"Us again?" Count Grant frowned. "We already have more battles than we can fight."
"This time is different." Duke Edmund swept a meaningful gaze over the gathering. "Once it's done, the land in the south will be ours to divide."
At those words, the reception hall fell briefly silent.
Then everyone began talking at once.
"Now that's a fine place!"
"A damn sight better than these freezing mountain backwaters of ours."
"Has His Majesty finally remembered to compensate us?"
"Ha! Compensate us? He's clearly making us his blade, so he can carve up those old bastards in the south."
"Well, I'm happy to be that blade!"
"Who could those useless southerners beat? We'll still have to do the heavy lifting."
"Then let's fight. As long as I get land, he can send me straight to the front."
Laughter, murmurs, and toasts gradually mingled.
Excitement swelled in the air, and even a few nobles who had seemed indifferent now had a gleam in their eyes.
Life on the Northern Frontier's land was too harsh.
The year-round task of gathering firewood and grain for winter alone could leave a barony struggling to breathe.
Every blizzard, every outbreak of disease among their livestock, every war-all were realities they had no choice but to face.
But the emperor had given his word: as long as they sent troops, as long as they won.
They could leave this snow-covered, frozen land and step into the south, where the sun blazed and fruit trees grew in groves.
What did that mean?
Lower costs for maintaining order, higher taxes, richer trade routes, a more valuable populace...
A fief they could truly pass down for three generations, giving their families another promising way to survive.
These nobles of the Northern Frontier were long accustomed to fighting through wind