Chapter 96: The Banquet

Leo had not yet grasped the reach of Uliyan’s connections, because the moment he stepped through the door, he was greeted with a stern dressing-down.

The steward of the Petukhov household assumed that Leo and Ivan were Uliyan’s personal guards, and assigned them to the servants’ quarters, where they were packed together with the other guests’ retainers on common bunks.

Fearing that these country bumpkins might offend some noble guest, the steward even came over to lecture them for a full ten minutes, as though he would have liked to lock their room and keep them confined there until the banquet was over.

One could hardly blame him. To make a show of status, Uliyan had dressed Leo and Ivan in the finest equipment Riverbend could offer: the full suit of iron armor left behind by Brother Lawrence, fit for an armed retainer.

It had to be said that Brother Lawrence knew how to make an impression. The gear of an armed retainer might not offer the highest protection, but it certainly looked formidable when worn.

Over the mail shirt they wore brand-new coarse cloth surcoats, hiding the sword cuts and rust beneath; the more conspicuous parts, such as the pauldrons and helms, had been freshly polished and waxed.

Standing six feet tall, with muscles hardened by long training, Leo and Ivan looked every inch like elite heavy infantry when they took their place behind Uliyan.

Since their official role was indeed to serve as his guards, they felt no particular burden over it.

Trailing behind Uliyan, the two of them kept glancing about like thieves, their eyes darting here and there.

Leo was a little better; having lived two lives, he was steadier by nature.

Ivan, a country boy from the most remote mountain village in the northern frontier, could be said to have seen absolutely nothing of the world.

He thought a common bunkhouse was the finest guest room imaginable, and the soft cotton quilts and feather-filled pillows were luxuries he had never even heard of.

He touched everything in sight, and was only a breath away from reaching out to feel the backsides of the other guards.

Those girls dressed in black gowns and white stockings, with white lace collars and all manner of bright finery, whom Ivan had taken for noble ladies, turned out to be maids.

The coarse jackets worn by the manor’s footmen did not even have a single patch on them.

They even wore protective sleeves while working; every one of them was a polished little fellow.

Ivan would not have dared dress so finely even for the New Year.

Rigolav’s estate lay south of the city of Isenpol, less than five miles from the south gate. It stood on level ground by the river, modest in size, with only a small output of fruit used for brewing wine.

This was a Petukhov family property, mainly used for receiving guests and hosting banquets.

Their four knightly estates were all farther from Isenpol, and each was ten times larger than this manor.

There were many such small estates around Isenpol. After all, most remote knightly holdings were little more than villages of a few hundred people, utterly incapable of satisfying a noble’s appetite for pleasure, while the houses within the city were hardly suitable for social calls and lavish feasting.

The Petukhov family was a famed military house in Isenpol, and the present head of the family, Rigolav, was especially renowned for his martial achievements. He was one of the five banner knights of Isenpol.

In the empire, a banner knight was not merely a rank of nobility, but also a military title, signifying command authority on the battlefield.

If war broke out in Isenpol, the lords of the knightly estates would gather, and the army’s commander would be chosen only from among Rigolav and the other four banner knights.

In the western lands, they would be the captains under Burke, men of general rank.

The Count of Frelov’s domain tightly controlled the World Tree Road, the northern frontier’s vital artery over land. Though its military strength ranked only in the middle among the seven northern counties, centuries of careful rule had earned it the loyalty of thirty-five banner knights and more than two hundred corner-banner knights.

That did not even include the family knights trained by House Frelov itself, or the landless knights with no fief of their own.

In the event of all-out war, the county could mobilize several hundred knights, more than ten thousand elite lord’s troops, and twice that number in conscript militia.

In the past two decades, the greatest war fought by House Frelov had been against the eastern House of Beboas, over control of the upper reaches of the Anzeno River.

The Beboas army marched upstream, while the Frelov forces moved south along the waterway, and both sides enjoyed excellent lines of communication. As a result, they were able to assemble more than half the forces of their respective territories with ease, a rarity among the other northern counties.

In the other counties, the lands were too vast and the roads too poor; often even a month after war had begun, they still could not gather half their troops.

That time, both sides assembled armies of more than ten thousand men and clashed along the banks of the Anzeno River, dozens of miles downstream from Isenpol, until the river ran red with blood.

In the end, the war ended in victory for House Frelov.

This was also why Isenpol, and even Riverbend, lay on the south bank of the Anzeno River yet still belonged to the County of Frelov.

Because the people on the south bank could not win.

At present, nearly half of the County of Frelov’s forces were gathered in the northern military stronghold of Valanger to block the advance of the orcs.

According to the traditions of the County of Frelov, if the fighting crossed Valanger and entered within five hundred miles of Isenpol, then the vassal knights of Isenpol would also have to answer the call to war and assemble their troops to march north.

For the warlike northerners, this was hardly an ordeal at all.

Even now, many of Isenpol’s knights could no longer suppress their hunger for battle, and had already ridden north with their men to join the war.

During this period, the nobility of Isenpol held banquets with unusual frequency. Some were to send off the knights heading north to fight, while others were to discuss the direction of the campaign and the increasingly severe problem of refugees.

The refugee settlement outside Isenpol had already swollen to more than ten thousand people. Rising grain prices, worsening public order, and outbreaks of disease were no trivial matters.

Uliyan, as a lord of an outpost territory, had not yet been formally recognized as a knight.

According to the frontier laws and northern custom, Uliyan would need to bring his outpost domain to self-sufficiency, pay the minimum tax for three full years, and be able to levy soldiers and serve two years in knightly military duty before his status as an outpost knight could be certified.

Rigolav’s invitation to the banquet, allowing him to meet some of Isenpol’s traditional nobility and begin to merge into upper society ahead of time, was also a form of support.

The dinner hosted by the Petukhov family was held on the following day. Aside from distant guests like Uliyan, who had arrived a day early, most of the invitees came one after another around noon.

As guards, Leo and Ivan could not openly take part in the banquet, and could only hide in a corner and watch from afar.

Mixed in with the other retainers, Leo pointed out the scene to Ivan and the rest.

One luxurious carriage after another, each bearing a noble crest, rolled into the estate carrying lords, ladies, and young masters and misses.

Those women, dressed in layer upon layer of elaborate clothing, yet with only a sheer gauze garment above the chest, their nipples colored with rouge and their appearance rich with seductive splendor, were the noble ladies.

Those wearing comparatively simple long dresses, cinched in leather bodices, and crowned with fresh flowers, were the young misses.

As for the male nobles, young and old alike, each wore a knightly sword to display his valor.