The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 5, Chapter 10

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 5, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“That fool. That absolute fool!”

A man’s enraged voice drifted out from the window beneath Liam’s feet. In the evening following the emergency session of Hoburns’ Royal Court, similar sentiments were expressed across the Prime Estates. Seemingly no one had a good opinion of the Holy King before, but now their attitudes bordered on outright hostility.

“Does he think we can station our armies outside the cities indefinitely? Who does he think is paying for everything?”

“At least we’ll be able to spread our troops out along the highway come winter.”

“Winter,” the first Noble snorted. “We’ll be overwhelmed by disease before then. Temple staff will have to be brought along from the south just to manage.”

“Transport will be troublesome. We’ll be able to move five hundred men every four days, at most. The number of houses waiting to lease our ship has grown tenfold, as well. Three are calling in favours for grain delivery.”

“Curse it all. Has this country been bedevilled? At this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sun just decided to not rise tomorrow.”

The discussion devolved into a formless rant, so Liam moved on. He thought that the Holy Kingdom was in a bad situation from the start, but there seemed to be no limit to how much worse things could become.

He dropped in behind a hedgerow, going unnoticed by the street patrols on the other side as he navigated the Prime Estates. The additional chaos and increasingly crowded surroundings made it even easier to get around than usual. In the shadows of a small public garden, he paused to listen in on a small group of noblewomen.

“Will you be returning to Debonei, as well?”

“Yes, not long after my lord husband arrives from Rimun. It seems that I’ll be shipped south with the grain.”

The group’s light laughter filtered through the leaves.

“I suppose it can't be helped. I certainly wouldn't want to be here with tens of thousands of men flooding into the city. What about your daughter?”

“Carla? I’ll let her know closer to the departure date. Some marriage prospects are arriving from Rimun with the ship, as well.”

“My, such troubling times and you’re thinking of making a match.”

“It is precisely in troubling times that the young are more amenable to potential matches, are they not? Never mind accepting suitable matches, they’ll be busy trying to make heirs due to the situation.”

“I suppose you’re right about that. Who did you have in mind?”

“Several young men have proven themselves quite capable of managing their holdings in the North, let’s see...”

Liam slunk away. He wasn’t sure if they were talking about Carla Vigo, but she probably wouldn’t want to leave the Custodio Household and he didn’t want her interrogating him at swordpoint for names so she could preemptively assassinate anyone who might threaten to take her away.

After visiting a dozen other manors, Liam returned to Rimun Gate. Sir Jimena was in the captain’s office debriefing a pair of House Restelo’s new thief-takers.

“Liam,” he said. “How did it go?”

“There’s a lot of information to sort through, sir. Did something happen while I was away?”

“Just the opposite,” the Knight said. “Everyone’s so damn busy dealing with the news that they’ve pretty much forgotten we exist. I’ve been sending our thief-takers out into the rest of the city to collect information.”

“I hope you haven’t assigned them to do anything too risky,” Liam said. “They’re getting better, but they’re not that good yet.”

“Nothing illegal at all,” the Knight replied. “It’s mostly just walking around taking note of gossip, deployments, supplies, and the like.”

“Then they better have good memories.”

Aside from needing to study magic, the most unexpected thing about his work was the sheer amount of stuff he needed to memorise. Ijaniya even had entire sections of training dedicated to retaining information gathered on the field. They even got him used to picking up bits of intelligence from his surroundings while actively engaging in combat.

“They had better, for their sake,” Sir Jimena muttered. “Head back to the camp: Sir Jorge will receive your report there.”

“Yes, sir.”

House Restelo’s labour camp had grown five-fold since he had started working for them, but now it was twice as busy as when he left it earlier in the evening. He eyed the activity curiously. It looked like they were cleaning up the place – at least as clean as one could get for a city of tents. The camp's administrative centre had undergone a small transformation, looking less like a makeshift office and more like a square decorated for the harvest festival. Liam frowned when he saw who was standing in front of the overseer’s tent.

“Marim,” he said. “What are you guys doing here?”

“All of B Company’s here,” the patrol sergeant replied, “Since everyone in the city’s too busy with their own worries to bother us, Sir Jorge had us come in to look all impressive. I don’t know who it is, but it looks like we’ve got an important guest coming.”

If they were meeting in the camp instead of Lord Restelo's manor in the Prime Estates, did it mean that House Restelo was plotting a major move? Then again, the Prime Estates had grown insanely crowded. Inside the tent, Liam found Sir Jorge being dressed up by his wife. The Knight sent a thankful look in his direction before shooing the woman away.

“She will be the end of me, I tell you,” Sir Jorge said. “Did you know she bought five different sets of formalwear for me without my knowing? I asked her why, and she told me it was necessary. Pah! What need does a man have for five suits? Tell me, does Nat do this to you?”

“Not really,” Liam replied. “I guess she did upgrade my bandolier three times in the last two weeks.”

“Ah, how I envy you. Maybe you had the right idea after all, hm? Keep her busy at home so she does not become busy in the market.”

Nat visited markets and shops in the city all the time, so Liam didn’t follow Sir Jorge’s reasoning. She just tried to ‘upgrade’ her husband in a different way.

“So,” Sir Jorge took a seat at his desk, “was your excursion fruitful?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that,” Liam said, "I won’t pretend to understand even half of what they were talking about.”

He waited while the Knight produced an inkwell and a stack of fresh paper. Sir Jorge dipped lightly dipped his quill and looked up at Liam expectantly.

“Um...first of all,” Liam said, “it doesn’t seem like anyone likes the Holy King much anymore.”

“I don’t think anyone was particularly fond of him in the first place,” Sir Jorge shrugged. “Well, he did have plenty of supporters after the war, but that support assumed that he would be the man he was before the war.”

“What was he like before the war?” Liam asked.

“Many believed that he was the best candidate for the throne,” Sir Jorge answered. “His brother Felipe was too much of an eccentric and he tried to introduce many strange, foreign ideas. Additionally, everyone worried that, if he ascended the throne, his successor wouldn’t even be a Human.”

“What about Calca?”

“Calca was, well, Calca. Beautiful, powerful, and idealistic. A bad combination for a leader, if you ask me. Those types always end up as villains in the tales.”

“It still sounds like she was pretty popular.”

She still was, apparently. It was understandable given the hell that they were plunged into after her death.

“Well, beautiful things are best viewed from afar, eh? As the Holy Queen, she and her followers pushed many reforms that no one wanted while leaving many, more important matters by the wayside. Caspond, at least, would have run things more to everyone’s liking...or at least that’s what we thought.”

“If you can call it that. We had to suffer through Caspond’s increasingly insufferable antics. His ignorance was made plain for all to see and I’m not even sure that he cares at all about what is going on.”

“I’ve read the accounts delivered from our allies about his conduct over the past few months,” Lord Vigo said, “but I still find it difficult to believe he’s that far gone. He was raised as a Prince, as far as anyone knows.”

“There’s not the slightest hint of that. It even feels as if his words belong to the thoughts of others.”

“The thoughts of others...?”

“Indeed. It’s been a source of friction multiple times since he took the throne. One house or the other is occasionally accused of influencing Caspond behind everyone else’s backs.”

“Our reports did say that he was too easily swayed,” Lord Vigo said. “Has there been any indication of where this influence might lead?”

“No. It’s random, as far as I can tell.”

“Random? Are you implying that there’s no reason or rhyme as to whom he is listening to and why?”

“As strange as it sounds, yes. The Royal Court was wary of it at first, as many suspected it was some ploy to keep us off-balance. Now that he has thoroughly proven his incompetence, however, it’s become a wearisome routine that grows more annoying by the day.”

A set of young women came by to offer the Knights refreshments and a late meal. The Knights were polite and accepted the hospitality and they also politely brushed aside the women’s attempts at flirting with them. Liam pondered the harmonious show they were putting on.

Why was a conservative Noble in House Restelo’s camp in the first place? Hoburns’ population was rapidly swelling due to the influx of aristocrats and their men, so everyone was probably looking for a place to stay. The city itself was already out of the question by midday, so anyone else would have to camp outside of the walls. Unless the conservatives wanted to go begging the royalists for space, House Restelo was the only option.

Still, that wasn’t any reason for a high-security meeting in the middle of the night. Something else had to be going on.

“What are the Duke’s plans in light of recent developments?” Lord Restelo asked.

“Nothing beyond what is expected, I would say,” Lord Vigo replied. “While what we’ve been discovering is grave indeed, the fundamental divide between us and the royalists remains. So long as they insist on their rampant exploitation of the north, we will remain firmly in opposition.”

“That may be a difficult thing to ask. On paper, the benefits of the new methods are clear. This is especially true when one considers that the aristocracy seems to have no choice but to limit the power of the Crown. The danger that Caspond represents is such that we must never allow him the means to force through any policies without gaining the establishment’s approval first.”

“As much as I dislike the idea,” Lord Vigo admitted, “it may be necessary to do so. But only the latter part. It is clear that the methods employed in the west are more beneficial for the Holy Kingdom as a whole. The abuses in the east gain little and cost much.”

Was House Restelo trying to broker a deal between the royalists and conservatives? There didn’t seem to be much point in that. Caspond’s position was so weak that he didn’t stand a chance against the Nobles should they oppose him.

“If anything,” Lord Restelo said, “your faction will be doing more to empower Caspond than the royalists. From what I understand, you still pay your dues to the Crown in full while also rendering your services for free.”

“That’s not incorrect,” Lord Vigo said, “but our point still stands. The goal of suppressing the Crown’s power can still be achieved without resorting to royalist methods. Urban centres only accounted for a third of royal revenues before the war. That’s nowhere near enough to overturn the establishment’s advantage.”

“But it is enough to give a fool ideas and Caspond is a fool amongst fools. Our superiority must be unquestionable, even to one such as he.”

Liam stifled a yawn. Did debates between Nobles always go like this? It was no wonder that they couldn’t get anything done quickly without being forced into a situation that required immediate action.

The meeting stretched on for another hour before the Nobles decided to continue the discussion in the morning. Not much had been accomplished beyond reviewing information and outlining stances that were already well-known. The Holy King’s passiveness over everything seemed to encourage everyone to take their time despite everyone agreeing that something needed to be done.

With little else to do, he returned to the city to resume his patrol. Morning revealed a drastic change in the countryside from atop the city’s curtain walls. The surrounding labour camps, which created a belt of tents along the edge of the city’s one-kilometre perimeter, had doubled in size overnight with the addition of the aristocracy’s forces and more still were on their way. It appeared that the fields had been hurriedly harvested in advance of their arrival.

Back on the ground, Liam found Nat waiting for him as usual at the gate. The girl smiled and waved before coming up to join him as he left the city. Liam glanced at her as she took his left arm. She had changed quite a bit from the timid girl who was waiting for a man to pick her up on the platform.

“Good morning, dear,” Nat said.

“Good morning, Nat. How was your night?”

“Crazy! It’s become even crazier now that the sun’s come up. June looked like she was going to explode this morning.”

“Explode?”

The Merchant who ran Nat’s stall was pretty excitable. He wasn’t sure if Humans could explode, though.

“There’s just so much to do, now! She was trying to go in every direction at once looking for new business opportunities. Then, she woke up this morning to find that a whole army camp popped up beside us! She says that they told her even more men are coming.”

“Did anyone buy your stuff?”

“It all went poof five minutes after June opened the stand,” Nat replied. “Everyone’s looking for everything. We’re trying to figure out whether we should keep filling army contracts or switch to supplying all of the new people arriving.”

“They must be paying pretty well if you’re thinking of switching from those armour contracts.”

Since she could produce multiple suits of armour simultaneously without worrying about finding buyers, Nat was averaging three suits per day. Not only was it an astonishing rate of production, but it was also making her rich.

“Well,” Nat said, “the best part is that the soldiers that are coming in are buying armour too! And they’re paying in real coin, just like the Royal Army. Our plan for now is to just keep making armour, but sell as much as we can to all these new people. According to Sir Jorge, the armour contracts are barely moving. That means we should take advantage of the temporary demand from these army camps setting up around the city.”

Liam nodded at her explanation. It made sense, as far as he could tell.

One thing he hadn’t realised while operating in the Holy Kingdom until recently was the nature of Lanca Leather and how prevalent it was. Unlike the cattle in Re-Estize, Lanca were Magical Beasts. Some people said they were a type of Nuk or maybe closely related to them.

Because they were Magical Beasts, it meant that goods derived from Lanca were superior to those made from regular cattle. The dishes they were turned to were better; their hides and bones were better; even the glue made from them was better. When it came to armour, it gave the Holy Kingdom’s light infantry the option to function as heavy infantry...or maybe their heavy infantry operated as light infantry. Needless to say, Rogues and Rangers used it as well and it gave them a surprising level of protection.

This also explained why Nat was growing so quickly. The material she was working with was far harder to handle than mundane leather. It also meant that the Leatherworkers in the Holy Kingdom capable of producing Lanca Leather goods were, in reality, far more skilled than they appeared to be.

“What’s going on there?” Nat asked.

“I’m not sure...maybe it’s just from all those people trying to move in.”

A huge crowd had gathered further west along the highway, past the entrance of House Restelo’s labour camp. Upon closer inspection, they found many Restelo Retainers gathered there as well, including several Knights. They found Sir Jorge near the back of the crowd, surrounded by his subordinates. Liam couldn’t see past all the people, so he went over to ask the overseer what was going on.

“Sir Jorge.”

“Ah, Liam. I figured you’d have beaten me here.”

“...I was working.”

“Of course. Forgive me for being so scatterbrained – too much is happening all at once.”

“What’s this crowd for?”

“The latest column of armsmen arrived from the west,” Sir Jorge told him. “They bring most troubling news. The investigation of the flotsam washing up on the north shore has turned up wreckage from the Water God’s Fury.”

Liam frowned at the unfamiliar name. Sir Jorge offered a helpless smile at his reaction.

“Prince Felipe’s flagship,” the Knight explained. “It appears that the conservative faction no longer has its candidate.”