The knights looked at each other.
Then soone said "For Percvale". It wasn’t sothing quiet, instead it ca out loud and rough and about thirty voices picked it up imdiately, then more, until the whole courtyard was making that sound, the kind that ca from the chest rather than the throat.
Even Garren.
He didn’t shout, that wasn’t the man’s way, he looked way too mature, experience and aged that an act like that would be considered childish.
But he stood straight and on his face was sothing that hadn’t been there before. Not just acceptance but actual belief.
With acceptance he could just accept what Darion had said, without actually being okay with it. But this wasn’t it, this actual believe.
Darion stood in the middle of it and let himself feel pleased for exactly a mont.
He had walked into this courtyard yesterday and had been handed a tarnished seal, a rusted ceremonial sword, and a barony that everyone in the empire had written off as a place people went to disappear.
The knights had been sitting on bare floors. Nobody had expected him to last a day. But here was! Here he was, going on a second successful hunt, first together with his knights, had ca back with actual at and now had convinced his knights about his supposedly evil and dark ability.
He hadn’t changed his ability. He hadn’t beco sothing other than a Necromancer to convince them. He had just explained it in terms that made sense to n who were hungry and tired and had been losing for a long ti.
What was a barony without enough bodies to defend it.
He had answered that question in a way they could hold onto.
He let the noise run for a few more seconds, then raised a hand.
It died down quickly. They were listening to him properly now, which was different from before.
"Good," he said. "Now. The at."
He looked at the carcasses laid out across the courtyard: nine Bogoarts in sections and haunches, one large deer, the whole day’s work sitting on the cracked stone.
"We’re not eating all of this tonight. We’re not eating most of it tonight." He looked at Garren. "I want it skinned and roasted, all of it, tonight, as much as we can manage before the fires die down. Roasted at lasts without getting spoilt so easily. Raw at doesn’t, not in this weather when it turns, and I’m not losing half of what we brought back because nobody preserved it properly."
Garren nodded.
"The deer goes to the kitchen for tonight. The rest gets roasted for preservation." He paused. "And when it’s done, I want portions taken into the village. Enough to sell, not give, but sell. Set a price that’s lower than whatever they’re paying for that bread in the market. Cheap enough that most people can afford it. We need the coin and they need the food and right now we have sothing they don’t."
Garren raised an eyebrow slightly at the word sell rather than distribute, then visibly decided that the reasoning was sound and kept the eyebrow question to himself.
"As you wish, m’lord," he said, with a small bow. "It will be done."
"Good." Darion turned to the group at large. "The rest of you, those who aren’t working the fires, rest. You earned it today."
He turned and walked into the castle before anyone could respond to that.
His chambers were cold when he got back to them.
The fireplace at the great hall had burned down to embers while he was out and nobody had co to rebuild it, which he couldn’t particularly fault anyone for given that everyone with any energy had been either in the forest or in the courtyard all day.
There was a fireplace in his room too, one which he went on to set up. It took longer than it should have because he hadn’t grown up doing it, and eventually got sothing going that put actual heat into the room.
He sat on the edge of the tilted bed and did nothing for a while.
The day had been long in a way that wasn’t just ti.
It had started before sunrise with knights sharpening weapons in the courtyard and ended with him standing in front of a hundred and fifteen of them explaining what he was and watching them decide they were alright with it.
In between there had been a wolf, nine Bogoarts, four venomous undead knights, two deaths, a deer, and at least one mont where the entire plan had collapsed and the only thing between him and a very bad outco had been a half-flesh wolf that hadn’t existed an hour before the fight.
He thought about the four dead knights briefly, the four venomous ones now sitting in his inventory. He had six more space for undeads in his inventory and it was up to him to go to the graveyards and create them.
He suddenly heard a knock at the door.
The cook, the chubby woman whose na he still hadn’t learned, which he noted with little guilt, ca in with a bowl and set it on the small table near the fireplace.
She was slightly (just a tad bit) surprised that he had set it himself and hadn’t called for help.
She left and now Darion stared at the Deer soup. The broth dark and fragrant, actual chunks of at visible in it rather than suggestions of it.
It was truly good.
He ate the whole bowl sitting by the fireplace, looking at nothing in particular, and when he was done he set the bowl aside and sat back and thought about the graveyard.
Tomorrow he would go back.
Apart from having 6 undead knight slots, he also had five animal slots, though he knew it would be a hard ti filling that up.
Undead knights were easy to create because they were already his since he is Baron of Percvale. For the animals, he currently owned none apart from the horses at the stable.
He took off the armor, a sort of slow process, lay back on the tilted bed, and stared at the ceiling until his eyes closed.
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