Trailing behind the diplomatic envoy by several days, the caravan finally arrived—noisy, arrogant, and tax-evading as always.

  Bran watched them with narrowed eyes from atop a small rise overlooking the path. This time, he was ready. This time, these merchants would learn a valuable lesson: how to pay their damn taxes.

  To most outsiders, the North was a nd of chaos and cold—a pce where rules were loose, roads were worse, and authority was only as sharp as the nearest sword. Bran wanted to change that. He wasn’t delusional—he knew the North’s limitations: sparse popution, poor roads, ox-drawn carts clunking through muddy passes. He wasn’t expecting rivers of gold to pour in from this little checkpoint he’d erected.

  But order had to start somewhere.

  So Bran borrowed every able-bodied servant from his siblings. Then he swept through the keep, collecting every idle young man and woman with a sword or a surname, most of them sons and nephews of local knights, recently come of age and lounging about the castle like spoiled mastiffs. These were the North’s future warriors, its "noble steel," though you'd be hard-pressed to see it in the way they loitered around stairwells and training yards, waiting for glory to come to them.

  Bran gave them something better: a job.

  He marked out a clear checkpoint, carved a path, erected a fg, and posted a sign in rge, simple characters:

  TOLL COLLECTING POINT — TAX REQUIRED

  At the roadside stood a crude desk and a single chair. Bran sat there casually, surrounded by four retainers—Dany at his right hand, the others forming a square of quiet vigince. Behind them stood twenty Northern youths, arms crossed, eyes bored but alert. And on the desk, basking in the afternoon sun, Bran’s cat purred as if this were just another zy day on the frontier.

  From the moment the caravan arrived, tension brewed.

  A portly steward emerged from the caravan’s front ranks—a middle-aged man with the air of someone who had argued over the price of garlic for decades. He offered Bran a polite nod and an oily smile.

  "Taxes?" he asked, voice smooth. "Strange. The North has never charged us taxes before."

  Before Bran could reply, Dany spoke for him.

  "One in ten," she said pinly.

  The steward bowed again, eyes darting between the woman with the knives and the boy with the cat. "I'll... go prepare our accounts."

  He retreated.

  But unrest spread like dry grassfire. Whispers turned to compints. Compints turned to shouts. Then, inevitably, the guards got involved.

  "This is robbery!" someone yelled."We've never been taxed before!" cried another."Then we’ll turn back!"

  Bran remained silent, arms folded on the table. Dany did not blink. The twenty behind them stood with all the enthusiasm of teenagers forced to attend a funeral—but none moved. None wavered.

  Bran tugged lightly on Dany’s sleeve and leaned in. "Can we take them?" he whispered.

  Dany’s grin was pure North—feral, amused, tinged with something older than fear. She didn’t answer. She stood.

  Perhaps it was the silence. Perhaps it was the seeming weakness of Bran’s gesture. Or maybe the caravan guards just had too much sun on the road. Either way, someone miscalcuted.

  A shout rang out: "Rush them!"

  A shirtless man with a scarred chest charged forward, shield raised, eyes locked on the boy at the desk.

  Dany moved.

  Her bde sang—a soft whisper of metal. The man raised his shield, expecting a csh. But there was no impact. No crash of metal on wood.

  Only a blur.

  Then Dany passed him.

  Then she passed them all.

  Her second bde slid free. Twin knives now gleamed in her hands, their edges thin and gleaming, as if they were forged of ice and starlight. Behind her, the attacking guards stood frozen—then slowly, almost politely, they began to fall. Those still breathing screamed in pain and confusion.

  The chaos turned. The hunter had become the hunted.

  Gasps rippled through the caravan. Men stepped back. A woman screamed. The guards raised weapons on instinct—an ancient reflex bred in bone. It was their st mistake.

  No mercy. No room to plead.

  Northern warriors do not tolerate threats in their own nd.

  A wave of silence followed. The front ranks of the caravan began to colpse—not from death, but from fear. Someone threw down their weapon and dropped to their knees. Another followed. And another. And another.

  They remembered.

  They remembered the stories.

  The North was not wless. The North was lethal. The North did not tax because it begged merchants for coin—it taxed when it wanted to remind the world that civilization here did not mean softness.

  They had grown too comfortable over the years. They had followed the envoy, year after year, taking advantage of custom and convenience. And somewhere along the way, they had forgotten why they had always needed an escort to enter these nds.

  Now they remembered.

  Bran watched as the st guard fell to his knees, as silence fell like snow across the road. Dany returned, bdes sheathed, steps unhurried, as if she’d merely stretched her legs. She passed Bran without a gnce, returning to her spot beside him.

  Bran turned to gnce at the twenty warriors behind him. They hadn’t moved. Arms still folded. Eyes still watching. Cats still purring.

  He looked down at his small force and had a sudden, dizzying thought:So this... this is what power looks like.

  A thought followed just as quickly:I may have brought too many people.

  But it was too te for second thoughts.

  The caravan remained prone.

  Bran decided to let them stay that way. Let them reflect. Let them learn.

  And while they y groveling in the dirt, Bran and his youthful army took the opportunity to conduct a more... academic investigation.

  Out came the bdes—not for war, but for dissection.

  Not out of cruelty, but curiosity. Bran had long wondered about the anatomy of this world. How were muscles yered? How did sinew wrap around bone? He’d read what few texts the manor had, but today, he learned with his own hands.

  Guided by several disturbingly enthusiastic “future Northern champions,” Bran helped open a few corpses. The smell was horrid. The process was grueling. But it was... illuminating.

  He saw the fragility of the human body. The softness beneath the armor. The absolute absurdity of survival.

  And as the others watched—smiling, teaching, proud—someone cpped him on the shoulder and muttered:

  "You’ll make a fine Northern man yet."

  Behind them, the caravan remained silent. Horses snorted. Mules shifted. But not a single man dared stand.

  A field of fallen pride. A mass of face-down wealth. And Bran, seated behind a desk with a cat, a swordmaiden, and twenty not-so-idle youths, watched them all.