Chapter 150 - 103 : Year 0 - 4 (1)

Chapter 150: Chapter 103 : Year 0 - 4 (1)

Time waited for no one.

It did not slow for the wounded, nor pause for those who slept. Seasons changed whether anyone watched them change, rivers continued toward the sea, crops were planted and harvested, children grew taller, and men who had once been young found the first traces of age upon their faces.

Beneath the castle of House Veymont, Ethan slept through all of it.

His body remained in the depths below the earth, submerged in a pool of blood and hidden from the world above, slowly recovering from the damage it had suffered. The depths kept the sounds of the castle far beyond his reach, while the changing seasons passed without disturbing his sleep. Whatever was happening above, his body continued its own silent work.

Above him, however, life did not stop.

The Veymonts had their own problems to deal with.

In the days following Lucian’s return, Count Veymont devoted considerable effort to uncovering how the ambush had happened. The attack had taken place deep within Veymont territory, close enough to the city that such an incident should have been nearly impossible without someone noticing. More troubling still, the target had not been some minor noble or passing merchant. Lucian was the Count’s only son, his heir, and the person who would one day inherit everything the Veymont family had spent generations building. An attack on him so close to the heart of their territory was not merely an attempt on his life. It was a direct challenge to the authority and reputation of House Veymont.

As a Count, Veymont could not allow such an attack to go unanswered. Whoever had planned it had exposed a weakness within territory that was supposed to be under his control, and until he knew how they had managed it, he could not be certain that the danger had passed. But beneath the measured response of a lord fulfilling his duty was the anger of a father who had nearly lost his only son. He kept that anger under control, knowing that rage would solve nothing. What mattered was finding the people responsible and understanding how they had come so close to taking Lucian’s life.

The more his people looked into the attack, the less likely it seemed to have been a random act. The attackers had moved through the territory without difficulty, knew the roads and patrol routes, and had intercepted Lucian at a point where he was vulnerable. Those details were difficult to explain unless someone had given them information they should never have had.

That left Count Veymont with a possibility he found far more troubling than the ambush itself. There might be someone within his own territory feeding information to the enemy. Until he knew who it was, the investigation could not end.

The investigation gradually narrowed the possibilities.

The trail eventually led to one of the Veymonts’ own vassal houses, a baronial family that had secretly established contact with the neighboring kingdom of Varell. The family had provided information, arranged passage, and helped smuggle a group of foreign martial assassins across the kingdom’s borders and into Veymont territory.

By the time the truth became clear, the baron and his immediate family had already fled.

But they had not disappeared without a trace.

They had not gotten far. In their haste to flee, the baron had taken his family, trusted retainers, servants, guards, and as much of his wealth as he could move. The wagons slowed them on the roads, the horses and carriages left clear tracks behind them, and the size of the group made it impossible to pass unnoticed. By the time Veymont’s people picked up their trail, there was little chance of losing it.

Count Veymont acted quickly. His younger brother, the family’s Viscount and one of its four Force Tempering martial artists, was placed in command of the pursuit. Five Blood Tempering retainers accompanied him, along with ten Bone Tempering martial artists and a light cavalry force drawn from the family’s household knights.

They rode hard toward the border.

The traitorous baron was either attempting to escape into the neighboring kingdom or return to those who had promised him protection and wealth. Whatever his intentions, House Veymont intended to learn the answer before he crossed the border.

It was not merely a matter of punishment.

A noble family’s authority depended upon more than the walls of its castle. Vassals swore loyalty, provided soldiers when summoned, attended their lord’s court, and relied upon that lord for protection and justice. In return, the lord was expected to uphold his side of the relationship. A betrayal from within could therefore damage far more than a single household. It struck at the trust that held the territory together.

For the Veymonts, whose history stretched back to the founding of Enwitra, such treachery was taken seriously. And with tensions already growing along the kingdom’s borders, allowing a vassal to betray the family, aid those who had attacked its people, and then simply disappear would send the wrong message. Others might begin to believe that Veymont authority could be defied without consequence.

The baron therefore could not simply be allowed to escape. He had to be found, and what happened to him would make it clear to every other noble under Veymont rule where the line stood.

That expectation was not something the Veymonts took lightly. Their authority had been built over generations, and their standing within the kingdom carried its own weight.

House Veymont stood beneath one of the kingdom’s four great dukes, Duke Vendettit of House Goth, and had held the rank of Count for generations. Their name had long been associated with three things: loyalty to the crown, hospitality toward those who entered their lands, and capable governance of the territory entrusted to them. Those ideals were reflected even in the family’s crest, a golden heart set against a deep red field. The heart represented the sincerity and loyalty with which the Veymonts governed and welcomed those under their protection, while the red behind it carried another truth: their hospitality did not mean weakness, and their sense of justice was backed by the strength to enforce it.

They were also known for something less ordinary. Generation after generation, House Veymont had produced martial artists capable of reaching the Force Tempering Realm, with at least two appearing in most generations. The present generation was stronger still, with four Force Tempering martial artists within the family. Count Veymont himself was one of them, as was his younger brother, the Viscount.

The remaining two were long-serving martial retainers whose loyalty to the house had been inherited almost as much as their positions had been earned. Yet it was not simply the strength of those four individuals that made the Veymonts formidable. Their true strength lay in everything surrounding them.

Their territory stretched across roughly four thousand square kilometers, encompassing both the lands directly administered by House Veymont and the holdings of the viscounts, barons, landed knights, and other lesser nobles who owed their allegiance to the family. More than fifty thousand people lived across the domain, spread among towns, villages, farms, estates, mining settlements, and the roads connecting them to neighboring territories. At the center stood the Veymonts’ ancestral castle, overlooking the city that had grown around it and taken the family name for itself.

Veymont.

Three additional fortified stations stood at important positions throughout the territory, allowing the family to respond to threats beyond the immediate reach of the castle. Their main garrison numbered more than two hundred armored soldiers, while the obligations and agreements maintained with their vassals allowed the house to gather a much larger force when circumstances demanded it.

At full strength, House Veymont could put more than fifteen hundred soldiers into the field.

Their martial retainers added another layer to that strength.

More than a hundred Skin Tempering martial artists served the family directly or through its established retainer households. Around thirty-five had reached Bone Tempering, ten had reached Blood Tempering, and four stood at the highest martial realm known to the kingdom.

The family’s wealth supported the rest.

Five major mines operated within Veymont lands: one gold mine, two silver mines, one copper mine, and one iron mine. Beyond them were numerous smaller and subsidiary mines scattered throughout the domain, some producing lesser quantities of ordinary metals and others yielding rarer materials of value to craftsmen and martial artists. Their roads connected several important trade routes, while their estates produced enough food and goods to support both the household and the population beneath their rule.

In a good year, the Veymont domain generated considerable wealth, but not all of it flowed directly into the family’s coffers. The viscounts, barons, landed knights, and other nobles who held portions of the territory maintained their own estates and sources of income, while owing House Veymont the taxes, dues, and other obligations attached to their holdings. Alongside those contributions, the family drew directly from its own lands, mines, estates, and control of important trade routes.

After accounting for these sources, House Veymont’s yearly revenue usually exceeded a thousand gold crowns, sometimes reaching fifteen hundred in particularly prosperous years. Much of that money disappeared again into the cost of maintaining roads, soldiers, mines, fortifications, officials, estates, and the countless obligations that came with ruling such a large territory. Even so, the family maintained a liquid reserve of roughly one hundred and fifty to three hundred gold crowns.