From Londoner To Lord

"You already know that Kirnos is located at the south-western border of the Reslinor kingdom," Feroy explained, "with the Nisador Mountain Range acting as the southern boundary of Reslinor. What I am going to tell is only a rumor I heard, and it concerns what lies beyond those mountains."

Kivamus nodded, remembering a very simple sketch Gorsazo had drawn for him as a make-shift map for Reslinor from his memory. It was only a vague outline, but it still gave him an idea of the immediate surroundings of Tiranat, until Pydaso hopefully arrived with a better map in the spring. "Yeah, you mentioned that those huge vesorions roam in the arid wastelands south of the Nisadors."

Feroy nodded. "They do, and those are just one of the many kinds of dangers to humans in those lands, including the flying bakkores and other wild beasts." He added, "While I have travelled around a lot, even I have still never been south of those mountains, mainly because there is nearly nothing to be found there. Even bare survival is difficult in that barren terrain." The ex-mercenary continued, "Coming back to the topic, in Kirnos I heard a rumor which might turn out to be very helpful to Tiranat in the future, even though I don't know much about what lies beyond the Nisadors. I also have no idea if those rumours have any truth in them or if it was just an old man's imagination."

"I think I have an idea about what you are going to tell about," Duvas remarked. He explained, "Neither of the two countries surrounding those wastelands - including the Kingdom of Reslinor and the Girnalican Oligarchy were ever interested in conquering those lands. It would just cost too much - without any tangible return from those wastelands - and would distract from the much bigger problem of Binpaaz in our east. Anyway, despite nearly no one living there, there are still some free cities in those wastelands, who survive independently of any authority other than their ruling city lords."

"Free cities?" Kivamus repeated with raised eyebrows. "You mean big cities like Ulriga?"

Duvas laughed. "No, no, it's just not possible for any human habitation in those barren lands to grow as big as Ulriga - which is easily one of the five largest cities in the whole of Cilaria. From what I remember - and this is far from any updated news - even the biggest of those free cities would be around the size and population of Cinran, or perhaps be a little larger. It would probably be much more accurate to call them free towns, not free cities, but their City Lords like to call them cities, and the names just stuck."

Kivamus nodded. "That makes more sense, but Cinran is still nearly ten times larger than Tiranat. That means those free cities could also provide a lot of workers to us if we could somehow incentivise them to migrate here."

Duvas shook his head. "That is extremely unlikely. The people who live in those wastelands - even if living inside the walls of those free cities - are hardy and rugged. They simply need to be, or they just wouldn't survive in that place. However, one of the reasons why neither of the surrounding countries tried to conquer those lands is because of the difficulty of travelling through those wastelands. That's why there is hardly any travel from those free cities to Reslinor. That means the people who live there have been staying there for generations at least. They consider those free cities as their homeland, and are very unlikely to migrate here. Not in the present condition of Tiranat anyway."

Feroy began, "That relates to what I was going to tell you about. I heard rumours in Kirnos that there used to be a small iron mining village called Perika located south of the Nisador Mountain Range. Kirnos used to import iron ore from them in the past, before shipping them out up north to Ulriga for smelting into ingots. However, from what I heard from some old people there, those iron imports stopped around two decades ago, right after the previous war ended and the demand for iron fell sharply. As of now, there has been no contact of Kirnos to Perika for at least a decade, and no one even knows whether the village of Perika even survives to this day or not."

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"Hmm..." Kivamus muttered, thinking about it. The fact that there used to be an active iron mine near Kirnos was very positive news, but nobody even knew if it was even possible to get iron ore from there anymore. He looked at the ex-mercenary. "Did you find out how far that village was from Kirnos?"

Feroy thought for a moment. "At least twice as far as Kirnos is from Tiranat, from what I heard, but that doesn't take into account the difficulty in travelling on that barren terrain. The guy who told me about Perika, who was probably approaching seventy now, used to have a friend who worked as a miner there in the past, although he is long dead by now. After I gave the old man some losuvil powder to treat his fever, he told me a lot of stuff - mostly rumours - including the fact that he had heard that it took around a week of travel to reach Perika from Kirnos, mainly because it gets so scorching hot in that region, that they could only travel during mornings and evenings."

The ex-mercenary continued, "The only good thing was that Perika was located right in the foothills of the Nisador mountain range on its southern side, which meant that after leaving Kirnos and circling around the western end of the Nisadors, all a caravan had to do was to follow the edge of the mountains on its south, and they would eventually reach Perika without losing their way. Otherwise, from what he told me, it is way too easy to lose your track in that barren wasteland, and you would die from thirst or starvation long before you found a human habitation to help you. That's how vesorions survive in that heat anyway, by feasting on the corpse of anything which died from the harsh environment in that region."

Kivamus thought about the distances involved. From what he had estimated from that sketched map as the time taken for wagons to travel between them, Kirnos was probably around eighty to hundred kilometres away from Tiranat. That would make Perika somewhere under two hundred kilometres away from Kirnos, or around three hundred kilometres away from Tiranat, by going around the Nisador mountain range from the west. If they had modern transportation methods here, like a railway line connecting the iron mines, that distance would be nearly nothing even without a tunnel through the mountains which could make the distance even shorter. However, as it stood right now, they would have to send horse drawn wagons in a caravan to import iron from Perika, which would be exceedingly difficult in that arid terrain.

He exhaled loudly. "Even if that village is still there, it's not like the Baron of Kirnos would allow us free passage from there to send a caravan to Perika. He would certainly charge very high border taxes on any wagons passing from Kirnos to import iron ore - not that we even have any gold to buy ore at the moment. We don't even have any facilities to smelt that iron ore, nor do we even have any workers to do it!"

He shook his head. Just another resource that would go unutilised, because Tiranat was too small and too poor at the moment...

He looked at the majordomo. "You just said that there wasn't anything valuable in those wastelands, but if there was an iron mine in that region, wouldn't it make sense for the surrounding countries to keep control over those wastelands, no matter how barren they may be?"

"During the previous war around two decades ago," Duvas explained, "Tiranat hadn't been founded yet, and I lived in the north of the kingdom, so I'm not sure about the exact details, but I do remember that the war had started after immense iron ore deposits had been found in the Tolasi Hills, which are conveniently located in the middle of the three major countries of Cilaria. Of course, people have known about the iron ore deposits in those hills for centuries, but until a few decades ago, it was thought that those were just minor deposits, and didn't have much iron anyway. That's why all three countries had a mutual agreement not to do any mining there, since Tolasi Hills have always been kind of a buffer area between the three countries. That had worked well in the past to keep peace between them, at least in that region."

The majordomo continued, "However, I still remember the time somewhere around twenty-five years ago, when the news had spread like wildfire that some prospectors had found by chance that Tolasi Hills' iron reserves were actually huge, and much, much larger than anyone had thought in the past. That's why there was an immediate rush to capture the hills by all three countries, which led to the last war."

"Those hills are still standing right there, Kivamus said, "including their huge iron ore deposits, but from what I know, there is no iron mining going on there at present. So how did the previous war end to reach the present condition?"