Viscount's Rise

“Lord Ganz has reached the walls of his castle, Milord.” One of Lord Shara’s men informed him. He had actually been the first to return to the west to take back his lands but had long since realised that he would not be able to take anything on his own. His lands consisted of a single well placed castle. As such, his army had to be hired from the freemen of the nearby towns and cities. Needless to say there were not many of them willing to become a soldier for some lord without better pay than he would have liked to give. Even for a viscount his army was small.

“And let me guess, he ran straight at them?” Shara would not have been surprised if Ganz actually went and did something like that considering that, unlike his own, Ganz’s garrison had not been spared from the sword. He was more than happy to make use of that now to draw away men from his own castle to make his life easier.

“Not quite, Milord. It seems that he was cowed enough by the show of force of the enemy that he decided that he alone would not be enough. Our scouts have said that at least double his numbers were waiting for him to try anything.” The man replied, surprising Shara. It was not often that Ganz changed his mind after he had decided on something.

“Surely that cannot leave many men to defend my own castle?” As far as he was aware this Fiverian nuisance should have already captured Damaz, at least if the word he had gotten from the other rebel lords was anything to go by. And something like that would take a significant amount of his army to defend if he actually wanted to keep it.

“Our scout last reported a full garrison still. It has been two days since then and it is unclear if that has changed, Milord.” In the past two days Ganz had appeared to take back his castle and he had been hiding his men waiting for an opportunity. If anything was to be expected it would be less men.

“Two days? And nobody thought to tell me it had been that long?” It was not like the scout was going anywhere particularly far away from his army, the castle was less than a day’s march away. For the scout to not have even reported no change was slightly odd to say the least.

“I was not made aware of this until this morning, Milord.” He was but a simple soldier, he did not want to get caught up in his lord’s wrath over such a mistake.

*sigh*

“Never mind that, send somebody to find out what is going on over there. I am not about to assume that he pulled his men to defend in one location and find out it was the opposite.” Lord Shara could not be bothered to find out which person had shirked their duty, he was more worried about actually getting his castle back before this rebellion cost him everything that he owned permanently.

“Oh? It seems that we had a lucky find.” Roan commented as he read the pigeon’s note that had just arrived. It had not even been a day since he had sent out a scout to see if there were enemies approaching from the south to take the other castle and news had already returned.

“To think that we would not find the army hiding in the hills but their scout first.” It would have been an impressive feat had it not been obvious that it was dumb luck that a pair of guards patrolling near the castle needed to relieve themselves and happened right upon a man that was obviously not supposed to be there. Once subdued and brought back to the castle it was not all that hard to get him to sing. A bit of a rough up here, a handful of denars there and they heard all they needed to know.

“And that means that those guys over the hill are all I will have to deal with for at least three or four days.” If he wanted to he could take them head on with the men that he had but now that they had set up and were obviously planning an attack there was no point in killing them on the field when he could do it from behind castle walls. 

Not that Roan knew how this lord intended to defeat an army double his in size with a significant number of them within the castle walls. The men he had left outside of the walls could harass the attacking army all it wanted to impede it from the impossible task of taking the castle with less than 300 men. 

“If he was smart he would act like his peer and wait for a favourable change in the situation to attack…” Roan carried on talking to himself as he thought about what he would have done in his opponent’s situation. He came to the conclusion that he would likely have acted more like the lord that was trying to hide himself in the hopes that he could pull off a surprise at best and wait for his allies at worst.

“I wonder when those Serchi men will be arriving.” Roan changed his thoughts after getting bored of mentally ridiculing one lord and praising the other. He still did not trust that the Marquess in Serchi would not try to backstab them if he was given an attractive enough offer. But that was not his call to make. Even if it was he would likely have to suck it up and make the same decision too if he wanted to be anywhere near cautious of the rebels that would be arriving in the next week.

Darkwood

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