The next couple of hours were a frantic, rushed mess of actions and assignments that I struggled to set in order. Though I had obtained the House Alistar Coin, it did little to mollify the crack in the hierarchy. I might have been the second most powerful, but I hadn’t earned their respect. Most didn’t even know who I was.
When I landed back at the former duke’s central compound, or what remained of it after the explosion, I immediately took control of the situation. That sparked quite a bit of discontented grumbling and some dark looks. I chose to ignore them. This was war, and I’d been elevated to commander, which meant all the resources that Duke Alistar had commanded were now my responsibility.
How embarrassing would it be for the Queen of Aedronir to lose control of low bronze core soldiers?
The first thing I did before giving any commands was orient myself to the city and the military as a leader needed to. I hadn’t previously bothered to learn too much about Sealrite, but I hadn’t been leading a military operation. I queried a few of the House Alistar knights to find the duke’s closest advisor. Apparently, that had been General Roderick, who had also died. The second-best option was one Field Marshal Aargorn Delgov.
I called for him, and one of the golden-clad wyvern rider knights brought him to a large tent the knights had constructed as a temporary headquarters. He was an average man, perhaps in his early twenties. His face was covered in scruff and dirt while blood doused his gold and black officer’s uniform. Despite the average nature of his overall appearance, Aargorn’s blue eyes stared inquisitively at me with a calculative nature I could respect. The man had a rigid posture from many years in the military but still had a slight swagger from his youth and, if I guessed right, a touch of ego that fed from an unusual intelligence.
At my request and a small gesture to start talking, the Field Marshal nodded and gave the Lysorian salute. “House Alistar’s military was directly supervised by Duke Alistar, but everyday operations were overseen by General Roderick. Under Duke Alistar, there was only one general out of respect for his relationship with Sir Roderick, but generally, there are two or three that oversee different aspects of the military.” He went on to explain that House Alistar, like most other noble houses, used a simplified version of the King’s military hierarchy since aristocrats were only allowed to legally house a military of around 1,000 at any one time unless called upon by the King to raise more. House Alistar separated their personnel into three categories of hierarchy: the enlisted, junior officers, mid-level officers, senior officers, and then the duke and his family. Since Duke Alistar had chosen not to have any family, it had just been him. The Marshal continued, “The enlisted ranks start with privates, corporals, and then sergeants. Junior officers are lieutenants and then captains. Mid-level officers start out as majors and then colonels, while high-level officers are field marshals and finally generals. But, like I said, under Duke Alistar, there was only one general. The duties of a general were more or less passed down to the field marshals as General Roderick could simply not do the task of three generals on his own.”
“At what point does this hierarchy require core formation?” I asked.
“Mid-level and above, ma’am. Junior officers are expected to have heart rings, and the enlisted can be mortal.”
“Any difference in ranks between Heart core users and mages?”
“No, my lady. None that I am aware of, at least.”
“How many field marshals are there right now?”
Aargorn tapped his chin in thought for a few moments. “I cannot say that none have died, but prior to the earlier explosion, there were seven of us. I believe it is likely one or two have died if Duke Alistar himself was killed.”
I waved off the worry. “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. Call all of them here.” When Aargorn left to hail the rest of the field marshals, I went over to a young woman who was following Aargorn everywhere with a notepad. She jumped when I put a hand on her shoulder, her brown hair tied tightly in a ponytail whipping around so fast it smacked her in the face.
“M-m-my lady?” Her words stammered slightly as she nearly dropped her notebook.
I didn’t pay any mind to her obvious nervousness, especially since I neither knew nor cared who she was. “Where is the city map?”
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“Over there,” she said, pointing to a stack of rolled parchments on a table in an adjacent tent.
I brushed past the loosely hanging flap of the senior officer’s tent and walked over to the other tent with the map, not caring who it belonged to, and snagged the entire pile. Then I heaved them up and carried them over to my tent where I opened them one at a time until I found the Sealrite map. The others were filled with casualty numbers, complaints, and a myriad of other notes and letters that weren’t particularly relevant to me.
I ordered the notepad woman to take the scrolls I’d determined to be useless back to where she’d pointed them out. As she did so, I sprawled the map of Sealrite across the white slab of stone that I’d decided to use as a table. I’d spotted it earlier on and used a sliver of heart energy to cut the stone to a perfectly smooth surface.
With nearly no effort at all, I used my thumb to break off small chunks of that stone slab to use as weights and placed them on all four corners of the map. Then I took a step back and absorbed the map and every detail of Sealrite, even those less likely to be useful.
I unsheathed the dagger I’d stolen and plunged it into the map and stone to indicate where the main fighting had been—where the portal had opened.
I wanted to finish off the Cael knights and capture the city lord, Marquess Sharma. While Nasq’s information was beneficial, it was incomplete. The Caelian Marquess no doubt had a much wider array of knowledge considering the summoning portal he’d created.
The detonation had killed most wyverns before they’d managed to land, and those that hadn’t died I doubted would be able to fly. In fact, other than the wyvern I’d protected with my heart energy, I’d yet to hear about a wyvern that’d survived the battle. That meant they would be running south toward the city gates closest to the Colosseum. Even if they did manage to escape, I was pretty certain that would only result in them facing an endless desert. Though, I still wasn’t entirely sure just how large the desert surrounding Sealrite actually was. But I’d need a map of the entire region to figure that out, and that hadn’t been in the stack of scrolls I’d commandeered.
Just as I was beginning to wonder how long Aargorn would take, he reentered the high officer’s tent with three men and two women in tow. At my raised eyebrow, Aargorn shook his head. “The seventh, Field Marshal Andrew Delborne, did not make it, my lady.”
“Understood, Field Marshal,” I responded with a grim frown. I turned to the others and started giving orders without so much as asking their names. There simply wasn’t time. I’d already spent enough getting the basics down. “We’ll have time for formalities later. As of right now, other than myself, the six of you are the pillars of this military and will be taking on specific tasks I am about to assign.” None of them objected, though quite a few sent me furtive or uncertain looks. One, a woman with pitch-black hair and blue eyes, was staring so hard at me I was having trouble deciding whether it was in fascination or an intent to kill me through thought. In the end, though, no one said a word, so I pressed forward and explained my thought process with the Cael military’s likely path of retreat and proceeded with the assignments. “Since I don’t know any of you or your strengths, I’ll leave the exact assignment of tasks to Field Marshal Delgov. Three of you will head toward the south exit and head off the escaping knights, soldiers, mercenaries, whatever they are. They showed Duke Alistar no mercy, so you should not give them the mercy they refused to give him.” All my field marshals nodded solemnly. “Another two of you should take your forces and head off the Holy Kingdom emissaries. That might bring you south as well, but that’s a bit more of a mystery. I know they arrived yesterday and had a good amount of holy knights with them.” One of the field marshals with light blonde hair and blue eyes, with high cheekbones and a narrow, straight face that ended in a rather pointed chin, paled and raised a hand. “Don’t worry about their stronger warriors; they were taken care of earlier. It should, more or less, be capturing the higher-ranking officials. Don’t kill them. Cael—well, we don’t really give three fucks about retaliation from them, but I think we can all agree a war with the Holy Kingdom, if avoidable, should be avoided.” For now, I wanted to add. “The last will remain here and keep this camp in order. You will have the hardest job. Start getting citizens together and helping them rebuild. Once this section is stabilized, you can move to other parts of the city.”
“My lady, what will you do?” Aargorn asked tentatively, his expression twisted a bit as if he’d bitten his tongue or shouldn’t have asked the question at all.
The question didn’t bother me. “I’m going to find Marquess Sharma. I’m assuming he’s with the grounded wyvern riders, so I will start by heading south for now.”
“Will you take a platoon with you?” The field marshal that had paled earlier asked, looking a bit better.
I shook my head. “Some of the ex-slaves in my retinue will be joining me.”
They all nodded, not daring to say another word. I realized they must have seen or at least heard what my Paragons could do. I still hadn’t read the report regarding the details of their actions, but even a glancing look told me my Paragons and knights-in-training had done a wonderful job in leaving a very bloody impression.
“Are there any wyverns or steeds that weren’t in battle? Or that survived?” I asked.
The field marshals exchanged looks and nodded in unison. It was Aargorn who spoke, seemingly the spokesperson for them. “There are many horses and even wyverns that weren’t used. The Caelian attack took us off guard, even if we were expecting it, so we barely readied two-thirds of our wyverns.”
“I’ll need a report on how Duke Alistar was caught so off guard later. For now, let’s get going,” I said, ripping my dagger from the stone.