“You’ve been trading with them?!”

It was Maleek’s turn to look at Adan furiously. Trading with bandits was reproachable in and of itself but now that the emperor himself had declared war on them, it was treasonous. If his dealings were discovered, Adan’s whole barony would be labelled traitors along with him. The punishment for treason was death and perceived traitors weren’t often given trials before judgement was passed.

Maleek began to panic, “Is there any evidence? How many people know?”

Adan shook his head, “No. You don’t understand. It doesn’t matter what evidence there is. They’re coming here.”

After a short pause he continued, “I stopped trading with them weeks ago. They weren’t too happy, but I didn’t think they’d have the gull to do anything about it then.”

“They’re coming for payback?”

Adan shook his head again, “They’re coming to restart trade.”

What?

“They’re going to attack us for that?

Adan picked up the glass he knocked over in his fit of rage. He poured some wine into it a gulped it down immediately. Before he could pour himself a second glass, Maleek grabbed his wrist and held it firmly. Their eyes met. Maleek’s eyes were stern yet concerned, Adan’s looked listless.

Adan put down the bottle of wine in his other hand, “No. They want me to sign the trade agreement in front of the town center. They’ll spare us if I do,” He looked down at his wrist and Maleek quickly released it, “They’ll burn the town down if I don’t.”

With every passing minute of this conversation, Maleek was shocked anew. He violently shook his head and tried to focus. Adan gulped away while he did so.

Start at the beginning. There's only one bandit group now. If the tales are to be believed, each group used to control two to three villages or towns. If they all came together...they control the entire south east.

Maleek put his thumb and middle finger on his temples.

No. That doesn’t change anything. There are bandits in that area in the first place because the moneys dried up. They’d have t—wait.

“What were the trade details?”

Adan flinched when Maleek suddenly addressed him, “What?”

“Trade Adan! What were you trading with them. What were the details.”

Adan swayed, struggling to compose himself for a moment, “Uh...uhm..”

Maleek grabbed the pitcher of water that remained untouched on the table and practically shoved it down Adan’s throat, “Think Adan think.”

Adan quickly pushed him off and coughed out the droplets of water that went down the wrong pipe, “Food you madman! We tr—”

Maleek cut him off, “What did they give you?”

Adan stumbled again, but only for a moment, “Uh...pelts, metals, crystals...” He rubbed his forehead trying to recalls the details of the agreement, “ And some other things, but those are the main three.”

No krwns… that means—

“We need to get you out of here now.”

Adan looked at Maleek bewildered, “What? No! Did you not hear me?”

“I did. They’re bluffing.”

—————

Lengths and distances were measured in telks in Lysken. Its system, devised by the Dranklen Kingdom to the north east of what became the Alden Empire, worked very much like the tiered coin system. The difference being that each unit was uniformly ten times more than the unit below it and ten times less than the unit above.The base unit, the telk, was about the size of a gruelgan palm, gruelgan palms being marginally larger than human palms.

At the systemes inception, a telk was the only unit given a proper name. The unit above it was called telks10, the unit above that was telks100. During this time as well, the Dranklen Kingdom was under the rule of the Imuru Empire. The three Gruelgan nations had not formed the union they had today nor had they devised the impenetrable fortifications that allowed their egos to swell over the centuries. The Dranklen Kingdom was merely a country of resources and scientists to the Imurians. As such, when the system came to be it was quickly adopted and adapted by them.

They almost immediately changed the naming scheme. Telks10 were renamed to decatelks, telks100 to hectotelks. After a few decades it was expanded as well, instead of having telks be the smallest unit they went two degrees lower. Just below telks there were decitelks and just below decitelks there were centitelks. A centitelk was miniscule, it was about the thickness of couple of sheets of paper. It was of no practical use to the common folk, but it saw plenty of use in laboratories and factories. At the other end of the spectrum there was a new unit as well. The kilotelk. It saw the most use of the units with prefixes. Being the first standardized measurement to cover a substantial distance, it saw immediate widespread use. From expert charting done by cartographers to shotty guesstimation done by drunkards playing darts—

‘Damn it! I almost had you there Jim.’

‘You weren’t even close. That was a kilotelk wide.’

—it had its uses for everyone.

Fast-forwarding to modern day and there were far more than a handful of units for measurements. The list had expanded. That expansion however, was only really in one direction. Smaller. As far as longer and larger and went, there was only one unit above kilotelks. Godsfeet.

Godsfoot was a large foot-like crater, about 23 kilotelks long, that rested in the far north of Lysken. While it spawned many myths and legends over the years and was at the focal point of certain religions, neither the Gruelgs nor the Imurians were known to be spiritual or religious. Gruelgs in particular believed themselves an intelligent race, far too intelligent to believe in things like Gods. Some people believed Godsfoot’s use as a mere measurement in their kingdom was their way of mocking those that did believe in Gods. That resulted in a few countries putting off using the gruelgs’ system at all, instead opting to create their own. For the most part, they merely created derivative copies.

—————

“They set up camp about 2 godsfeet northwest of here, about here. It doesn’t seem to be well fortified, but they’re on a hill.”

Marcus surveyed the map laid out in front of him and plotted the new information, “Good work, there’s still some soup on the fire.”

The guard turned scout walked out of the tent and Marcus was left alone with Raezel.

She analyzed the map alongside him, “We still can’t rule out the possibility they’re trying to launch an ambush on the troops leaving Otger.”

Marcus replied to her while keeping his eyes glued to the map, “We can and I have. These guys are too smart to ambush this stupidly.”

Marcus and Raezel had been following a party of well armed bandits for slightly less than a month. The party had split off from the main group in Arkthur and headed south east. One of the guards with Marcus had caught the party’s convoy when they made their own escape from Arkthur.

Marcus had realized the bandits weren’t planning on simply pulling off a raid, but he didn’t understand the extent of their strength until he went out into the streets disguised. The walls were lined with a ridiculous amount of soldiers. Before their attack, there weren’t too many bodies than manned the wall separating the third ring from the outer ring. When Marcus was walking around, he could hardly find a part of the wall that didn’t have a soldier on it. He could only assume how well manned Arkthur’s outer walls would be. The decision to leave the city came very quickly after that outing. There was some pushback, but they ultimately made their way out of the city.

They also woke Raezel up. They waited until they were outside Arkthur’s walls, but the decision proved detrimental to Marcus’ aim of getting to Otger all the same. After awakening, she was both furious and motivated. She was prepared to head back to the city immediately and wouldn’t take no for an answer. It took every trick in Marcus’ bag to stop her. Fortunately for him, Master Gluvdaad had also retreated from the city. That information greatly helped his argument. Unfortunately for him, they learned about the convoy heading south east and Raezel was not going to let them waltz by.

Unfortunately for both of them, they couldn’t figure out the party’s motive. Originally, Marcus believed they were an ambush party as well. The plan was to slowly catch up with them and kill them. The further they travelled in stalking the party however, the less than plan appealed to Marcus.

“They release at least two winglows a day. They stop to set up camp way before sundown. They’ve sent a few carriages to every village and town we’ve passed by. If they were an ambush party, they’d be the worst ambush party ever. They clearly have a different objective in mind.”

Raezel was growing increasingly frustrated with being forced to just watch the convoy from a distance, “So what? We’re going to follow them forever? It's been weeks.”

Marcus sighed, “You wanted to follow them. I said we should head to Otger. This is on you.”

“I didn’t me—”

“I know. Just bear with it. They can’t go east for that much longer, Dreadnon Valley is right there.”