Road To The Crown

As devastating this realisation was, there was no way for me to confirm this. After all, it was nothing more than just a hunch! Yet with that notion at the back of my mind, I had to make sure that all the movements I would make would be aimed at someone no less than a potent enemy!

"Hey, Jan, can you come on board for a moment? Or no, can we have a talk somewhere where both your and my people will see the two of us, but won"t be able to hear what we will be talking about?"

Rather than trying to convince everyone that I wasn"t the traitor that they took me to be, it would be far more efficient to just talk this through with Jan in a calm and composed manner. In the end, I wasn"t even sure if it would be a good idea to clean my name so soon, as long as I could get him to protect my lands and pa.s.s the message to my workers to ramp up the weapons production!

"What, you want to have a duel? If that"s your intention, then be my guest! Men, move away!"

Seeing how either he greatly misunderstood my intentions or was witty enough to comprehend them perfectly, I could only smile as I turned on my feet to my men.

"Bring us closer to the sh.o.r.e."

Even though swimming those fewteen meters that separated us from the land wouldn"t be a challenge for me, if anything were to go wrong, swimming back would be the real problem, especially under constant fire of Jan"s troops!

Seeing how the paddlers of the boat once again started moving in the proper direction, I waited for a moment for the s.h.i.+p to reach as close to the land as it could without risking any damage to its hull. Only when sailors finally reversed the engine to lose the momentum did I gather my wits and jumped from the s.h.i.+p directly into the water.

Just a moment later, I finally reached the dry land, instantly turning it wet from all the water that was flowing down from my body and clothes to the ground.

"Okay then, what did you want to speak about?"

Clearly trying to ignore the fact that I was still soaked with water, Jan didn"t bother himself with offering me any sort of blanket or anything like that. After all, no matter what he said, he still most likely considered me to have something to do with treason, even if the officially given cause was nothing short of bulls.h.i.+t.

"First thing first, we can"t clear my name yet. Rather than that, you need to help me build the legend of my exploits and make me the worst, demonic traitor that ever existed to date. While I will go and lift the siege of Tarnow myself, I will leave it in your hands to keep it safe from those Ostros b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

Considering how Jan was surprised by my mentions of the east, I could only a.s.sume that telling him to only reinforce the rumours about me being a traitor where my demeanour clearly hinted that I wasn"t one would make him listen closely to my next words.

"As for my own moves, I will gather all my troops from the mining town and go help the Tarnow. After that, I should have the proper confirmation whether the Russian invasion is true or just another plot that someone was trying to scheme. Yet just in case that my worries are true, and Zaomyski family is not trying to push me into a corner for some strange reason, then I will need you to lead the punitive army aimed at taking me down to the east."

Word by word, I finally reached the huge reveal. Considering how tense the situation was already, only adding the fuel to the fire by hinting at the invasion without actually explaining it could be considered a risky move, yet I still decided to go with it!

And I didn"t have to wait for the results of my daring approach for long!

"Invasion?!"

Shouting out loud, Jan instantly collected himself upon realising that if anyone were to get a hold of that news, the entirety of my plan would instantly go down the drain.

"Invasion? Russian one at that? Is that the reason why you were so troubled back on the s.h.i.+p?"

Finally catching up to the speed, Jan looked as if he just swallowed something sour. In fact, I could understand why he looked like this. No matter what, in the past as far as one could remember, the rivalry between Muscovites and Commonwealth, sparked by their shared claim to the Russian part of the Grand Princedom of Lithuania, kept going. Even if most of the time Commonwealth managed to keep its ground, it didn"t mean that the wars with its eastern neighbour weren"t exhausting.

"It"s not just an invasion. Here, read this. It"s a latter I was tasked by Kristina from Zamosc to pa.s.s on to the capital."

As I pa.s.sed this barely holding together piece of paper to the governor"s hands, I could see how just this fact alone forced the expression on his face to change drastically.

"So you went to visit Zamoyski family recently? What for?"

Despite clearly glancing over the letter, Jan was still more interesting with an irrelevant detail of my story. Yet considering my current position and how much I had to rely on his silent support to save both my own lands and the country at a whole, I didn"t have any way to voice my protest.

"If you were to visit the mining area"s now, you would realise that the treeline that initially reached the buildings… Is now barely visible from the middle of the arena. Heck, that was the case when I went there the last time! As most of the wood is used to create charcoal, if we keep going like that, this furniture manufactory of mine won"t get any wood for itself. That"s why, I had to find a way to obtain another resource that those lands lack, that could replace charcoal as the main fuel for the economy."

This was never supposed to be a secret. While coal was already well-known fire fuel in the world, it never reached the level of common usage anywhere else than in England. That"s why, revealing that I was intending to use it as the proper fuel rather than relying on charcoal was not something that would give me any form of an advantage other than the fact that being the first to start producing it when everyone else would catch up to the level of steam horses, they would have to rely on me!

"Wait, I don"t get this. If you are looking for an alternate source of fuel to wood and charcoal, wouldn"t it be only harder to get it all the way from Zamoyski family lands? Even if they have that coal or something, just the costs of bringing it to the mining town would be far more than enough to hire more people to just bring more and more wood!"

Hearing Jan"s words, I couldn"t help but smile. As great of a man and administrator he was, he couldn"t comprehend the basic principle of industrialization. It was true that I could just gnash my teeth and start hiring even more people just to obtain enough wood to supply all my projects. It was also true that it would be far cheaper than setting a carriage route, not to speak about creating the world"s first train line. Yet there was one, a single advantage that coal had over those falsely cheaper options.

"You see, after putting the initial investment in coal, it will cost me nearly nothing to obtain it. That"s why, rather than constantly paying more and more only to bring wood to the place where it"s needed, I will build a steam horse-based vehicle that will connect the iron mining site with coal mining site, allowing for a free and quick flow of the resources between those two!"

Some people said that it wasn"t the firearms or numerical advantage that allowed the whites to conquer entire northern America, but the existence of train. It was their ability to move men and resources through the vast distances of land in a quick manner that proved to be a deciding factor in regards to settling that continent!

And just a single look at the map of Commonwealth would prove that its situation was almost exactly the same. If not for this invasion happening right now, if only I would get enough time to create just a few train lines that would connect the furthest ends of the country with each other, then no army and no country would be capable of ever posing any threat to this land!

"I"m not gonna lie, you already bought me with that steam horse-powered vehicle. Seeing how insane effects it can bring with simple machines, I don"t even want to imagine what you would be capable of creating in terms of logistic… But rather than that, now I"m finally certain that those rumours about your treason were just a bunch of lies. Yet, as much as I would love to believe in you myself, I need something that will allow me to convince other great n.o.bles. Could you maybe draw the blueprint of that steam-powered vehicle for me? With my word and your contribution, no one would dare to claim you went against the will of the country!"

Watching how the Governor"s face changed as he spoke was truly an amazing experience. Whenever he would finish his sentence, his voice would turn louder along with his excitement, only to be toned down as soon as he realised that he should prevent others from hearing him.

"Yeah, just bring me a piece of paper and something to write and I will do it in a moment. Just keep in mind, I can only produce a rough draft as there are still a lot of details to fix. But let me ask this, why do you need said proof in the first place? Wouldn"t it be better to just bait everyone by dangling my treason in front of their eyes?"

As much as it irked me to be branded a traitor, as long as I could use this to not only save my own lands but also the country as a whole, I didn"t mind sticking with it for a few more days, weeks or even months!

"No. While I won"t tell a word about your plan to normal n.o.bles or Ostros, if we want to bring a real force to the east, we need the help of other magnates. And you should know better what it means to antagonise them!"