Day 45, 8:30 AM
“It is said that the night brings counsel, but it is not said that the counsel is necessarily good.”
— Jules Verne
I walk into the village of Coremir ten minutes before sunset. Manny and our troops are less than half an hour away, just out of sight of hypothetical sentries. Nobody guards the gate as I approach, and I sneak in, but instead of the usual empty streets of twilight, there are still people milling about.
I barely have the time to notice the dilapidated houses, which, unlike Holgord’s, had never been rich or fancy, when a young man points a finger at me and shouts, “Blackstaff.”
Crap. I bite my lip. They knew.
Everyone turns towards me, and they all start cheering, “Blackstaff, Blackstaff!”
“You drove the monster away,” a fat woman in her forties screams, tears running down her face.
“It couldn’t have been that hard on you, given your figure,” I cover my mouth as soon as I realize what I’m saying, muting everything after, ‘hard.’
“He’s so humble,” a fangirl shouts, but I don’t see who she is.
I clear my throat. “What I meant to say is, ‘How did you recognize me?’”
The good people explain that the word of what we have done traveled faster than we did. Given how slow a large group of people is, I’m not surprised. Manny guessed Gohen would learn of us before we reached him, but word reached baron Jaggel too.
The man, protected by his mercenaries, fled yesterday afternoon, an hour after the rumor of Duchess Eagleeye’s rebel army started spreading around the village.
“He took a big wooden chest with him and fled like devils were chasing his ass,” a wizened old man says, his back so bent, his spine must have an ‘L’ shape.
Despite his age, he stares at me with bright eyes full of hope, but I don’t know what to say. This changes a few things.
“I need someone to notify Duchess Eagleeye and her army. They are some twenty minutes’ walk away, towards Krimagord.”
A lone youth volunteers, but the elderly folk make him wait until they form a group of six.
“It’s dangerous to wander the road during the night,” the L elder insists, and I wonder about the way I label unknown people who fail to introduce themselves, and how bizarre it is that I think of kids older than my body as youths.
Enough idle thoughts. Manny will be here in two hours, tops. We didn’t start any fires tonight, so that baron Jaggel wouldn’t see the smoke and become suspicious. That will make packing up easier for everyone. But what do I do in these two hours? Chasing the baron is impossible, he’s on a horse and has a whole day of head start.
“Noble Sir, could you spare some food?” Nine villagers approach me, seeking alms and snapping me from my thoughts.
“Not much,” I say automatically, refocusing on the people.
They are starved, scrawny things. Despite their loose tunics, you can see they are all knees and elbows. They suffered oppression and they are weak, almost too weak to work. Definitely too weak to join an army, unless we provide several weeks of proper diet to nurse some strength back into them.
Even as I pity their poor souls and regret being unable to help them now, the rational part of me considers the baron’s intellect, which devised the move of abandoning these people.
Was it an accident or a political play? They are dead weight. If we feed them, we appear kind and gather sympathy at the cost of our extremely limited resources. If we abandon them, well, we’ve damaged our reputation with the common folk to preserve some rations.
We’re racing against the clock now, and I guess I won’t be sleeping with Manny here. Ironically, the thought saddens me considerably more than the starved peasants. The misuse and abuse of humans never really made me sad. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with sorrow. It made me angry. Especially when I was abused and misused.
I draw a deep breath, and find a solution.
We could distribute the baron’s food stock. What if he poisoned it, though? Why would he poison it? It could have been a false alarm. He might be forced to return in two days or a week. But even if it is poisoned, we can blame him for it. If it isn’t, we have won supplies and sympathy of the common folk.
“Storm the baron’s home and his food stores,” I shout. “Take whatever you need, but leave half for us. Your baron’s food is your property, something you worked hard to grow, and we will buy it at a fair market price. Later, you can split the gains however you see fit!”
The crowd cheers, and together we assault the empty mansion. The villagers are very brave when no actual enemy stands before them. Baron’s household slaves are even more miserable than the rabble, and they join us in our charge against the food cellar.
I kick down the locked door, knocking it off its hinges, and I’m faced with a spacious cellar, well organized, with cured meats hanging from the ceiling, like delicious, smoked, nature’s bounty.
While I’m inspecting the chamber under the light of my lantern, the mob surges in and starts grabbing whatever they can. The slaves are weak, timid, and stay to the back, letting the free citizens pick their food first.
To my shock, some villagers start gnawing at a piece of ham right before me.
“Wait! It could be poisoned,” I shout, but nobody pays me any heed, their arguments and shouting loud enough to drown my words. The only ones who pay attention to me are the slaves, but even that is only for a fleeting moment before they find an opening and sneak to join the assault on food.
Well, I tried my half-assed best. The only thing left for me is to shrug and wait to see if people start dropping like flies. Kind of feels like malicious compliance back at work, when certain clients were being real dicks and ignored our warnings, because they “knew” what needed doing better than people doing the work.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
There’s not really much for me to do here. With that thought, I take my leave and go to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. What are the odds of this abandoned kitchen having food?
The answer is one hundred percent. There’s half a ham hanging, fresh veggies, and today’s bread in the pantry. Meanwhile, a cauldron of warm chicken stew sits above the hearth, nothing but ashes and embers beneath it.
I take a sip with the ladle, and it turns out quite decent.
There’s enough stew to feed twenty people. The slaves probably acted like everything was normal, fearing the consequences of their master’s sudden return. Good for us. I pour myself a bowl of stew, tear a hunk of bread, and cut five thick slices of ham on the side. I could eat three more servings, but I leave the rest for Manny, Gerta, and the women. If they water it down some, there should be enough for everyone.
The stew is decent from the first spoonful. It’s greasy, mildly seasoned, and warms you just right.
Manny really knew what she was talking about. War will fund itself, she said, and it seems true. Once we have some more soldiers, we can conquer larger towns, robbing nobles of gold, grabbing their slaves for our army, and plundering their food stocks to feed our army.
But what will a real battle look like?
I don’t want to think about it. I know fighting is an inevitable part of war. Soldiers and civilians will die, morale will drop, and everyone will see how I have absolutely no idea about tactics and strategy.
Well, that’s not technically true. I have a lot of experience in strategy games, but the problem is, I used to play turn-based games. They gave me enough time to plan my next move, change a diaper, check homework, eat lunch, grab a beer, and then click the button.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I mutter, sitting on the kitchen table. I glance left and right, just in case, but nobody’s spying on me, and I shovel another spoonful of stew into my mouth.
What now? The baron almost certainly fled for Eaglegord, which has a standing army of one hundred professional soldiers to keep the population from rebelling. That means Sir Gohen will expect us, and it might become our first battle. Three hundred and fifty barely trained militia versus one hundred soldiers and thirty mercenaries.
If the battle turns out anything like Heroes and Rome: Tonal War taught me, the conscripts will get wiped out, inflicting minimal casualties. It will boil down to the battle between hero units, and Manny thinks I’m not Sir Gohen’s match.
I check my screen, Redo, my silver bullet, is available. The rest of my skills aren’t that useful.
What if I level up? I check once more the Bodyguard’s condition, and it’s impossible to advance, unless I take Manny, chase after the baron, and no. Anarchist, though…
[To level up, impose justice upon a party legal authorities are ignoring.]
I can work with that. If I can find someone in this village who bribed his way into doing anything, and then organize a public trial…
I glance out the window. It’s dark, but I don’t know exactly how much time has passed since I sent the messengers. I need to come up with some phrase so Manny can distinguish messages sent under duress.
I file that one for later and wolf down my dinner. Now, about leveling. Nobles are charged with upholding justice. There must be a book of laws somewhere in the mansion.
I spend half an hour checking every room in the mansion, but there are no books. Not a single one. In the end, I go down to the cellar and find a slave wearing a tidy uniform, which in my mind makes him a butler.
“Excuse me,” I say to the man, “did your lord have any books?”
The man stares at me for a moment, then shakes his head. “No, my lord.”
Well, that’s that. I could ask him whether he knows about anyone bribing his lord to cover up crimes, but that’s just dumb.
“Have you ever seen anyone bribe your lord to get away with crime?” Huh? Was that Direct?
The butler looks at me and nods.
What?
“There’s old sir Macconah…” he starts talking and mentions several incidents. Apparently, the baron’s mercenaries have raped several women, and got away with it scot free. There were two incidents of slave traders stealing children, and the innkeeper killed his neighbor in a dispute over a field border he cleared and illegally merged his land with his neighbor’s.
Well, stealing land and murdering a man sounds like a hangable crime in my book, but the level up condition makes it sound like I should exact the punishment required by the law, and I don’t know what that is. I guess I’ll wait for Manny to arrive and ask her. She’s technically the lord of this area, so her judgment should be legal justice as well?
After thinking for a moment, I realize the fallacy of it. No, it has to be by the book and not what the lord says. That’s the essence of anarchy, doing everything by the book despite those imposing the rules.
I’m stumped, so I leave the mansion and head out to find Manny. I meet the company as they are entering Coremir. I trot over to Manny, and explain our situation.
Her face is serious when she nods, but it’s not grave. She expected a similar development.
“Gohen knows. He will mobilize his army and attack us.”
“Are you certain?”
“By staying passive, he would allow us to conscript more troops, and he would never face siege while his city is on the verge of revolt. Too much risk. Too many unknowns.”
“What do we do? How many men will he attack with?”
“We fight. Coremir has a palisade, but it will never stop trained men. We have three to four days before they reach us, but that is not enough to craft bows and train with them. Maybe we could spend the time training everyone with slings, assuming we have a slinger here?” She glances back, but she was whispering, and nobody heard her.
“Does anyone here know how to use a sling?” I shout, and two dozen men raise their hands. “All right, you guys will teach us how to use them. We will rest for two days in Coremir, drilling with slings and preparing for melee combat.”
There has to be a better solution. If Gohen’s soldiers are equipped more or less like town guards, that means mail armor and helmets. They probably have shields and swords too. If we pelt them with bullets, they can just raise their shields and their only casualties will be freak accidents.
I could coat the stones in nitroglycerin? That would make exploding rounds. It would be cool and devastating, but there’s a problem. I don’t know how to make nitroglycerin. Stop fantasizing and focus. Armed with a sling, I can probably take out several soldiers before they reach us. If there are some freak accidents too, that would decrease their numbers by… ten, I realize with disappointment.
“We will need to make two hundred slings,” Manny says while I’m considering the futility of our action, and one of the slingers tells her rope slings are easy to make.
Wait, why the hell am I so pessimistic? We kill ten of theirs while they kill zero of ours, that’s got to hurt their morale, they will have to run unless they want us to pelt them with more rocks, they will be easier to kill, and if we surprise them with our first volley, we might inflict even greater damage. Maximize what you have, don’t shit on it.
“We can do this, men,” I shout. “We will destroy a knight and his troop, and when we get enough training in, we will be able to destroy knight troops, not just one knight! One day, you will be rock-solid veterans who chew king’s soldiers for breakfast.”
I bite my tongue when I realize what I’m about to say. Saying ‘The ones who survive,’ would destroy their morale.
They cheer without noticing my clenched jaw, and I shout, “Oorah,” and they pick it up. Chanting several times before I speak again.
“Train hard, work hard, become hard. You can do it!”
“Oorah!”
“We will train and rest in Coremir!”
“Oorah.”
“You do not believe a word of it,” Manny whispers, and I smile.
“I do. We will destroy them.” Under the flickering torchlight, she looks at me with surprise and opens her mouth to ask me how I plan to do that, but I don’t let her speak.
“What’s the legal punishment for murder?” I ask instead.