Godfather and Godson

Chapter 65: Vassals

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After the death of Ser Gimbal at the hands of Magic itself, Harry continued with the work of clearing this Keep out.

As for Lord Nott, he set him aside for now. Thanks to this infringement into his own personal matters, he had casus belli with his House, so he could basically wage war on him at any time, and it would be held up in the Wizengamot. But now wasn't the time to pursue it, his armies were still building up to the force they used to be, and they would need time to prepare for an all-out war with them.

So as much as it pained him, he had to leave be the man for now. But that didn't stop him from sending out spies to check out his enemy's estates and holding. Soon dozens of little Micro Griffins were flying out of the keep towards numerous directions.

After that, the question came up about what to do what all the people they capture. There were a lot of captured souls from battle- from the 600 mercenaries captured by Sirius on their way to the keep, which explained why they took so long to arrive.

All of them put down their weapons when they saw the overwhelming force and surrounded to face his judgment, just like any sane hireling would.

He thought about what to do with them; on the one hand, they took his rebellion vassal's money, but on the other hand, they made his conquest of the place a lot easier when they fleed. It was a tough choice, but what decided for him, in the end, was the mercenary codes.

They were compelled to offer up their wands, armor, equipment, and mounts to him, which they also needed to either pay out recompense him with serve time to him.

Metting the mercenary captain, Harry decided to give them generous terms by returning their wands and equipment to them and buying out their serves for the whole year, for a very reduced price of course. The man looked very happy with the term, and so was he since he would need the extra men to wage war with the Notts very soon.

The mercenary captain also recommended his brother with glowing remarks who lead 400 men, so in the end, he totaled out a 1,000 men for service the whole year.

After that it was time to deal with the civilian folks of the keep- from the cooks, cleaners, servants, entertainers, gardeners, blacksmith, hunters, apprentices, and so forth. For them, he decided to take them into his own household with the promise of double wages to ease any hurt feeling.

His estates were a bit lonely and very much empty, yes there were plenty of House-elves underfoot taking care of properties, but he wouldn't deny that it could use some livening up. He knew that they used to be Ser Gimbal's folk which he basically forced him to murder himself, but they were just common folk who didn't have any words to say if their master decided to rebel or not.

So with that, he decided to pass them on to Tobry, his ever helpful little steward who just arrived with the fanfare of the victory going on.

Then it was the troop, for the recruits most of them made it through the battle with only a few having some sort of injure. Really those injuries were more from their wild panic than anything else.

He sort of felt bad for the whole lot of them, most were made up of baby faced boys and girls who looked to be recent Hogwarts or some other magical school graduate.