After Veylin finished speaking, the beach fell silent for a moment.
Then he changed tack.
"But all of this depends on one condition."
He paused. "Winning the war against the Sea Folk. Otherwise, every inch of land beneath our feet will be destroyed by the enemy."
Trading blood for seeds?
That wasn't out of the question... but the risk was rather high. Who knew how much grain that saline-alkali soil beneath the sea could produce?
At that moment, Baron Kru spoke up. He was fairly wealthy, but money did not necessarily buy a fief, so his attention lay elsewhere.
"My lord, what do the Sea Folk... have to do with the land you mentioned?"
Veylin looked at Diana, and the two exchanged a confirming glance.
"Here and now, Count Diana and I jointly propose an entirely new arrangement for cooperation."
"Any noble willing to send troops and dispatch knights under their command to help the Gray Marsh Fief resist the Sea Folk will find that their knights can earn more than generous payments in Gold Suns from me."
Veylin paused, sweeping his gaze over the conflicted faces before him, then cast out the true bait.
"After the war, I will personally grant every knight who earns military honors a knight's fief on the future 'newly reclaimed land' of the Gray Marsh Fief!"
A fief!
Every noble present, young or old, froze where they stood.
That was land their descendants could inherit in perpetuity!
The Duchy's age of expansion had long since ended. Sea Land had not expanded its territory on a large scale for many years.
No matter how many sons a noble family had, inheritance law dictated that the title and the vast majority of its land could only pass to the eldest son. For the second and third