Chapter 174: The Price of a Dragon Egg

The Crownlands, the Kingsroad.

Led by banners such as the three-headed dragon on black, the Gold Blade Horse, the direwolf on white, the golden rose on green, and the twin towers on white, dozens of riders bearing various banners marched at the very front of the column, followed by one hundred and fifty elite Reach cavalrymen, guarding the royals and nobles in the center of the procession.

Over a hundred carriages, ox-carts, and the like trailed behind, with eighty selected servants sitting on open-top ox-carts alongside their luggage.

One hundred Stark infantrymen wearing chainmail and pointed helmets advanced with the servant caravan; they were the portion of the guard left to Sansa by the North, and now they were following the Queen to the capital.

The weather was overcast, looking as if it would rain at any moment, and the infantry and servants prayed silently that it would hold off until the column made camp.

The nobles lying inside the enclosed carriages had no such worries.

In the center of the column, in the most luxurious four-horse carriage, the King, who had just had two bouts of wrestling with Sansa, was tidying his clothes with the Queen while chatting idly.

"I recall your Winterfell has a clutch of dragon eggs; are you aware of this?"

The King asked while rubbing the child's canteen.

Queen Sansa, whose beautiful face and hair were the same shade of red, asked in surprise, "Are you joking? How could Winterfell possibly have dragon eggs?"

Thinking her husband was trying to extort her and the Stark family, she viciously pinched Arthur on the waist.

After gently brushing away Sansa's small hand, the King said seriously, "I'm not joking. There is a rumor that a dragon named Wo Ma Ke Si once went to Winterfell and laid a clutch of eggs near the hot springs of your home. The Starks certainly couldn't hatch a dragon, so perhaps that clutch of dragon eggs is still hidden in some secret chamber in Winterfell."

Wo Ma Ke Si was active during the Dance of the Dragons nearly two hundred years ago; rumor has it that it was a male dragon, and its dragonrider was named Jacaerys Velaryon. In order to seek support from the North, this man flew his dragon to Winterfell, and his dragon took the opportunity to lay a clutch of eggs.

Speaking of this, one must mention the gender of dragons.

Archmaester Adal, who compiled the book *The World of Ice and Fire*, believed that dragons are divided into male and female, but do not follow the principle of "sexual dimorphism."

That is, in theory, there is no difference in size between male and female dragons; the female dragon Vhagar, who survived until the Dance of the Dragons, grew to the size of the male dragon Balerion, making this claim seem relatively reliable.

However, a very influential Septon Barth believed that dragons have no gender, while Maester Aemon of House Targaryen believed that the gender of a dragon is as fickle as dragonfire.

A third view holds that dragons are divided into male and female, but their gender is not fixed, only manifesting as a certain gender at a specific time.

Archmaester Ge Er Dan tends to agree with this view, and because his research on House Targaryen and dragons is very deep, this view is also relatively reliable.

"Why do I feel like you're trying to extort things from my home?" Regardless of whether this clutch of dragon eggs existed, Sansa did not want her husband to obtain them.

"You already have six dragon eggs in your hands; whether for hatching dragons or selling them for money, that is more than enough."

She knew of her husband's plan to expand the royal standing army and was quite supportive of it.

"Since Daenerys Targaryen and I have successfully hatched dragons one after another, dragon eggs now have strategic significance. Such weapons of mass destruction, even if we don't intend to hatch them all, must be kept in our hands."

Arthur pondered for a moment and discussed with his wife, "After Winterfell is recovered, I will send reliable people to go there; if the dragon eggs are found, they will be retrieved."

Sansa stared at her husband resentfully, "My home is already poor enough, and you still want to snatch away good things..."

"What is yours or mine?" Arthur reached out to stop his wife's words, "You are entirely mine; what is wrong with me taking some of your things?"

The King was joking, but he noticed his wife's expression was not very good.

So Arthur hurriedly changed his tune, "My things are also yours; we are one family. As for that clutch of dragon eggs, they shall be counted as the public property of House Stark. If I take them, I will certainly pay Winterfell at market price."

Only then was Sansa a little happier.

After tidying up their clothes, the King gently patted his wife's shoulder and said he was going to discuss important matters with his vassals.

Queen Stark guessed who her husband was going to see, so she extended her right hand again and gave a fierce twist to Arthur's waist.

After suffering this punishment, Arthur, who fled the battlefield in a sorry state, went straight out of the carriage and headed toward an inconspicuous carriage in the rear.

There, Princess Arianne of Dorne was waiting for him.

Because he had not wrestled with the petite and lovely Dornish princess for a month, after Arthur returned to Harrenhal, the two would wrestle whenever they had free time.

They did so while Sansa was inspecting Harrentown, in the lord's room, in Arianne's own room, in the empty basement, and even on the throne in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths in the dead of night.

Even so, Arianne still felt it was not enough.

To the King's surprise, the coachman was actually Tyene, the Sand Snake beauty.

But once he thought of her intimate relationship with the Dornish princess, Arthur thickened his skin and got into the carriage.

Tyene pretended to glare fiercely at the Dragonrider, but she snuck a few extra looks at his slender fingers and near-perfect physique.

For the next several hours, Tyene had to listen to her cousin's beautiful singing and worry about whether the bumpy carriage would fall apart during the journey.

"By the gods! At least let us make it to King's Landing before it breaks."

She prayed for this.

The Stormlands, the Golden Company camp outside Storm's End.

In an extra-large military tent, three officers—Quinn, Tristan Rivers, and Otto—each with ten sturdy soldiers, sat on the ground in a circle, sixty-six eyes staring fixedly at a large chest bound several times with iron chains.

"I say," Quinn, who was tall and sturdy and wore a set of plain, unadorned chainmail, coughed twice, drawing the gazes of his two companions.

"Are we being too stupid doing this? The dragon egg is in the chest; what is the point of us staring at the chest? I propose we open the chest and stare at the dragon egg."

Another officer, Otto, also supported this view, "Exactly, could the dragon egg really be stolen from under the noses of thirty-some people?"

Tristan Rivers glanced helplessly at his two companions, who were known for their valor and bellicosity, and reminded them:

"Is it possible that we need to rest? If we leave it outside for people to watch, what if the guards find the egg more and more valuable the longer they look at it and decide to steal it?"

Quinn and Otto looked at each other and agreed with Tristan Rivers' point.

"The Earl from the Riverlands makes sense after all."

"That's right, the nobles of Westeros have good brains."

Quinn was a native of the Stepstones, and Otto, with his dark skin, came from the Sheng Xia Qun Dao; the two often joked about Tristan Rivers' status as a bastard.

"In front of the Prince of Velaryon from the Sheng Xia Qun Dao, I am simply stupid beyond words."

Because Otto, who had black skin, had a head of white hair, Tristan Rivers mocked him as the Prince of Velaryon, only from the Sheng Xia Qun Dao.

The three went back and forth, talking nonsense for a long time, before finally getting to the topic they were both concerned about.

Otto asked, "Two vice-commanders, how much Gold Dragon do you think this dragon egg is worth?"

Quinn half-jokingly and half-guessed, "At least twenty thousand Gold Dragons?"

"Hmph!"

After exhaling a breath through his nose, Tristan Rivers felt he had finally seized an opportunity to mock his companions.

"Hei Ba Qu comes from the same place as you; you should know the hiring price for a mercenary archer, right? Twenty thousand Gold Dragons only gets you two hundred archers, so how could they be worth the same as a precious Dragon Egg?"

Hei Ba Qu was also a white-haired Summer Islander; he was an archery commander in the Golden Company and had a fairly good relationship with Otto.

Otto thought for a moment and said, "That's true. The price the people of Myr set for archers is one hundred Gold Dragons per man. A mere two hundred mercenaries certainly aren't worth a Dragon Egg."

Quinn asked again, "Then one hundred thousand Gold Dragons?"

Otto shook his head. "More than that. I think at least two hundred thousand."

The two men each had their own opinions and began to argue with one another.

Tristan Rivers secretly enjoyed himself for a long while before calling a halt to their nonsense and beginning a careful analysis.

"You've heard of the Dragon Mother Daenerys, haven't you? Back in Astapor, she already established the price for Dragon Eggs and young Dragons."

After opening the topic, he took out the cowhide pouch at his waist and began to chug water.

Quinn and Otto urged him repeatedly to tell them the price of a Dragon Egg.

"How much does a group of Unsullied cost? In peacetime, maybe seven or eight thousand Gold Dragons!"

Unsullied are not sold individually; they are generally sold by the group, with one hundred to a group, though sometimes they can be sold in batches of one thousand, complete with commanding officers to maintain discipline.

Quinn held up his right index finger and shook it. "You're wrong. The Unsullied have a reputation abroad; how could they be so cheap? A unit price of only seventy or eighty Gold Dragons—cheaper than the soldiers under our command—is that even possible?"

The hiring price for a single Golden Company soldier is generally between fifty and one hundred Gold Dragons, depending on their equipment, physical strength, and past combat record.

The subordinates of these three officers were naturally the most valiant in the entire Golden Company, and their unit price was also the highest.

"Then let's calculate it at ten thousand Gold Dragons per group." Tristan Rivers signaled his companions to lean in closer. "It is rumored that Stormborn Daenerys traded one young Dragon for eight thousand Unsullied in Astapor, which is eight hundred thousand Gold Dragons. Plus, Slaver's Bay was still relatively peaceful at the time, so that price was on the low side. A single young Dragon is worth at least one million Gold Dragons!"

Tristan clicked his tongue for a good while before stating his conclusion regarding the price of a Dragon Egg:

"After the Dragonrider and Stormborn both successfully hatched dragons, I fear the price of a Dragon Egg is catching up to the price of a young Dragon. I suspect that if this Dragon Egg appeared on the market in Volantis, excluding the influence of people snatching it or wealthy merchants driving the price down, it could sell for at least six hundred thousand Gold Dragons, and eight hundred thousand to a million would be easy."

"And that's not even counting the intense obsession the nobles of Volantis have for Dragons." The more Tristan spoke, the more his heart burned; he wished he could steal the Dragon Egg right then and there to sell for money.

Because they consider themselves descendants of the Dragon King family, the entire upper class of Volantis pursues things related to dragons with fanaticism.

Over there, Dragon Eggs are truly priceless.

Quinn nodded, admitting that his companion's analysis had some merit:

"You're right, but selling things depends on the quality. This Dragon Egg is intermingled with gold and silver, which shows that the dragon that hatches will also be gold and silver. The bit of gold on your armband is already this beautiful; how gorgeous would a silver dragon inlaid with gold be? This alone can raise the price significantly."

Tristan Rivers had a pure gold armband, which he was currently wearing on his right arm.

The three officers discussed for a long time and concluded that the price of the Dragon Egg was over one million Gold Dragon coins.

Meanwhile, in another inconspicuous tent in the same battalion.

The Faceless Man, whose figure was obscured by black, said coldly, "If the dragon cannot be hatched this time, we will take charge of the Dragon Egg and the subsequent fire-dragon matters."

"Rest assured." Although the temperature was very low, Commander Ha Li was covered in sweat; it was unclear if it was from fear or heat.

He did not know what kind of agreement the fat man Illyrio had reached with the House of Black and White, only that these people were not to be trifled with.

And based on the fact that Faceless Men never kill those they know, and that this Faceless Man had never revealed their physique or appearance, Ha Li felt he should not expect much leniency.

"This time, we will definitely capture two people of King's blood and successfully hatch the dragon."

The Faceless Man waved a hand lightly. "Storm's End shouldn't be much of a problem. What actions are you taking regarding King's Landing? Do you need my help?"

Commander Ha Li steeled himself and leaned toward the black-robed figure, whispering, "Sir Lai Si Wei Er Pei Ke has secretly headed to King's Landing. His relatives, the Peake family of Starpike, have fifteen hundred soldiers in King's Landing, and we are trying to find a way to win over this army."

"If all goes as planned, we will give the Dragonrider a surprise at his second wedding."

The Faceless Man's black hood swayed slightly, appearing to approve of this approach.

East of the Stormlands, in the waters near Shipbreaker Bay and Tarth.

A large ship was currently transferring cargo with a small boat.

Several days ago, the Onion Knight Davos Seaworth returned to his old trade, using a ship in the dead of night to secretly spirit away Edric Storm and Shireen Baratheon.

Of course, there were also several loyal knights, such as Andrew Estermont, Jie La De Gao Er, and others, as well as several of the Onion Knight's sons: Dai Er Xi Wo Si, Ma Suo Si Xi Wo Si, and Shi Tan Ni Si Xi Wo Si.

Yes, Davos had named his favorite son after his King (who was only a lord at the time).

After the Golden Company occupied the territory of Feng Nu Jiao, the Onion Knight's wife brought their underage sons to take refuge in Storm's End.

Sensing that there would be a difficult defense at Storm's End, Davos also took away his favorite sixth son.

"Sir Andrew, I leave Princess Shireen and the lad Edric to you."

The Onion Knight said sincerely.

Previously, he had already appointed Sir Andrew as the guardian of Princess Shireen and Edric Storm.

"Why, aren't you coming with us?" Andrew asked, puzzled.

He had assumed that since Davos brought his sixth son out, he intended to flee together.

"No." The Onion Knight's eyes were firm. "Someone killed my King, and I must avenge him!"

PS: Tyrion's parentage is stated very clearly in Volume 1; he is the son of Joanna Lannister and Tywin. The union of two Lannisters caused the Imp's bloodline to be purer, a throwback. His ancestor, "Lann the Clever," was a witty, wise dwarf.

(End of chapter)