Ascension Of The Elder

"It"s okay Lord Kyle they probably all joined the same mercenary company, found they all had the same name and became friends."

Ash reasoned as he could see the irritation on Kyle"s face. Hearing Ash Kyle felt that this was the most likely situation so he began to think about what questions he was going to ask.

"Actually we are brothers." The one on the right said making everyone look at them strangely while Ash"s eyebrow began to twitch.

"Brothers like sworn brothers or brothers in arms?" Susan volunteered her thoughts but she had a bad feeling to what the response was going to be.

"Nope same ma and pa we left our hometown together to seek our fortunes." The one in the middle responded this time while Susan he her head in her hands.

"So just to confirm your parents called three of their sons the same name." Kyle was trying to get his brain around the situation of these brothers.

"No I"m Daryl."

"And I"m Darryl."

"And last but not least I"m Daryll."

"OH G.o.d d.a.m.n IT THEY ARE EXACTLY THE SAME NAME!" Randall was getting close to snapping and everyone else just wanted this conversation to be complete.

"Not quite you need to emphasise the different parts as you say them I"m Daryl nice and simple Darryl you need to really stretch the arr got it?"

"Look I don"t mean to be rude but right now at this precise point in time I really don"t give a monkey"s a.s.s." With that Kyle projected 3 slave seals and forcefully applied them to the Daryl"s in front of him.

"What did you just do?" Daryl asked as he could feel something was different but he didn"t understand what was happening or rather he didn"t want to believe what had just happened.

"Simple gentlemen I"ve placed you all under a slave seal. Now you will answer my questions truthfully and fully, you need to give me as much information as you can understand?"

The three mercenaries who were now slaves could do nothing but nod their heads to their new lord. They regretted taking this contract but the offer was too good and the boss was nothing if not greedy.

"Good now tell me where does your mercenary group hail from?"

Kyle began with a simple question which would be easy to verify. Even though they were under the influence of the slave seal it was always best to ease people into these interrogations with simple questions to start with just to get their minds geared towards answering questions.

"Our group comes from our hometown, it"s a low level city a few cities to the east."

One of the Daryl"s responded as he knew there was no reason to resist. Mercenaries are the most pragmatic of soldiers and knowing they could do nothing about the situation they now found themselves in they could only respond truthfully.

"Good and now how did your group come to be in our city?"

"The boss got a black job request along with a lot of the other smaller merc bands around. When we were coming to the city we merged with a larger host but found out it wasn"t just mercs but bandits as well."

"What do you mean by a black job request?"

"They"re usually postings that don"t go through the union and are more like unofficial jobs. They usually are something to do with n.o.bles who are fighting each other. Gotta say though this is the biggest one we"ve been involved in."

"Oh really what do you mean by that?"

"Well your honour we had merc bands from all over, add in the bandits and we outnumber all the guards in the city."

"Interesting, do you happen to know who hired you and the others?"

"Didn"t know before we got here, but we were staging outside the city when some prat in a black cloak rocked up to talk to the bosses. He told them that they needed to enter the city in small groups and stay ready to act on the day of the harvest festival."

"Good we have a timeframe, now did you get the ident.i.ty of this man in the cloak?"

"Hold your horses I"m getting there, so when this poof was leaving a couple of us were told by the boss to follow him. It weren"t just us but a few of the other bands had men following. It were b.l.o.o.d.y hilarious, you had this pompous t.w.a.t swaggering back to the city with fifty men following and he didn"t even look back. When he got to the gate he took down his hood and demanded they let him through in the name of the Miles family and flashed some kinda badge."

"Good if the guards let him through like that it means they could confirm his ident.i.ty so these people have all been brought in by the Miles family probably using the resources they gained from their backer in the capital."

"Well sir what"ll happen to us now?"

Finally the Daryl"s wanted to know what was going to happen to them as they didn"t want to give up their lives like this at least not without a fight. Kyle looked at them and began to hatch a plot, looking towards his generals he felt the best way to deal with this situation was to turn the enemy"s resources against them.

"Faye, One I"m going to need you to work overtime for the next while. I want you to entrap, trick or straight up kidnap as many of the mercs as you can. We need to keep it quiet so you can use the Daryl"s to make a start with their group. Lady Sparrow I"m afraid we"ll need to use your facilities again to house these personages until I can lay a slave seal upon them. Ash these "new recruits" will be yours; I need you to train them as hard and as fast as possible. We don"t have long so I"m only aiming to weaken them and lessen their numbers. Tobias we are going to start inducting the general guards into the "death watch" I need you to identify good candidates for officer level. Does anyone have anything else they would like to bring to the table?"

Kyle looked at the members of the council and could see they were thinking, finally it was Maria who spoke up.

"The timing of the attack is going to be at the harvest festival. Do we have any idea of what time that will be?"

Everyone looked at the Daryl"s who looked uncomfortable. They didn"t truthfully know but they didn"t want to anger their new lord so Daryl 1 decided to bluff it. When he thought of this and decided to do it he suddenly felt pain shooting through him. It was as if a thousand needles were shooting through all of his muscles at the same time leaving him a twitching blubbering wreck.

"Daryl it isn"t a good idea to lie to me, if you don"t know the answer just tell me the truth. Oh and just so you know this doesn"t extend to other people so feel free to lie to the girl you may be dating."

Daryl was thankful for this little mercy and gradually the pain faded away only leaving him with the fear of it. Kyle was watching these men and decided to give them a boon as they would be the newest members of his force.

"Look I don"t know if you three are aware but in the next year or two the northern regions are going to be cut off from the capital, when that happens the army will not protect the cities only the garrisons present at that time will be left. We are preparing for that as well so if you let me know which city is your home town I will ensure it is protected."

The Daryl"s were shocked to hear what Kyle had said because the northern lands were a ma.s.sive swath of land and to let this are just fall didn"t make sense to them. However Kyle had no reason to lie to them due to the slave contract so they decided it would be best to believe in him at least for now. They looked at each other and could see the agreement in each other"s eyes. Finally it was Daryl who spoke up and let the gathered members know the name of their city.

"Our hometown is only small we don"t even have a standing garrison so I don"t know what resources we will be able to provide you but we would appreciate your a.s.sistance."

"No problem, anyway getting back to what we were discussing. The time of the attack will most likely be later at night probably somewhere between ten and twelve." Kyle stated his belief as he felt this was the most likely time for the enemy to strike.

"Yes if I was going to attack the n.o.ble families in the city this would be the most sensible time due to the guards being at minimal strength and those being off duty having a chance to drink themselves into a stupor."

Landon agreed with Kyle as he knew that at these kind of festivals the off duty guards would get hammered and even the on duty guards would be a bit sloshed. No n.o.ble would usually attempt anything during this time as it was considered extremely bad manners and may carry repercussions from the imperial overseer. But this begged the question what was the overseer going to do so Landon posited this question.

"During this do you have any idea what the imperial overseer will be doing?"

"Well most likely he will be with our enemies. He has no reason to side with us as we"ve made no overtures to gain his favour and he must be aware of the situation to the south but we have had no reports of him attempting to flee, so I think he is going to milk this for as much as he can."

Faye and One agreed with Kyle as they both had separate dossiers on him, One had details of his illegal dealings which included drugs and slavery while Faye had details of several women he kept in the city and also copies of secret doc.u.ments between him and the empire that "steel lotus" had copied. Kyle had seen all of this evidence and it wasn"t the actions of someone planning to cut and run, so his interpretation of this was that this little man was planning on building himself a little kingdom and just wait for the end in luxury. It wasn"t really a bad plan but it did sacrifice everyone else.

While they were thinking through the upcoming battles they would be facing Kyle remembered he hadn"t got the name of the Daryl"s hometown.

"Daryl what was the name of you hometown I"ll need to get a team over there soon?"

"Thank you sir it"s called Scottland."