Reincarnated to the Past 46 (Patreon)

Reincarnated to the Past
Chapter 46

-VB-

Everything I’ve done so far flashed by my eyes…

I came to this era with nothing on me, not even clothes. Nevertheless, I made do. I made fire. I made tools. I built myself a house.

Then I encountered runaway slaves.

I let them go. Helped them run away, and killed the people who came chasing after their “possessions.”

Believing that my home would come under attack once those slavers didn’t return home, I followed their track to their home… and found a tribal village very far from what I expected.

Byzantion sent their troops to burn down Istria, but I wasn’t having it. I thwarted the attack and called up volunteers for a counterattack.

I arrived just as Byzantions themselve came under siege by their rivals in the region to the south, the Perinthians. The Byzantions, upon realizing that we had scaled their city walls, surrendered. As they were now under my hand, I kicked out the Perinthians. But I was not a man without compromise or mercy. I sent men to talk to the Perinthians to settle the issue before it became bigger…

But they beheaded my envoys.

You do not kill my envoys and get away with it.

We assaulted Perinth.

We tore its walls down.

We salted its lands.

We beheaded its leaders.

We exiled their people.

And then we left.

And we came back home.

---

“We’re home!” I laughed as our ship ground into the riverbank by our village.

Or what was once a village.

With refurbished wooden walls and watchtowers, our once small village now looked like a proper town. The volunteers quickly jumped out of the ship as their families came out of the walled town.

I smiled as I got off the boat, too. My boots splashed into the shallow river and walked inland.

Among the crowd, I saw Ureya.

I couldn’t help the smile growing on my face, and then it grew even more when I saw her holding our baby boy.

Oh, he now had a tuff of black hair.

God, my baby boy was cute. Anyone who said otherwise will have to kiss my steel.

Just like the rest of my men, I ran up and -gently- bearhugged my family.

“I’m home!” I laughed.

Ureya laughed, too, but a little bit more wetly than my own.

My son gurgled between us, ignorantly happy(?) and drooling all over the place.

“Now, let me see my son!” I chuckled as I gently lifted him out of my wife’s arms, and held him up. “Who’s a good boy?!”

Ah. Wait. That’s not what I’m supposed to say to a baby.

“Did you eat well?”

Wait, he doesn’t understand anything yet.

“Goo goo gaa gaa!”

… Now, I looked like a damn fool, but what father wasn’t a fool for his baby kid?

My men around me laughed at the embarrassing scene of my own making, but I just stuck my tongue out at them childishly.

Some of my men were quick to get back to the boat and start calling out the second group of people. They laid down a plank for people for walk down, because the next group had all of its members bound in such a way that they couldn’t run.

It’s hard to run with both ankles tied to a wooden board.

As they started hesitantly walking off of the boat with only rags covering them, I sighed.

They were slaves and some of them were my slaves.

Ureya’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are they…?”

“Yes, spoils of war. Among other spoils.”

Most of the slaves made their way to their masters as they have been taught to, and waited for instructions. Due to the fact that most of them didn’t speak the same language that we did (they spoke Thracian while we spoke Kettish), I needed to be a translator for them. I also intended to make sure that my slaves would learn Kettish so that they could take up translator jobs. It’d make everyone’s lives easier.

Slaves were mostly young men and women, leaning more towards woman than man, and the single volunteers leered at their slave women. I had managed to keep them from doing anything lecherous or demeaning on the ships and in Byzantion (as apparently considered them my property?), but now that we were home, my authority ended here. On top of that, I ended up having to slaves of my own when I didn’t want to but couldn’t refuse because if I didn’t take any slaves and loot, then none of the men could have them, too, and that was the exact opposite of what I promised.

Still, my slave Rom seemed to understand what I wanted, so I freed him and made him my representative in Byzantion. I gave him orders to rebuild the defenses, stock up the granary, and keep the people if not happy then at least compliant.

Why did I assign him that?

Because, of all of the people I have met so far, he had been the one to take my teaching the most. On the boat trip, I taught him about management. Before that, I taught him letters and numbers. Between fights, I taught him about people. He excelled at it all, so I made him my representative. A few of the single men stayed behind without my prompting after they were offered positions of importance.

As the slaves walked off the boat, the last group of people walked off behind them.

These people were the odd men and women, merchants, and people who followed us home.

Why?

Well, in the case of Kerrus, a blacksmith from Byzantion, he heard the ideas I talked about and wanted to work with me. He also brought his entire family with him.

One such people jumped out of the boat and walked up to me with a grin on her face.

“Well, I now know that you’re going to be a great father! I knew it was a good decision to pick you!”

Ureya stiffened as she stared at the woman who’d followed me from Byzantion.

“Alan, who is this?”

I heard the tone. I knew the look.

Ureya felt territorial.

“Ureya, meet Jenni. Jenni, meet my wife, Ureya, and my yet unnamed son.”

Jenni bowed somewhat deeply, which surprised Ureya, before she straightened herself. “I am Jenniaria, daughter of Geutheus, one of the five Patriarchs of Byzantion, the city that is now a vassal of Warlord Marris. Or king, whichever title your people prefer.”

Everyone who didn’t know, aka everyone from home and none of my volunteer men, turned to me in surprise.

I laughed nervously.

I didn’t mean to become a king, but apparently, Byzantions accepted me as their king after I thoroughly ruined their enemy and rival, Perinth, and brought them a shit ton of slaves for them to utilize. They gleefully believed that I was some kind of a conqueror and pledged their allegiance.

Now, along with Istria, I owned the entire eastern coast of Thrace. Perinth didn’t count because I burned it down.

My father-in-law, Chief Ghigari, walked out with a cane and a hunched back. His pale face, combined with the rest of how he looked, didn’t paint a good picture.

“Wiseman. You’re back.”

He wasn’t calling me by my name, too.

“I am, chief,” I said carefully.

He nodded. “Good. I just heard some wonderful news. A warlord, what does that title mean?”

Jenni had said it in Thracian, so of course, he didn’t understand.

“A chief of war and conquest,” I translated with a sigh.

Ghigari chuckled. “You tell me you didn’t want the responsibility, but here you are taking on more responsibility than that of a tribe!” he laughed. “Come, I need to speak with you,” he said as he turned around.

I nodded but also saw something.

Ureya’s mom wasn’t here.

“Where’s mother?” I asked her, using the word for “mother-in-law” that sounded like the word for “mother.”

She grimaced.

“She… passed away. Father has been like that ever since.”

Oh dear.

Oh dear.

“Are you …?” I asked her quietly as the crowd, sensing some sort of seriousness settle down around them, began to disperse. Someone from among my volunteers used what smattering of Thracian he learned to call the immigrants to him while another one directed the slaves to their masters and what their new masters expected of them. I ignored it all as I focused on Ureya as she bit her lips and shook her head.

And then she smiled at me, sadly yet hopefully.

“I had time to say goodbye.”

I nodded.

It was so sudden. I mean, how did someone go from being completely healthy to dead in a few months? Was it infection? It couldn’t be cancer… Or could it?

“Do you want to come with?” I asked.

She shook her head before firmly looking at me with all seriousness she could muster. “I am the woman of the house, which means that it is my job to make sure that the spoils of your adventure gets home safely. Go talk to my father. He needs to talk with you.”

So I did. I kissed her on the forehead, getting a blush out of her, and followed after the old man.

When I reached him just as he was opening the door to his Kettish longhouse, he glanced over his shoulder and hummed. “Enter with me.”

I did.

I immediately recognized the difference in his home.

For one, the open hearth was cold.

“I’ve been staying with Ureya as it is custom for my tribe. I hope you understand?”

“There’s nothing to misunderstand.”

It’s normal across all cultures and societies right up until post-modernity, and even then, a significant portion of the world still practiced having up to three generations under a single roof.

“It’s a bit dusty, but what can you do?” he shrugged as he sat down. “Besides, your home was a much better seat of the chief than my own home ever was. I still can’t believe that you built a bloody manor by yourself.”

I sat down as he chuckled.

And then he sighed.

“I do not believe I have much time left, Alan,” he spoke, and for the first time since I met him, his voice cracked and waned. “The next generation must step up, but I fear that none of my children are up for it.”

“... I think differently,” I told him as counterpoint to what he was eluding to. “I do things differently. I do not even follow all of the customs.”

“So? It doesn’t matter. Worse, you went and got my only loyal and good son to marry some Thracian to the south, and he’s very insistent on staying there.”

I grumbled.

“And he and my in-laws have pledged themselves to you, which means that if I make him the new chief, our Lower River Kettin tribe would become a vassal of your ‘warlord-dom’ and lose our status as an equal member of the Greater Kettin Confederation.”

… Johaken, if I see you, then I was going to punt you for doing this to me. And Renius, too.

“The confederation has such laws?”

“Roughly. It’s less of a law and more of an understanding. A chief who bends to someone else not of the Kettia is … well, he can’t be our equal, not when he could be a subversive element. You can try to argue it, but ultimately because of my stupid son, everyone would expect him to be nothing more than a chief of a tribe that can’t back up their words. Or rather his words are outweighed by yours, and there is never a guarantee that you and he will continue to be agreeable or even amicable,” he grunted. “My son likes slaves. You don’t. That’s already a difference.”

“Ah.”

“So what will it be? Will I have to find someone else or will you shoulder the consequences of your actions?”

I bowed my head as I thought about it.

I could … foresee future problems. I was part of the GKC because I was a member of the LRK tribe, but I couldn’t be a member of the LRK while also being a king elsewhere. It would upset the balance of power within LRK and cause problems for the tribe and Ureya.

Ureya would really not like having to move or fighting against LRK, but she … probably would. I wasn’t 100% sure about that.

But why force such a test on her when I could, as Ghigari just said, shoulder the consequences of my actions?

I sighed as I looked up but steeled myself before I spoke.

“I accept.”

He smiled in relief and fatigue. “Good. We’ll go announce it right away. I meant it when I said that I don’t think I have much time left.”