Chapter 455 — The Summons

Forty-six days now.

Baron Sunderland sat quietly on the single bed that was his, facing the wall, counting the scratches on its surface from beginning to end, then from end back to beginning.

He had been in this cell for forty-six days.

As one of the southern nobles who had risen in answer to Earl Horseman's call to arms, he knew himself to be very lucky—being of low rank, he had never been permitted near the earl's own column, and so had narrowly escaped the cannonade at Gravel Ridge; and afterward, again for want of rank, he had been left far behind by the main body during the flight, and so had become one of the first nobles captured by the Cecilians, sparing himself the ordeal of fleeing day and night across the wilderness.

But he did not know how long this "luck" of his could hold.

The collapse of the noble coalition already seemed a thing of another age; that expedition—so stirring at its outset, so disastrous in its ending—had by now become a nightmare that everyone deliberately avoided and yet replayed in his mind without cease. Baron Sunderland knew that throughout the South, apart from the Cecil family and the handful who had pledged to Cecil early, every noble was finished. Though when he had first been locked in this cell he had still harbored a shred of fantasy, imagining the Cecilians suffering setbacks in the battles to come and at last reaching some stalemate settlement with the southern nobles, what he had received in the end was only a succession of new "cellmates"—

One familiar face after another was cast into the cells, and each face meant another stretch of land fallen into Cecil hands. When more than half the nobles of the South had appeared in this "prisoner camp," Viscount Sunderland accepted the fact: there would be no turning of the tide.

Now he, like every other noble captive, could only sit quietly in his cell and wait for that Duke Gawain Cecil to summon him one day and deliver a clear verdict.

A commotion arose from the neighboring cell.

Baron Sunderland lifted his head and saw that his "cellmate," Viscount Trier, had raised his head as well. The two of them listened intently to the sounds from next door, and after a moment exchanged a glance and shook their heads with bitter smiles.

"It's those fellows brought back from Boulder Fortress," Viscount Trier said with a bitter smile. "Seems they haven't yet gotten used to the 'rules' here."

"We were the same at the beginning," Baron Sunderland answered with a bitter smile of his own. "Listen—they're demanding the guards salute them, demanding red wine and pillows, even harping on about ransom... I haven't heard such talk in a long while."

The men in the neighboring cell had been locked in only a few days before; they came from Boulder Fortress. Baron Sunderland had once assumed these men had slipped the Cecil pursuit and returned to their own lands, and only now learned that they had merely hidden themselves in that fortress to the north.

These new "cellmates" brought astounding news to the noble captives in the camp: by their account, Boulder Fortress had fallen—beneath the Cecilians' furious assault, that legendary stronghold had held out less than two days.

Some even said that the true attack had lasted only about half a day, and that the two days counted the time the Cecilians had spent pitching camp.

Baron Sunderland had lived here forty-six days; he had smoothly adapted to and accepted his present circumstances, but clearly those newly arrived would need some time to buffer before they understood the situation.

When the commotion in the neighboring cell finally subsided, Viscount Trier asked, "What do you think Duke Gawain Cecil actually wants?"

"Perhaps the unconditional allegiance of every southern noble, the same as allegiance to the king," Baron Sunderland said, voicing his guess. "We can already see that this war was his doing from first to last. He clearly means to take back what is his—the South will become the Duchy of Cecil once more."

"...The Duchy of Cecil," Viscount Trier was silent a moment, then sighed. "I've thought so ever since he kept putting off the question of ransom."

Baron Sunderland muttered, "It could be worse..."

Viscount Trier wanted to ask what "worse" meant, but before he could speak, the sound of military boots striking the concrete floor cut him off—the cell door opened, and Cecil soldiers in mana armor stood in the doorway. "The Duke will see you now," one said in a cold tone.

Baron Sunderland and Viscount Trier jerked their heads up and looked at each other in astonishment and joy:

After waiting so long in dread and bewilderment, was that Gawain Cecil finally going to summon the nobles of the South?!

……

In Xuan曜 City, in the lounge beside the great council hall of the administrative office, Gawain waited at his ease, with Hetty standing quietly at his side and Amber not quiet in the least.

"Hey, hey, you think those nobles will be talked round by you?" Amber glanced at the stack of documents on the table nearby and could not resist leaning in toward Gawain. "These things are near enough to deadly for them—"

"Could you mind your manners just a little?" Hetty said, frowning and unable to hold back. "This is the administrative office. You should at least have some self-awareness..."

Amber set her hands on her hips and retorted with perfect confidence: "I am minding them, aren't I? I even came in through the door just now—didn't you see?"

The two of them bickering now and then was already routine; Gawain ignored it entirely and said unhurriedly, "Talk them round? I don't intend to negotiate with them at all. The choice isn't in their hands."

"Honestly, if that's how it is, why not just pack them all off to the mines and let them dig stone till they drop? Why drag them out and make them 'voluntarily' give up their noble privileges?" Amber said, puzzled. "Their lands are all in your hands anyway, their armies have been wiped out by you, and even their persons are locked in your cells..."

Gawain shook his head, then looked at Hetty. "Hetty, explain it to her."

Hetty gave Amber a helpless look. She had no wish to bother with this disgrace to elfkind, but when an elder spoke, one had to listen: "The population migration and new city construction projects the Ancestor proposed are under way. At present, the reconstruction and construction of Horseman City, Leslie City, Gran City, and Kant City are all entering new phases, but as the population grows ever more concentrated and the new decrees are steadily carried out, resistance in various places is gradually surfacing.

"The situation is better in the three regions of Leslie, Gran, and Kant. The greatest resistance comes from the Horseman region, and from nearly all the old noble territories outside these four new cities.

"The aftereffects left by the fall of the old nobles remain, and they are quite thorny. Many of the local wealthy farmers still harbor doubts about the new lords, and a considerable portion of local scholars and merchants still support the old lords—or are simply the old lords' 'private retainers.' The second-tier administrative office finds it very difficult to recruit people in those regions, and commercial reform has met no small obstruction as well.

"In the western Peibo region and around the northern Karol region, some exiled knights and noble soldiers have turned to banditry. They dare not approach the garrisons of the Cecil Corps, but they frequently raid the countryside. Since the Cecil Corps is short-handed, the campaign to hunt down these bandit bands of exiled knights is not going as well as we would like. Worse still, some exiled knights in the northwest are making contact with Frostgate City; they may be converted into armed forces of the Frostbalance Church."

Amber's eyes went wide. "Exiled knights and noble soldiers too?! Weren't they all killed or captured?!"