The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 527: What Do They Know?

Dominic sat at the head of the table, slowly eating the hearty stew that the kitchen had made, while the other guests held an animated conversation about what life had been like before the “Great Storm” as they were calling it.

“You know, I used to be a deck hand for Redaxe, the Orcish Pirate. It was quite the life, but when he asked me to take over at the docks and get him a discount on the tariff fees, I was happy to be back on shore.

In only two months, we had three encounters with Naval fleets, and one with the blue Elves. By the time that we made it back to shore, it was a wonder that we had any crew left at all, and we’d lost half our cargo running from the Elves.

Their ships are ungodly fast, and if you don’t distract them with a cargo dump, they’ll just run you down and take it all by force.” One of the men informed the group.

A younger man nodded. “The group that I work with had an arrangement with them for years, and then one of the Captains thought that it would be more profitable to hide a few runs and not inform the rest of the fleet.

Well, the Elves caught him, and insisted that we had all been reneging on our agreement to help them move goods.

The retaliatory strikes took out forty ships and over a thousand sailors.”

“What do you think the Lords are going to do once the waters go back down? Do they even have enough soldiers left to enforce the travel restrictions?”

Dominic tapped the table to get their attention.

“What is this about travel restrictions?”

“Oh, after the previous King died, the northern Nobles put travel restrictions on the commoners. They weren’t allowed to travel more than ten kilometres from home, on pain of death.

Even the traders had to start using the Pirate ports if they didn’t have a Nobleman on board to vouch for them.

Most of them did, but after whatever happened in Skiple, we stopped getting trade vessels entirely. So, I suppose that part doesn’t really matter. That made things a bit rough, I’m telling you.

No matter how much we offered, they simply wouldn’t come to us.”

Dominic nodded. “How much do you know about the overall situation?”

The sailors shrugged. “We all know what the pirates say, but until the storm, all the radios in the area were jammed to prevent Cygnia airships from pinpointing military movements.”

Dominic sighed, and Amie shook her head.

“You should likely know that, by international consensus, the war ended months ago. There is a new King on the throne in Albroles, and Prince Kaizon and his allies went rogue and staged a failed coup attempt that turned into a civil war when they refused to surrender.

They launched monster attacks on southern Dagos, Cygnia, and even Skiple for not supporting them, and eventually managed to even get a tower full of Necromancers from Shersdonia on their side.”

“So, you’re saying that our Lords, the ones who won’t let us move away from home, due to the threat of Cygnia attacks, aren’t at war with Cygnia at all?”

“They think that they are. But everyone else agrees that they’ve already lost, and they’re just in rebellion against their rightful King, and every nation allied with Dagos.”

“So, if they’re caught?”

“They’ll be executed as traitors and war criminals for their attacks on civilians.”

“So, for the last two months, we’ve been confined to our hometowns with no supplies… because we didn’t know that our Lords had rebelled against their oaths to the crown, and were being hunted as criminals?”

“More or less?”

The sailor sighed. “Well, that changes a lot of things. Tell me, what do you know about the new King?”

“It’s the old Lord of Boscom. Early middle years, a lot more worldly than his predecessor. For one, he has required that servants be paid more than food and clothing at all estates. That’s a start.

But he also did not particularly want the role, he just couldn’t accept Prince Kaizon having it, given his history.”

“There was a lot of talk about what would happen after the battle with Cygnia. Many expected to get concessions that would have given us fertile land, and dropped the price of food.

That clearly never happened.

But what is your view of what happened in the war?”

Dominic sighed. “What we found when we counterattacked into Dagos was sad and pathetic. Half the nation is abandoned, as everyone either fled or starved to death.

The entire place was in a drought that had lasted a decade, until last week when the storm hit. So now, the whole place is soggy, and still nothing will grow.

The army wasn’t equipped to deal with magitech, despite their advancements that led them to field airships early in the fight.

So, when Cygnia fought back, they lost tens of thousands of conscripts, until mass desertion became the norm. The cities of Stansia Province stood down without a fight. The commoners turned their Lords over to the invading armies, and the land was ceded to Cygnia during the peace treaty after the official war was over.”

“See, we were told that Cygnia occupied it, but we were told that they had brutally slaughtered everyone, and the cities were graveyards.

That was the official news we got before the radios were all jammed.”

“And the pirates wouldn’t know what was going on along the eastern coast, as they don’t trade from Cygnia to Dagos, so they hadn’t talked to anyone who knew the truth.

No, the cities of Stansia Province are fine.

The drought never really hit them as hard as it did most of Dagos, and they were the major supplier of food to the nation, until Cygnia demanded the Province as reparations.

Now, there are Cygnia Lords and laws in place, and the city populations are higher than they were before the war, as everyone is pretending that the refugees from Dagos are locals so that the loyalists hiding in the cities don’t come for them.”