“Halt!”

A few hours later, the shipment of metal ore entered town just as expected. The guards were awake now, and they didn’t act at all like they had just had a battle where they might have been knocked unconscious. The time was now evening, and the streets were busy as people were heading home from their jobs. Well, many of those homes were just hovels created in certain alleys, since that was the best anyone in the working class could afford. At least they were able to feed their families, usually.

Thus, when the inconspicuous cart full of metal ore heading toward the castle was suddenly stopped by a man shouting halt, it drew a lot of eyes. The guards put their hands on their swords. They were suspicious, but they weren’t on high alert or anything. The person in front of them was Drake, and beside him were his street toughs.

Although they were dressed better than they once had in the Capital, they only appeared to be mildly wealthy laborers, perhaps Blacksmiths or mediocre Merchants. Nothing that would cause the guards to worry. It wasn’t like they were moving gold coins. Metal ore was heavy, and you needed tons of it. It might be valuable, but who could steal it in the middle of town?

“What is it that you want?” One of the men asked, his hand only lightly touching his sword as he waited for an answer.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“That carriage you have right there. You’re coming from the local steel mill, right?”

The steel mill was right next to the iron mine and was ultimately where all of their metal was processed. These men then brought it into town where the local Blacksmiths would do what they were asked. While most cities had freelance Backsmiths, who were only occasionally hired to do bigger jobs, all of the Blacksmiths in Alerith were picked up by Lord Reign. He had strict quotas he had them meet every month. Although they were paid, it was only half the price of normal work. If they wanted to do jobs that made them any money, they could only work on them after making their quotas.

That meant that the Blacksmiths in this city were expensive and difficult to hire. Why did they put up with it? For the same reason! They were expensive, and they could act as selective and snobbish as they wanted to the public. Any who could handle the quotas could then sell their extra ware for five times the price they could sell it anywhere else. Furthermore, there was never a lack for work. As to what they made for Lord Reign, that would be the Knight’s armor that was being used to build his army.

I had assumed the Knights I had encountered were all provided by Imperial Cloud Meadow. They had even led me to believe this. While some of them might have been brought over as teachers to help the new Knights, most of them were selected locally. They were raised to knighthood using counterfeit Knight token, given good armor produced in bulk at the expense of the citizens, and then trained by a few skilled Knights from another country. I didn’t know another way to say it other than that he was building an army.

So, when we were attacking the steel ore, this too was weakening Alerith as a whole.