"Egger, you're really making it hard for me. Tyrion was troubled, "Father agreed to me to come and negotiate with you because you and I are close to each other, and we have the best hope of negotiating a suitable price that is acceptable to both parties." There are 3,000 defenders in Golden Tooth City, more than 10,000 elites have been assembled in Lanniport Harbor, and the 10,000 new troops trained by my cousin, Sir Staffor, have begun to take shape and can go to war at any time. And then there's the mercenaries and freeriders you can recruit...... An army of 30,000 men can be assembled in the west! Whether this force will hold high the red dragon banner and fight for the queen or be the enemy depends on the results we can negotiate today!"

Tyrion didn't want to say such a powerful remark, but the truth is: because of its neutrality for several years, the Westside is indeed the largest force in the Seven Kingdoms that retains most of its strength, and it has the leverage and the right to negotiate with either side. Rather, the conditions listed by Egger would not have been known to anyone who did not know it at first glance to think that the Queen's army had breached Lannisport and besieged Castle Rock...... Cornered the Lannisters.

In desperation, he had no choice but to show his muscles in order to pave the way for the next bargain.

"The Westside can pay for the Iron Throne the Iron Vault arrears left by Robert Baratheon, all of them. Tyrion directly threw out the negotiation price that Tywin gave him, "If Her Majesty is not satisfied, she can also borrow another 100,000 gold dragons to stabilize her financial situation in the early days of her reign......"

Egg raised his hand, interrupting Tyrion's words.

He didn't want to make this conversation between friends too much gunpowder, but ...... Politics is impersonal.

The Western Frontier did have 30,000 troops, a number of no water, and with Tywin's old calculations, it is impossible to say that even the dragon hunting crossbows in the army have been installed on a large scale...... Such a strong strength undoubtedly gave the Lannister family the confidence and ambition, and if they did not show their strength and try to talk about it with an empty mouth, it would only make Tyrion feel that he had no regard for his old feelings and wanted to kill him by his feelings.

"It's a little stuffy in the tent, so come out for a walk with me. I happen to have something new to show you. ”

Is this a talk of collapsing and chasing customers?

Tyrion frowned, but seeing that Egg's expression didn't look angry, he jumped out of his chair and followed Egg out of the tent.

They were heading in the direction of the Western Wall of the makeshift camp.

"Who is the commander of the defenders of Golden Tooth City at this moment?"

"My uncle Kai Feng. ”

As the number two in the West, a mere border fortress certainly doesn't take his turn to take charge in person, and Tywin's subtext for putting a big man of this caliber on the front line is actually that the Westside is ready for war, and if he can't negotiate with the Queen, the two armies of Lannisport and Oxford will rush here...... From here, enter the River and follow the main road to King Landing – and of course, King Stannis.

Even though the second eldest of the Lu family is also quite mean to the West, at least he has no intention of taking the life of the Lannister family.

Tyrion hoped that a smart man like Egg would understand what this meant.

"Yay. ”

Egger showed a relaxed expression, and a sentence came out of nowhere, continuing to lead the way.

The war between you and me is on the verge of breaking out, so what's so good?

Tyrion almost wanted to ask, but held back. The two of them, followed by a group of guards, climbed the western wall of the barracks, which was actually a wooden shelf behind a thin wall, and looked in the direction of the western border.

Although winter is not over yet, the climate in the Riverlands is a little warmer - even the snow-covered wilderness is not as white as the north, but mottled with bare land. The road that had been run over by the horses and carts stretched like a thick black line from under your feet to the distant ...... At this distance, it looks like a little toy Golden Tooth City.

The temperature here is actually more than ten degrees warmer than that of Winterfell, but due to the higher humidity of the air, it feels colder. Standing on a high place and being blown by the wind, Tyrion shivered.

"Where's the novelty?"

"Over there. ”

Tyrion followed Egger's point and saw a boulder dozens of meters away.

Stone, not a rarity in the mines-infested West, can be found everywhere around the Golden Tooth City, nestled among the mountains, but this one is a little "outstanding": it is a vertical column, about fifty feet high, slightly sloping, with a hat-like cloud of snow at the top, and the whole is an ordinary tan, like a half-rotten piece of wood that the gods have planted in the earth.

It's a very ordinary rock, but most people who regularly walk this path will have a little impression of it - because it stands right next to the river, anyone who leaves the west and enters the river, will inevitably see it when they pass through it, and Tyrion is no exception...... When he was a child, he even had a whim, planning to smooth the side of this stone facing the river and engrave it with "Welcome to the West" and so on, but unfortunately after asking the carver, he learned that the texture of this stone is brittle and hard, and it is not suitable for this kind of construction.

After calculating, it cost him more than a month's pocket money, enough for him to go to King's Landing's best female branch dozens of times, and Tyrion had to give up.

"A stone, what's wrong?"

Iger didn't answer, but nodded to the soldier next to him, "Let's start." ”

One soldier raised his trumpet, blew it, and waved his hand in the direction of the boulder.

Tyrion realized that there was a man under the boulder, and when he heard the trumpet, he stood up from the shelter and began to walk around and do small tasks that he could not see clearly, while the soldiers on either side also lowered their weapons and raised their large shields to protect the front and upper heads of the two great men.

？？？

The dwarf was confused and was about to ask a question, but the staff under the boulder in the distance began to run away from the place of view frantically, hiding behind another large rock more than ten meters away.

Ten seconds later, the root of the boulder near the ground suddenly flashed a few times, and the boom came a little later than the light, and the whole earth began to shake.

When Iger arrived outside the Golden Tooth City yesterday, he had already begun to make relevant preparations when he set up camp - he ordered to find a boulder between the coalition camp and the Golden Tooth City to ensure that both sides could see it, and then ordered the sappers to carry the guys to dig a hole at the bottom of it, and buried explosives bags and fuses in the dug hole, and carried out a similar arrangement of "blasting and demolition", just to make a splash today, so that the people of the West could see how ridiculous and vulnerable the force they possessed in the face of the power that Iger had.

Artillery can also accomplish this task, but after all, the cannon body has a service life, and it is not good for him to bombard the Golden Tooth City without declaring war just to show off his strength, so blasting an indestructible object in the eyes of ordinary people has become the best alternative.

Directional blasting is an advanced technique that Iger himself can't and has no talent under his belt, and his solution to this is to win by quantity, with enough gunpowder to ensure that the show will have the effect of shocking the people of the West.

"Boom Rumble......

Due to the lack of high-end technology such as electric detonation, the result of pure lead ignition is that several explosion points buried at the bottom of the boulder did not explode at the same time as expected, but were scattered and irregular for two or three seconds, causing a loud sound not only directly to the ears of the viewers, but also reflected back and forth on the cliff and rock walls on both sides of the Golden Tooth City, and finally converged into an endless effect like rolling thunder.

The explosion was not perfect, but under the overflow destruction of the large amount of pipes, the columnar boulder that may have stood next to the West-River boundary for an unknown number of thousands of years was still broken without suspense, and under the action of gravity, it lost its balance and smashed to the ground, shattering into several petals and bringing a muffled sound that made the earth tremble.

A small amount of small debris from the explosion had crossed a distance of nearly 100 meters, crackling against the wooden walls of the Grant - the Northern Coalition camp and the shields held high by the soldiers on either side—and as one of the people protected by the shield, Tyrion was already stunned and completely lost in a state of distraction.

A hundred pounds of gunpowder is worth a thousand words.

It wasn't until the smoke from the distant knockdown of the boulder slowly cleared that Iger spoke again.

"Do you know, in fact, I can hide the latter condition from you, first trick the western realm into the queen's camp, and then try to meet the dagger when the seven kingdoms are unified. How can you resist then?" he said in a nonchalant tone, as if he was saying something completely unrelated to him, "but I won't do that, because I really regard you as a friend, and I really want you to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer during my reign, so I don't want to cause a rift in the relationship between you and me because of such a trick." The Iron Throne's control of the gold in the West is imperative, either by the Lannisters themselves, or by ...... I don't know which Western nobles it is, and then passively accept it after becoming the queen's new favorite. ”

Tyrion's mouth was dry and bitter, how could he say anything witty?

"I have good news for you, and that is - the Queen doesn't need the West's forces to attack King's Landing for her, she has other arrangements for the Lannisters' armed forces. So, you don't even have to give me an answer anytime soon, and you have plenty of time to discuss with your uncle Kevon, and your father, Duke Tywin, whether or not to accept Your Majesty's terms before the Queen takes King's Landing and sits back on the Iron Throne. ”

"Oh yes, I almost forgot to convey to your Majesty the most important statement: no matter what banner the army of the West is fighting for, and which side it claims to be fighting for, anyone who steps into the river even half a step before receiving her orders and permission will be regarded as hostile and treated with the same hospitality as the stone just now. ”

——