“The kingdom our ancestors hailed from was divided into duchies, just like the new world is today,” Amos began, scooting back to take a more comfortable seating position. “Except instead of three there were around twenty, varying greatly in size and power. The king ruled over all of them, but he barely controlled any land of his own, or armies that reported just to him. His power lay almost completely in his vassals. The dukes paid taxes to the crown, and if he called for soldiers, they had to answer.

“In that time, relationships between nobles were a lot more combative than they are now. There were a lot of them, vying for a finite amount of land and people to rule over. In the beginning, struggles for power were fought through assassinations, be it masked assailants stabbing someone in the street or poisoned wine claiming dozens at feasts or balls. The king and dukes of that time knew that they couldn’t simply do away with the rivalries and bad blood that had festered for generations, so they chose to regulate the way these things would be resolved instead. This is how the set of rules known as the ‘Noble Pursuit’ was created.

“It has a harmless name but it’s really nothing other than a guideline on who is allowed to kill whom, and how. If a noble had a disagreement with another, they could bring it to their liege lord and have it attested to. Depending on the severity and complexity, there was a whole process with hearings and investigations, and the liege lord was supposed to try to mediate and see if it could be solved peacefully. It usually couldn’t, which was when the aggrieved party was free to challenge the other to a duel. Again, the exact terms of the duel would vary depending on a number of factors, but most of them weren’t to the death. The winner of the duel received a pre-agreed compensation from the loser, and the matter was considered settled.”

“That worked?” Leodin asked, surprised. “Why didn’t they just keep killing each other?”

“Oh, it definitely worked,” Amos said seriously. “Within a few years, assassinations stopped almost entirely. The aristocracy was ruthless, but they didn’t want to live in constant fear for themselves and their families either. The Noble Pursuit didn’t just give them a way to get even with their rivals, it allowed them to show off their prowess to others and humiliate their adversaries. Duels between important figures were big events, sometimes with thousands of spectators. Bards were paid to compose songs about the duelists, both before and after. There were traveling vendors who made a living doing nothing but traveling from one duel to the next, selling their goods to the masses. Instead of perfecting their poisons and hiring assassins, nobles hired swordmasters and spent a lot of money and effort creating fighting styles.”

“While that’s actually pretty interesting,” one of the gathered adventurers said, “I don’t see what that has to do with war.”

“You’re correct: This part doesn’t, or at least not greatly. But the Noble Pursuit contained a different set of rules for those of higher station. At the level of counts and dukes, disagreements could be about deals valued in the thousands of gold coins or vast tracts of land. That was too much to lose to bet it on the skill of a man’s sword arm. If they had a disagreement and the king couldn’t mediate it, they fought it out with their armies instead.

“Wait, nobles of the same kingdom conquered each other’s lands?” an adventurer asked. “And the king did nothing?”

“He encouraged it. You see, it was necessary for the security of the realm that the dukes kept armies, but armies are expensive. If they had no reason to use them, their skills would diminish, and the nobles would find ways to shirk their defensive duties and funnel those funds somewhere else. By letting them fight each other, the king made sure that their armies were combat-ready. It also kept positioned them against one another, more likely to turn against each other than against the king himself. As I said, his power was dependent on the dukes supporting him.”

“That seems… ruthless,” Leodin said quietly.

“Oh, it was. The last king especially was a giant ass, that’s why he was killed.”

Seeing the shocked expressions around the fire, Amos laughed.

“I know, people have this romanticized version of our home, but it was really pretty bad. If it hadn’t been, there’s no way people would’ve banded together against the king and started an actual civil war. And as a student of history, I can say with some certainty that the ones who were most responsible for all the death and destruction that followed, including our ancestors’ perilous journey halfway around the world, were the dukes of Marrad.”

“Really?” another adventurer asked. “I mean, I hate ‘em as much as the next guy, but that seems far-fetched.”

“Not at all. In fact, once you have access to the detailed records the noble houses brought with them during the Exile, it is quite clear. Marrad and Harvand were the most wealthy and powerful duchies of the kingdom, mainly because they were situated on the coastline and controlled all the large ports. Anything moving in or out of the kingdom via ship meant tariffs in the coffers of our two duchies. A decade or two before the Exile, the new duke of Marrad claimed a grievance against a neighbor. Their armies marched against each other and Marrad ended up annexing a sizeable portion of land.

“I assume that this is where they realized the potential to attain even more power because in the following years, the number of grievances claimed by Marrad itself or its counts against their neighbors increased sharply. As I said earlier, the arbiter of these proceedings was the king. He could decide whether a grievance was real and if it was severe enough that it warranted going to battle over it, instead of just dueling it out. Due to their prominent position, Marrad had great sway with the crown, but I assume that they actually paid the king off to rule in their favor. Records show that as time went on, the excuses became more and more flimsy. The king was petitioned to do something about it repeatedly, but those petitions were denied, and if the petitioner was a neighbor, they were the next to lose their lands. Finally, the other dukes had enough. They banded together to overthrow the corrupt king and put Duke Marrad’s head on a spike.”

“If Marrad was wrong, why did we side with them?” a young adventurer asked. “You make it sound like the rebels were in the right!”

“I believe they were. Marrad and Harvand had been staunch allies for centuries at that point, which naturally meant that we were exempt from Marradi attacks. Looking back, it’s hard to say why the duke of Harvand sided with Marrad. Maybe he did it simply because they were allies. Maybe he thought if the rebels won they would want to reduce Harvand’s power as well, make it so no duke stood above the others to prevent something like this from happening again. Either way, we lost and our ancestors came here instead of being strung up by the rebels. And that leads us back to the original question.

“After the war against the Volarki was over, and the three duchies separated and claimed their new territories, Marrad realized that they had an army sitting around doing nothing. Nobody knew if the Volarki would actually honor the agreement, so we needed to retain our defensive capabilities, but there was no actual fighting to be done. That’s when they remembered the Noble Pursuit, and Marrad started this whole thing. They thought they could just slice off the southern tip of our territory and add it to theirs, but our duke of the time knew that he couldn’t allow that. If we didn’t fight back, Marrad would simply keep doing it until there was nothing left. According to the rules, we would’ve had to stop fighting when Marrad gained control of the territory they had set out to take, but we kept fighting. Without a king to arbitrate, both of our duchies are maintaining that the other’s war is illegal and that they’re defending themselves.”

“But you said initially that the war changed because people just stopped following those rules,” Edwin said. “How does that make sense if it was illegal from the start?”

“Self-preservation, I’d say. The Volarki were still considered a real threat back then, so nobody wanted a full-scale war where entire armies would be wiped out. Also, the soldiers on opposing sides had fought shoulder-to-shoulder with each other not too long ago. They weren’t willing to brutally slaughter each other all of a sudden. All of that is in the past now, with Marrad declaring himself king and announcing the planned conquest of Harvand.”

“And let’s not forget the whole College debacle,” Edwin grumbled, which Amos acknowledged with a tilt of his head.

“Indeed. Either way, the world has changed mightily from what it was a few years ago, and the ones feeling that change the most are the soldiers.”

Edwin was about to reply when he heard a commotion, and he rose. In the distance, past the bridge they had crossed not too long ago, the sky was lit a flaming orange.

“Say, Edwin, all those carts we set on fire,” Leodin asked conversationally, “the ones we left burning on a narrow road surrounded by trees. You think the Marradi put them out before they fled?”

“I feel like they might not have,” Edwin replied with a sigh. “Well, at least we’re safe behind the river. Let’s just hope it rains soon.”