooden frame up ahead, then branching into forty or fifty lines, each pulled by oxen.
Others laid gravel, coarse sand, and bricks between the statue and the stone road.
Once all this was done, Ser Clinton pushed over a cart loaded with smooth, solid iron balls, each the size of a child's fist.
He placed them beneath the statue, leaving a hand's width between each, arranging thirty or forty in total.
(End of Chapter)
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