Road to the Crown

"Good luck brothers. If we succeed, the entire south of the province will be in our hands!"

Shaking hands with Jan and Kalen respectively, I watched as they jumped on their horses and rode down to the west, while I stood on the empty road with only Al and Elia to my side. With only two of my men departing with my newly acquired companions to the Tarnow, just in order to pass the message from me to my other people stationed there, the three of us was now left to our devices.

"Are you really sure about that? Is defeating Peter to such a degree worth the risk of losing Tarnow?"

Turning my head around, I looked at Al, in his full noble suit. Despite being on the poor side of the nobility, he was capable of wearing a rather expensive hauberk on top of his usual kontus, but instead of a tunic, he was already dressed in gambison. With how only the three of us were going to go on the journey to the Sandomir, it was better to at least take care of the basic aspects of armour.

"We don't really have any other way. While I could gather all the troops I could from Tarnow and the nearby villages, not only would that force be slow, it's quality would also leave a lot to be asked for. Considering how that bastard managed to organise a unit hundred men strong in such short amount of time, I'm worried that instead of simple commoners, they all belong to the group he is raiding the Tatar lands with."

While in the future times, the difference between a simple man armed with a gun and a professional soldier wasn't that great, in the current times, a single trained soldier could take on multiple untrained commoners with relative ease. Even without caring for the quality of weapons and armour, most of the troops that I could rally up would be usefull for as long as it would take them to fire their shoots before being cut down by those who would survive the salvo.

"I'm really sorry about that."

Joining the topic, Elia hung her head low on her shoulders, as if she was the one responsible for our current problem. While partially this was true, there was no reason to blame her for the reckless actions of some haughty warlord from the east.

"Don't let it bother you. Sooner or later we would have to deal with him anyway, so Peter making the move first is nothing else but a wake-up call for us."

Patting her lightly on her back, I turned back to my horse and jumped on top of its saddle. Grabbing the reins, I threw a quick glance to my companions, only to see them following my example.

After all, time wasn't waiting for anyone.

"Let's go!"

Hurrying our horses into a relatively fast pace, we followed the course of the small, dirt roads. In Commonwealth, most of the roads were going from west to east, with the travel vertical on the map mostly dependant on the many rivers connecting to the Dnieper and Vistula rivers. Thankfully, travelling in such a small group with all three of us riding on one horse while leading one behind us, allowed us to keep a pace way greater than what we could achieve while burdened with carriages.

Despite the distance that separated us from the Sandomir being around two to three times greater than how far Pilzno lied away from Tarnow, setting of rather early in the morning allowed me to hope that we could reach the city of Mielec, about halfway on the way. Considering how this was one of the other major cities in the province, albeit way is smaller and poorer than towns of Tarnow or even Pilzno, while there was no direct road leading from there to the Sandomir, with the relative proximity of the main branch of the Vistula river, as long as we could find a single barge travelling downstream, we could arrive at the gates right before their closing for the night!

"Speaking of which, why do you think that travelling to Sandomir will do us any good? It's not like Governor will pay any attention to yet another small conflict of the local nobility."

With how mundane and simply boring the travelling in this day and age was, we could kill the time only by talking. As such, it was only a matter of time before either of my companions would ask for the details of my plan.

"First thing first, don't escape in the way you will be chased. As soon as Peter arrives in Pilzno, he will learn how we ran to my home, and in the villages we passed through, they will only confirm his guess. That's why I asked Jan to hurry up on his way so that the militia could be alerted in time. Even if Governor won't mind a small scale conflict between nobility, Peter ought to know what would happen to him if he dared to attack the villages!"

First of all, the new king just started his rule, so all the major nobles were very interested in presenting their services in the best way possible. As brutal as stupid conflict sparking up just two weeks after the coronation was the sure way to bother the King and lessen the chances of the Governor to poach some privileges for himself.

Second of all, with the current tax system of Commonwealth, the taxes that my lands paid, were transferred directly to the Governor's coffers, who was in change responsible for paying its due part to the crown. If anything happened to the villages that provided Sandomir with the basic and greatest tax from my lands outside of the city of Tarnow itself, he was bound to react in some way, since it would be him who would lose the most.

And lastly, Peter would achieve simply nothing by raiding my lands! Raiding Pilzno in hopes of routing me and Elia there? Jumping into pursuit right after to do exactly the same on the road? Yeah, that was the simplest and easiest way to fulfil his dream of marrying Elia. Anything else, and he would turn his own ambition into a spark of a rebellion, that most of the nobles in the lands around would love to squash in order to claim his lands as recompensation!

"And about travelling to the Sandomir itself… We are not going there to ask the governor for help. We are riding there so that we could personally invite him to our wedding in Pilzno!"