Chapter 768: Calculating the Costs (Part One)
For a moment, Liam Dunn stared numbly at the Lothian Marquis. He understood the question that had been asked. After their losses, could they still pay their tithes and send soldiers to fight the demons next year. It was a simple, rational question. It just wasn’t the one he’d hoped to hear.
’How many men have lost their lives?’ would have been a better question. Or ’Will your people be able to get through the winter after what has happened to them?’ Anything to show that the man responsible for Lothian March cared about the people who fought and bled and died for the Dunns and their Lothian lords. Instead, they were asked if they could still pay their tithe and send more soldiers to fight in the coming war.
Sitting behind him, Baron Otker watched the young lord squirm with a barely concealed smile on his face. For years, the Dunns had dominated almost every industry of value within the march and they’d only grown more dominant under the rule of Liam’s father. Once, the Otkers had enjoyed handsome profits from helping the Dunns ship everything from bales of wool to rough hewn logs on their way to the mills in Keating Duchy.
In the years since the War of Inches, however, they had aggressively reinvested everything they plundered from Airgead Mountain into their own local industries. Bales of freshly shorn wool had given way to spun thread and they’d even begun planting vast fields of flowers in order to dye their own wool. Saw mills dotted the barony and what timber sailed down river was already bound for customers like the ship builders in Blackwell County.
Combined with their relentless expansion and their flaunting of the restrictions about how many knights they could appoint and how many villages they could establish, the Dunns had grown so mighty within Lothian March that Baron Otker wasn’t the only one hoping to see them fall. So while young Liam Dunn squirmed and fought to control his temper, Baron Otker leaned back in his chair, sipping on mulled wine as if he was watching a play on a grand stage rather than dire news presented to the Lothian Court.
"Our autumn tithe was already in Maeril Village when the attacks happened," Liam said after taking several deep breaths to compose himself before he said something he might regret. Still, he couldn’t let matters stand without speaking up for the people they’d lost.
"My father is still tallying the dead," Liam added, turning to look at Loman Lothian instead of addressing the lord of the march. "At the very least, we’ve seen the almost complete destruction of our garrisons in Sooner’s Reach and Kitchner’s Fell. Captain Jorg is among the fallen," he said, looking directly into Loman’s eyes.
During their summer campaign against the demon villages, Loman had spent half a day meticulously removing an arrow from Captain Jorg’s leg before bestowing the blessings of the Holy Lord of Light on him. The man was a good soldier who had served the Dunn’s for more than a decade and his assignment to Sooner’s Reach was supposed to be a reward for his service and a chance to spend some time recuperating from his injuries.
"I, I remember Captain Jorg," Loman said after a moment. His hands gripped his cup of mulled wine firmly enough that the cup shook in his hand, spilling a bit of the hot liquid over the back of his hand, but Loman hardly noticed. He was thinking of the soldier’s soft grey eyes as he boasted to his companions in the healer’s tent that he’d be leaving to defend a sleepy village where the most dangerous thing for leagues were jealous bulls guarding their herds.