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"Rumors have already begun to spread, Mistress," Thane said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his ankles in front of him. "Some rumors say that you’ve brought men from the High Fen because you intend to submit the Vale of Mists to the rule of High Fen City. Others wonder if you’re about to take friend Savis as your husband to gain the support of High Lord Hamdi’s progeny in fighting against the Lothians. "

The first rumor Thane mentioned drew a handful of scoffs from people who knew Nyrielle well, especially people like Heila, who had seen the way Lady Nyrielle interacted with High Lady Erna.

Some of them could envision the serpentine High Lady offering up her domain to her teacher, but no one could imagine things flowing the other way.

When Thane mentioned the second rumor, however, the entire room broke into laughter, though Savis adopted a detached posture, as if the idea of a betrothal between himself and Nyrielle was too ridiculous to acknowledge enough to laugh at.

"Those are tame rumors compared to the ones I’ve heard, Sir Thane," Marshal Jakob said from the far end of the table, interrupting the moment of levity with a serious tone and a worried expression on his weathered face.

The aging Marshal from the Horned Clan had presided over the villages across the Vale for more than twenty years at this point and there wasn’t a village elder, wise woman or prominent figure in the entire Vale that he hadn’t spoken to within the past ten days since Lady Nyrielle returned to the Vale of Mists at the head of a vast army.

Perhaps more importantly, as the Marshal of the Vale, Jakob was responsible for keeping the peace within the Vale.

Normally, that involved mediating in instances of minor disputes and arranging a few strong men to watch over ale houses late at night in case things got out of hand, but lately, with so many strangers mixing together with the natives, his constables had been strained to their limits trying to keep minor conflicts from turning to racaous brawls.

"We’ve taken in thousands of refugees from the outlying villages," the old man pointed out, tugging at his snow-white beard as he began to make his point. "We were able to endure through the summer without hardship, and thanks to Sir Ollie, the village of Refuge has begun to sustain itself."

"While some people settled in the castle town, the ones who have are the ones who are looking to be around others, to ply their trades and open shops of their own. They don’t create much trouble.

Still, whether it’s the village of Refuge or the newcomers in the castle town, half of the food they consume needs to be gathered from other villages. "

"We’re working as fast as we can to solve this problem, Lady Nyrielle," Ollie said awkwardly, feeling compelled to speak up on behalf of his villagers.

"Some crops take longer to be ready, and it was already summer by the time we began to plant our fields.

Next year, the crops will be more abundant, and the herds of goats and sheep will be larger too.

We just need to make it to the next harvest in order to stand on our own. "

From his seat across the table, Thane smiled with obvious pride in his young pupil. In the beginning, Thane might have given him more specific directions and advice to guide the young man in managing the crisis.

He’d also made men like Marshal Jakob available to Ollie in order to help with much of the planning that resulted in the harvests the young knight had mentioned.

Still, it was no exaggeration to say that Ollie himself had made many of the critical decisions that allowed the village to be much more successful than even experienced leaders like Jakob had believed would be possible.

"That may be true, Sir Ollie," the aging Marshal acknowledged. "And many of the newcomers were able to bring enough of the necessities for living that we’ve been able to fill the gaps without anyone suffering too much hardship, but..."

"But?" Nyrielle asked, raising a slender brow at the old man who knew the people of the Vale almost as well as she did, if not better.

If he was worried enough about the people of the vale that he was speaking up now, then the cracks caused by the recent influx of people must be large enough to pose a significant risk.

"What rumors have formed about the refugees that concern you, Old Goat?" Nyrielle asked, using the term of endearment she’d applied to the Marshal ever since his beard turned white.

"They say that this will be the last war against the Lothians," Marshal Jakob said directly.

"They say that we cannot feed everyone who has come here, and all the extra mouths that have come with the army will only make the winter leaner.

The people are worried that the winter will be too hard, my lady," the old man said.

Around the table, several people nodded, unsurprised at the rumors that had circulated.

Both Nyrielle and Ashlynn had worked hard to compensate for the impact of bringing along such a large influx of people and many of the wagons that followed the army were loaded with everything from grains and preserved meat to sugar and spices that would let people find more than just subsistence in the meals they ate through the cold winter months.

Still, neither Nyrielle or Ashlynn had been aware that Owain Lothian or Liam Dunn would go on a rampage through the outlying villages, sending thousands more people into the Vale of Mists to find safety from the human’s latest wave of aggression.

Now that the refugees were here along with the army, the concerns Jakob brought up weren’t unfounded.

"If it were just rumors about running out of food, it would be bad enough, my Lady," the horned Marshal continued. "But people who can rub two ideas together often ignite the worst sparks. Some people think that you’re not worried about the food shortages because they haven’t seen anything being done about it. They say that once spring comes and the winter snows melt, everyone will be forced to fight to the last man, woman and child... and that you’ll sacrifice the weak that you cannot feed in order to preserve the lives of the army in the hopes of claiming victory. "

"It’s not all that bad, is it?" Heila asked from beside Ashlynn.

"Surely the people understand how hard Lady Nyrielle worked to recruit an army just to keep the people of the Vale safe from the Lothians. And Lady Ashlynn brought in so many people to help build up the Vale... they can’t think we mean to give up after all this work and sacrifice them to the Lothians, can they? "

"That’s just it, Lady Heila," Marshal Jacob said grimly.

"When they see the strangers tearing up the ground to build new roads and buildings, some of them see new neighbors and they welcome them with open arms. But others worry that the people coming from across the mountains are more skilled than they are.

.. and they think that Lady Ashlynn is bringing them here to replace them. "

The picture that Marshal Jakob painted was grim, filled with anxiety about the war to come and uncertainty about whether or not Nyrielle truly cared for her people when it seemed like she’d brought in warriors that were stronger, engineers who were smarter, and sorcerers who were far more powerful than anyone who had grown up inside the Vale in the past century.

"The worst rumors are always the ones that contain a kernel of truth," Ashlynn said, giving Nyrielle’s hand a comforting squeeze. "The people are right to think that we’re preparing for our final war against the Lothians," she said.

"But if they think that we’ll need to sacrifice the common people to bring the March under our control," Ashlynn continued, her voice growing dark as her emerald eyes grew cold. For a moment, her chest grew tight with the remembered sensation of sodden earth piling atop her as Owain’s knights tried to bury the person who had slowly transformed herself into the greatest threat the march had ever faced.

Sensing the dark mood settling over her lover, Nyrille reached out under the table, placing a slender hand on Ashlynn’s thigh and giving her a gentle squeeze to remind her lover that whatever she felt, she wasn’t alone, and that she would never have to face her enemies without the help and the support of the people who loved her the most.

"Thank you," Ashlynn mouthed softly to Nyrielle as she drew a deep breath to recollect herself before she continued speaking in a fiercely determined tone. "If our people think we’ll need to sacrifice the common folk just to gain a chance of victory in the war to come, I’m afraid they’ve underestimated the strength we’ve brought back to the Vale and just how vulnerable the Lothians are to our plans," she said, nodding at each member of her coven in turn.

Just the fact that the Vale of Mists had gained four powerful witches, plus the support of Hauke, who was still a powerful sorcerer even without a seed of witchcraft, and Talauia, who wouldn’t hesitate to join in battles even if it wasn’t appropriate for her to join the war council that planned them already added a kind of strength that the Vale of Mists had never hoped to wield against the Lothians before.

When you added that to the powerful army Nyrielle recruited, along with everything else that they planned.

... Ashlynn and Nyrielle had already begun to plan for the war they would have to fight after they defeated the Lothians, when the Church began to launch its crusade.

But while the two of them had already started to look at the next threat, the people around them were still very much concerned with the threat directly in front of them.

"My darling and I have spoken extensively about how we intend to use the power we’ve brought back from the lands across the mountains," Nyrielle said.

"For years, I’ve cared little for the world beyond our borders.

So long as we could protect the lands we still held and the people who lived there, I was content. "

"But now that Ashlynn has joined us, I am no longer able to remain as impassive as I once was," the powerful vampire added with a predatory gleam in her eyes that had only rarely been seen by those who had grown up seeing only the impassive mask her face had worn for so many years.

"So this time, instead of defending our borders, we will bring the war to the Lothians and their vassals. And we will not wait for the snows to melt in the spring... Our war will begin as soon as the festival ends!"