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

Ambassador

Monday, 19th September 1442

We stirred up right before dawn and had some hot drinks for ourselves and the balance pottage and bread that we had for supper last night for breakfast.

The whole pot of pottage was enough to spread around the goodness with 22 of us and there was some balance inside the cauldron as we divided the food equally among us.

The Shadow units and militiamen had never had meals with us much before and were feeling awfully awkward when they sat down together to have meals prepared by their chef.

When Eagle saw what was happening, he just cleared his throat and waited for me to spoon the first mouthful before they started to consume theirs from their own bowls.

Last night, they were oblivious of what was happening so it was dismissed by Eagle but today at dawn was a different thing as everything could be seen clearly in the day. After we had our breakfast, we were informed by the Adventurers that the town ahead would be Broderbund and its roughly about 10 miles out and Camp would be 30 miles out or so.

"There's a marshland up ahead after Broderbund and we would need you to skirt around it. Most probably, we have to dismount and push the Dandy Horses since the ground would be too wet to ride on."

Guy MacDonough highlighted to us and the Adventurers made their way out first and followed by us while our provisions and supplies wagons followed closely behind as much as possible.

A horse may travel at 4 miles and an hour hit having two horses doesn't mean that they would be travelling at 8 miles an hour...! Besides the horses would be walking, trotting, cantering, hand gallop and run.

These are the few speeds a horse would be able to move in order to reach a destination faster (it is obvious right) but whether it is riderless or with a wagon, it is all up to the user.

So, in the meantime, Priest Hendry and partner, as well as Gwen and partner, were just using the dray horses to walk over to the next destination. Going through the marshlands with a simple load on the wagons would prove to be not a chore for the horses.

Those manning the wagons knew about marshlands and also knew how to divert their route so that it would not cause their wheels of the wagons to get lodged inside the wetlands.

The Adventurers horse around and we had just passed Broderbund and from the looks of it, the houses looked rather dilapidated and seem to be void of life and activity especially the young ones. Instead, when we passed the village it simply looked pretty lazy, laid back and devoid of any crops on the surface.

Little did they knew what bountiful resources would be available under the cellars of each home...!

We caught up with the Adventurers who were waiting for us at the outskirts of Broderbund. "Your Majesty, Camp would be ahead around 20 miles or so. Its already been 3 hours since we had moved from our encampment. How far would you be setting the next encampment near Camp?"

Guy MacDonough came up and asked since he would like to know what kind of special arrangements that we might have in mind. Besides, Guy MacDonough had already been to the Camp once with the party of four so he would be quite familiar with the best and safest route that they would be able to take next.

Eagle spoke up and suggested, "Since you have some insiders in the village, we would make an encampment around 2-5 miles away from its nearest borders. Would that be alright?"

"As what you had reported, these guards are voluntary community service and not part of an organisation and were also underpaid, am I right?" Eagle pointed out and Guy MacDonough nodded his head.

"That's right, Eagle. I was thinking... If we set up a camp about 2 miles off, I could enter Camp with the party of four and pull out Gregory from there and bring him over to our encampment."

"It might the four of us entering Camp or it would be just me alone with my sister here. Besides, we could enter Camp and then bring out the people that had been influenced by Gregory and the others."

"I don't know yet but that's what I had told Gregory the guard to inform others of a certain time they wen would be coming back with the troops."

When Eagle heard this, he laughed since Guy MacDonough had informed some of the people that we were coming so it gave some heads up to the community there to immediately throw down their arms and surrender at the sight of the four Adventurers...!

Besides, this won't be a preemptive strike but rather a subtle approach to let the community to revolt and go against their Lord and flee from the scene and defect to the other party.

"No worries, Guy. I think we would be able to go ahead with your planning and execute it tonight. Besides, it's not even noon yet and maybe we say hi to your good friend in Broderbund."

Thinking that it was a good idea to let our wagons approach the point, they dismounted and wheeled their dandy horses and entered Broderbund. Guy MacDonough and the party of four soon walked over to the Fat Bastard's House and called out his name.

A few moments later, a rather skinny man peered out from the house and was surprised to see 18 men with weird contraptions on their sides and all wearing the colours of our town, gathered at his courtyard and were grinning widely.

The skinny man's hands were a bit muddy and dirty as he was clawing his way in his mushroom garden underneath his house and he had harvested some of the mushrooms to prepare for lunch later on.

"Uh... Hello there young lad, we meet again. Wow... You do bring a lot of your friends over here this time. I'm preparing some mushrooms for lunch, what can I do for you, young lad?"

"Hi there Fat Bastard, this is Our Majesty that I was mentioning on the last occasion and he and we would like to see how the water purification plant of yours worked, from undrinkable brackish water right down to good sparkling drinking water."

Guy MacDonough made a simple introduction and the moment Fat Bastard hear that I was around, he quickly got down on one knee and bowed his head low in deep respect.

"It's alright, good man. Please rise. We normally skip all these formalities the royals would be accustomed to. Just a simple bow or a nod of your head will do. If one starts to throw themselves to the ground like what you did right now, I don't think there would be any work for the community here to do anymore. Hahaha."

I laughed as Eagle helped Fat Bastard to stand and regain his composure and posture as the latter stood up and brushed his knees and slowly bowed slightly.

"What can we do for you, Your Majesty. You seemed to have from far and I am sure you are not here just to take a look at the water purification plant as well as the basement mushroom farms that the citizens here had cultivated for the past 2 years or so."

Fat Bastard began addressing to me as he spread out his hands and flourishing showed towards his house. Well, one thing for sure we do not need a water purification plant as we have Priest Walter to conjure up his special abilities to bring up the groundwater to the surface.

Besides, I guess the engineers would like to see what's the purification plant looks and functions like so I gestured to the engineers to follow up with Fat Bastard instead.

"Would you mind if my men were to come inside your home to take a look at your water purification plant? Besides we are here to take over a town and we might be due for further discussion later on."

After saying that, Fat Bastard was glad and he ushered some of the Shadow units into his home as he demonstrated how the water purification plant functions like. After some 30 minutes or so, Fat Bastard had some mushrooms in his hands which he had harvested from his cellar and handed them to his newfound friends.

It seems that the engineers shared a common language as Fat Bastard handed the mushrooms to Guy MacDonough (seems to be more than enough to make a good pottage for dinner later on) and peered at the weird contraptions that we had ridden on earlier.

"These are called balance two-wheelers for adults that we termed them as Dandy Horses instead. It requires zero maintenance and all it needs was our leg power as we push them along and balance on it to traverse the great plains of the wilderness."

After the engineers had demonstrated and shown how the functions of the Dandy Horses to Fat Bastard, he was able to understand the overall functionality of the Dandy Horses as it would cut down the time for troops to travel from Point A to Point B.

"Very interesting there, my friends. It seemed that we do have some knowledge that we could share among ourselves and also to learn new technologies as well. Very intriguing indeed. Hahaha. I'm glad you dropped by."

Fat Bastard was chatting with the engineers from the Shadow units as if they had known each other since childhood and from the interactions between them, I had a Stoke of ingenuity.

"Eagle... In case we take over a town and we need an ambassador, could we assign one to take note of the progress and control of the town instead, even if he was not from the town itself?"

Eagle smiled at me and nodded his head since he too was thinking about the idea of assigning someone to care for the other town since we would be ousting the other bastard from the fade of the earth. Hahaha.