The following day, I explained to the councilmen that according to top-secret intel from the capital, there was a chance a Demon Commander would attack. The response was discord and chaos. When they asked for evidence, I just hit them with, “Ask His Majesty and His Highness the Crown Prince.” That shut them up.
Of course, it’d be a bit hard to believe, but I still essentially threatened them by telling them that if it was true, they better shut up and listen if they didn’t want to all be eaten alive. Thanks to that, I was able to keep the conversation moving forward.
“Viscount Zehrfeld is close with the holy woman. It wouldn’t be odd for a prophecy made known to only the crown to be leaked to his ears,” said the head priest, backing me up. I sent a look of appreciation his way. When I had gone to thank him the other day for assisting Rafed in wrangling up all the voices of dissent on the council, he simply told me to give the holy woman his regards. I guess that checks out.
“And so, I have something to ask of you all.”
“What is it?”
“I’m going to build a fort here,” I said, pointing to the place on the map that would serve as the location of the first of our fortresses. They didn’t give much of a response, but I supposed that made sense, given they weren’t really experienced with military affairs. “However, I can’t explain to you why. Just know that this fortress will not stay standing for long, and when it’s attacked, that will be the signal to move on to the next phase in my plan.”
“Your plan?”
“Yup. If this fortress is attacked, I want you all to evacuate those living in the villages around Anheim and keep them safe.”
With that, the councilmen finally changed their expressions. I couldn’t blame them for caring more about the people in the nearby villages than a city-slicker deputy who had suddenly arrived from the capital like me. All I could do was bitterly grin on the inside. I decided to feign ignorance and continue the conversation.
I told them about what happened to Valeritz in Count Friedheim’s fiefdom, which was destroyed before the battle at Finoy. There was no need for sugarcoating, so while I didn’t want to remember it either, I gave it to them straight. Their faces turned white. Yeah, I could understand that feeling.
“I want to save all the people I can, even if all that amounts to is one person. For that, I’ll need you all to work with me.” This time they all nodded. “We’ll use a smoke signal. However, I can’t tell you now how much of the domain will become a battlefield. That means that as soon as you see the signal in Anheim, you need to evacuate everyone.”
“Everyone? As much as we’d want to…”
“Evacuate everyone in the surrounding villages to Anheim. I’ve already talked to Baron Zabel and Viscount Gröllmann, who have agreed to handle the neighboring domains. They can shelter evacuees for up to ten days.”
“Ten days?”
“If we can hold out for that long, reinforcements will arrive from the capital.” That seemed to shut them up. Or rather, they probably had no choice but to agree to my plans after hearing what had happened to other towns that were attacked by Demons.
“Won’t some refuse the evacuation orders?”
“Spread word that if anyone refuses, their whole village will be taxed five times as much as they were last year.”
That caused a bit of an uproar but no actual opposition. In a medieval world like this, villages worked like a unit. Every villager was deeply connected to one another. If refusing would affect the entire village, their only option was to follow orders. We didn’t have the time to explain the danger to each and every village in the vicinity, so some aggressiveness was in order.
I’d need a heavy hand if I wanted to limit casualties. Though if I did succeed in minimizing harm to the villages, the records wouldn’t speak of the threat, only of my harsh measures. When was the last time my stomach wasn’t turning? It was getting tiresome.
Using the map, we worked out the details, identifying where each village’s residents would evacuate to and how many people would be at each evacuation camp. We also discussed what to do with their livestock and how we could insure them. For example, in one area, the average shepherd’s family kept some seventy sheep for wool, and we had to determine whether it was more feasible to move the animals or compensate the family for their loss.
Speaking of which, the farming villages in this world resembled those of the middle period of Europe’s medieval era. Dairy farmers and the like separated their houses from their animal pens, but the average farmer raised their livestock in their homes. Few farmers had two-story houses, so it wasn’t rare to find homes where people lived right beside their animals.
That didn’t just go for chickens and ostriches either; even pigs or donkeys would be kept inside the home. I had some thoughts about that from a sanitary perspective. They even said that one of the reasons the Black Plague spread so easily in farming villages was because the animal excrement inside people’s homes attracted rats.
Well, maybe it wasn’t right to reduce it all to calculations of pandemic risk, but given I knew the dangers, I couldn’t just let it be either. That was a problem for another day, though. We had no time to spare for such matters just then.