Anna joined them in the carriage soon after Drake learned Samuel and Lydia were already conspiring to marry him off to someone, which he still wasn’t totally cool with. Still, at least they both took the hint to drop the subject. He knew neither would be foolish enough to bring up marriage in Sky’s presence, and he was looking forward to seeing her today.
His people would probably continue making arrangements for an eventual marriage behind the scenes, but they couldn’t just marry him off without his approval. He remained the lord of Gloomwood Manor. Nobody was going to make him marry anyone unless he wanted it.
Or, he supposed, if it would put him in a stronger position as a manor lord.
He really was considering the political benefits now. Samuel and Lydia had planted the seed. He’d liked what he’d seen of Skybreak Manor—the huge town Sky maintained with all its skilled workers, its strong stone walls, the obvious defensibility its narrow approach offered—and he also liked the people he’d met among Sky’s folks, like Karth and even Head Ranger Cask.
Moreover, Sky herself appeared quite strong. Her blood thralls all followed her of their own free will, just like his, and from the casual way she spoke of dealing with assassins, she must be a competent warrior as well. And what about her rarity?
Drake needed to look that up on the road today. He didn’t want to look ignorant when she and her rangers joined their caravan this afternoon. If Sky’s rarity was powerful, and in this world, female rarities generally were, she’d also be an excellent addition to his army.
Or rather... their new, joint army. If he ever married Lord Skybreak. Which could happen someday, maybe, years from now.
From the list of manor rarities Zuri had provided, he learned Lord Skybreak’s rarity was simply called void. There was no additional information, and not even Lydia knew how it worked. Apparently lords only needed to report the names of their rarities, not describe them, and Sky had kept hers secret. That suggested it was even more powerful than he hoped.
Drake spent the morning having Lydia quiz him about things he’d learned yesterday regarding the other manors. He was pleased when he got more questions right than wrong. He still wasn’t going to remember the date each new manor lord took power, but he did now know what resources each manor lord possessed and understood their leadership styles.
Lord Proudglade, as he’d suspected, was currently the richest and most well-respected manor lord thanks to the strength of the alliances he commanded, which he had pulled together by force of personality and will. The fact that his powerful rarity, shock spear, allowed him to toss bolts of lightning capable of blowing up walls obviously helped.
Proudglade Manor also sounded like a much nicer place to live than Gloomwood Manor, at least before Drake had taken it over. They were known realm-wide for their fairness and sense of honor, though Drake had some doubts about all that. Still, so far as Lydia knew, none of the former Lords Proudglade had ever tortured and killed their own servants.
Instead of battle maids, Proudglade Manor’s elite soldiers were its golden knights, men and women with some sort of combat rarity. Proudglade Manor currently had eight golden knights, not five battle maids, but from the description of their rarities, Gloomwood Manor retained the edge in overall power. The rarities of his battle maids remained among the best.
The rest of Proudglade Manor’s forces were a mix of silver knights (elite warriors with no rarity, or whose rarity was not useful in combat) and bronze knights, who were foot soldiers who didn’t even wear real bronze, just leather armor. Lord Proudglade also had many servants in various roles just like he did, as well as skilled artisans and weapon smiths.
Proudglade Manor, like Skybreak Manor, was actually a keep built inside a town, and yesterday, Drake had confirmed that Lord Proudglade (just like Lord Skybreak) did not actually have the entirety of her surrounding town as blood thralls. The upper limit of a blood pact remained around one hundred people. More than that, and the compulsion grew diluted.
Therefore, the majority of people who lived in the area around keeps like Skybreak and Proudglade Manor were just folks who swore fealty to the local manor lord, like the folks who lived in Shadowfort: the town back on Drake’s lands. With other manor lords, only those who were part of the manor lord’s blood pact were allowed inside the keep.
Drake had also learned that Gloomwood Manor was not the only manor that stood alone without a town around it. Gloomwood Manor remained remote due to the difficulty in clearing the massive silverwood trees, a process Drake was told was closer to sawing down miniature mountains than chopping down a normal tree. Given the resulting wood was much stronger than normal wood and also entirely fireproof, the effort remained worth it.
Gloomwood Manor was also remote due to the ability of Lord Gloomwood to command vero, who in turn commanded the limbs of its massive silverwood trees. Drake now understood the other manors that stood alone, without towns, were similarly defended.
Ashwind Manor didn’t have a town above ground at all. The manor and the small town built up around it existed entirely in a large underground chasm. Frostlight Manor was half-buried in a mountain atop a sheer cliff in a frigid territory, with small habitations scattered across those frigid lands. And Mistvale Manor was apparently built up in a giant tree.
When Drake included the size of the habitation surrounding it, Brightwater Manor was actually the largest of all the manors. In addition to a stone and wood fort on the coast, it included multiple buildings along the beach along with a whole armada of floating buildings moored just off the coast. Hurricanes weren’t a big issue here.
Finally, he’d learned quite a bit about Korhaurbauten itself. The realm’s capital city was also built near the ocean, though it had grown up around a large and peaceful bay that was so shallow that most large ships couldn’t even moor inside it. They had to drop anchor in the deeper waters beyond the bay and then take smaller boats to and from their big ships.
Korhaurbauten was the oldest and largest city in the realm, and the Eidolon temple was apparently the oldest known structure ever built. Given Lydia told him the Eidolons themselves had built it, that wasn’t surprising. It still boggled his mind that actual gods not only existed in this world, but could also actually be seen by anyone who visited the temple.
Supposedly, the Eidolons slumbered in the center of the temple in an endless dream. If anyone ever somehow managed to wake them up, the world would vanish the moment they rose. Because this world, as its people believed, was actually a dream of the Eidolons.
He had enough troubles without debating theological theories about the end of the world. Still, when he got to Korhaurbauten, because he was a manor lord, he would be one of the privileged few who would be allowed to enter the ancient temple and get a look at the world’s gods. He’d do his best not to sneeze loudly enough to accidentally end the world.
When they stopped for lunch, which Drake again took inside his armored carriage (Samuel insisted the surrounding hills would be perfect for archers) Drake half hoped Sky and her people would arrive and join them. Yet they concluded lunch and returned to their slow walk down the Noble Road without the arrival of his allied manor lord.
By the time the sun was most of the way to the horizon, Drake was more than a bit worried. Sky had said advance riders would meet them shortly after lunch and then the rest of her vanguard would arrive in mid-afternoon, but both had come and gone without any sign of them. Given she couldn’t lie, she had obviously fully intended to have that happen.
So had she run into another ambush? This time, one she couldn’t escape? His worries grew after he removed the magic mirror from its magic box and checked to see if Sky had contacted him on it. She had not. Where the hell was she?
Finally, with his caravan rolling on toward dusk and the sun little more than a red smear on the horizon, Sachi returned with news. A large group of riders was approaching... the vanguard of Lord Skybreak. Finally! Better late than never.
Drake ordered a halt so Sky’s vanguard could catch up. He had no doubts they were actually Skybreak rangers, thanks to Sachi’s intel, and he was very curious to know what they’d run into today. There were no wagons with them, so they must have left those behind.
Lydia and Valentia walked with him to meet Lord Skybreak and her rangers as the first six rangers approached his line of wary zarovians. From the way their horses were limping along, they had obviously run the animals hard. Not a good sign. Not remotely a good sign.
When Drake recognized Karth in the lead, he walked past a glowering Cresh and walked out to meet the man. The Noble Road and the area immediately around it were wide open ground, so short of invisible archers, he had no worry about being attacked. With Lydia and Valentia at his side and Emily and Nicole in reserve, he went out to meet his weary allies.
Karth looked dead on his feet when he finally slid off his exhausted horse. The rest of his people looked the same. His dour expression told Drake the news was going to be bad. He looked like a man who’d seen his horse killed in front of him, yet his horse was right there.
“Lord Gloomwood,” Karth said. “It is good to see you well.”
“You too, Karth.” Even so, Drake was already looking past the man into the crowd of distant faces, none of whom he recognized. ”Where’s Lord Skybreak?”
“She will be delayed.”
So she wasn’t here? Drake ground his teeth. “How long?”
“Perhaps a week. Perhaps longer. She sent me to give you her most sincere apologies and asks that you travel to the capital without her.”
Sky’s failure to show up for the cabal on time meant that she would be censured by the noble court, which would be bad. It also meant Drake would not have his newly allied manor lord to back him up, which meant he wouldn’t have her vote around the table either. He needed to know what the hell happened today.
“Were you ambushed?”
“Lord Skybreak informed me that is none of your concern.”
“Did she order you to keep your mouth shut, Karth? Or was it just a suggestion?”
The weary man, covered in dust from his ride and the road, eyed Drake as a man who had lost all hope. “And just what would you do if I told you about our day?”
“I don’t know what I’d do. Because you haven’t told me. If you tell me I can tell you what I’d do, and if I can help your lord somehow, I’d like to do something.”
Karth glanced back at the other five rangers with him, a group of three women and two men who all looked as weary as he did. He looked beyond to the host of other soldiers gathered further up the road, all as tired and ejected as he looked. Then, he looked back to Drake.
“It’s Lord Skybreak’s mother. Lady Skybreak. She’s been taken hostage, and the leader of the group responsible demanded she deliver the ransom herself. If she refused, they informed us they would kill her mother slowly and painfully.”
Lydia gasped at Drake’s side, then glanced his way in worry. “Lady Skybreak is a powerful warrior, lord. Her rarity, cleavage, allows her to split stone. If a group of warriors managed to take her hostage, they must be truly powerful as well.”
Drake had only just begun to process a rarity called “cleavage” when Karth spoke.
“Lady Skybreak was only captured because she surrendered to these mercenaries instead of allowing them to put Tallowhorn to the torch. She gave herself up to save the town. Over two hundred men, women, and children.”
That was yet another problem with being a good manor lord. Drake glanced at Valentia. “I guess that’s too benevolent?”
Valentia offered him a level gaze. “Lady Skybreak is no longer in charge of Skybreak Manor. Given she now has only her own life to consider, not a manor, her decision to offer herself in place of an entire town of her subjects is a heroic sacrifice I can respect.”
This totally felt like a double standard, but Drake let it go since he actually agreed with her. He looked back to Karth. “So, Lord Skybreak knows this whole mess was absolutely orchestrated to keep her from reaching the cabal, doesn’t she?”
“The possibility has been discussed. Many times, lord.” Karth sighed. “Which is why I am now the lord of Skybreak Manor.”
Drake blinked. “The hell?”
“This afternoon, Lord Skybreak passed the title and blood pact to me. I will lead our vanguard to Korhaurbauten in her place. She has instructed me to keep counsel with you and your advisors and to support you in representing our manor’s interests.”
“And do you feel confident you can do that, Karth?”
The ranger grimaced. “The former Lord Skybreak made it clear I don’t have a choice.”
Anna joined them in the carriage soon after Drake learned Samuel and Lydia were already conspiring to marry him off to someone, which he still wasn’t totally cool with. Still, at least they both took the hint to drop the subject. He knew neither would be foolish enough to bring up marriage in Sky’s presence, and he was looking forward to seeing her today.
His people would probably continue making arrangements for an eventual marriage behind the scenes, but they couldn’t just marry him off without his approval. He remained the lord of Gloomwood Manor. Nobody was going to make him marry anyone unless he wanted it.
Or, he supposed, if it would put him in a stronger position as a manor lord.
He really was considering the political benefits now. Samuel and Lydia had planted the seed. He’d liked what he’d seen of Skybreak Manor—the huge town Sky maintained with all its skilled workers, its strong stone walls, the obvious defensibility its narrow approach offered—and he also liked the people he’d met among Sky’s folks, like Karth and even Head Ranger Cask.
Moreover, Sky herself appeared quite strong. Her blood thralls all followed her of their own free will, just like his, and from the casual way she spoke of dealing with assassins, she must be a competent warrior as well. And what about her rarity?
Drake needed to look that up on the road today. He didn’t want to look ignorant when she and her rangers joined their caravan this afternoon. If Sky’s rarity was powerful, and in this world, female rarities generally were, she’d also be an excellent addition to his army.
Or rather... their new, joint army. If he ever married Lord Skybreak. Which could happen someday, maybe, years from now.
From the list of manor rarities Zuri had provided, he learned Lord Skybreak’s rarity was simply called void. There was no additional information, and not even Lydia knew how it worked. Apparently lords only needed to report the names of their rarities, not describe them, and Sky had kept hers secret. That suggested it was even more powerful than he hoped.
Drake spent the morning having Lydia quiz him about things he’d learned yesterday regarding the other manors. He was pleased when he got more questions right than wrong. He still wasn’t going to remember the date each new manor lord took power, but he did now know what resources each manor lord possessed and understood their leadership styles.
Lord Proudglade, as he’d suspected, was currently the richest and most well-respected manor lord thanks to the strength of the alliances he commanded, which he had pulled together by force of personality and will. The fact that his powerful rarity, shock spear, allowed him to toss bolts of lightning capable of blowing up walls obviously helped.
Proudglade Manor also sounded like a much nicer place to live than Gloomwood Manor, at least before Drake had taken it over. They were known realm-wide for their fairness and sense of honor, though Drake had some doubts about all that. Still, so far as Lydia knew, none of the former Lords Proudglade had ever tortured and killed their own servants.
Instead of battle maids, Proudglade Manor’s elite soldiers were its golden knights, men and women with some sort of combat rarity. Proudglade Manor currently had eight golden knights, not five battle maids, but from the description of their rarities, Gloomwood Manor retained the edge in overall power. The rarities of his battle maids remained among the best.
The rest of Proudglade Manor’s forces were a mix of silver knights (elite warriors with no rarity, or whose rarity was not useful in combat) and bronze knights, who were foot soldiers who didn’t even wear real bronze, just leather armor. Lord Proudglade also had many servants in various roles just like he did, as well as skilled artisans and weapon smiths.
Proudglade Manor, like Skybreak Manor, was actually a keep built inside a town, and yesterday, Drake had confirmed that Lord Proudglade (just like Lord Skybreak) did not actually have the entirety of her surrounding town as blood thralls. The upper limit of a blood pact remained around one hundred people. More than that, and the compulsion grew diluted.
Therefore, the majority of people who lived in the area around keeps like Skybreak and Proudglade Manor were just folks who swore fealty to the local manor lord, like the folks who lived in Shadowfort: the town back on Drake’s lands. With other manor lords, only those who were part of the manor lord’s blood pact were allowed inside the keep.
Drake had also learned that Gloomwood Manor was not the only manor that stood alone without a town around it. Gloomwood Manor remained remote due to the difficulty in clearing the massive silverwood trees, a process Drake was told was closer to sawing down miniature mountains than chopping down a normal tree. Given the resulting wood was much stronger than normal wood and also entirely fireproof, the effort remained worth it.
Gloomwood Manor was also remote due to the ability of Lord Gloomwood to command vero, who in turn commanded the limbs of its massive silverwood trees. Drake now understood the other manors that stood alone, without towns, were similarly defended.
Ashwind Manor didn’t have a town above ground at all. The manor and the small town built up around it existed entirely in a large underground chasm. Frostlight Manor was half-buried in a mountain atop a sheer cliff in a frigid territory, with small habitations scattered across those frigid lands. And Mistvale Manor was apparently built up in a giant tree.
When Drake included the size of the habitation surrounding it, Brightwater Manor was actually the largest of all the manors. In addition to a stone and wood fort on the coast, it included multiple buildings along the beach along with a whole armada of floating buildings moored just off the coast. Hurricanes weren’t a big issue here.
Finally, he’d learned quite a bit about Korhaurbauten itself. The realm’s capital city was also built near the ocean, though it had grown up around a large and peaceful bay that was so shallow that most large ships couldn’t even moor inside it. They had to drop anchor in the deeper waters beyond the bay and then take smaller boats to and from their big ships.
Korhaurbauten was the oldest and largest city in the realm, and the Eidolon temple was apparently the oldest known structure ever built. Given Lydia told him the Eidolons themselves had built it, that wasn’t surprising. It still boggled his mind that actual gods not only existed in this world, but could also actually be seen by anyone who visited the temple.
Supposedly, the Eidolons slumbered in the center of the temple in an endless dream. If anyone ever somehow managed to wake them up, the world would vanish the moment they rose. Because this world, as its people believed, was actually a dream of the Eidolons.
He had enough troubles without debating theological theories about the end of the world. Still, when he got to Korhaurbauten, because he was a manor lord, he would be one of the privileged few who would be allowed to enter the ancient temple and get a look at the world’s gods. He’d do his best not to sneeze loudly enough to accidentally end the world.
When they stopped for lunch, which Drake again took inside his armored carriage (Samuel insisted the surrounding hills would be perfect for archers) Drake half hoped Sky and her people would arrive and join them. Yet they concluded lunch and returned to their slow walk down the Noble Road without the arrival of his allied manor lord.
By the time the sun was most of the way to the horizon, Drake was more than a bit worried. Sky had said advance riders would meet them shortly after lunch and then the rest of her vanguard would arrive in mid-afternoon, but both had come and gone without any sign of them. Given she couldn’t lie, she had obviously fully intended to have that happen.
So had she run into another ambush? This time, one she couldn’t escape? His worries grew after he removed the magic mirror from its magic box and checked to see if Sky had contacted him on it. She had not. Where the hell was she?
Finally, with his caravan rolling on toward dusk and the sun little more than a red smear on the horizon, Sachi returned with news. A large group of riders was approaching... the vanguard of Lord Skybreak. Finally! Better late than never.
Drake ordered a halt so Sky’s vanguard could catch up. He had no doubts they were actually Skybreak rangers, thanks to Sachi’s intel, and he was very curious to know what they’d run into today. There were no wagons with them, so they must have left those behind.
Lydia and Valentia walked with him to meet Lord Skybreak and her rangers as the first six rangers approached his line of wary zarovians. From the way their horses were limping along, they had obviously run the animals hard. Not a good sign. Not remotely a good sign.
When Drake recognized Karth in the lead, he walked past a glowering Cresh and walked out to meet the man. The Noble Road and the area immediately around it were wide open ground, so short of invisible archers, he had no worry about being attacked. With Lydia and Valentia at his side and Emily and Nicole in reserve, he went out to meet his weary allies.
Karth looked dead on his feet when he finally slid off his exhausted horse. The rest of his people looked the same. His dour expression told Drake the news was going to be bad. He looked like a man who’d seen his horse killed in front of him, yet his horse was right there.
“Lord Gloomwood,” Karth said. “It is good to see you well.”
“You too, Karth.” Even so, Drake was already looking past the man into the crowd of distant faces, none of whom he recognized. ”Where’s Lord Skybreak?”
“She will be delayed.”
So she wasn’t here? Drake ground his teeth. “How long?”
“Perhaps a week. Perhaps longer. She sent me to give you her most sincere apologies and asks that you travel to the capital without her.”
Sky’s failure to show up for the cabal on time meant that she would be censured by the noble court, which would be bad. It also meant Drake would not have his newly allied manor lord to back him up, which meant he wouldn’t have her vote around the table either. He needed to know what the hell happened today.
“Were you ambushed?”
“Lord Skybreak informed me that is none of your concern.”
“Did she order you to keep your mouth shut, Karth? Or was it just a suggestion?”
The weary man, covered in dust from his ride and the road, eyed Drake as a man who had lost all hope. “And just what would you do if I told you about our day?”
“I don’t know what I’d do. Because you haven’t told me. If you tell me I can tell you what I’d do, and if I can help your lord somehow, I’d like to do something.”
Karth glanced back at the other five rangers with him, a group of three women and two men who all looked as weary as he did. He looked beyond to the host of other soldiers gathered further up the road, all as tired and ejected as he looked. Then, he looked back to Drake.
“It’s Lord Skybreak’s mother. Lady Skybreak. She’s been taken hostage, and the leader of the group responsible demanded she deliver the ransom herself. If she refused, they informed us they would kill her mother slowly and painfully.”
Lydia gasped at Drake’s side, then glanced his way in worry. “Lady Skybreak is a powerful warrior, lord. Her rarity, cleavage, allows her to split stone. If a group of warriors managed to take her hostage, they must be truly powerful as well.”
Drake had only just begun to process a rarity called “cleavage” when Karth spoke.
“Lady Skybreak was only captured because she surrendered to these mercenaries instead of allowing them to put Tallowhorn to the torch. She gave herself up to save the town. Over two hundred men, women, and children.”
That was yet another problem with being a good manor lord. Drake glanced at Valentia. “I guess that’s too benevolent?”
Valentia offered him a level gaze. “Lady Skybreak is no longer in charge of Skybreak Manor. Given she now has only her own life to consider, not a manor, her decision to offer herself in place of an entire town of her subjects is a heroic sacrifice I can respect.”
This totally felt like a double standard, but Drake let it go since he actually agreed with her. He looked back to Karth. “So, Lord Skybreak knows this whole mess was absolutely orchestrated to keep her from reaching the cabal, doesn’t she?”
“The possibility has been discussed. Many times, lord.” Karth sighed. “Which is why I am now the lord of Skybreak Manor.”
Drake blinked. “The hell?”
“This afternoon, Lord Skybreak passed the title and blood pact to me. I will lead our vanguard to Korhaurbauten in her place. She has instructed me to keep counsel with you and your advisors and to support you in representing our manor’s interests.”
“And do you feel confident you can do that, Karth?”
The ranger grimaced. “The former Lord Skybreak made it clear I don’t have a choice.”
