Chapter 96 — Two Hundred in Black Armor

The mine changed FireStorm's military planning before the first proper shaft was opened. Cade had already been screening recruits, and the prospect of local iron made the expansion of the Black Armor Army easier to sustain beyond the next shipment of purchased equipment.

Three hundred and twenty-seven young men had applied. Some were sons of established FireStorm families, others refugees who had settled during the past months, and a smaller number had crossed from neighboring lands after hearing that soldiers here were paid regularly and their households received support.

Rodrick's background checks eliminated men with unresolved accusations, contradictory names, or obvious ties to households currently spying for Elton. Cade's physical screening reduced the remainder to one hundred and eighty viable recruits between roughly eighteen and thirty years old.

FireStorm needed one hundred and fifty of them to join the original fifty. Cade accepted that number and placed thirty on a reserve roll rather than pretending every sound body had already become a soldier. Rejected applicants received the reason in front of a witness; otherwise a failed test could turn into a useful grievance for Nightsong before sunset.

"The full establishment will be two hundred," Arlan said from the edge of the training field. "Four companies of fifty."

Cade held the roster under one arm. "The original fifty are ready to become the spine of them."

Veterans would supply company commanders, squad leaders, and instructors wherever ability justified it. New men would spend a full three months in basic training before receiving permanent places, regardless of how quickly FireStorm wanted larger numbers on a ledger. There would be no exceptions for impatience.

Arlan had watched armies in two lives. Numbers written before training were a comforting form of fiction.

Brienne asked for command of the company assigned to household protection and mobile patrol. Arlan granted it without changing her status: she remained his sworn sword and household champion, now with a defined military responsibility rather than a ceremonial title.

"Patrol is not an excuse to start quarrels beyond the boundary," he told her.

"I know."

"I know you know. Your men need to know."

She accepted that correction with a nod.

The recruits were told what awaited them before the first formal muster. Black Armor service paid better than ordinary farm labor, but it demanded dawn drill, formation discipline, equipment maintenance, and obedience under pressure. Families of serving men received guaranteed rations during campaign duty, while desertion or theft from the armory ended those privileges quickly.

The levy on labor was less visible than the pay. Morton marked which farms, kilns, and mine crews would lose hands to training and refused to take two adult sons from the same small household. Twelve accepted men moved to the reserve when harvest teams showed that their absence would leave fields unworked. Cade filled those places from the original thirty only after the same household check.

The Black Armor Army had become one of the few institutions in FireStorm where a refugee's son and an old local farmer's son could compete under the same drill standard, which made admission valuable beyond the pay.

Equipment remained the expensive half of the plan. That night Arlan entered the secret chamber, opened the level-two group interface, and sent Balin Anvil a detailed order built around the two-hundred-man establishment.

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Two hundred sets of heavy plate armor. Two hundred fine-steel longswords. Heavy spears and broad shields for the formation companies. Two hundred military hand crossbows. Twenty thousand armor-piercing arrowheads. Spare plates, repair tools, replacement straps, rivets, and ten sets of officer armor carrying basic defensive rune work. Arlan ordered maintenance equipment with the weapons because an army that could not repair a broken buckle eventually owned two hundred expensive piles of scrap.

Balin answered with the enthusiasm of a smith who had just been handed eight hundred gold dragons' worth of business.

[Balin Anvil: Standard heavy plate will use Black Steel from the Ironpeak Mountains, cold-worked through twelve finishing passes. Joint assemblies will be made for marching infantry rather than mounted ceremonial armor.]

[Balin Anvil: Ten officer sets will receive basic defensive rune treatment. Total order: 800 Gold Dragons. Thirty percent deposit required. Three-day production and delivery window.]

Arlan paid in full.

The cost would have bankrupted the FireStorm he first inherited. Current reserves could absorb it, though not casually, and the difference reinforced why the mine and workshops mattered. Buying two hundred exceptional sets once was an advantage. Needing to buy every replacement forever would become dependence. Morton would dislike the entry when he saw it, but he would dislike losing two hundred trained men in inadequate armor more.

[Payment confirmed. Instant delivery permission triggered.]

Rather than fill the secret room from wall to wall, Arlan received the bulk order into the Group Warehouse and withdrew the first crates for inspection. Each oak chest carried Balin's anvil mark and a numbered manifest matching the order.

The first breastplate was dark steel polished enough to catch lamplight without becoming mirror-bright. Arlan checked the hinges, edge rolls, and interior attachment points before weighing the complete harness.

Under fifty pounds for the standard set.

That weight was still substantial. Arlan had no intention of telling farm boys that excellent distribution abolished fatigue, heat, bruising, or the need to condition neck, back, and legs for hours under steel. Better armor changed the burden; it did not remove it.

The weight was better distributed than in many Westerosi harnesses. The plates covered the vital areas without turning the wearer into a walking iron box, and the joints had been built for men expected to fight on foot.

The officer set showed thin rune lines cut into protected surfaces where ordinary wear would not immediately damage them. Arlan did not activate or display one in public. The armor could be issued to trusted commanders after testing, with the rune work treated as another secret of the dwarf craftsmen.

The next problem was explaining two hundred crates.

FireStorm now had dwarf artisans, a mine under development, and expanding smithies, which gave Arlan a plausible framework. He staged deliveries through the secure armory and recorded the equipment as imported high-grade stock to be fitted and maintained locally. The cover would not survive a maester dismantling the logistics for months, but ordinary soldiers had little reason to question good armor appearing in the lord's own store after weeks of trade.

When Cade opened the first crates on the training ground, he stopped talking. One of the older veterans reached toward a spearhead, caught Cade's stare, and remembered that an armory inspection was not a market stall. The men stood back while their commander examined the equipment first.

Cade lifted a breastplate, tested the articulation, and examined the spearheads laid beside it.

"This is for the new companies?"

"For all two hundred," Arlan said. "Veterans do not keep worse equipment merely because they arrived first."

That answer spread faster than the armor itself.

The recruits did not receive full harness immediately. Measurements, fitting, and training came first. Cade issued practice equipment and told men who had imagined themselves marching tomorrow that they had three months to earn the right to wear what they had just seen. The original fifty veterans, meanwhile, began learning how to inspect hinges, clean hidden rust from overlaps, replace leather ties, and identify damage before it failed in battle.

By sunset, four company rosters hung in Cade's office, the original fifty veterans had new leadership assignments, and one hundred and fifty recruits had reporting dates staggered around the final harvest work. Two hundred visible suits waited behind a locked armory door, but nobody yet knew how many would fit without hurting the men expected to march in them.