Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 829: Movements At The Frontier Stronghold

CH829 Movements At The Frontier Stronghold

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The Frontier Stronghold experienced the wet season much as it always did—relatively peacefully.

While the Frontier March, under the leadership of Count Skywalker, Alex Fury, prepared to spend the season facing yet another Berserk Beast Tide, the atmosphere within the Frontier Stronghold itself was considerably more relaxed.

From the stronghold proper to the streets of its lower city, Mirador City, an upbeat mood prevailed.

As always, the citizens of both the Frontier Stronghold and Mirador City felt little concern over the approaching Berserk Beast Tide, as confronting it directly had always fallen on the shoulders of the people of the Frontier March within their territory.

However, while the average citizen simply took this arrangement for granted, the Stronghold’s upper echelons went a step further.

They considered it their right.

After all, they commanded the Empire’s most important military installation in the region—a bastion of hope standing against the Great Berserk Beast Forest.

Surely it was only natural that they should enjoy such prosperity.

Yet hidden beneath the foundation of that prosperity lay the exploitation of the people of the Frontier March.

To many amongst the Stronghold’s leadership, the Frontier March was not truly part of the Empire.

Instead, they viewed its people as little different from the beasts lurking beyond the mountain range that separated the Empire from the Great Berserk Beast Forest.

If that was the case, what did it matter that the Stronghold continually forced the March to bear the full brunt of every Berserk Beast Tide, leaving its lands devastated time and time again?

What did it matter if the ‘true citizens’ of the Empire exploited the vagabonds and destitute living just at the foot of the border mountain range for their own benefit?

And how dare those vagabonds, destitutes and outlaws—and their descendants—presume to rise against their masters and demand something as outrageous as fair trade?

Standing atop the ramparts with his arms folded, Fabien Ingram watched as a group of soldiers assembled in the courtyard below, preparing to march out.

The thoughts of those soldiers—and more importantly, those of their commanders—echoed within his mind.

Over the past several weeks, Fabien had quietly visited each of the Stronghold’s captains, probing their thoughts regarding the treatment of the Frontier March.

To his disappointment, he had discovered that their views were even more inhumane than he had imagined.

He wasn’t certain, but Fabien had begun to suspect that one of the unspoken requirements for becoming a captain within the Stronghold—never mind a Subcommander, who were little more than public lackeys of the Stronghold Commander—was to harbour some degree of hatred, prejudice, or outright bigotry towards the Frontier March.

Amongst the lower-ranking soldiers, he could still find people who sympathised with the plight of the Frontier March. The majority, however, remained largely indifferent, choosing instead to trust the judgement of their superiors.

The opinions of the captains and those above them, however, were singular and almost completely unanimous.

Such uniformity made no sense unless someone had deliberately cultivated it.

Fabien’s first suspicion naturally fell upon the Stronghold Commander, Viscount Dunhill himself.

However, further investigation revealed that the problem ran even deeper than the Viscount.

It had existed as an unspoken doctrine amongst the Stronghold’s leadership since the days of the previous commander, Marquis Brendford.

Over time, that way of thinking had become the accepted norm—indeed, the benchmark—within the Stronghold’s command structure.

Anyone who opposed it was viewed as a potential threat to the Commander’s authority and quietly removed from the Stronghold before they could ever attain meaningful leadership positions.

It explained why so many talented officers had suddenly resigned and left the Stronghold over the years.

Fabien even suspected that some of those who had chosen to remain had been deliberately sent to their deaths ‘in battle’ by supporters of the Commander.

As the saying went, ‘The truth, once seen, becomes difficult to unsee.’

Now, as he watched a force of one thousand five hundred Stronghold soldiers alongside three thousand five hundred mercenaries—a combined force of five thousand troops—preparing to depart for the Frontier March, Fabien could no longer ignore the falsehood and hypocrisy concealed beneath the surface.

Officially, this force of five thousand was marching to aid the Frontier March—the Stronghold and Mirador City’s ‘neighbour’—in resisting the approaching Beast Tide.

On the surface, it sounded admirable.

Indeed, it was precisely the sort of duty one would expect the Frontier Stronghold to fulfil.

Yet Fabien could now see through the deception.

These men were not marching to help the Frontier March.

If that had truly been their objective, they would have sortied weeks earlier, ensuring they arrived shortly before the Beast Tide reached the domain—or at the very least, soon after it began.

However, they were only setting out after the Beast Tide had already begun.

By the time this force completed its journey, it would almost certainly arrive long after the berserk beasts had ravaged the Frontier March.

The Stronghold’s leadership firmly believed that it would be impossible for the Frontier March to withstand the Beast Tide.

Or, at best, they believed it would achieve nothing more than a pyrrhic victory.

After all, even their supposedly invincible Frontier Stronghold found it difficult to repel a Beast Tide.

How, then, could a collection of villages inhabited by peasants possibly hope to fare any better, and under the leadership of a newly appointed Count—who, in the Commander’s eyes, was still fresh off his mother’s breast milk—no less?

Thus, this force of five thousand soldiers who had only been deliberately dispatched only after the Beast Tide had already begun, ensuring that they would not arrive until after the fighting was over, in reality, had two objectives.

If events unfolded as the Stronghold’s leadership expected and the Frontier March fell, the force was to secure the strategically important Ashwell Mines, eliminate any remaining berserk beasts in the surrounding area, and ensure that mining operations could resume as quickly as possible.

There were many vagabonds in the North-east, not to mention the empire. The mines could quickly be repopulated.

But if, however, the domain somehow survived, then the orders were equally ruthless.

Should the Count have perished, the surviving population was to be eradicated.

Should the Count still be alive after what the Stronghold assumed would be a pyrrhic victory, the five thousand troops were to force the exhausted domain into accepting an effectively enslaving contract.

Fabien recalled the face of Count Skywalker.

He simply could not believe that a man like Alex Fury would have entered such a situation without a plan.

Nor did he believe the Count lacked preparations for resisting the Beast Tide, considering the measures Alex had already set into motion that Fabien had come to realise.

A thorough investigation into the Count and his activities throughout the domain should have revealed at least part of those preparations.

Or so Fabien had believed.

He could not understand why the Stronghold’s leadership remained so utterly convinced that the Frontier March would be crushed beneath the heels of the berserk beasts, or that, at best, it would emerge with nothing more than a pyrrhic victory, leaving the Count either dead or grievously wounded.

It was only later that he finally discovered the reason.

As it turned out, the Stronghold’s scouts had encountered several vagabonds who claimed that this year’s Beast Tide would be massive—far larger than any minor tide the Frontier March had experienced in decades.

The vagabonds claimed that this was why they had fled the domain.

According to them, despite all of the Count’s promises, he had put virtually nothing in place to defend against the Beast Tide, even with less than a couple of weeks remaining before its arrival.

Since everyone knew it was impossible to construct proper defences within such a short period, the vagabonds claimed they had no choice but to flee to the Frontier Stronghold and beg to be taken in.

Having obtained the confirmation they wanted, the scouts failed to conduct any further investigation and accepted the vagabonds’ testimony at face value.

So too did the Stronghold’s leadership.

This single assumption ultimately gave rise to the plan now sending this force of five thousand troops into the Frontier March.

Out of the lingering loyalty and goodwill he still held towards the Stronghold, Fabien had tried to warn the Stronghold Commander, Viscount Dunhill, of the obvious danger of underestimating an individual personally dispatched by the Emperor.

However, following his conduct during the meeting after returning from the Frontier March, he had seemingly lost the Commander’s ear.

It did not help that none of the Stronghold’s senior officers could even imagine proper defensive fortifications being constructed within such a short span of time.

As a result, none of them took his warning seriously.

Worse still, he had been publicly dismissed by someone he had never expected to see attending that meeting—

The Family Head of the Dunn Clan from Castin Town in the Frontier Stronghold.

The very same man who still had the accusation of attempting to assassinate a noble under the Emperor’s direct shadow hanging over his head.

The narrative Count Skywalker had shared with him was fitting together more and more neatly.

And with each passing day, it seemed increasingly likely to be true.

‘Since things have come to this…’

Fabien watched the column of soldiers marching out through the Stronghold’s iron gates and into the wilderness leading towards the Frontier March.

‘…then patiently watching how this all ends may be for the best.’

Days later, the news brought back by the five-thousand-strong force proved that Fabien’s concerns had been well founded.

***