The great hall doors swung silently under Harold's hand and stopped at the wall without the clap they'd had yesterday.
He stood holding the iron a moment longer than the motion needed, glanced down at the hinge plate, and let his thumb find the seam where the dwarves had set the new pin overnight. There was no mark on it. There was no scrape on the floor. The doors moved the way water moved.
Adeline came up at his shoulder with the ledger open across her forearms and a quill already in her fingers, and her hair was tied back. She was wearing a green dress with his banner sewn into it, and he couldn’t help notice how nice she looked. "Forty-six attendees, my lord. Caldwell sent the TOC tribune to represent the Legion without Centurion Garrick or Colonel Hale here." She caught him looking at her, and he couldn’t help but chuckle at her satisfied expression.
"Walk in front of me for ten paces," Harold said quietly. "Gives them a warning I'm coming."
She stepped off, and he gave her a moment before following.
The hall had been a feast hall and a place for the various aides to work, and this morning it was the largest room in the Landing and still going to be too small if they kept growing the way they were growing. The long table down the center was a single slab of oak twenty feet across, with three benches a side and one chair at the head for Harold. The aides lined the walls in twos, ledgers braced on their thighs where they were standing, quills in their off-hands — a pair for each section, the way Anil had organized it, and Harold could put a section to every pair without looking at them twice.
A new statue stood just inside the doors that hadn't been there yesterday.
It was a man and a woman of granite, shoulders nearly touching, their eyes closed, the woman's mouth half-open and the man's hand pressed flat to his chest. The Long Walk singers. Worked through the night by a dwarven matron and brought in some time before dawn, and Renna was busy examining it as he entered.
"—because it's still one piece, isn't it, the whole figure is the one block, but the beard relief is so deep here it should be a separate piece, it has to be, and it—"
"Renna."
It was Maren's voice this time, from somewhere down the table, perfectly level and somehow louder than Harold's.
Renna's head came up.
It came up slowly and stopped at the Count of the Landing, standing six feet from her in the doorway of his own great hall.
"Oh," Renna said.
"Good morning, Lady Renna."
"Oh," Renna said again. Her finger came off the braid. "Oh — gods. My lord. I — I was supposed to —"
"You were."
"You walked in, and I was — there's no seam, Harold, look at her hand, she's holding her own beard, and it's the same stone all the way—" She caught herself mid-sentence, with both her hands now off the statue and pressed flat to her thighs, and the color climbed all the way to her hairline. "I'm so sorry. Please. Give me one moment."
Renna squared her shoulders, turned on her heel to face the room that was already standing at the bench, drew a breath, and announced into the room in a formal cadence.
"My lords, my councilors, masters of the Gemheart clan." Her voice steadied as it went. "His lordship Count Harold Calder, Lord of the Landing, Potion Lord, Master of the Basin."
The room was already on its feet and had been since Lord Harold had entered.
Caswell, three deep in a knot of dwarves at the far end of the hall, set his cup down on the table without taking his eyes off Renna, and a single short laugh got out of him before he could close the door on it. Hargen, beside him, was less polite about it. Fitch's head came up off the palm it had been resting in, registered what had just happened, and his shoulders started shaking.
A grin pulled at the corner of Harold's mouth and didn't go any further than that.
"Thank you, Lady Renna."
"My lord."
"Find me at the close of the meeting. We'll get one of Master Bram's people to walk you through the stonework."
"My lord."
She crossed the floor with her chin up and slid onto the bench between Caswell and Fitch like she had been there all morning, and Maren reached past Fitch without looking and patted Renna once on the back of the hand, and Renna's color did not come down by much.
Harold walked the length of the hall to the head of the table while every eye in the room tracked him, and when he reached the chair he set one hand flat on the back of it and looked down it.
"Sit. We have a great deal to get through, and not all of it pleasant."
Adeline slid onto the smaller seat at Harold's right elbow and laid the ledger flat. Across the oak, Bram came down off where he'd been speaking with Thessa, climbed up into his chair with the same hop he'd used the first time, settled, and put his palms flat on the table.
"Bram."
"Sunny."
"Thank you for the doors."
"Three more sets of hinges going up before noon," Bram said. "The well in the square gets new stonework today. And some general repair work all over the town, on principle of course. You have some good crafters, but none compare to mine people."
Harold concealed his smile but nodded his thanks. Then turned to the Tribune from the Tactical Operations Center on the second floor.
“Why don’t you start us off, Tribune.”
Benches shifted. "My lord. Council." She glanced once at Bram and the elders, and went to it. "Knights' standing strength is one hundred and three this morning. We lost ninety-seven in the trial. The majority of those losses were in the final actions at the shelf and recovering the Gemheart Stone."
The room did not move. Losing that many knights was devastating.
"The surviving knights are almost all above tier two," Cess went on. "Six are within a clean push of tier three. Tribune Parker will be running selection trials for replacements in the coming days. We have several legionaries who want to join, and we expect the trials to take a few days. Especially for those stationed outside the Landing."
"I want to increase the standard of our knights. They must be Tier 2 minimum." Harold said.
The quill paused over the page. "My lord?"
"The Knights' takes only tier two from this morning forward." Harold looked down the table. "We've been pulling promising Tier 1’s in on the chance they'd grow into it. The trial settled that question. The knights are an elite unit, as the average mana levels rise in the legion, the Knights must remain above them."
"My lord."
Hargen made a low approving sound into his cup. "Pickin' the steel before ye temper it. Right way around."
"The legion." Harold lifted his hand. "Where are we?"
Cess flipped a page without looking. "Ten cohorts, sworn and trained to imperial standard. Three garrisoned in the Landing under direct command. The other seven are spread on the basin's interior — two in the south basin at Lord Arjuns and Henris' towns, one at Lord Dalen’s, one at Lady Aiko’s town, and one apiece at the passes. Recruitment is at the highest pace we've ever seen since Lady Aiko, Lord Arjun, and Lord Henri set their new village steles down across their territories." A glance flicked to Henri, who acknowledged with another precise inch of nod. "Every soldier summoned through a basin stele goes to a three-month training camp on the north edge of the territory, near the mountain spurs, to learn the legionary perks before assignment. Colonel Hale designed the curriculum. The intake at the camp is a thousand strong as of this morning, and will do a new class every thousand recruits. Promising recruits will be sent from there to the scouts and other specializations like the medics and fortifications or follow-on training."
"A thousand?" Caldwell said, frowning, and turned a small page in his own book.
"And the perimeter of that camp," The Tribune said, "sits inside a half day's ride of the new manufactory ground and the new mine cuts. Lira's resource lines feed the camp and the workshops from the same wagon roster, while it is a 3-day ride from Veridia for food."
Lira was on the second bench down with both elbows braced on the table and a smudge of something black on her jaw she had not noticed yet, and she lifted a finger off the wood in acknowledgment without saying anything.
Harold turned a quarter degree toward Beth. "The manufactory."
Beth pulled her hand off Josh's wrist and laid both palms flat. She had not slept well, and the line of her jaw was a degree sharper than usual. "Mass production sits outside the towns. Smelting, milled lumber, packaged ration runs, the standard kit. The towns keep the elite end — Finn's hall, Rimi's glassworks, Kers's smithy, the high-tier alchemy benches. We don't want the mess of a foundry inside city walls, and we don't want our best crafters working a forge they share with three apprentice classes."
"I like it."
"That's the policy going forward," Beth said. "Anything that scales sits in the manufactory zone. Anything that needs more specialized manufacturing stays in town."
Cess waited a beat and went on. "The mountain eagles are flying. Nine of them are now large enough to carry a rider on short legs, half a day at the outside. Rimi has finished the first set of distance lenses. We've tested them on three flights and the spotter range is between four and seven miles depending on weather and altitude. They are not yet a combat asset. They are an outstanding reconnaissance asset."
"For now, we've equipped them with five throwing spears and a longsword each," Cess went on. "On the principle that if they're in a fight, they should not still be airborne when the fight ends. Colonel Hale's standing order is that no eagle takes a contested patrol without two centuries within range to attempt to recover them. We are not losing one of them to a stupid choice. We have already identified the locations of a few ruins and hidden valleys in the surrounding mountains. However, we are not looking to risk sending them further into the mountains as there have been multiple other flying monsters identified within the range."
Harold opened a hand. "Alchemist Finn and Master Kers are working on a project for me. Air-deployable munitions. A bomb light enough to carry, stable enough to drop, and big enough to punish a formation." He let the next part land where it landed. "If it works, the eagles become something we have not seen on this continent."
Cess turned a page. "Outer-basin troops. The household forces of Lord Caswell, Lord Fitch, Lady Maren, Lady Renna, and Lord Brennig have not yet been folded into the imperial structure. They have not absorbed some of the perks we consider standard, and do not know our formations and commands. They are not cleared to be folded into a cohort that is going to be in action." She closed the notebook over her finger. "We need to figure out how to integrate them, but for now we can not leave their lands undefended so they can come here to be trained. We recommend we send trainers to their lands to integrate them."
Harold leaned back a quarter inch. "Policy stands as follows. All soldiers under a sworn lord in my territory will be integrated into the imperial legion. The lord retains a household force at a fixed level based on their Lordly rank. A knight is permitted a century. A Baron, a cohort, and so on. Lords are free to recruit to that force level. Everything above that enters the legion, trains at the north camp, and serves under imperial doctrine."
A small silence. Henri's mustache moved a fraction; he didn't speak. Caswell drank, set his cup down deliberately, and nodded. Fitch lifted his head off his palm long enough to mouth agreed, and put it back. Maren frowned and turned to Fitch but didn’t argue the point.
"My household sits at a century, then?" Brennig asked from the wall, the cigar moving with the words.
"Until you are promoted to Baron, correct, if you keep performing the way you have, your promotion to Baron is guaranteed."
"Hm." The cigar went still, and the humming picked back up.
"Good." Harold opened the hand the other way. "Tribune. Lessons learned."
Cess opened the notebook again. "Three findings rank ahead of everything else. The first is siege equipment. Our ballistas were critical for counter-battery fire and for destroying enemy formations. However, they were not enough to contest actual fortifications. We need a generation of siege equipment we have not yet built. We need to maintain lighter, more maneuverable types of siege equipment while developing heavier versions to degrade fortifications."
Hargen pushed Caswell's doodle aside, sat up straight on the bench, set both fists on the table, and stood.
He stood at the height a Gemheart stands, which was a head shorter than Caswell and twice the volume, and the chair scraped a quarter inch and stopped against him without going further. He looked down the table once, looked at his clan head once, and turned on Harold.
"Then yer lookin' for dwarves." His voice was a working voice. "Siege engines aren't a thing yer human smiths know yet. They build 'em like wagons with arms. Wrong principle. Wrong materials. Wrong everything." He shook his head once. "Give me the workshop and a span of decent timber, and I'll have ye real trebuchets, and a ranged piece that throws past anything you've seen, by midwinter. Gemheart-cut. Gemheart-made."
"Master Hargen." Harold rolled the cup between his palms once. "Have you ever made dwarven gunpowder?"
The room went very still, and Lord Brennig and Fitch looked very interested.
Hargen stopped halfway through his next breath. Bram set his cup down on the table without a sound.
"No." Hargen sat back down. He looked at Bram and then back at Harold. "Never seen it. Heard of it. We've all heard of it. Mithrilmind clan, mostly. Bunch of ravers off in the deep east who never came up out of their workshops if they could help it, and the last hold we know of, of theirs, wouldn’t reveal the secrets of it. They were always too smart for their own halls, that lot. Half of 'em died of their own experiments and the other half went to live with their gods on the back of one. Gunpowder was theirs. We've a couple of pages on what it does. We've not got a recipe."
"Could you work one out?"
"Given the alchemist who lost his eyebrows?" Hargen showed his teeth. "We'd give it a serious try."
Harold nodded. "Adeline. Note that Finn and Hargen are now working on two projects, not one. The munitions and the powder. In the same workshop, we will need to build outside our town in case of accidents. I suspect we will also need Councilor Lira for this work, as there must be a material we are missing in its design. Somehow, they figured out how to control a chemical reaction like that."
"Noted, my lord."
"Good. Tribune. The second finding."
Cess turned the page. "Support crafters are the limiting factor on every plan we want to put on the table. Earth crafters held the river. We cleared the trial on the back of your own Alchemy Lord. Every campaign we run from this point onward will be decided more by the quality of the support crafters than by the quality of the line. And every campaign we run will put those crafters in front of an enemy who is going to learn quickly that they should be the first to die."
She closed the notebook again and shook her head. “Crafters give us a level of flexibility we can’t replicate.
"The Colonel and I are proposing a dedicated support company. A full crafter complement assigned to the cohort that goes north — earth shapers, battle alchemists, smiths, tailors. The company travels and works as a unit. They are guarded by their own century. The century's only job is to keep them breathing. Knights' standard. Tier-two minimum on the guard. The whole formation is the priority target on any field, and we treat it like one."
Bram came down off his chair onto his feet on the floorboards, and the chair scraped back behind him.
"We'll support this. There's no better guard in the world than a dwarven Guardian, sunny. None. We'll open the path to ye."
Harold went still for a long second as he thought. “That will draw support away from our Knights.”
"Bram. Are you offering what I think you're offering?"
"Aye."
"The Guardian path."
"Aye, that's what I said."
Hargen, on the bench, made a small sound in his beard and rubbed his forehead with one soot-stained hand. "By Brokkun," he muttered. "He's done it now."
"The path book was lost," Harold said carefully, "in every other hold. You have access to the actual path book?"
"Stop." Bram raised a flat palm. "Don't ye start with the gratitude, sunny, ye'll embarrass us both. Yer guards holdin' your relics are at tier two, were they not?"
"My personal guard is tier two."
"Then they're ready. Perhaps one on the higher end of your tier one." Bram nodded to himself once and looked up at the table. "The book itself can give the path to one a day. Past that, and it gets sulky and stops, and ye don't want to be the one tryin' to argue with it. So one a day. All my own soldiers walk the path already — every one of my soldiers out on yer hillside has been on it since they could walk. We can guide human takers through unlocking your Prime Perk. It works differently for Dwarves."
"One a day." Harold mused. "That's enough for a couple of centuries inside the year."
"Aye."
Harold rubbed two fingers along the side of his jaw and let himself smile. "Master Bram. Can you show the council what a Guardian does?"
Bram grinned through his beard, turned on his heel, and raised his voice into the hall without raising it past conversational. "Dorgan!"
The door at the side of the hall opened, and Dorgan walked in with his heavy plate, axe slung, the shield on his arm pebbled with the marks of a hundred parries. He stopped two paces in and looked at Bram.
"Lord."
"Turn around, lad. Face the door."
Dorgan turned without question and put his back to the table, shield down at his side.
Bram looked across the hall at the wall where the relics were glowing in the reliquary. Four of the relic guards stood there at parade rest. They were all armed with a long spear butted to the floor.
"You there?" Bram pointed at him. "That piddly spear. Throw it at me. Whenever yer ready."
The guard did not move.
He looked at Bram. He looked at Dorgan's back. He looked at Harold. His mouth opened and shut, and his grip on the spear adjusted.
"My lord," he said, strained.
Elroy was at the wall behind Harold's chair, in his customary post in his customary slouch, with his thumbs hooked in his belt, and a small sound came from him, and Harold heard it.
"Elroy."
"My lord."
"Throw your sword at the dwarf."
"Yes, my lord."
The sword came out of Elroy's scabbard with the bright easy hiss of a man who had been hoping to be asked. He took two steps off the wall, set his stance, drew the blade back over his shoulder, and Harold felt his mana go into the throw a half-second before it left his hand — he had gone for the kill, not a soft throw.
The sword sang through the air and flew faster than many could track.
Dorgan turned.
He moved like water as he flowed into the thrown sword, blocking with his shield. It ended with his shield up and across Bram’s body; the dwarf had blurred, and the shield had been resting at his side a moment ago but had punched out to intercept the sword.
The sword punched through the shield.
It went through the plate, the wood, and the inner banding, and stopped with the crossguard pressed flat against the front of the boss, the point standing six inches past the inside of the shield and two inches into the front of Dorgan's chestplate.
Dorgan looked down at the point with mild interest, looked up at Elroy across the hall, and gave him the small approving nod of one professional acknowledging another.
The guard with the spear had not moved.
Elroy said very quietly, "Yes."
"Bram." Harold's voice had not lifted, and the corner of his mouth had. "Explain what we just saw, please."
Bram had his hands in his belt and his eyes on Dorgan with the proud weight of a clan head watching one of his own do the thing he was made to do.
"A Guardian, sunny." His voice came down a degree. "He doesn't watch a fight. He feels it. The path puts every life he's sworn to inside his bones — the men, the relics, the women, whatever charge he holds. Anything that harms one of his charges, he knows the instant it approaches the range, which increases with your mana level. Before the steel moves. Before the foot leaves the ground." A thumb tapped his own chest, over the heart. "Then his body answers. Speed, for the moment of the answer. Strength, for the moment." Bram looked at Harold. "Dorgan, there is my best fighter and has saved more lives than I know to count."
Dorgan grunted and moved to exit. Harold rubbed the side of his jaw once, slowly, and his eyes were on the broken shield.
"Master Bram. I accept the gift of the path."
"Aye."
"And I ask, that you gift the true path to my people. Not just the path by word of mouth."
Bram laughed.
The wreckage of last night's tears still half in it, and he reached up and slapped his own chest once over his gemheart, and grinned at Harold with all the teeth he had.
"No other clan should be able to put a Guardian on the path the way ours can. The path book has stayed with us."
"Adeline."
"My lord."
"Every man and woman in my personal guard takes the Guardian path. Starting with myself. Beginning today, one a day, until the company has been seated through. The support crafter century, when it stands up, takes the path on the same schedule directly behind. Coordinate with Captain Carter on the order and with Master Bram on the timing."
"Yes, my lord."
"Master Bram."
"Sunny."
"Thank you."
"Don't ye start," Bram said, and sat down in his chair, and reached for his cup.
Harold turned a degree and put his hand back flat on the table, and Cess was already on her feet beside the bench with the notebook open and a page turned.
“Continuing on my Lord, with the arrival of the convoy last month. We have gained a couple of experienced sailors. A full fifth of all recruits are being sent to Lord Henri’s village to be trained as either marines or sailors. However, we are waiting for the ship's arrival from Councilor Margaret's section to validate our training. He will be arriving with real sailors we can begin the training with.”
“To start, we are looking to control the islands nearest to our lands. We believe a basic galley build will be best until we have the yards to actually build larger, more complex ships. Lord Henri’s shipbuilder has begun construction of five galleys to start with. Each galley will be 40 meters long and will be able to mount two forward-facing ballistas and one on the rear.”“We have begun surveying the closest island to our lands for the construction of a large watch tower to watch for the Orc pirates you have said to frequent the region. These ships will not be able to combat the monsters of the deep, and we will be sticking to inland waters in order to stay out of their paths.”
“Finally, we have injured legionaries who are wishing to get out after the trial. Not many, but a noticeable amount, and mostly the ones that were in the fights with the ritualist.”
A couple of murmurs ran down the table before Harold stopped them with a glance.
“I have approved it as long as they agree to maintain their soldier role and move into the civil legion. We are large enough that I think you agree, my lord, that we are close to needing a police and militia force.”
Harold nodded as hetapped his finger on the table as she spoke, but he agreed with everything she had said.
"Next section," Harold said. "Let's hear the rest of it."