Duke and Vivian's schedule became quite hectic after their subsequent victories during the past month.
Vivian's secretive deals and associations with Merchants loaded her with heaps of paperwork she had to go through... Also simultaneously dumping Benjamin a lot of funds to plan...
And Duke, well... His miraculously flawless victory, despite being only a simple bandit subjugation blew up by heaps in proportion to the actual events...
Maybe it was the South's hunger for a heroic symbol that could guide them throughout these dark times, or maybe it was Duke's nefariously infamous past reputation as a fat useless bum who could barely harm a fly even if had sat on and crushed it!
I mean, a helpless baby defeating a lion was a much more sensational story than that of a Dragon eating lions for breakfast after all...
The first rumors were quite accurate and people depicted how the subjugation really went down... But then, soon enough the 30+ men Duke had with him became 15 men, then it suddenly became a one-man stand Duke had made as he valiantly sacrificed himself to kill every last Bandit on that mountain shouting with his last breath 'For the people!' (He DID NOT do that...)
"FOR THE PEOPLE!" The common folk cheered...
[Don't Kill me yet!] Duke wailed...
Then one day, to Duke's surprise, the story had suddenly changed and became the tale of Duke and his three Swordsmen of Doom who fought off the 150 'heavily' armored Veteran Macedonoi Spartan Hoplites who had defected from the Thracian Army Scourge, suddenly becoming Bandits...
3 the people called it, not 300, Three.
Implicating Byran, Dan, and Bardis as people thought they were the mysterious 'Swordsmen of Doom'...
"We weren't even there! Stop givin' us these embarrassing names! Please!" The two old fools who had accompanied Vivian instead of Duke cried out...
Of course, the spread of such rumors wasn't without cause...
"The young lord? Ah, when he shouted the skies cleared in terror! And without even lifting a finger all the bandits were KILLED!" Bran, the guy who had asked Duke to join the Bandit subjugation enthusiastically spread stories of Duke's valor...
The poor young person started as Duke's haters during the time he had never heard of anything about Duke, was now Duke's most fervent supporters...
Of course, most of the People didn't really believe in the wild tales regarding Duke. But it was just a charming experience to hear about weak and useless people striving and finally improving themselves for the better... The people, specifically playwrights and minstrels even made Duke's tales as a sort of comedic mini-genre where storytellers competed in spinning the most absurd tale about Duke...
Overnight Duke's image improved from 'disdained laughingstock' to 'meme'!
A welcome change for Duke! Much to the chagrin of Byran... as he thought to himself:
[Milord! Please have some, no at least even fake dignity! Please!]
Thanks to the almost unbelievable stories about Duke, more and more people started to join Maine's semi-militia army...
The number of normal conscriptable soldiers bumped from 90 to 500 abled men! With an added bonus of 10 honorable Knights who had come to Maine due to their admiration for Duke's sudden change
And, it was during this time that Duke had thought of one of the greatest military innovations in history...
Duke had thought of Mandatory Military Training!
In Myrth, (Duke's World) the quality of the Upper-Class' armies was generally what decided most wars.
It was no joke when Nobles brag that the Commonfolk wasn't needed in Armies and were just added to create a morale boost due to their larger numbers or to be used as cannon-fodder during sieges or extremely dangerous to lessen the Noble's casualties.
In fact, peasant or slave rebellions rarely succeeded, and in truth, most rebellions happen when a local Lord or Ruler who had enough charisma to rally his bannermen fought against greater powers, either because his people really were suffering, or just because his 'needs' (greed) wasn't being provided enough by his liege...
Slave/Peasant only rebellions without the incitement of Nobility/People who were already in power almost never succeed. IF they did succeed it would've been a one in a million miracle or the conniving schemes of someone behind the shadows.
This was why most of the war's casualties came from forcibly conscripted peasant soldiers or the innocent citizens caught in between raging powers.
Duke, growing up in an area populated mostly by peasant wheat-growing farmers who he saw get dragged by other Lords to war every other year or so, he could slightly guess how wars played out for the innocent common-folk.
And so, about 2 days ago after he had gotten back to Maine and resumed his daily training routine with Byran and the old Knights...
"Hyaargh!" Byran shouted as he hit Duke right in the head, for other people this was probably a decisive blow, but surprisingly, Duke just took it as if nothing had happened.
"Ha! Is that all you got?!" Duke haughtily shouted with confidence... But was immediately followed by more of such strikes to the head by the other Knights annoyed with his confident words...
"Kukhuhu, becoming boastful just cause' ya defeated some Bandits? I THINK NOT!" Dan shouted as he dealt the last blow to Duke's head...
And THEN! An incredible bolt of Genius lightning struck Duke, dumb! Ok, even dumber than he already was!
"Aha! I-I got it! I got it, Byran!" Duke ran over to Byran clasping his hands... which made Dan and the other old men worry. Thinking to themselves: [Did we overdo it? Not OUR fault! He ORDERED us to hit head!...]
"What if we order every citizen of Maine with mandatory training?!" Duke excitedly shouted.
Hearing this, the Knights immediately kneeled!
"""Our Lord!!! Please be merciful! Not every person can take 50 hits to the head like you can!""" The Knights cried in unison, as they thought Duke had finally become crazy and retaliated towards the People for their transgressions towards his head...
"What?! No! I don't mean like MY training, they'd probably die! What I meant was, what if every able-bodied man in Maine could be trained for 3-5 years?! What would happen then?" Duke asked Byran...
"E-Every man in Maine?!... Hmm, Maine has at least 15 to 25 Thousand citizens, half of that are men so 12 Thousand. Taking into account only the able-bodied that'd be... F-Five to six thousand men! Yes... Yes... If we rotate them so that Labor and Farmer populations won't completely dry up... W-We might just get Five Thousand soldiers!" Byran shouted in shock! Not because of the large number (5000) that was approximately 5-6% of the total number of the 125,000 Soldiers the WHOLE Empire of Brune could muster in a time of crisis...
No, Byran gasped because the almost non-sensical idea Duke had just proposed... might just work.