Chapter 117: Chapter 103

The wind blasted into my face as if there was no tomorrow. The clouds hang deep in the sky as I stood outside and watched the sky. A few hours earlier, Tom began his travel to the capital city exactly at this place to ‘prepare our arrival’ after ‘Mary’ dealt with the insurgents.

“Are you missing him?” asked a sleepless Mary right beside me. She still hasn’t recovered from the shock of murdering someone with a paperweight and I caught her staring at her own hands from time to time.

“Missing? No, not at all, I just hope he doesn’t get himself killed. That’s all.” The first raindrop fell down right in front of me and I turned around to run back into the house immediately. Mary went after me swiftly, amused by my reaction. “But knowing him, he would probably just hand over all the money if he was attacked by bandits. Rats always survive.”

“That is an interesting perception of him.” The sky opened its floodgates completely and I closed the door swiftly. Rain was scary. We went into Mary´s working room afterwards where she promptly put a map on the table while avoiding a suspicious red stain on the carpet.

“Alright, I was able to confirm the letter I got yesterday. The three noble families of the north are indeed working together to recruit a sizable force. The military advisors I still have left are estimating it to be around ten thousand while we can merely field a force of three thousand. They will be here within the next month.” She placed ten black pawns on the northern side of the map, while she only put three white pawns on Eastminster.

“Cookies?” I showed her a box of self-made cookies I originally made for Tom, but couldn’t bear to let go of in the end.

“No … we could either hope to rely on the fortifications of the city to repel the attackers, ask the other nobles for help, or …” She was already out of ideas. Waging war was definitely not her speciality, no matter what she may claim.

“or we surrender?” I asked jokingly. Nervously, she tapped onto the map and didn’t even try to look amused. “okay, I´m sorry … what about mercenaries?”

“They are already calculated into the three thousand, in addition to the help of the other loyal families. Lucinda, do you have any ideas at all?” I sat down on the table, stuffed my mouth full of cookies and imagined a world where everything was going smoothly and I could fool around all day.

“Is the enemy commander an idiot?” I asked slowly with my full mouth. If Mary´s intelligence service was good enough to estimate the number of soldiers, then it wasn’t impossible they knew who would be leading them.

“Romeo Montague is not the brightest lamp under the sky, but he shines nonetheless.” So messing with the army directly was out of the question. Even I couldn’t win a decisive victory with such a huge difference in strength if the enemy commander wasn’t a complete idiot. For me, holing up in Eastminster was out of the question, mostly because I was quite envious of Tom and wanted to join the fun as soon as possible.

“Did he fight in any wars before? Went to a military academy or something in that direction?” I followed up.

“No, I don’t think so. He went to the same school as I and I don’t think he visited any military courses.” It baffled me that such a person would be the commander of the enemy army, but there had to be a reason for that. Maybe he was exceptionally good at everything he tried or maybe …

“His family pushed for him to be the commander, didn’t they?” I concluded.

“They did, he is from the most influential family of the north. The other two are the Capulets and Arthur´s family. None of them have any military history and so they probably agreed on him as the Montagues are the family that spent the most money on the army.” I whistled loudly and put another cookie in my mouth. After wiping the crumbs on the map away, I looked at every route they could take. Sadly, there were no natural barriers we could use for ambushes, except a large forest where only a handful of routes led through. Judging by the rain outside, we couldn’t burn the forest down either as autumn was already beginning.

“So we aren’t dealing with one army, but with three separate ones who pretend to follow this man… which family is the most morally corrupt one?”

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“Definitely the Capulets, although I doubt we could bribe them. They have enough money from their slave-trading business. These bastards sell whatever living being they can get their hands on to the highest bidder and make a lot of money through that.” A plan was already forming in my head, although a piece of the puzzle was still missing.

“Is there any anti-slavery sentiment in the general population?” I asked curiously.

“Sadly not, you won´t be able to use their population against them as the slave trade fuels the economy of their region.” Too bad, I would have wished to test my skills with creating a rebellion, but apparently, that had to wait a bit.

“Where are their markets?” I asked full of curiosity.

“All over the country. The biggest one is naturally in their home city, Verona.” The city was a mere week away, meaning I could get there in time and hurry back before the army arrived here.

“I see … let´s free some slaves then.” I chuckled slightly, hoping that for once, I could be seen as a good person in Mary´s eyes.

“There are only about a thousand or so at the market and I doubt most of them will be able to fight well.”

“Oh, no, they won´t fight for us. They will fight for their freedom which is ten times better.” I claimed and smiled knowingly.

“I cannot follow …”

“What does a slave trader fear the most?” I asked swiftly.

“A loss in revenue? Not having a way to source new slaves?” She asked as she placed her index finger on her right cheek.

“Well yes, but no. All of these issues can be fixed, but what cannot be fixed is a horrible reputation. So we are letting some slaves bash the heads of their buyers and threaten the Capulet inside the army with even more chaos if he doesn’t fight against the other coalition members.“

“They won´t succeed.” Mary claimed, which was probably right. Even when they struck from within the army, I doubted they could deal critical damage. Their morale should be low considering they were fighting against their previous allies and the new orders should disorganize them. But if we attacked together with them …

“I know, but an attempt is all we need.” I smiled knowingly and clapped loudly. The puzzle was nearly finished. All pieces were laid out in an orderly manner, I only had to put them together with my own two hands.

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