Last Life

Book 8: Chapter 8

WINTER FINALLY CAME to an end, although it bade farewell to Gondreville with a heavy snowfall that lasted almost a week and a half. After that, however, the temperature began to climb steadily upward, as everything around us began to wake up from its wintertime slumber. And this meant that, before too long, our small army would be setting off on its journey.

I understood that early spring was a pretty difficult time to begin a campaign, especially in the conditions of this new world. The weather was still highly unpredictable — we could expect more or less anything, from freezing winds to prolonged, heavy rains. And there might still be snow on the ground in many places, which would turn the roads into rivers of mud and make them immensely difficult to travel. Especially in hilly country.

Furthermore, the nights were still cold. Spending the night outside in such conditions would risk frostbite, not to mention the common cold. The noncombatants who accompanied the army would have an especially difficult time; after all, they weren’t as tough or experienced as the mountain men or the Mertonians.

With all this in mind, I decided to conduct the migration into my new lands in two phases. I would set off for my Margraviate first, accompanied by about 1,500 people. A thousand of these would be soldiers, and the rest would be civilians, who would be responsible for building homes, warehouses, and shelters for the animals, as well as repairing roads, caring for livestock, and dozens of other occupations that were vital for the army’s survival. Then, once everything was ready for the arrival of a much larger contingent of people and animals, the rest of my army would come join us, along with any settlers who had remained behind in Gondreville.

It turned out that Hans was right, by the way. His prediction that a lot of the locals would decide to move into my lands with me was completely correct. In fact, I might almost say that reality exceeded even his boldest predictions.

Over the winter, the locals saw the way things in their lands changed for the better after the chaos and horror of war, and they naturally associated these changes with the Margrave de Valier — which only made sense, since such administration as existed was more or less completely in the hands of my people.

So I wasn’t really all that surprised when people from the lands all around Gondreville started to flood into the city during the first few days of spring. Big peasant families with their goods piled high on their carts and sleds, teams of artisans, and solitary migrants who came on foot, carrying their few meager possessions in sacks on their backs... They were all coming to me in the hope of finding a better life. And the prospect of living next to the Shadow didn’t seem to scare them. Apparently, they had already placed their hopes firmly and finally on me.

I realized, of course, that this “migration of peoples” would probably come back to haunt me in future conflicts with the Bergonian aristocrats whose lands were being abandoned by their resident peasant families, but I still didn’t make any attempt to stop it.

First of all — instead of taking up arms to defend their lands and people, most of those aristocrats had sat out the war in comfort somewhere across the border while their peasants were being robbed, raped, and murdered. Second — considering the demographic disaster that had occurred over the last few years, my Margraviate would probably need a sizable influx of human resources from outside if it was going to survive.

Basically, if any of those aristocrats decided they wanted conflict with me... Well, I could only wish them the best of luck. They would need it, although it probably still wouldn’t save them.

Back when the King had first “surprised” me with this Margraviate, I was prepared to focus entirely on campaigns into the Shadow and the acquisition of bruts.

First and foremost, I had planned to build up a base at Fort de Gris, a small fortress-city that served as my Margraviate’s capital. Once that was done, I figured I would be ready to send expeditions across the Barrier. As for the rest of my Margraviate, I decided that I would work on its infrastructure gradually — if at all. Especially since I knew that the lands I had received were depopulated, and not very big to begin with. Actually, that’s putting it mildly.

Naturally, a lot of things changed after my successful military campaign, and I soon had to modify my initial plans in a big way.

The huge number of settlers who had lost their homes and families — who had, in other words, become exiles in their own land — saw a chance at salvation in my new Margraviate. For me, too, these lands offered a number of new prospects besides the acquisition of bruts. After all, I had never been a feudal landowner before.

And while this naturally meant that I had no direct experience, I felt like I had a working understanding of what I would need to do. Besides, I had a lot of competent people with me — people like my seneschal and the Count de Poitiers, who would always be able to help me with their advice and expertise.

Admittedly, at one of my meetings, when I outlined my plan for imposing order on the administrative system in my Margraviate, my advisors all went silent, and the expressions on their faces turned extremely serious. Especially the Count de Poitiers... Soon, however, I understood the reason for this sudden, gloomy bout of pensiveness.

For local feudatories who had always run their lands according to the same centuries-old patterns as their ancestors, any suggestion of change was like a red rag to a bull. They were used to having the peasantry depend on them for everything, paying them a portion of their own harvests, working their domain lands on regular occasions, and generally living according to whatever rules their landowners might lay down. For feudal barons, these rules and customs weren’t just a matter of routine — they were the very foundation of power and wealth for their entire class.

The Count de Poitiers, for example, was truly a man of his times in that regard, and his attitude was the same as those of other landholders like him. This, I soon realized, was the ultimate source of his negative (albeit restrained) reaction to my proposals.

If some jumped-up Margrave suddenly decided to start lowering taxes — or worse, giving his peasants freedom from taxes altogether for a few years to let them “fatten up” — and word about the changes spread into the lands of other lords, it would be a direct attack on the status and the pocketbooks of the entire class of conservative feudal landholders.

They didn’t give a tinker’s curse about whether these reforms might promise serious improvements to the lives of their peasants. For these guys, any and all such ideas seemed like a direct threat to the control they exerted over their lands. Most of them wouldn’t even have considered the possibility that, if things were structured artfully and sensibly, an improvement in the lot of their peasants might start filling up their own treasuries a little faster as well. In their eyes, an upstart Margrave like me wasn’t just an innovator — he was a revolutionary, whose actions undercut the very foundation of the feudal world.

Naturally, they wouldn’t simply sit by and let him do it. Most likely, their first step would be to look for allies among other influential noblemen, including the priests, and eventually the King himself. And let’s not forget about the role of rumor and intrigue in such affairs — these, of course, were their specialties. If worst came to worst, they might take up arms to defend their privileges and teach the overeager bastard a lesson.

Put simply, my theses would have been an outright challenge to feudal society as a whole — if my Margraviate had been located in the middle of the country. The peasants would no doubt have applauded my initiatives, although even there, these ideas would make me seem like an oddball at first. For the other feudal lords around me, however, I would quickly become public enemy number one. One look at the Count de Poitiers’ face as he listened to the points of my plan was enough to demonstrate just how unpopular these ideas would be if put into practice. And after all, he only ended up hearing a small part of what I was intending to attempt in my Margraviate.

Thankfully, the Margraviate de Valier was a long way away from the so-called civilized world, and for the time being, nobody there had any time to worry about my plans for the place anyway. Plus, Carl III had made it very clear that I could do as I pleased within my Margraviate.

Moreover, for the time being, it didn’t really matter if others disapproved of what I was doing in my lands. They couldn’t possibly object; to be frank, none of them were bold enough.

In the future, however, if I managed to achieve everything I was intending to pull off, my Margraviate would become a refuge for people not only for people from Bergonia, but from other countries as well. At that point, I would certainly start running into problems.

As for my ideas, I wasn’t actually planning to do anything very revolutionary at all.

I simply wanted to give the peasants a little break. Even as it was, they had already shouldered an enormously heavy burden. War, followed by migration to a new place... So I decided that I wouldn’t charge any rent for two or three years. Let them focus on getting their new farms and livelihoods set up first. Once that was done, we could talk about feudal dues.

If I found that things were tending toward improvement, but that the peasants still weren’t ready for major payments, I could propose that the sum be split into smaller amounts. They could pay me once per quarter, for instance, or twice a year.

I was also planning to go a step further and release the peasants from their obligation to turn over a portion of their harvest, at least for a few years. They could keep the whole harvest for a while — use it to feed their families and develop their farms. Then, when things were going better, I could reinstate the taxes.

By doing all this, I was hoping to show people that the Margrave de Valier actually cared about them. He wasn’t just another nobleman out to fleece them of their taxes. And this, of course, would be to the benefit of the Margraviate as a whole: the peasantry would grow more loyal, more powerful, and better able to contribute to the Margraviate’s future development.

I had a similar plan in mind for people whose work didn’t tie them directly to the land. I knew I would have to support the master artisans by giving them land and/or buildings for their workshops. Such a huge influx of people would require tools, clothing, furniture, and all the other necessities of daily life.

To stimulate the flow of goods, I was also planning to revive existing markets and festivals, as well as organizing some new ones. For what you might loosely refer to as the “domestic market,” for example, I could schedule daily or weekly markets in various towns where the peasants and artisans could sell their goods. And a few yearly festivals would help attract merchants from other countries.

In addition to that, I knew that without safe, well-maintained roads, there wouldn’t be any long-distance trade at all, which meant that shelling out for repairs and regular patrols would be a necessity almost from day one.

Even that, however, wasn’t the end of the complications I would be facing. I knew that if I wanted to make my Margraviate an attractive destination for traders, I would have to reduce import and export duties for at least the first few years.

Basically, I had a whole mountain of work cut out for me already. I was also planning to build hospitals in the Margraviate’s capital, as well as schools for children from poor families. To repair the Temples of the Most Luminous Mother and the Forefather, which the priests from the Scarlet Temple had no doubt desecrated.

But there were also other plans, which I hadn’t told anybody about. For example, Lorin and I were planning to develop improved systems of animal husbandry within my Margraviate. First and foremost, our efforts would be focused on horses. The hejdelf and I had already worked out a strategy for the breeding (and eventually improving the stock) of at least three different types of horses. Thankfully, after our military campaign, we had more than enough horses to get started.

We hadn’t forgotten other domestic animals and birds, either — prior to setting out, Lorin had selected the best specimens from my own barns, stables, and coops.

I also cherished the hope that eventually, my lands would become a magnet for other first-born like Lorin. There would certainly be plenty of room for them. We would just have to create amenable conditions. They were a conservative bunch, not normally well-disposed toward change and innovation. That said, I knew that sooner or later our incentives would have their effect. Lorin and my fairies mentioned this to me on a pretty regular basis.

Once we had a sizable population of first-born, for example, we could focus on breeding new crop cultivars with better market potential, as well as special-purpose medicinal herbs.

If we could assure that our markets were full of unique, hard-to-find goods, it would guarantee interest from abroad — normal, run-of-the-mill merchants at first, then the big trading houses later on.

Basically, I had a lot of plans for developing my Margraviate. First, though, I had to actually get there...

* * *

Our force left Gondreville at the end of the first month of spring. As planned, the first expedition comprised about 1,500 people. By the way — nobody from the Sapphire Guild had reached out to me again at all during the rest of my time in Gondreville.

According to my scouts, Aldrich van Klausen left the city shortly after our meeting and returned to Romont.

Despite that, though, I had a pretty good idea of what the Guild’s current bosses were thinking. They were playing for time. Waiting for me to set off for my Margraviate and bring my armies with me. That was why nobody had tried to break into the Citadel yet.

When they did, though, they were in for a big disappointment... Baron de Bacri and his men had moved in and taken over garrison duty from the Mertonians and the mountain men who had sworn fealty to me. Before leaving Gondreville, I had announced that I would be holding an auction at the end of the coming autumn, and that the Citadel would be up for sale. I knew that the news would reach all the magical guilds before too long, and I could only imagine how the Sapphire Guild would react when they learned that they were about to have some serious competition.

After twelve days, our small force reached Stony Creek. This was the river that separated Bergonia from the lands of the Margraviate de Valier.

Despite the river’s calm, almost placid appearance, crossing it was bound to be a complicated operation — especially when we had just finished a twelve-day march through hilly country.

The weather was nice and sunny, but the warmth of spring still hadn’t quite driven off the last vestiges of winter. Shady stretches of trail were still covered with snow, as was the ground under the trees and bushes — a reminder that the cold wasn’t quite gone yet.

Despite our exhaustion, though, we decided to make the crossing that very same day. Who knows what kind of surprises might be in store for us in that seemingly-calm ribbon of water? Plus, the local guides we had hired warned us that the streams could be fickle and devious in springtime: melting snow often collected in the mountains and surged into the river in large quantities, which could raise the water level significantly at more or less any time.

Despite the fact that we were at a ford, the riverbank was pretty steep and rocky, especially on the Bergonian side, which made our crossing even more difficult than it might have been otherwise. Not surprisingly, the water was still freezing cold, and the mere thought of setting foot in it would have sent a shiver down anyone’s spine.

From the opposite bank, a huge, half-ruined tower loomed over the inhospitable ford. This was all that remained of a small border fortress that had once stood on the site. It looked lonely and forlorn, like an ancient guardian who had seen better times, but knew that its masters had forgotten about it forever.

It was obvious that the people from the valley were exhausted. For my battle-hardened mountain men and Mertonians, however, twelve days on the march wasn’t anything too taxing. So our army started the crossing decisively, and without any procrastination.

Seated atop Storm, surrounded by my companions, I kept a close eye on the movement from a small hill where I had a good view of everything that was happening at the crossing site.

I knew that for my people, crossing this border wasn’t just another stage in their journey: it was a symbolic step into the unknown. A step into lands that were considered some of the most dangerous in all Mainland. People would need to be able to see their new master as they took that step. He needed to be a source of calm, as well as reassurance — they needed to know that he was ready for any threat that might arise.

Strange as it may sound amidst all the hubbub around the crossing, therefore, every little detail was of the utmost importance. Therefore, my strykers and I were all wearing full magical armor. We made a point of exchanging superfluous banter, smiling, and generally making it clear that this crossing was no more concerning to us than anything else we had done over the last twelve days. I actually caught a number of people glancing at me as they set off for the river, and I liked what I saw in their faces. The people seemed to be confident in their new Margrave.

This confidence was further solidified by the dozens of campfires Aelira and her scouts had started on the opposite bank. They had already been waiting for us for two days by that point.

From time to time, Aelira would send Vaira to me with reports about the condition of the roads and any potential threats. So far, though, we hadn’t encountered any of the latter at all. Unless you count the footprints of the locals, who had run off in all directions when they heard that our forces were coming. I knew I would have to talk to them at some point. For the time being, though, there was no sense in chasing them up and down through the hills and forests. In time, they would come to swear allegiance to me of their own accord — once groups of Glenns and werewolves started settling in the forests. Normal humans simply wouldn’t stand a chance against the true gifted.

By the time the crossing was finally complete, the sun had nearly set beyond the horizon. A ring of wagons, surrounded by a row of sharpened stakes that had been dug into the earth, was already encircling our camp at the base of the old tower. We had decided to give humans and animals two days of rest before moving on.

I was sitting in my tent, stretching my legs out toward my campaign stove and sipping a tasty herbal tea, when suddenly I heard the noise outside grow noticeably louder. A moment later, Gunnar appeared through the flap of my tent.

“Your Lordship,” he greeted me. He sounded a little anxious. “Some scouts have arrived.”

“What do they want?” I asked as I stood reluctantly up from my chair.

“A small unit of locals is headed this way,” said Gunnar.

“Hm,” I said as I strode toward the door and snapped my cloak out of Gunnar’s hands. “They’re finally reaching out, then... Well, let’s see what they have to say...”