91 Smiles All Around (1/2)
Out of the window, Corco could see the lines of wolf mercenaries, as they boxed in Sawo's loyalists on the stone plates of the central yard. After his men had been handed control over the western south gate, the rest of his troops had soon made their way into the city proper. In the end, the rebellious troops only managed to give some token resistance before their commander realized the futility of his attempted coup. By midday, they had taken the central island of the Mayura Delta and Rapra Castle with it. At least the biggest problems had been solved for now. For the moment, Corco had control of his own city. Still, with the revolution over, he had to deal with the annoying fallout.
”King Corco, this must be some kind of misunderstanding!”
Before his feet kneeled Sawo, administrator of Saniya. The self-entitled warrior was really grinding Corco's gears with his servile attitude, but there would be advantage in humoring him for mow. Listening was better than talking, he reminded himself.
”So what is it you misunderstood?” the king asked with a kind smile.
”Oh, it is such a tragedy.” The warrior covered his face with his hands to display his supreme sadness. ”What happened was such a terrible mistake! How could this ever happen? This poor servant thought a foreign army had invaded the great southern kingdom! Like any good official would, this servant simply did his duty. This servant risked his life, and the lives of all the warriors of Saniya, in an attempt to repel the foreign invaders and defend the city until the return of our great king.”
”So you didn't see the flags?” Corco asked, smile unchanged from the bullshit.
”Who would trust those flags? In the end, the soldiers were all foreigners. We had to be careful to not become the victims of a terrible ploy!” The man shuffled towards Corco on his knees. However, before he could come close enough to try anything, the pole of a halberd landed on the floor between him and his target. Predictably, it stopped the groveling mess in his tracks.
Still holding on to his smile, Corco looked over to the one who had opened the gates for them, a tall, weak-looking official. Iyo, was how the man had introduced himself.
”Yeah. Okay. You got anything to say about that? Since you let us in without confirming our identity, wouldn't Sawo's interpretation make you a horrible traitor?”
”That is not the case. King Corco may excuse this official, however, not all of administrator Sawo's words are the truth.” With a shallow smile, the man answered in a calm and collected manner, despite Corco's unfair accusation. The entire attitude reminded the king of the old prime minister Chaupic.
”Lies!” shouted the fat warrior in response. ”Do not believe the rat's slander! He is vermin, sent by the Ichilia brood! Unlike me, who has always been a loyal servant to House Pluritac. Only due to my foresight would I hire warriors from within the local population, rather than rely on the Ichilia influence. Otherwise, if the rat had been allowed free reign, they would have taken over the entirety of Chawir long ago!”
Nothing but a short motion of his head and the soldiers around him understood their king's wish. Another heavy pole dropped onto the flailing administrator, this time on his back. As the man reeled in pain and gasped for air, pressed into the floor, Corco looked over to the smiling politician, to await his response.
”Administrator Sawo does speak the truth, in this one instance. Indeed, administrator Sawo has hired only local men to become his warriors. However, his goals were far less noble than stated. Rather than resist the Ichilia clan in favor of House Pluritac, administrator Sawo has trained commoners of Chawir into warriors, fed them and clothed them to guarantee their loyalty to Sawo alone. All of it has been done in an attempt to become a lord himself, to build his own army and rise to the highest ranks of Medala nobility.”
”Nonsense! There is no proof for any of this!” Again Sawo shouted, but this time, one stern look from the king was enough to shut him up.
*Really annoying.*
He wanted to solve this whole incident in a quick manner, but he had to remain fair as well. Now that he was king on his own lands, arbitrary decisions based on gut feeling would be poison for his reputation, and ultimately his entire operation. A tyrant could never implement a proper rule of law the people would believe in.
”Okay. I can't really prove intent. Or rather, I might be able to, but that sounds like a pain. So let's try a different route: How many warriors are there in Saniya right now?”
”Including their families, the total number of warriors is eight thousand. However, most of them, around five thousand total, are young men with no or only small families, ready for battle,” the official answered off the top of his head.
”Good, then what's the total population of all of Chawir, to your best guess?”
”According to the last census, there are about fifty thousand people in Chawir, twelve thousand of which call Saniya their home.”
”That sure sounds like a lot of warriors to me. Even rich territories only have a ratio of about ten percent warriors to commoners; those warrior clans usually have large families, so less than half of them actually serve the lord in any capacity, unlike here, where the total number of fighters alone makes up more than half the warriors in Saniya, not even counting other servants and officials. With this many regular fighters, with such a large standing army, how could they ever be fed and paid?”
As Corco followed the chain of logic, Sawo's face began to sweat as his eyes grew larger. Now, he was no longer complaining of injustice, though that pole pressed in his back might have had something to do with it.
”Let's do the calculations for now, Corco continued. ”You have around fifty thousand people in the entire territory. Of those, twelve thousand live in the city and don't produce food. Not only that, around five thousand are cultivating warriors. Cultivators have much higher energy consumption, so we can comfortably count one warrior as two people. The territory itself has only small amounts of farmland. The lavender gets you no food, while the rest of the population mostly lives off of fishing and herding, plus the occasional tiny farm with average yield. So we end up with thirty eight thousand herders, fishermen and farmers having to feed essentially seventeen thousand mouths, plus themselves. Does that seem realistic to anyone?” Corco looked around the room. After he had left Sawo's sweating face, he saw Tama suppress a grin next to him, while Iyo still held onto his unreadable smile.
”It does not,” public servant Iyo replied dutifully. ”Since his arrival in Saniya, administrator Sawo has recruited more and more warriors to bolster the numbers of those loyal to him. The measure was a temporary one, only meant to last until administrator Sawo would be acknowledged as the lord of Saniya by the southern nobles. In order to fund his hubris, administrator Sawo not only increased taxes and depleted the treasury, he also installed several bandit groups all across the Chawir waterways, a method to take in taxes a second time. These bandits are, in essence, a further part of the administrator's forces.”
”Slander! None of this can be proven.” Though he was still flat on his belly, the administrator repeated himself like a broke record. However, by now his voice had reached a much higher pitch than before, a clear sign of his panic.
”If any of this is true, then that would be at the very least a misappropriation of funds. That's one accusation I can prove without doing much actual work. You have books here, right? A way to prove how much you've been spending and on what item?” Corco asked, as his harmless smile had a stand-off with the vapid one held by Iyo.
”Of course, my king,” the official answered.