Valkyrie's Shadow

Chapter 4

Uwah, they’re so mad…

A half circle of scions faced Neia Baraja in the Corps’ camp outside of Lloyds. Her wavering gaze kept going between them as she tried to figure out how to respond to their anger. They were all dressed for business – which meant they were very well-dressed – and that made things all the more intimidating.

“I-It was unavoidable,” she said in a small voice.

“I won’t deny that the situation could have escalated into a violent conflict, Miss Baraja,” Lord Lugo said, “but there is a certain order to things! To us, your resolve is respectable since we understand what you’ve invested into the affair, but the rest of the Holy Kingdom won’t see things the same way. From their perspective, you’ll be akin to a thug desperate to prove their empty blustering.”

“Except common thugs don’t make rousing speeches,” another nobleman said. “Just how long have you been plotting that move for? Have you been harbouring these ulterior motives all along, exploiting our trust to access supplies and logistical support?”

“I wasn’t!” Neia replied, “Who could have foreseen what happened the other night? Lord Lugo was there – even he said that we didn’t have any good choices.”

“So, in lieu of good choices, you chose violence. Need I remind you that the citizens of the Holy Kingdom are not Demihumans from the Abelion Hills?”

A mire of misery churned in her stomach. It was all her fault.

Shortly after the Royal Army’s transports started letting their troops off in Lloyds Harbour, the local royalist authorities entreated their officers to secure the city. The transports were royalist ships delivering soldiers from royalist-controlled territories to the wall, so of course their officers were all royalists who accommodated the request without question.

Once they learned that the army was being sent to stop Neia’s allies, she and Saye snuck out of the city and rushed to the site of the confrontation. Along the way, her mind raced to figure out how to end the standoff, but, in the end, she had taken a gamble. Either the soldiers were from the south and her words would fall upon deaf ears, or they were from the north and there were enough people from the towns and cities present to plunge the royalist ranks into chaos.

In hindsight, it was a gamble with terrible odds and the results were more bad than good. While it was true that it had gained them Lloyds, doing so had landed them in all sorts of trouble.

Additionally, her ‘rousing speech’, as the nobleman put it, was completely spontaneous. She had neither written nor practised anything remotely like it. Given its polished delivery and effectiveness, however, no one would believe that.

No one except for Saye. According to her, it was a form of Oration, which functioned similarly to a Bard’s. It brought together all of the wielder’s experience and knowledge to render their performances, which was one of the reasons why Bards were constantly compelled to seek out new information and lore.

To Neia, however, it sounded like Saye was trying to make something out of nothing. Everyone relied on their experiences and knowledge to do things – it wasn’t something unique to ‘orators’ or whatever. She had earnestly related her feelings over the experiences that were common to many urbanites in the north and she had spoken publicly many times before.

The people had responded to her words because of that. Attributing things to some weird ability to twist people’s wills was insulting to those who had suffered so much. It also made her sound like she was manipulating others like some kind of Heteromorph with weird abilities.

“Waiting would have cost us dearly,” Neia said. “As it was, the standoff was going to be endless with both sides feeding people into it. It was more important to end things swiftly and keep information from leaking out.”

“It was expedient, perhaps,” Lord Lugo replied, “but you’ve exchanged a set of manageable problems for unmanageable ones. The Holy Order has all but turned against us and we have no justification that outsiders will accept.”

“The people accepted it,” Neia said. “Shouldn’t that be what matters?”

“People believe what they want to believe,” Lord Lugo said. “And ousting the royalists from Lloyds works in its citizens’ favour. That being said, just because people accept what happens doesn’t mean it’s right. You speak of justice, but it only looks like you’ve forced things through for convenience. Justice may require strength to carry out, but strength is not justice. Your current course will drown the Holy Kingdom in blood and if you do achieve peace, it will be the peace of the sword. We will become no better than the Demihumans that raided our country for generations.”

“How else can the common folk achieve anything?” Neia grumbled, “We don’t even have a right to represent ourselves in court! Everything relies on others acting on our behalf. The Holy King doesn’t care. The Royal Army is effectively nonexistent. Our Nobles are gone and both the Temples and the Holy Order are powerless.”

“That’s why you should make common cause with us,” Lord Lugo said. “And I thought that was understood when we joined hands with Los Ganaderos. Never did we imagine that you’d act unilaterally the moment our opponents appeared in front of our faces. Have you forgotten everything we discussed since your arrival in Rimun?”

“I haven’t, but all that becomes secondary on the battlefield.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Baraja. The battlefield is where it matters the most! We are fighting to restore justice to the Holy Kingdom. Abandoning the Holy Kingdom’s justice to do so makes us no better than the royalists.”

Neia released a sigh. It seemed that they still didn’t understand what justice was. How could they not after everything that happened?

“We can argue about this all day, Lord Lugo,” she said, “but it doesn’t help us now. What do you propose we do?”

“Figure out how to clean this mess up,” Lord Lugo said. “We have thousands of captives to handle now, including members of the Holy Order.”

The scion shook his head, clearly incredulous of their situation. After the battle, they delivered the dead into the city morgue and all of their manpower was now dedicated to managing the prison camp populated by the Royal Army’s soldiers while they sorted them out. The five Paladins assigned to Lloyds were also being kept captive, though they were under a sort of ‘city arrest’ that allowed them to continue their judicial functions inside the walls.

Neia was now seen as the leader of what the Paladins considered a criminal organisation. She and her collaborators were wanted for mass murder and piracy amongst other things. Any goodwill that Neia had with the Holy Order in Lloyds had evaporated and she was now seen as a traitor to the Holy Kingdom. She couldn’t set foot in the city without all of them coming after her.

“We still need to take the towns in the prefecture,” Neia said. “The royalists there are going to start wondering why Lloyds has gone silent and their Merchants aren’t returning.”

Lord Lugo’s companions shook their heads, not looking pleased at all.

“When does it end?” One of them asked, “We’re committing crimes to cover up previous crimes. Even if we contain the prefecture perfectly, the lack of traffic will eventually draw attention.”

“Then we should liberate as much as we can before that happens,” Neia said. “The more voices we have on our side, the harder it will be for outsiders to ignore the injustices being carried out in the north.”

Lord Lugo exchanged silent looks with his fellow scions.

“We can’t move without approval from Rimun,” he said. “The Duke will already be livid when he learns of what happened.”

“In that case,” Neia said, “let us do it.”

“What do you mean by that?” Lord Lugo frowned.

“My people and I can go ahead and take control of the royalists’ holdings on our own. Your people can come behind us and assume management when we move on.”

“We just went over this, Miss Baraja. We cannot abandon justice to correct injustice. It is best to wait–”

“The people can’t wait!” Neia told him, “How can you not understand that by now? The conditions created by royalist management eat away at the very soul! You claim that you desire nothing less than the restoration of the Holy Kingdom, but the longer we wait, the further the Holy Kingdom drifts away from that past ideal. I can’t even guarantee that the people that we wrest from the royalists’ grasp will be the same people we remember from the past. Their personalities and behaviour may already be twisted beyond all recognition.”

It was the best compromise that she could think of. The conservatives were too bound to the traditional way of doing things, making swift and decisive action next to impossible. They were more than willing to assume management of the city, however, so she figured it didn’t matter how much they complained so long as she produced results.

“It’s not as if we can stop you,” Lord Lugo’s words came out laced with bitterness.

With that, the lordling and his entourage departed the camp. The man at Neia’s side – the same dusky-skinned man who had greeted her at the harbour when they took Lloyds – shook his head.

“Those brats have no choice but to respect the truth,” he said, “yet they continue to refute it. I suppose that should be expected of Nobles.”

“They seemed so reasonable right up until they weren’t, Commander.”

“That’s always how it is,” the Commander told her. “They’re used to being in control. Nobles expect everyone to play by their rules, no matter how unfair they may be.”

“Let’s just focus on our next move,” Neia said. “We’ll be leaving Lord Lugo and his followers in our dust, so we shouldn’t have to deal with them too often from now on.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The Commander, an army veteran by the name of Pablo Lobo, sent out a few aides to fetch his officers. Then he ordered another pair to deliver refreshments for the command tent. Neia examined his weathered features as they waited.

“I’m sorry for bothering you so close to the harvest,” she said. “You’re supposed to be retired, too.”

“I was getting bored, anyway,” Commander Lobo replied. “Seems retiring to a farm wasn’t as great as I thought as everyone makes it out to be.”

“Why is that?” Neia asked.

“I’m not cut out for farming, I suppose. Even the hired help is better at it than I am.”

“He’d jump at the chance to command an army anyway,” Captain Guerrero said as he joined them in the tent. “The Commander’s been stuck as a Sergeant for his entire career.”

Commander Lobo was the Sorcerer King Rescue Corps’ official military commander, though that didn’t mean much at all outside of the Corps. Neia had met him not long after she had started to share the Sorcerer King’s wisdom in the camps of the Holy Kingdom Liberation Army. As Captain Guerrero stated, he was a man much like Neia’s father, stuck as a Sergeant in the Royal Army despite his long record of distinguished service and personal excellence. When she asked him to help out in the Corps, he resigned his commission on the spot.

Back then, the Sorcerer King expressed concerns about creating ill will by poaching staff members or something like that, but it wasn’t as if anyone dared to defy their benefactor.

Over the next few minutes, over thirty officers joined them, which included Captains, quartermasters, and other support staff. If any more joined, they would need a bigger pavilion.

“Thank you for coming out on such short notice,” Neia said. “We can’t afford to sit around Lloyds for long. Our next move will be to liberate the towns in the royalist-controlled parts of the prefecture.”

“Our Noble friends actually agreed to that?” One of the Captains asked, “They didn’t look too happy about what we did here.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Neia said. “We’ve gained the initiative over our enemies and we need to keep it for as long as possible. More importantly, every day we wait around Lloyds is another day that our people suffer.”

“Our conservative allies want to carry on with the way they usually do things,” Commander Lobo said. “Going along with their plans won’t work because they’ll want us to wait until the end of summer for Prince Felipe to arrive. Our people don’t have the time for that: not only are our people suffering, but they’re also having the fruits of their labour stolen from them by the royalists! Our provisions for the winter will be shipped to the south and we’ll be entirely at the mercy of the south until next summer.”

The Commander gestured to a simple map of the northern Holy Kingdom.

“To fight on our own terms, the Corps needs to achieve operational independence. Debonei can easily put an end to our activities by denying us supplies. Our first step will be to obtain a year’s worth of provisions just in case they try. To do that, we need to seize the northern coast.”

“All of it?”

“It’s the surest way to secure everything that we need. Both for our forces and for the citizens of the north. Trying to send grain overland to the bay will double or triple its cost. The royalists won’t fight us if we control all of the ports. Simple economics will keep our industrial output where it belongs.”

“We only have five galleons,” one of the Captains noted, “plus, we’re still training crews for ‘em. That won’t be enough to fight the royalists off if they come around with a fleet.”

Many of the officers nodded in agreement. That much was common sense in a maritime kingdom.

“We can fix that easily,” Commander Lobo said. “The royalists are delivering their quotas for the army to the wall. Those five galleons – well, six, including us – came in together because they had to weather that storm. Normally, they sail up and down the coast on their own.”

“So we’re commandeering more ships.”

“Exactly. Thanks to Miss Baraja’s quick thinking, no one should know what happened in Lloyds. If we play things right, it may be weeks before they realise what's going on. We’ll have dozens of ships by then.”

“But we won’t have the crews for them.”

“We can man those ships as we get them,” the Commander said. “The important part is that everyone’s short on ships, so each ship we take from the royalists will be crippling. Those galleons are also going to take our summer harvest away as it’s being delivered. If we seize enough of them, the royalists’ freight capacity will be reduced to the point where they won't be able to afford to attack us with what they have left.”

“Will it really be that convenient?”

“We’re not in a position to turn up our noses at what’s being offered. If we don’t get the ships we need, we won’t be able to conduct our campaign. Simple as that. What do you think, Miss Baraja?"

Every eye turned to Neia. She shifted on her feet as she gave the plan some thought.

“From a practical standpoint,” she said, “it makes sense. We currently can’t win against the royalists because their base of power is in the south. All we can do for now is secure our own base of power. Unless someone else has a better proposal, forcing a stalemate with Commander Lobo’s plan seems like the best way to do it. The only thing I’m worried about are the conscripts.”

“What about them?” The Commander asked.

“We won’t know where they’re from until we talk to them,” Neia explained. “If we get a ship loaded with people from the north, I think they’ll join us. But, if they’re from the south–”

“You won’t get any from the south.”

Saye’s crystal-clear voice sounded from somewhere within the mass of men. Several seconds later, her head popped out from between Captain Guerrero and Captain Carlos.

“What makes you say that?” Neia asked.

“I thought it was odd that every ship was loaded with northerners,” the Bard replied. “So I went and asked one of the royalists about it. Every reservist drawn for the army is from the northern Holy Kingdom.”

“…and whoever you spoke to just told you that,” Commander Lobo gave the Bard a dubious look.

“I have my ways,” Saye smiled mysteriously. “At any rate, it was the same story between the dozens of royalists I asked.”

“But conscription is always universal,” Captain Guerrero said. “How can this be true?”

Neia was curious about that, as well. Everyone served their time in the army. It was a fundamental aspect of being a citizen of Roble.

“The south paid gold to get out of it,” Saye shrugged.

An explosion of angry voices came in the statement's wake. Neia glanced upwards, wondering if the canopy of the pavilion would be blown away.

“Those depraved–”

“What in the gods’ names is wrong with those people?!”

“They’ve been getting fat and happy while we’ve suffered raids for generations! Now they think they can use the prosperity bought with our blood to get out of service entirely?”

“The south can go to Hell!”

It took several minutes for the anger of her officer corps to settle into a simmer. By then, word had spread to the nearest portions of the camp, creating new waves of outrage.

“Commander Lobo,” Neia said as a commotion rose around them, “we need to get this under control. It’ll give us time to consider your proposal, as well.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The Commander and his officers split up to deal with the news, though the most they cared to do was keep soldiers from running off to strangle the nearest royalist. Neia reached out to drain a cup of water that had been left untouched since the beginning of the meeting.

“They got mad,” Saye said.

“Isn’t that obvious?” Neia replied, “Military service has always been mandatory and universal. Sometimes, you get stories of people bribing their way into choice positions, but no one’s ever heard of paying one’s way out of service entirely. That the entire south was able to do would infuriate any citizen of the north.”

“Sounds like you have another card to play out there,” the Bard noted.

It was a powerful card indeed. One that could turn anyone in the north against their southern oppressors.

“There’s something I don’t get, though,” Neia said. “How come this is the first we’ve heard of this?”

“Going by the reaction just now,” Saye said, “it sounds like it was a pretty prudent move.”

She supposed that it was, in a twisted way. Conscription was part of a citizen’s reality and a lie of omission would result in the people assuming that it applied to everyone. Now that the truth was in their hands, however, it would be a reliable weapon to strike at the royalists with.

“By the way,” Neia asked, “did you hear the Commander’s proposal?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think of it?”

“I’m not a Commander, so I can’t say whether it’ll work or not.”

Neia frowned slightly at the Bard’s answer. She had a peculiar way of acting when it came to anything that wasn’t within the realm of expertise. It was as if she believed that she wasn’t allowed to have an opinion.

“You must feel one way or another about it,” Neia said.

“The only useful thing that I can say is that the Nobles can’t stop you,” Saye said. “Neither the royalists nor the conservatives. It will take them weeks to react in any meaningful way after they find out what’s going on.”

Which meant that the royalists in particular might not be able to react until winter so long as they remained ignorant of what was happening. However, while Neia’s forces could preempt any royalist attempts at warning their allies while they were taking over each town and village, their net of Rangers would grow increasingly ineffective the larger their borders grew.

Additionally, Commander Lobo’s whole notion of keeping information from leaking hinged on the idea that the royalists didn’t use proper scouts. While that had proven to be the case so far, there was no guarantee that it would stay that way. There were more than enough Nobles who had decent martial aptitude – or at least fancied themselves martially competent – so Neia was sure they would run into someone with real reconnaissance elements eventually.

“How do you feel about the Nobles’ reaction to what happened?” Neia asked.

“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about at the moment,” Saye answered. “Lord Lugo and the others may sound angry, but you’re still creating opportunities for them. I’ll even bet that Duke Debonei will send all the scions that were kicked out of Lloyds last month to manage things here. They’ll also come with a strongly-worded reprimand, of course, but life happens and everyone does what they can to deal with it.”

“I don’t like how you make it sound as if it’s not your problem.”

“It’s not. They’ll be yelling at you.”

A whimper rose from Neia’s throat. She cut it short when she saw Commander Lobo on his way back to the command tent.

“So,” he said, “how should we proceed, Miss Baraja?”

“I think your plan is sound,” Neia replied. “And this new piece of information will sway pretty much any of the locals we come across.”

“Agreed,” Commander Lobo nodded. “We can focus almost entirely on the military operation since we won’t have to worry about convincing every town and village that they should side with us.”

“Assuming they take us at our word,” Saye noted.

The Commander snorted.

“I’ve seen every dirty thing the Nobles are capable of throughout my career, girl,” he said. “Lords bribing the bureaucracy to keep their sons well out of harm’s reach. Cocky shits with the money for training and all the time in the world lording over their ‘lessers’ on the wall. All of the undeserved privilege and wealth that they wield in their daily lives is enough to make any honest man sick.”

“Lord Lugo and the others seemed pretty normal to me,” the Bard said.

“That’s because you don’t know what they’re like behind their handsome faces and flowery words,” Commander Lobo told her.

“But does any of what you said make it right to ignore what they’ve been saying?” Saye asked, “It sounds to me like they’re doing their best to preserve the justice of the Holy Kingdom.”

Commander Lobo gave Neia a look, but she wasn’t sure what he meant by it. After a long moment, he turned his gaze back upon the Bard.

“It’s as I said to Miss Baraja before,” he said. “The Nobles expect everyone to play by their rules and they force those rules upon those who reject them. They decide what those rules are between themselves, so why should we follow something we have no say in? The ‘justice of the Holy Kingdom’ failed us, anyway. During the war, Miss Baraja told us that weakness is a sin, so one must become strong or humbly accept justice similar to that of the Sorcerer King. Now, we have the strength to create our own justice.”

Neia recalled the rather simplistic messages that she delivered during the war with just a bit of embarrassment. She still believed every bit of what she said, but experience had proven that it was so open-ended that anything could come out of it. That would have to be addressed at some point to prevent undesirable outcomes.

“So,” Commander Lobo said, “if there aren’t any objections, shall we get to work?”

“Yes, let’s,” Neia nodded. “I guess learning how to capture more galleons is the first order of business. Do you have any idea how?”

“About that,” the Commander smiled, “I got just the thing.”

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