Lord Parker already knew the answer he was going to receive from his officer regarding the arrival of his reinforcements.
He had read and re read all the sent letters many times over just during the past week, to the point he had basically memorized all of them.
However, that knowledge did hardly anything to soothe his frustration.
Then, feeling that officer was too much of a small fry to pick on, Lord Parker instead turned to lash out at Lord Macht,
"Why is father taking so long? Why are not the men here? Did you explain our predicament properly? What exactly did you write in that letter? Could he have misunderstood you?"
Lord Macht felt properly incensed hearing this.
The way Lord Parker put it, it was very easy to construe the things as him taking a dig at Lord Macht's impoverished background, mocking him as a man who could not write.
A proud, veteran warrior like Lord Macht felt like grabbing the brat by the throat and strangling him then and there.
While Lord Kite who was watching all this from the sides immediately felt the hairs on his back stand.
He understood that tempers were running high all around and this was just a manifestation of that frustration.
So stepping forward, he loudly spoke to draw attention to himself,
"My lord, remember that Lord Macht was the first to raise the request for reinforcement. His commitment to this campaign is perhaps only exceeded by yours!"
Defending the pride of that elder warrior and cooling him down as such, Lord Parker quickly then turned to Lord Parker explain,
"The problem here is the season, my lord. Winter is really not a good time to raise men. You should know very well... traveling is difficult and it takes much more time to send messages.
Not to mention how some of the waters around here turn very dangerous. I'm sure the duke is doing everything he can to send help.
And who knows, the fleet might just be waiting for us off the coast... only waiting for the weather to improve a bit before making contact. They might very well be here tomorrow, surprising us all! Then we will teach these Margraves why we are a ducal family and they are a mere marquis. So please hold your patience a bit longer until then."
Lord Kite tried to sound as optimistic as possible while saying these things, hoping to inspire confidence in the young scion.
While internally he lampooned, 'If only there was a way to contact the ships. Then we would not be in such a flux!'
Indeed at the current level of technology, there was really no way of contacting a fleet out in the ship other than sending scouts ships to manually search for them.
But in the vast sea, this was harder than looking for a needle in a haystack. And the Heeats could not even do that due to the same reason Alexander could not use his ships- bad weather.
So they had to rely on the fleet contacting them according to their will.
The fleet could still communicate to the headquarters using message birds that were trained to always fly to a predetermined position, however even that was very limited.
It was only a one way method like a pager and worse, it had too many ways to be intercepted. Birds of prey, bad weather and the birds simply losing their way were all known dangers.
"Right! We can load the ships with enough supplies and anchor a few kilometers out of the harbor! We can easily last a month ... or even more! Then once we have enough men...."
As the man trialed off excitedly, the gloomy look the lad had till now seemed to have been wiped off in an instant, thinking he had finally found the key to solve all his troubles.
Lord Parker was just about to let out a torrent of expletive praise to Lord Kite, and even offer him the position of his right hand man.
"Snort! Where are all the ships?"
When all that happiness was almost instantly turned to dust by none other that Lord Macht, who had chosen to unceremoniously gate crashed into Lord Kite's 'brilliant' idea then and there.
He was perhaps the only one who resisted getting washed away by Lord Kite's 'fantastic' idea and instead, upon carefully thinking about its feasibility on the spot, quickly found a major glaring flaw.
He thus reminded everyone that even if they wanted to do such a thing, they lacked enough vessels to take even half the total force, since a majority of them were currently underneath the harbor as charred wood courtesy of Alexander.
And then, as if to get revenge for Lord Parker questioning his literal skills, Lord Macht was still not done, but went on to further add,
"Not to mention the weather is currently really bad. Who knows when a huge storm will hit? What will happen if we get caught in it?
Then there is the matter of pride- how can we call ourselves a ducal family if we run like such cowards?"
And lastly, what if the Margraves loses to Alexander and then without us, surrenders the city to him? How will we take it back? Through another siege?"
"....." The whole crowd went silent hearing the veteran commander tear apart Lord Kite's idea will a rapid dog tears meat, shredding it until it basically disappeared.
While Lord Kite's lips twitched with regret as well as quite a bit of anger,
'You damn fool! You think I could not see such an obvious flaw? You think I came floating by a river yesterday? I was just saying it to placate the young brat. Would it kill you to shut your trap for a minute?'
Many who saw Lord Kite's face turn red then thought it was because he was embarrassed, while in reality it was because he was very angry at having his plan foiled by his own allies.
If things had all gone according to plan, he could have safety ended the meeting now and then slowly soothed the frustrated Lord Parker later.
However now,
'To be pitted by such good natured fools....' Lord Kite helplessly lampooned.
Let us say no to piracy! Don't take part in a crime! Don't patronize thieves!
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