Chapter 113 Laying the Groundwork at the Gold Mine
The camp wore a heavy mood from first light. The night before, Viscount Barten had shown his men the Prime Minister’s letter. That had been the plan from the start. The Prime Minister’s unreasonable demands concerned everyone tied to the mine; it would reach them sooner or later. Better to tell his subordinates now, when they wouldn’t be stopping by the city again.
No one had slept well. Still, there wasn’t much any one man could do. Everyone understood: they’d each done their best, and this was the result.
「From here the plan changes. Let’s see how it breaks.」
Barten steeled himself and called his men together.
「Our situation is exactly what I told you last night. The mine yields only low-grade ore, but the Prime Minister demands even more coin. To be blunt, there’s no way we can deliver double what we’ve sent before.」
Not a single cough. In the clear morning air, Barten’s words sank into them.
「I’m sick of a greedy Prime Minister. That said, I’ve no intention of turning bandit. But—there is a powerful patron willing to take us in. I intend to bring the Guinea Alchemin as a gift and join them. What do you make of that?」
「Are you serious?」
「There’s nowhere in the kingdom beyond the Prime Minister’s reach!」
「I don’t want to flee to another country.」
They spoke up one after another. All of that was within Barten’s expectations.
「I’ve no desire to leave the realm either. In that case—what about Lord Protector Alan Corinth, the Dragonslayer and Bandit Hunter, the man who slew the Count of Gantz?」
「I-Is that even possible?」
「Even for the Lord Protector, why would he hide us?」
「But Gantz is far closer than the capital. Ride hard and you can reach it in five days.」
No one balked at Lord Corinth’s name. A fair number fell silent, thinking, as if to say, That could work. The odds weren’t bad.
「The Count of Gantz was the Prime Minister’s ally. In the first place, it was at the Prime Minister’s instigation that the Count invaded Lord Corinth’s barony.」
There were gasps—tinged with a note of recognition. Private wars weren’t rare among nobles, but they usually flared between houses already at odds. You didn’t hear of a major private war erupting at full scale from the first blow between an upstart and an entrenched old house.
「Lord Corinth, who threw back the Count of Gantz, has no reason to hand us to the Prime Minister. He’ll use us as soldiers. He has the steel to do it, and he’s already recruiting—under decent terms.」
He passed around a copied recruitment bulletin obtained from the Commercial Guild. For men long underpaid and overworked, the terms were more than attractive.
「If we bring a gift, they’ll treat us better than what’s written there. And if we want shelter from the Prime Minister, a gift is exactly what we need.」
Whispers spread with the paper, but Barten left them alone, planting his sword like a cane and standing firm before them. This would mean nothing unless the soldiers chose their own course; he knew that well.
It was rebellion they were plotting. Soldiers sworn to the kingdom would not be out of line to put a viscount to the sword for it. If they were fleeing to another country, that might well have happened already. But Gantz, though far from the capital, was still within the Belta Kingdom. And each of them, more or less, harbored grievances against the Prime Minister.
When the murmuring died, an older soldier stepped forward—Christoph, the veteran Barten trusted as his right arm.
「We’ve talked it through. We’ll follow you, my lord.」
The first wall was cleared.
Barten’s party reached the gold mine at midday the following day. After exchanging greetings with the sentries, they passed under the gate leading into the mine complex. The place was tightly guarded, but everyone here knew one another, and word of their arrival had gone ahead. They welcomed Barten’s party with visible relief.
「Sirs Zeifried and Prell are waiting for you.」
He was summoned at once by the two colleagues who oversaw the mine. Barten signaled Christoph with his eyes and headed for the officers’ quarters. First things first: report the situation to his peers.
「You’re back.」
The eldest, Viscount Zeifried, greeted him tersely. The younger, Viscount Prell, wordlessly poured wine.
「Any trouble on the road?」
「Thanks to the bandit purges, it was the easiest march we’ve had. Not a bandit in sight. The trouble is the Prime Minister.」
He handed them the Prime Minister’s handwritten letter. Better to let them read the thing than explain it. Zeifried let out a groan before he’d finished the page.
「‘Crucify the underperforming craftsmen’? Has he lost his senses?」
「Blinded by greed. And unfortunately, he means it.」
Barten tossed back the wine in his cup.
「The demand is absurdly high. It’d be funny if it weren’t impossible.」
Prell refilled his cup as he spoke.
「He also orders that Lord Zeifried’s unit carry the coin when you return to the capital. We’ve not even four days’ grace at the mine. What now?」
「What can we do? Last time we scraped together every last coin to meet the demand. Double that isn’t happening.」
「He sent a letter in his own hand—that’s how serious he is. I wondered why the treasury was bare. It seems he tried to spark a civil war and failed.」
「Explain.」
Barten reported what had happened at Gantz and put documents on the table—things he’d obtained through Erwin and the Commercial Guild.
「Unbelievable.」
「But true.」
「What are the Prime Minister and the Count of Gantz thinking, brawling inside our borders?」
The Great Demon Forest lay close to the Cecilio Kingdom. If there was turmoil at Gantz, the keystone of the frontier, Cecilio might very well move. Zeifried, dutiful and eldest, cradled his head in his hands.
「Given that, I have a—」
「Wait. Hear our side first.」
Zeifried stayed Barten’s words with a hand.
「The mine’s drawn eyes lately.」
Scouting silhouettes had been spotted again and again.
「For all that it’s under the Prime Minister’s authority, no local lord would touch a mine like this. Likely foreign agents. We’ve checked their kit—almost certainly Cecilio Kingdom troops.」
「Cecilio… now of all times.」
「Because it’s now. Your documents finally connected the dots. The Prime Minister and the Count likely stripped the border patrols to throw them at Lord Corinth, got smashed, and left the border watch in tatters.」
Prell’s reading was almost certainly right. The border patrols rotated through multiple towns and leaned on support from local lords—chief among them the great city of Gantz. Which meant that when the two men who always supported you—the Count of Gantz and the Prime Minister—made a request, you couldn’t refuse. If they sent a fair number of soldiers and those soldiers scattered upon defeat to Lord Corinth, dysfunction was inevitable.
「To neglect the border for private ambition—fools. Typical Prime Minister.」
「The scouts have shown themselves the past two days. We’ve been anxious the main body might come today or tomorrow.」
「That’s bad.」
The mine’s defenses were stout—but only against a force of similar size. Against a foe superior in quality or number, the place would become a deathtrap. Rations needed regular resupply; it wasn’t built for a long siege. The plan assumed support from the patrols. With nearby troops shattered, holding out would be difficult.
「Problems inside and out, then.」
「And what was your proposal, Viscount Barten?」
「Abandon the mine and place ourselves under Gantz.」
Zeifried and Prell fell silent.
「Truth is, we’d considered seeking Gantz already.」
「But the trouble is that Gantz is now in Lord Corinth’s hands. If the Count still held it, we’d rest easier. As it stands, we’ve never even met Lord Corinth. Are we truly to tell him the mine’s location and the existence of the Artifact?」
「Mm.」
Barten frowned in thought.
「Lord Corinth has been appointed by His Majesty to stand in for the Count of Gantz, and as Lord Protector he holds command of the realm’s defense. His credentials are sufficient. The local lords hereabouts will follow his orders. By that logic, this mine falls within his remit.」
「If His Majesty knows of this mine and has ordered the local lords to heed Lord Corinth, that’s fine. The problem is: His Majesty may not even know we exist.」
「Then we’ve been laboring for the Prime Minister’s private gain? This operation goes back to the former Prime Minister, Lord Leister.」
Whether the king knew of the Guinea Alchemin—the question had nagged at them. Now it loomed over their very course.
「All the more reason.」
Zeifried, who had listened to Barten and Prell go back and forth, spoke up.
「Even if His Majesty is unaware, the Guinea Alchemin is a precious Artifact and a treasure of the Belta Kingdom. Rather than fret over the Prime Minister’s schemes, we must prioritize its preservation. That is our duty. Letting another country carry it off is the worst case. Our aim now is to avoid the worst.」
「I believe Lord Corinth alone is worthy of being entrusted with the Guinea Alchemin. If we agree on the conclusion, I’ve nothing more to add.」
Barten nodded.
「Viscount Prell?」
「Bottling up in the mine is a bad move. Our food situation is too fragile, and we’re cavalry to begin with—we’re poor at sieges. If we’re running, I’m with you.」
The second wall fell.
Countess Ursula Dopner traced her bloodline to the royal house of the Cecilio Kingdom. The current Crown Prince, Rouge, was her cousin. Not once in her life had she felt even a shred of affection when he addressed her as ‘dear cousin’.
Even so, she could not defy the orders of the next king. With the monarch bedridden, Crown Prince Rouge commanded most of the state.
Rouge’s cherished ambition was the conquest of Belta. The Dopner domain lay close to Belta, and because Ursula’s ties to Rouge were strong, he had set her to laying the groundwork for the invasion.
The great roads of both realms met at Gantz, the largest city in the region. Less well known was a rough track that cut across the no-man’s-land between the two countries. Using it, one could slip from the Dopner lands in Cecilio out to Belta’s highway.
Merchants who navigated by road would miss it; only rulers and soldiers who studied border topography on maps noticed the shortcut. It was the quiet underpinning of Rouge’s ambition.
For the Belta Kingdom, it was a major hole in national defense. They couldn’t police that wide a wilderness and so coped by increasing patrols. The place teemed with monsters so near Gantz; trying to tame the land drew beasts, and craftsmen would end up eaten.
Thus the waste stayed empty. But with an army, it wasn’t hard to traverse. The land was flat; there were paths, little better than game trails. A cavalry column could cross in under half a day. Dangerous, yes—yet useful, depending on the goal. In this case, seizing Belta’s Guinea Alchemin.
Rouge himself had told Ursula of the Artifact. Beyond its practical value—minting gold coin—the symbolic weight mattered more to her. Royal blood and the right and means to issue coin: those two were the foundation of a kingdom’s rule. For Ursula, who shared the Cecilian royal blood, securing the Guinea Alchemin carried immense meaning.
Ursula was unmarried. She had extracted a promise from Rouge: ‘When Belta falls, I can leave Belta in your hands, dear cousin’. It did not mean Ursula would rule Belta directly. Rouge was not that soft.
It was a suggestion that if Ursula married King Amado of Belta, she would become Belta’s queen. If, shortly thereafter, King Amado suffered an unfortunate accident, Ursula—now queen, with strong ties to conquering Cecilio—would remain.
Ursula and Rouge were cousins; there was no obstacle to a later remarriage. Thus Cecilio would cement a perfect structure of rule over Belta. For Rouge, Ursula was a piece with many uses.
If anything threatened this plan, it was that Ursula despised Rouge. She hid it well, and Rouge—an arrogant man who assumed the world bent to his will—paid no mind to her feelings.
He was the crown prince; handling a wife who disliked him would be, in his mind, nothing more than added spice to married life.
Ursula had considered defecting to King Amado. She dismissed it as too dangerous. In raw power, Cecilio—rearming in earnest—held the advantage over Belta. On top of that, rumor held Amado a puppet of his Prime Minister. He’d never commanded an army. He didn’t sound like a man capable of toppling Crown Prince Rouge.
At present, Ursula had few options. Securing the Artifact would change that. Obtaining the Guinea Alchemin would not, on its face, sour relations with Rouge; she could spin it. And for Ursula, the combination of royal blood and the Guinea Alchemin hinted at a different sort of ally—a man who might be interested in both.
Her best candidate at the moment was Count Khalifa of Belta: a Belta noble unlikely to be colluding with Rouge, his lands relatively close, and renowned for sound generalship. He was older—convenient, depending on how you looked at it. A highborn widow inheriting her husband’s full estate was nothing unusual in this world; such a woman, with lands and wealth, never lacked suitors.
The Commercial Guild swore fealty to kings in their own lands, but its horizontal ties across the continent were strong, and its communications web spanned the map. Cross-border dealings were uncommon—but possible. It was also common knowledge among interested parties that Countess Dopner had been tasked with ‘carving off’ a piece of Belta.
News reached Ursula via the Guild: Lord Protector Alan Corinth had cut down the Count of Gantz. The Count’s reported strength had been higher than expected.
They had already traced Belta’s Guinea Alchemin to a heavily guarded gold mine and fixed the location. It would not fall easily; if besieged, Count Khalifa or the Count of Gantz would hurry to the rescue. But something had shifted at Gantz.
Now, Count Khalifa was on his way home from Gantz, and Gantz itself had fallen under the rule of a Lord Protector unfamiliar with the land. Which meant the Guinea Alchemin—once Ursula sent troops to the mine—was as good as hers.
She dispatched a vanguard of one hundred to scout the highway defenses and the area around the mine. She didn’t intend to push them; advance confirmation mattered. She planned to oversee the recovery herself. An Artifact of that importance couldn’t be left to others, and the march would double as reconnaissance for the coming invasion. If the target fled, how far into Belta should she pursue? That judgment would be crucial.
Ursula mustered four hundred cavalry and set out—picked troops forged for the invasion of Belta. Even against Count Khalifa, she’d assembled a force that wouldn’t be easy to beat.
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