'Til Kingdom Comes - The Banished Prince Vol 3: The Prophecy

Guy MacDonough

"Your Majesty, Guy MacDonough wishes to report...!" I was surprised to see the last two Adventurers parties that had arrived back to town at almost the same time.

As usual, the Mackenzies had mentioned to the registrar, who was manned by Michelle at the moment of the settlers and Romani Gypsies that they had encountered along the way during their task.

After waiting for Mackenzies to complete the registration of their tasks, it was followed by MacDonough and once they had completed them, they had joined me who was sitting one of the long benches.

"Alright Guy... Please calm yourselves down. Michelle, could you bring the occurrence journal that you had recorded earlier for this party of four."

I motioned for Michelle to bring in the occurrence journal that kept track of all the Adventurers meetings during their task and then I could reflect back with them with what actually happened.

"Your Majesty, allow me to speak on behalf of the party and the members could interrupt me if I had missed certain important matters. First of all, we had come across a village called Aidi Village about 15-20 miles off the borders of this town."

"As shown in the records of the occurrence journal, the town was quite prosperous and had a few inhabitants that would be of any importance to us since the town folks were rather quite aged."

"The message had been passed down to the leader and then we moved off after some hora in the village. The next following day, we had made contact with a group of Irish Travellers which consisted of four major household families. We informed them of our town needs and I heard that the Irish Travellers had already reached this town and settled in."

"Next we went on our journey and had come across a weird naming town called Broderbund. It's the same situation as Aidi village as the inhabitants were quite aged."

"Besides, they had a technology called the water purification plant and had shown us how they managed to purify brackish water into good, clean, drinking sparkling water."

"That town also had lots of mushroom farms which they had grown in their cellars and despite the missing crop fields form the surface, they manage to survive from their varieties of mushroom grown underneath the surface, accurately to be grown underneath their very own houses."

"Last but not least, we encounter some problems which need to be addressed to you immediately. We are not sure if you need to summon the rest of the key personnel in this town to hear what we wished to convey but this matters the reputation of Your Majesty as well as this town...!"

Gut almost spat the words out when he mentioned about the incident that the party of four had faced back then on their last town.

Not only had they conveyed the message from their Majesty, but was challenged to meet the Lord face to face as if the words from the ambassadors do not carry any weight at all.

"Hang on guys, could we all move to the conference hall right away while waiting for Eagle and the rest of the pioneers to hear about this matter? How could they belittle our town and the effort that was put in to ensure that everyone here lives in a harmonious way... Hmph... This can't be outdone and something had to be done immediately."

I stood up and beckoned for the Adventurers to move to the conference hall of our domain while Eagle was once again summoned from whatever he might be doing right now.

The pioneers too were summoned along with some of the key members of the community as we went out and made a beeline towards the domain, with the Adventurers in tow.

"Dear, we better leave the lunch first. There's something urgent that needs to be discussed and I want you to bear witness to it too. If anyone dares to insult us, they would be insulting you and your family as well...!"

I mentioned to Heather and she suddenly swung her cleaver down hard on the fish that she was cleaning, cutting the fish cleanly into two. It was a small red snapper and well, it won't actually take up too much effort to chip it into two parts.

"WHO DARES TO INSULT OUR FAMILIES?!" Heather stood there holding her cleavers at her waist while the poor fish was flapping ably her feet. With her temper like this, no one would dare come in contact or near Heather or else they would suffer the same fate as the small red snapper...!

Heather was intending to prepare some sweet and tangy dish for our lunch that day and use the head of the Red snapper to make the dish while the rest would be deep-fried.

There would be some vegetables that would be stir-fried as well to accompany the fish soup on that day.

According to her Gracehaven's Mighty Cookbook And Baking Recipe Book, she would be making a dish called 'Fish Soup - Sour and Tangy'.

In some Polynesian country, it called Sinigang or in some parts of the world, it would be called as Singang.

Heather left the cleaver on the cutting board and told the ladies who helped to prepare lunch to prepare the main ingredients instead while she would be doing the cooking later on.

After she had washed her hands free of any fish scales, she then wiped her hands on the apron she was wearing and hung it on a nail that was located near the beams and hurried over.

"Calm down, dear. We would wait for the rest to come in before we met Guy MacDonough to address the members of the board. This affects our reputation and we need to have some answers and suggestions to what we would do next."

I advised Heather as we sat down at the head of the table as everyone came running back to the conference hall, leaving their work partially done and to attend to an urgent meeting they needs everyone's attention.

When everyone had gathered, I announce to the members of the board while they got their seats and refreshments were served first to steel their nerves of what would be relayed by Guy MacDonough and the rest of the party members.

=*=

"Preposterous words coming out from a so-called blue-blooded royal swine as such...! We never had such happenings when we were dealing with such nobles back in Darlington and right now, we had one unknown so-called bastard noble if both unknown parents and had made unrest with us...!"

"How dare this little red butted chimpanzee...!! Had he lived long enough to dare poke at a hornet's nest and be ready to face the consequences? Go ndéana an diabhal dréimire do chnámh do dhroma...! (meaning may the devil make a ladder out of your spine!)"

Old Jack cursed loudly and some of the pioneers understood what it meant and agreed wholeheartedly. It seemed that the pioneers and some of the members of the board were incensed with fury after they had learnt from what Guy MacDonough had informed us once again without skipping a beat and missing any juicy details.

"You mean to say that Camp is just 5 days trek away on foot? Gentlemen, how fast could we cover that distance on a Dandy Horse? A few wagons would be able to follow through our journey from behind, would it be advisable?"

I laid my hands on the table as the question was directed to both the Adventurers and the Shadow unit members as well.

"That's right, Your Majesty. It would be 5 days to and from Camp to this town." Guy replied and one of the Shadow unit members countered, "If we travel by Dandy Horses, we could cover at least 10 miles in an hour for up to 15 miles an hour, Your Majesty. We would be able to cover the distance of 5 days of travelling on foot to about 2½ days time on our Dandy Horse."

"We have ample Dandy Horses to be deployed, Your Majesty. How would your modus operandi be, Your Majesty?" one of the Shadow units replied and asked how was my plan towards this blue-blooded swine that had insulted our good name.

"Eagle, what do you say on this?" I asked since he would have the best answer for it.

"A King would normally lead its troops into battle. Besides, once we had taken over a town or village, the Lord would automatically come under our command."

"However... Since we have no need for such a bloody idiotic fellow within our midst, how about we just take over the population by force and then get them to move over to our town here."

"By the way, we have the dray horses pulling in the empty wagons so we would easily transport them back to Gracehaven. Not as prisoners but as reformed residents before becoming citizens in a year's time."

"We would depose that sweltering swine of his position as a Lord and turn him to be a commoner instead. But to reach that stage would take some months before it becomes effective."

Guy raised his hand to speak and we allowed him so. "Your Majesty, when we were there, we had managed to get in touch with one of the guards named Gregory and we told him to lay fine his arms and surrender when we come over in 14 days time. He was worried for himself, his friends and families as well and I think he would have informed them that we are coming to give a showdown to his Lord."

Guy said his piece and sat down right after he had mentioned it and I lauded for his efforts to bring the boil to a simmer instead so that when we happen to visit the so-called Lord, it would be an easy takeover.

"In that case, Heather, Her Majesty would stay back in the domain with the twins and Eagle, please arrange for a plan for a preemptive strike on Camp."

Eagle was all smiles as they had not been in action for some time and they would be gladly serving under me to get the things done their way.

Eagle saluted to us and then proceeded to have a discussion with some of the Shadow units before they concluded how many shadow units would be coming along and how many wagons and horses would the secondary team follow up from behind.

Heather had no mood to continue her cooking for our lunch and decided to let the helpers imagine how the dish would be prepared. She too was excited to learn about how some troops and I would be heading down to Camp to kick someone's butt.

It's been so long since I had done so and how she wished she and the twins could actually watch how the performance would be in the next few days to come. Hahaha.

By evening time, Eagle and some of the Shadow unit members came to meet me with some statistics on how many troops would be involved, the equipment, dandy horses and number of wagons they would be deploying.

Since it was a developed town or so from what they had speculated, they decided that only 2 wagons would be brought along and pulled by 2 horses each. It would be meant to carry the essential supplies and provisions.

Gwen and Michelle were told not to give out any tasks to the Adventurers and to let them go hunting instead to fill their time right after they had completed the two courses of charting maps and learning about the mythical races.