“Do you see that? Think we should intervene?” Dominic, a young recruit, said, gesturing to where a human slave boy was hiding from his master, who went shouting through the plaza looking for him.
“Go ahead. I doubt any good will come of it. If the rumors are right, things will change pretty quickly.” The more experienced Jonathan answered. He had served as Sergeant of the 105th for years and was wise enough to sniff when the winds were changing.
After the Incursion and the normalization of duties from wartime, the 105th had become a joke among the Royal Army. As Alpar lacked a local militia - it having been sent to fight against the Void and never returned - they worked as thief-catchers more than they trained.
Gerard knew very well what his colleagues said behind his back. That he was washed out and that the Incursion had broken him to allow his men to be employed like that.
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They had no idea what living away from the aegis of authority was like. The 105th, for all that more than half its numbers had been lost fighting the Voidlings, had managed to reforge itself. Its soldiers were well trained, and he’d wager his monthly salary that even his recruits could go toe-to-toe with many “experienced” soldiers in companies like the vaunted 75th stationed in Treon.
“Leave him be,” Gerard sighed, earning a confused nod from his subordinates.
Usually, he’d be the first to enforce order. Whether that was bringing back a truant slave to their master or making an abusive owner stop beating their property, it didn’t much matter to him. Order and Law were what society was built on. Even the Hammerfest Empire, with its savage strength and mighty armies, relied on them once their conquests were done. Without them, people would be like monsters. If it meant the suffering of a few innocents for the greater good of all, so be it.
But now, that justification was not sufficient anymore. Franz, another of his young soldiers, had reported the previous evening that the Hero was gathering an army. He broke veterans and adventurers out of their funk with charismatic speeches and talked about equality for all. He spoke of Light-given rights being infringed upon.
He might even be right about that. Slavery has always seemed like a natural thing to me, but looking at it from the outside, it’s evident that the slaves are being stopped from achieving their potential. And most slaves are not criminals like some like to think. They were born into it and have known nothing else. Or they had to sell themselves to give some money to their families.
This wasn’t a new belief. Once in a while, some zealot sprung up and started preaching about freedom. But those were usually put down by the Temples very quickly, as they didn’t want to risk the wrath of the Royal Court. If they somehow acquired enough power to resist the paladins, the army was known to have dispatched a few over the centuries.
While those situations might seem similar to what was developing in Alpar at the moment, Gerard knew it wasn’t so. Leonard Weiss might have been too into his beliefs for his liking, but he was also a rational, talented commander. He wouldn’t have started recruiting if he didn’t believe he might have a good chance of winning. Whether that was carving out a principate of some kind for himself or aiming at the whole kingdom, Gerard didn’t know. But the fact that he was readying for a fight meant that the calculation had become positive.
There’s also his not-insignificant personal power. Even if I wanted to stop him, as the law says I should, I couldn’t detain him. He made sure to let everyone know about this by walking out of the courthouse unimpeded after summoning the greatest concentration of Holy Light I’ve ever heard of.
Shaking his head, Gerard continued his patrol. All over Alpar, similar scenes repeated. Minor transgressions were visible everywhere, as unseen energy ran through the lowest class. Something was pushing them to be bolder. To dare more.
At one point, Gerard saw a small slave girl, property of a merchant from Hammerfest if her leather clothes were any indication, actively disobey her master, forcing the man to activate her collar to catch her.
This was not something usually done in polite society, and even the other slave merchants gave the man reproachful looks at the way he was treating his merchandise.
They didn’t pity the girl, but her screams as electrical currents ran through her were bad for business. After a moment of hesitation at interfering with something that was not technically illegal, Gerard gestured to his men to approach the slaver.
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“Good man, you are causing a ruckus!” Jonathan yelled over the pitiful screams.
That seemed to do the trick, and the girl let out a gasp, finally able to breathe again. She lay there in a pool of her fluids, whimpering. She’d recover, Gerard knew, but it didn’t mean it was fun to look at.
“If you cannot keep order in your household, we’ll be forced to intervene more thoroughly.” The Sergeant said, voice low and eyes hooded. He had a daughter the same age as the girl, Gerard remembered.
“Who do you think you are?!” The merchant sputtered in his heavily accented voice. He struggled with the softer sounds and excessively put effort into saying the words correctly, but at least it was understandable. They’d have to resort to elvish otherwise, as it was the lingua franca of merchants, and Gerard had forgotten most of what his grandmother had taught him. Speaking in Festese was not on the table, as they didn’t teach their tongue to outsiders.
“Disrupting business is a punishable offense.” Gerard intervened firmly.
The merchant turned his gray eyes to him, typical of the Empire to the south, and sneered. Still, he complied, roughly gathering the girl by her collar and dragging her away, muttering to himself that he’d leave as soon as he managed to fill up his hull and not a day later.
The soldiers watched them go in silence until Dominic turned to Gerard. “Captain, do you think the Hero will do anything to the foreigners? He says slavery is evil, but if he hurts them, we might see retaliation from the countries in the south.”
That was a good question. Gerard would have liked to have the answer himself, but he supposed it would have to wait until Weiss made his move. It shouldn’t take too long. “I doubt he’ll kill them, as he’s not an idiot, but I don’t see him allowing them to run away with the slaves.”
That was as much as he could say without speculating. Weiss was decidedly unpredictable at times so that the precise execution would remain a mystery for a while.
Resuming his patrols through the cobbled streets, Gerard took in a deep breath. Alpar sat where the Serpent Sea and Green Sea met, and the winds were strong enough to remove most bad smells. Only the salt remained behind, just as it had always been.
Down into the slums would be worse, as they were protected by most winds by the town and, therefore, were cursed with the lingering smells of fish and civilization, but here, at least, one could breathe without problem.
“What should we do when the time comes?” Jonathan asked, getting to the heart of the matter.
It was a question that had haunted Gerard for days. He knew the rest of the garrison was no less conflicted. On the one hand, they were sworn to fight for the king and uphold his laws. There was no ambiguity in what should be done. On the other hand, the Hero had fought with them for years and had repeatedly proved himself to be a brave warrior and a man of honor. He was also a particularly powerful wielder of the Holy Light, as evidenced by the miracle they had all witnessed. That counted for something.
He sighed. He had been doing that more often lately and wasn’t sure he liked it. Gerard had never thought of himself as a man who sighed instead of solving problems. “We all know the time to make a choice is coming soon. Sooner than most understand. We’ll have to use our conscience then. I don’t doubt that if anyone lays down their weapons, they’ll be spared, so keep that in mind if you cannot decide.”
It wasn’t a particularly rousing speech, nor what a Captain should say in response.
But then, I’d have to either attack Weiss now, and we’d all die, or retreat with all the supplies we can take like thieves in the night and get to Thelma, where I’d need to coordinate a strike against the town. And I’m not doing that… I suppose my choice was made a while ago.
“It was bound to happen sooner or later.” The Sergeant grumbled, getting dejected nods from the company.
He was right. The conditions in Alpar were still deteriorating, which was saying something considering that the town had almost been overrun three times during the Incursion. Sooner or later, something would have snapped. A peasant rebellion would have been bloody to put down, especially if the commanders had enough time to achieve a few victories and become strong enough that the full might of the Royal Army needed to be mobilized to stop them.
Gerard hadn’t exactly left the town since the end of the Incursion, but he still had his ways of getting information. Most towns up north or close to Garva in the east had been restored to their glory, and the crown had given the local lords some leeway to replenish their coffers before they needed to pay taxes.
Alpar and the southern holds, however, were different. No royal mage had been dispatched to rebuild their walls. That had been done locally. The only money coming in had been from the sales of slaves made from the displaced populations of the former towns that had been overrun. And that money had been kept between the wealthiest citizens.
The town's overall population had gone from almost two thousand to over six. It was an untenable situation, and if Gerard had been a more conspiratorially minded person, he would have believed it to have been orchestrated. It was as if an intelligent puppeteer had added together all the elements of a rebellion.
“Gonna be a lot of dead.” Marcel, another soldier, added. “I hoped I’d seen enough of it after the Hero beat back the last Voidling.”
“Life is conflict,” Gerard said, repeating the adage his father taught him. It was a grim outlook on life but more accurate than most understood.
With that, silence fell over the troops. They continued their rounds, breaking up scenes similar to what happened at the market and noticing how differently people moved.
After the Hero had emerged from the courthouse, apparently immune to the force of law, a weird spell had fallen over Alpar as everyone waited to see what he’d do. That translated into much more cautiousness by the upper classes, as if they could sense their time was coming.
Gerard even knew of a few smarter families who had uprooted and left town on the first ship they could find. If the tension continued much longer, others would follow, but he suspected things would soon come to a head.
“Sir Gerard, out for a patrol?” A familiar voice asked, and the Commander of the 105th turned to see the source of his troubles emerging from the slums, decked in his golden and white armor.
Leonard Weiss made for an intimidating sight even when not on the battlefield. He was tall and handsome and had an air of assuredness that told everyone to think twice before crossing him.
Gerard recognized it as the aura only the most powerful adventurers and knights had. It was the confidence of someone who knew they could defeat everyone around them without breaking a sweat.
“Sir Weiss.” Gerard nodded.
He wasn’t worried about getting attacked. The Hero wasn’t that kind of man. But he still gestured for his men to give them some privacy.
“We need to talk.” The Hero said.
The time to decide had come.