Four - Foundation Part Three

As the empress had expected, the consultation with Count Griffith was not finished quickly. It wasn't until an hour and a half later that a tired-looking Alyena returned to the hidden arsenal.

“Have you found anything?” she asked Captain Cervik.

“We have found a lot, your majesty. Most of that is more of what you've already seen. Lots of harnesses and the like. But we also found some weapons. Not all of them are usable, but some of them just need to be re-sharpened.”

“I want to see everything!” Alyena was rather short after the exhausting consultation with Earl Griffith.

It wasn't until three hours after Alyena returned that the final discovery was made. By this time, Alyena wasn't the only one who looked tired. She was just about to give the order to stop the search when one of the guards came running. As could be seen from his sweaty face, he had run the entire distance. Captain Cervik immediately approached the guard, while Alyena pretended to continue studying a bunch of weapons with chains attached to them and that no one understood.

“Captain, we found something,” the guard shouted enthusiastically after gasping for a moment.

“What did you find? And where's your clerk?”

“It's a complete library! With hundreds of books!” exclaimed the watchman, and then told a little more calmly. “Harm has stayed behind. I couldn’t tear him away from the books when he saw them.

Alyena stopped staring at the weapons and joined them.

“A library you said?”

“Yes, your majesty, with rows upon rows full of books. There are so many that they even reach up to the ceiling.”

“That’s what we’re looking for! Let’s go right away!”

However, the captain disagreed.

“Let our people finish their work, your majesty. It is already late and tomorrow you will have another long day. The clerks will make a list of what can be found here. I will hand it over to you as soon as possible.”

“Maybe you’re right,” was Alyena’s dejected reply. “I already have a lot of work to catch up on tomorrow. The consultation with Count Griffith is not the only thing I had planned for today. It’s quite a bit of work that I’ve put off.”

The next day it became clear to Alyena what they had found exactly. Captain Cervik’s report stated that a total of one hundred complete iron harnesses with a number of spare parts had been found. Furthermore, there were several hundred books in the library, of which there were one hundred and twenty textbooks for soldiers, four books for officers and a number of separate other books. Of the four books for officers, one was different from the other three and was probably intended for a senior officer. Unfortunately, that very book had become quite damaged over time.

Apart from reading the report, Alyena did not get around to dealing with the discoveries for the rest of the day. One report after another had to be read and answered, signatures had to be signed, and then there were the meetings and other conversations. Apart from a short break to have something to eat, she spent the whole day catching up on the previous day's work.

Before she fell asleep that night, she thought that she really had to find a way to get some more free time. In the past, when she also did much of the work, she could occasionally make trips to the imperial forests to hunt with the falcons. Or she could spend a day with dusty old books. Now that she had become the empress herself, it wasn't even possible to wander around her own palace for a few hours without having to work extra hard for days to catch up on all the work.

When she woke up in the morning, she was immediately reminded of the discoveries in the old arsenal. There was a scroll of parchment on the table next to her bed.

“Where did this come from! Who put it here?” she cried as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes.

“I don't know, ma'am, it wasn't there before,” the surprised chambermaid proclaimed.

The scroll itself explained it. It was a new message from Mithras. Alyena wasn't sure what to do with the message. There was only one sentence on the scroll: 'Let them believe again.'

By noon, it finally came to her. This was what Mithras wanted for his help! Those legions of old had to rise in their former glory to worship him.

That same evening, Alyena gathered Captain Cervik and the two remaining commanders of the army. The commanders Colling and Dwain were stationed at the army headquarters in Niroma, making them the highest surviving officers in the entire army. Together they had to figure out what they could do with the discovered equipment, weapons and books.

During the meeting it immediately became clear that both commanders had already decided what they wanted to do with the armor. Their decision was to distribute it among the commanding officers. The rest had to be stored somewhere under lock and key. Empress Alyena, however, had other plans. She had a promise to keep.

“We're not going to give these armor to officers. On the front line, they will have much bigger effect. The officers usually command from behind the units and need them less.”

The commanders disagreed.

“Officers are more important than normal warriors!” exclaimed one. “Imagine what the high nobility would say if you did not give it to their sons!” cried the other.

At that moment, Captain Cervik remarked that it would be almost impossible to move in the harnesses because they were so heavy.

“They probably weigh as much as a fully armed warrior. This means that they are not very useful for the warriors and even less for officers. Or would you like to carry them around all day?”

Commander Dwain admitted that there would be few officers who would want that.

“Hmm, and they'll be super warm too. Nice in the winter, but it is almost spring now. In the summer, I think you don't have to make a fire anymore to make your lunch. Those harnesses will be as hot as ovens.”

“What we need to do is create a new unit. We can equip this unit with the harnesses and test how we can best use them,” captain Cervik continued.

“Impossible!” shouted commander Colling immediately, after which commander Dwain also reacted negatively.

“We need all the recruits we can find to rebuild the border army. We don't even have enough recruits for that, let alone for this ... experiment,” was the opinion of commander Colling.

After some bickering, the captain changed his advice. Instead of taking warriors who were desperately needed in the border army, a new unit had to be created from people who had never been trained as fighters. That would mean that the common people could be deployed. After all, they already had the equipment ready. These did not have to be bought by the new recruits first.

This was exactly what Alyena wanted. This could be a first step towards closing the gap between rich and poor.

Even though the commanders complained with comments such as 'It's against tradition' and 'It can't be done', she decided to push through captain Cervik's idea.

“We will implement captain Cervik's idea. We're going to recruit a hundred ordinary people here in the capital. These will be trained in a remote camp by your best people. Practicing with a hundred people won't be such a big deal for men who normally have to train thousands of others in the normal way. The instructors and officers in charge of the training will then decide how best to deploy the new unit.”

With this decision, Empress Alyena closed the meeting.