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"It was implied!" one of the emissaries shouted, followed by the other emissaries voicing their agreement with that statement.
"Oh? Implied, was it? If that is how you want things agreed upon, I can "imply" that, besides one of the mines I am owed, I can "imply" my claim over other natural resources by right of conquest, or we can call the whole thing off. I'm sure my men would be disappointed at not being able to loot, but they will understand," Grud replied flippantly.
The younger emissaries started to raise more accusations and were about to question Grud's honor, but the eldest of the emissaries quickly shut them up before they could make the situation worse.
"On behalf of these younger ones, I apologize, Chieftain Grud. We will keep to the previous agreement." The latest emissaries said.
Grud just nodded in acknowledgement and walked off. He had more important things to attend to than dealing with greedy and petty tribes who bit off more than they could chew when trying to get more land.
***
As Grud's sons got the Rock Claw tribe's fighting men ready to move out, Grud made his way back home, and after settling some other matters in regards to the smooth running of his chiefdom, made his way to Tavora's shaman hut, and from there, made his way into a secret underground passage where the study of the World's Language was being done.
Before he entered what was called the "Main Study Hall", Grud had to enter a small resting area, where he ran into Tavora and some of his children taking a break while chatting on their musings and theories of what they had discovered so far.
When they noticed Grud, his children greeted him, and Tavora gave him a smile and a gentle nod.
Grud's children, despite being older and most of them already having families of their own, were still excited to see their father. With winter over and the troubles at the Alliance border, Grud has been busier than ever and had to take a step back from the World's Language project. So when he asked for updates, his children were more than happy to catch Grud up on what he had missed.
Tavora could have easily caught Grud up on their progress, but at night, she and her sister-wives were busy getting run through by Grud and each other, and it had become something of an unspoken rule not to bring up work in the bedroom unless it was urgent.
Turns out that there has been some progress on the Fire and Cold symbols discovered so far. Chief among them was finding a way to sustain the symbol without the caster constantly feeding the symbol mana.
To sustain the fire symbol, they found that they could carve the symbol on a chunk of wood, feed mana into the symbol, and the wood would act as a fuel source to maintain the symbol, but it would burn out the wood ten times faster with no significant difference in heat output or brightness. Other than the ability to burn wood at an accelerated pace, there was no other benefit than the knowledge that symbols can be imbued on objects and sustained for a moment.
Funnily enough, when the same thing was tested on a chunk of ice with the Cold symbol, ice started forming out of the ice chunk until it filled in the grooves carved for the symbols, and when they tried to manipulate what they thought was the part of the symbol that controlled the color of the Cold symbol, they did not notice any change until they put the ice up to the light of the sun, projecting a barely noticeable change of color. Nice to know, but practically useless for any application.
As his children were updating him on their discoveries, Tavora joined in the conversation with great enthusiasm written all over her face, and besides the face she makes when in the throes of pleasure in the bedroom, her face when she was discussing something she was passionate about was Grud's favorite, and despite the burn scar on her face, in the few months since she had married into the harem, Grud thought she was more beautiful than ever. And the baby bump from her pregnancy made her glow with the aura of motherhood.
When Grud's children got the reins of the convocation again, Tavora took the opportunity to take Grud's hand into hers as she listened. The more attentive of Grud's daughters caught on to their handholding and interrupted the conversation, saying it was time for them to get back to work.
Some of her brothers did not catch on, but agreed and followed their sister back to research, leaving Grud and Tavora in the break room.
Grud took the opportunity of their one-on-one time to scooch closer to Tavora and put an arm around her to pull her into his chest, to which Tavora gladly leaned on. "How are you holding up? Are you sure you don't want to take a break until the baby is born?" Grud asked.
"For the hundredth time, I am fine. As much as I like you fussing over me, why are you so concerned? You have sired over a hundred children. You should not be this nervous." Tavora said as she smiled and poked at Grud's muscular chest.
"I worry because it is your first, and if having so many wives and children has taught me anything, it is better to be too concerned than not concerned at all." Grud said and gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.
Tavora huffed and said, "Well, that is nice, I suppose. As for a break… maybe when I am further along in my pregnancy. Right now, if I stayed cooped up at home, I would most likely go mad with boredom. Especially with the research on World's Language going on, I cannot just stay away from something so new and exciting. For shamans like us, this is something on the level of man first discovering fire."
"True, true. But as exciting as it is, please make sure to take care of yourself, or I will have to come down here and carry you away." Grud said.
Tavora giggled as she said cheekily, "Carry me away, will you? Maybe you will be forced to do so."
Gurd just shook his head and said, "Don't you start." before standing and offering a hand to Tavora, "Come, I want to go and see what the rest of the research is doing."
***
Back in the guest housing, where the emissaries were waiting for the Rock Claw army to prepare, most of the emissaries were having a whisper-shout match about what just happened and their supposed next course of action.
"That was not what we bargained for!"
"Well, we did not specifically ask for Chieften Grud."
"Shut up! As I said earlier, it was implied! And for what? We just conceded a whole mine to him, and we will be marrying our family into his. If anything goes wrong in any of our tribes, the children of their union may have a say in our tribes!"
"Does that not work the other way around? If anything happens to Grud, we will have a say in the Rock Claw tribe."
"That is a very big if. He has over a hundred children, that is over a hundred people in the line of succession before we are even considered. But that is not the problem. The problem is, what are we going to tell our chieftains when we come back without Chieftain Grud?"
"I don't know. Is there some other benefit we can get out of this?"
It was then that the oldest of the emissaries who had been negotiating spoke up. "There is one way that I can think of." he then turned to the others and told them to check the surroundings for anyone listening in on them.
When they returned to the table after making sure there were no eavesdroppers, they leaned in conspiratorially as the ender spoke. "Unlike most other tribes, the Rock Claw tribe has not suffered significant losses from the long winter, which means they have much more manpower than we do. But that is just raw manpower; I'm talking about fighting men. They recently lost fighters in their battles against the Thunder Striders, so what if even more of their fighting men die in combat? If you haven't noticed, there were hundreds of men standing before us when we were on that stage."
"They will be a lot weaker?" another of the emissaries replied.
"Correct. And just like the position the Rock Claw tribe put us in because we are weaker, we can put them in if their fighting men do not come home alive." the elder said.
"But how? We are going to be fighting with them. Are we going to betray them after the battle is done? Do we even have the numbers and strength to do that?" another of the emissaries asked.
"That's where my plan comes in. When we get back to the battlefront, each of you will go call your chieftain for a meeting. If we can trick the Rock Claw tribe into doing most of the fighting for us, the plan will work. The best case is that they are wiped out by the enemy. If not, we will need to finish off whoever remains. After that, we can tell the Rock Claw tribe that the battle was fiercer than expected. As for reneging on the deal for the mines, we will leave that up to our chieftains if they choose to follow through with my plan.