Note: Thank you all so much for the amazing comments and reviews.
I truly appreciate every single one of them.
❤️
Well, it’s been a day since the challenge started, and I’m very happy to announce that…
Are you readdddyyyyy?!
Did we finally make it into TOP20?!
🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁
…
We didn’t even make it onto the rankings.
😿
I’m not really surprised, to be honest.
I kind of expected it.
But what does annoy me is seeing some novels that are complete garbage, obviously AI-generated, and somehow they’re ranked while we’re not.
HOW?!
I’ll probably never understand.
Alright, enough complaining.
Thank you all for the support!
❤️
Oh, and one more thing: based on “Cafreine” suggestion, I’ve changed Duke’s title to Grand Lord.
And as always, everyone is welcome to help make this story better.
Feel free to leave your suggestions, and I’ll take all of them into consideration.
Especially the ones that come with a lot of love.
If you know what I mean…
👀
wink wink 😉
……………….
At Erwin’s call, the two sellswords came jogging back.
Under his orders, they loaded the crates onto the wagon again and drove it back toward camp, same as if nothing at all had happened out there.
Both men were left thoroughly baffled by the whole business.
That evening, the two of them sat by the fire, talking low.
“You think…
whatever Erwin was doing out there this afternoon…
what was that really about?”
“Shh.
Keep your voice down.
I think…
I might’ve worked out what he’s playing at.”
“You’ve worked it out?”
“I have.
Unless I’m well off the mark, what’s sitting in those crates right now is probably the real thing.”
“Say that again?”
“Shh!
Why do you keep jumping like that?
I told you to keep it low!
Just let me walk you through it…”
“First off, we both saw the blood on that ground.
Fresh enough, no more than a day or two old, by the look of it.
And didn’t Erwin say he and his men ran into bandits already?
I’d wager…
that’s likely one of the very spots it happened.”
“Now think back before we left the inn.
Why have farmers fill crates with rocks and mud right out in the open, in front of half the common room?
Who in the seven kingdoms hauls crates of dirt all the way to King’s Landing for no reason?”
“And then, sun still high in the sky, he rushes us to camp early.
Drags the two of us off quiet-like into the trees, has us dump every last bit of dirt out of those crates, won’t let us so much as look while he does whatever he does.
Then we carry the crates back to the wagon, heavier than before.”
“You really think a man does all that just to pass the time?
Unless he dumped the dirt and packed something else back in its place.
So tell me, does it make sense to you now, what’s really sitting in those crates?”
The first sellsword wore the look of a man who’d solved the whole riddle himself, laying out his theory piece by piece.
The second one’s face lit up all at once.
“I’ve got it!”
“That spot was where he’d buried his treasure before!
When the bandits jumped him and his men, in all that chaos he must have buried a few chests of it right there!”
The first man looked at him the way a teacher looks at a slow student who’s finally caught up.
“Not bad.
You’ve got more sense than I gave you credit for.”
“He made a whole show of hiring men at that inn, told everyone he meant to wipe out the bandit gang, then made an even bigger show of filling crates with rocks.
All of it’s smoke.
That inn sees every sort passing through, day and night.
A gang that’s held that stretch of the kingswood this long is bound to have an eye or two planted somewhere nearby.”
“Whatever he’s done gets carried straight back to that gang through whoever’s watching.
Once the bandits hear we’ve got men enough, and those crates are nothing but rocks and dirt, they’ll lose interest in us fast.
That’s how the real gold makes it to King’s Landing without a scratch on it.”
The second sellsword let out a low whistle.
“So that’s the shape of it.
These lords really do think in circles, don’t they.
Makes you wonder how many gold dragons are sitting in those crates, heavy as they were.”
The first man frowned at him.
“Why’s that any concern of yours?
What’s in those crates has nothing to do with either of us.
We’re sellswords.
We do the job, we take the coin, and that’s the end of it.”
“Just wondering, is all…”
“Enough wondering.
Finish eating.
We’ve a watch to walk before this night’s through, and I’d rather not find out the hard way what’s out there.”
…
They’d kept their voices low, but a farmer close by, feigning sleep, had caught every word of it clean.
Deep in the night, once the camp had gone quiet, that same farmer slipped past the watch without being seen and crept into the trees.
After some searching, he found the spot where Erwin had dug, and there in the pit, catching the moonlight, sat a single gold coin.
A gold dragon?
He snatched it up, grinning, turned it over in the moonlight, bit down on it to be sure, and once he’d satisfied himself it was real gold, his face split into a wide, greedy smile.
“Crafty little lordling.
Nearly had me fooled.”
The farmer wore the look of a man well pleased with himself.
He was, in truth, the eyes the bandit gang kept planted near the riverside inn.
Most days he lived as an honest farmer.
But whenever some fat lamb passed through near the inn, he’d send word to the gang holed up nearby, and take his cut once they’d stripped the poor traveler bare, enough to keep himself drunk and comfortable for a few days more.
When Erwin sent Willem out recruiting hands, the farmer had put himself forward eagerly, and slipped right in among the rest.
Now, turning the coin over in his fingers, noticeably heavier and finer than any ordinary gold dragon he’d ever handled, his grin only widened.
If those crates held even a fraction more of coin like this, he and the rest of the gang would be living better than they’d ever dreamed from here on out.
With that thought, he untied the small birdcage hanging at his belt and opened it, letting the bird inside fly free.
It would find its own way home, straight back to the bandits’ den, and let them know a fat lamb was passing through below.
The farmer crept back to camp after that, satisfied, the coin held tight in his fist, and slept easy the rest of the night.
Not one soul in that camp had any idea what had just happened.
Which suited Erwin fine, because every part of it had gone exactly as he’d planned.
He’d killed those three bandits in the trees nearby not two days before.
Dropped into this world with no history to his name and no way to explain himself, but with a pack full of millions in gold, alone with no household of his own, he’d needed some story that would hold up to scrutiny.
So he’d built one.
A foreign lord, robbed and set upon by bandits after making landfall, forced to bury what treasure he had left, now hiring sellswords to see him safely on to King’s Landing.
And while he was at it, why not run a bit of entrapment on the side, draw the local bandits out for a fight, and pick up whatever experience came of it.
Of course, Erwin had no intention of actually filling those crates with his own gold.
If the bandits came at him harder than expected and the whole thing went sideways, losing chests of real coin on top of everything else would sting far worse than losing nothing at all.
So after turning it over a while, he’d landed on this scheme instead, half bait and half nothing at all.
If it drew the bandits out and earned him some experience for the trouble, all the better.
And if he’d guessed wrong, if the gang had no eyes planted at that inn after all, he’d still end up hauling his crates of “treasure” into King’s Landing without a hitch either way.
Either road led to the same place.
His cover as a foreign lord would hold.
…
Elsewhere, in a cave dug into a hillside deep in the kingswood, a bandit lieutenant watched the bird come home and pulled a short length of straw from its leg.
His face lit up, and he hurried deeper into the cave.
He found the gang’s true leader soon enough, a rough, thick-shouldered man with one eye.
The one-eyed man took the straw from him, held it up against a copper star, measuring its length, then burst out laughing.
“Only five guards on him?
And gold besides?
Good.
Everyone eats well come morning.
We’ve work to do.”
The straw was the code the gang had worked out with their man at the inn.
Its length told them how much gold, and how many guards stood between them and it.
Most of the gang couldn’t read a word, so this was the only message they trusted.
One of the men nearby, cup in hand, spoke up.
“When I rode hard out of that inn this morning, though, I saw with my own eyes those crates full of nothing but rock and mud.
And they split their men in two before they left, wagons up front, a dozen-odd armed sellswords trailing well behind.
Looks to me like that’s meant for us.”
The one-eyed man only shook his head, unbothered, wearing the look of a man already three steps ahead.
“You think that escaped me?
But everything about that lordling’s been off from the start.
Contradicts itself at every turn.”
“If he truly meant that show for us, he’d never have filled those crates with rock where half the room could see it.
He’d have let a glint of real coin show through instead, that’s how you actually draw a man in.
Doing it the way he did only made me want to look closer.”
“And now, with what our man’s sent us, I’m sure of it.
What he really wants is to get that gold to King’s Landing in one piece, quiet as he can manage.”
“Splitting his men the way he has only makes this easier on us.
Tomorrow, everyone rides.
Thirty-odd men against five guards, and surprise on our side besides.
We’ll be through them before they know what’s hit them.”
“Quick and clean, before those other sellswords ever catch us up.”
“This one’s ours to take.”