Chapter 593: An Opening Gambit (Part One)
"There are five ’western’ barons in Lothian March," Ashlynn continued, gesturing at the map. Much like a sailing ship needed to haul in several lines in order to adjust to the wind, Ashlynn intended to ’tug’ on a few of the barons of Lothian March in order to pull the rest of the March onto the course she desired.
On the map, they looked like powerful domains ruled by capable men with borders that had only expanded over the years since they were first drawn, but to her, they were little different than the spokes of a ship’s wheel, unaware that the force that was preparing to descend on them was only intended to cause a greater power to move.
"But of the five, only three directly border lands controlled by Eldritch nations. Baron Dunn to the north-east is the closest to the Vale, Baron Hanrahan to the south-east is closer to Airgead Mountain than to the Vale, and Baron Aleese, even further south, borders the Southern Steppe," Ashlynn explained, tapping each territory in sequence.
Sitting in their seats, Savis and Tausau perked up at the mention of the ’Barons’ who controlled the territory neighboring the local Eldritch Lords. From what they could make out on Ashlynn’s map, each of these men controlled a swath of land roughly the same size as the Vale of Mists, which should mean that these ’Barons’ should be prey on the same level as an Eldritch Lord.
For Tausau, such powerful foes were a risk that his Mongrel Horde would need to avoid at all costs, but Savis’s eyes took on a predatory gleam as he imagined adding a third or even fourth Ring of Conquest to the piercings in his left ear.
The lesser soldiers in the Black Wolf Brigade marked significant kills with small rings and their ears often held five or even six slender rings, but Savis only marked his ears when he defeated an Eldritch Lord or greater foe. The two thick, heavy rings in his ear bore delicate inscriptions and the glyphs that represented his conquered foes, standing out as a mark of pride that no one could ever strip from him.
If he could add another ring for killing one of these ’Barons’, then the shame he felt from his humiliating encounter with Thane and the defeats that brought him here would fade like fog in a stiff breeze.
"Commander Bassinger’s men have just finished a summer campaign against the Dunns forces in the foothills, here," Ashlynn said, pulling the bloodthirsty vampire’s attention back to her briefing. "And this will be the one of the first places we begin our attack after tomorrow’s festival."
"It wasn’t much of a campaign, my lady," Commander Bassinger said humbly. "We mostly fought to buy time for the people in the outlying villages to evacuate to the Vale of Mists and to give the Dunn’s enough of a bloody nose to train our own men," he explained.
As much as he wanted to stand up tall and proud for what they had accomplished, just being in the presence of the bloody and aggressive aura that radiated from his white-furred ’fellow commander’ was enough for the veteran soldier to recognize that there was a gap he still had to cross before his ’ordinary’ soldiers could meet the standards that would be necessary in the war to come.