Aprilia's heart finally slowed down when she heard the messenger announce that the brigands had been dealt with, with not a single soldier of theirs seriously injured, and both boys safe. Relief swept through the crowd of thousands in waves of chatter and sighs, but it all quieted down when the messenger added that they had made contact with a group of knights from Nanon, who had left shortly afterward.
A knot of worry twisted in her stomach. She had hoped to never hear that name again. This time her worry wasn't just for herself and her family, but also for Jack, and everything that they had built together. They had been together for only a few weeks, but she couldn't imagine life without him anymore.
He had warned her that contact with Nanon was inevitable, as they needed seeds, cattle, horses; resources they simply didn't have, while Chadom didn't border any other nation. Still, she could not stand the thought of losing him. Aprilia was no warrior, but that didn't mean she was useless. What could she do to help Jack and her people?
---
The next day, we had the loot hauled back to Cradle, while me and my six guards pressed on further to visit the far end of the forest. It was around four kilometers long and unfortunately for us, became only wider the farther we went. Luckily, a mountain jutted towards the shore near the Treacherous Bog, pinching the forest, so it was only half a kilometer wide when it met the desolate landscape.
Aside from mountains to one side and cliffs plunging into the ocean to the other, all the eye could see was a vast bog. Shades of brown and green dominated the landscape, with nothing bigger than a bush growing anywhere. A terrible all pervading stench attacked our nostrils. The nasty, treacherous terrain forced everyone to slow down to a crawl, even through the more stable mapped out route.
"The perfect place to set up a kill zone." I said, smiling, despite the horrible stench.
"A kill zone?" Lothar asked.
"A place where we decide who lives and who dies, and should be the only way to enter our lands."
"How?"
"Three trebuchets with a range of... two hundred meters, which should obliterate any slow moving enemy group, which they all will be, thanks to the Bog." I explained. "Also bunkers for a platoon every forty meters, so twelve of them placed in a concave arc, and a whole lot of traps in front, leaving only a narrow safe passage for entry and exit."
"I'm guessing us soldiers will be building all this?" Ethan said dejectedly.
"Yes, but there are plenty of loose stones, dirt and trees nearby. Do a good job or you will have no one else to blame if you die at the hands of the enemy. General Lothar?"
"Yes, Commander?" He snapped to attention when I used my formal tone.
"We need to raise a unit of Frogmen: soldiers who specialize in amphibian terrain. Pick a dozen soldiers who are most familiar with the Bog and work with them to build some hidden depressions surrounding the only path we will leave the enemy, and come up with any other ways to make their advance hell."
"Sir!"
I made some ghillie suits for the Frogmen, who quickly took to it. They turned their camouflage training into a game, trying to see if they could spot their compatriots gradually creeping toward them.
The captured horses turned out to be as big of a boon as I had expected. Three each were assigned to the limestone quarry, the iron quarry, the logging camp and the newly opened peat quarry, and six were rented to the farmers, which resulted in significant increase of their productivity.
One horse was to be present at each major outpost at all times, namely West Point, the Bay, East Gate, and the newly named Bog Watch, for messengers.
Six were to remain at Cradle, so they could deliver wagons full of fresh soldiers wherever needed. It was essentially a rest posting for them, as we didn't have grain to feed the poor beasts. Only Lothar and I got personal mounts, and he quickly took to it like a natural.
I had stables built inside the Cradle castle and put three former stable hands in charge. I taught them how to ride the horses, then gave them the charge of training the rest of the soldiers.
I worked with Aramid and Kovar to build a small prototype trebuchet. Thanks to the work of an enthusiastic professor on Earth, I knew how to optimize the design.
The ratio between the projectile arm and counterweight arm must be 3.75:1, with the sling holding the projectile being just as long as the arm, while the counterweight, which should be free to rotate, should be 133 times heavier than the projectile.
The prototype worked beautifully and the craftsmen began working on a full-scale version, with a range of two hundred meters, enough to rain death upon anyone approaching Bog Watch.
While our weapon production was coming along fine, we were facing a big problem: clothing. I noticed that everyone was wearing ratty clothes, as they had fled with just one extra change of cloth, but months of hard labor had been, well, hard on them. So I decided to covertly visit the Nanon kingdom to buy cloth and other essentials, before we became embroiled in a war.
---
I sent the freshly trained Frogmen to scout the route ahead, then followed them, along with my guard and four wagons.
It took us four days to cross the Bog, with the wagons occasionally getting stuck, even with the purpose-built wider wheels. Fortunately, the far side of the Bog was just wild forest, undefended and unpopulated. Nobody wanted to live near the stinking landscape. We left the Frogmen hidden in the forest, and rode to the closest settlement, which was the village of Hamfeld.
From there, Wenik, a soldier who used to live in the nearest town, Allonay, and I traveled the ten kilometers to town and bribed the guard to get inside. It was a bustling town, full of merchants hawking their wares and stench of filth clinging to every street.
"Where can we buy cloth in bulk here, Wenik?" I asked my companion.
"From the weavers, Sire. They have a shop nearby."
"Why don't you go investigate that while I look for other items?"
"My lord, bolts of cloth for three thousand people is a very large order. They might get suspicious if I go there by myself, and will just kick me out when I ask for that much." He explained slowly, as if I was a young child.
"Right. Lead on." I had forgotten cloth was absurdly expensive in pre-industrial times. And there were no ready made clothes, other than the third hand ones sold by servants of the rich.
"Welcome." A man greeted us as we entered the small shop.
"I'm Sir Moran of Zardin, and I need to buy quite a bit of cloth." I wasn't very good with names, so I morphed the name of the first prick I could think of.
"Of course, my lord. How many people are you trying to cloth?"
"Around three thousand. The purchase is on behalf of my liege lord."
His eyes nearly popped out of his head.
"Do you have enough to fulfill an order that size? I need it within a few days." I asked haughtily.
"I... I think we might have that much in our warehouse. Please let me confirm."
"If you're worried about payment, it's not an issue. I will pay you promptly," I said while jingling my heavy coin purse. "If the price is right."
His lips cracked into a smile in response. Far too many noblemen were tight-fisted misers when it came to paying for anything other than their own luxuries.
"It is a pleasure to do business with a judicious man such as yourself." He said, smiling. Judging by his selection of words, he definitely did business with the big wigs. I recalled that as an ex-Viscount, I was once one of those bigwigs. Good thing he didn't recognize me. I hoped my handkerchief on the mouth trick would be enough to fool anyone who might.
We settled on an eye watering price that ate through most of the money I had brought with me. I offered to pay half of the price upfront and the shopkeeper was so happy, he readily agreed to deliver the bolts of cloth to Hamfeld on guarded wagons within two days, just as I wanted.
Next we bought a cartload of grain to alleviate our food security issues and a few sacks of flax seeds, so we could produce our own oil and fibers, to turn it into cloth. I sold a few pieces of jewelry I had on me, taken from the brigands, and bought some brass with it, for a special project.
I was counting my lucky stars that everything had happened without incident when I found my eyes drawn to a strikingly beautiful woman sitting in a stationary coach. Suddenly our eyes met, and a hazy memory slammed into me. Her lying in bed, naked and flushed, hair spilled like silk across the sheets.
"Jack? Jack Nobara?" she called, narrowing her eyes.
"I'm afraid you have the wrong man, my lady." I said, tugging Wenik towards a nearby alley.
"It's you, isn't it?" she raised her voice as I began walking away. "Jack!"
Great. Jack was a womanizer and now his past was coming to bite me in the ass. I was trying to recall more of his memories, when I found our path blocked by some thugs.
"That's a hefty coin purse you've got there. Care to share some?" said the head thug, with a lilt in his voice.
I looked around and noticed we had walked deep into one of the poorer parts of the town. Two thugs were in front of us and two in the back.
"I was trying to stop you from going deeper, Sire, but you were lost in your thoughts." Wenik complained.
"Sorry about that." I apologized. "Can you handle your two?"
"Yeah," he grinned. "I grew around these parts. I know how to handle a bunch of scrugs."
No sooner had he finished, when the thugs lunged at us, daggers and cudgels in hand. We drew our own in turn and responded. I would have been scared, well more so than I currently was, if I hadn't practiced for weeks while training the soldiers, and if I hadn't been blessed with immense strength. Strength, as it turns out, also made you fast.
Still, I wasn't going to risk getting hurt by fighting two guys at once, so I threw my dagger at one guy, then promptly kicked the other one, who was idiotically tracking the dagger, square in the gut. He collapsed instantly, while the other dodged my throw. It gave me an opportunity to grab his arm, which I did and squeezed, hard, eliciting a cry from him. His weapon fell from his hand, which I let go and then promptly kicked him in the gut as well.
I picked up one of the daggers, turned around and threw it at the guy who was still fighting Wenik. He tried to dodge it and slipped in the process. Wenik kicked him in the chest repeatedly, while I retrieved my steel dagger.
"You good?" I asked Wenik.
"Yes, Sire," he said between breaths.
"Then let's get out of this hellhole."
I finally released the breath I didn't know I had been holding when we left the city. We went back to Hamfeld on our seed laden wagon, with baited breaths, but no one intercepted us.
We stayed in the village, making some stories about our origins to the villagers and spread some coin around to keep them appeased. I also had my soldiers buy the top soil from their barns.
We took possession of the two shipments in the next two days. With everything bought, we began our miserable journey back to Chadom. This time it took more than a week, as the goods laden wagons kept getting stuck in the Bog.
We reached Bog Watch to the cheers of our men, and spread around some dried fruit I had bought in town. Back in Cradle, I received good news that two trebuchets had been built and tested. They were transported to East Gate, where Aramid and Kovar gave us a demonstration.
"Those are some odd looking trebuchets." Lothar commented.
"Seen a lot of them, have you?" I asked.
"No, but I got a glance, one time," he said. I was curious about his past, but there was no necessity to know it, so he could keep his secrets.
We waited with baited breath as the operators charged the weapons. Then, the cord was pulled, the counterweight went down, the sling was flung and the rocks went flying. As they landed in the forest, a thunderous crash resounded, followed by the cacophony of thousands of birds taking flight.
"So, what do you think?" I asked the dumbstruck Elders.
We installed the trebuchets at Bog Watch, where Lothar drilled the new crew in firing them in realistic conditions every single day. Assuming the worst case scenario, where all the soldiers and reservists would be engaged on the front lines, Cradle would be left undefended. So we took the most capable two hundred men after the reservists, inducted them into the newly established Home Guard, and began training them.
While I outwardly smiled at the men practicing sniping the enemy from the palisade and stabbing them with wooden spears, inwardly I despaired at our unpreparedness. If this Lord Ox came truly prepared, we might already be doomed.