CHAPTER 902: A LORDLY WELCOME

Word of Loman and Sir Tommin’s generosity reached Baron Ian Hanrahan’s ears mere minutes before the Lothian lord himself rode into the central courtyard of Hanrahan Keep. While the portly baron had received reports of damage from across Hanrahan Town, his response had been far more restrained than that of their guests.

Ian Hanrahan had already sent men to help the town’s bakers and to clear the streets of snow so that wagons could move between the storehouses and the market square. If the bakers couldn’t get wood for their ovens or burned through their stores of flour and salt, he knew that he’d have riots in the street within a day.

At the same time, he’d sent men to a number of the wealthiest and most influential families in Hanrahan Town to ensure that they hadn’t suffered undue hardship in this storm. The last thing he needed was for the fattened sows who accounted for a third of his yearly tithes to decide that they should move to Lothian City or, worse, the Town of Dunn once winter was over.

The storm had been severe enough that Ian Hanrahan knew he couldn’t rely on the townsfolk to take care of everything that needed doing by themselves, but he’d expected the commoners who lived in the shadows of the city’s walls to do a better job of helping their neighbors and doing as the priests commanded that peasants should do in times like these. They were supposed to be ’meeting their struggle,’ not holding their hands out for charity as soon as Loman Lothian arrived with his soldiers.

And if his own people’s weakness and selfishness weren’t bad enough, the Lothian lord had actually indulged their begging! He was supposed to be a man of the Church, but where was the stern lecture about pious suffering that a real priest should have delivered? Instead, he and his Templar followers had pledged gold, not simple silver but actual gold, to help feed the people of his town during the crisis, and they’d done it in full view of the common folk!

It took a tremendous act of will for the Hanrahan Baron to smooth the lines of frustration from his features and plaster on a welcoming, subservient grin as he walked out of his fortress to welcome the young lord who had just thoroughly humiliated him with his act of ’kindness.’

"Lord Loman," the portly, balding baron gushed as his boots crunched through the snow. "I’m so glad to see that you and your party arrived safely. If we hadn’t seen you by tonight, I would have sent riders to search for you," he said as he made a grand gesture of bowing to the young lord, nearly overbalancing and falling in the snow in the process as one foot found an icy patch in the middle of his sweeping bow.

"Thankfully, you don’t need to waste your men’s time looking for us," Loman said with a strained smile on his face. He’d finally seen where the baron’s men were ’helping’, clearing the roads in front of the large estates within the town and helping a merchant move his goods from a damaged storehouse to a different storehouse nearby, preserving finely carved furnishings instead of doing work that would preserve people’s lives.

But he hadn’t come here to quarrel with the baron, and Loman reminded himself of that fact every time he saw places where the man seemed intent on neglecting his people. Right now, what mattered were the demons who had appeared with the last storm, and the ones who might be lurking in the wilderness even now, waiting to take advantage of this storm.

"Well, it’s good that you’re here, Lord Loman, Sir Tommin, Inquisitor Diarmuid," Ian said as he gave a slight welcoming nod to the other men accompanying Lord Loman. "But you’ve been out in the cold too long."

"Come, come inside," he said as he gestured to the open doors of the keep. "I’ve prepared a welcoming feast, just for you. It should be the perfect thing to wash away the chill that clings to the bones when you come in from the cold."

The last time Ian Hanrahan had received Owain Lothian, he kept the gathering small at the request of the man he had once believed would be the next Lothian Marquis. After all, that visit had been intended to bring the Guild Masters of Blackwell County into the fold as Ian Hanrahan’s new vassals. An ostentatious display worthy of Owain Lothian’s stature might have given the merchants an inflated sense of their own importance, and so he’d kept things fairly subdued.

Now, however, with his son reporting that Bors Lothian seemed to be abandoning his eldest son in favor of the younger one, Baron Hanrahan wasn’t about to miss this opportunity to make a good impression on the visiting lord, especially not when he needed his help and the influence that Loman commanded with the Church in order to purge the demon raiders from his lands.

Every hearth in the great hall burned brightly, keeping the vast hall warm enough that the people inside could set aside their fur cloaks and forget that there was still snow on the ground just outside the freshly scrubbed glass windows of the keep.

A dozen tables had been arranged in six, V-shaped rows leading to the high table, and the importance of the guests sitting at each table only grew the closer to the front of the hall the table had been placed. More than a hundred people packed into the hall, including knights, prosperous merchants, and even the head priest of the local temple, all standing as the baron entered the hall to welcome their lord and his esteemed guests.

The smell of savory, roasted meats filled the hall and two of the large hearths even sported roasting spits where serving boys carefully turned a whole boar and deer, collecting the drippings in a long pan beneath the freshly hunted game and ladling those drippings back over the roast nearly constantly to ensure that the texture and flavor of the meat remained as succulent as the master of kitchens commanded.

To the side of the great hall, a full dozen musicians played bright, stirring music on harps, drums, and even sets of high-pitched reed pipes that were favored at gatherings in Lothian City. At the same time, at the front of the hall, a trio of performers was putting on a show of juggling brightly colored balls with tails of multi-colored silk that fluttered in the air as they passed from hand to hand.

It was an incredible display of abundance and prosperity, from tables filled with the finest dishes of the barony to the best musicians in town and even lively performers. If Baron Hanrahan had been receiving Owain Lothian, it certainly would have put a smile on the young lord’s face, especially when he realized that Baron Hanrahan had asked several of the prominent families with eligible daughters of bedable age to bring them to the feast.

Loman Lothian, however, was a different matter entirely, and Ian Hanrahan pressed his hands tightly together as he watched for the young lord’s reaction to the reception he’d been given...