On January 3rd,
The massive convoy traveled along the main road, covering one hundred and twenty li per day.
On January 4th, the convoy covered forty li in the morning, then left the main road in the afternoon, turning west onto a forest path that crossed a small hill and entered the territory of the first Redlis Kingdom noble.
On the third day, just as the convoy was preparing to depart,
Lorist was dumbfounded with laughter. He asked the scout who had come to report: "Did Sir Yuri explain to the viscount that this is the Northland
The scout reported: "Sir Yuri explained it to the lord over and over, but the lord wouldn't listen. He insisted that we are a merchant caravan using a noble's banner as a cover for smuggling. He even mocked us, saying that if we were going to use a noble's banner, we should at least pick a prestigious one. 'The Norton Family? Who the hell are they?'"
Lorist turned and called out: "
Terman returned quickly — the viscount was already a prisoner.
Terman said that when he led the knights in a charge, the viscount's cavalry either wheeled around and fled or dismounted and surrendered. Only the lord himself remained, sitting on his horse in a daze, watching as Terman charged up to him and disarmed him. All twenty-seven of his cavalrymen were taken prisoner as well.
The viscount displayed the noble qualities of unwavering integrity. Though a prisoner, he still held his head high with arrogance, loudly berating Lorist for daring to attack the head of the noble Meister family. Was he trying to start a war with the Meister family?
Of course, if Lorist were willing to apologize, the noble viscount would magnanimously forgive this reckless attack on his person. As a token of sincerity, Lorist must present the viscount with a batch of valuables, and... hmm, that maid is quite nice... He was pointing directly at Moris, who was standing beside
Lorist smiled bitterly and turned to Bodenfeng, saying he suspected whether this viscount even had a brain.
The noble viscount was then ordered by the furious Fatty Shi to have Reidi and Pat bind him to an assembled hollow spinning wheel, where he experienced about ten minutes of the world spinning around him. After that, he collapsed on the ground, crying and snotting, answering every question asked and confessing everything cleanly.
It turned out that this Viscount Meister was at war with a neighboring baron. The previous night, the viscount had led all his cavalry to raid the neighboring baron's village for plunder, but the neighbor had been prepared, and the viscount returned empty-handed. On the way back to his castle that morning, he spotted Lorist's northbound convoy and brought his cavalry along to squeeze out some profit. Incidentally, the viscount's castle was located sixty li ahead beside a small lake.
Lorist was amused: "So the viscount is inviting us to visit his castle. Terman, take this Meister lord to his castle and have the garrison open the gates and surrender. Otherwise, hang the viscount outside the castle walls. Have Doles' chariot troops go with you. If they don't surrender, lay siege directly. We'll rest in the castle tonight."
---
Viscount Meister felt terribly cold. He opened his eyes, still dizzy, with a queasy feeling in his stomach. That damned fat man — how dare he treat a noble viscount this way! Once he got back to his castle, he would certainly rally the populace to form an army and settle the score with that convoy. Wait — where was this? Why did it look so familiar?
The viscount pinched his face to clear his head a bit and looked around. The more he observed, the stranger it seemed. Where was this place? It looked very familiar. Finally, the viscount realized — this was his own castle, and this room appeared to be his former bedroom. But why had the bedroom changed so drastically?
The viscount jumped up from the floor and discovered that he was completely naked, without a single stitch of clothing. What was this? The viscount picked up the thing that had been draped over him and examined it closely. It appeared to be a coarse burlap sack, the kind used for storing wheat.
How dare they! What had those people done to him? The viscount cursed as he rushed toward where his bed used to be. On the wall was a rope for the summoning bell — one pull and the bell would ring, and a maid would come to help him get ready. But when the viscount pulled the rope, it fell limply — the bell's cord had been cut.
The viscount had no choice but to hold his nose, pick up the burlap sack from the floor, wrap it around his waist, and tie it with the rope. Barefoot, he opened the door and peeked out. The corridor was empty — not a soul in sight. The viscount called out several names of his servants and maids, but no one answered.
The viscount went to the adjacent rooms and found them all like his bedroom — empty. Not a piece of furniture, not a piece of clothing, not a single pair of shoes. Only cold, bare walls remained. Even the ornately decorated doors of several rooms had vanished.
Where had everything gone? The viscount rushed to the rooftop terrace and finally breathed a sigh of relief. Outside, the sun was shining brightly, its warm rays falling upon his skin, bringing a comfortable warmth.
Looking down from the castle's rooftop terrace, the viscount noticed his castle was remarkably clean — yes, clean. So clean that there wasn't a single person, not one smelly animal, not a single cart, not a scrap of cloth, not a single piece of ironware. The entire castle contained nothing but stone and wood.
"Is anyone here? Is anyone still here?" the viscount let out a despairing scream from the terrace...
"Mi-my lord, you've finally awakened. Th-that's wonderful." A figure rose from a corner of the courtyard wall below. The viscount looked — wasn't that his loyal old steward? But this old steward, like the viscount himself, was completely naked, with a burlap sack wrapped around his waist.
The viscount dashed from the rooftop terrace down to the courtyard in one breath. The old steward looked at the viscount with overwhelming emotion: "My lord, you've finally awakened! You've been lying unconscious for two days..."
The viscount grabbed — but couldn't grab anything. They were both naked with no clothes to grip, so he simply placed his hand on the old steward's shoulder. "What happened in the castle? Where are the people? Where has everyone gone?"
"Mi-my lord, have you forgotten? Two days ago, a band of bandits brought you to the castle and demanded we surrender. They said they'd hang you outside the gate if we refused. We had no choice — for your sake, we had to open the gates and surrender. Those bandits claimed to be the Northland Norton Family's convoy. They said that because of you, their journey had been delayed, and that you had caused them enormous mental distress and reputational damage. So they captured you and demanded compensation. But — but you know our situation, there weren't many gold coins. Those bandits devoured all the livestock in the castle and carried off everything inside, not sparing a single curtain or rag. They even tore off the doors." The old steward explained.
The viscount was nearly driven to fury: "Then where are the people? Why is everyone gone?"
"Everyone left with them. Before those bandits departed, they gathered everyone in the castle together. A fat man asked if we would go with them. I said no, so they stripped me naked and threw me in the courtyard. After that, everyone followed them." The old steward said.
"My lord, as they were leaving, I begged them bitterly, and they finally threw me a sack of wheat. I poured the wheat on the ground and covered you with the burlap sack. I searched the castle for two days before finding a broken clay pot on the ground. I just cooked some wheat porridge. Would you like to eat some to fill your stomach, my lord?"
The viscount's stomach rumbled emptily at the old steward's words. "Fine. Go bring me the porridge."
Just then, the sound of hoofbeats came from outside. The old steward glanced out and his face changed: "My lord, it's bad! The Cobley family is coming to attack us!"
"Quick — bar the main gate!" the viscount panicked.
"Bu-but my lord, even the iron gate bar was taken by the bandits. These past two nights, I've been using a stone to hold the door shut..." the old steward said.
"It's over..." the viscount collapsed to the ground in despair.
---
Fatty Shi had no concern for the fate of Viscount Meister, the first noble whose territory they had passed through. In his view, that viscount was a complete fool, and he had no idea how such a person had become a territorial noble. Did he really think that wearing a noble's title gave him the right to boss everyone around? Had he never considered the vast gap between his own strength and that of others? If you don't teach them a lesson, they'll never learn. And he even had the audacity to covet my Moris...
At this moment, Fatty Shi was standing before the castle of the third territorial noble the convoy had passed, haggling with the baron lord over a batch of weapons and equipment. The day before, when passing the second noble's castle, Fatty Shi had sent someone to call out, hoping to do some business with that lord. But that lord had probably been frightened by the enormous convoy outside and had holed up inside his castle like a turtle, refusing to respond to any calls. Fatty Shi had no choice but to abandon the idea of doing business.
Today, when passing this baron's castle, Fatty Shi had learned from yesterday's lesson. He brought only three carriages to the castle gates and first unloaded a set of relatively fine furniture taken from Viscount Meister's castle as a gift for the lord. Mainly because Fatty Shi found this furniture too bulky and space-consuming on the carriages, so he used it as a gift.
With the gift presented, the baron lord appeared on the castle walls and asked Fatty Shi what business brought him.
Fatty Shi first gave a knight's salute, then explained to the baron that the convoy behind him was the Norton Family's northbound party. He asked whether the baron could provide some grain, fodder, or other supplies, noting that they had brought some weapons and equipment, and wondered if the baron might be interested.
Hearing about weapons and equipment, the baron left the castle to take a look, then selected one hundred spears, twenty sets of chain mail, twenty round shields, twenty two-handed greatswords, and three full sets of knight's plate armor. All told, it came to roughly five hundred gold Fordes. However, the baron didn't have that many gold coins, so he negotiated with Fatty Shi to trade in kind.
In the end, the baron traded one hundred gold coins and ten cargo wagons full of wheat — including the wagons and the two horses pulling them — plus five cattle and fifty pigs for the weapons and equipment. Fatty Shi, since this was his first deal, even gave a twenty-percent discount and instructed his men to bring a small cask of grape wine originally produced at Slofov Manor for the baron to sample.
Before leaving his territory, the baron advised them to be careful going forward. The area ahead was where bandits and mountain outlaws were most active, and they also needed to guard against attacks from
Fatty Shi quickly expressed his thanks with gentlemanly courtesy and sincerely invited the baron to attend the evening banquet. The location wasn't far — just below the mountain ridge in the distance, where the convoy would be making camp for the night.
The baron thought for a moment and said he would attend the banquet that evening, hoping it wouldn't cause too much trouble for the convoy.
Fatty Shi replied that the Norton Family would be greatly honored to have the baron's presence. He would take his leave now to prepare for the evening's festivities.
That evening, the baron arrived with his eldest son, a Silver Three-Star knight, and four attendants. Entering the wagon camp, they looked around in admiration, marveling at the Norton Family's military might.
Fatty Shi had set up an open-air banquet in the clearing at the center of the wagon camp, using tables, chairs, and tableware brought from Viscount Meister's castle. He first introduced Lorist and several family knights to the baron and his son. The baron introduced himself as Charles, and his son as Solia. Everyone then took their seats, eating and chatting.
Fatty Shi's purpose in hosting Baron Charles was to gather intelligence on the surrounding situation and the conditions of the lords along the convoy's intended route. The baron knew this himself. Over the course of the feast, father and son enthusiastically provided all the information they wanted, clearly and thoroughly.
Baron Charles pointed to the mountain ridge beside the wagon camp and explained that this ridge served as the boundary between his territory and that of Viscount Dibona on the other side. But Viscount Dibona was already dead and his clan destroyed. Not just Dibona — Baron Enler, Count Bigali, and Baron Umado beyond him had all met the same fate. In other words, the hundreds of li that Lorist's northbound convoy would travel through next were all lordless, unclaimed lands. In this region, Lorist would find no supply points — only abandoned or burned towns and villages.
All of this was the handiwork of Count Cobley's private army. Speaking of the Cobley family, one first had to understand the current Count Cobley. It was said that in his youth, this count had been a notorious philandering knight and dandy in the neighboring region. His favorite pastime was riding through his territory on horseback, spotting women, dismounting, and forcing himself upon them — whether they were forty or fifty years old or thirteen or fourteen, he spared none. This drove the women of his territory to either stay locked inside their homes or, unable to bear it, flee with their families to other places.
Because of this, the count had fathered over sixty illegitimate children, but he didn't mind at all and took them all in. He was known among the local nobility as the "Brood Count." Later, the count suddenly took a notion to visit the imperial capital for some entertainment. There, he met the First Prince, and the two hit it off, becoming fast friends. Two years later, the First Prince was exiled by the old emperor, and the count returned to his territory. He completely changed his ways, settling into his manor and carefully raising those illegitimate children.
A few more years passed. When the First Prince raised his banner of rebellion in Bodorg Province, the count answered the call, leading about thirty grown illegitimate children to join the prince's cause. After the civil war ended, the count returned to his territory with a large retinue and vast wealth, though of the thirty-plus illegitimate children who had departed with him, only a dozen or so came back.
The count was now over sixty, but his ambition had not diminished. Shortly after returning to his territory, he used various pretexts to provoke wars with neighboring territorial nobles, successfully expanding his domain's power twofold. All thirteen noble families who opposed him ended up dead and destroyed — the males were virtually all slaughtered, and the females met even worse fates, either violated to death or sold to slave traders once their captors tired of them.
Once, a noble traveled to the royal capital to complain to the First Prince, denouncing Count Cobley's cruelty and demanding that the prince punish him and avenge the wrongfully dead. The First Prince dismissed it lightly, saying he was unfamiliar with the matter and would need to send investigators first. Then nothing happened. The complaining noble waited bitterly in the capital for three months, only to find that the investigation had not progressed in the slightest. He then encountered one of the count's illegitimate sons, who was reportedly delivering tax revenues to the First Prince in the capital.
During their conversation, a conflict erupted, and the complaining noble was unfortunately killed when his head was smashed in during the altercation. The perpetrator was a servant under the illegitimate son, who claimed he had endured the noble's insults against his beloved master and could bear it no longer, so he had struck him with a stool. The result was that the servant was sentenced to death, while the count's illegitimate son went unscathed.
When news of this incident spread back, it caused an enormous uproar among the nobles of the region. Everyone was outraged by the First Prince's favoritism toward Count Cobley. At this point, one of Count Cobley's close associates let slip a shocking revelation in a tavern: when the count returned to his territory, the First Prince had promised him that as long as he consolidated all the territorial nobles in the kingdom's northwestern region, the count would be appointed Duke of the Northwest of the Redlis Kingdom. And all the lands in the northwestern region would become Duke Cobley's personal fiefdom.
The allied noble forces suffered several more defeats in succession, and the allied nobles grew increasingly panicked. Several noble families even humbly submitted and defected to Count Cobley.
Baron Charles gulped down another large cup of fruit wine. Count Cobley's army had already destroyed neighboring Viscount Dibona, and it would soon be his family's turn. His only options were to prepare for war and to send his younger son and daughter to
The baron's eldest son, Knight Solia, briefed Lorist on the situation with Count Cobley's family army. Because the count had profiteered from the civil war, he had brought back over a thousand mercenaries when he returned to his territory. Every one of these mercenaries rode horses and were equipped with leather armor and long spears. They called themselves lance cavalry and were skilled at using weighted nets to capture enemies. They served as Count Cobley's main force in his territorial wars. Additionally, there was a two-thousand-man garrison that the count had conscripted from his territory, led by several of his adult illegitimate sons who had accompanied him in his campaigns, responsible for defending his family territory and several nearby territories.
Whenever Count Cobley defeated an opponent, he would pillage and burn that territory, then drag all surviving inhabitants back to his family territory as forced laborers and slaves to build various infrastructure. It was said that the count intended to construct a city resembling the royal capital in his territory, to serve as his seat of power when he eventually became Duke of the Northwest.
Knight Solia told Lorist that the next few days of the convoy's northward journey would pass through the territories of several annihilated noble families. These territories were home to many resistance forces formed by fleeing inhabitants — small groups of dozens, large ones of over a hundred. They inflicted more damage on Count Cobley's army than the allied nobles did. However, because these resistance forces lacked supplies, they often doubled as bandits and mountain outlaws, robbing not only Count Cobley's territories but also those of other nobles. Count Cobley, in turn, frequently dispatched his troops to sweep through these unclaimed territories — partly to eliminate the resisting inhabitants and partly to capture able-bodied adults as slaves.
Among the resistance forces in these territories, the most famous was a knight named
Knight Solia's advice to Lorist was to take a detour rather than pass through Count Cobley's sphere of influence. Otherwise, if they were targeted by Count Cobley or those who called themselves resistance forces but were really just bandits, even the formidable family escort would suffer heavy losses — to say nothing of the camp followers they had seen upon entering the wagon camp, who would all become burdens on the convoy.
After seeing the baron and his son off, Lorist's expression was grave. Before him lay the question: should he continue forward or turn back? This was a matter that required careful deliberation.