"How is the training for the new troops going?"

After a few days of absence, Elia finally joined me back in the military camp set at the periphery of the mining town. With how to spread out all my businesses now were, I had no other choice than to temporarily rely on her to make sure everything was going as planned with one of them while I would personally oversee another one.

While this fragmentation of my power was already starting to pose quite a lot of challenge to effectively administer so many different places, I had no other choice than to look forward for increasing this problem even more. With the letter of invitation sent to the Cheerie family, as long as they would agree to rather lenient terms, not only I one or two of Matsu"s beer managers would have to go to their own lands and organise the production for this magnate household, but some of the newly schooled managers of mine would travel even further to establish outposts at the verge of the cossack community influence!

Thanks to the fact that I would be banking mostly on the national trade route connecting the south of the country, or rather, the entire eastern part of the continent to its western counterpart, even if Ostros decided to strike at this exposed and long logistic chain, they would have to bear with the wrath of Cheerio"s, as this side business of mine would be put under their direct protection!

"It"s good, but not good enough. Without a proper fight, no matter how long I will keep disciplining them and making things hard for them, they will remain greenhorns. That"s one of the reasons why I want to expand to the east. After all, not many fallen n.o.bles would be able to resist the charm of stable and generous pay that I"m willing to give them!"

Just like I explained to Elia while being able to bolster the number of my troops almost at once with how insanely simple the new weapons were in use when it came to actually put them into any military use, it was an entirely different topic. As most of the recruits hailed from the nearby villages and some of the n.o.ble households that have nothing to them outside of their name, even if they could do everything exactly as told during training, I doubted that when the fires of battle would scorch their a.s.sess, they would still be of any use!

"Well, I think you will have the chance to test their loyalty soon enough. While I was back in Tarnow, we received a summons to the royal court. It seems that Ostros moved into offensive after we excused their envoy from our lands."

While I was prepared that sooner or later they would try something sketchy, for them to direct this fight directly to the royal court… Either they were confident in taking me down during some kind of trial, or this was nothing more than a ruse aimed to distract me from the place where they would really attack!

"Thanks for bringing this information. Do you know what pretence they used for doing so? Did people learn about summons?"

Summoning one to the capital mostly served only one out of two purposes. Either the ruler wanted to reward or punish them! With how quickly all my lands were developing, if the news about summons were to spread, initially everyone would take it for a good sign, a.s.suming that I was going to get rewarded for my efforts in developing the country and bringing in more and more taxes to the royal coffers. 

But I wasn"t as stupid to believe that Ostros would waste quite a lot of their influence to show how close of a family we were by forcing the royal court to reward me! And if people learned later on, that despite all of their initial a.s.sumptions, I was going to be trialled and potentially punished for something, there would be nothing I could do about rumours spreading that all my growth was based on some shady methods!

"Yeah. To be frank, I heard about the summons even before I officially received them. It"s safe to say that this was the top topic for all the merchants in the grand Tarnowian market!"

Hearing Elia"s words, I couldn"t help but frown. If they were as swift with spreading the news, it turned the situation to a whole new picture. While spreading the rumours wasn"t as hard as one might think, it was often a single-use strategy if the plan based on said rumours ended up failing. That"s why, if Ostros were as eager as to use it as they appeared to be, they had to be quite confident that they plan was foolproof!

"Say, what do you think we should do? I can"t really tell whats their aim in spreading those rumours…"

If they did it so that everyone would antic.i.p.ate me being rewarded which considering how I approached my investments, would directly translate to even better opportunities for everyone, hearing about me being punished would do me just as much harm as it would open new possibilities in front of me. 

After all, I could be perfectly sure about the loyalty of the low and middle cla.s.s in Tarnow, along with everyone in the mining town area. With all my efforts to improve the welfare of the common folk, and the distribution of the cheap beer of mine amongst those who could afford it, I knew that any attack towards me would turn into a burst of loyalty in those subjects of mine, willing to go for great lengths to…

f.u.c.k!

"Elia, take all the troops that are ready for combat to Tarnow. You have to make sure that when the news of whatever will happen in the capital will spread, no popular unrest will turn this place chaotic. Leave just a few battle-hardened veterans of ours whose loyalty can"t be questioned to train even more troops here. I think I know what they are up to!"