The feast was over. The shouting had died down. Now came the math.
Ronan stood in the Lord's Solar of Winterfell. It was a stark, unadorned room, warmed by a large hearth. Ned Stark sat behind his heavy oak desk. Maester Luwin, the castle's wise man, stood by the window, holding a piece of the blue spring steel breastplate.
Luwin was frowning. He held a magnifying lens to the metal, scratching it with a file. The file skidded off, leaving no mark.
"It is not Valyrian steel," Luwin muttered, his chains clinking softly. "It lacks the ripples. But it is harder than castle forged iron. And lighter."
He looked up at Ronan, his eyes narrowed behind his lenses. "You say this is a matter of heat and oil? Not spells?"
"Carbon, Maester," Ronan said. "Iron is soft. Charcoal is carbon. If you mix them in the liquid state at the correct ratio—about one percent carbon—you get steel. If you quench it in oil, you trap the crystal structure. It becomes a spring."
Luwin lowered the lens. "The Citadel has books on metallurgy. None speak of 'crystal structures' in invisible forms."
"Then the Citadel needs new books," Ronan said.
Ned Stark leaned forward. "Maester Luwin is not easily impressed, Lord Ronan. Nor am I. You have promised five hundred suits. That is more steel than the Wolfswood has produced in a century."
"I can deliver," Ronan said. "But I need something in return. I need the land rights to the Western Ridge. The rocky hills bordering the Stony Shore."
"The barren lands?" Ned asked. "Nothing grows there but gorse and moss. It is poor grazing."
"I don't want to graze sheep," Ronan said. "I want what is underneath."
Ned studied him. He didn't understand what Ronan was hunting, but he trusted the boy's results. He took a quill and signed a parchment.
"The ridge is yours," Ned said. "Along with the mineral rights. But be warned, Ronan. The smallfolk say those hills are haunted. They call them the Black Lands."
"Ghosts don't scare me, Lord Stark," Ronan said, taking the parchment. "Only rust."
The Canal Proposal
Before leaving, Ronan walked to the large map of the North hanging on the wall. He traced a finger down the Kingsroad, stopping at the Neck—the swampy choke point that separated the North from the South.
"One more thing, my Lord," Ronan said. "The Twins."
Ned's face hardened. "House Frey controls the crossing. We pay their toll because we must."
"We pay because we are thinking in two dimensions," Ronan said. He tapped the Fever River, which flowed into the Neck from the west, and the Trident, which flowed from the east.
"The distance between these two rivers is less than thirty miles," Ronan said. "If we dug a cut... a canal... we could float barges from the Sunset Sea to the Narrow Sea. We could bypass the Twins entirely."
Ned looked at the map. The idea was audacious. It would change the trade routes of the entire continent.
"The Neck is a swamp," Ned said. "It swallows men and horses. To dig a trench there would cost a fortune in lives."
"Not if we use dredgers," Ronan said. "Steam powered dredgers."
"Steam?" Ned asked.
"Someday," Ronan smiled. "Keep the idea in your mind, Lord Stark. The Freys only have power because they sit on a bridge. If we move the river, the bridge leads to nowhere."
[Seed Planted: The Northern Canal]
[Strategic Vision: Grand]
The Return
The journey back to Blackwood was fast. The paved road made the return trip a blur of grey stone and iron wheels.
But as they approached the Keep, the triumph of Winterfell evaporated.
The sky above Blackwood wasn't clear. It was choked with smoke.
Ronan rode into the courtyard. Varrick was waiting for him. The administrator looked haggard. He was holding a stack of the grey requisition forms.
"Welcome home, my Lord," Varrick said, his voice tight. "We have a problem."
"We have a contract," Ronan said, dismounting. "Five hundred suits. Tell Kennos to fire the furnaces."
"We can't," Varrick said.
Ronan froze. "Why?"
Varrick pointed to the hills surrounding the castle.
Ronan looked.
Three months ago, those hills had been thick with pine and sentinel trees. Now, they were bald. Stumps dotted the landscape like tombstones.
"We have eaten the forest," Varrick whispered. "The Blast Furnace eats ten tons of charcoal a day. The glassworks eats five. The heating system eats two. We are cutting trees faster than they can grow. We have fuel for maybe... two weeks."
Ronan looked at the denuded hills. He had committed the classic mistake of early industrialization. He had scaled production without securing his energy source.
If the fire went out, the steel would stop. The glass would stop. The keep would freeze. And he would default on his contract to the Starks.
"The charcoal is gone," Ronan said, realizing the gravity of the situation. "So we switch to the black rock."
"The coal?" Varrick asked. "Kennos tried. He threw the raw black rocks into the forge. The smoke... it was yellow and choking. It made the iron brittle. It shattered like glass."
"That's because of the sulfur," Ronan said. "We have to bake it first. We have to make Coke."
"We have another problem, my Lord," Varrick interrupted. "The mine."
The Flooded Deep
They rode out to the Western Ridge—the "Black Lands" Ned had just granted him.
A crude mine shaft had been dug into the earth, following the vein of coal Ronan had spotted with his Eye.
Peasants were standing around the entrance, looking defeated. A bucket chain was moving, men passing leather pails of muddy water hand to hand, dumping it into a ditch.
It was useless. For every bucket they pulled out, two more seeped in from the water table.
"It flooded yesterday," the foreman said. "We hit a spring at fifty feet. The coal is underwater, my Lord. We can't reach it."
Ronan walked to the edge of the pit. It was dark, cold water.
The energy he needed to save his empire was right there, twenty feet down, locked behind a wall of water.
He needed a pump.
He looked at the bucket chain. Human muscle was too weak.
He looked at the river. It was too far away to run a drive shaft.
He needed a machine that could generate its own power, right here, in the middle of nowhere.
Ronan sat on a rock and pulled out a fresh sheet of grey paper. He drew a cylinder. He drew a piston. He drew a boiler.
"Varrick," Ronan said, not looking up.
"Yes, my Lord?"
"Send a cart to the glassworks. I need copper. All of it. And send Kennos here. We are going to build a monster."
"A monster?"
"A machine that breathes fire and drinks water," Ronan said, sketching the rocker arm of the Newcomen Engine. "It will be loud. It will be dangerous. And it will change the world."
He looked at the flooded mine.
"We are entering the Steam Age, Varrick. Ready or not."
Status Update:
• Resource Crisis: Wood/Charcoal depleted.
• Objective: Drain the Coal Mine.
• Tech Unlock: Steam Power (Pending Construction).
• Threat: Economic Collapse if failed.
...….
Author Note
Hi guys! Thank you for reading my fanfiction.
I wanted to let you know that I'm releasing bonus chapters for Power Stones. Here are the goals:
50 Power Stones: 1 Bonus Chapter
80 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapter
100 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
125 Power Stones: 2 Bonus Chapters
Thanks for the support!