Zero Crossing City and the Prefectural Governor

Zero Crossing City and the Prefectural Governor

"Ha ha ha ha, Ryan, come on, this is mare's milk specially shipped from the south. If it weren't so easy to preserve here in Northwind Province, you might not have gotten to drink it, ha ha ha."

Hatton eagerly poured snow-white mare's milk for Ryan while several pretty maids stood obediently nearby, holding iron kettles.

Ryan did not stand on ceremony in the face of Hatton's hospitality. After all, he had not eaten food like this in a long time.

What was more, ever since becoming a knight, his appetite had greatly increased. He could eat three to five times as much as an ordinary person.

Not only was the food better, but even the beds in Haton Baronial Territory were countless times softer than the hard wooden boards in Frozen Earth Territory. Ryan felt that, ever since crossing over, he had never slept in such a comfortable bed.

"Soon, I'll have this too."

Without the slightest attachment to the soft bed, Ryan pushed open the door and headed for the soldiers' training grounds.

There, Ryan saw the only knight in Haton Baronial Territory, Wyatt Blinn.

A knight with a surname. That was right—his ancestors had once been nobles, but the family had fallen into decline. Wyatt had become the Knight Commander of Haton Baronial Territory, likely hoping that Baron Hatton would one day grant him a fief and allow him to restore the glory of the Blinn Family.

However, Ryan felt that Wyatt's generation would have no such chance. With Baron Hatton being the way he was, merely keeping his Baronial Territory would already be enough to earn him a place in the family records.

Expect him to strive for greatness?

Ryan glanced at the maids coming and going in the distance and shook his head.

"Knight White, do you know how many soldiers Watt Knightdom has?"

"Greetings, Baron Ryan." Knight White respectfully gave a standard knight's salute. Ryan's current mild manner seemed to leave him somewhat flattered.

He glanced at Brandt, who stood behind Ryan without leaving his side, then said,

"Knight Walter has a total of one hundred soldiers. Only twenty of them are Apprentice Knights; the rest are merely trained militia."

Ryan nodded, then asked again,

"What about slaves?"

He knew very well that the number of soldiers these lords could raise was not as simple as it appeared on the surface.

Whenever war broke out, the lords would drag slaves onto the battlefield. Once the war ended, the surviving slaves would return to the mines or the fields.

In short, it was just a bunch of weaklings pecking at one another.

Of the hundred men White had mentioned, Ryan could guess that aside from the twenty Apprentice Knights, the remaining eighty militiamen were probably only part-time soldiers.

"One hundred men who can fight." Ryan looked around. Haton Baronial Territory was in much better shape than Watt Knightdom, thanks to Baron Hatton having a good father.

"Haton Baronial Territory has a total of one hundred and twenty soldiers, all fully armored. Thirty of them are Apprentice Knights." White's tone carried a trace of pride as he spoke, because this was all his doing.

Ryan did not know what he had to be proud of. He was clearly stronger, yet he had been repeatedly outmaneuvered by Knight Walter.

"Go wake Baron Hatton. It's time for us to set off."

After quite a while, Baron Hatton finally appeared before Ryan, yawning.

The two barons walked at the front. Soon, a grand procession of five to six hundred people swaggered toward the center of the conflict between Baron Hatton and Knight Walter.

A small iron mine. Though it was only a small mine, it had still made both the Baronial Territory and the Knightdom a fortune.

Riding a Highland Warhorse from the south, Ryan could not help enviously stroking its mane.

Could a knight without a mount still be called a knight? Could a noble without a mount still be called a noble?

Baron Hatton might lack everything else, but he did not lack the ability to read people's expressions. That was a basic skill for every noble.

He proudly patted the brown warhorse beneath him and said,

"Ryan, Zero Crossing City, where Viscount Miles resides, receives hundreds of Highland Warhorses from the south every spring. If you're interested, you can have a servant wait for them then."

"But every Highland Warhorse is worth quite a lot. A few hundred Gold Coins won't be enough."

To put it bluntly, Hatton simply could not resist showing off his wealth. Hearing this, Ryan could not help clicking his tongue.

A single warhorse could sell for several hundred Gold Coins in Northwind Province. Distance really could create wealth.

According to his memories, an adult warhorse in the southern Empire should cost somewhere between several dozen Gold Coins and one hundred Gold Coins. Yet by the time it reached the Empire's borderlands, its price had increased tenfold.

However, as far as he knew, Northwind Province indeed had nowhere that bred horses, even though it possessed a stretch of plains.

It was still the same problem: it was too cold.

Distance and cold made warhorses expensive.

Precisely because they were so expensive, even Haton Baronial Territory had only five.

Naturally, the two barons, Ryan and Hatton, could not travel on foot. Besides them, there were Knight White and Baron Hatton's eldest son, Lennon Hatton.

Lennon Hatton was only one or two years younger than Ryan, but a noble's education made him appear mature. Thus, when he looked at Ryan, his eyes revealed envy.

There was still a gap between the heir to a Baronial Territory and an actual baron, especially when both of them looked like teenagers.

The last warhorse was beneath Brandt. Among them, this Guardian Knight was the one most reluctant to let go of the horse, and even more strangely, the warhorse beneath him seemed to particularly enjoy Brandt's caresses.

Seeing this, Hatton burst into laughter. "Ryan, it seems you need to prepare an excellent mount for your knight!"

Ryan did not refute him. Instead, he began asking about Zero Crossing City.

He knew only that it was the closest city to Frozen Earth Territory and Haton Baronial Territory.

Viscount Miles was the owner of that city and also the prefectural governor of Zero Crossing Prefecture, one of Northwind Province's seven prefectures.

Viscount Miles's Viscount's Territory spread outward from that city as its center. Throughout Zero Crossing Prefecture, aside from Viscount Miles, there was another viscount, seventeen or eighteen Baronial Territories of varying sizes, and roughly the same number of Knightdoms.

The Empire had a very simple administrative structure from top to bottom: Empire—province—prefecture—village and town. In the southern Empire, nearly every place, even villages and towns, was ruled by nobles. Besides these administrative divisions, there were also territories belonging exclusively to nobles themselves.

For example, the Empire's four grand dukes all lived in their own duchies. Some counts, and even viscounts, were the same.

These noble territories did not belong to the Empire's administrative divisions. They were like states within a state, and without exception, they all shared one thing in common.

That was the confidence brought by strength.

Take Viscount Miles, for instance. If a prefecture-level city like Zero Crossing City existed within his territory, he could draw taxes from the city every year.

This was also a major source of income for the Miles Family. That viscount valued the city greatly.

Some nobles desperately wanted to occupy such a city, so their families would have a sufficient source of income. Other nobles, because of their own strength, looked down on these cities that belonged both to them and to the Empire.

Thinking of this, Ryan could not help but speculate inwardly.

I wonder whether Viscount Dragoon in Zero Crossing Prefecture is the former or the latter?