A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor
Chapter 1753 - 1753: The Lion's Den - Part 2

Yet for all that speed, here he was, all but stuck as the sole defender for these recently conquered lands. He gnashed his teeth, wishing he had a thousand diplomats of the calibre of Lord Idris. Blackwell found himself relying on that man with an increasing firmness in the aftermath of the war. He quickly began to realize that, when it came to the total governance of a city, and of a country, with its trade routes, and its systems of power, Blackwell was very much approaching the realm of an amateur. At least, when compared, once more, to that Lord Idris.

"…Would you see more remain?" A nobleman asked Blackwell, barely concealing his disgust. He was a young man, and Blackwell had the urge to ask why it was – if he could carry himself with so much hatred – that he hadn't put that same hatred into wielding a sword in defence of his city. But, naturally, giving into that anger that so threatened to stir wasn't exactly the quickest line to well-ironed diplomatic relations.

"I would hear more information," Blackwell said. "Naturally, Hurst is going to need a good deal of rebuilding."

"Reallllly?" The man said, drawing out the question with due sarcasm. Blackwell twisted his lips, fighting the urge to strike the man. He noted, indeed, how arrogant the weak became when they thought themselves to have a well-placed position. It seemed a quicker reveal for the honest nature of a man than anything else.

Blackwell heaved a sigh, allowing his Colonel Willem to intervene on his behalf. That man at least had a good deal more patience than Blackwell did. And besides, when it came to the governance of cities, he might even have known better than Blackwell himself.

Hurst was a mess. It was true. Half the houses inside it had seen themselves demolished as part of the aftermath of the assault. The walls were in tatters from where Blackwell's own siege weapons had battered them. The gates were still very much shattered – but Blackwell had seen that carpenters were commissioned to solve that with a swiftness. At least when it came to defence, he could be quite certain of what was necessary.

Before Blackwell had fallen upon it, like the black shadow that the people seemed to see him as, Hurst had been a city of significant importance. In trade, it likely was more valuable than any other city in the Pendragon lands. It sat right on the border with the Capital, and also with the lands of the Treeants to the south. Trade flowed to it swiftly and readily, as naturally as a stream. Or at least, it had once, before the war had begun.

It was the second largest city in all of Pendragon territory, only second to the Pendragon Capital of Hirosh. Even Valence, Asabel's own old Capital city, very much struggled to keep up with the value of Hurst.

The city was important militarily and economically. It was a piece that Blackwell sorely needed to improve if he wished to keep the territory that he had just captured. But it was hard to defend a city when the very inhabitants of it were your enemies. If they could not trust the civilians to be willing to keep the enemy out, then what could even a full army of soldiers do, when there were thousands more who were readily willing to sabotage them?

Blackwell intended to speak to the lot of them. He'd asked for them to be gathered in the city centre, amongst the ruins of several shops, but he didn't feel particularly optimistic as he wandered there on horseback. All he saw were more signs of the destruction that he'd caused, and more evidence that the villagers he spoke to would give him nothing more than a deaf ear.

"It might be reduced to rubble, but of all the cities we have conquered, Hurst has the ability to rebuild itself, and quickly," Lord Idris had said. "Outwardly, it looks a mess, but there is still an immense amount of money in that place."

When one looked at the clothes of the merchant nobles that had received them, that certainly seemed to be true. Blackwell might have demolished the city in its conquering, but he had ordered his men away from loot and plunder. A fact that no one would thank him for. They did not seem to realize the difficulty of holding back battle hungry men from their rightful spoils of victory.

There was no doubt coin enough squirreled away long underground, and Blackwell had the strong feeling that if only he could motivate the nobles that had received him, they'd have Hurst cleaned up in a matter of weeks.

The question was how. Blackwell knew how to motivate men on the battlefield, and bring their morale to a boiling point that could melt through any wall. But to sing the song of those coin-inclined noblemen? It was too far away from Blackwell's wheelhouse. His education had always been on military affairs, and his socialization had been the same. He looked down on those scrawny nobles who knew no power but that which coin wielded. And, somehow, those same noblemen seemed to know that.

The crowd that waited for Blackwell was less than he would have expected, but still sizable enough that he had to put in a deal of effort to appear dignified before them. There were around a thousand gathered there, but a good chunk of that were armed men. Though it was hard to consider them even armed. There was a marked difference between a man that simply held a weapon, and that of a soldier.

Blackwell had to fight the urge to sneer. There were those noblemen surrounded by their bodyguards, and there was that militia that they'd gathered on the edge of the crowd, in an attempt to appear intimidating, but even coming with just a hundred men as he had, Blackwell knew very well that the shattered of those few hundred would be amongst the easiest battles that he'd ever face. They'd flee at the first charge. Such was their lot.

The fact that they stood there so confidently, though, so arrogantly, it was hard not to show any outward aggression. Nothing stirred the Black blood in Lord Blackwell more than a creature of significant weakness baring its fangs at him, believing them – in its great misjudgement – for them to be anything close to equal.