Chapter 3

Lady Shalltear appeared in the centre of the garden gazebo, wearing her customary black ballroom gown. Her crimson eyes scanned the garden briefly before falling over Ludmila, who was standing slightly down the way.

“Good evening, Lady Shalltear,” Ludmila lowered her head in a curtsey.

“Good evening, Lady Zahradnik,” Lady Shalltear replied.

“I apologize for the interruption to your busy schedule,” Ludmila straightened to address her liege, “but I thought I should head over to see what was going on as quickly as possible.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” Lady Shalltear told her. “You’re conducting yourself in a manner appropriate to your duties. I’d be remiss in my own if I failed to answer your call.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“I told you, it–”

“I feel that I must say this, my lady,” Ludmila said. “If this was Re-Estize, it would have taken days to deliver news of this to E-Rantel, then a week or more of deliberations while we did what we could to keep these invaders at bay. In the end, if they thought the threat significant enough, the Provost might have thrown some coins our way and told us to hire Adventurers…then we would have to make a posting and hope that an appropriately-ranked team could be hired in time.”

Ludmila sniffed, wiping the imagined frustrations gathering in her eyes.

“I cannot express enough how much it means to me to have a liege that shares the same priorities and responds appropriately, my lady. I hope you will forgive me for my insistence in doing so.”

Lady Shalltear looked up at her with a furrow on her brow, the light from the nearby streetlamp glinting off of her crimson irises.

“Well, that just makes me angry just hearing about it,” she said. “Rest assured, nothing of the sort will happen with us – the very idea that our defensive response would be subjected to such a delay is unthinkable. Still…it would have been nice if these Demihumans had waited just one more day.”

Her words reminded Ludmila that the Lizardmen migrants would be arriving from the Great Lake in the morning. Though Lord Mare’s alterations to the Vale were still ongoing, they were to consult with him on the areas where they would dwell and prepare the components for their homes in advance. The timing of the incursion into the upper reaches was quite annoying; it overshadowed the success of the harvest and the sense that a hopeful new life awaited her subjects.

“If one could move Demihumans around the wilderness at will like that,” Ludmila said, “I think it would be trouble for a whole lot of people.”

The dark portal of Lady Shalltear’s Gate spell appeared in the Gazebo, and Ludmila made a last-minute review in her head.

“Will you not be coming, my lady?” Ludmila asked. “I half-thought you might happily fly off at the opportunity to perform your more familiar duties.”

“There is a proper order to things,” Lady Shalltear answered. “The individuals who manage specific parts of my territory are also responsible for its defence. I won’t ‘fly off’ and rob them of their duties, and so it is the same for you. Besides, I’ll be there tomorrow due to the other thing. The report you delivered to me sounded quite vague, so I’m sure you have a lot of information to gather between now and then.”

“Yes my lady,” Ludmila nodded. “I should get started on that right away. Have a good evening.”

Lady Shalltear silently waved her away with a smile, and Ludmila stepped through the Gate. She appeared not far from where Lord Mare had placed his potted tree and startled Mrs Linum, who was tending to it. The Elf woman fell back, staring at Ludmila with a face full of consternation.

“Good evening, Mrs Linum.”

Ludmila offered a warm smile with her greeting, but, as usual, Mrs Linum did not respond in kind. Well, at least she was moving around beyond the immediate area of her home now.

At some point, one of her daughters mentioned that Lord Mare had left the tree there. From that moment onwards, Mrs Linum tended to it during every possible waking hour. At least the tree seemed to respond well to her care. Ludmila wondered if she would ever figure out what was going on with the beleaguered Elf woman. She hadn’t worked up the resolve to ask Merry about Lady Aura and Lord Mare yet, so the entire relationship between all of the Elves that she knew of remained a mystery. Ludmila turned and walked away from Mrs Linum before putting away her smile, and the Elf woman returned to incessant vigil over Lord Mare’s potted tree.

Ludmila’s gaze travelled over the village and its surroundings as she made the short distance to her manor. Despite having the advisory issued to them, the villagers continued working outside – though things were notably subdued compared to how they were normally. The Death Knights stationed at the manor, the warehouse and the village entrance remained at their posts, while pairs of Bone Vultures circled overhead in greater numbers. The Undead helpers assigned to each household now stood outside of their respective homes, armed with the weapons and shields that they had first arrived with.

With a good sense of how strong the various Undead servitors in her demesne were, and their various weaknesses and strengths, Ludmila thought that the village’s defensive arrangement was more than sufficient for the small Demihuman raids that the villagers of Warden’s Vale patrolled against in the past. This did not include the Death Knights, Elder Lich, and the flock of Bone Vultures, of course. The situation now was anything but normal, however, and various worries slowly mounted as she ran through various scenarios in her head.

“Welcome home, my lady.”

Wiluvien set down her work in the back, coming up to the hall to greet her. She lowered her head respectfully – Ludmila made the Linum sisters stop trying to perform the elegant curtseys they were trained to do out of worries for their health – then looked back up at her with a glowing expression. The idea that Demihumans were gathering in the south did not appear to worry her in the slightest.

“Aemilia didn’t accompany you?” She asked.

“I did not want to interfere with her studies with this sudden change in schedule,” Ludmila answered, “and there will be little for her to do here anyway. How have things been at home, Wiluvien?”

“Up until about twenty minutes ago,” Wiluvien replied, “normal, I suppose? Nonna went about informing the villagers, but she made it sound as if she were announcing it was going to rain in a few days. There’s something to be said for that flat delivery of hers.”

“I am just glad that no one appears to be panicking,” Ludmila said. “Nearly everyone here is from the inland territories – I feared that they would jump into the river and try to swim to Corelyn Harbour at the first whiff of Demihumans.”

Ludmila produced a pen and a stack of papers from her Infinite Haversack, placing them onto the nearby desk. Wiluvien came around behind her to remove her mantle.

“It isn’t the first they’ve seen of Demihumans here, my lady,” she said. “There are the two races of the Krkonoše, then the Lizardmen that have been poking around the floodplain for the last few weeks.”

“…I suppose you are correct. They are my subjects now, so I seem to have set them apart from the rest. From your perspective, how have the Human villagers been handling their presence?”

“Aside from being aware of the occasional Krkonoše that wanders through,” Wiluvien replied, “I don’t believe they spend much time thinking about Demihumans at all. That’s just the way rural villages are, isn’t it? The little bit of land that they work on is all that matters. When I was still living in Fassett County, it seemed that Human villages didn’t receive much attention from the others unless they’d been set on fire by bandits.”

Wiluvien had a point – one that Ludmila would need to address. The communities within a frontier territory needed to be well connected and communicate with one another to collectively respond to threats…or at least that was how it once was. With His Majesty’s Undead servitors comprising nearly the entirety of the realm’s defence, it was no longer as crucial. Still, she thought it important that every subject considered themselves a part of her demesne, rather than solely a member of their respective villages.

Heading over to the dinner table, she unfurled the map of the upper reach over its surface. The old oil lamps of her manor had been replaced by magical lighting, making the interior as bright as day. Not that it mattered to her, or the Linum sisters, or Nonna…well, it did help Aemilia, who was the only member of her household in the Vale lacking in Darkvision or something better. She would have purchased them regardless, as a gesture of support for sales of their newest magical item.

“Wiluvien,” she said, “would you like to help keep track of things as you did in Fassett County?”

“In Fassett County…? Ah, you mean gathering information and marking it down on the map here?”

“Yes,” Ludmila nodded. “We do not have any Shadow Demons this time around, but we do have dozens of Bone Vultures.”

“Are Bone Vultures even capable of speech, my lady?” Wiluvien asked.

“They report to the Elder Liches somehow, but no, I haven’t heard them speak at all…maybe you’ll have to coordinate things with Nonna.”

“I’ll see what we can do,” Wiluvien said. “Will you be having Lluluvien keeping track of things at night?”

“Yes – you have already divided yourselves into night and day duties since I received this Ring of Sustenance, so it should give the two of you more to do. I feel like I barely give the two of you any work.”

“You don’t do a lot of the things that other nobles usually do, my lady,” Wiluvien said, “so I guess that’s where the lack of work comes from. We’ve got these Undead helpers to speed everything up, too. Hmm…”

Wiluvien wandered over to the hall, rummaging through one of the crates stacked along the wall. After finding what she was looking for, she held it up in her hand.

“May I use the pieces from these as markers, my lady?”

“That is a good idea. Go ahead and commission a large enough set of real markers from Kovalev – we will have to put those ones back at some point.”

What her maid held in hand was a game board, fashioned into a box that contained its pieces. Warden’s Vale had no lack of outdoor activities that her subjects could enjoy, but it was decidedly lacking in recreation for the indoors. With magical lighting slowly being introduced to the villages and each household, she had imported various things for her people to try out.

She had brought in many books as well, with the idea that the children learning how to read would find them useful and entertaining, but most books sold in the city were utilitarian in nature or contained other subjects that were decidedly unpopular with most. It was vaguely disappointing – Ludmila devoured any and all books when she was a child and continued to do so when she had the opportunity, so she thought others might share the same enjoyment.

Nonna entered the hall while Wiluvien was arranging the dozens of game pieces along the edge of the map.

“Report.”

“The advisory has been issued to all of the villages,” Nonna said, “and your other orders have been carried out.”

“Were there any problems along the way?”

“With the Human population, no. The Lizardmen were confused, and the Krkonoše have absolutely no idea what a Class B Advisory is.”

The Lizardmen were in the safest position out of all of her subjects, and she was fairly certain that the Krkonoše would utterly annihilate any sort of Demihuman incursion that tried to scale the eastern range. She would inform them of any developments relevant to them once she had a clearer picture of what was going on in the upper reaches.

“I will speak to them,” Ludmila told her. “Have you received any additional reports from the Bone Vultures?”

“They have been instructed to deliver information from the pass on an hourly basis,” Nonna told her. “Units on standby will be assigned to monitor known groups as they are identified.”

“Are they capable of that?” Ludmila frowned.

“You question the efficacy of His Majesty’s summons?”

“The Bone Vultures cannot even detect me when I am sneaking around in the woods,” Ludmila told the Elder Lich. “There are plenty of Demihumans much better at it than I am. His Majesty’s servants do what they are supposed to; I am under no illusion that they are capable of anything otherwise until it has been determined directly. As far as I know, this is the first time the Sorcerous Kingdom’s border defences are being earnestly tested: I do not fancy the idea of our performance being riddled with failure because we choose to turn a blind eye to our shortfalls.”

Nonna remained silent for several moments, and Ludmila turned her attention back to the map while the Elder Lich digested her words.

“Then what is your proposal?” Nonna asked.

“The only proposal I have regarding this is going out there myself,” Ludmila answered. “Almost everything better at reconnaissance in the Sorcerous Kingdom has been reserved for keeping an eye on major population centres, sent to the new army, or is an Adventurer.”

“What of the Krkonoše? Many of the feline-type Beastmen are superior to you in terms of Ranger skills.”

“They will have their paws full with what I intend for them,” she motioned for the Elder Lich closer to the table before pointing out the eastern range on the map. “The eastern range is imposing, but it is not impassable. There are many Demihumans superior to Humans when it comes to rugged and mountainous terrain. If they manage to break through there, they will spill into Corelyn County, putting nearly a quarter of the duchy’s total Human population at risk. The ideal defensive arrangement will be for the Krkonoše to hold the range, as it is already their territory. This is as close to a guarantee that we have for eliminating the most problematic avenue that these Demihumans may use, allowing us to focus on other areas.”

“I see,” Nonna said. “Then you intend to have His Majesty’s forces defend the remaining stretch of the border.”

“Yes,” Ludmila nodded, “but to figure out the best way to deploy what we have on hand, I need a better idea of what is going on out there – that is why I have settled on taking a look myself.”

“If this Area loses its commander, defence will be affected as a whole.”

“I believe I have a way to minimize the risk,” Ludmila said. “Have the Bone Vultures reported any flying Demihumans or Monsters amongst this group that came in?”

“We have only the initial report to make inferences from,” Nonna said, “but it does not seem to be the case thus far.”

“Then in that case,” Ludmila said, “We’ll be going on a little flight.”