B3Ch70-News from the Basin. (Patreon)

Halloran's eyes went to the stone, then back to Harold's face.

"And what is that?" He didn't dress it up. "What do you mean, our men against yours?"

"This," Harold said, turning it once so the lamplight caught the veins in it, "is a Battlefield Simulation Stone. Spent the last couple of months soaking up mana, and it's ripe." He set it flat on the table. "I mark out a piece of ground and a number of men, and the stone scans every one of them. Weapons. Armor. Whatever they're carrying. Then it lays a working over the lot and we fight like how we normally would. Steel bites. Shields break. Men fall."

"A war game," Halloran said, slowly.

"A rock," somebody called from the back, pleased with himself. "He's going to win a war with a rock."

A ripple of laughter went with it. Harold waited for it to crest and drop.Halloran snorted. “You must be a pretty shite Lord, if that’s your comment after everything Lord Calder has done. Would you like a visit from his bombs?”

The lord paled in response to his reply and looked away.

Harold nodded towards him and said, "It’s better than a war game," he said. "The stone simulates a real battlefield. It will shroud everyone's blades and bodies. A man takes a blade through the arm; that arm goes numb, and he can't use it.  But it feels a whole hell of a lot like he just watched it hit the dirt." He gave Halloran a thin smile. "Does wonders for a soldier's attention. Hard to make a man take a drill seriously. Not hard at all to make him take losing his leg seriously."

"Does it grow his balls back too?" A grizzled voice off the left wall, some old campaigner in a lord's coat that didn't fit the shoulders under it. "Half my soldiers have been looking for theirs since the goblins came."

“If your men’s short of stones, my lord, that's a leadership problem, and I can't sell you a rock for that." The lords laughed uproariously in reply. "But send them through mine, and they'll at least die less."

"And what does renting your miracle pebble cost us?" This came from the left, where the Argent Circle sat clustered and coin-bright — a woman with a ring on every finger. "Nothing you've shown us this morning has been free, Count."

"Funny hearing that from a merchant." Harold looked at her flat. "I don't need money. The lords will take part because I want to judge the army we are building. I need to see how we will compare against the Blackjaw goblins."

"And in the meantime, the Velthari are putting my north to the torch!" A gaunt man rose out of the benches under Oksana Reeve's banner, and Reeve herself didn't stop him. "Goblins in the mountains, my people are fighting tonight, Calder, while you play host here. Give me one reason the North marches on goblins."

The hall clapped loudly at that, the northern benches loudest, and it was a fair question.

"I imagine no matter how this goes, the North will be in dire straits. You will always be on war footing with the Valthari no matter how well we do in the summer." Harold didn't raise his voice, and the room leaned in to hear it. "A hundred thousand goblins pouring down the passes in spring while the Velthari come at your back. That's a hopeless fight. I'm not asking the north to abandon its towns and march south. Your people will be better prepared if you have the spring to prepare for the Velthari." He held the man's eye. "I will be giving assignments to various lords to move north and reinforce it instead of marching on the goblins. They will be responsible for preparing for the army's arrival and your defenses. We only win this if the entire peninsula pulls together."

The gaunt lord sat, not satisfied, but quiet.

"The last part for this stone is the one that matters to all of you." Harold set two fingers on the stone. "The system counts the fight. Send your men in, and they profit from it. They’ll earn perks and growth, same as blood spilled on real ground. Slower, I'd guess, than a real fight. But nobody comes home in a box for it." He looked back at Halloran. "Enough of these; you could run green levies through a few battles and get a real soldier."

The rumble that ran through the lords was much louder that time. Halloran looked at the stone a long moment.

"You've been getting ready for this a good deal longer than the rest of us have been," he said. He shook his head once. "I want to be more involved, but that changes things. I’ll follow you, my Lord."

A man came up out of the western knot while the hall churned.

The crowd opened for him and closed behind, and he stopped a pace off Halloran's shoulder like they'd walked in together — and Harold was fairly sure they had. Broad, scarred. The memory perk handed him the name before he'd finished looking. Corran Vayle from the Western coast, horse country.

"Vayle."

"Calder." Flatly.. "I wanted this. Trained for it, thought I'd earned it. Not many Lords here have my combat experience out here." He looked at the stone, then back up. "Then you pulled the sky down in a night. I'm not going to stand here and pretend I'm your equal on a field after watching that. You're a bastard for it, by the way."

Harold snorted. "That's more honesty than the rest of the room's managed all morning."

"Honesty's cheap. Here's what it buys me." Vayle took a half step in, eyes locked. "I march north. My cavalry falls in under your hand but under my own leadership. But the morning I ride out that gate, I'm turning my back on my holdings, my people, everything I've got — and half this room" — he didn't spare them a glance — "would sell their own mother for a better look at my coastline. I want to know what happens to them if they try it."

Harold looked at him, and the thing that passed between them didn't need words to carry it. He didn't remember Vayle from the last time around. Died early, maybe. But the man knew exactly what game they were playing, which put him ahead of most of the corpses Harold did remember.

"They die," Harold said, and kept his eyes on Vayle's while he said it. "Fast as I can arrange it, and not gentle." He turned his hand over on the table, unhurried. "They won't be alive long enough to enjoy the coastline. That's the only promise I make."

Vayle held his eye. Then he nodded, slow, and dragged a thumb through the scruff on his jaw.

"Good enough." He glanced back down the packed hall, and let the contempt off its leash. "Most of this lot are shitting themselves, in case it wasn't loud enough for you up here. They're not soldiers. They're accountants who inherited a sword and a title in the same bad week." He looked back. "When do we kick this off?"

"Details hit the forum today." Harold set his knuckles on the table. "March the day after tomorrow. That's time to settle your camps and get your columns moving out of your towns without tripping over each other." He put his voice back out to the room. "Today you meet me in groups. Some of my sections have laid on demonstrations — I want you to watch exactly what this army does, and I want you carrying it home with you." He paused. "None of this matters unless humanity gets stronger, and fast. There's too much killing right now, and not one guarantee any of us are still standing at the end of it."

He let his eyes travel the whole length of them. Some bored, or wearing boredom like a coat. A good many still working a jaw full of anger. And more than he liked, looking back at him with awe. "Colonel Hale." Already turning for the ramp. "Cut the day's schedule and get it in their hands. I want this moving before noon."

"On it, Sir," Hale said from the wall.

Adeline caught him at the mouth of the ramp.

She'd come up the back stair with the ledger clamped to her chest, but the color was gone out of her, pale clear to the lips. She got close before she spoke and kept it under the noise of the hall.

"Urgent message on the private channel. Councilor Margaret." Her hand found his sleeve. "There's trouble in the Basin, Harold."

He looked at her, worried, and went down the ramp a half step ahead of her, into the small room that still smelled of tea and frost, and she had the decoded sheet in his hand before the door finished shutting.

Harold —

A nest of ants has surfaced half a day's march from the Basin. We are still confirming numbers, but there appear to be several thousand of them, and I do not believe we have found all of them yet. They are slate grey, roughly the size of a large hound, and heavily armored; most of our soldiers cannot generate the mana density to cut through their shells. There are variants among them. One of these — an assassin type, silent, faster than the rest — came up behind Josh during a patrol and put a spur through his shoulder. He was critically wounded and badly poisoned. Elia, Kers, and the imbuer Jessim managed a miracle to help him, and I believe he will pull through, though I will not pretend it was ever certain.

This nest sets every alarm I have ringing. A colony that size does not establish itself under us like that. Someone took pains that we should not know.

We need whatever you can tell us about these creatures, and whatever you suspect about who could have done this to us.

We will be under siege within a day, and our walls will not hold them out. Your banner lords are answering the call, but the only garrisons near enough to matter are Veridia and Haven, with Three Rivers some way behind them. If you have plays held back here that we do not know about, we need to know about them now, or we may lose the Landing.

— Margaret

Harold read it once fast, then again slower, and by the second pass the room had gone very still around him.

"Core ants." Barely a breath. He set the sheet flat. "That's what she's got. But that's wrong — they don't come up this high, not for years yet. They live in the deep dark. The mana up here's too thin for them; they'd starve on the surface." He dragged two fingers down his jaw. "Unless something raised it. The mana spring. It could've nudged the density just over the line. Just enough to let the weakest of them live up here."

He stared at the sheet without seeing it.

"That tells me they could. Doesn't tell me why they came up there, out of every stretch of ground on the peninsula — right under my capital." His voice dropped. "Something's calling them up out of the dark."

Then the cold went through him, root to fingertip, and he had it.

"The lizardmen." Very quiet. "Their priestess could raise a ritual to pull them up. It would take a focus with real power behind it to sing that far down." His hand curled against the table. "Like the blood crystal from the trial. That's the kind of thing it takes." A beat. "They’re fucking with me again." He rubbed his jaw again before murmuring. “That god and I need to have another chat. I need him blocking these kinds of moves.” He paused. ‘Unless he wants me to fight it?”

“Hell, I don't know. I hate these games,” he muttered again.

He straightened, and the room shifted with him.

He didn't raise his voice, but the weight came off him regardless, leaning on the walls, flattening the lamp flame, and the frost Iris had left along the table edge cracked and let go. Adeline's spine went straight without her deciding it. Then Harold exhaled and drew it back in. He didn't need to lean on her, of all the people in the world.

"Copy my reply, please." She already had the pen up. "Go ahead."

"Margaret." Both hands flat on the table, building it as he spoke. "The ants are almost certainly deep core ants. They belong to the deep dark and shouldn't be within years of the surface. If they've risen this early it's because the mana spring thickened the field enough to let the weakest survive the climb — and they only made that climb because something's attracting them up. Find where they're breaking ground, find the ritual focus that's calling them, and destroy it. Break the summons, and the rest is just a battle."

Her quill tore across the sheet.

"They'll strip everything in reach to feed the queen. Depending on how strong the ritual is, the numbers don't end. You can't bleed them slowly or hold them at a wall — you hit them with everything, all at once." He paused and made himself go on. "Contact the mayor of the northern pass village tonight. Tell him to run Plan Charlie, immediately, on my order, and that I'll pay the price for it myself. He'll understand. Help's coming from a direction nobody's watching. The other thing is that just the ants isnt enough to stop us. You should have the power there to overwhelm the ants. If this was planned as well as it looks like it was there will be another strike coming from somewhere else. Externally to the Basin. Move troops to the forts in the pass and towards the coast. The strikes must be coming from there."

He turned his head to her, and the voice dropped lower.

"And beware the variants. Our magics generally align with the elements — fire, stone, water, air. Theirs don't. Theirs use concepts, and a concept's a lot harder to counter than a flame. Assume every one of them can break a rule you were counting on, and plan for the surprise instead of the ant."

Adeline caught up, looked at him, and waited.

"Last line," Harold said. "You have to win this. Keep me posted on all of it."

He read it back over her shoulder, top to bottom, and nodded.Adeline drew the sheet back to her side of the table and bent over it, and the quill started again, the plain words going down into the cipher a character at a time. Her hand stayed steady. The rest of her wasn't.

Harold watched her over the table. The loose curl fell at her temple as she worked. The set of her jaw. The shine in her eyes that she tried to hide.

"Max is going to be fine, Adeline."

The quill didn't stop, but it slowed.

"You know that legion and every adventurer down there better than almost anyone," he said. "They'll tear the Basin down to the bedrock before they let a bug have it. All of them."

The quill stopped. She looked up, and the tears began to fall, and she didn't wipe them.

"I don't know how you do it," she said. "The lords, the goblins, the Velthari, now this, and you stand up there and make jokes about a man's balls." Her voice cracked on the end of it. "I don't care what happens to me. I made my peace with me a long time ago. But Max? I can't do that one, Harold. He's all I've got left."

"Ah." Harold let a beat sit. "So I'm chopped liver now."

She smacked him on the arm, hard, and a wet laugh got out of her before she could stop it.

"You know what I mean, you ass." She put the quill down. "This. You and me. It's two broken people keeping each other upright. I buried my husband. You lost your wife, and a good chunk of your own life besides. We both needed someone to lean on so we'd stop tipping over." She dragged the back of her wrist under one eye. "Doesn't help that you're so damned sexy about it. It's not fair, is what it is." The last word came out on a hiccup.

Harold didn't say anything. 

"And it doesn't help," she went on, smaller, "that I've gone and caught real feelings for you. Watching that fairy bitch lean over my table at you this morning like a cat at a bowl of cream." She hiccuped again. "I nearly put the ledger through the back of her head."

He laughed, got an arm around her, pulled her off the chair before she could put anything between them, and kissed her, tea and salt and all.

"Max is going to be fine," he said against her hair. "He's a smart kid. Smarter than his mother, and she's the sharpest thing I employ. And he's got that eagle."

She nodded into his shirt. "I know. And Caldwell's down there."

He stole another kiss off her while she was agreeing with him, and then he backed off a step, both hands coming off her slowly. "I've got to get back up to the lords before Caswell challenges one of them to a duel out of boredom."

"I know." She pushed the hair off her face and got herself squared, aide again, mostly. "Go on. I've still got the rest of the updates to put up on the forum. I'll come find you when it's sent."

Harold nodded and went back up the stairs.Harold came up the stairs into a different room than the one he'd left.

The great hall had emptied of the general mob and filled again with a smaller, looser crowd — thirty-odd lords with cups in their hands, spread through the warm end of the room where the fires were, and his own people salted through them. Caswell had a beer and an audience. Brennig sat at the edge of it with a cigar going. Renna was talking with her hands showing a map. Fitch and Maren stood close without quite standing together, talking to another Lord.

The moment they clocked him, a shout went up off the mountain lords, warm and loud, cups raised, and Harold walked into it.

He went around the room. Shook every hand that came at him, remembered every name, and let them talk. He just needed to be seen.

"Your sister," a broad northern woman said, gripping his hand in both of hers, "is a force of nature, Lord Calder. She helped reroof half my granary in a morning and helped hunt down a flight of Harpies that had been harassing me. I'd have her back tomorrow."

"She left three of my crafters afraid of her and the other two in love," said a lean man with a burn scar up his neck. "They haven’t stopped talking about her since."

"Broke my second son's arm sparring then gave him a healing potion and took him to my dungeon," another said, and sounded proud of it.

Harold made the right noises and meant most of them. He'd known a few of these faces the first time through. Back then they'd been names too large for a man like him to shake hands with, and he'd been nobody worth their remembering. The déjà vu sat strange in his chest, but not badly. Nobody minds seeing their roles reversed like this, but it was strange seeing people who hadn't helped him last time so eager to rub shoulders with him.

He worked his way to the front and let the room settle enough to hear him.

"I'm glad you all made the trip." He set a hand on the back of a chair. "I hope my sister didn't break too much of your property getting you here. I'll be honest with you — she hasn't sent me one word about how it went in your towns. But I did send her. I asked her to go through your lands and open talks between us, because I knew this campaign was coming and I wanted a bloc I could trust when it did. That she managed it is something I'm grateful for."

He let that sit a beat.

"This campaign has to happen, and I'm going to lean on all of you for the whole length of it. And I know how altruistic every one of you is —" he waited out the laugh, and got a good one "— so I know none of you mind that I've put you in a tight spot. So. Alongside the trade routes my councilor is running through your areas, I brought a little something for the trouble."

Two of his guard came through the side door and dropped a pair of chests on the floorboards with a flat, heavy thud.

"There's a token of my appreciation in there for each of you. Three of my body empowerment potions, and a spread of healing and explosive stock besides."

The noise that went up at that was almost explosive. Up to now he'd never let one of the body potions past his own borders, and every lord in the room knew it. They were only offered to his adventurers for now, for exceptional deeds.

"The body potion increases you by fifteen percent across every attribute you've got," Harold said over the cheer. "That's a thing I keep at home, as a rule. Consider it a down payment on the next few months."

He let them be excited about it. Then he pulled the room back a notch tighter.

"Before we get on with the drinking. Colonel Hale — where do we stand?"

Hale stepped off the wall.

"The army's ready to march on your word." No preamble, none needed. "Every lord in this room has committed their host to our command under my authority, with some of their own people slotted into the structure. I'll use the march to the staging ground to shake the command chain out properly before it matters." He turned a hand toward a heavyset lord near the fire. "Lord Ariske can walk you through supply."

The logistics lord stepped up, cup still in hand.

"Lord Calder. Your colonel's charged me with being responsible for managing supplies to the front." He had a settled, ledgers-and-loading-docks kind of voice. "My lands are one big depot now. I've got rations and materiel for ninety thousand for thirteen weeks, staged and ready to roll. My trouble's going to be wagons once the line stretches, so I'll be working with your Captain Tran to seed depots as we push north." He grimaced, not unhappily. "We're expecting north of two hundred thousand on the road once you count the adventurers coming in behind. Half my job's going to be feeding lords who haven't arrived yet."

Harold looked at him a moment.

"Correct me if I've got this wrong," he said. "You were in shipping. Back on Earth."

The man brightened like a lamp turned up. "I was, my lord. Ran cargo through the Strait of Hormuz, mostly. You learn to price risk fast when half your route wants to sink you."

"Then I'm in better hands than I hoped." Harold nodded to him. "Thank you for taking it on. I'll have Councilor Caldwell open more of my restricted list to you for your own use as a personal thank you."

The lord brightened further, which Harold hadn't thought possible.

"Contributions," Hale went on. "Each lord here is committing five thousand of their own, plus whatever adventurers they can field. Add my lord's own ten and you're looking at a core of a hundred and eighty-odd thousand before the guild fills in behind it." He let the number sink in. "Which is the problem. The mountains allow an army that size. Push one host up those passes, and it jams in the valleys. I've modeled the campaign around a doctrine Bonaparte spearheaded it — four separate armies, four routes, converging outside the goblin city to open the siege together. But all moving close enough that we can support each other."

A lord near the front lifted his cup a few inches. "Lord Calder, if I may. If you've got Vayle's backing, you'd be mad not to pull him into your own army. Cavalry like his—"

Harold looked to Hale.

"I had Lord Vayle down for a separate force," Hale said, even. "He and his bannermen field better than twenty thousand horse. But it's not the quality of Lord Fitch's, and horse is the wrong tool in that country regardless." A short pause. "For the Velthari, though — the Velthari, we do not move without him."

The lord took that, nodded, and settled back.

"Crafter support," Harold said.

Another lord came forward. "One of mine's already coordinating with your man Marshal, at your crafter company. Every house here is sending you a few hands after what we watched your guardians do this morning." He hesitated. "It's a reassuring thing, Lord Calder, seeing a man raise dedicated guards for his crafters. I'd take the Guardian path myself, if you were minded to share it."

"The Guardian path stays home for now." Harold let the corner of his mouth raise. "I've got to give you lords some reason to swear to me, haven't I?"

A few laughed. A few laughed a half-beat late.

A hard-faced lord planted himself. "About that. Don't take any of this for us bending the knee, Calder. We're our own lords still."

"I'll bend mine right now if he wants it." This from a round, easy man two cups in. "Ignore him. He's grumpy on a good day."

"Where's your pride, man?" the hard-faced one snapped. "Be your own lord."

"You spawned in a fertile little valley with one road in and bottled yourself up snug," the round one shot back, cheerful. "You can afford pride. I've got to do right by my people, and I'm not too proud to say I'm not half the man the Potion Lord is. He'll let me shelter under his blanket, I'll crawl right under."

Harold snorted. Half the room laughed. The other half watched him instead, to see what he'd do with it.

He rubbed his jaw, took the beer Jenkins put in his hand without looking, and drank.

"Honest answer, my lords — I'm not asking any of you to swear. Not now." He set the cup down. "You're too far from my lands and anything I could call a support network. I can't run my legion this far north without stripping my own borders bare, and folding this many new lords in at once would tip over what I've spent a year building. On top of which none of you have the first idea how I actually operate. Swearing to a man you don't know is how people end up regretting things."

A quieter lord stepped in before the moment closed. "Lord Calder — I might have something for you. If you're willing."

Harold tipped his chin. Go on.

"Back in England they kept a thing called Marcher Lords." The man picked his way through it. "Border lords, set on the edge of untamed country and left to hold it their own way. For our purposes — out here without your network, we're on our own regardless. Name us Marcher Lords, and we'd carry the shelter of your name without needing your legion at our backs. You'd owe us less, but we still get to shelter under your name."

Harold looked at him, and it caught him a little off guard — the idea had been done before, but it wasn’t something he had considered to do here. "It'd leave you a long way from the Landing," he said slowly. "Out of the room when the decisions get made. You'd have no hand in your own politics."

The lord shrugged. "Would you have us in the room anyway, my lord? Word is you keep your circle small. A benevolent dictatorship, near enough." A few sharp intakes of breath around him; he didn't stop. "It's worked so far, and it's what this needs right now. Your banner lords here vouch for you to a man. And that rude Australian would vouch for near enough anyone with a beer in him couldn’t shut up about you after a beer."

Caswell hoisted his cup in salute and nearly wore half of it.

"Let me think on it." Harold didn't close the door, and didn't open it either. "I've no interest in overreaching. I've made enough enemies already, and it would leave you exposed."

The lord opened his mouth for more; another set a hand on his arm, and he let it go and stepped back.

"Now." Harold turned, and his voice changed key. "To my own people. I promised a promotion months back, off a little contest. Colonel Hale — the results."

His own lords came up out of their slouches all at once. Caswell set his beer down on the mantel. Brennig drew on the cigar and let the smoke go slow, and Harold spent half a thought, as he always did, wondering where in the nine hells the man kept getting them.

"For the benefit of the room," Hale said, reading a butcher's bill, "Lord Calder put two Baronies on the table, to be won on merit and nothing softer. These are the standings."

He didn't look at a paper. He never did.

"Dead last of the field, four hundred — Lady Renna. Solid work through the Trial, and she wet-nursed Lord Fitch through his Grail quest. She is responsible for significant cultural efforts in her town and through the County."

"I'll take it," Renna said, unbothered.

"Sixth. Four-oh-five. Lord Arjun. Laid damn near every road in the Basin and never got round to finishing his own Grail quest. Loaned a good slice of his household troops to Lady Aiko for hers, which is more courtesy than sense, but it's on the board."

"Fifth. Six-seventy. Lady Aiko. Grail quest is done — found a way down into the deep dark, hauled back surveys that have Councilor Lira behaving like it's her birthday, and left us a fort down there to garrison. System paid her a perk combination token and a crate of weapons. Kept two, gave you the rest, my lord." 

"Fourth. Six-ninety. Lord Caswell."

"Nice," Caswell said, pleased with himself.

Hale's eye twitched toward the ceiling. Renna pointed at Caswell without looking at him. "You child."

Caswell shrugged and reclaimed his beer.

"Loath as I am to hand him the satisfaction, he earned the number," Hale went on, over it. "Pulled his weight in the Trial, front and center for the Gemheart stone. Grail quest is done — he killed a named wyvern and was rewarded with a Path: Mailed Sergeant, which he's since completed himself and started beating into his household troops. Offered it to you, my lord, and to Knights who've earned the look." A beat. "And he flattened two towns that raided their neighbors for grain, stock, and people. That part I'll shake his hand for."

"They started it," Caswell said, to no one.

"Third — Lady Maren." Hale's voice didn't warm, but it slowed. "Damn fine work. She's responsible for collapsing the wall during the siege in the trial. Grail quest is done — she earned a bloodline, and she's asked me to keep the particulars off the table.” He grunted. For her reward, she was given another cache of system weapons. In the pursuit of her quest, she cleared seven ruins to earn it. Two caches of arms and armor, a chest of five perk combination tokens, potion stock off half your list, my lord — one token sold to you. Her household is among the best-armed we field; they're Knights now under her own hand, and i offered her a job on my plans staff."

Maren took it well, but a little color came up under it. He could tell she was disappointed to not have scored higher.

"Second," Hale said, "eight hundred and fifty-five — Lord Brennig."

The cigar paused.

"The Gemheart stone recovery was his responsibility. He's the one who sniffed out the lizards' works under the Trial town, and worked out how to put their casters in the dirt. Wiped a hostile town off the map. And on the Night of Falling Stars he killed two lords and four crafters, and not a soul heard him come or go." Hale let it sit.  "Good work, that. He also supported the other lords in their own grail quest since he has yet to complete his own."

Harold crossed the room to him.

Brennig snuffed the cigar against his boot heel and got to his feet.

Harold leaned in close, so it was only for the two of them. "A man's past isn't the man, Lord Brennig. I know that better than most people alive." He held his eye. "You've done good work. Keep doing it."

He leaned back and pitched it to the room.

"Lord Brennig. For your service to the County — rise a Baron."

The word came out with weight behind it, more than a word should carry, and Harold felt his own knees try to collapse. He caught himself on a thread of mana and stood.

Brennig's eyes moved over a panel only he could see. Then the former rogue went down on one knee.

"I didn't want to bend the knee to you at the start, Lord Harold," he said, low. "Thank you for turning out to be the man you told me you were."

Harold got a hand under his arm and brought him back up, and leaned in one last time.

"Thank you for living up to how I remembered you."

He stepped back and walked off on legs that weren't entirely steady, spending more of himself on that than he'd let the room see. Hale gave him the moment, then went on.

"Lord Fitch. First, with nine hundred."

Fitch flushed red, like a young man who'd rather be anywhere else.

"Front and centre every phase of the Trial," Hale said, and did not hurry. "Grail quest is done — he settled the ground he was assigned for the quest, cleared the ruins around it, some of them nasty pieces of work, and put down the named beast squatting on them. Caches of arms in every one. He is now the proud owner of the best-mounted household troops on the peninsula. Turned up a beast-upgrade token and sold it to you, my lord. Secured the mouth of a world dungeon, opened it to the guild. However a few dozen delves failed and he had the sense to seal it till our people reach silver tier. Grail quest rewarded him three mana-body tokens, one sold back to the County. Built the legion's cavalry program out of nothing and contributed to paying for the training camp out of his own purse."

Hale let a short breath sit before the last of it.

"And with Lady Maren and the legion, off the back of that cavalry, he broke six towns in open battle. He captured a few thousand soldiers and donated them to the legion; the wreckage folded into three towns and twelve villages. His holdings run half the size of the Basin now." A gruff pause. "Not bad, for a boy who still can't kiss the girl."

The mountain lords made an impressed noise. Fitch looked at his boots and wished, visibly, for the floor to collapse.

Maren was clapping — up out of her stillness and a step forward ahead of anyone, her face bright — and Caswell, half a beer in and constitutionally unable to leave a moment alone, brought his hand down on Fitch's back like he was staving in a barrel.

Fitch pitched forward. Straight into Maren.

There was half a second where it might still have been a collision. But it went past that. Whatever the two of them had been doing for months, standing close without quite standing together, quit pretending. And their lips sealed over each other the only way horny twenty-something-year-olds can do and the room cheered.