Chapter 338: Slave Bay (Part I)
The 800-foot-tall pyramid rises from its majestic square base and soars into the sky. The Queen's courtyard sits at its top, surrounded by greenery, flowers, and sparkling water...... From here you can see the whole city: narrow winding alleys and wide brick streets, temples and barns, burrows and palaces, brothels and bathhouses, gardens and fountains, and the red brick stands of the Colosseum. Outside the walls are the ash sea, the winding Skazadan River, the dry brown hills, burnt orchards, and charred fields.
The high queen's residence is like the top of a holy mountain, but it is a pity that the queen is missing, only the hand of the queen who is worried and full of anxiety.
Even Petyr Berish had to admit that his brain power was limited.
He appeared before Daenerys and defected to her on the day Daenerys took Meereen, when the hungry people of Yuankai and Astapor, who had followed the queen here, rushed into the largest city of Slave Bay, taking advantage of the chaos of its fall to loot and slaughter with impunity. The majestic stepped pyramids of the nobles were spared, but the plebeian area was severely damaged. Although the Unsullied eventually stabilized the situation, Petyr managed to restore order with a combination of hard and soft measures, and reluctantly worked and established his rule over the tiger and the wolf.
It wasn't easy, and he was at home in Westeros, except for his brilliant brain, meticulous thinking, and the ability to pull any means into his ends...... In fact, he also has an understanding of the aristocratic lords, and the contempt of the people around him for his "little finger" plays a key role.
And in the nest of poisonous snakes in Meereen, he has no humble background as the greatest cover, he is in the open, in full view of everyone, and the enemies in the shadows can even be more unscrupulous than him. He had to tighten the strings of struggle, conduct government affairs during the day, and sleep with one eye open at night. In this environment, for the first time since his "awakening", Petyr did not have the slightest extra energy to carry out intrigues, but devoted all his experience and mind to protecting the interests of his master.
What sustained his belief was the burning anger in his heart, which assisted Daenerys Targaryen in fighting back to Westeros, to Tully, to Arryn, to Lannister...... The desire for revenge on all who once despised him, mocked him, judged him, betrayed him. One day, he will sit on the Iron Throne and rule the Seven Kingdoms on behalf of the Queen, and he will find out clearly about the "note incident" that ruined him and had to flee overseas, and cut off the heads of every participant and stick them on the bamboo poles at the head of the Red Keep wall!
......
It was the distant future, and now he had to be the hand of the queen diligently.
***
Meereen's new nobles quickly succumbed to both hard and soft pressures, and the city began to operate under the rule of the True Dragon, constantly producing the supplies and armaments needed for their own defenses and Daenerys' counterattack on Westeros...... Unfortunately, this was probably the only good news for Petyr after he boarded the "Last Targaryen" thief ship.
The wayward and young queen traveled all the way, capturing Astapo and Yuankai before arriving at Meereen, but because of the wrong way of handling it, she left a mess behind, and finally had to take over by herself.
Astapor: Daenerys left behind a council of three doctors, scholars, and priests, without considering whether the three had the ability and experience to rule, let alone leaving them with enough force to protect themselves. Sure enough, the council was quickly overthrown and wiped out by a butcher named Cleon. The former slave, who slaughtered pigs at an unbeatable speed, ostensibly abolished slavery, but in fact became the new slave owner himself, and the butcher king grabbed all the children of the former nobles and began to train the new Unsullied. Every pyramid in Astapoli has been turned into a barracks, the streets are full of death and lies, and the shops are filled with little food but slaves of all kinds, more like hell than Daenerys had before she passed.
Yuankai: With a few simple but ingenious tricks and a backlash, the queen easily took the city, but probably the victory came too easily to be cherished - Daenerys did not drain its resources, did not establish a new order, and did not even deal with the slave owners in power, but only added countless "free people" to the team to feed, and hurried to the next stop. To make matters worse, Daenerys' slave owners immediately reverted to their rule and even saw her as their greatest threat, sending envoys to Valantis, Quilles, and other free-trade city-states to spread rumors about Daenerys, and to rally more allies to wage war against the Queen.
Being cruel when you shouldn't be cruel and being merciful when you shouldn't be kind — this is typical of political childishness, but considering that Daenerys is indeed a novice queen, Petyr doesn't have much to complain about.
***
After much planning and arrangement, the nascent Mother of Dragons barely managed to gain a foothold with its own support and survived the most dangerous stage of nascent life.
But the real challenge soon came, and after Yuankai regrouped his slaves and mercenaries and united with the legions of Neogith to capture Astapor, Meereen ushered in the armed intervention of the former and the fleet of Valantis. Petyr integrated all the resources inside and outside the city, established an alliance with the Lazas, known as the "goatmen" by the Dothraki outside the Ring of Sandstone Mountains, and reorganized the Unsullied, mercenaries and hungry people who followed the Mother of Dragons to form a new Meereen army, and sent troops to stop the influx of more hungry people from the south to bring hunger and pestilence......
Despite all their efforts, there is still a huge disparity in the strength of the enemy and the enemy. In the end, Daenerys accepted his suggestion and made peace with her opponents who had a chance to settle it once and for all by negotiating compromises and concessions.
As a result, Astapo and Yuankai, who had resumed slavery, "respected" Daenerys as a result of the liberation of Meereen. In return, Meereen also respected the first two institutions, allowed the departure of those who voluntarily became slaves in the cities, opened the ports and allowed the free entry and exit of the major free trade city-states and the trading ships of Slave Bay, and compensated the former Grand Slave Owners of Meereen......
In this case, a fragile peace was reached. With the help of the Queen, Yuan Kai eliminated the two major rivals and became the monopolist of the human trade in Slave Bay, the biggest winner of this farcical slave emancipation.
But as if to guard against Daenerys's rebellion, Yuankai's army was still stationed south of Meereen, and the warships were still parked in the harbor. Whether it was out of necessity or simply humiliation, the slave owners reopened the slave market by building slave pens and auction stands outside the city walls and under the noses of the Meereen defenders.
One wall, two worlds!
"They mocked me to my face and showed the world that I was powerless to stop them. ”
Outside the walls, slave owners lined up to the yellow tents at the end of the field of vision, and the New Giss Iron Legion, the Giscari Legion, and many more free mercenaries were encamped under the protection of the trenches dug by the slaves...... This scene undoubtedly provokes the "wrath of the sleeping dragon", and Daenerys looks down on the scene and angrily vows that she will one day defeat the provocateurs and crush slavery once and for all.
It stands to reason that this is not difficult: after all, the queen has the most famous and powerful biological weapon in the world, the three magic dragons. And they're really growing, but the problem is that Daenerys doesn't know how to harness her dragon.
The three dragons had grown from kitten-sized to over ten feet long, and as they grew in size, so did their appetite. At some point, Daenerys could no longer use her slender fingers to pick up pieces of meat to feed her "children" easily, and at some point, they began to forage for food on their own...... Sheep and cattle grazing in the wild...... It is said that there are still people.
In order to prevent the three increasingly wild dragons from causing even greater trouble, Daenerys decides to hold them for now. Viserion was the first dragon to be chained, and its mother led it down to the pit with a few bulls. When it was fed and drowsy, the soldiers rushed in and locked him up. Rego had to work harder, and the soldiers had to cover him with a large net of heavy chains while he basked in the sun on the Queen's terrace, and it took him three days to stumble down the servants' steps. Six people were burned as a result.
And Drogon, the winged shadow, the strongest, fiercest, and wildest of the three dragons, with night-like scales and purgatory-like eyes...... The Queen's soldiers made three unsuccessful attempts to capture him. At dusk, the last failed attempt with heavy losses, it finally spread its wings and flew north across the Skazadan River, all the way to the Dothraki steppe.
Three dragons, two imprisoned and one missing...... This method of dealing with it made Petyr frown: if the dragon that has not appeared for a hundred years has not only become a helper but a burden, will Daenerys really rely on the Unsullied to reclaim all of Westeros? He issued a new order in the name of the Queen's Hand: collect information and knowledge about the "dragon master" from all possible sources for the queen's reference and learning, so as to control the three weapons of destruction as soon as possible and pave the way for clearing all obstacles.
It was purely out of the goodwill of the overall situation, without the slightest personal thought, and Petyr even took command of the operation himself. Unfortunately, the art of domesticating and harnessing dragons has long since been lost with the fall of Valyria, and after some bounty and inquiry, he did not collect the legendary dragon harnessing technique, and only came to one result: there are only three places left in this world...... It is possible to find systematic knowledge related to dragons.
First of all, of course, in the ruins of the destroyed Valyria, the apocalypse killed all the Valyrians in the affected area, but did not completely destroy the peninsula.
Then there's Dragonstone in Westeros and the library in King's Landing...... As the last Valyrian family to breed and control dragons, there is a chance that clues will be left in places where the Targaryens' family has lived for a long time. Provided, of course, that it was not ordered to be destroyed by Robert Baratheon.
Finally, the gossip came from nowhere: Yaxia, located in the far southeast of the known world, known as the Land of Shadows, not only preserves complete knowledge of dragon mastery, but even has a living dragon.
......
The ruins of Valyria are said to be dangerously infested with monsters and demons, while King's Landing and Dragonstone are under enemy control. The willful and impulsive queen probably had a hot brain, and in the accidental return of the missing black dragon, despite the exclamations and dissuasion of others, jumped on Zhuo Geng's back in full view of everyone, and flew east on the dragon to find and learn the true dragon mastery.
——