The days following Mark’s escape from the battlefield were tense. He half expected dozens of throne ships to fly over the horizon and bombard Fort Winterclaw, but they never came.

He briefed Callum carefully, making sure the boy wouldn’t say anything about what happened. Creating a panic was the last thing they needed.

He had planned to take the suit back from Callum after arriving in the fort, but with such an important secret looming over his head, he decided to let him keep it, hoping that it would encourage secrecy. Not to mention, the boy now had experience and had proven himself under pressure, both of which he needed.

As for the others aboard their ship, Mark offered them silencing coin and even went as far as offering them new cabins in return for their silence. Luckily for him, they turned out greedier than they were cautious, and so he kept the secret of their engagement with the Imperium within the group.

Mark wasn’t naive, though. He knew the secret would get out. But like any good conspiracy, he just needed to sow enough doubt in the people’s minds that they wouldn’t want to risk upending their lives over something that might not be true.

Ultimately, Mark had grander plans for the boy in mind, but he needed to get their priorities sorted first, so he sent Callum off with a couple of Venjmin’s men as navigators to the mine. Their objective was to find what the mine needed, bring supplies and/or manpower, and, if the mine had already become operational, return with ore.

As for governance, he intended to build a council to assist in decision-making. This would consist of Venjimin, Elowen, Payon, Reida, Tath Gorak, and Altono.

The foreign priest was a bit of a wild card, but he was undoubtedly valuable to the fort, and Mark thought it would help the fort's image as a welcoming haven for people of all kinds. This was also present in his decision to elect Tath Gorak. With any luck, the troll chieftain would help outsiders see the fort as not just a refugee for all humans but for other races as well. Something Mark had realized was missing elsewhere.

He had already known the Imperium to be a human-exclusive empire, and from the nations he had visited when he traveled south, he had learned that they appeared to be the same. But it had Mark wondering. How many intelligent races lived in this world? If there were many, perhaps that was another force he could tap into to set Fort Winterclaw apart.

He needed to consider another issue—the fort’s name. Fort Winterclaw was limiting. He wanted to create a state, not a tiny fort in the middle of nowhere, and that would require an appropriate name.

Over several weeks, Mark had gone through hundreds of potential names, including stealing entire nations' names from Earth. But none of them stuck. Besides, he had created a tiny but growing culture around Fort Winterclaw and figured that shying away from the roots they had created would be a waste of the effort they had already invested.

The problem was that Winterclaw just didn’t go into the names he came up with in a way that he liked, and since he intended to drop Fort entirely from the name, it was all he had to go by.

However, after an endless back and forth, Mark ended up settling on The Kingdom of Winterclaw. Ultimately, he figured that building on the identity they had already created made more sense than changing the name to something else, even if he didn’t really like the name all that much. Although, he kept an open mind. If they developed a larger domain and secured more land across the Frontier, Mark would reconsider changing the name to something more inclusive and inspiring. But for now, he wanted to attract people toward him with the prestige they had already earned for themselves.

The Law of Hierarchy and all the other Imperial laws were obviously disbanded. Few had issues with this, and those who did kept quiet. Mark kept an eye on his two remaining masters—the only people who had any real rank worth losing in the Imperial—but neither showed any sign of leaving.

Mark wouldn’t have stopped people from leaving if they wanted to. It was part of the image he was creating. He wanted people to feel free to come and go as they wanted, hoping it would encourage more to move to the fort since they wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to leave if they didn’t like it. But he had no intention of letting people sneak away in the dead of night with valuable items, and he kept a combination of mercenaries and ferals on watch.

The next task was to encourage more independent wealth growth and investment.

Up until now, he had been paying people to do most jobs on his behalf and then selling back their productivity to the people, but the larger his realm became, the harder that would be to manage, and it would no doubt grow inefficient eventually.

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The first industry to privatize was the collection of rigar bark. First, he declared all land surrounding the fort for over a hundred miles in all directions the domain of The Kingdom of Winterclaw. Less than half of it was currently patrolled by his guards, but it wasn’t as if there was anybody else to refute his claims. He then set an auction date and planned to parcel off all the rigar forests within that territory.

By doing this, he would give the buyers of said land the legal right to harvest it, and enforce their ownership of the land with the help of his guards. Not only would this bring in an influx of wealth, which he was beginning to run low on, but it would create debt, since few of his people would be able to afford the land outright.

Once the owners were in charge of their own land, they could then manage the collection of the resources and collect the rewards, creating more wealth within the Kingdom. And because his rigar mill was so much more efficient than the manual production method, he could control the price of the bark. Setting the price of a raw bundle of rigar at two iron coins, Mark could comfortably rake in a profit since he could easily sell the refined output for ten iron coins and needed little manpower to do it.

Mark also hoped that this would help his attempts to resettle the surrounding land. Since before the invasion, ferals had been fleeing from the land in search of security, and that strain was increasingly evident every day. By selling land, he would be giving his people tangible equity that they would be inclined to defend, even if it had been technically free and up for grabs prior to his parceling of the land.

His goal was to change the way the people thought about the land, moving away from their hunter-gatherer lifestyle and toward an agrarian and capitalistic society.

With all this going on, he had to abandon the idea of looting the temple for now. He was thankful that the Imperium hadn’t come looking for him but didn’t want to go poking the hornet’s nest. Mark wasn’t about to roll over, but he knew they weren’t ready to take on the Imperium. To even consider that possibility, they would need to bring far more allies from across the Frontier under his rule.

Several days later, Callum returned with the first ore from the mine. It wasn’t much, but what was important was the promise of wealth to come.

Dozens people and all kinds of goods had gone back with him over the during his return visits, and the mine soon boosted a temporary population of around fifty workers.

It was easy to get people to work in the mine once Mark introduced a commission program, allowing miners to keep ten percent of what they mined.

He was fairly certain that the mining camp was taking more than ten percent, but since the yields were so low, he let it slide for now, but not without a plan to resolve the issue.

What Mark intended to do was build up his order of knights to deal with such problems.

Since he had sought out the help of the trolls, the foundations for his new keep had been quickly finished, and a few rooms had even gone up, although the keep still lacked a proper wall.

His plan was to develop a devout and committed order that took pride in its work. Once it was ready, he would use these zealots to oversee projects like the mines.

If he became heavy-handed with the mercenaries currently mining, he was certain they would just come up with more sophisticated ways to steal from him and, in the process, become less loyal.

That wasn’t the answer. He needed loyal and faithful warriors who believed in what they were doing.

Mark had yet to reveal his connection to the Lightning God. Because one of Fort Winterclaw’s greatest attractions had been the secular nature of its governance, which had attracted all kinds of people to it, Mark had to be careful about how he went about making changes. However, he also couldn’t pass up the opportunity he had been granted.

As he built his new order of knights up, he would aim to indoctrinate them into the Lightning God, with him as their lord. Once he had a strong foundation among his order of knights, he would then work on expanding that across the fort. However, he intended to maintain secular order across his lands. Ultimately, as valuable as being the patron of the dominating religion was, he understood how important it was to maintain Winterclaw as an open and accepting realm if he wanted to attract populations with differing beliefs toward it.

Meanwhile, the establishment of presence within Frostwind Trader’s Post had gone down well. There had been surprisingly few issues between the opposing communities that now called it home, but that was likely because the mercenaries who had taken over the trading post were reliant on Mark and Winterclaw for a reliable food source.

After Mark got done parceling out the land, the lots surrounding the trading post were some of the fastest selling, and people were quick to set up operations in the area, likely thanks to the post’s security and the ability to move into cabins that were left standing and vacant when the guilds and Imperials soldiers left to travel south.

Even though the trading post didn’t have all the defensive weapons of Fort Winterclaw, its excess of Imperial mercenaries and tall walls made it an attractive location to live, especially since the fort was growing more crowded every day, and many ferals were already being forced to live outside of the walls.

Because of these pressures, there were plenty of people willing to get in early and start a life for themselves within the trading post. Not only that, but the trading post was where it was for a reason, and many had begun to bank on its value as a trading hub, returning when the invasion settled down.

With the reorganization of his infant kingdom starting to find its footing, Mark turned his focus to his new order of knights. First, he needed to recruit its inner circle. This would begin with Callum, Erin, Radic, and Clay. He chose the acolytes as they had already shown proven loyalty to him, and while they had tensions between each other, he hoped he could fuel that into a competitive attitude that could be utilized to push them further, and since they had refused to follow Henric when he left the fort, he wasn’t too worried about them betraying him.

Mark sat down on the chair in his cabin and strummed his fingers along his table. There was still so much to get down, but strangely, he felt confident about their future.

Now, he just needed to assemble and army to expand their reach across the land, and he needed to do it fast.