With the meeting with the village council over we quickly left the great hall to allow the servants to make it ready for dinner and went our separate ways. I went to the stables, saddled my horse and took it for a ride in the direction of South Hinatel and returned long before the setting of the sun over an hour later. After dinner, I headed to the map room to have a look at the maps of the local area focusing on the areas bordering the lands of Eugene Haas to look at both his possible avenues of attack and ours in return.
A direct attack on Membe itself was one possibility but unless he was able to cross someone else’s territory it was unlikely since there was only one real point along his border with us where he and his men could easily cross the Presbur River and it was guarded night and day by a small garrison at Hanhold Tower. Other than it and the bridge at Hinatel there were only two points within the barony where you could easily cross it. Not that that would prevent him from seizing all the barony on the other side of the river
No, the attack was much more likely to come from Antwa. There was a river crossing point within it and once he had all his men across it, he could attack Hasford at any point along the border. Before or after he had seized Wainthe and or Northern Hasford. If they had fallen, he could launch feint attacks at any or all of the four crossing points and if not, only the Hanhold one. He’d perhaps be splitting up his men to thin, but he could use the levy for the feints while using his men and any mercenaries he manages to hire for the Antwa attack.
We could just as easily attack Antwa from either northern or southern Hasford and then launch an attack on the lordship of Elmsey from both Antwa and Wainthe, after which we attack Dagleana itself. There doesn’t seem any point to doing that since Antwa is separated from the rest of Eugene’s barony by a thin strip of land easily guarded. It would best to forget about Antwa until everywhere else is taken care of and attack Elmsey first.
Maybe we should concentrate on armies instead of land so perhaps the best bet is to draw Eugene into one large decisive engagement and hope we win it. Very risky I know and it would only really work if we had more and better quality men than him and that is not necessarily going to be the case.
Well, whatever we plan to do it’s going to be messy and best left until we have a better idea of the force we will be facing and what we will be bringing to the table.
After looking over the maps for close to two hours without coming up with any sort of game-changing inspiration it was time for bed. Before going to sleep that night I again had a look at the mirror book and found he had left a message on it and not any simple one either.
It was as follows:
‘Amondo I have reached a decision on the matter you raised previously and provided you can prove to my satisfaction that you have the item in question I am willing to work with you. I do however require that proof before the end of the year or the deal is over. As a show of faith, I am willing to inform you of a certain actions people will shortly be undertaking on Eugene behalf. For me to do so will require you to provide details as to how my satisfaction can be obtained, the sooner the better for the show of faith is time-sensitive.’
After reading the message the beginning of a plan as to how he could provide Robin Wodeh with the proof he required while at the same time keeping it from him if he tried to pull a double-cross.
‘Your terms are acceptable as to proof is there a third party you trust.’
I had to wait close to ten minutes before he sent a return message.
‘There is.’
‘Then we can make arrangements for them to view the book in a secret location around about the end of Ectebur if I can be assured that you are elsewhere.’
‘That seems reasonable but I am currently unsure as to how to go about it especially without a specific date in Ectebur, hopefully, closer to the time things will become clearer.’
‘Same here’
‘So details to be worked out at a later date but agreed in principle.’
‘Agreed in principle.’
‘With that in mind here is my show of faith, bandits have been employed through a third party by Eugene to launch attacks in the lordship of Kincarn from a base just inside Membe. They have been made to believe they are actually working for your widowed sister-in-law Nazma. They already have the base up and running and will be launching the first attack any day now but I don’t know exactly where the base is located. Eugene believes that if or rather when they are stopped this fact will lead to a worsening in your relationship with each other.
I tried telling him that your relationship with each other cannot get worse, but he believes that this isn’t the case and further that she is in a position to harm you and your rule of the barony. Clearly, since she gave birth to a daughter this is no longer the case, but he thinks otherwise and perhaps to a certain extent at least he may have a point.
I leave it up to you what to do with this information. Please do not contact me until you can provide more details as to the third-party viewing of the book’
With that, I closed the book and spent some time thinking about what I learnt from communicating with him. It took him long enough to provide me with an answer to my question but does that make it more or less likely that’s he is just stringing me along until he can get his hands on that book. Still no matter the case I cannot trust Robin even if he is currently acting in good faith, he could still turn on me at any time. Now what to do about those bandits.
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