Michael
They started their journey two days later with about ten knights, Lord Rowan, Matthias, Michael, and his retainers. The time on the road was uneventful; Michael mostly scouted ahead with Eydis or trained with Kiran. He got many interested gazes as he formed the swirling sigils, most of the knights had never seen them with Michael not living in the castle and sigil casting being rare even among the mages that existed.
Matthias was also helpful in passing the time, he had always been talkative and now he told Michael about these kinds of missions he had been on already. The last years had passed so fast that Michael still saw his brother as a teenager, but he was almost an adult already, having his eighteenth birthday later this year.
After a mere one and a half days of fast travel, they reached Emall; Lord Rowan didn’t want to waste any time, so they didn’t stop at any city. They continued on toward the last place the brigand had attacked with a guard from the area, that they had enlisted to lead them.
Emall was even less populated than Reen County and vast parts of it were covered in forests, as far as Michael was told by the locals only little of it was actually used. There were towns, villages, and farms but most of the wealth of the county came from hunting and woodworking.
The villages they came through looked sad nonetheless, with hunting rights belonging mostly to the nobility and the difficulty of raising farms while tiptoeing around the noble’s hunting grounds, these lands were poor.
“This is just sad. So much unused potential,” Michael said lost in thought as they rode through a forest path.
“What would you do,” Matthias asked him; Michael had completely forgotten that his brother was riding right next to him and nearly jumped off the horse from the sudden interjection.
“This land is mostly an enjoyment place for nobles right now, most of the valuable forest patches that could be used to build are owned by the nobles and just used for hunting games,” Michael started to explain after regaining his balance, “To improve this county you need to either take the parts of the forest that are most valuable for forestry or farming away from the nobles or convince them to start those kinds of projects themselves. You would also need to improve the infrastructure; you can’t have a large woodworking industry when half the roads are not even traversable by cart.” As if to prove his point, his horse stumbled over a root at that exact moment and Michael bit himself on the tongue.
“Oh, hells.”
“You alright,” Matthias asked while chuckling.
“Yeah yeah,” Michael let his tongue slide over his teeth trying to get rid of the pain but at least he wasn’t bleeding.
“I get your point. The nobles enjoy themselves but do nothing to improve the land. Maybe you should talk to Viscount Telp about it,” Matthias suggested after Michael had assured him of his well-being.
Michael shook his head at this, “I do respect the viscount, but he has much less influence in Emall than his position would suggest. His lands are not much larger than other nobles here and so he has to placate them for their help, a problem that is amplified by him being in Reen most of the time.”
“That’s true. It must be hard to influence things from one county over, or even to know what is going on for that matter. It seems like a weird decision to give the de facto rule over a county to someone and then have him be away from that exact land for a long time,” Matthias nodded.
“That is how life is. It is the same on every level of our society with Duke Wulfen being in Lionsgate as the king's chancellor for example.”
“Then we should try to talk with Father. He has more influence even if he isn’t present all the time,” Matthias suggested but Michael shook his head. “Have you ever known Father to care about improving anything in his lands but security and the military? He doesn’t really care about it and delegates these jobs to other people.”
“So, how would you handle this situation if you were me,” Matthias asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You can either wait until you are in charge or ask Father for the authority to take care of it yourself,” Michael shrugged.
“Like you did in Reen with the criminals?”
“Something like that, yes.” Michael could see Matthias thinking; he was not cut out for work like this, to be honest, Michael was seeing evermore gaps and flaws in his father’s and brother’s administrative abilities, but he was determined to make it work.
“We do what we must, right?” Matthias chuckled and played with his reins.
Michael inspected his brother as he looked down at his hands. “You don’t want to marry Lord Telp’s daughter, do you?” Michael had heard Lira and Luciel talk about it and even though he had no experience in the whole love thing, he had concluded that their arguments were reasonable.
“What are you talking about of course I do, I like her. And her name is Janna, and you know that.” Matthias looked back at him with an amused expression, but Michael knew him better than that.
“What about Sally?”
This time he looked more surprised, “What about her?”
“Don’t you like her as well?”
“Oh, come on, Michael. You are too young to understand such things. You might be a smart one but that is not your forte.” He was right but Michael had heard it from someone that most certainly understood things like this.
“I heard it from Luciel, are you going to argue that she doesn’t understand those things?” Michael smiled at him, and he shook his head.
“That is the whole listening to advisers when you have no clue thing, right? Fine, yes, I like Sally, I like her a lot. The thing is though I am a noble and she is not. You heard Mother at the table she is not even happy that I want to marry ‘under my station’,” he made air quotes. “I talked with Janna about it, and she also doesn’t want to be married off to some stranger for political favor. So, we made a deal for me to propose, there is no way that Lord Telp refuses, and we marry. We can both stand each other even if we might not have any romantic love for one another but this is the best, we are both gonna get and who knows maybe we will fall in love later.”
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“Don’t you think you should just marry who you want to or for politics? Why are you doing something in between, if you don’t want to marry for politics then marry Sally, I am sure Father would let you. If you want to do what is best for the county allow Mother to find you a suitable wife.” Michael didn’t understand what the problem was, Matthias was making himself unhappy and didn’t help the county by much, this was a weird half-measure.
Matthias laughed loudly. “You might understand me when you are a little bit older, little brother.” He smiled into himself, but his eyes looked sad. “Love is a weird thing and maybe one day you will understand that sometimes you have to make sacrifices for it.”
Michael could see his father out of the corner of his eye watching them, a flash of pain came over the count’s face, one that Michael had never seen as he turned back, away from his sons.
After this Michael concluded that love was painful. Everyone seemed to be looking for it but only trouble followed; his brother was in pain, his father hid his, but it was there, and even Sola and Geron were struggling with hiding their relationship.
They traveled for another hour until they finally came to a village; it was in shambles, the houses burned and corpses lining the road.
Michael could see guards walking in between the corpses, dragging them onto a pile, preparing to bury them. His stomach began to turn as he saw the dead, but he forced himself to keep looking, these wouldn’t be the last he would see in his life after all.
In the center of the town were the survivors, by the look of it nearly half the village had been slaughtered mostly the men, this was nothing like what Father had told them. The brigands had robbed until now and only killed those who resisted. What had changed here?
They rode into the village square and instantly found the one in charge, a man in a coat of arms with a yellow tree on brown ground. He was a member of the baron’s family of these parts but not the baron himself; the baron was nearly sixty as far as Michael remembered and this man was in his late twenties at best.
Lord Rowan stopped his horse in front of the noble and a guardsman quickly moved to hold the horse while he dismounted, the rest following his example.
“Report,” Lord Rowan addressed the noble without open emotions, but Michael knew that he had to be upset at his people being slaughtered.
The noble quickly bowed and started talking as Michael and Matthias joined their father. “Milord, my name is Ulric, son of Baron Trebon. Your visit is quite a surprise. We have been hunting the brigands for some time already, but they keep skipping over borders into other baronies, and that makes it difficult to pursue them. Not everyone seems to take them too seriously, but I am sure that we will have them pinned down soon, this is nothing you need to concern yourself with.” He finished his short explanation with another bow and Michael could see the stress in his movements.
It was a short and precise explanation of why they were not at fault for their continuing failure to capture or report the brigands and Michael made an annoyed face at the waste of time. Lord Rowan seemed to share Michael’s opinion and said, “Does his burning village look like something irrelevant to you, Sir? Does this mountain of corpses give you so much confidence that you want to refuse help?” Ulric quickly shook his head. “That’s what I thought. So, I don’t need excuses, I need a report, now.” His voice cut through Ulric, and he stood straighter.
“The brigands attacked this village yesterday, Milord. The survivors said that they tried to defend their homes and didn’t want to give up their livestock. This is a wild area so they are used to fighting small monsters and brigands, but this was more than they could take. The brigands killed everyone that resisted and set their homes alight as punishment for resisting and then vanished.”
“How many are there?”
“Around twenty, some said more some less but that seems to be about right from what we knew already.” Lord Rowan frowned, and Matthias joined in, “That is less than I thought, how come you haven’t hunted them down yet, and don’t tell me barony borders, twenty bandits should be easy picking for even a small group of knights, and they have been robbing and murdering for weeks.”
“It is not that easy,” Ulric tried his hardest to not let his hurt pride show, but Michael could see that he was a bellicose man. “They have augmenters and mages.”
“WHAT,” Lord Rowan bellowed, “They have augmenters AND mages, and you didn’t report any of it? You haven’t even called the Inquisition?”
“We were sure we could take care of it once we got a hold of them and we still are, Milord. There was no reason to trouble your lordship or the most holy Inquisition with such a matter,” Ulric tried to defend himself, but excuses would never have any effect on the stoic Lord Rowan.
“I will have a chat about this with your father and all those involved later,” Lord Rowan growled, and Michael could feel the pressure rising, he had only learned recently how difficult it was to do that outside of a room and that his father was one of four people in the kingdom who had this strong control over his mana.
“What can you tell me about the bandits?”
“T-the leader is a man called Oak; we have no real name. He is at least a mana-sword-level augmenter. There are a couple of weaker augmenters as well, but we have no exact information on them. There are two mages one with wind and one with fire affinity. That is all we know.”
Lord Rowan let his fingers drum on his arm as he thought. “Fire is dangerous, especially in this wooded area.” He turned around, “Kiran!”
The mage walked forward and nodded respectfully, “What can I help you with?”
“Are you participating in this fight or are you just here to teach Michael?”
“Oh, I will fight, these damn rogue mages are really bad for the reputation of us law-abiding mages.” Kiran looked excited at the prospect of fighting and Michael couldn’t fault him for it, few other things in his life were as exciting as crossing blades with someone skilled, even though he never had a magical duel to judge.
“Good, I would ask you to control the fire mage then, we can’t have him burn down the whole forest with us still in it.”
Kiran nodded, “I will focus on the fire mage, but I will probably be able to deal with both mages; mages don’t live long enough to become powerful if they join brigand groups after all.”
“Good. Eydis, you are a good tracker?” Eydis looked at the count for a moment before she nodded with confidence. “I would like you to join me and Matthias in tracking them down.”
She looked at Michael and he shrugged, “Your decision.” He hoped she would agree, it would show her in a positive light in front of the knights and nobility, the same as Kiran.
She turned back to Lord Rowan and nodded.
“Okay, Ulric you are going to come with us, and we will leave in ten minutes.”
“I will mobilize my men,” Ulric said but was quickly stopped.
“No, we are enough for this task,” Lord Rowan said, it was obvious that the Lord didn’t trust them to stand at the side of his knights.
“Aren’t greater numbers advantageous in a battle, milord,” Ulric argued. Michael suspected that he didn’t want to lose face by just riding along with his liege’s party after they had failed to capture the brigands.
“This is not a battle, this is a hunt and quality goes over quantity in such situations, don’t worry you will get to fight at the front line with us,” Lord Rowan ended the discussion and turned around.
The noble bowed enthusiastically even though the count couldn’t see it anymore. At least he is not a coward, Michael thought and turned to his retainers.
“The first fight then,” he said into the group.
“You are not going to fight, milord,” Geron said with an amused expression.
“Yeah, I know but still.” Michael was excited for his first fight. He had heard so many stories and he would finally be able to tell his own.
Geron looked at Kiran with concern and said, “Michael, I have told you before, fighting with your life on the line is not fun. Many get traumatized on the spot, I thought you would get that after your run-in with the monsters in the capital.”
“That was only because I wasn’t strong enough,” Michael argued; he knew that it was dangerous, but the thrill of battle was still there.
Geron got down on a knee in front of Michael and looked him in the eyes, “Promise me that you won’t do anything stupid, you will stay out of the fight and just observe and do anything we tell you to.”
“I promise and I understand your concern; this is dangerous, but I am certain that you will protect me.”
“With my life, milord,” Geron said with a smile.
“This is all very heartwarming, but I have to relieve myself, and I would recommend you guys do the same before we leave,” Kiran said and walked away, destroying the moment.