As usual, the crowds were out, bustling against one another, when Mark brought the throne ship down into Winterclaw. The people of Winterclaw knew why he had left, and despite there being differences between the West and East, they were eager to hear they had gained allies in their struggle.

  Despite all their wins, the dire situation of the Frontier wasn’t lost on the commoners, and even the diehards knew that allies were needed to free the lands of their warg invaders.

  Stepping up to the beat of the crowd's cheers, Mark stopped to give a speech about the wedding. He talked about how it bound their fates with the rest and gave them hope to survive their enemy. Most importantly, he talked about the army they would be providing. Then, as promptly as he had arrived, Mark retreated to his private quarters.

  He had been gone too long and needed to see the reports waiting on his desk. For the most part, things were looking good. Winterclaw’s refugee intake had continued to increase steadily, and they still had enough food production to cover it, although it was getting increasingly dicey. However, there were glaring issues, such as the mine.

  Mark hadn’t expected the mine’s productivity to burst into action immediately, but the numbers he was given suggested that it was attracting more and more of his people toward it while failing to increase its output. This was a major concern.

  Providing the miners with food, guards, and other resources in exchange for iron was a great exchange. Iron was valuable, after all. But it was just a resource sink if they weren’t providing iron output in exchange. However, it barely took a moment of Mark’s interrogation of the report to raise suspicions. If the mine was performing so badly, why were people choosing to move there? It wasn’t as if the hard life of digging rock and living underground was something the average person enjoyed.

  Looks like I’m going to have to pay them a visit. Mark sighed. He could go there and whip his people into shape, even imprison ringleaders if they were stealing from him, but none of that was ideal. For starters, they still barely had the manpower they needed as is, let alone shoving what few followers he had in prisons. Secondly, nothing would stop them from returning to their old ways the moment he got busy dealing with Winterclaw’s issues elsewhere. He needed a trustworthy leader who could reliably manage the mine in his absence.

  Who would be a good pick?

  He hummed to himself as he considered solutions to the issue. The problem was that he didn’t want to surrender anybody too valuable to the mine. Winterclaw was his base of power, after all, and Mark wanted his best and brightest nearby.

  Pushing the mine report to the side, Mark's eyes widened as he saw the lumber report.

  Deforestation was increasing astronomically between their ever-growing population, construction, heating, and steam engine needs. This mightn’t have seemed like a major issue on the surface since the Frontier was a huge and relatively sparsely populated region that was almost entirely covered in forest. Still, the further his people had to travel for timber, the more costly it became.

  Manpower was Winterclaw's constant constraint, and something as minor as his people traveling twice as far for timber slowed down their operation and stretched what little manpower they had even thinner.

  It seems we’ve hit a roadblock. The answer to these problems is obvious: We need to spread them out. But we can’t do that in our current situation.

  Winterclaw, as a kingdom, couldn’t support itself with the vast majority of its population in one settlement; the land wasn’t built for it. This might change once they had more towns and settlements to support their resource needs, allowing Winterclaw to cut back on simple resource gathering and focus on industry and specialty services, but it couldn’t do everything. However, this wasn’t possible because most people were too scared to live anywhere but within Winterclaw’s walls.

  What Mark desperately needed to do was alleviate that fear. But of course, that was easier said than done. Right now, he was stuck waiting for the Western warriors, and he couldn’t just sit back and hope his problems would be solved.

  He needed to do something meaningful that wouldn’t draw him into a battle he couldn’t win against the wargs or the Imperium.

  Taking out another warg army wasn’t an option either. It would not solve their problems—since it would only be a fraction of their enemy—and it could worsen the situation. Firstly, there was a risk that the wargs attacked with their full army. But even if they didn’t, weakening the wargs too much while they had other enemies threatening them wasn’t necessarily ideal either.

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  While it wasn’t ideal, at least there was a balance of power in place at the moment. It was unlikely the Imperium would attack Winterclaw while the warg army stood, so he couldn’t allow them to fall until he had a means of dealing with whatever the Imperium would throw at them.

  There was also the Barbarian Clan Federation. Although perhaps the weakest of the fractions, it still had a numerical advantage on Winterclaw, and it would be beyond foolish to underestimate them.

  If I could draw a border between us and the warring southern regions that people believed was safe, then perhaps that would provide a sense of security.

  Mark crooked his head. He didn’t have hundreds or thousands of soldiers to defend hundreds of miles of snow; if he did, he could probably just defeat his enemies now.

  He needed a means to create the feeling of border security without actually dedicating his tiny manpower to defending it.

  Wait a minute, what about hot air?

  Mark’s mind raced as he considered his options. The only issue was suitable fuel, but if he could build hot-air balloons, then he could reposition the scouts he had walking between the outposts they had built. If he could put the scouts they currently had patrolling into the sky, it wouldn’t just allow them to see enemies coming from much further away, giving his people a sense of security, but also decrease the number of men he needed scouting the borders.

  The problem was their lantern oil was probably the most suitable fuel for the job, but the resource was already on its last legs, and they had nowhere near enough for it to take on a new job. He would need something new.

  Mark remembered the spirits that the locals made from rigar. Alcohol would make for a far better fuel than trying to use something like wood, thanks to its lack of smoke. However, they were already barely producing enough food as it was, and rigar spirits already posed a major issue to Winterlcaw as it was due to the inefficiency of using rigar to make alcohol. It had actually been something he had wanted to limit in the past, but he had restrained himself as there were few substitutes without the ale imports coming from the Imperium, and it helped raise morale.

  No, that’s not going to work. We need something else.

  The realization was dawning on Mark that they had a serious problem. There was no easy path to expansion. Everything required more resources, and what little they had was stretching precariously thin as it was, thanks to their unsustainable level of population growth.

  I can’t just stop our population growth now. If we’re going to beat our enemies, we need to increase our numbers; there’s no way around it.

  Even if he increased the efficiency of one of their industries by industrializing it, that wouldn’t solve the real problem. Without his people spreading out, there just weren’t enough resources to sustain them. But what could he do to encourage his people to spread out if he couldn’t improve the land’s security until he defeated their enemies?

  Thinking back to his land sales, Mark got an idea. He still marveled at how successful selling land that had essentially been free and available for anyone to take prior to his declaration. This had been an important reminder of how much value legitimacy is provided by a governing force.

  That’s it. I need to use my title as king more. Building up Winterclaw and the army that protects it has created a wealth of legitimacy that is just waiting to be exploited.

  Mark’s knowledge of feudalism was basic at best, but he knew that kings didn’t rule alone. If selling undeveloped land could provide so much wealth for his tiny nation, what might he be able to achieve by handing out titles?

  Pulling out a map, Mark began to draw out regions. It didn’t matter if he had no control over them currently; that wasn’t his problem to worry about. He had been able to claim a kingdom, after all, and so far, nobody had stopped him. What was creating a few counties and baronies?

  Drawing lines on a map and declaring them as counties was the easy part. The hard part would be figuring out who would rule them.

  Mark had been pretty self-serving when it came to handing out titles in the past, but he realized this would require a more delicate touch. Ultimately, his tribunes, councilors, and knights were all direct reports to him, and while his counts and barons would also report to him, they would also be rulers of their own fiefs.

  He needed people he could trust, but more importantly, he needed people who had their own followers and base of power; otherwise, what point would there be? If they couldn’t provide security, people wouldn’t live in their domain, and if people didn’t live there, then the objective would fail. Lastly, he needed counts and barons who wouldn’t cause issues, thinning his list of potential candidates.

  The first fiefs he drew up were the Barony of Frostwind and the County of Dhamhi, named after the ancient clan that had once inhabited the mine and the nearby ruins. The County of Anders—a name Mark came up with for a section of land along the far edges of the land they currently inhabited to the south. And the Eastmarch, which was situated along the eastern border with the miasma-shrouded foothills.

  Along with the right to rule these lands in his name, Mark also brought Elowen in to help him pick suitable locations to build capitals for Anders and Eastmarch.

  He planned to provide them with timber, food, and iron to get started. Iron and food would be taken out of their supplies, while he and Callum would each go to one of the new capital sites to down trees for them. However, once they provided the resources needed for construction, the rest would be left up to his new lords.

  For now, he would only ask these new territories to provide levies for his armies. Mark hoped that this would make the benefits clear to them, and if they managed their lands wisely, they would be able to grow their wealth and influence.

  If the plan worked, he would elevate the stress on Winterclaw’s resources without reducing their overall population and retaining the levies he would require if he were to secure this land and defeat their enemies.