Chapter 131: Challenged Authority?

"What did you say?!" The King let the fact that the servant had barged into the room shouting slip, what he had said was far more important.

"T-that Viscount Sharpe has taken his men and left." The servant, who had just realised that he had barged into the room, stuttered over his words as he repeated what he had said. When he had gone to ask about the Viscount's whereabouts he had gone to one of the King's knights to ask. The same knight that he entered the room with.

"When and where did he go?" These were the most important questions. If Viscount Sharpe had left a while ago, it would look horribly upon his ability to lead an army. If he could not even get information on what was happening in his own army encampment, how was he supposed to lead it to battle?

On the other hand, where Viscount Sharpe had left towards was an equally important question. It was one thing if he was just heading back to his own territory, he had originally been one of the neutral northeastern nobles. But if he were going to try and join the other side, or worse had been aligned with Duke Ryder to begin with, he could cause some serious damage. It did not matter that he only had a few hundred men at most, that was more than enough to compromise their defence of the bridge over the harmony if he tried hard enough.

"Erm..." The servant looked to the knight that had accompanied him back to the mansion, if anyone was going to have a good grasp on the situation, it would be one of the King's knights.

"From what I know, my liege, the Viscount left earlier this morning. As for where he was headed, I am not sure." The knight himself was also unsure about too much. Even though they were technically a part of the same army camp, lords preferred to keep the management of their personal troops to themselves. Not to mention when most of the lords in the camp were not actually a part of the royal faction, it was why King Aled had such a large problem even getting the various lords to agree to centralise the overall leadership on the field of battle.

*sigh*

"He cannot have gone far, I want scouts to go out and immediately find where he has gotten himself. If he is headed for Cinar, for God's sake warn him. The last thing we want is that donkey opening up a hole in our defence with a couple hundred men." The King was not best pleased with the situation. They had not even finished discussing the actually important matters and Viscount Sharpe had gone and shoved another one onto their plate.

"And if I lay my hands on that man, forget punishment for ignoring royal summons he can be taken to the executioner for treason." Just as everyone thought that the King had finished and was going to move back onto other topics, he shocked them with another statement. There had not been somebody charged with treason since the last Viscount of Kirton. Not that anyone was going to argue in his favour, if he caused a problem for Cinar, all of them would face the consequences of a newly emboldened Duke Ryder.

"I thank your majesty for coming to a conclusion on my dispute with Viscount Sharpe." Seeing the situation was about to come to an end, Braydon jumped in and thanked the King. Even though the decision was not made because of him, it did not harm him to claim that it was. And the King would be more than happy to use the excuse of looking after his subjects over trying to reassert royal authority. Even if everyone knew that it was really about one thing, it sounded nicer for them if they pretended that it was to look after a subject's interests as well.

"Then let us shelf our discussion on sending extra men to guard the river for the moment. First we should decide on who will be the one to lead our combined army. It will not do us any good if we are to have disagreements on the field that lead to our defeat. Does anyone want to nominate somebody?" The King decided that it was time to finally achieve one of the goals that he had set out to achieve since the neutral nobles decided to join with the royal faction in the civil war.

The choice of words he used raised a few eyebrows. It meant that it would have to be a choice between a few nominated candidates rather than ambitious people putting themselves forward. And it had been deliberate, Aled knew that there were a number of ambitious lords among both his own faction and the northeastern lords, the prestige of 'winning the civil war' was a hard temptation to pass up. And he knew that many of those ambitious men were too incompetent to actually lead an army properly, hence his choice in words. Though it did also help to appease some of the lords that he was not just going to unilaterally chose a close ally.

"..."

"I am sure that some of you at least think one of your peers is somewhat competent." The King prodded as there was a moment of silence as the lords looked to one another seeing who was going to speak first. There was a lot being conveyed in the looks that they were giving each other but nothing being said verbally.

"Then I would like to nominate Earl Dawn." The first man to speak out was someone standing beside Earl Dawn, clearly they were friends. But that did not mean that he was nominating the Earl based on that, it had to be known that to stand out among the lords in the north east was no easy task. And while standing out did not necessarily mean being strong militarily, it most certainly helped.

"Who do we nominate?" Braydon asked Ethan in a low voice as a few other men were nominated from among the northeastern lords. If anyone from the royal faction was going to nominate someone it would have to come from one of them. Cinar was not present to nominate someone and the King could not do it himself without getting unified objection to whomever he chose.

"Well Cinar is not here, he'd have been my first choice. And I will curse you if you try to nominate me." Came Ethan's response, he was good at many things, leading an army was not one of them.

"Then how about you nominate…"