Disclaimer: I don't own A Song of Ice and Fire. I don't own the Iron Bank or Braavos.
Monarck: If you don't like it, it's your opinion but no one forces you to read it.
cristianronald278: Robb will die eventually like everyone else. He's after all human, and humans die, in battle or of old age (though the latter is not happening often in Westeros).
Daenerys can't control her dragons, but the author isn't aware of it, it isn't like she shouted the news from the top of the Meereen pyramids...
As for the Ironborn and the Dothraki, it's GRRM who created these two charming and peaceful cultures (heavy sarcasm). The numbers and the logistics are also all GRRM (I assume that if someone does an impossible thing in the books, then they can do it too in my story). Note that I could be wrong, but I would be pleasantly surprised if similar events don't happen similarly in the Winds of Winter...
raw666: Everyone save the immortal beings has to die sooner or later. Even dragons have and will die of old age.
X59: Victarion was never the brighter Ironborn having existed. He and his brother Euron are playing with forces completely out of their league. Euron doesn't care. Victarion is too idiot to realise it. Both brothers will not see each other again. Though the discussion would be no doubt extremely interesting...
Master of Dragons God: Thanks!
Guest: To pair Robb with Margaery would be very good for both parties, but unlikely to work as long as the Reach continues to change sides each time it's advantageous for them. Northern lords have a deep respect for the oaths they swear, a thing you can't tell a lot about the Tyrells.
Dagmer could have tried to make Victarion listen, but would he have succeeded? The Lord Captain is under the influence of a Red Priest, and so far every person who finds himself in such a situation does things very out of character. As for his attempts at dragon taming, there are going to be a lot of problems...
To bring down dragons, you need a shot in the eye or a very big specialised siege engine (like a scorpion bolt). The army of the slavers was a bit too busy with the battle to make sure the dragons died.
Matt Quinn: Hizdhar is so pathetic no one has bothered to deal with him. His fate is going to be left to Daenerys.
Dellaus: Everything is always possible in Westeros! Thank you for the review.
Darthas: Oh, it is not the entire strength of the Dothraki, not by far. It's just everything which in the area Daenerys explored. There are more barbarians elsewhere, the Dothraki Sea is huge...
Ojha: I've never said the year in which Robb is going to die, haven't I?
And now another chapter where Westerosi propaganda is a bit biased against an Essossi Free City...
The Debt is growing
The Iron bank will not have its due Part I
"The Iron Bank will have its due." Common saying about the Iron Bank.
"Was that a threat, banker?" Asha Greyjoy, 300AC.
"Braavosi never jape about dragons. They are wise to so." Tyrion Lannister, 300AC.
By the time King Robb Stark and King Stannis Baratheon marched respectively north and south in 300AC to fight the wildlings and the Targaryen loyalists, the Seven Kingdoms were in a state of economic ruin. With the total destruction of the capital in the Battle of the Four Armies, all the ledgers keeping count of the taxes, laws and debts had been lost forever. What remained of the financial system of Westeros was now dispersed between the possessions of King Stannis in the Stormlands, at Highgarden in the Reach in the hands of Lord Mace Tyrell and at Riverrun and Winterfell for the Kingdom of the North and the Trident. Asha Greyjoy, as new Lady of the Rock, had of course the millions of gold dragons formerly owned by House Lannister under her personal control. To say it made some parties angry was the understatement of the century. Among them, the Iron Bank was certainly the entity the most furious of all. Based in Braavos, this famous financial establishment was infamous for their words "The Iron Bank will have its due". In other words, any who subscribed a contract with this bank had better repay its loans in time, or suffer the consequences.
The consequences in question could really be awful. The wealth and the ruthlessness of the Iron Bank had allowed them more than once to hire thousands of sellswords, legions of assassins or bribe all the officials of an Essossi city to ruin a wealthy merchant or a prince who had believed himself above repaying his loans. In 300AC, the Iron Throne was perhaps the country which had cumulated the greatest amount of debts towards the bankers of Braavos: the sum waiting to be repaid had not yet reached three millions of gold dragons, but it was approaching it fast. Of course the Iron Bank was hardly the only one to ask the Iron Throne to repay its debts. The Faith of Seven, House Lannister and House Tyrell had loaned too rivers of gold to the king of Westeros when Robert I was still throwing tourneys after tourneys. But of these three parties, the first two were in tatters, and House Tyrell had a Greyjoy invasion to deal with first. The Iron Bank was alone to request the reimbursements to the surviving kings of Westeros. The welcome the emissaries of this prestigious institution received was frosty everywhere, which was somewhat understandable. First, winter was finally striking the Seven Kingdoms with snow and ice, which meant every lord and knight not involved directly in any fighting was busy buying food to survive this dreadful season. Learning your entire gold and silver supply had to be given to a bank which literally bathed in it according to the rumours was sure to irritate all the classes of the population, from the king to the lowest beggar. Secondly, apart from some merchants and ship masters in the Reach and Renly Baratheon supporters in the Stormlands, the debt of the Iron Throne had been essentially concentrated at King's Landing and its neighbouring castles in the Crownlands. It was the excesses of Robert I, Renly Baratheon, Petyr Baelish and House Lannister who had led the kingdom to economic ruin. By comparison, the Riverlands, the Vale, the North, the Iron Islands, the Westerlands and Dorne had almost no money to reimburse, and appreciated very moderately being told to pay for the expenses of others. Especially when the Iron Throne was a melted abomination and King's Landing was in ruins. The direct consequence of this was that everywhere the Braavosi emissaries went, they received the same message, which was "not now". The motives for these refusals were diverse and varied, but a large majority of the Noble Houses told the same one: there was no money left in their coffers to repay the debts. The depredations of the Lannisters and the monumental cost of the War of the Eight Kings had taken an awful cost in the treasury of every belligerent, not to mention some lands had never been big centres of trade and exchange before the conflict started.
This left the Iron Bank in a very difficult situation. In normal cases like this, the usual operation was to assassinate the leader opposing the repayment and threaten his successor the same thing was going to happen to him if he didn't cooperate. These methods, after all, had been extremely successful these last three centuries in Essos and elsewhere. However, the bankers and their emissaries failed to realise the circumstances were anything but normal, and didn't adapt their answers accordingly. Asking a Hightower to repay his debts after his city had just narrowly missed destruction at the hands of the Ironborn and threatening him when he refused to do so was not particularly intelligent. Nor was pointing the fact to Lord Wyman Manderly of White Harbor the fact that the Braavosi navy outnumbered him twenty to one in case hostilities were to break out. The emissary Tycho Nestoris, sent to White Harbor, was lucky the Northmen has such respect for guest laws and even received the authorisation to plead his cause to Winterfell once he produced written evidence of his claims(albeit under heavy Northern guard ). The others Braavosi were generally less fortunate: the mission to Oldtown saw every one of its members hanged without trial, while a few R'hllor worshippers took pleasure to burn alive the men who had had the temerity to threaten Princess Shireen Baratheon. The men sent to Gulltown were caught in the sack of the city and perished there (there were never seen again so this explanation was the most likely) and the emissary sent to Casterly Rock didn't survive ten seconds after having told Asha Greyjoy she would soon suffer an "unfortunate accident", being decapitated on the spot (and having his body offered to the Drowned God afterwards). Several assassinations attempts were made, but it was evident none of the legendary Faceless Men had been available on such a short notice, as the killers failed utterly in their tasks. Worse, the identity of the assassin's masters was evident and it contributed to poison the diplomatic waters between Westeros and Braavos in a definite manner.
The bank keyholders who sat in Braavos were not pleased by this series of reverses. Many of these wealthy aristocrats had expected a fortune of several thousand gold coins to cross back the Narrow Sea with their emissaries. Instead, the few men sent who came back alive were carrying letters of excuses or promises to pay when winter was over (which given the predictions of those in the know promised to be especially dire). Moreover, what should have been a minor economic defeat against the lords and kings and Westeros revealed itself to have bad implications for the future of the Iron Bank. In theory, the hundreds of thousands gold dragons loaned to Robert I Baratheon were really a minor sum compared to the gold, silver and precious materials they had at their disposition in their vaults. But it had been when the whole world wasn't burning in the flames of war. In Southern Essos, Volantis had gathered a massive fleet, which had severely curtailed the available hulls in the area to trade with. Victarion Greyjoy and his Iron fleet had also taken and sunk dozen of ships on their way to Meereen, disrupting further the Essossi trade. In the Narrow Sea, former Gulltown captains and the fleet of Salladhor Saan hunted the merchants arrogant enough to leave their harbours without the protection of warships. Not to mention hostilities had begun once again between Myr, Lys and Tyrosh, with sellsails and captains fighting in the waters surrounding the Sea of Myrth, the Stepstones and the Broken Arm. Even Pentos, supposed to be docile after the smashing defeats suffered at the hands of Braavos in the last centuries, was now finding its passion for war again, recruiting mercenaries and taking the first steps for the creation of a real army.
These were not actions which could be left unopposed. Not only the Iron Bank position as the main financial entity of this word was threatened (although there was no candidate right now to replace it), potential enemies to Braavos were coming out of the shadows, in the form of dragons in Slaver's Bay and magisters in Pentos. The problem was that the actual Sealord, named Ferrego Antaryon, was agonising and unable to take the decisions he had been elected for. The end of his life being a question of days, influential citizens started to put the formidable Braavosi fleet in condition to sail as soon as the Sealord's successor would be known. Men like Torm Fregar, Berrero Zathyne and Lorro Tevos were the favourites for victory, all claiming a quick and overwhelming military action was the immediate solution to Braavos current problems. Others aristocrats or common people, less well-known, still entered the electoral campaign by the dozens. Sacking Pentos and annexing its lands as Fregar told in his speeches was very popular. Making the former Crownlands of Westeros a client state as Zathyne wanted was not far behind. Alas, not one among the vast number of candidates remarked that, as they tried to rally the voters to become the most powerful man of the city, snow was falling on the Purple Harbour. Winter was finally here. And the Old Enemy had come once again, to wipe out the human realms...
