"Your Highness, wonderful news, wonderful news!" Tiger Ross charged up to the main tent on horseback with over a dozen men, leaped off his horse, and barged straight in. Dollas burst in right after him, grinning from ear to ear like a fool.
"Wonderful news? What could possibly be so worth celebrating..."
The front lines remained deadlocked. The garrison legions holding the three defensive positions had adopted a strategy of avoiding Lorist's colossal lever-operated catapults altogether — they simply abandoned the nearly hundred meters of forward defensive works on the hillside and pulled their garrison troops back, letting Lorist hurl his stones at empty ground to his heart's content.
That left Lorist at a complete loss. With no one to defend, what was there to bomb? The catapults were virtually useless now. Because of their sheer size and weight, these cumbersome machines couldn't be moved uphill. And while they were being repositioned, they couldn't even launch rocks — which meant they had no counterattack capability. Grand Duke Fisabron refused to accept this and tried to force-march the giant catapults uphill, but the defenders above rolled down logs and boulders in abundance, not only thwarting his plan but also inflicting casualties on nearly a hundred grass barbarian cavalrymen who had dismounted to push the machines.
Lorist was at the base of the hill, and the defensive positions were on the slope, roughly five hundred meters apart. So even though the defenders had ceded the forward positions, the moment they spotted any sign of an attack from below, they could quickly rush back into the forward works and prepare their defenses — leaving Lorist to curse helplessly. What made it worse was that these hillside defenses weren't spread flat across the slope like a sheet of paper. The defenders had cleverly exploited the terrain's elevation changes to set up multiple layers of defensive facilities at varying heights, creating a three-dimensional killing zone. No matter where an attacker struck, they would come under crossfire from both flanks and from above in every direction.
Even though Lorist had already surpassed the level of a third-tier Sword Saint, he had nearly paid the price the night before. He had personally led a nighttime raid, but nobody had anticipated that the defenders had scattered large quantities of broken ceramic jars and glass bottles in the first trench of the forward positions. Lorist himself was unharmed, but the Family Knights who followed him on the raid were not so lucky. Their full steel armor left the soles of their boots unprotected, and the moment they leaped into the trench, they were stepping on razor-sharp shards. Screams of agony erupted, and that was followed by a concentrated volley from the garrison soldiers — feathered bolts and crossbow bolts rained down like a storm. At the same time, the defenders had learned a trick from Lorist: fist-sized rocks were hurled by hilltop catapults, blanketing the entire forward area, interspersed with flaming fireballs...
Realizing the situation was dire, Lorist hastily ordered a retreat with his raiding party. When they tallied the losses afterward, he nearly exploded with rage. An elite thousand-man guard detachment had gone with him on the night raid, and without so much as touching the enemy, they had suffered three to four hundred casualties. The only saving grace was that his retreat order had come in time — the wounded and the dead were all carried back by the guards. Only a few dozen had been killed, but nearly three hundred were wounded.
Lorist was still sulking and trying to figure out how to recoup his losses when Tiger Ross came roaring in with his shouting. With that kind of mood, there was no way he was going to give Ross a warm reception. Tiger Ross, well aware that Lorist was still smarting from the failed night raid, quickly said, "Your Highness, a messenger has arrived from Wrathbear City with good news for you."
"What good news?"
"Lady Sylvia is with child. After examination, she has been pregnant for over two months..."
Princess Sylvia was pregnant? Lorist was stunned for a moment. He did the mental math — it was now early July, and a pregnancy of over two months meant it happened around late April. She must have known he was heading to the front lines and couldn't bear to part with him. She had shamelessly clung to him for days on end, even calling in Anna, Daisy, and the other three concubines for a night of shared bedding in the end. But in the end, it was Sylvia who had received the fruits of those efforts. It seemed the girl had been scheming — and her efforts had finally paid off. She had finally put a bun in the oven.
"Indeed, this is good news. But why are all of you so happy about it?" Lorist found it very puzzling. It wasn't as if he didn't have sons already. Elena had borne him two, and Anna had also given him a son. On top of that, Lady Trist had borne him two daughters. It was perfectly normal for Princess Sylvia to be carrying a child — so what were these fools so giddy about?
"Your Highness, if Lady Sylvia gives birth to a boy, that will be the heir born of the legitimate wife! With Your Highness having an heir, us Family Knights will have hope for the future..." the simple-minded Dolores explained with a wide, gormless grin.
"Get lost!" Lorist raged. "I haven't even hit forty yet — I'm in the prime of my life, and you're already eager for my unborn son to take over from me?!"
Realizing he'd misspoken, Dolores clutched his head and scrambled away. Tiger Ross, standing to the side with a look of secondhand embarrassment on his face, said nothing in bitter silence...
"Oh, come back." The moment Dolores stepped out of the command tent, he heard Lorist calling him and had no choice but to turn back. "Your Highness..."
"Where's the messenger?" Lorist glared at him.
"Waiting outside the command tent..."
"Then what are you waiting for? Call them in already."
The messenger was a guard that Lorist recognized. His guard battalion was a three-thousand-man unit, and he had brought two thousand-man companies to the front lines, while the remaining one thousand guards stayed behind in Ironbear City to protect the central castle and his family. This guard named Warren was a squad leader, one of those who had remained in Ironbear City.
The letter described how much Selia missed Lorist, and at the end it mentioned that in order to nurture the baby, she had already set out for the estate in Cherry Blossom Ridge — the scenery was beautiful and the climate cool, making it the perfect place to escape the summer heat...
After reading the letter, Lorist told Warren to go rest first and that he would have a reply ready in a couple of days for Warren to bring back. After Warren left, Lorist looked at Tiger Ross and Dolores standing side by side, and said with a furrowed brow, "I already have three sons. Irene bore me two — the eldest is eleven years old, fostered in Marlek's household as you well know, and the younger one is seven; I've been looking for a good tutor for him. Anna also bore me a son, who will turn four this year. So I have no shortage of heirs, and I've already made it clear that every child of mine will be entered into the family registry as ranked successors to the
So while Silvia's pregnancy is certainly good news for me, it's also perfectly normal. I'm pleased, but I won't celebrate with the same level of enthusiasm as the two of you. Tell me honestly — are there many people in the family who share your way of thinking? People who are very particular about the inheritance rights of legitimate versus illegitimate sons in our Norton Family?"
Tiger Ross and Dolores exchanged glances. Tiger Ross stepped forward. "Your Highness, I don't mean to overstep, but in my honest opinion, the inheritance right of the legitimate heir is the most solid foundation upon which a noble house can endure for a hundred generations. If Your Highness had not yet taken a wife, I would have no objection to listing all of Your Highness's sons as ranked heirs to the family. But Your Highness has formally taken Lady Silvia as his wife, so any child born of her is a legitimate heir and should be the first in line of succession for the Norton Family. This is not merely my own view — many Family Knights think the same way..."
Dolores hesitated, opening his mouth as if to speak but stopping himself. Lorist glared at him. "If you have something to say, say it straight. Nothing you say here today will offend me or be held against you afterward. Our family grows larger by the day, yet fewer and fewer people dare to speak the truth to my face. Go on — tell me what you truly think. Think back to the hardships of organizing the caravan and heading north, and then look at everything we have now. As my earliest followers, I have never once doubted your loyalty and dedication. Let me hear what's really on your minds."
"All right, then, Your Highness." Dolores spread his hands. "There are things we don't bring up not because we don't want to, but because it feels inappropriate — after all, these are domestic matters, and as Family Knights, we shouldn't meddle. But the question of the family's heir is different. It concerns the future of the entire house and is intimately tied to all of our interests. If Your Highness were to choose an unsuitable heir, the family's future would be in jeopardy...
Take the eldest young master, for example. We've kept an eye on him as well, but Baron Marlek's assessment was that the eldest young master might become a brave and fearless knight, but he would never make a wise and benevolent lord, because his temperament is far too cruel. Although Lady Marlek's careful guidance taught the eldest young master manners and restraint, he still regularly kills small animals. We all agreed that letting the eldest young master become the next head of the Norton Family would be a disaster for the house..."
"But he's still young..." Lorist weakly protested. In truth, he was not unaware of the reports about his eldest son. Tager had dispatched several intelligence investigators who had been secretly monitoring the boy's development. What had left the deepest impression on Lorist was an incident where, after being punished by Lady Marlek for some misdeed, the boy had gone outside, shot a little squirrel with an arrow, and then hacked the poor creature to a pulp with his short sword...
"Your Highness, this is not a question of age. An eleven-year-old child can already distinguish right from wrong. Taking out his anger on creatures weaker and smaller than himself after being scolded or punished is not the act of a brave man. On this matter, we are in unanimous agreement that it was Lady Irene's coddling of him from childhood that bred such a cruel disposition in the eldest young master. In that regard, we hold little hope for the futures of Lady Irene's two children — we believe neither of them is capable of becoming a fitting heir to the family," Dolores countered.
Lorist remained silent, fully aware that this was in fact a pushback by the newcomers within the family against the so-called old guard. At some point, a divide had emerged in the household between old and new. The old guard referred to those originally from the family's territory, most of whom hailed from Maplewood Manor. They took pride in having been born into the Norton Family and looked down upon the knights and officials who had followed Lorist into the family, labeling them newcomers. They believed they, the old-timers, were the most loyal to the house, while the newcomers were nothing but opportunists. This faction was led by Supervisor Hancks, whom Lorist had once sent off to the desolate wilderness of the Northland to build roads — they held that the two sons born to Irene, who herself came from Maplewood Manor, were the rightful heirs to the Norton Family...
The newcomers, on the other hand, were the knights and officials who had joined the Norton Family by following Lorist on his northward journey. They equally despised the old guard. In their view, before Lorist's return to the family's ancestral lands, the old-timers had been cowering in Maplewood Manor, bullied by everyone, living from one day to the next — nothing more than a pack of provincial bumpkins. The newcomers, by contrast, had followed Lorist and forged the Norton Family's current prosperous state, bringing the house to the height of its power. That was their merit and their glory. Now that those old men from Maplewood Manor wanted to lord it over them, who could stomach it? The contradictions had accumulated in precisely this manner and slowly escalated into open conflict.
Fortunately, there were still many level-headed people who remained neutral — people like Fatty, Boardfing, Supervisor Speer, Supervisor Codan, and Knight Beruneck, among others. Their stance was to judge issues on their merits rather than take sides based on personal loyalties; whoever acted in the family's best interest earned their support. This effectively prevented the eruption of conflict between the old and new factions, keeping the family's growth on an unstoppable trajectory...
Lorist himself did not particularly mind. The division between old and new within the family actually made it easier for him to maintain control over the entire household. What he had not anticipated was that the old guard would seize upon the scandal surrounding his intention to marry
"Then again, didn't Anna also bear me a son?" Lorist finally spoke up.
Dolores shook her head. "Your Highness, Madam Anna's background is not suitable. If she were to become the mother of the head of the Norton Family, it would damage the family's reputation..."
Lorist understood. Dolores was subtly reminding him that before becoming Lorist's concubine, Anna had not only been a widow, but had also attended the Garden Party held by the late Queen Carrie back when she was still a princess — a notorious pleasure gathering among the nobility of the Andinac Kingdom. It was there that Lorist had first met Aristoli and Anna. Although Queen Carrie was dead, and most of her companions and the nobles who had attended the Garden Party had been purged by the
Should Anna's son one day inherit the position of head of the Norton Family, Anna would inevitably have to appear before the nobility. The moment someone uncovered her past, those buried secrets could easily be used to blackmail her into serving their purposes, or publicized to stir up scandal and cast doubt upon the heir's bloodline and legitimacy. For Anna, a peaceful life was what she truly wanted. Her son would be her support in old age — she had no need for the Norton Family's seat of power.
Sigh. Who would have thought that Silivia's pregnancy would immediately set off such an uproar within the family. For Lorist, it was both a blessing and a curse. No matter how he chose to take a stand, certain things were simply unavoidable. For some members of the household, designating an heir to the Norton Family was not Lorist's private matter — it was a matter of the family's future, a matter that concerned every single person within it.
"You may all leave. Let this matter rest here today, and do not fan the flames any further within the family. There are certain things you needn't worry about so prematurely. Right now, all I want is for Silivia to safely deliver her child..."
Lorist waved his hand, sending Ross the Fierce Tiger and Doles out of the tent. Then he sat alone in the great tent, smiling bitterly. The family now dominated the Northland, riding high with boundless prestige. But in Lorist's view, they had only just gained a bit of self-preservation capability, a tentative sign of improvement. Yet within the family, infighting had already begun—a thing virtually unavoidable once a family grew and its numbers increased.
What a bunch of imbeciles! Didn't they realize he was not even forty yet? If he had indeed reached the realm of Sword Saint, living another two or three centuries would be easy. They were truly bored out of their minds, worrying so early about the issue of his successor. They didn't even consider his feelings, turning every good thing into something bad...
Lorist spent a day writing a long, heartfelt letter to Princess Sylvia, filled with nothing but expressions of his longing, exhortations for her to take good care of her health, and promises to return to the family lands to keep her company whenever he had the chance. He then had Knight Valen deliver the letter back. Following that, Lorist found himself torn between whether to host a grand banquet to celebrate or to hold a private gathering, because the news absolutely had to be conveyed to Grand Duke Fisaburon... he was Princess Sylvia's own grandfather...
Should he invite him or not? And would Grand Duke Fisaburon even agree to come? Lorist was caught in his dilemma...
...