After a few days in Thesathas, we left again. Yathanae was sad as we left, but she knew we had to. There was a calm over her that had not been there before, she seemed more content. I was happy for her because that had been the outcome I had hoped for.

Before we left, Tarathiel had pulled me aside and gave me a stern warning, “You keep her safe or I’ll do everything in my power to kill you.”

Family. It left a pang in my own heart, but the realization that I would soon have my own made me ecstatic. The trip back to the Bastion took most of the time that was left before the portal home opened. After that, it would more or less be straight home to the Hold, Lily, and hopefully, I would be home in time for my first child’s birth.

Instead of sauntering up to the main gate and getting asked uncomfortable questions, we made our way to the top of the mountain. I looked at Ayda and said, “Don’t bother. We’ll be closing the passageway down. Have fun making a deal with the dwarves.”

She turned to Chione and Anders. “Can’t you convince him to leave it open?”

Anders had been muzzled by Chione in everything that had to do with me. Of course, that had not lessened the hate in his eyes every time he looked in my direction. Chione shook her head. “No, and I actually agree with Karth in this instance. If we leave it open, it might reveal our working together. They’ll know that we left somehow and came back. If you take over the Bastion soon after, we’ll be outed or at least suspected as traitors.”

“I’ll give you a parting gift,” I added. “If you do manage to take the Bastion, go to the barracks furthest to the east. I’ll leave your family’s weapon and armour encased in stone somewhere on the top floor.”

She sent me a hateful stare, before nodding once. Our elven escorts left, with all the horses we had acquired trailing behind. They left us with enough food to last for a month, despite there being less than a handful of days left for us to stay at the Bastion.

Despite it being the middle of the day, we made our way down the stairs. I led the way, while the stone mages were last. They would be closing the hole in the overhang and removing the first section of the stairs underneath it.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, I made a huge hole to the outside and immediately made a bridge to cross the ten metres between the side of the mountain and barracks. I made it extra wide, allowing for three people to cross at the same time. I also used the illusion magic of the fairies’ priests, hiding our activity from prying eyes and ears.

It did not take long for everyone to get downstairs. It turned out that someone had been in our rooms, to search for us. We could tell because someone had destroyed the walls we had created before leaving.

It amazingly took five hours before someone discovered we were back. I suspect that it was some of Anders’ men who had gotten a bit chatty about their Lord’s return. As soon as they learned about our return, they sent an invitation to a meeting with the high commanders.

An invitation in the form of an angry looking High Commander Ballard backed by a platoon of soldiers. In a building made entirely of stone, I could have crushed them in an instant, something that made me smile, so I made my way to the meeting, without any fuss. Ballard had already picked up Anders. Chione was with him. The meeting was held in the cavern, inside the foyer of their quarters.

It would seem that one of the high commanders had been killed because only six of the seven were there. Unfortunately, it was not Farnsworth that had been killed. The priest was there as well. They had set up tables and chairs for a mockery of a trial. The priest as the judge, Farnsworth as the prosecutor, Ballard as the bailiff and the rest of the high commanders as the “impartial” jury.

The mockery of the trial started as soon as we were led in, with Farnsworth grandstanding. “We’re gathered here today to charge these despicable curs with the most heinous crime of desertion. I will—”

“Just shut up already,” I interrupted him. “I don’t have time for this bullshit. I was relieved of duty, so were my men, because you failed to provide provision for us. We came and left in a way that you can’t figure out, and I’m under no obligations to tell you. As far as I’m concerned, this bullshit is over with. If you want to go ahead and do the whole circus act with Lord Anders, go ahead. I don’t care. I’m leaving.”

With that, I turned around and started walking away. The soldiers with Ballard moved to stop me. I just waved my hand and a colossal stone hand rose up from the ground and pushed them to the side.

There were shouts of surprise, but no one else tried to stop me until I reached the door, when the priest’s voice rang out, “In the name of Gyzbohr—”

He did not get further than that, because I clamped down on his soul, making him unable to move or speak. I gave him a look of disdain. “Oh, it seems that Gyzbohr doesn’t like when you try to use his name for injustice.”

The priest turned angry. He knew what was going on, but for the high commanders, it could very well look like divine intervention. No matter how much he tried, the priest could not utter a sound.

With a contemptuous snort, I left the cavern and made my way back to the barracks. For the next few days, no one bothered us, and we just ignored the ongoing siege. We had plenty of provisions. We used the roofs of the barracks to get some fresh air and train when the Bastion was not under attack.

The rest of the time, I spent with Ethan, Linus, Hrothgar, Bendis, Yathanae, and Siphanien planning how to spend all the coins that had fallen into my lap. We already had gotten confirmation from Lily and Emma that they had retrieved it from the dwarves. At the same time, they had delivered some wagon loads of apples and the rest of the booze I owed.

The moment we stepped through the portal and arrived back at the capital, a priest came up to me. He gave a respectful bow and everything. “Honoured Lord Karth.”

“Greetings,” I replied with an incline of my head.

“I am high priest Renard, I have got an agreement for you to look at and sign,” he said. “As soon as you sign it, the Church will be extending you a credit of a half a million marks. I’ll be accompanying you to ensure the line of credit with the merchants.”

“Sounds good. Please lead the way,” I replied with a smile. After we had signed the agreement, the shopping spree started. It lasted eight days.

The first day was spent acquiring provisions and transportation. The reason we started with that was that both of these things would form the framework for how much we could acquire later on. I was mostly interested in food that could last for a long time since we would be acquiring a lot of new manpower. We also made sure to get plenty of seeds for planting, especially the kind that would grow well in the latter half of the year.

The second, third, and fourth day were spent travelling to all the schools of magic close to the capital. We visited a total of twenty-seven schools, and from them, I bought close to a thousand female mages. Most of the schools were of schools I already had, but one of them was a school of lightning mages. The other new form of magic I acquired from the schools was something similar to the short-range teleportation that Chione had used.

The fifth day was spent scouring the different slave markets for enslaved mages. By the time news of our spending spree had already been widely known, and many of the slave traders had purposely stopped selling their mages, just to present them to me. I bought in bulk and paid a higher premium on the low-end slaves, but a lower premium on the high-end ones.

Nevertheless, the traders were happy. They might have taken a loss on the high-end merchandise, but they earned a lot more on the low-end, which more than made up for the loss. So instead of us coming to them, we had plenty of traders coming to us to offer their wares. Including some of the schools further away, including one that allowed for telepathic communication with animals, including experiencing their senses.

The greatest harvest in new abilities, for me personally, came from the slave traders. They had many different magic-users from all over the empire, including some that were generally not available in the kingdom. The problem was that there were too few of some of them to be particularly useful on large scale. Nevertheless, I bought all of them.

The sixth day I continued to make the slave traders happy by buying thousands upon thousands of skilled and unskilled labour. Renard’s brow furrowed at the long list of names that they had to pay money to. I made sure that we kept our own tally so that they would not cheat us.

The seventh day I emptied the capital’s weapon shops. Hell, I even bought some of the clearly defective pieces. Mostly, it was just a question of badly forged parts for the gun that made them defective. It was easily fixed by a metal mage, of which I had over a hundred at the last count.

Day eight I spent buying up all manner of livestock, no more than the herders I had bought claimed to be able to move. I also bought thousands of horses, while all the wagons I had bought would be pulled by oxen and mules.

As we were preparing to leave, Renard gave me the final tally. “You’ve spent three hundred sixty-eight thousand, seven hundred—”

“Don’t bother,” I interrupted him. “With the tithe, we agreed to pay you, it comes to four hundred and fifty thousand marks or actually a bit less than that. When I get back to the hold, I’ll transfer half a million mark. That’ll take care of the debt I owe the church, the tithe, and the line of credit you vouched for with the different merchants. They already know that you’ll be the one to pay them. Call the extra coin a handling fee or something like that.”

He bowed his head. “Thank you, Lord Karth. The Gods have truly blessed you.”

‘More like cursed me,’ I thought. With the hundred and fifteen to sixteen thousand marks I owed the king in taxes, I had less than thirty-five thousand marks left. On the other hand, I had made sure I could feed my populations for the next two years. That number was if we did not produce or procure any other food at all in that time period. At the same time, my population was now a bit above forty thousand people. Almost all of them were slaves.

We made for quite the procession as we made our way into the portal that would take us to northern-most high hold. Take us home. Home to Lily and my soon-to-be-born child.

We had let the others from the high hold go through the portal first. There were not a lot of troopers left, but I was happy to see that Theo was one of them. Though he had a haunted look. So did most of the people that had endured five months under siege. I knew that very well because I saw the same look in the eyes of my own troopers. They had undergone something much more horrendous than just a siege.

When I led my entourage, no more like a sea of people, through the gate, I found myself staring at a group of guards, led by Wilbur. Of course, I could not stop, because people were coming through the portal and we had to hurry. So I kept riding forward, and so did the horse riders, wagons and animals behind me.

“In the name of the High Lord, halt!” an officious looking toad shouted. The guards behind him all levelled their musket in our direction.

“Make your men stand down,” I roared. “We’ve thousands of people coming through, we need to move to the side.”

“Halt or be shot,” the man screamed, eyes bulging as he saw the vast amount of people coming through the portal. Groaning, I summoned a wall of stone in front of the guards. I heard they opened fire, but they just shot into the wall. Before the wall toppled over and crushed them, I used stone magic to pick up Wilbur and move him out of the way.

The wall of stone fell on top of the screaming soldiers. With a wet crunch, they were mere splotches on the grass. Sealed forever underneath several tons of rock. If I had been feeling magnanimous I could have allowed them to live, just moved them aside as I did with Wilbur. I was not feeling magnanimous.

I rode over to Wilbur, who was still being held by the giant stone hand. The first thing I noticed was the smell of piss. “High Lord Wilbur, I’m informing you that I’ve returned from the Bastion, despite your best efforts to starve me to death. As you see I’ve not learned my lesson, and in fact, has returned stronger than ever before. Because of your actions, I was forced to go raiding in the elven lands.

“As you see it paid off handsomely. But you’ll not see a single coin out of it. The King and the Church have gotten their share. You won’t receive anything, except my scorn. You no longer have any hold over me. The debt to the Church has been paid. Your actions give me casus belli if I want to revolt. I’ll hold on to that card for now. And no, I didn’t assault you or your troops. I moved you out of harm’s way when your guards committed suicide. Have a splendid day.”

Wilbur finally found his voice as I rode away. “You won’t get away with this!”

I ignored him and rode on. I wanted to get home. That was all that mattered. I did forget to release him as we left the city. Oh well, he probably had some servants that could get him out of there. Unless they hated him as much as I did.

I did not have the patience to travel at the slow speed of forty thousand people with animals and so on to take care off. So I grabbed my bodyguards, my personal retinue, but left Ethan with Hrothgar, and set off for home.

Briefly, I considered if I would get in trouble once more for dividing the troops, just as I had the first time I made my way to the Hold. However, I shrugged at the possibility. The me back then was a joke compared to the current me. The power of my magic and the amount of mana I had available was mind boggling, and I only knew of one person with more of it than me. Unfortunately, she had cast her lot in with Anders. With all that considered, I felt certain I would be pretty safe.

When we arrived at the Hold it was so unlike when I had first gotten here. The fields were in the progress of being harvested, so the golden wheat fields went on for kilometre after kilometre. We were greeted by a patrol as soon as we started crossing the bridge. We were greeted enthusiastically by the troopers.

“Welcome home, Milord,” the senior squad leader said. His words echoed by the troopers.

“Thank you,” I said with a smile. “Sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”

“The name is Niles, Milord.”

“Thank you, Niles. Have things been quiet?”

“Yes, Milord, we even have the new fort built and everything,” he replied.

I was antsy about seeing my wife. So I bid them a good patrol and hurried on back to the great hall. In the past, there were only a handful of houses and the mill, besides the great hall. The shambling huts were not worth mentioning.

Now the roads were paved with stone, all the houses were sturdily built, and there were a lot of them. Of course, there would need to be many more, with all the new citizens I was bringing. They would of course not be able to be living in the old Hold, but I was already planning on making a push beyond the mountain pass and into the northern plains.

If everything went according to plans, Wolf Ridge Hold would go from the smallest holds to one of the biggest. We would also change the wooden houses out with some made of conjured stones. Otherwise, we would end up stripping the entire Hold of all its trees several times over.

When we could finally see the doors of the Hold, I saw Lily, Nina, and Caspar standing in front of the doors, waiting for me. Lily had been beautiful before, but the moment I saw her, with her hands resting on her big round belly, radiating happiness, she looked to be the epitome of beauty.

I hardly noticed that Nina had grown a lot, nor did I spare Emma who rested in Nina’s arm more than a single glance. I jumped off the horse and approached Lily, my eyes blurry with unshed tears. Seeing her pregnant really drove home the fact I would be a father soon.

“Welcome home, Husband,” Lily said formally, her voice trembling a bit. Her eyes worried for some reason. I did not answer, but stepped up to her and opened my arms. I searched her eyes for acceptance or denial of the hug. I had trouble reading her eyes, so I gently enveloped her in the hug.

“It’s good to be home. I’ve missed you, Lily,” I mumbled into her hair as I rested my head on top of hers.

“It’s good to have you home,” she replied, her voice sounding very emotional. I felt the front of my shirt getting wet. We just stood like that for minutes, before separating a bit. One of my hands moved down to caress her giant baby bump.

“Thank you for your surprise,” I said, indicating Yathanae, who was standing next to us with Emma in her arms.

“You’re welcome,” she said with a teary smile. Despite her tears, her face radiated happiness. She suddenly grimaced.

“Are you okay?” I asked worriedly.

She nodded and moved my hand to another spot on her stomach. For a moment I just looked at her confused, when I felt something pressing against my hand. I realized it was my child kicking. The tears that had been in my eyes since I saw Lily, finally fell.

I was home.