The courtly departure of Monsignor Valerius left a chill in the air that had nothing to do with the weather. His words, a silken glove hiding an iron fist, echoed in Alessandro's mind. A careful balance must be struck.
"He means for us to be a fat goose, ready for his master's table," Alessandro said that evening to Bastiano in the tower's hall. "Productive enough to deliver a double tithe, but not so strong that we might one day refuse to be plucked."
"Then we must be careful, my lord!" the old steward implored, his face pale. "We must not grow too quickly! We must appease the Bishop!"
"To appease a wolf is to show it your throat," Alessandro countered, his voice hard. "Valerius did not see our strength; he saw our vulnerability. He saw a rich valley with only seven men and sharpened sticks to guard it. The Bishop's warning was not a threat; it was an observation of fact. We are a fruit ripe for the picking by any power that chooses to do so. That changes now."
His focus, which had been on agriculture and infrastructure, now pivoted with cold necessity toward security. The next morning, he gathered Enzo and a newly returned Lorenzo.
"We need soldiers," he stated simply.
Enzo sighed, the familiar weariness of a practical man returning to his face. "My lord, mercenaries demand silver we do not have. And our men are farmers, not fighters."
"Then we will make them fighters," Alessandro said. He led them to the overlook, gesturing to the vast, fertile valley floor, a patchwork of thriving green. "That is our treasury. It is our food, our wealth, and now, it will be our armory. We will not pay our soldiers with coin. We will pay them with the very land they will swear to protect."
He unveiled his plan, another concept so foreign it took the men a moment to grasp. He would not just call upon a peasant levy in times of war. He would create a standing, professional force. He would select the most promising young men of the valley—those between sixteen and twenty-five, strong and loyal. Each man who swore an oath of service for ten years would be granted a personal plot of the new, rich valley land. A fiefdom in miniature. It would be theirs to farm, theirs to keep, with only a minimal tithe owed to the lord. In exchange, they would not be farmers who sometimes fought; they would be soldiers who also farmed. They would train every week, be equipped by the lordship, and be ready to assemble at a moment's notice.
The call went out. In the bailey, before the assembled families of the fiefdom, Alessandro made his offer. He spoke of the looming threats, of the Bishop's warning and the Baron's hatred. He did not offer glory or riches, but a harsh duty in exchange for a stake in their shared future. The response was overwhelming. To the sons of peasants who expected to live and die working land that was not theirs, the offer of their own rich plot was a dream beyond imagining.
A careful selection process began. Alessandro, with Enzo's knowledge of the families and Lorenzo's eye for strength and discipline, chose twenty young men. They were the strongest, the quickest to learn, the most fiercely loyal to the new order of Rocca Falcone.
The valley's industry shifted once more. While the production of new plows continued, Lorenzo's forge now glowed late into the night, hammering out the tools of war. Following Alessandro's designs for simple, standardized equipment, he and his apprentices began producing basic iron helmets, small round shields bearing the falcon crest, and most importantly, hundreds of sharp, leaf-bladed spearheads.
On a flat section of land near the new mill, the training ground was established. Alessandro, drawing on his 21st-century knowledge of military history, became a drillmaster. He did not teach them the chaotic individual combat of knights. He taught them the discipline of the Roman legion and the strength of the Swiss pike square. He drilled them relentlessly in marching, in formation, in holding a shield wall, and in wielding their nine-foot spears as a single, cohesive unit.
It was grueling, repetitive, and utterly alien to the young farmers. But week by week, a transformation occurred. The clumsy individuals began to move as a single, deadly entity. A phalanx of twenty men, their shields locked and their spear points glinting, was a far more terrifying sight than any single knight in shining armor. Alessandro appointed the most disciplined of his original guards, a stoic young man named Marco, as his first Decanus, a corporal in charge of ten men.
One bright afternoon, weeks into their training, as Marco was drilling his squad in advancing and retreating in formation, an interruption came. A rider was spotted on the road, galloping towards the valley at a desperate pace. He was not a soldier or a merchant, but a simple peasant, his horse lathered in sweat.
He reached the gate and, seeing the armed, disciplined soldiers, begged to be taken to their lord. Brought before Alessandro on the training ground, the man fell from his horse, exhausted and terrified.
"My lord," he gasped, "I come from Pietra Secca, a village three leagues from here. We are being terrorized! Bandits have made a camp in the woods nearby. They steal our food, our livestock… they have carried off two of our women! Our own lord, Baron Valli, is weak and refuses to help us!"
The man looked at Alessandro, his eyes wild with a sliver of hope. "We have heard the stories, my lord. The stories of Rocca Falcone, the valley of miracles. They say you are a just lord, a strong lord. We have nowhere else to turn. We beg you, in the name of God, help us!"
The recruits stopped their drilling, looking from the desperate peasant to their young lord. A hush fell over the training field. Alessandro now faced a choice that would define his future. To risk his new, barely-tested soldiers in a fight that was not his was a terrible gamble. But to refuse a plea for justice, to show the world that the Falcon of Rocca Falcone was unwilling to use its new talons, was a risk of a different kind.