The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 711: Clear The Road

Dominic waited with Amie until a whole unit of guards arrived, enough to surround the trucks, and properly escort them into the Palace.

Under normal circumstances, it would be unthinkable for an entire caravan of potatoes to be delivered directly to the Royal Palace, but that seemed to be the only safe way to do it right now.

With the guards in place, the convoy started to come through the portal.

And every prediction of the chaos that it would cause proved to be an underestimate.

The citizens swarmed to the food, desperate for anything that they could get. Naturally, the caravan guards weren’t going to cut down a bunch of starving civilians when they were escorting food for the city.

So, they climbed on the truck and began tossing handfuls of potatoes out into the crowd.

Which was what the crowd wanted, but it only encouraged even more people to rush forward to get their hands on the food. They weren’t willing to wait for the distribution, and risk that the good stuff would go to the surviving Nobles first.

And that brought the progress of the convoy to a crawl, even with the Palace Guards escorting them.

They were still moving, but when Dominic hopped up on the first truck, and extended his wings, the crowd rushed out of the street in front of them. There were a lot of things that they were willing to do for food at this point, but standing in front of the Butcher of Wistover was not one of them.

You had to be alive to eat, after all.

With Dominic’s appearance clearing the road for them, the trucks trundled forward, a steady stream from the portal to the Palace, dragging the crowd along with them.

“I’m glad that I’m not in charge of distributing this. I don’t think that the crowd is concerned about where tomorrow’s meal is coming from when they can see today’s.” Dominic joked to the driver of the truck he was standing on.

The driver laughed as they made their way through the city.

“There aren’t enough people to eat everything in this convoy in a day. Well, not in this part of town anyhow. The idea was that the full shipment should be basic ration level supplies for the remaining population.

We’ve got nearly half of it, so it should keep the city supplied for most of the month. If they’re only eating potatoes.

It’s not much of a diet, but I’m sure that they can come up with something to serve with them.”

Dominic laughed, and held up a small bag from his storage ring.

“I thought of this as well. I’ve got a whole bag full of spices from the Manor grounds. I don’t know what survived the flood, but I do know that spiced potatoes are better than unspiced potatoes.”

The driver raised an empty wineskin up to Dominic, who took it and refilled it with level three wine. Good stuff for the driver, but not the sort of extreme level that would mess with his driving.

“Thanks for that. Driving is thirsty work, and we’re not likely to find much of anything here.”

The Palace guard was formed up at the gates to the outer palace courtyard, and behind them, Dominic could see that the formerly manicured gardens had been turned into a tent city for the soldiers and Nobles of Dagos who had their territories flooded.

Dominic could see why everyone was worried about the distribution of the food, with the Nobles mostly staying in the Palace until the city was cleaned of the mess of the floods.

The work was well underway, and portions of it were already beginning to look inhabited as he had passed by. But he could still see the high water line on the low side of town.

So, most of the Noble district shouldn’t have flooded. But that didn’t mean it had survived the zombie invasion intact.

An extremely nervous looking young man, or perhaps still a boy, given his youthful appearance, greeted them at the gate.

“Welcome Duke Wistover. I am assistant Castellan James, and I will be doing the inventory on the shipment. Rest assured, we will calculate for the early distribution and shrinkage caused during the journey through the city.

How much have you sent? I cannot see the end of the convoy.”

“Two thousand tonnes of potatoes, and one trailer load of magitech stove inserts, to help lessen the demand for firewood and coal in the city.”

The youthful assistant was shaking in his boots, and Dominic quickly realized that it wasn’t the situation he was afraid of.

Dominic terrified him.

“Alright, That should be a hundred and one trucks, then? What is in the first one?”

“That is the magitech fireplace inserts. The rest of the convoy is loose loaded bulk potatoes, as we lacked bags for such a large shipment on short notice. We do have large amounts of flax growing in the Duchy, but it was not ready for harvest, and we lack a large enough textile mill at the moment to make the canvas.

However, I do intend to have that remedied soon, for ease of unloading.”

The boy focused as Dominic put his wings and claws away. He was furiously scribbling at his notepad with a frown.

“We do not have a large enough storage house in the Palace for that. There were… some damages when the wall was breached. However, we can make space as the city is cleaned, and the temporary residents move back home.

Please hold the truck of fireplace inserts on the left, and the first truck of potatoes outside the gates.

We will distribute directly out of the vehicle today.

Fortunately, we have a system for this.”

Dominic didn’t know what he meant, but he shouted the orders to the driver, who looked relieved that he wouldn’t be public enemy number one.

With a gentle twist, he leapt down from the truck and landed next to the gate guards, who were moving to begin unloading the truck.

“What’s the system for distribution?”

“We gave every address a ration token based on head count while we were assessing survivors. Every week they turn in the token for rations, and we give them a new one for the next week.

It lets us see if there is disease spreading in the city, and prevents hoarding to some degree.

I’m sure that there is some in the slums, stolen tokens and intimidation to steal the food, but we’re doing what we can to make sure that the people are getting fed.”