Enlightened Empire

Chapter 386: Worry

“Have you still not moved it?” An annoyed Sumaci walked up to the offices in Saniya's Rapra Castle, where a group of six workers were holding a giant piece of furniture.

“The table is too wide! We can’t possibly get it through the doorway,” one of them argued, but the queen wasn’t having any of it.

“Then just break the doorway,” she said. “Do you think the doors are more expensive, or the table?”

With a face of defeat, Rapra Castle's office workers put down their heavy load. It had taken them hours to move the table from the castle entrance all the way down here, and now they had even more work. Still, no one would dare defy the queen.

So their team leader simply said, “Very well,” and they got to work again.

Thus, the office workers began to dismantle the doors so they could move in the new equipment. Although they were grumbling, Sumaci didn’t really care about leaving a bad impression. They may be frustrated with their willful queen for the moment, but once they started using their new desks, they would thank her on their knees.

This was the tenth and last calculator table that the clock maker Egidius had managed to fashion for the castle in time for their great revolution. The first few tables had already been in operation for a few days by this point. After extensive testing, they had more than proven their worth. With them, one accountant could easily do the work of five, which meant that all of a sudden, they had freed up the workload for forty-five bureaucrats in their offices.

For the first time since Sumaci arrived in Saniya years back, it looked like the castle wouldn’t suffer from a chronic lack of officials. Over the years, many attempts had been made to alleviate this lack of workers, and finally it seemed like they were paying off.

Originally, Corco only had the thirty officials he had brought with him from his merchant guild in Arcavia, as well as himself and a few of his friends like Fadelio and Brym who were good with numbers. Although Saniya was just a slightly larger town back then, they were still completely overloaded with work and even had to temporarily enlist some of the ghost warriors to do paper work.

Later, all of the former merchants had received apprentices, about three on average, who went through what Corco had alternately called a crash-course and a boot-camp to get them helping as quickly as possible. Since then, these apprentices had gone on to learn enough about the craft that they could graduate and become fully fledged officials. In fact, they had gone on to have their own apprentices as well since a few months ago.

On top of that, Corco had eagerly recruited any immigrant who could already read and write to further enhance their workforce, especially if they were at least somewhat familiar with an official’s work. As a result, the number of officials had risen from the initial thirty all the way to two hundred, supplemented by about six hundred apprentices.

However, as their workforce had grown, so had the city. The original population of around ten thousand had since swelled to almost forty thousand, not to mention the increase in population in the rural areas.More and more workers were necessary to oversee the increasingly chaotic city and its surroundings, and even more officials had gone north, to oversee any one of Brym’s official ‘Wonders of the World’ stores in the two northern kingdoms. Recently, another batch had to be sent to the Verdant Isles, to keep her own family’s country together.

Thus, they were always short on staff, despite their best efforts. At least they had been, up until now. With great satisfaction, the queen watched the workers finally squeeze the expensive table through what was left of the door, past wood shavings and rubble and into the country’s archiving department. With this increase in efficiency, their new offices finally had the capacity to keep up with their demands, and even exceed them.

In the future, they would finally have more time for themselves. No longer would she or Corco have to spend their days hunched over countless documents. Maybe they would actually get to spend some time as a couple for once, though she wasn’t quite sure if her husband was even capable of something like that.

Of course, her own private wishes were less relevant compared to the bigger picture. Far more importantly, they finally had the manpower to take proper control of the southern kingdom. If her husband could fulfill his goals this time, the additional manpower hadn’t come one moment too soon.

When Corco had started to plan for his lightning miracle, he had always planned to solve all of his problems at once, overambitious as always. Not only was the event supposed to remold the country’s culture and reshape its society, it was also meant to remove all dissenting voices from within the southern kingdom.

As for Sumaci herself, she wasn’t as optimistic as her permanently overconfident teacher. Rather than look forward to a better future, Sumaci was more worried, about her stupid, cocky husband, who was once again off to fight some war somewhere, putting himself in danger for no good reason just to show off.

In fact, there really wasn’t a reason for her to watch the office workers put together a desk in the archives. The only reason she had come here was to distract herself from her constant worries. It had been three days since Corco had traveled south, into Puscanacra’s borders and thus past the reach of their beacon towers. They had been installed along the king's roads, but many of the antagonistic and greedy lords like Ogulno and Saqartu had never allowed them to build anything in their precious territory. Thus, communication was far slower in enemy lands. So far, she had yet to receive any word from Corco.

When she left the archive and returned back to the light of day, she looked up to the sky, towards the south, for what felt like the millionth time today. With a sigh, she made her way up the stairs, back towards the king’s office. Rather than distract herself, it was more important to fulfill her duties. That was all she could do for now, that and hope for the best.

“And what now?”

A confused Lord Ogulno mumbled to himself. Stood atop a snowy hill in Sachay’s wilderness, he stared down at the mighty army at his behest.

His own men had tallied up the total refugee warriors and commoners over the past day and had come up with an impressive number of twelve thousand heads. While they had been waiting here, in the snow a day’s march south-east of the battlefield, a handful of additional stragglers had joined their troop, but it really wasn’t a significant number. So most likely, this was it.

Almost half the core army of the league of lords now stood and moved at his command. Unsurprisingly, Ogulnowas in charge of this many troops for the first time in his life. Yet he couldn’t gain any joy from his sudden rise in status. Maybe part of the problem was that he was not the only one in charge.

“We need to move,” a voice said from behind Ogulno. The lord turned and saw lords Curichi and Sucopia come up from behind. They both spoke without a greeting.

“Our rations are about to run out,” Lord Sucopia added to Curichi’s words. “Even if we send the men to forage, we will not last much longer out in the wild.”

Right. Ogulno wasn’t the only one in charge here. Back when he had escaped the battlefield like a coward, two other lords had also seen the writing on the wall and done the same, though they hadn’t met up immediately.

At first, Ogulno had spread out his troops to create a net that covered the south-east of the battlefield. This way, he tried to catch as many of the fleeing soldiers as possible. After all, most of these people were without leaders and without direction, at least temporarily. When they had met Ogulno’s troops, most had been eager for someone to follow, someone who could save them from the terror of battle and give them something to aim for. Under the flag and leadership of a proper lord who could provide them with the stability they were searching for, he had soon assembled a fairly substantial army.

After some time, his troops came in contact with others, so he realized that several other lords had come up with the same idea as him. Thus, the three camps had collected warriors from other southern estates and then, after short negotiations, had combined into the impressive troop assembled before Ogulno and the other two lords.

Yet even with all these soldiers, the lord of the copper hills had honestly no idea what to do. He had collected the warriors at first because he thought that having them was better than not having them, but now that they were in front of him, he was honestly at a loss. Their next goal was of paramount important, but with the strength of their enemy and their weakened position, he couldn’t find any viable option.

“While all of your assertions might be correct, we have no place to move were we to move, and nothing to do once we get there,” Ogulno replied to his last remaining allies while pretending to be calm. However, it seemed like his allies had long read his real mood.

“Why do you look so defeated, Lord Ogulno?” Curichi asked. “What is standing here before us, but an army greater than almost anything assembled in medalan history?”

“Though the key phrase may be ‘almost’,” Ogulno shot back. “Our foes are much greater in number, and our larger army has already lost to them once. Are we a match for the royal troops with these leftovers alone?”

“Only a coward would concede the war straight away!” Sucopia began to shout, as if his insistence could change reality. Finally, Ogulno got annoyed as well.

“Our league just fought the royal army!” he shouted back.“We had around four times the soldiers and more than twice the warriors than what we have now. And we lost miserably.”

Ogulno had no illusions in regards to their chances in combat, but it seemed like his allies didn’t see it that way.

“Only because our leadership was weak, and fractured,” Curichi insisted, though his argument was weak and his voice sounded more stubborn than convinced. “A strong commander could turn our fortunes in but a moment. Now most of our brothers from the league of lords are gone, so we have the chance to elect a proper, single leader who can guide the army with one voice.”

At last, Ogulno understood why Lord Curichi seemed so stubborn despite their weak position. He had seen this army before them, and it had awakened his greed once more.

“And who would that leader be?” Ogulno asked back, despite knowing the answer already.

“Of course, it would be the only one with enough bravado to fight on in the face of impossible odds!” Curichi said, and patted his own chest without shame.

“And this lord would assume that brave Lord Curichi already has a plan for our future, one beyond empty bravado?”

“Of course. We should rush back into the lands of Chawir, and attack the troops of the arrogant little king as soon as possible. Best would be an attack at night. Now they are drunk on their victory, no doubt celebrating their feat with a grand banquet, as if they had already won. The last thing they would expect would be an attack from a defeated foe.”

With his puffed out chest, Curichi looked like he had just reinvented warfare. Yet his plan was so idiotic, Ogulno was no longer interested in being polite.

“Of course they would not expect it, because it would be suicide!” he shouted back, ready to explode.

All this time, Lord Sucopia had stayed out of the argument, but finally he contributed again, just in time before the other two could get at each others’ throat.

“This lord agrees with brother Ogulno. We cannot possibly win if we simply fight the king’s men with the rest of our troops. Our numbers are simply not enough, and our morale and supplies are low.”

“You-” a red-faced Lord Curichi wanted to start shouting to lose his one remaining ally as well, but Sucopia held up his hand to interrupt the next outburst.

“At the same time, we cannot continue to sit here,” he continued. “We need to move now, before we run completely out of food. Before the warriors lose their trust in us and run away by themselves, we need to at least appear as if there is a plan to follow.”

Unlike the suicidal plan from the hot-headed Curichi, Lord Ogulno agreed with the assessment. He no longer opposed the plan to move, since it sounded like Sucopia had thought it through.

“So, where do we go then, and what tell we the men?” he asked instead.

“For now, I propose we march east. Brother Ogulno, your estate is closest to our current position. For the moment, we should be able to find shelter and supplies there, correct?”

“Yes, that would be possible.”

Of course, Ogulno was happy that they would move to his home, where he would have more power and control compared to the other lords.

“Good, then we should do just that. It will put some more distance between us and our enemies. Thus, we will gain enough time and space to stabilize the morale of our men, and to make a more concrete plan for the future.”

“That seems acceptable for now.” Curichi finally agreed as well. His ploy to take the whole army under his control would have to wait. Thus, the remains of the league’s army marched east.

Once again, Lord Ogulno had survived an attempt on his life. But compared to last time, survival was a scant reprieve for his current circumstances. Without much hope for the future, Ogulno followed his men east, back towards his home.