The Disputed Lands were no longer disputed.
Bloodbeard was dead, the Company of the Cat had been scoured from the fields, and the Spear Company had knelt before the Wolf Pack flag. Even the treacherous Second Sons had "fled" back into the city, though they were now Gendry's ears behind the high stone walls of Myr. The Magisters and slave-lords who had once looked down upon the "Blacksmith's Boy" were now prisoners of their own prestige, watching from their balconies as the smoke of their burning estates choked the horizon.
Gendry's victory was absolute. He had bypassed the chaotic raids of the "Ninepenny Kings" and replaced them with a systematic occupation. By seizing the granaries and the fireweed fields, the Free Army had effectively cut the throat of the Myrish economy.
Three massive silhouettes now loomed over the city's landward gates—the captured Myrish trebuchets. Gendry's men had renamed them with a cruel irony: Wolf Pack, Liberator, and Freedom! To the cowering Magisters, these engines were no longer weapons; they were the ticking heartbeats of an executioner.
"You have the city by the throat, Commander," a gravelly voice said. "Why not tighten the grip? One good push and the gates will buckle."
Gendry turned to the speaker. Ser Jorah Mormont was a man of the North, burly and middle-aged, with skin turned dark by the Essosi sun. He was balding, but the coarse black hair that covered his arms and chest spoke of a strength that had not yet begun to fade. He stood with the weary posture of an exile, yet his eyes were sharp with a veteran's calculation.
"Myr is a city of artisans, Jorah," Gendry replied, looking at the intricate lacework of the city's spires. "If I burn it, I inherit a pile of ash. If I wait, I inherit a treasury and a thousand master craftsmen. I don't want a ruin; I want a capital."
Jorah nodded slowly. He had joined Gendry's ranks seeking a new path, his name a curse in his own homeland after his involvement in the slave trade. In the "Wolf King," he saw a man who was breaking the very chains that had led to Jorah's downfall.
"You're thinking like a king," Jorah noted. "Most sellswords only think as far as the next tavern. But kings have enemies that sellswords don't."
"You mean the fat man on the Iron Throne?" Gendry asked.
"Robert Baratheon is a shadow of the man I saw at Pyke," Jorah said, his voice tinged with a strange mix of respect and pity. "He's a drunkard and a hunter now. As long as the grain flows and the Small Council keeps the peace, he won't care about a 'Liberator' in the Disputed Lands. It's Jon Arryn who keeps the gears turning. But Westeros is a long way off."
"And the dangers closer to home?"
"Volantis," Jorah said immediately. "The Elephants hold the power now—the merchants and the usurers. They hate war because it's bad for trade, but they hate slave revolts even more. If the Tigers ever regain the Triarchy, they'll bring the sword to your gates. And don't forget the Ironborn. They've been reaving the Stepstones for years; if they smell blood in the water here, they'll descend like gulls on a carcass."
Gendry's mouth thinned into a hard line. He had already planned for the sea.
"I'm not waiting for them to come to me," Gendry said. "I've secured ships from the captured Myrish families. We're going to make a feint for the Stepstones. If Tyrosh and Lys think I'm coming for their pirate nests, they'll pull their fleets back to defend their own harbors. It leaves the Myrish port open for my final move."
Political maneuvers and military strikes were two sides of the same coin. Gendry knew that a head-on assault on the "Three Daughters" was a fool's errand. But with Brown Ben Plumm inside the walls and his own "Hammer" outside, the city was already hollow.
"The Ironborn and the Tigers can wait," Gendry said, his hand resting on the pommel of the Valyrian steel arakh. "Today, we finish the Myrmen."