Now that affairs in the viscounty and the demon realm were largely on track, Murphy could finally breathe a sigh of relief. It's just too bad he couldn't speed up time in this world; otherwise, he'd have fast-forwarded straight to the harvest season.
With no pressing matters at hand, Murphy's biological clock had once again gone haywire. By mid-October, he could hardly tell night from day, shrouded in an eternal gloom, until a piece of intelligence arrived that shook the Demon Lord Your Majesty from his slacker routine.
A fresh report on the warfare in the northwest landed on Murphy's desk. To be precise, the battlefield had shifted from the northwest of the kingdom to its northern heartlands.
Such exact information certainly wouldn't come from Alaric's not-so-sharp underlings. A tiny ghost from Ghost Lord Wirt's retinue had delivered this envelope brimming with intelligence to Murphy's study. With its level, almost no one in the viscounty could see the specter besides the bio-mimetic skeletons of its own kind.
There it was, the ghost had left an envelope filled with intelligence on Murphy’s desk, where it lay undisturbed until the Demon Lord woke from his haphazard slumber.
As the afternoon waned, Murphy was having what could only loosely be called breakfast, perusing the latest military dispatches.
The kingdom's vast war machine, with its colossal might, took weeks just to stir into motion.
With the help of shadow guards and mages, news of the northern ducal uprising spread to each lord's ears within a couple of days – no slow crawl by any standards. But for a lord to muster troops throughout their territories, well, that was a drawn-out affair.
It's worth noting that a certain viscounty in the kingdom's southwest had responded to the king's call to arms with extraordinary zeal. Soon after the war drums sounded, the newly anointed Viscount Seth Reed began conscription efforts across his lands, projecting bold proclamations. He dared the traitorous Western Duchy to consider centuries of friendship and surrender swiftly, sparing themselves greater humiliations.
Viscount Seth Reed's grandiose declarations evoked laughter among the other nobles. The Western Duchy itself paid little heed, continuing to scrape the land with abandon.
What took everyone by surprise, three weeks of basic military training later, was that Seth Reed personally led a force of two thousand fresh soldiers and captured Clark Fortress and its subsidiary towns on the outskirts of the Western Territories – ripping a chunk from the beast itself.
As the news slowly disseminated, lords mocked the Western Duchy's exposed flanks while simultaneously feeling an odd surge of confidence.
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Removing this significant hiccup, the gargantuan war machine of the kingdom had spent nearly two weeks just starting up. During that time, the united army, a force of two hundred thousand, marched on, leaving only scraps for the peasants – a blade that shaved the locals clear wherever it passed.
It wasn't until the army reached the Carnwen Stronghold, nestled between two mountain peaks about three hundred miles north of the capital, that the ducal forces met their resistance in the form of George Bradlay, the vanguard commander from the royal court.
George was a scion of a courtly earldom, a breed apart from regular nobility. The Bradlays were a non-hereditary title, lacking the governance of their own land.
This kind of noble was plentiful in the capital – a place where an earl, on the income of their land, could rake in about five thousand gold coins, saving one or two thousand provided spending isn't too extravagant.
To pacify these landless nobles, the king compensated them well above the average revenue of their equally ranked landed counterparts.
Of course, these nobles couldn't just idle away the years. Dwelling so close to the royal seat rather than ruling autonomously, the scions of these families were drilled from youth to serve as the king's commanders, offering everything for the crown and family glory, ensuring eternal lineage.
George Bradlay was such a noble. At over fifty, George might not match the strength of the two rebel dukes, but the gap wasn't vast. With ten thousand vanguard troops and two hundred mid-level mages in tow from the capital, the stronghold's defenses were more than adequate.
The rebel dukes were well aware of this and ceased their offensive after a token assault, leaving Carnwen Stronghold intact.
Yet seizing the capital required breaching Carnwen, or facing a lengthy detour. At this critical juncture, the dukes made another decision – to split their forces.
"If they won't let us through, then who knows what might happen out here?"
The King's Land occupied a good chunk of the kingdom, territorially well-endowed. The army's initial incursion, eager to make up time, drove a straight line across his vast dominion, leaving unmolested and scaring into submission those outlier settlements en route.
But now, the script had flipped. The dukes knew their golden moment had passed; each league closer to the capital demanded careful consideration. Otherwise, the two hundred thousand might dissolve shockingly fast into the boundlessness of the King's Land.
So the planned fragmenting began in earnest, with the sole aim to coerce the royal troops out for open battle – only then did the rebels stand a chance.
Townships of the north, believing they'd dodged a bullet, were blindsided by a swift retort as the army disbanded and descended into manic plunder across the northern expanses.
No matter the onslaught of the united forces, no matter how many pleas were penned by the small lords, George Bradlay feigned obliviousness. Not only did he withhold reinforcements, he even prevented couriers from delivering the pleas to the capital.
It wasn't really that George was cowardly; a ten-thousand-strong vanguard, no matter its caliber, was hard-pressed to challenge a twenty-fold force, especially since the legendary Western Guard and the Northern Line Mage Corps were among their ranks...
As such, by the time this covert missive, pregnant with intelligence, was delivered here, the territories north of Carnwen Stronghold were almost stripped bare.
After digesting the report, Murphy felt his spirits lift; finally, his patience paid off as the united armies suffered setbacks.
Closing the missive, Murphy started to spruce up, for he was about to play benefactor in an icy battlefield – what better reason to look resolute and confident?