Road to the Crown 226 Painful question

"Oh… So that's why you were so depressed back then…"

Suddenly limping out as if a huge burden appeared on top of his shoulders, Kalen even had to go as far as to grab the railing of the boat to prevent himself from staggering and falling over.

"Do you need me to slap you back?"

Seeing the chance to use my own comeback as a way to fix back the desperate mood of everyone on the ship, I replied with a smug smirk.

"No, that won't be necessary. Go on."

While useless in the greater scale of things, this small exchange managed to achieve the intended effect. Right now, the men around us were focused more on our slight bickering rather than the reality of how hard times were ahead of us.

"Okay then, rather than trying to tackle this entire, messy situation at once, let's list out what problems do we have to face. By splitting them into four categories, of those important and urgent, those that are important but not urgent, those that are urgent but not important and those that fail to meet either requirement."

Since I was going against the brutal approach of the current age, the best way to face it was to use the methods of future times. Just this small trick of Eisenhower matrix would allow us to realise what we really had to focus on, letting us to not divert our attention towards the stuff that could wait or was not important at all in the first place.

"Starting with stuff that's both urgent and important, it's recovering Tarnow and securing Mining Town. With how the war might be already ongoing, whether the reinforcements will come at a certain time or a week later, it won't really make any difference. Then, we have matters important, but not urgent at all."

While it pained me to decide whether the lives of some people in my country were more important than the others, when the push came to shove, supporting my own subjects had to go first. With how I had no idea what kind of thing pushed Ostros to go against me, I couldn't rule out the fact that they would attempt to ostracize me in order to push their blame on my shoulders. If that would be the case, then I could only count on those already loyal to me, as no more fresh manpower would bother to join the case of an alleged traitor.

"That's where we should place the potential war with Muscovy. No matter how hasty we are, unless we confirm that the message that Zamoyski household received is true and legitimate, attempting to raise the army could create a lot of enemies amongst the nobility. That's also where your job will come."

Moving my eyes on top of El's and Kalen's faces, I made sure that they understood the weight of the mission that I gave to them. Only after their nodded their heads in confirmation to my silent question, did I dare to move on.

"For now, all the matters that are urgent but not important and neither urgent nor important can be ditched away. That leaves us with a very simple conclusion. We need to gather our troops and save Tarnow."

As obvious as it could be if I were to simply give up on my current main source of income, even if my projects from the mining town would allow me to keep my financial stability, just the fact that someone dared to raise his hand against my own land would turn us into eternal enemies. After all, as someone from the relatively peaceful, modern times, I watched enough war movies to know in advance how I would treat anyone who would dare to do harm to my hometown!

"That's all nice and dandy, but what about the mining town itself? I wouldn't be that surprised if attacks on Pilzno and Tarnow were just a diversion aimed at paralysing our economical prowess. After all, even Ostros can't be that stupid to miss this point!"

Once again, Elia managed to catch me by a surprise. With how her own hometown most likely already succumbed to the attacks of those damned Ostros, I thought that she would be all for focusing all of our efforts on recovering our lands, yet she still managed to keep her head cool enough to not miss this important point!

"While I really do value your input, I already have a solution to this problem. Despite wasting quite a lot of resources to implement it and most likely scrapping it as soon as those problematic times will be over, I don't think we need to worry about wasting some of our spare steel or iron. As for Tarnow…"

To be quite frank, I would love if I could just get my soldiers, pack them on the boats and drop them off somewhere near the enemy camp, only to storm it out and kill anyone who dared to disrespect my right of ownership. 

Yet as sad as gladdening it was, there was no way for me to act so recklessly. Even if I were to simply ignore all the problem regarding supplies of all kind, securing the roads to transport it, moving all the troops, finding a safe spot for them to land… 

The more I thought about the simplest of the problems, the greater my realisation was of the real scale of the war. After all, I didn't have oil-powered trucks to carry the supplies for my entire army on a single trunk!

Yet even without caring about all those auxiliary matters, there was still an important question that had to be asked in advance, as to prevent my people from freaking out when the situation that I was worried about would turn into reality.

"Guys… While I would love to just come in, grab my troops and get out… We need to debate how we should act if Governor will refuse us the right to pass through his lands. Or rather, to put it simply, what are we going to do if Jan turns out to be yet another traitor?"

Chapter end