Chapter 75

King Oswald’s death was supposed to mark the end of a dark era according to the kingdom’s nobles and King Aethelbrande himself. But that wasn’t how it played out. Before his death, King Oswald ensured his projects would continue even without him by depositing all the funds for his projects into escrow with the Zenastra Empire. It was like he predicted his own death and he wanted to do everything he could to make sure his projects were completed. 

With the money in the empire’s grasp, King Aethelbrande and his supporters couldn’t do anything to stop the projects that were underway. The Basteb King’s Road had already been completed, Mountain’s Toil was running and thriving, and various villages were sprouting up all across the peninsula, including Abermock. King Aethelbrande tried sending tax collectors into the peninsula to rescind the three year tax free period but all of them mysteriously vanished the moment they set foot on the peninsula. 

It seemed many King Oswald loyalists moved to the peninsula side of Mountain’s Toil once the town was completed and even more moved there following his death. Eventually, King Aethelbrande decided it was too much of a headache and opted to forget about the existence of the entire peninsula. He appointed one of his followers as the mayor of the continent side of the town and then wiped his hands clean of it. 

The story of King Oswald would have likely ended there with his scant loyalists secretly seething and lamenting over his death but that’s when Monoclais stepped in with his biographical inquiry, The Foolish Sage. Monoclais is a philosopher, an author, and a self proclaimed lifetime scholar as stated in the book’s author introduction. He was awarded the title of Wise by the Church of the Inextinguishable Light for his dissertation, On the Beneficial Effects of Good Religions on Society as a Whole. Though he was denounced by the Temple of the Scarlet Tide for blaspheming their religion by insinuating it was an evil religion. He was always looking for new subjects to write about and he said the one thing that really drew his attention and sent him following the rabbit hole that was King Oswald was the thriving Basteb peninsula. 

Even without the kingdom’s support, the peninsula quickly turned into one of the continent’s greatest lumber exporters. Not only did the peninsula produce enough to supply the whole kingdom with its lumber and firewood needs, but it produced enough that the Nasaar Kingdom could now export those goods. In the five years since the peninsula was opened up, they had nearly earned back a fifth of the cost that went into developing the peninsula including the tunnel and the town. 

Taking into account the kingdom didn’t collect taxes from the peninsula for the first three years, that’s a miraculous feat. Monoclais suspected that in another five years, once they reached the peak of their development, they’d likely earn back the full development cost and with plenty leftover. Once they started operating and exporting their goods to the kingdom’s markets, they increased the kingdom’s annual gross domestic product by 10% which is normally unthinkable. But the Loran Mercantile Alliance had such a powerful stranglehold over the continental lumber market for such a long time that when a new producer entered the market, countries tripped over themselves trying to make trade agreements with the Nasaar Kingdom. Once again, King Oswald displayed his full excellence for the kingdom to see even after his death. 

At that point in time, Monoclais spent the next three years researching everything he could find regarding King Oswald and once his writing was fully compiled, he released what many consider to be his magnum opus, The Foolish Sage. This is information I heard from Derriv when he found out I was reading the book, but it turns out the book wasn’t very popular when it was first released. It was a rather dry, incredibly technical work about an unpopular king who had died nearly a decade ago which didn’t really appeal much to a wide audience. However, King Oswald’s die hard followers made sure to spread the text to as many people as they could and eventually it caught on. 

The nobles who were unhappy with King Aethelbrande’s rule threw their weight behind propagating the inquiry and the book was eventually translated from Formal to Informal. Once tens of thousands of Informal copies of the book flooded the streets across the kingdom, the masses went wild. Well, the ones who could read anyways. From their perspective, King Oswald was the people’s king and he was assassinated for making the lives of the common blooded better. That wasn’t really what happened at all but propaganda is propaganda for a reason. 

With such a vocal uprising forming in his kingdom, King Aethelbrande attempted to quell his deceased father’s movement before it got too far by ordering the book to be banned but he would quickly learn it was already too late. The Church of the Inextinguishable Light would jump on the bandwagon and award King Oswald the postmortem title of Benevolent, cementing his legacy and resurrecting his name. 

The movement had formed a faction to consolidate their power and they would pick up the moniker: the Followers of Oswald the Benevolent, or FOB for short. Seeing the tides changing in the Nasaar Kingdom, the adventurers’ guild would throw their support behind FOB as well which in turn signaled King Aethelbrande’s fall from grace. King Aethelbrande was hemorrhaging support left and right, and he was forced to publicly and formally apologize for besmirching his honorable father’s name which only further damaged his dwindling prestige and reputation. 

In a kingdom, the king should be the most powerful, influential, and paramount existence without exception. In spite of that, Aethelbrande became the first king in the continent’s history to be eclipsed in importance by a dead king and his steadfast followers. It was even by his own legitimate father by blood. What a shocking turn of events. 

But regardless, for the past 12 years since Monoclais the Wise released his masterpiece, the Nasaar Kingdom has stabilized itself while the undercurrents in the kingdom continue growing more severe. FOB gains more supporters by the day while King Aethelbrande’s power base remains stagnant on good days and diminishes on bad ones. This all came to a head when King Aethelbrande declared war on the Ribier Kingdom at the beginning of this year out of the blue. 

Just like his father did 20 years ago, our king plunged our kingdom into a war that nobody wanted and nobody expected. I can see why the public’s opinion of him is so low considering I have never heard a good thing about him. Out of all the people I’ve met thus far that were willing to talk about current events in the kingdom with me, not a single one of them talked positively about him. I wonder if being the target of all that spite, all that criticism is what it means to be a king though. Could I take it if I were him?

…

When I shut The Foolish Sage for what’s probably the final time, I crawled out from under the leather overhang above me that was keeping me from getting covered in snow. It’s the middle of December now and it only started snowing heavily a few days ago. Luckily we were already pretty close to Ocean’s Rest, though I think I should attribute it more to good travel planning than luck. The Wellock Company’s carriages have leather flaps that can be attached or detached depending on the weather conditions and they let me sit under one of their overhangs as I finished my book. There’s quite a few people around me sharing the same campfire, either starting to nod off or oiling their weapons. I pull up my hood until it completely covers my head before I walk back to my wagon. 

There’s something special about hearing my boots crunching the snow beneath me but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It might have to do with how I was brought up. Back on the farm, winters were hell for me. My thin linen clothes did nothing to stop the cold from freezing my body and I had to be careful of everything I did otherwise I’d lose a few fingers or toes. I couldn’t even spend most of my day in the barn being warmed up by the pigs because there was still work that had to be done and sometimes I’d be forced to venture into snowstorms just to make sure the main house had enough firewood. 

Every time I left the barn during winter was a chance I wouldn’t make it back. I guess what I’m feeling now that my life’s no longer in danger and my circumstances are wildly different from back then, is my appreciation for something which I used to dread. I like snow, I like it a lot actually. Now that I don’t have to be afraid of it anyways. 

When I get back to Candle’s designated resting area, I can tell people are starting to turn in for the night while others are waking up for their guard shift. One great thing about traveling with such a big group of people is there’s quite a bit of time in between when I’m needed on guard duty again. I think my last shift was one and a half weeks ago and my next one should be in a day or two but since we’ve reached our destination, I’ve lucked out. 

I don’t dislike guard duty per say but I can’t take Schon the day of my shift because I don’t know what will happen to me if someone tries to wake me up during my trip. I’ve just been staying awake until it’s time for my shift which doesn’t leave me much time for sleep but that’s just the tradeoff I have to make. Sometimes if my schedule is really bad, like if I’m on duty during dawn hours, I just won’t sleep that night. I mean, it’s better than the alternatives of sleeping without Schon or waking up in the middle of my Schon trip. It’s not too bad though with how few and far between my guard shifts were. 

But tonight I’m free to my own devices and with nothing else to do and everyone else asleep, I’m settling down for the night. When I get back to our wagon, I can see Wraine and Olin in their bedrolls, fast asleep. The girls should be asleep in the wagon right next to ours with Deriv watching over them and everyone else in Candle is either sleeping next to us or on guard duty. I’m pretty sure I saw Torban and Bafal earlier gearing up to go on guard duty. 

I’ve noticed Bafal’s mostly been learning things from his dad like driving horses, setting up camps, and a few survival skills. But no sword fighting from what I could see. I understand Bafal’s still young but I thought Torban would at least teach him enough to make sure he could defend himself but even Torban himself isn’t very keen on sword fighting. Maybe he just doesn’t want his son following the wrong path and I can’t really fault him for that. 

I slowly crawl into our wagon trying to make as little noise as I can. When I’m inside, I open up my leather pack and see my coin pouch sitting on top of everything. There’s 5 gold coins and 80 silver coins inside. The gold coins are from the Wellock Company’s wages for three months, minus the one the elephant snake extorted from me. The silver coins are from selling all our spoils in the town we passed by two weeks ago. 

Derriv went ahead and evenly split all the proceeds between the 30 odd members of Candle which turned out to be a surprising number of coins. It seems before we disrupted them, Millson and his group were busy boys. I don’t really have any particular plan for these coins but considering Wraine’s saving up to buy a rudimentary rank spell and most of those cost 50 gold, I’m holding off on spending too much but we’ll see. Digging through the rest of my things, I get my dose of Schon for the night and I let myself slowly drift off into the abyss as I can feel Death’s intimate arms wrapping themselves around me.