From Londoner To Lord

He walked down a flight of stairs and kept moving through the corridors until he reached the meeting hall of the count. Noticing him, the guard immediately opened the door, and he entered inside.

"Oh, Ustaimo! Come on in," Count Ebirtas gestured towards one of the chairs next to the table.

At the moment only the knight commander was sitting next to him, with the rest of the chairs empty for now. Ustaimo thanked the Goddess that that bastard Zoricus wasn't here. Just looking at his grubby face was usually enough to make his blood boil.

"I've taken care of all the accounts in the taxation ledger," Ustaimo reported as he took a seat, "and only the barony of Tiranat's tax is overdue as of now."

"Good, good," the elderly count nodded. "We were just talking about that. Your escorts are ready and you can leave tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, my lord." Looking at the knight commander, Ustaimo added, "I hope you have given more knights to accompany me this time. We all know the fate of the previous baron of Tiranat, and nobody wants a repeat of that when travelling on the Southern road."

The knight commander - who was sitting in his full armour with only his helmet not in place, being kept on the table in front of him - winced at that. "That won't be possible this time. We simply cannot afford to send any knights away from Cinran right now if there is any chance we can manage without that. For tomorrow, you will leave with one knight along with four other guards - three swordsmen and an archer. That should be enough to protect the gold you'll bring back."

"What? No!" Ustaimo protested, feeling a sudden pang of fear for a journey which was going to be much more dangerous now than what he had thought earlier. "That's not enough at all! Even if you don't give me more knights than usual, at least give me the usual two knights whom I take with me when travelling anywhere outside Cinran for collecting taxes! You know that a single knight will hardly be enough protection when I'm going to be carrying more than a thousand gold...!"

Count Ebirtas grimaced. "You already know that there was another raid by Binpaaz on the eastern farms a few days ago, and this time they put a few orchards on fire and damaged our wheat crops - trampling their horses all over the newly sown fields. Yesterday, we had to dispatch another group of knights to the border to protect the farmers. We really don't have enough reserve knights here to send with you without weakening Cinran's defenses."

"But... this doesn't feel right..." Ustaimo complained again. "A single knight and just four other guards... on that dangerous road going south through the forests."

The knight commander gave a small smile. "You might not know this, but we probably wouldn't even have been able to give you even that many guards. Thankfully, Baron Zoricus offered to help, and has provided us one of his own guards to accompany you. That's the only reason you have four other guards going along with you."

Ustaimo frowned. "Lord Zoricus offered to help me...? That can't be right..."

Count Ebirtas laughed loudly. "There you go thinking he's a bad person once again. He's not. Zoricus is the only reason my domain is still standing. I simply wouldn't be able to run Cinran without all the help he has been providing, whether in terms of guards or in gold."

If only you knew what he wanted in exchange for that... Ustaimo thought with a grimace, but didn't say it out loud. Whatever else Zoricus may be, he was still a noble, and was easily the favourite vassal of the elderly count. Saying anything against the fat bastard openly, especially without any solid proof would only lead to his own undoing, and that was something he couldn't risk. He just had to keep his head down, and keep following the Count's orders in order to secure his own survival.

He gave a nod looking at the count. "I'll leave early tomorrow morning."

"Good!" Ebirtas nodded in return. "Make sure to collect all the overdue taxes. If they can't pay it, bring something else in return, whether coal or slaves. Preferably slaves, now that winter is nearly over and we don't have that big a need for coal anymore."

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"Of course, my lord," Ustaimo agreed. "I'll make sure of it."

He gave a quick bow, and turned around to walk towards the door. While he wasn't able to say it openly to the Count, something didn't feel right here. He still couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but Zoricus offering to send guards to protect the wagons going to Tiranat for taxes was giving him a bad feeling. Even though he didn't have any proof of it, Ustaimo was fairly sure that the fat bastard was the one behind the demise of the previous baron of Tiranat as well as had a hand in looting all that tax gold of the poor barony - which didn't even have a wall surrounding the village for Goddess' sake! That's why he couldn't understand why Zoricus would offer to send better protection for tomorrow.

As he exited the door and started walking back towards the room which doubled as his workplace as well as his sleeping quarters, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He had no idea what was going to happen on this trip, and if he would even return alive from it, which is why he had to keep his eyes peeled and ears open for anything which didn't feel right. If it came to the worst, he knew that he should be able to count on the knight coming with him, since they only worked on the orders of the knight commander, and would never do any favours for the fat bastard - above board or otherwise. Zoricus' own guards, on the other hand, simply couldn't be trusted with anything.

As he reached the staircase, he gave a sigh. Maybe he was just thinking too much and seeing dangers when there were none. It was very much possible that Zoricus just wanted Cinran to keep standing by helping to collect all its taxes, if only so the town would still be here for the day when the fat bastard got a chance to take over. That might mean that the fat baron really did want to help.

"Aah..." he groaned. His head hurt just thinking about it after working so much for the last two weeks. He didn't know what was true and what was not about this new guard arrangement. So he would just have to play it by ear and pray that the Goddess kept him alive. That was his best hope at the moment.

Reaching his room, he thought about how long it would take. Three days to reach Tiranat - two if they really pushed it - then a full day to check their revenue ledger to find out the correct amount of taxes, and around three more days to return to Cinran. Add another day or two, just in case Tiranat didn't have enough gold and he had to find an alternative way to recoup the taxes. Yeah, better to pack for a journey of at least a week. Glancing at the mostly empty room which barely held any belongings which he could call his own, he got to work, not looking forward to the upcoming bumpy carriage ride even a little. May the Goddess save his back from being broken on that bone-jarring road.

******

~ Kivamus ~

It had been a week since the return of the caravan from Kirnos, and he couldn't have been more glad to see all the progress in the village in the last week. He was walking on the narrow path made from gravel which connected the manor house to the gates and all the buildings in the manor, while the rest of the ground was way too muddy to walk easily. It was morning right now, although the sun had already risen above the Arakin Mountain Range in the east.

Earlier in the morning, he had been standing on top of the manor house and the whole surroundings of the village were easily visible from there, including the newly made watchtowers, making the village feel more secure than it ever had. The third watchtower had been completed in the southeast a couple of days ago by the old carpenter Taniok and his apprentices, while the fourth one in the northwest was already under construction. While their primary purpose for clearing the forest around them was to ensure a good line of sight as well as to clear enough land for farming, he was quite thankful that by now they had gathered so many Fedarus logs that they wouldn't have a shortage of them for a few years at the very least.

With the logs having been kept criss-crossed in various piles while leaving some free space between them, the initially felled logs had already started to become seasoned by now, which is the only reason they were strong enough to construct watchtowers from them. Another good thing was that all the stockpiles of logs had already been transferred inside the walls, which meant any bandits wouldn't be able to simply put them on fire and make a makeshift pyre to distract the guards in case of a raid. Although all these stockpiles were taking a lot of space - not that they had much of a need of that empty space between the village and the walls at the moment - it had also made it much easier to take the logs to wherever they were needed for construction, while also freeing more space in the south for farming which was earlier occupied by these logs.

They had also managed to hire enough older men to keep an eye on the surroundings from those watchtowers in the daytime, while the female guards did all the watching in the night time. Once the fourth watchtower was also completed in a few more days, they would have a decent way to keep an eye all around the walls. He had also planned to make at least two more watchtowers in the middle of the northern and the southern walls - which were longer than the other two ones - so that the whole surrounding area outside the village could be covered by the watchmen.