Lansius
The water clock, the only heavy piece of furniture Lansius had brought all the way from Canardia, stood in the living room where he had summoned his close retinue and allies for an impromptu meeting. Its hands showed ten past seven, yet the chandelier above glowed with the cool brightness of a morning sun.
Lady Ella arrived first, as she was staying in the Great Keep as a guest. Sir Michael came second. Audrey received them both and led them into the private hall, a place still new to nearly all of them. There they found Lansius seated on the herringbone-patterned wooden floor, working there instead of at a table, his doublet hanging loose like a jacket.
Next to him sat the old scribe and the younger one, both on the floor as well, writing at low wooden desks while Lansius spoke.
From the hour, the place, and the way Lansius was dressed, it was clear this was no formal meeting. The sight of them working on the floor quietly invited the others to do the same.
Page boys on duty soon brought in more parchment, along with ink and quills.
Knowing the night might be his last, Lansius had spread parchment from left to right and wrote and dictated as quickly as memory allowed. Behind him lay old scrolls of notes and scribblings he had never found the time to compile, filled with stray thoughts, half-formed ideas, and plans whose time had not yet come.
Calub was the last to arrive. Once again, Audrey received him, and as she had before, she briefly told him that Lansius was putting his affairs in order.
When she brought him in, and Lansius saw that everyone had arrived, he turned to the guards. “Lock the door for us.”
The guards immediately closed the door behind them.
Lansius began on a different topic. “Along with the no-tax policy on farms, I want to avoid war. Aside from our conflict with the smugglers, for the next four years, we must try not to be drawn into open war. Our people are already too burdened by the last war and by the uncertainty following the Imperium’s demise. The land has fallen into near neglect. The populace is worn down. Children have died. People have been displaced. If this continues, the damage will become irreversible.”
He drew a sharp breath before continuing. “I want to give the people a chance to return to their homes and work their farms. While we cannot help each of them one by one, the no-tax policy is the least we can do.”
The scribes wrote down his words with care.
“And that is not all,” Lansius added. “I am restoring the old Imperium practice of issuing loans for iron farming tools. I have checked the rulings. They are sound, and we can adopt them word for word. So long as a farmer is recorded in the tax rolls, he may take such a loan. By doing this, I hope the Shogunate will have a stronger footing to face these turbulent times.”
As soon as he finished, and without waiting for the scribes to catch up, he turned to Margo and asked in a calmer voice, “Do you have the latest report from the Monastery?”
“I have it here, My Lord,” Margo replied.
When the scribe had finished, Lansius said to her, “Read it for us, please.”
“It is said they have welcomed another senior Hunter from the Guild. And that the search party was successful, they...” Margo startled herself and trailed off, which made Lansius furrow his brow.
“They,” Margo repeated, “captured the last one, a lich, a young Sister named Gemma. They intend to bring her to the Ancient Forest as a healer, to replace the member they lost. They hope for your consideration and approval.”
Everyone exchanged concerned looks.
“Do the Hunters employ liches or other fell creatures?” Lansius pondered aloud.
“I have never heard of such a thing,” Sir Michael answered. He then turned to Calub, who shook his head.
“I may be a Midlandian guildsman, but I am not familiar with these Hunters," Calub answered.
His words prompted the younger scribe to speak up. “But you have fought such creatures in Progentia, have you not, Meister Calub?”
“Not quite. I have fought goblins and other creatures of the dark in the old continent. But they are not fell creatures.”
“Aren’t they all the same?” the younger scribe asked again.
“No, Meister Scribe,” Calub answered. “Many call them fell beasts, but goblins are goblins. There are cave goblins, river goblins, forest goblins, and worst of all, the labyrinth dwellers. But they are not fell creatures. A lich, though...” He frowned. “From what I have heard of their command of magic, that is something else entirely.”
Lansius took it in with his arms crossed. He looked first to Audrey, who gave him a small nod, showing she had nothing to add, and then turned to Margo.
“Anything else in the report?”
“Yes. Vice Commander Stefan reported that they successfully evacuated the Great Gemstone. He is requesting the Hunters’ assistance to determine whether any trace of corrupted magic still lingers within it.”
Lansius exhaled heavily. He had never expected the Great Gemstone to bring this much trouble. No one could say with certainty, but it was highly likely that the Great Gemstone had been what allowed the Saint to raise so many undead.
A vile magic...
When Lansius turned back to him, Margo continued, “Another thing. As per your approval, the Monastery Complex has been renamed Fort Gregory.”
Lansius gave a quiet nod. The name had been taken from Gregory, a fallen member of the Sky Rider team. A promising man gone too soon.
At that, Sir Michael asked, “My Lord, what of the Sisters and their order?”
“The Healer Guild will be rebuilt. I will allow the Healers to maintain a training facility there, since that was where their order began. However, their practice will be different. No more Saints or Candidates. I believe the younger Sisters are already carrying out a reform on their own. I would be happy to revise it, but as of now, I have nothing to work from. I think it's safe to leave the matter in the hands of Sir Harold, Sir Omin, and the Hunter Guild.”
Sir Michael nodded while scribbling notes on his parchment.
“Speaking of Sir Harold,” Lansius remarked, “does anyone know his condition?”
Audrey was the one who answered. “He is stable and resting in Canardia. His wife is a Healer, so he should be receiving the best treatment. I also believe another Sister is with her, along with an infirmarian.”
Lansius was relieved to hear it. Then, as he sorted through his parchment, he remembered something else and asked Margo, “Where is the soap industry report again?”
Margo searched through the stack and handed over the parchment as soon as he found it.
“Yes. This is the level of production we'll likely need,” he muttered to himself as he read over a parchment of his own calculations, then said to the rest, “Soap should be issued to soldiers on the march. They need to wash their hands, especially before eating. But the medical staff comes first, then the cooks, then the fighting men.”
The old scribe quickly rearranged his list of priorities.
Calub, who had been reading through the stack of parchment the scribe had written, shifted closer. When Lansius looked at him, he asked, “A metal plate design for fireplaces?”
“Yes. It will be useful in winter. It will save lives.” Lansius then explained the details of the stove while Calub nodded and took notes. Sadly, there was little time for anyone to fully marvel at the invention.
“It is very interesting, but it will be costly,” Calub said, already filling the page with notes.
“Unfortunately. But like a cauldron, once a family has one, it can be passed down.” Lansius turned to the younger scribe. “We will surrender the rights to this metal stove, so anyone may make a cheaper version of it. And make sure our castles and winter quarters are equipped with them as well. It will greatly reduce firewood use.”
The younger scribe nodded, making notes as fast as they could.
Sir Michael also shifted a little closer, he asked when Lansius’ gaze fell on him, “My Lord, this speaks of military reform?”
“Have you read it?” Without waiting for an answer, Lansius went on. “We will formally recognize the rank of sergeant. He will be responsible for the well-being of twenty to forty men, for maintaining discipline, and for seeing orders carried out. The rank will sit beneath lieutenant. This way, more veteran soldiers can be given authority and better pay without having to compete for a lieutenant’s post.”
“I see,” Sir Michael said.
“This matters because our army is growing. Our lieutenants and captains are now responsible for a hundred men or several hundred. We need men of lower rank to take charge of smaller fighting groups.”
Sir Michael set down more notes on his parchment.
Lansius coughed, then quickly took a sip of warm water.
Audrey suggested, “Perhaps some rest is in order, so the others can catch up. The scribe can brief them on your plans and ideas.”
Seeing the wisdom in her words, Lansius did as she suggested.
...
After a brief rest to ease his throat, rest his writing hand, and gather his thoughts, Lansius was ready to resume. That was when Lady Ella requested a private consultation. He quickly agreed, considering that Dawn was the newest member of the alliance and vital to the Shogunate.
With Margo in attendance, he welcomed Lady Ella into the new study chamber.
Once the greetings were done and they had both taken their seats, Lady Ella asked, “Lord Shogun, what plans do you have for Dawn?”
Lansius pondered for a moment before speaking. “It is not my place to force my designs upon House Dawn. You should never let someone unfamiliar with your strengths and weaknesses shape your future for you. Sadly, I have never even set foot on Dawn.” He said it not out of politeness, but because he truly regretted never having seen Dawn for himself, its vast airship workshop, or its secret vault.
“I understand your hesitation,” Lady Ella said, “but surely you must have some plan for Dawn that we could at least consider.”
Lansius blinked several times before answering. “I believe Dawn’s future is clear.”
His words made Lady Ella meet his gaze.
“If the volatile oil that keeps airships aloft is abundant, then the future of long-distance travel lies in the sky. Lord Avery would do well to keep innovating. So long as the Shogunate’s economy holds, I believe we will continue placing orders for airships and their maintenance. Dawn should focus on reliability and safety rather than speed and comfort. It cannot remain only for elite passengers. What we need are light, cost-effective, and robust airships.”
“What kind of airship do you have in mind?”
“We have the Shogunate Bank overseeing the Southern Trade Route and handling payments across the whole Shogunate. They alone would need such smaller but sturdy airships to move personnel, important documents, letters, even gold and silver. They are going to need a fleet, and they have the money to buy it.”
Lady Ella nodded quickly as she wrote. These were not small insights, but revelations. Never had she imagined that the Southern Trade and the SKY Bank would become so vital to Dawn’s future.
“I think Dawn’s future is strong,” Lansius muttered after running through the likely outcomes in his mind. “Keep training people in airship building, and do not neglect your defenses or your fighting men. If you do that, your realm will surely prosper.”
“What about the trouble along Nicopola’s border? Even without the false King Nico, the mercenaries still number in the tens of thousands.”
Lansius drew a deep breath. “Your forces would do well to refuse battle and hold fast at Kapua. Without a single figure to unite them, those mercenaries have little reason to throw themselves against Kapua’s walls. Not when airships can burn their camps by night, and rival mercenaries would gladly descend on their home ground without a second thought.”
The red-haired lady wrote down the main points of his words on parchment.
“Also, Lord Avery would be wise to build a second workshop, either in Lowlandia or in Midlandia. That way, even if your homeland faces trouble, you would still have a second base to operate from. I firmly believe in never putting all your eggs in one basket.”
She pulled another sheet of parchment toward her and wrote that down as well with the ease of a trained scribe.
Watching her, Lansius felt a twinge of envy toward Lord Avery for having such a diligent and capable granddaughter.
Will Gill one day grow to be this bright?
The boy, still awake even at this hour, was stubborn, hard to please, but full of curiosity. He had inherited some of Lansius’ features, along with Audrey’s Centurian traits. His brown hair was thick, and his face had already grown into a handsomeness Lansius knew he himself had never possessed. One day, he would likely become the favorite of many girls.
Lansius hoped he would be there to guide him through life, or smack his backside if he ever grew arrogant enough to look down on girls for being highborn.
That reminded him of another matter: Gilly’s schooling.
He could not simply let the boy enroll in the commoners’ school for landless gentry without adequate preparation. That would cause an uproar.
A disguise is needed. And strong enough reasoning that they will follow through.
With that in mind, Lansius remained in his study after the meeting and began writing a separate plan for Audrey to keep.
***
The Mountain Range between Dawn and Three Hills
The dungeon beneath the mountain city had once been part of an old mine, abandoned after its copper veins ran dry. Copper was the only thing of value this mountain range had ever offered. To live here was to endure a forsaken place, for the land gave little else. While the mine had been long abandoned, the dream had not. Even after the Clansmen grew rich from smuggling, there was always someone in every generation willing to commission a new shaft, for it was a long-held belief that where copper showed itself, gold couldn't be far away.
For generations, new shafts were opened wherever traces of copper appeared. At times, the signs seemed promising enough that the Clansmen lured outside miners into the mountains with promises of wealth and women, bribing them to stay and help keep their secrets.
In the process, the Clansmen grew skilled at excavation, using specialized tools and techniques, among them Ruina Montium, the Wrecking of Mountains. Water reservoirs were built high on the slopes, and narrow tunnels were driven toward the chosen rock. When the water was released through sluices, it struck with enough force to break apart even hard stone and tear open the mountain’s face.
Still, no gold was found in these mountains. Whatever nuggets had once been there had likely long since been taken.
It was a crushing end to the Mountain People’s dream of gold.
All it left them was an intricate lair of tunnels beneath the mountain.
There, in one of the many abandoned shafts, the elders left Roderic, the renegade, the failed leader of the coup, to rot.
It had been many months since his defeat. Roderic had managed to escape the rout at the hands of the Black Lord’s forces and the treachery of the Nicopolans, only to be seized by the elders and thrown into a dungeon without so much as a hearing. They stripped him of all his possessions. They blackened his name and ruined his standing.
Worse still, his allies had been all too ready to throw him to the wild dogs.
Roderic was forced to bear the shame, abandoned even by those once closest to him. The very men he had led now laid every fault at his feet.
Yet he was too proud to admit he had been wrong.
In his own mind, he alone knew the truth. What he had done had been faultless. He was simply betrayed by the Nicopolans he had recruited. No man could have prepared for that. And it certainly was not the Black Lord’s design that defeated him, only some freak turn of fate.
A rotten coincidence.
In near darkness, Roderic yawned and scratched at his overgrown hair. Insects gnawed at his body and sometimes even crawled onto his mustache. He paid them little mind. There was little else to do in this stinking place.
Hemmed in by stone, he had only a wooden spoon, a cup, a bucket of water, and a ragged woolen blanket. The cell lay in darkness, save for the thin lantern light that filtered through the small window set in the locked door.
Still, after months in confinement, he had managed a few small improvements.
One stone jutted sharply from the wall, and he used it to hang his clothes when they grew damp. It stood near a narrow crack that let in a faint draft. He had also gathered patches of moss that seemed to keep some of the bugs away. At times, it even served as a dressing for scratches left by the sharp stone and as a plug to stop the bucket from leaking. He needed the water to flush his piss through another crack in the floor, down into the bottomless pit below.
A more desperate man might have scraped at the rock in hopes of escape, or tried to work loose the door hinges, but Roderic was too lazy for that, knowing there was little chance of getting out.
Still, despite being shut away for so long, he had not gone mad.
What kept him going was a single thought. Change would come. It always did.
The Clan elders, in all their stupidity, could never make a firm decision. One faction always fought the other just as fiercely. In a place where any failure would be seized on and used to pull a man down, no one wanted to lead. Especially not now, when one of the younger generation’s favorites had been cast aside like this without even a fair hearing.
And with the Black Lord’s men and allies pressing further, that deadlock would only grow more ruinous under pressure.
When that moment came, Roderic would need only one man to raise his name again, and he would be back in the game. For he alone still commanded the respect of the hardline faction of the younger generation, the ones who had actually fought and bled for the Mountain People. They listened to him not for his wealth or prestige, but because he had dared to defy the elders when others shrank away.
And the elites feared them.
The elders, who wished only to keep enriching themselves while ignoring the younger generation, were losing their grip. The younger men did not dream of merely living in the mountains. They wanted to rule as proper nobles. With the Imperium in ruins, they believed their time had come.
Where the older generation saw the Mountains, with its five cities and twelve towns, as home, the younger generation saw only a springboard.
Fate had made them rich, and they wanted more.
And men like Roderic told them they were right, and that he could lead them to glory.
“We will rule over the vile Nicopolans and the Lowlandian brutes,” he muttered to himself, smiling in the cell as he dreamed of his return and of the triumph that would follow.
His urge to tame the wives and daughters of the Lowlandian lords still raged within him. That, in his mind, would be the final triumph over the Imperium. To force his blood into theirs and rise as the new power in the South. With Nicopola as his breadbasket, and with the Great Plains of Lowlandia and the Mountains as his bulwark, he would be well placed against the forces now rising in the central plains. And while the highborns tore one another apart, he would gather his strength and strike for supremacy.
“These people will finally know their true master...”
All Roderic needed was an opportunity.
***
Beneath the Mountain
With a pat on the shoulder, the young man in the crimson doublet was finally relieved of his guard duty. After checking his gear, he headed deeper with his group of thirteen men toward the rear, where several bonfires had been kept lit. As they sat down, they pulled out the earplugs they had made from clay and scraps of linen. They needed them, for the constant hammering and chiseling, especially deep inside the tunnel, could batter a man’s ears raw.
At the resting spot, the smell of herbal brew, fresh bread, and pottage simmering over the fire was a relief. The younger men assisting the cooks quickly set about preparing their meal.
“Is it ready yet?” one of them asked.
“You want it hot? Have some patience,” the cook replied crudely as he added more to the cauldron. He was rarely in a good mood while working.
No one argued with the cooks, so they waited, talking among themselves to ease the boredom, glad to hear properly again without the endless chiseling of stone.
Off to one side, behind simple wooden fencing, stood great stacks of supplies, kept there in case the shaft collapsed or the work crews were cut off. Nearby, more than thirty men slept, for the labor was carried out in three shifts, following the craftsmen who had agreed to work under such an arrangement.
Farther back, two half-kin were resting, their ears more troubled by the constant chiseling.
These Umberlanders had scouted the vast underground network, but so far had found no other way through, only a few broken shafts of doubtful use.
There was only the stone gate, which had blocked their advance for weeks.
“Oi, Ted,” someone called, making him turn.
The other man grinned. “Look who’s coming to visit.”
That was enough to put a grin on Ted’s face, and they all turned toward the shaft leading back to the entrance.
“Fruits,” another cried, and laughter rang out as the hairy orangutan approached, walking with the same awkward gait as always. One of her young clung to her, while she carried a lantern on a pole in one hand and a basket of fruit in the other.
Several weeks after the attack, the orangutan had recovered and grown used to the half-kin. Despite her wariness, she had proven forgiving. Curious about where the men kept going, she had taken an interest in the cave. After taking certain precautions, the commander had allowed her to enter the shaft under escort.
Commander Farkas and his Black Bandits trusted their men enough to allow such a thing. They knew it did not mean a lack of discipline, only something to keep morale from souring.
For several weeks, they had been searching the vast tunnel complex, wide enough for two carts with spare room along the sides. Ventilation shafts brought in air, and in some places even allowed natural light to filter through. There were wells too, with dug-out troughs beside them for animals to drink from.
But they had found nothing but rodents. The mountain clan had sealed their doors and left the place abandoned.
It was as if they were in the old continent, digging through some lost dwarven citadel.
Still, the situation was too convenient, and the men feared an ambush from some unknown entrance. That was why constant readiness was needed.
To combat boredom and monotony, they brought in newer recruits so the seasoned men could rotate outside when needed.
But this week, all their main fighters had been called back in.
A breakthrough was imminent.
After handing out the fruit from her basket, the orangutan sat down beside Ted and began playing with his thin beard. He had let it grow because his shaving knife had gone dull, and shaving with just lantern light was nearly impossible.
While others relied on their friends to help trim them, Ted of House Tedzeus had grown to have sensitive skin and would not risk a cut that might take too long to heal.
Before their meal was ready, a commotion broke out, though not the kind that signaled an alarm.
It was a different kind of stir.
“What is it?” they asked as they saw a man running toward Commander Farkas’s place.
“They did it. They did it,” the man said as he kept running toward the commander.
Despite their hunger, the men rose and made for the stone gate that had blocked them for weeks.
Ted even gathered up the orangutan and her child, eager to see what had happened.
There, they saw men grinning as a ray of light filtered through a hole beneath the stone gate.
Commander Farkas arrived with his staff, wearing a tired grin yet looking every bit as resolute. “Grab your masks. There may be another miasma attack.”
The men scrambled to get ready. Even the half-kin came forward with poleaxes in hand. Their sharp noses were the best warning against such attacks.
Farkas spotted Ted and said, “Go get your meal. We likely won’t have another chance soon. And send someone to escort her home. This is no time for sightseeing.”
After grueling months in the jungle, and after surviving friendly blows in the dark, they finally knew what the stone gate looked like from the inside. That alone gave them something to work with.
Farkas had requested experts from the Guilds, and one of them finally recognized what they were dealing with. The heavy stone door was an imitation of the dwarven vault doors found on the continent of Progentia.
Hearing that, Farkas immediately contacted the Shogunate Bank in Three Hills, which in turn managed to bring in a retired explorer. Thanks to the Shogunate’s long reach and strong hand, the man was hauled by a series of fast carriages, day and night, all the way from Midlandia to Three Hills in barely a week.
The man was not only experienced in navigating catacomb mazes but also in breaking open old vaults.
He recognized the entrance gate. It had been built in two layers, with a slab of hardened stone on the outside to resist chiseling, while the inner mass was a hard mix of volcanic ash, sand, lime, small stones, and iron bracing. It was dense and stubborn, not the sort of thing that cracked like ordinary stone. Even a gate that wide would not yield to ordinary siege engines.
But he also knew how such a gate could be beaten.
Instead of wasting men and iron against its face, he had them dig around the gate and expose the frame. Fortune favored them. In one section, the frame proved less hardened than the rest, and he seized on it at once. From there, they turned their tools against the cavern rock and drove a tunnel through with slow, punishing labor, but far more effectively than if they had kept hammering at the gate itself.
With the hard confidence and stubborn patience that came from long experience, he directed the men until at last they had cut their way beneath the giant stone gate.
Now the Black Bandits were ready to come through.
The Mountain Clans had nowhere left to hide.
***
PS: Big chapter.🤗
What do you think about Lansius’ planning so far? Any interesting take?🤔
We’re going to see more of it next chapter.😙🎶
Also, it's time to finish this Smuggler arc. We’re running it in parallel with Lansius in Korelia.🔥
A few historical tidbits:
Ruina Montium is based on an actual Roman mining method, more or less as described. They built water reservoirs on top, then released the water through narrow tunnels they had dug. The high water pressure blasting apart sections of the mountain below and exposing the gold veins. It was certainly destructive to be named Wrecking of Mountains.
Some types of moss are highly absorbent, springy, and naturally antiseptic. They were used for wound care, feminine and personal hygiene, insulation, and even as diapers. I took that part from goggle, so it may still need a bit more research.
As always, gratitude for supporting Horizon of War! 💎💖🦆