Samuel stroked his beard and eyed Drake. “How, and why, would we strike back?”
Drake stared him down. “They slaughtered our people like animals. They killed hundreds of innocent people and wrecked the capital’s docks. They have to pay for that.”
“Today was a tragedy, and I grieve as you do. But a single manor lord cannot unilaterally go to war with the kromian empire. Their numbers dwarf ours by an order of magnitude.”
“So we’ll get the other manors to join us!”
“Even the sum total of all manor lords, their blood thralls, and the whole of the capital guard is a tiny fraction of the numbers the kromians possess. Even should we unite, we would still be outnumbered a hundred to one. We also have no way to strike the kromians in their underwater cities. They reign supreme in their own territory.”
Drake glared. “So you’re saying we just lay back and let them fuck us?”
Marissa grimaced. “Perhaps you should use less colorful language?”
Drake glanced at her. “And perhaps you should stop worrying about my language when we’re openly discussing letting kromians murder our people, then scurrying away with our tails between our legs. If we don’t hit those fish fuckers in the teeth, they’ll hit us again and again.”
“We don’t know that,” Samuel said. “This is the first time they’ve struck the capital directly, and we don’t know what their objective was today. If they accomplished it—”
“Then they’ll know they can roll up and burn our house down whenever they fucking feel like it! The only way we can ensure nothing like this ever happens again is to show them we can hurt them as badly and easily as they hurt us. So how do we hurt them?”
No one answered him. Drake looked at his advisors. Samuel remained unflappably calm. Marissa still looked uncomfortable with the way he spoke to his people, which was just too bad, and Lydia, while she looked to agree with him, also looked to have no good ideas.
“Dammit,” Drake said finally. “We need to get Sky in on this conversation too. Can we send a messenger to set up a strategy session with her?”
“I have sent word to Lady Skybreak,” Marissa said. “The only response I received was an apology and the fact that she is unavailable. Lord Skybreak and her thralls were instrumental in defending the walls today. They lost people as well.”
So Sky was busy mourning her own losses and plotting her own revenge. They might be allies, but Drake couldn’t rely on her strength or her manor every time someone caused him harm. He needed to be able to handle his own defense, and with the size of his already small force dwindling each day, it seemed the first thing he needed was reinforcements.
His own blood pact was no longer slavery. He’d solved that problem. So long as people signed up with him willingly, for gold and shelter, Drake had to keep his manor strong. Without new blood his manor would wither and die, and then everyone he protected would die with it.
“I haven’t changed my mind about hitting back,” Drake said. “But for now, we will focus on restoring our strength. We’ve taken losses since we left the manor. We need people, and not just warriors. So where can we hire some new blood?”
“It is doubtful many will offer their services in the capital,” Samuel said. “The manors remain at the service of the noble court, and it is now clear to all that the manors will be called to service soon. Most would be hesitant to join a manor now.”
“What if they wanted to kill kromians?” Drake asked. “I bet there’s a lot of people who’d jump at the opportunity to make those fish people burn after what they did today.”
Samuel frowned. “Respectfully, lord, attempting to recruit those purely interested in slaughtering kromians runs counter to your goals. Robin’s focus on vengeance was troublesome enough, especially since we had only her word she would not take it.”
“Her word was enough,” Drake reminded everyone. “We don’t compel people in this manor, and I killed the Asp for her. No reason I can’t do the same with the kromians.”
“That aside, recruiting more thralls who are focused on revenge could lead to dissension in our ranks if we took a different focus. You have been lucky that, so far, the interests of you and your thralls have aligned. Everyone wants to defend the manor. If that changes...”
“I’m not taking a different focus,” Drake said, and offered a heavy sigh. “I just want to kill them. All of them.” He clenched his fists. “And I want to do it myself.”
Marissa touched his arm. “We do not know what the noble court will ask of us. You are a manor lord, but you also serve the Judge and the Eidolons. What if, in the cabal tomorrow, the Judge ordered us to take an entreaty for peace to the kromian empire?”
“Then I’d tell her to go fuck herself.” Drake raised a hand before anyone could correct him. “Which I know I can’t do.” He sighed. “I’ll concede the point for now. But if she orders us to go beg for peace, I might use my token of the court’s favor to refuse.”
“We cannot know what will happen in the cabal until it happens,” Samuel said placidly. “Let us table such discussions until we know more.”
“Fine,” Drake said. “We won’t put out a poster saying ‘Join Gloomwood Manor if you want to kill kromians.’ That doesn’t mean we don’t need people, and sooner rather than later. So if we can’t attract people from the capital, what about professional soldiers?”
“Sellswords, lord?” Marissa asked. “You may find such people unreliable.”
“Why not? We’re using gold and shelter to motivate everyone else.”
“Yet everyone who now serves you had already taken the blood pact and has friends here they wish to protect. Unlike our people, sellswords have no loyalty to anything but coin. So without the compulsion of a blood pact, the chance they would betray us is unacceptably high.”
“So who can we recruit?” Drake asked in frustration.
Lydia tapped her lips in thought. “Zarovians?”
Drake glanced at her in sudden hope. “We can recruit more of those guys?” Every zarovian he’d met was powerful, intimidating, and an asset in a fight. Especially after their selfless bravery on the beach today, he’d taken every loyal zarovian he could get.
“It is possible,” Lydia said. “Several large clans call the lands between Gloomwood and Ashwind manors home. Their numbers, while modest, do offer a way to replenish our own ranks. It is from these roving clans that prior Lord Gloomwoods often recruited.”
“By asking for volunteers, or conscripting?”
“Buying war trophies is the norm,” Lydia said. “Clans war often among each other, and zarovians often take zarovians from other clans as trophies in battle. Once we return to the manor, I could send someone to speak to the clans and see what war trophies are available.”
“So we buy slaves taken in clan battles,” Drake said with a grimace. “I didn’t know our zarovians were all war trophies. Did they leave families behind? What about their clans?”
“I am certain some have family who remain in the clans,” Lydia said. “You are the first Lord Gloomwood to ask.” Her faint smile told him how she felt about that.
“I don’t like it,” Drake said. “What about forming an alliance with a zarovian clan instead? They all have a clan leader, right? A matriarch? What if we approached her?”
Marissa cleared her throat. “That would be inadvisable, lord.”
“Why?”
“As Lydia has stated, clans war often among each other. Were we to formally ally with any one clan, we would be obligated to aid them in their ongoing battles against the other clans. Any benefit we might gain by having a clan from which we could freely recruit new zarovian thralls would be offset by the thralls we’d lose in endless clan battles.”
Drake mulled that over for a moment. “So why do they fight all the time?”
“How do you mean, lord?” Samuel asked.
“I mean it exactly how I asked. You said the zarovian clans fight in endless clan battles. Why? Is it cultural? Do they enjoy beating each other up? Is it about honor, or resources? Are they fighting to feed themselves?”
“Life in the wastes around Ashwind Manor is not easy,” Marissa said. “So... it would be accurate to say that zarovian clans fight over resources. Fertile land for farming and animal domestication, clean sources of water, safe caverns in which to nurture their eggs.”
“So what if we fixed that?”
Lydia’s brow furrowed. “Fixed... their lack of resources?”
Drake nodded. “I get we can’t just wave a magic wand and make the lands more fertile, but why do they even live there? Did it used to be fertile before some manor fucked it up? Have they always lived in the waste, or were they forced to live there after fleeing somewhere else?”
“Some histories suggest zarovians once called other lands their home,” Samuel said. “However, that was long ago. Those lands have long since been settled by the manors.”
“So the manor lords rolled up with their rarities, pummeled any zarovians who resisted, stole their ancestral lands, and pushed the survivors away to live in a wasteland.” Drake snorted in disgust. “More evidence this world isn’t all that different from mine after all.”
“Has this happened in your world?” Lydia asked.
“More times than I want to say,” Drake said. “When it comes to the best places to live, the strongest always seize those for themselves. The zarovian clans fight because the manors stole their lands and forced them to fight with each other simply to survive.”
“It is unfortunate,” Samuel agreed. “But where is this discussion going, lord?”
Drake remembered how impressive Skybreak Manor had looked when he arrived. Sky had built a whole city around her manor, one filled with normal people not under a blood pact. Those people made her manor self-sufficient, and not one person in her manor served her out of compulsion. They willingly served her because she kept them safe.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Drake said. “I want to expand our manor, and not just in people. In territory. What if we offered a whole zarovian clan a place to live that had all the resources they need, like we did with Cresh and his people? That would be something a clan matriarch might be willing to bargain for, right?”
“Expand how?” Samuel asked.
“You’ve all seen Skybreak Manor,” Drake said, and glanced at Marissa. “Right?”
She nodded. “There have been discussions in the past of expanding the lands occupied by Gloomwood Manor. I suspect that if you were to offer a zarovian clan the chance to take up residence on our land, you might even interest a matriarch in that deal.”
“So that’s perfect,” Drake said. “We get more zarovians to guard our gates and a unified clan to fight for us, and they get lands they can farm and defend as their own.”
“However, such discussions would be fraught with risk,” Marissa continued. “The silverwood tolerates us because we have only taken that which is given. Were we to seize more land without first offering recompense, our stay could prove more difficult.”
Drake replayed her words a moment to ensure he hadn’t misheard. “Hold up. Marissa, are you saying the silverwood is intelligent?”
Marissa looked to Lydia and Samuel. “You did not inform him of this?”
Samuel cleared his throat. “Until now, I was unaware he didn’t know.”
Drake turned on him. “You didn’t know I didn’t know those trees were intelligent?”
“Apologies, lord,” Lydia said. “I also simply assumed you knew. That is my mistake.”
Author's Note: Next week, we learn about unusually smart trees, zarovian tribal conflicts, and why gemstones are bad.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Read Ahead on the Patreon
Chat on the Discord
Samuel stroked his beard and eyed Drake. “How, and why, would we strike back?”
Drake stared him down. “They slaughtered our people like animals. They killed hundreds of innocent people and wrecked the capital’s docks. They have to pay for that.”
“Today was a tragedy, and I grieve as you do. But a single manor lord cannot unilaterally go to war with the kromian empire. Their numbers dwarf ours by an order of magnitude.”
“So we’ll get the other manors to join us!”
“Even the sum total of all manor lords, their blood thralls, and the whole of the capital guard is a tiny fraction of the numbers the kromians possess. Even should we unite, we would still be outnumbered a hundred to one. We also have no way to strike the kromians in their underwater cities. They reign supreme in their own territory.”
Drake glared. “So you’re saying we just lay back and let them fuck us?”
Marissa grimaced. “Perhaps you should use less colorful language?”
Drake glanced at her. “And perhaps you should stop worrying about my language when we’re openly discussing letting kromians murder our people, then scurrying away with our tails between our legs. If we don’t hit those fish fuckers in the teeth, they’ll hit us again and again.”
“We don’t know that,” Samuel said. “This is the first time they’ve struck the capital directly, and we don’t know what their objective was today. If they accomplished it—”
“Then they’ll know they can roll up and burn our house down whenever they fucking feel like it! The only way we can ensure nothing like this ever happens again is to show them we can hurt them as badly and easily as they hurt us. So how do we hurt them?”
No one answered him. Drake looked at his advisors. Samuel remained unflappably calm. Marissa still looked uncomfortable with the way he spoke to his people, which was just too bad, and Lydia, while she looked to agree with him, also looked to have no good ideas.
“Dammit,” Drake said finally. “We need to get Sky in on this conversation too. Can we send a messenger to set up a strategy session with her?”
“I have sent word to Lady Skybreak,” Marissa said. “The only response I received was an apology and the fact that she is unavailable. Lord Skybreak and her thralls were instrumental in defending the walls today. They lost people as well.”
So Sky was busy mourning her own losses and plotting her own revenge. They might be allies, but Drake couldn’t rely on her strength or her manor every time someone caused him harm. He needed to be able to handle his own defense, and with the size of his already small force dwindling each day, it seemed the first thing he needed was reinforcements.
His own blood pact was no longer slavery. He’d solved that problem. So long as people signed up with him willingly, for gold and shelter, Drake had to keep his manor strong. Without new blood his manor would wither and die, and then everyone he protected would die with it.
“I haven’t changed my mind about hitting back,” Drake said. “But for now, we will focus on restoring our strength. We’ve taken losses since we left the manor. We need people, and not just warriors. So where can we hire some new blood?”
“It is doubtful many will offer their services in the capital,” Samuel said. “The manors remain at the service of the noble court, and it is now clear to all that the manors will be called to service soon. Most would be hesitant to join a manor now.”
“What if they wanted to kill kromians?” Drake asked. “I bet there’s a lot of people who’d jump at the opportunity to make those fish people burn after what they did today.”
Samuel frowned. “Respectfully, lord, attempting to recruit those purely interested in slaughtering kromians runs counter to your goals. Robin’s focus on vengeance was troublesome enough, especially since we had only her word she would not take it.”
“Her word was enough,” Drake reminded everyone. “We don’t compel people in this manor, and I killed the Asp for her. No reason I can’t do the same with the kromians.”
“That aside, recruiting more thralls who are focused on revenge could lead to dissension in our ranks if we took a different focus. You have been lucky that, so far, the interests of you and your thralls have aligned. Everyone wants to defend the manor. If that changes...”
“I’m not taking a different focus,” Drake said, and offered a heavy sigh. “I just want to kill them. All of them.” He clenched his fists. “And I want to do it myself.”
Marissa touched his arm. “We do not know what the noble court will ask of us. You are a manor lord, but you also serve the Judge and the Eidolons. What if, in the cabal tomorrow, the Judge ordered us to take an entreaty for peace to the kromian empire?”
“Then I’d tell her to go fuck herself.” Drake raised a hand before anyone could correct him. “Which I know I can’t do.” He sighed. “I’ll concede the point for now. But if she orders us to go beg for peace, I might use my token of the court’s favor to refuse.”
“We cannot know what will happen in the cabal until it happens,” Samuel said placidly. “Let us table such discussions until we know more.”
“Fine,” Drake said. “We won’t put out a poster saying ‘Join Gloomwood Manor if you want to kill kromians.’ That doesn’t mean we don’t need people, and sooner rather than later. So if we can’t attract people from the capital, what about professional soldiers?”
“Sellswords, lord?” Marissa asked. “You may find such people unreliable.”
“Why not? We’re using gold and shelter to motivate everyone else.”
“Yet everyone who now serves you had already taken the blood pact and has friends here they wish to protect. Unlike our people, sellswords have no loyalty to anything but coin. So without the compulsion of a blood pact, the chance they would betray us is unacceptably high.”
“So who can we recruit?” Drake asked in frustration.
Lydia tapped her lips in thought. “Zarovians?”
Drake glanced at her in sudden hope. “We can recruit more of those guys?” Every zarovian he’d met was powerful, intimidating, and an asset in a fight. Especially after their selfless bravery on the beach today, he’d taken every loyal zarovian he could get.
“It is possible,” Lydia said. “Several large clans call the lands between Gloomwood and Ashwind manors home. Their numbers, while modest, do offer a way to replenish our own ranks. It is from these roving clans that prior Lord Gloomwoods often recruited.”
“By asking for volunteers, or conscripting?”
“Buying war trophies is the norm,” Lydia said. “Clans war often among each other, and zarovians often take zarovians from other clans as trophies in battle. Once we return to the manor, I could send someone to speak to the clans and see what war trophies are available.”
“So we buy slaves taken in clan battles,” Drake said with a grimace. “I didn’t know our zarovians were all war trophies. Did they leave families behind? What about their clans?”
“I am certain some have family who remain in the clans,” Lydia said. “You are the first Lord Gloomwood to ask.” Her faint smile told him how she felt about that.
“I don’t like it,” Drake said. “What about forming an alliance with a zarovian clan instead? They all have a clan leader, right? A matriarch? What if we approached her?”
Marissa cleared her throat. “That would be inadvisable, lord.”
“Why?”
“As Lydia has stated, clans war often among each other. Were we to formally ally with any one clan, we would be obligated to aid them in their ongoing battles against the other clans. Any benefit we might gain by having a clan from which we could freely recruit new zarovian thralls would be offset by the thralls we’d lose in endless clan battles.”
Drake mulled that over for a moment. “So why do they fight all the time?”
“How do you mean, lord?” Samuel asked.
“I mean it exactly how I asked. You said the zarovian clans fight in endless clan battles. Why? Is it cultural? Do they enjoy beating each other up? Is it about honor, or resources? Are they fighting to feed themselves?”
“Life in the wastes around Ashwind Manor is not easy,” Marissa said. “So... it would be accurate to say that zarovian clans fight over resources. Fertile land for farming and animal domestication, clean sources of water, safe caverns in which to nurture their eggs.”
“So what if we fixed that?”
Lydia’s brow furrowed. “Fixed... their lack of resources?”
Drake nodded. “I get we can’t just wave a magic wand and make the lands more fertile, but why do they even live there? Did it used to be fertile before some manor fucked it up? Have they always lived in the waste, or were they forced to live there after fleeing somewhere else?”
“Some histories suggest zarovians once called other lands their home,” Samuel said. “However, that was long ago. Those lands have long since been settled by the manors.”
“So the manor lords rolled up with their rarities, pummeled any zarovians who resisted, stole their ancestral lands, and pushed the survivors away to live in a wasteland.” Drake snorted in disgust. “More evidence this world isn’t all that different from mine after all.”
“Has this happened in your world?” Lydia asked.
“More times than I want to say,” Drake said. “When it comes to the best places to live, the strongest always seize those for themselves. The zarovian clans fight because the manors stole their lands and forced them to fight with each other simply to survive.”
“It is unfortunate,” Samuel agreed. “But where is this discussion going, lord?”
Drake remembered how impressive Skybreak Manor had looked when he arrived. Sky had built a whole city around her manor, one filled with normal people not under a blood pact. Those people made her manor self-sufficient, and not one person in her manor served her out of compulsion. They willingly served her because she kept them safe.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Drake said. “I want to expand our manor, and not just in people. In territory. What if we offered a whole zarovian clan a place to live that had all the resources they need, like we did with Cresh and his people? That would be something a clan matriarch might be willing to bargain for, right?”
“Expand how?” Samuel asked.
“You’ve all seen Skybreak Manor,” Drake said, and glanced at Marissa. “Right?”
She nodded. “There have been discussions in the past of expanding the lands occupied by Gloomwood Manor. I suspect that if you were to offer a zarovian clan the chance to take up residence on our land, you might even interest a matriarch in that deal.”
“So that’s perfect,” Drake said. “We get more zarovians to guard our gates and a unified clan to fight for us, and they get lands they can farm and defend as their own.”
“However, such discussions would be fraught with risk,” Marissa continued. “The silverwood tolerates us because we have only taken that which is given. Were we to seize more land without first offering recompense, our stay could prove more difficult.”
Drake replayed her words a moment to ensure he hadn’t misheard. “Hold up. Marissa, are you saying the silverwood is intelligent?”
Marissa looked to Lydia and Samuel. “You did not inform him of this?”
Samuel cleared his throat. “Until now, I was unaware he didn’t know.”
Drake turned on him. “You didn’t know I didn’t know those trees were intelligent?”
“Apologies, lord,” Lydia said. “I also simply assumed you knew. That is my mistake.”
Author's Note: Next week, we learn about unusually smart trees, zarovian tribal conflicts, and why gemstones are bad.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Read Ahead on the Patreon
Chat on the Discord
