Before leaving for Deddings Town, Solomon walked his lands.
It was less an inspection and more a reality check. If he was to leave his home for weeks, he needed to know what he was leaving behind—and what he was fighting to save.
Nikken trailed him like a shadow, while Lushen and Lauchlan marched with hands on their hilts, their eyes scanning the reeds for threats.
The "village" of Mirekeep was a generous term. It was a cluster of hovels clinging to the only patch of dry ground in the swamp. The huts were low, built of mud and woven river grass, sinking slowly into the mire. The air smelled of stagnant water and human misery.
This isn't a fiefdom, Solomon thought, fighting the urge to gag. It's a graveyard waiting for the bodies.
"Is this it?" Solomon asked, stepping carefully over a puddle of slime. "Is there no other harvest?"
"We survive on what the river gives, my lord," Nikken sighed. "Eels, frogs, water snakes. If river grass were gold, House Bligh would be richer than the Lannisters. As it is... we have mud."
Solomon looked at the squalor. Naked children with swollen bellies played in the filth. Women with hollow eyes watched him from dark doorways. It was a scene of absolute, crushing poverty.
Suddenly, a commotion broke out ahead. A group of ragged children were wrestling in the muck, screaming.
"Lushen," Solomon ordered. "Break it up."
The big guard waded in, pulling two scrawny boys apart. "Here now! What's this madness?"
One boy, face smeared with snot and dirt, pointed an accusing finger. "He cheated! He was supposed to be the Ironborn reaver so I could kill him, but he hit me back!"
The other boy, wild-eyed, shouted back: "I don't want to be a squid! I want to be a soldier of Lord Solomon! I want to fight for the Lord!"
Solomon stopped. He looked at the starving children fighting over who got to die for him. It was absurd. It was tragic.
Then, the villagers began to emerge.
They came out of the mud huts like ghosts—widows, old men, orphans. They recognized the young lord, the one who had returned from the dead.
A woman burst from the crowd. It was Harke's widow. She dragged two small children behind her, running until she collapsed at Solomon's feet in a splash of dirty water.
"My lord! My lord!" she sobbed, pulling her confused children down with her. "Look! Look at him! This is Lord Solomon! This is the man who saved us!"
She slammed her forehead into the mud.
"Thank you! Thank you! Without the grain... without the coppers... my babes would be bones in the river! You gave us life!"
She turned to her children, shaking them. "Remember his face! Remember the Lord of Mirekeep! Your father died for him, and you will live for him! You owe him everything!"
The weeping spread like a contagion.
One by one, the other villagers fell to their knees. These were the families of the thirteen dead. The families Solomon had bankrupted himself to feed.
"The Seven bless Lord Solomon!"
"Long may he reign!"
"The Good Lord! The Kind Lord!"
Solomon stood in the center of the weeping crowd, feeling a heavy knot form in his chest.
He knew the law of the land. In Westeros, when a peasant soldier died, the lord didn't pay a pension. He took the widow's land because she had no man to work it. He forced her to marry a stranger or turned her out to starve. That was the "justice" of the Seven Kingdoms.
By simply giving them what was arguably theirs—compensation for their dead fathers and husbands—he had become a saint in their eyes.
They aren't kneeling out of fear, Solomon realized, looking at the tear-streaked faces. They are kneeling because for the first time in their miserable lives, a lord saw them as human.
It was a terrifying kind of power.
He looked at the widow, at the boys who wanted to be his soldiers, at the starving village that would die for him.
He had bought their loyalty with his last sack of grain. Now, he had to make sure their loyalty didn't get them all killed.
"We leave within the hour," Solomon said quietly to Nikken.
He turned his back on the adulation and walked toward the tower, his boots heavy with the mud of his people. He had a title to claim, and a liege lord to beg. The Trident's Dance was just beginning.