The guard grimaced after hearing about the cut-off arm. “Feroy had already done cauterization of the wound soon after moving away from the ambush site, but the man was still out of it when I last saw him.”
Kivamus didn’t have to see that amputated guard to imagine how much pain he must be in. It wouldn’t be just physical pain either . “Duvas, after we have heard everything here, go and tell Syryne to confirm that we have enough Losuvil powder remaining. Hudan, you tell Nurobo to be ready to check the injuries whenever the caravan returns. He is an archer but he is the closest one we have to a surgeon here.”
“A surgeon?” Hudan repeated.
“I mean someone who has experience in dealing with serious injuries. We really do need to find someone with more experience in it in the future, but at least everyone is alive this time. It could have been much worse.” Kivamus looked at the guard. “Carry on. What was the state of the refugees? How many of them are there?”
“There were fourteen men and women – twelve of them slaves – and they looked like they had barely eaten for weeks. Feroy had already used up the rations they had taken with them since the trip had lasted longer than expected, so he told me that he would be using some of the smoked fish to feed the refugees and the guards even though he hadn’t taken your permission for it.”
Kivamus waved it off, wishing he had a way to contact Feroy directly and tell him that. “That’s nothing to worry about. The fish is for feeding our people anyway. Is that all?”
The guard gave a nod, so Kivamus allowed him to return and rest for now.
Hudan took a seat nearby. “Where are we going to house these new slaves, or uh… refugees?”
“Maybe we can put them in some of the abandoned shacks in the village since it’s not that cold now,” the majordomo suggested.
Kivamus glanced at the fireplace burning near them. “That’s the only option we have anyway, even though It’s still plenty cold despite the weather being above freezing now. Still, send someone to the longhouse blocks and tell the people that we need them to volunteer half a dozen huts for others.”
“Do we even need to ask the villagers for this?” Hudan raised his eyebrows. “You own all the land here, and the material the huts are made from barely counts for anything.”
Kivamus shook his head. “That’s not the point. I don’t want to turn into a tyrant who just takes people’s homes away on his whims, like Feroy had told us to be happening in Kirnos these days. If these runaway slaves start to think that I’m the same as other nobles whom they are running from, they’d have no reason to stay here either.”
“I’ll send a servant to the blocks later this evening to ask them.” Duvas added, “In that case do you also want to pay the shack owners something for this? Like we were doing when we asked people to take in the homeless people temporarily before winter?”
Kivamus snorted. “We don’t have any money to pay for it even if we wanted to. Anyway, like Hudan said, I do own this land and the villagers had neither taken any permission to build their huts nor bought that land from the previous baron, so we have no obligation to pay them anything. But asking people for this in advance will still make them feel like I value them, even if they were planning to stay in the longhouse blocks in the near future with their shacks sitting empty anyway.”
He continued, “That being said, it’s easy to pack so many people in the longhouse blocks when it is winter, but it won’t be feasible in the summer.” He tried to remember if Gorsazo had ever mentioned how warm the summers were here, but couldn’t think of anything. “How hot does it get in the summers anyway?”
“Oh, it gets plenty hot,” Duvas replied. “It’s certainly not going to be as scorching as it would get south of the Nisador mountain range in the arid wastelands there, but Tiranat is still located in the southern part of Cilaria so the weather always becomes sweltering for a few months in summer. That’s because the frigid winds of Cilaria which blow from a north-easterly direction in the winter months and make Tiranat so cold in that season, start to reverse direction every spring and blow from the south-west for the summer months. You already know that there is an ocean not far away from us in the west, which is where Kirnos is located, and these south-westerly winds bring in moisture from the ocean which makes it very humid in the summers apart from being hot.”
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Kivamus grimaced thinking about living in sweltering and muggy weather in the summer, after already dealing with subzero temperatures in the winter here. It explained another reason as to why Tiranat and maybe even Kirnos were such undesirable places for any nobles, apart from being one of the most dangerous places in the Duchy of Ulriga.
“Well, that decides it,” he muttered. “We really can’t afford to keep people stuffed in the longhouse blocks like they are right now for too long. We will need to start building new housing as well as more longhouse blocks as soon as we have enough workers for that.”
“Couldn’t the villagers just return to their shacks for the summer where they lived before?” Hudan asked. “It’s not like they will freeze to death in the summer living in those huts.”
“You are forgetting that we are doing everything in our power to get more immigrants here, and that means if it goes well, we will always have a shortage of living space.” Kivamus added, “Even if we send all the villagers to live in their old shacks in the summer, and keep the new arrivals in the longhouse blocks for now, it is still going to get overcrowded eventually. And when winter comes again, we will be in the same situation as last autumn, where at least some people are going to freeze to death if they keep living in those poorly insulated huts. At that point, we wouldn’t even have an option to shift them to the longhouse blocks again which would already be full.”
“That’s true enough,” Duvas agreed. “You don’t know how glad I am to see that nobody died this winter from cold or hunger. We have to make sure that everyone has a warm place to live before the next winter.”
Kivamus nodded. “Of course. Anyway, for now we have to focus on mining enough coal to pay the taxes on time, and then we have to complete the sowing in the newly cleared forests. We will also have to return most of the workers to keep mining coal after the sowing so we can afford to buy enough grain to feed the village until the harvest time in autumn. That means we aren’t going to have a labour surplus anytime soon. Still, we will have to manage somehow with the workers we have, and hopefully with more immigrants.”
“Can we even afford to send enough labourers to start making individual houses right now?” Duvas asked. “We only get a surplus of labourers in the winter, and I know we built a lot more stuff in this winter than any year since the time Tiranat was founded. But now that the snow has nearly melted, we’ll have to keep most of the labourers in the village occupied to mine coal until the northern road gets blocked before the next winter.”
Kivamus exhaled. “We still have to try… even though new housing is hardly the only thing we have to build. We also have to make some big storage barns to store the wheat we will harvest in autumn, although we have some time for that. Another thing that we’ll have to prioritise before all that is to dig a canal connecting the eastern stream to the farms, as well as a way to lift the water from the level of the stream to the farms so that they can be irrigated properly, probably using a new waterwheel. These are the things we need to do just for the bare minimum of survival. It doesn’t cover some new projects which I want to start in Tiranat to diversify our revenue streams.”
Seeing the blank look on Hudan’s face, he explained, “I mean I don’t want to let our village be dependent on mining coal forever. It’s not very profitable, and we can’t earn anything in the winters from that anyway. So I want to create more ways of earning gold, but that will only happen if our neighbouring barons and nearby bandits leave us in peace, which is not very likely, is it? So we will also have to take measures to secure our village more. After the first four watchtowers are built at the corners of the village walls, we have to make a few more of them to cover the walls better to make the village more secure, while also digging a small trench all around the village walls with sharpened stakes in it.”
He continued, “Of course, we will have to recruit more guards and train them once we have more immigrants, while also working to make new equipment like better swords, spears and shields for them, apart from more crossbows which are going to be even more important. We’d already planned to make a new barracks in the east of the manor as well as a dedicated new training area for the guards there, which will become important in the future once we have more guards.”
“All that will cost a lot though…” Duvas interrupted. “Paying the wages of so many guards as well as the craftsmen building those buildings will take a lot of gold. You had also planned to start paying everyone in coins instead of grain and coal after the winter, so I’m not sure we can do all that with our limited funds. Not that I think we can keep postponing that for too long, otherwise the villagers might just refuse to work. They can only keep working for so long in exchange for grain and coal before they start demanding ale as a part of their weekly rations.”
Kivamus snorted. “That’s why I said that I want to generate new ways of earning gold. Anyway, that’s for the future. For now, send someone to the longhouse blocks to ask who is willing to give up their huts.”
Duvas nodded. “I’ll do it right now. The labourers must have returned from work by now, so it is a good time for that. We’ll also have to feed those refugees, so I’ll ask the head maid Madam Nerida to cook something for them tomorrow until we can think of a more permanent way to feed them. You don’t know how glad I am that Feroy has managed to negotiate buying more smoked fish from that merchant in Kirnos, otherwise we simply wouldn’t be able to feed everyone right now.”
“Let’s just hope that we still have enough seeds left for sowing after feeding everyone,” Kivamus muttered.
It was the afternoon of the next day when a servant came running with the news that the caravan had returned from Kirnos. Immediately, Kivamus and Hudan exited the manor hall to visit the new arrivals, with Duvas following behind them.
Reaching close towards the gate, he saw that the pair of wagons had just been brought to an empty shed where a group of servants had already started loading up the smoked fish barrels on wheelbarrows, while some of the guards were supporting a man who seemed to have trouble walking because of a leg wound. Tesyb was helping the man whose cut-off arm was bound in thick bandages to climb down from the wagon. At the same time, Nurobo came running towards the group, reassuring the injured men that he would take care of him. There was also an unknown man with cropped black hair with downcast eyes who was looking around at everyone with a tinge of fear.
As Kivamus reached next to them, Feroy, the redhead Hyola, and the other guards immediately bowed to him.
“It is my fault, milord,” the ex-mercenary apologised. “I should have done better to make sure nobody got hurt.”
Hyola glanced at the wounded guards before looking back at him. “No, it is on me. If only I had been of more help to everyone… I don’t deserve to be a guard.”
Tesyb was just gazing downwards, along with the other guards who had returned.
Kivamus took a deep breath. “Stand straight you all. None of you are at fault. I know you all must have done everything you could have. Torhan and that bastard Nokozal are the ones who caused this, not you. And those bastards will get exactly what is coming to them, one way or another.”
“But…” Hyola protested.
Kivamus raised a hand to stop her. “No buts! It is not your fault. I’m just glad that everyone is alive. Now you all have been through a difficult journey and must be tired, so just take some rest for today. Feroy, you stay back here for a moment. Hyola, go and meet with Madam Nerida in the servants hall and tell her to start distributing food for every returning guard.”
“Of course, milord!” The redhead immediately jogged towards the servant hall.
“Nurobo, you already have some experience in treating injured guards, so make sure to do everything you can for them. Tesyb, you go and help the injured guards to an empty sleeping spot in the servant hall. There will be food waiting for you all there. Eat well and get some good rest. Duvas will also send Syryne with some more Losuvil powder for anyone who needs it.”
One by one, the guards started trudging towards the servant hall, with the injured ones being supported by others. Behind them, the servants were hard at work and had already removed most of the barrels from the wagons, while the grooms had unhitched the horses and were taking them to the stables for some water and hay.
“Where are those refugees you brought?” He asked the ex-mercenary. Looking at his arm which had a bandage wrapped around it, he added, “Are you injured too?”
“It’s just a few scratches, milord,” Feroy replied. He pointed at the man who looked out of place between the guards, “Apart from Joric here, who was recently enslaved by Torhan, the rest of the slaves are waiting outside the manor walls. I didn’t want to bring them inside since we don’t know anything about them, and the jail here is already full from the escaped farmers who had come here in the past.”
Kivamus felt that there was a story behind Joric, but skipped asking about it for now. “We have decided to house them in those huts in the village which are in better condition. It would be good for them to see a familiar face again, so go towards the market square with Duvas and he will show you which of the huts to accommodate them in. Madam Nerida should have made some food for them as well, so they can just eat and rest for today. Tell them that from tomorrow, apart from those who are sick or injured, they are expected to start working at whichever place suits them best based on their skills, and we’ll start giving them weekly rations in return so they can cook their own food in their huts for now.”
Feroy nodded. “I’ll return right after showing them to the huts. Hudan, keep an eye on Joric. He’s harmless, but we still need to ask him more questions first.”
Hudan walked towards the former slave named Joric, and put his giant hand on his shoulder, making the man stumble from the weight.
As the ex-mercenary jogged towards the gates along with Duvas, Kivamus looked at the barrels of smoked fish being transferred to the food storage barn. This was still unpaid food, but at least they had managed to buy enough of it that they should be able to sow the majority of the cleared land with the seeds they already had. The temperature was already rising and around half of the snow had melted by now, which meant it would only be less than a week before all of it had turned into water, making the ground muddy everywhere. Well, even more than it already was.
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At least all the seed drills were ready by now, so they should be able to complete the sowing with a fraction of the number of people which would be needed if doing it manually. While they had already tested it once, he really wanted to see them in in action soon. If everything went well, then this would be the last year when Tiranat was so desperate for buying food from outside. He didn’t think that they would be able to go on without buying any wheat at all from Cinran, especially if new immigrants kept arriving in Tiranat as was planned, but it should still be able to cover the majority of their food grain requirements. Leaving that for later, he turned towards the manor hall to wait there for Feroy. There was something even more important to consider before food security.
******
After a while, Feroy entered the manor hall and took a seat. “I’ve put the refugees into the shacks like you asked. A few servants are already taking a cartload of porridge to the market square to feed them.”
“It’s good to hear that they are settled in, but we seem to have a bigger worry right now.” Kivamus looked at Hudan and Duvas who were sitting nearby, before returning his gaze to the ex-mercenary. “Our scout told us that it were Torhan’s men who ambushed you.”
Feroy nodded. “They were. Apart from Nokozal who escaped at the end of the fight, we couldn’t keep any of those men alive for questioning, but Joric – the man you saw outside – has confirmed that they were all bandits working under Torhan.”
“What’s this man’s story anyway?” Hudan asked.
The ex-mercenary explained how the man had sold himself into slavery to make sure his family would stay safe, and that he had been forced by the bandits to participate in the ambush and had begged them after the battle to take him with them.
“Hmm…” Kivamus nodded. “He doesn’t sound like a bandit, like you said. Still, make sure to find out everything he knows about Torhan.”
“Of course, I’ll keep grilling him until I find out everything,” Feroy agreed, “but from what he already told me on the way, it doesn’t look good for us. Torhan isn’t a small-time bandit like Nokozal or others. This man is smart, and has good connections in Kirnos, likely with Baron Farodas there. Although he does seem to have an ongoing rivalry with Lanidas, son of the baron. Based on what Joric says, Torhan basically runs a small village by himself around the clay mines. Including the men we already killed, he used to have more than twenty-five bandits working for him. That doesn’t count the fifty or more slaves working under him.”
“That sounds bad for us, especially if this Torhan decides that he wants revenge on us for killing all his men…” Hudan muttered.
“How would he even find out that all his men were killed?” Duvas asked. “Dead men tell no tales, after all.”
“You are forgetting that that giant bastard Nokozal is still alive,” Kivamus answered, “and we can be pretty sure he is going to run back to his new sponsor Torhan. Still,” he asked while looking at Feroy, “unless Nokozal recognised you and the other guards, would Torhan even know it was us?”
“Oh, he recognised us alright,” Feroy snorted. “Tesyb fought with him one on one for a while, just like he had done when Nokozal had raided us, and the giant also recognised Hyola from the limestone quarry. I have no doubt that Torhan is going to find out exactly who killed his men.”
“Of course he will…” Kivamus muttered. What else was he expecting with the way everything was going in this world since he had arrived…
“Why are we even arguing about it like this?” Hudan frowned. “Shouldn’t there be a way for us to complain to the higher authorities like the Count or the Duke? We shouldn’t have to worry about a Goddess-damned bandit group wanting revenge on us just for trying to protect our people from them!”
“If it were some other bandit group,” Feroy answered, “they would be happy just to know that there are no knights here to go after them to wipe them out. But in Torhan’s case, he seems to have the second largest fighting force in this region of southern Reslinor after the baron of Kirnos, and with that power comes the ego and the capability to want revenge.”
“You are also forgetting where you are, Hudan,” Duvas remarked. “This is not Cinran or Ulriga where the rule of law is the mightiest. Frankly, as long as they keep getting taxes from us and Kirnos on time, they won’t give a copper about what happens to us, forget about sending their valuable knights to keep an eye on the roads here. If anything, Zoricus might even prefer it if we are overrun by bandits and Lord Kivamus is killed by them, not to mention his brothers in Ulriga would be more than happy to hear that news.”
“It’s not just that…” the majordomo continued with a frown. “We have no way to be sure about it, but it kind of sounds like Torhan could be an illegitimate son of Baron Farodas… I can think of no other reason why the crafty old baron of Kirnos would allow such a strong bandit group to exist so close to his village and even allow his men entry in his village, unless there were familial ties between them. That would also explain why the young master Lanidas doesn’t have good relations with Torhan, unlike his father, since the young master would be seeing the bandit leader as a rival for his inheritance of the barony.”
Hudan smirked. “So this Torhan might actually be a bastard then…”
Feroy snorted. “Yeah, he might be. Anyway, assuming Torhan had 25 men to fight for him until now, then even if he wasn’t related to the baron of Kirnos, the baron simply wouldn’t have enough men to get rid of this bandit group. From what I estimated after visiting Kirnos – which is maybe one and a half times the size of Tiranat – their baron must have around thirty to forty guards working under him at most. That is simply not a big enough number to wipe out the bandits in their own home without taking very heavy losses themselves.”
Hudan nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. But what if he really is a bastard of the baron?”
“If he is, then that basically makes him a noble…” Duvas muttered. “I simply don’t see a noble of this kingdom not wanting revenge for his men being killed by us.”
“If that’s true,” Feroy said, “we can be pretty sure that the Baron of Kirnos will also support Torhan in some way if – or rather, when – he decides that he wants revenge on us. Even if the Baron of Kirnos doesn’t send his own men with the bandits, they might still supply them with weapons and horses to make it easier for Torhan to raid us. Kirnos would be getting its own share of the spoils from that raid as well, which is already a good enough reason for them to support the bandits in an attack as long as they are confident of raiding us successfully.”
“Yeah… but our village is not the same as it was last autumn, is it?” Kivamus asked with a smirk. “That time the guards had to huddle inside the manor to protect themselves, leaving the village ripe for plunder. But before he actually comes here, Torhan has no way of knowing that we have a strong palisade wall surrounding the whole village now – taller than the one in Kirnos, from what Feroy mentioned last time. We also have a lot more trained guards now. I think you had what… a dozen guards during that raid?”
Duvas nodded. “Yeah, eleven men apart from Kerel who was acting as an interim guard captain. We used to have around 20 men in the past, but the remaining guards were killed during the ambush on the previous baron. As sad as it is, I’m glad we are in a much better situation now.”
“Of course,” Kivamus agreed. “After hiring more guards late last autumn, we have twenty four guards apart from Hudan and Feroy – and that was before we started hiring women. While the female guards can’t do much with a sword, we have 38 guards in total including them. No… 37 now, since the man who got his arm cut-off wouldn’t be able to fight anymore. The other guard who had a leg injury also wouldn’t be able to fight for a few weeks. That should give Torhan a nasty surprise if he dares to attack us!”
“But we don’t have that many guards in the village at the same time…” Hudan reminded them. “We have three to four hunting groups out at any particular time, which means usually we have around 10 to 14 guards out of the village for hunting, apart from the hunters of the village. Since we can’t send the women to fight with a sword, and we still don’t have enough crossbows even to let them support the swordsmen from a range, it leaves just 14 male guards, including two archers, to protect the manor and the village. Of course, the watch towers will give us a decided advantage here in defence, since the women guards, or even the older watchman we are keeping there can use a single crossbow to take out some bandits by themselves with the height advantage of the tower.”
Kivamus looked at Duvas. “What is the status of the watchtowers?”
“The second one next to the southwestern gate should be completed today,” the majordomo reported. “Taniok will start working on the third one in the southeast from tomorrow.”
“Okay, that’s good news, but it still means we won’t even have four watchtowers in a week to ten days time, since that’s how long it should take for Torhan to decide to attack us. Isn’t that right?”
Feroy nodded. “That’s the very minimum, but it will probably take longer, since Nokozal likely won’t have horses to ride back to the clay mine. I wanted to bring those horses with us after killing the bandits but we just couldn’t risk staying there when we started hearing the howls of adzees. Most likely, those horses wouldn’t have survived the night, since they must have been tied to trees by the bandits, and in that case even a single adzee would be more than enough to kill them. Although from what I heard, I believe it was a whole pack of them.”
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“Who knows, we might have gotten lucky and that giant bastard would have been eaten by an adzee…” Hudan snorted.
“We can certainly hope so, but it’s not very likely…” Feroy muttered. “That slimy bastard has a way of getting out of situations where he might die. We have to assume that he survived, and probably even managed to take a horse to ride. In that case it should still take him around a week just to find a way to the clay mine, since he used to operate in a different region of these huge forests and he wouldn’t have a good idea of how to find the mine without someone from Torhan’s group to show him the way. Assuming Torhan decides to attack us immediately after getting the news, he will likely try to get an audience with Baron Farodas in Kirnos to ask for his help, and then it will take a couple of days for them to ride here. That means we should have around ten days before we get raided by Torhan, and probably even two weeks or more in case Nokozal couldn’t find a horse.”
“Isn’t that around the same time when we are expecting the tax collector to arrive from Cinran?” Kivamus asked. “Can’t we ask them to stay here for a few more days and help us in case of a raid? How many men do they come with anyway?”
“Unless there is a delay, the tax collector should arrive in around a week,” Duvas answered, “since the Count wouldn’t want to delay getting taxes any more than he already has. It’s been a while since the tax collector of Cinran had to come here, since our previous baron preferred to go to Cinran himself to pay the taxes, but when the last time Count Cinran’s tax collector Ustaimo had come to Tiranat, he came with a couple of knights, their squires, and a few swordsmen and archers.”
“They would be very helpful if they agreed to help…” Hudan said. “I trained as a squire for many years in Cinran, so I might even know one of them.”
Duvas shook his head reluctantly. “Unless a raid happens at the same time they are in Tiranat, I don’t believe they will stay here for a single day longer than they have to. That means most likely the tax collector will be long gone by the time Torhan raids our village.”
Feroy looked at the others for a moment. “You all are also forgetting that Baron Zoricus in Cinran might even have bribed one of those squires or swordsmen to try to assassinate Lord Kivamus again. I don’t think we can trust them any more than we can trust the bandits.” Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on NoveI★Fire.net
Kivamus clenched his fists, trying not to think about how Levalo had tried to feed him poisoned soup, and had nearly killed the young maid Clarisa in the process. “Alright, let’s stop thinking about what-ifs. There is no point in that. I agree that we can’t trust any armed men from Cinran to protect us, which means we have to do it ourselves. What I want more than anything is to go and attack Torhan right in his clay mine and kill him right there, so he can’t threaten us ever again, but I don’t think it is feasible. Even if we sent every single guard we have for this – which we certainly cannot afford to do – we still won’t have enough men to be able to kill all his bandits without losing our own people, and that is if Baron Farodas didn’t outright help him against us.”
“You are right,” Hudan agreed. “Joric said Torhan had at least 25 trained men, but Feroy and the others already killed seven of them. That means he should still have around 18 to 20 men now, and to wipe them out fully we will need at least a double advantage in numbers, which means we will need to send at least 40 men, and that is after leaving enough men here to protect the village. That is simply not possible right now.”
“Indeed,” Kivamus nodded. “Which means we will just have to make sure to protect the village from them. Alright. The walls are completed, so that’s good. The second watch tower will be built by today, and a third one will be done in another 4 to 5 days. That means even if we just get around 10 days before a raid on us, we might even be able to build a fourth watchtower by then. Darora should also be able to provide us with at least two, and maybe even three new crossbows by then. We already have a good stock of bolts, so that wouldn’t be a problem either.”
He looked at the guard captain. “Hudan, select more older men and women who are willing to keep a watch on the towers, and continue giving them some basic training with the crossbow, just in case. However, when the time for a raid is coming close, we will send our women guards up there, since they are already well-trained in using the crossbows.” Once Hudan nodded, he asked while looking at Feroy, “That reminds me, how helpful was Hyola with the crossbow during the ambush?”
“She did much better than I expected,” the ex-mercenary replied. “The redhead killed two bandits and injured a couple of others, and this was her first time facing bandits coming to kill her. The other guards did good as well, including Tesyb who managed to hold out against Nokozal alone for a while. I would recommend all of the guards to be given a medal, including Hyola.”
Kivamus grinned, especially after noticing how Duvas’ mouth didn’t even close for a while in surprise after hearing about Hyola.
Kivamus began, “I agree that the guards acted bravely against the bandits and we’ll give them the medals later today. Still, crossbows are usually better when used as a defensive weapon, like when the person using them is standing in the safety of a watch tower, so they can keep shooting at the attackers without risking themselves. But they can also be used effectively in offensive situations, although that will only happen when we have enough of them to shoot the bolts in bulk.”
He glanced at Duvas before adding, “Just imagine how the ambush would have gone if all eight of the guards had a loaded crossbow with them at the beginning of the ambush. Even an archer like Yufim could have used it once to shoot a bolt before returning to use his bow after that. In that case, with eight crossbow bolts being shot out immediately after the guards recognised an ambush – even assuming half of them missed completely – they still would have injured or killed four of them.”
Feroy interrupted him before he said any more. “Actually, I saw that Hyola had just enough time to load the crossbow one more time before the bandits reached too close. In that case, we could have shot another eight bolts. That might have completely removed the threat, since even if the bandits didn’t die, only a few of them would have been left uninjured enough to keep attacking us. And that’s the best case scenario for the bandits. Sixteen crossbow bolts being shot at them in two waves could very well mean that all of the bandits might have died before they even reached the wagons.”
Duvas shook his head in wonder. “I had expected that the crossbow might come as a surprise to any bandits… but to think that the guards wouldn’t even have to lift their swords to wipe out all the bandits if they just had more crossbows…?” He sighed before looking at Kivamus. “You were right, my lord. In such a case, it wouldn’t even matter if all the eight guards were men or women if the crossbows could finish that many bandits before they even reached in sword-fighting range…”
Hudan also looked surprised. “I have already seen how effective a crossbow can be in the fight with the adzee a month ago, but to hear about them being so useful even in a sudden battle with armed bandits… Huh… At this rate, the guards might as well stop training with a sword altogether and start learning how to use a crossbow better!”
Kivamus grinned again, not mentioning that this was exactly the eventual result which had happened on earth after the invention of guns, which worked on a very similar principle to crossbows, due to the fact that they could be used by anyone without any prior training. “That’s why I keep insisting that crossbows are going to be our secret advantage in the short to medium term. Anyway, now that we have gotten fourteen more refugees, we can afford to hire a few more guards. Hudan, you had given some basic training to half a dozen villagers with machetes a few months ago and we had decided to keep them as reserve guards. This is the time to give them an offer to join us permanently.”
Duvas interrupted, “You are raising our expenses again and again, my lord, without worrying about the consequences. We can’t keep spending gold like this!”
“There is no point in keeping any gold if there are no people to use it!” Kivamus retorted. “Let me worry about how we will finance it.” ᴛhis chapter is ᴜpdated by novelꞁire.net
“I’ll ask them today when they return from work,” Hudan said.
“Good. I think they all should agree easily enough, which will give us another six guards, even though they won’t be on the same level as the other guards for a while.”
Thinking about the estimate Feroy had given them, Kivamus added, “We should have at least a week on the minimum before a raid from Torhan. That means it should be okay to send the hunting groups out on one more trip, but once they return from it, hold them back so we can protect the village better. Extra meat won’t help us if you don’t have people to feed them to. With the two wagon loads of smoked fish we got today, we now have more than enough food to feed everyone for the coming week, even without the guards going hunting for a while. Even if we somehow run out of stored food supplies, we will just have to use some of the seeds to feed the people. This might lead to a smaller harvest, but that is still better than losing our people to a raid or getting our village burnt by bandits.”
“I’ll let the hunting guards know about it,” Hudan replied. “In fact, they usually stay out for three to four days at a time, so I’ll tell them to take longer on their next trip to get as much meat as they can. That way we will still have all the guards in the village within a week, and we will get more meat to eat or smoke as well.”
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Duvas looked at Kivamus and gave a sigh. “I know you are doing your best to keep us all safe, but your ideas just seem too irrational sometimes for me to agree to them immediately. But doing all this might just help us to get out of a raid better than I could have imagined a few months ago.”
“I agree,” Feroy said. “It’s not like Torhan can even bring every single bandit from his clay mine to attack us. He has to keep some of them right there to keep an eye on the slaves. With every single guard in the village ready with a sword, along with the archers and crossbow-women keeping a watch sitting on top of the towers and with us also having some men in reserve with these six new guards… we might just be able to deal with Torhan without much losses, if at all.”
Kivamus look at everyone’s faces and gave a dangerous smile. “As much as I want it, we might not be able to go and punish that bastard Torhan right in his home, but if he does dare to attack us here, he won’t know what hit him!”
“That reminds me,” Duvas interrupted, “just like Feroy had hidden the crossbows when he went to Kirnos, we also have to hide the existence of crossbows from any visiting knights or the tax collector, since it is prohibited for anyone to have them outside of Duke’s army in Fort Aragosa.”
Kivamus nodded. “That’s a good idea. I don’t want to let any other nobles know that we have them, or that we also have the capability and designs to craft them here. I don’t want to see Darora being taken away by those knights for that. Anyway, those men are only going to stay here for a couple of days at most, so we can just keep those crossbows out of sight for the time being when they arrive. It will make us a little vulnerable without the crossbows on the watchtowers, but the knights will also be present here within the manor for that time. In case of a raid, they will have to help us at least a little bit… to protect their own lives, if nothing else. That should still help us enough for us to deal with the rest of the bandits.”
He looked at everyone for a moment. “Well, that’s all for now. You all know what to do. Hudan, you have to hire the reserve guards, and talk with the hunters. Feroy, you ask Joric everything he knows about Torhan and his men, then put him to work in the coal mines from tomorrow. Duvas, make sure we have enough medals so we can provide them to the guards in the evening.”
The others gave nods before getting up and moving out of the manor hall to complete their tasks. Once he was alone, Kivamus glanced at the shelf with the blueprints. Others were doing what they could to defend the village, so now he also had to do his own part to make sure Tiranat had enough gold to fund everything he had just ordered and the things he planned to do in the future.”
******
~ Joric ~
Joric was feeling confused. No, overwhelmed might be a better word. It hadn’t been even half a day since he had arrived in this unconventional village, and he already found it difficult to reconcile the memories of how a village was supposed to be run from what he had seen living in Kirnos against what he was seeing right now in front of his eyes.
Throughout the nearly two day journey from the ambush site near Kirnos to the bustling village of Tiranat, he had been dreading what he was going to find here and what was going to happen to him. Feroy, the leader of the caravan – who acted more like an experienced mercenary than a travelling merchant, or even a lazy village guard – had been asking him all kinds of questions about Torhan and his clay mine. Instead of hiding anything, Joric had told the mercenary everything he knew, just so he wouldn’t be thrown away as some adzee food by Feroy, with his throat slit while he was sleeping, but thankfully the mercenary had believed him and left him alive.
Despite the guards acting more or less friendly to him throughout the journey, even after knowing that he was the one who had stopped them for the ambush, Joric had still been fearful of what would happen when he arrived in Tiranat and the baron met him. However, back in the afternoon, when one of the guards had mentioned that Tiranat was only a short distance away now, his heart had started beating faster and faster, fearing the baron would execute him for helping the bandits in the ambush. After all, any noble leading such a poor and destitute village wouldn’t have any heart to show him generosity anyway. From what he had heard for most of his life, Tiranat was barely a village, and didn’t even have a wall surrounding it, like the mighty palisade walls of Kirnos.
From what others used to say about this poverty-stricken settlement when he lived in his home village of Kirnos, the beggarly villagers of Tiranat just mined coal all day, then drank ale all night, only to go back to mine more coal the next morning and then drank again in the evening. There were no other jobs here, and no new opportunities for people – unlike in Kirnos, where a person could become a farmer, a fisherman, a merchant or could even join a visiting ship as a deckhand if he didn’t have any other opportunities. Not that any of those tasks were easy or paid much, but Kirnos still seemed like a much better place to live than Tiranat. Or so he used to think before arriving here.