They arrived outside Brillante in the last week of August, they didn’t have the element of surprise with this fort, however, it looked like an easy bombardment, they set up the cannons on the west side and began bombarding, and by the day’s end, the city had surrendered.

However, when they entered the city, it was almost deserted. It was only the elderly and sick remaining, as well, a few disabled veterans acting as a garrison.

“It looks like the enemy is abandoning this port town,” Daniel exclaimed. “What’s the next step?”

“There are two more counties Gulledge and Galopenterrer. To the southwest and southeast respectively. Once we have those it’s onto Ludnus.” Fred commented.

“Half the city is the other side of the river, we may be able to bombard that side, but we won’t be able to secure it,” Henry said.

“Then what do you suggest?” Fred asked.

“There is a county on the river west of Ludnus, half a day’s march. The castle is this side of the river, but they garrison a stone bridge there, if we take that first we will have a crossing to Ludnus.” Henry explained.

“Furthermore, if we don’t capture the town to the northeast of Ludnus, we cannot cut their supply off from the mainland.” Mendes chimed in.

“But are we not spreading our troops too thin,” Fred asked

“The navy has their first 100 marines now right, they can garrison Brillante, and we can head towards Gulledge and then onto En Traindelire, once we cross the river we can swing around from the north, don’t forget most of Ludnus is north of the river.” Henry continued.

“What about Galopenterrer, are we just leaving that,” Fred asked.

“With the navy present in Brillante, they can’t do much, plus due to the white cliffs, the closest port east of Brillante is Ludnus,” Mendes reassured.

Fred sent the command towards Brighton. The return letter brought news of the ships ready to leave, they managed to get all three heavy ships operational, although the third was still missing a quarter of its cannons.

He also received news of reinforcements both what the cities recruited and what the mainland sent over. The mainland sent over the remaining 150 archers as well as 150 halberdiers and 150 Knights, and what shocked him was 150 wizard Corp,

“Hey is this right, they sent 150 wizards over with the reinforcements,” Fred asked the table.

The others we in a relaxed position before he started reading the letter but when he mentioned this, they suddenly got serious.

“That can’t be right?” Daniel asked. “The Wizards are a strategic asset, Wizards are not something to be sent out lightly, Wizards rarely even leave the capital cities of the duchies.”

“Fred, we have to be very careful when we attack Ludnus, Wizards are only sent out to counter magic, I believe one of the reasons they would send wizards out is if Normandy was doing something similar,” Henry warned.

“And what would the other reason be?” Fred asked.

“The family are preparing for something,” Henry answered.

“What?” Fred asked.

“I don’t know, you have the letter,” Henry complained.

“Ok, So the mainland has sent over 600 reserves, we have 300 Musketeers ready, as well as 400 Crossbow/Halberdiers and 100-man artillery unit with 15 cannons, ready they are moving to Oxford and will join us after we cross the River at En Traindelire,”

*Whistle* “So we have an additional 1400 men reinforcements, with our 2500 men here, that is quite sizable,” Daniel said,

“We would still be outnumbered 2-1 don’t forget, although the mainland is bringing up to 6 thousand men, they should have 3-4 thousand men on Albion in Ludnus by now.” Mendes put a dampener on Daniel’s spirits.

“We’ve always been outnumbered, what’s the big deal?” Daniel bit back.

“The last two major fights we were either the defender, or we had sabotaged the defences of the enemy beforehand, we won’t have that with Ludnus.”

“It’s fine, this might end up as a battle of attrition, as we have quality on our side, we will deal with it when we get to Ludnus, meanwhile, we should prepare to go north.” Fred tried to calm down that room.

“When are the ships arriving,”

“It should be a week, they said, they are leaving port today but may have to make several breakthroughs with the enemy fleet. Also, according to this letter, the mainland fleet, is going to push to establish a line to Southampton.” Fred said as we narrated off the letter.

“How many of their ships have we put out of commission; they shouldn’t need that many ships in the first place?” Daniel asked.

“Estimates reckon they have over 500, they had to compete with the Lowland duchies for naval supremacy, they have a lot of trade with the Saxon, Pomeranian and Baltic duchies and are major competitors with the lowland duchies,” Mendes explained.

Fred remembered seeing on a map that Jutland didn’t exist, and the maritime trade could just travel straight up into the Baltic Sea, these duchies Mendes were talking about were all independent duchies, and they were located on the south of the sea.

Records indicate that the Scandinavian lands were inhabited by wild beast tribes, whatever that meant, and it was almost impossible for humans to settle the lands up there.

“So, we haven’t even knocked out half their fleet,” Daniel complained.

“We don’t have to, at least a quarter of their fleet have been damaged or destroyed and are currently in their dockyards being repaired. And they would probably want to keep a quarter of their fleet for the crossing now,” Fred explained.

“If we can not only knock more ships out on our navies journey here, with its bigger fleet, the enemy is going to start being more cautious. And now Aquitaine is attempting a push into the channel,” Fred continued.

___

3 days later Fred got the news that his fleet arrived at Southampton. They had been held up in the battle for 2 days with the enemy, they had committed over 200 ships to try and prevent the push, Aquitaine had lost 30 ships, while the enemy lost 80 and another 40 needed repairs.

“Hey, looks like you got your wish Daniel,” Fred joked.

“What happened?” Daniel asked in surprise.

“Half of the enemy’s ships are out of commission,” Fred explained.

“Haha, that’s great.” Daniel laughed.

“Do you know how long they will take to get here?” Henry asked.

“Another day,” Fred answered. “As we now have some form of safety, I’m going to tell the construction crew to continue the port expansion”

The enemy seemed to be backing off, as the fleet arrived without any engagement the next day, after the handover, Fred and the army moved up to Gulledge, again this had no resistance or to be more accurate, no one living in the town.

Fred left 100 men to the garrison, and had bricked up the gatehouses, the garrison had only two small entrances on the south side, so they could retreat to Brillante.

After a week, they moved up to En Traindelire this town had put up a little more resistance, but what could they do when it took half a day to make the walls crumble.

“Well, we have En Traindelire, we can move north now,” Daniel said.

“These counties are quite small, some of them even had wooden walls, however, Ludnus will be a lot different,” Henry commented.

When they got to En Traindelire, they informed the reinforcements at Oxford that they would be heading to Louttonne, and to meet them thereafter they took Vachegue, it was then that Fred realised he messed up, ‘Damn it, I’ve called Swindon, Oxford, what do I call Vachegue now,’

___

One of the nights in En Traindelire, they had been drinking, and Daniel asked, “So where do you come up with the idea of the cannons?”

Fred was a little hesitant to tell.

“It will cause issues later down the line, the family wants to know, but at the moment you are too profitable for them to ask. If you wait until you are no longer of benefit, they may not be as accepting of the answer.” Mendes said.

They were gathered in the bailey with a campfire off to the side while they sat on benches behind the castle, Fred got a stick and drew two circles on the ground and a line separating the two.

He pointed at the one. “This is the world we live on,” he pointed to the other “This is a world, where a copy of ourselves lives on.”

“You come from that world?” Mendes asked.

“Half of me does.”

“Half?” Daniel asked. “What do you mean Half?”

“Remember when I said there was a copy of us on this world?”

“Yes,” Daniel answered.

“My… Spirit, as you call it, came from that world to this world and merged with my spirit from this world.”

“How? Were you summoned through a portal or something?” Henry asked.

Fred drew a circle on top of the line he drew of to the side of the circles. “It was a hole from my world to yours. It should have happened by chance; nothing suggests it was a consequence of man.”

“Where is this hole can we go to it?” Daniel asked.

“O, yeah, it’s that way about a few million light-years away, at the centre of the galaxy.” Fred pointed up, he couldn’t tell if he was pointing to the centre of the galaxy, or if the exit of his old world’s black hole led to the centre of this galaxy. He just pointed to the brightest cluster of stars.

“Galaxy? Light years? What are those?” Daniel asked, but they all wanted to know, even George hadn’t heard about this part.

See all the stars, twinkling so brightly in the night sky?” Fred asked.

“Well, they are like our star,” Fred said.

“Our star?” Henry asked.

“Yes, the sun, it’s a star,” Fred explained.

“What, but our sun is so big and round, they are so tiny and pointy,” Daniel said.

“First off, the light being so pointy is to do with light refracting through the particles in our atmosphere, don’t ask me to explain it, I would need to explain a lot more, just squint your eyes at a mana crystal, you should get the same effect,” Fred explained. “Second, from this position, use your fingers to measure that tree over there.”

“But that won’t tell us its height, it looks smaller the further away it is,” Daniel answered.

“Well, now that you’ve answered your own question let’s talk about light-years,” Fred said.

Daniel finally got what Fred meant, although he felt like an idiot afterwards.

“A light-year is how far light travels in a year,” Fred explained.

“What, light travels?” Henry asked in exasperation.

“Yes, my previous world managed to work out it travels 300 million meters a second, it was a shocking discovery for our world as well, as something moving that fast is unmeasurable with our own vision.”

Fred went on to explain what he thinks happened while reiterating that it was just a presumption to them. Then he gave Daniel a headache with the multiverse theory.

“So, you like what 320 years old?” Daniel asked.

“In a sense, only half my soul is, the other is 12 years old.”

“Wow, your like, 17 times my age, I’m only 19,” Daniel said with shock.

If Fred remembered right, Isabella was 27 this year so there was a good 8-year gap between them.

___

The next day the troops moved out to Louttonne, there was only Chelemsgue, and Sudende-an-meer, to surround Ludnus once Fred met with the reinforcements.

The day after the reinforcements met at Louttonne, with 3 new commanders.

Earl Jean, from de Ansul with his son Ronald. Jean was a cousin of Isabella and Daniel, and Edward’s and Thomas’ cousin Earl Jacques, and his son Jacques, however, Fred had met the sons Jacques and Ronald when he first enrolled on school, Jacque’s nickname was Jackson, as he had the same name as his father.

And finally Count Arthur, one of the sons of Earl de Anjou.

“Jackson! Ronald” Fred called out and hugged him.

“Fred, Long time no see,” Jackson returned the gesture. When they separated, Jackson introduced him to his father, “This is my dad, Jacques.”

“Nice to meet you, Earl Jacques.”

“Ah, you’re the kid who kept dragging the family into fights at school,” Jacques chuckled.

“I,” Fred was speechless, wasn’t he the one who turned the family losing streak around.

“Nothing’s changed there.” Earl Jean commented with a smile.

“Fred, this is Earl Jean, my father.” Ronald introduced.

“Nice to meet you too, Earl Jean.” Fred greeted formally.

“And this is Count Arthur, of de Anjou”

“Nice to meet you too, Count Arthur.” Fred greeted formally again.

“Likewise, young Frederick.” Count Arthur said.

“Relax kid, no need to be formal,” Jacques Laughed.

They went into the main room for a discussion.

“So how come you came over?” Fred asked, it was nice to get reinforcements but there wasn’t a free lunch.

“Multitude of reasons really, a lot of the nobles have come over with their kids, you’ve introduced a new generation of weapons, and it would be better to get the new generation of leaders experienced with them,” Jean commented.

“But the worst is that some little brat was giving the dukes some funny ideas,” Jacques said sarcastically while looking at Fred. Which caused the other two to look at Fred.

“Er, this isn’t about the dukes seeking independence is it,” Fred said nervously.

“Haha, relax kid, they’ve had these ideas for years, they were waiting for someone to mention it really,” Jean commented this time.

“Really?” Fred questioned.

“Yeah, they just need support for the idea to increase, the only problem is that they can’t be seen to be the ones fanning the flames themselves,” Arthur said.

“Who would be king though, I only mentioned my parents on the off chance as it was a ‘marriage between the 3 households,” Fred asked.

“Well, Rumour has it, we would be pulling in five duchies, with a possibility of eight duchies, and we were thinking of an elective monarchy, similar to what the Slavic’s have in the east. But we wouldn’t vote for foreigners.”

“Five to eight duchies?” Fred asked.

“We currently have the three houses. De Plantagenet, De Ansul, and De Anjou.” Jacques said.

“Wait, I thought De Anjou isn’t a duchy,” Fred asked.

“We are the same size as the other two duchies, and they were offered the title of the duchy from the crown for services against the empire, but we refused it,” Arthur said.

“Why?” Fred asked in puzzlement.

“We believe it was a ploy to break up our block, if we became a duchy, we would have to cancel a lot of our marriages, or the King could use them to issue sanctions,” Arthur said.

“I see, but if we weren’t under the crown, you could be a duchy?”

“Absolutely,” Jacques said. “With that, we will have the two duchies here.”

“Won’t it be one, under me,” Fred asked?

“Haha, that’s wishful thinking,” Jean said.

Fred’s face went dark. “Are you planning to take them from me?”

“Relax kid, it’s not like that, and I think it would be better for you this way,” Jacques said.