Chapter 59:

I walked out of the strategy meeting, ignoring the stares, glares, and looks of confusion that followed me. I knew the true consternation of all the generals and other nobles wasn't directed at me but rather at the Duchess trailing behind. She had a notebook tucked under her arm and a satchel with several bottles of ink and writing implements.

As she followed a step behind me to my left, I grumbled something unintelligible. Still, she must have overheard me saying something. She just laughed in a low, rich, musical way and reached out to touch my elbow. I had been explicit in my rebuff of any attempt at closeness or affection she tried to show me. She wasn't exactly happy about that, as she was preparing herself to possibly enter a marriage that would never happen for many, many reasons.

This might have made her or anyone else avoid me or dislike me. Unfortunately, I may have tipped my hand a little too hard on too many other things for that to work. And as much as I was going to avoid any romantic entanglements with her, I actually enjoyed her company. Other than Loki, she was the first person I actually had things in common with from my previous life. She was far too much of a nerd but still sitting and talking rather than fighting. I would take what I could get.

Sadly, it felt like we had less in common than we probably should. I was slowly coming to terms with how much my time in Valhalla changed me. Long meetings were just a part of my previous job. I had gotten used to them, even if no one enjoyed them. Now, though, they positively grated. Alana only helped shed light on this fact.

I'd let her get too close and see too much of what I knew. Explaining the very basics of calculus had just been the start. Ever since then, she never left my side without significant protest and would steal every second of my spare time to pester me for extra knowledge. Unfortunately, she was so persistent and reminded me of my own daughter that I couldn't say no to her. That was a problem, as she had taken it upon herself to be my historian. Apparently, great men like me—her words, not mine—needed to have a record of what they did. In reality, this wasn't limited to what I did; she also wrote down everything I said.

Now, she followed me around with paper, pens, and even a notebook for when she couldn't use ink. The sound of the scrawl of charcoal or pen nibs on parchment followed me everywhere. I learned to tune out her hastily copying down pretty much every word I said for the "historical record." But not everyone else had.

I had fought it for a while, but eventually, I gave up. Now, this world was being introduced to all sorts of science and technology, which it probably wasn't ready for. It wasn't just technology. There were battle tactics that I vaguely half-remembered from studying things like Alexander the Great, Rome, or Medieval Knights. It was kind of flattering to receive such attention, but I had a feeling this wasn't going to go over extremely well after I left this world.

The biggest concern, though, was the image we were projecting. Alana had become very much subservient to me in the eyes of the nobility and generals. She was the Duchess sent to learn from me, for sure, but she was still a duchess, and I was a lowly count. Instead of acting her station, she acted more like a scribe. I couldn't even speak regularly around her. Every time I accidentally dropped an idiom or some reference to something else, she would get a certain look in her eye and scribble something even faster in the margins. As soon as she got me alone, she'd pester me about what it meant and explain the concepts behind it. I just hadn't realized how much of everyday speech was reliant on technology and things that didn't exist here.

I slumped into my sitting room as Alana finished taking down her notes, and I just looked up at the ceiling and sighed. In my previous life, I essentially played politics in a cutthroat business environment. But over the last year or so, since I've been dead, I seemed to have lost my taste for it. The endless meetings were nothing but frustrating. As well as maneuvering everyone. I received no satisfaction from the conquests of the backroom deal like I used to. It was as if the joy of battle had washed away any satisfaction.

My heart didn't race right when I was pulling the rug out from underneath my opponent or when I received the concession, and my will was imposed on the others. It was satisfying in some sense but now felt hollow.

In order to combat this, I spent a decent amount of my time either meditating or training. I couldn't really improve my stats or weapon efficiencies with my inferior body, but it was satisfying. Also, I now had a reputation to maintain as a master swordsman. One of the few things that helped the other nobles put up with me was that I was more than willing to teach.

Several of the children of the nobility on the campaign were now my students. Teaching was as satisfying as fighting in some ways. This was one of the few reasons why Alana had been able to maintain her position at my side, with nothing more than strange looks and rumors being spread about her. She couldn't care less, though. The only person who really seemed to object was Earl Ingress, and that was because he was technically Alana's cousin and felt that she was disrespecting their house. But whenever he had cornered her to complain, it had fallen on deaf ears.

"Can't you lay off for a moment?" I complained to Alana. "Just write it down later or something. Every time you do this, you make a scene."

She ignored me as she poured over her book. I hadn't really expected a response to the argument we had what felt like hundreds of times. But after she finished pouring sand on the page and blowing on the ink to dry it, she looked up.

"What's a layoff?" she asked. I just rolled my eyes before figuring out how to explain.

"When a company fires a bunch of employees at once due to situations outside their performance," I said in a monotone explanation, long since giving up on avoiding explanations that didn't make sense. She would just have to figure it out.

Luckily, she knew most of the terms at this point and never forgot a thing. She just nodded, making another note on a separate sheet of paper. As she did that, she said, "No, I can't. I won't remember everything. Do you realize during that strategy meeting that you potentially revolutionized warfare in about five different ways, and most of the people in the room didn't even realize it?"

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Her voice was rising. "If I hadn't written some of this down, I would totally have forgotten about the details of the crank mechanism you just described for a crossbow. The idea is that you could use differentiating gear ratios to miniaturize them to improve the reload speed... I mean, if you work it right like you suggested, we could even have children firing them."

I winced at the idea of child soldiers.

"Not that I want to," she hurriedly explained at my reaction, "but it's incredible."

I shouldn't have brought that point up nor explained it to everyone when they didn't understand. Even if I started people making them now, we wouldn't have enough for it to matter in the upcoming battle. Instead of explaining that, I just shrugged. "You know about gear ratios. You could have figured that out anyway."

"Yes, but do you realize how long it takes for some inventions or ideas to move from one thing to another?"

"Sorry. As I said before, I don't know if really revolutionizing warfare all the time is a great idea. It'd be better if no one else knew how to do any of these things," I grumbled.

Loki had been wrong about the level of technology in this world. It wasn't exactly 400 years newer than Earth, but somewhere between 2000 and 400, depending on the technology. It had evolved in entirely different ways and was a weird mishmash.

She finished writing something else and then said, "So no, I cannot just write this all down later. There are too many important things."

Alan reached out and rang a bell by her desk. A second later, her handmaid came in. She handed the servant the stack of papers with some instructions.

Not only had the Duchess decided she was going to follow me around and write everything down, but she also had a team of various scribes and engineers filing it and expanding on everything she found interesting. I suggested that she have an actual scribe write down everything I said, but her response was just that they would miss things and wouldn't recognize what was important.

To be fair, she was correct. I fully accepted that Alana was brilliant. I might have the experience of a culture that had technology for a long time and the advantage of a college education. Nevertheless, Alana's brain worked in a way mine never could.

"I never thought I'd miss Zoom meetings," I grumbled. "At least they had live transcription."

Alana perked up at this. I looked at her flatly. "No, that involves computers. I'm not bothering to explain that."

She whined wordlessly. Computers were where I had drawn the line. I explained electricity to her, and I told her until she figured out how to make a transistor, I wasn't going to bother explaining anything about programming or computers. It was something I didn't understand myself and wouldn't be something she'd ever likely see in her lifetime. No matter how much she progressed in technology. She still complained about that whenever she could.

The one advantage of her obsession was that the rare bits of romantic overtures she had attempted in the first couple of days had slowed down. A lot. She was just so obsessed with the current projects. Which was a relief. I couldn't help but admit that she had grown on me. Not in any sort of romantic way, but I honestly didn't mind having her around. And if she had continued in that way, it would have been incredibly awkward.

I levered myself out of the chair and sighed. "Okay. I'm going to go to the training ground for a bit."

She put down her quill. I paused; she never stopped in the middle of a sentence like that. I read worry in her eyes as she looked up at me and frowned. "They're not that bad."

I grumbled and shook my head. "Really, they're not," she insisted.

"Arron objects to my every plan just to argue," I said, throwing my hands up in the air. "He doesn't even disagree with me. He just likes to argue, and it wastes so much time."

"You're not giving him credit. He's just making sure that everything is thought out and everyone understands. You tend to bulldoze people in the conversation."

I frowned. I wasn't normally so forceful, but over the past month or two, my patience had been growing thin. I had been giving in to my dramatic side more and more. In Valhalla, I had been relatively cautious, as it was very much out of my depth and out of my element. But now that I was somewhere I was comfortable with, even if I had lost my enjoyment for.

"Well, if they had better ideas," I said weakly, and she shook her pen at me.

"You know they don't. Besides, the king explicitly put you in charge, and even though I'm technically senior," she said, putting her fingers in air quotes around 'technically.' That was a gesture she particularly loved and now uses at every opportunity. "Everyone knows you have my complete backing. So, pretty much what you say goes. Do you think you would normally get such a level of respect and deference from these people? Marquess and Earls are in that meeting with you, and many of them haven't even said a single thing."

"Are you sure you are only eighteen," I asked.

She grimaced at me. "Stop calling me old."

I just shook my head, not really in denial, but just exasperation. It was a good thing that she didn't really understand the problem. "Fine, but I'm still going to go work out some stress."

Alana looked down at her notes, and I interrupted her. "Don't worry. I'll be fine on my own."

The scrim dripped from my words, but she just looked up and smiled.

"I have no doubt you will be. But this can wait," she said, and she started packing away her things.