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Ch.85: An Eye-Opening Experience
🕑 Added 2025-03-01 06:30:01 +0000 UTCBolton Lands
POV of Eddard Stark
The next day, Eddard Stark and his men continued their travel to Dreadfort, and he was flabbergasted by how smooth it was to travel on such a road.
Carts and horse carriages especially had a far easier time on these 'Concrete' roads than on dirt paths.
Traveling through the straight road, it took them only two more days of journey before they finally reached Dreadfort.
And every single person within his party was shocked by the fact that the whole castle was surrounded by a canopy of weirwood trees, giving it an ethereal feeling.
As he looked at the red-leafed trees, he started to wonder if the rumors about Lord Domeric Bolton being blessed by the Old Gods were something more than mere rumors.
After all, weirwood trees were one of the rarest trees in the whole north. Not to forget the fact that every weirwood tree takes decades if not centuries to reach maturity and can live for thousands of years.
There was also the fact that the wood of Weirwood tree was perhaps the most sought-after wood in Westeros if not in the whole world.
By just selling the wood from some of the trees surrounding Dreadfort, Lord Domeric Bolton could gain enough wealth to raise another Dreadfort castle beside the original one.
Of course, because of the fact that Heart Trees were made up of weirwood trees, the trees were considered sacred in the North and no one would even think about cutting the trees up for some more gold dragons.
After gaping at the Weirwood trees surrounding Dreadfort for a long and embarrassing moment, he came out of his shock and took notice of the lands surrounding Dreadfort.
History lessons about Dreadfort told him that it was a large and dreary castle. Hard to siege thanks to its tall walls and surrounded by barren lands for a couple of miles with no village or settlement within eyesight.
Well, it seems the history books were either outdated or Lord Bolton had created a miracle once again.
Instead of empty and barren land, the Dreadfort was surrounded by a small bustling town that was still growing in size if the numerous workers and the pre-built road were anything to go by.
"Father." He heard Robb call out to him and when he looked at his son, he found that the boy gaping at something in the distance "Look." His son said.
He did and saw the start of the wall that would one day surround and protect the city growing outside Dreadfort.
But that was not what caught his eye when he looked upon sight nor what caused his jaw to almost fall to the floor.
No, it was the dozen or so giants and the 4 mammoths pulling heavy weights and helping the builders in building the wall that had caught his attention.
Giants. Something that he had once thought to be a subject of myth and legend.
Until Lord Domeric Bolton took thousand men and became the first lord to go the North of the Wall in centuries. And return with a tribe of giants and a herd of mammoths.
Well, he had known that young Lord Bolton brought giants, mammoths, and wargs with him from North of the wall. But knowing something and actually seeing it with his own eyes was really different.
"Let us continue." He told his men, and they finally entered the growing town that held the factories that produced steel weapons, glass, books, and other products built by the one favored by the Old Gods.
Then he heard a bell ringing sound coming from far away. When he turned toward the direction that sound came, he saw a distinguished stone tower building. His eyes caught the building before when they were further away from the town, but he thought it was just a wooden watch tower.
But when he saw the tower from a closer distance, he realized that this tower was anything but just a watch tower. It looked like the tower clock that Lord Bolton gave him as a gift in the past and the chime was similar as well.
Then Eddard Stark realized his mistake. This tower didn’t look like a tower clock in his castle, but his tower clock looked like this Tower. Somehow Lord Bolton managed to build a giant clock building in his town. But why? And just how much wealth did the Boltons have?
He then thought about something, took his pocket watch, another gift from Lord Bolton, from his pocket, and looked at it. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. Just as he heard from the chime. Then he understood that with this tower, everyone in the town could tell the time without even looking at it.
Store owners, merchants, smallfolk, soldiers, workers, everyone…
‘With this tower, this place would be the most organized and efficient town, no, city in the future. But why didn’t I hear anything about this building till now? My men didn't think it was important enough to tell me?’
This journey was really an eye-opening experience for Eddard Stark.
As they came closer to Dreadfort and the canopy of trees surrounding the Castle, he finally saw something that once again shocked him to the core.
Because the trees that he had thought were simple weirwood trees had faces carved onto their trunks, making them the Heart Trees that he had been taught to worship since childhood.
But… there has been no new Heart Tree since the First Men chased the Children of the Forest from the North.
Does that mean that lord Bolton carved the faces on his own? No, doing such a thing would be too blasphemous.
But what if he was truly blessed by the Old Gods?
