And besides that, there was a limit to how many troops you could recruit in the first place. Many places in Karse had poor soil; poor soil meant that a great deal of work had to be put into a farm to make it prosper. The boys might get dreams of glory in the Sunsguard, but their fathers would see to it that they didn’t run off when they were needed at home. No matter how hungry for the land and riches of other realms the Sunpriests were, they were not mad enough to deplete their own land of the very people needed to keep the farms going. By the time Alberich was about to get his first commission, they had conscripted so many of the poor in the cities that there was an actual labor shortage, and women were taking jobs that once only men had filled. That had been the reasoning behind permitting bandits to use Karse as a base to raid into Valdemar; bandits didn’t require the support of the state, and they kept up the ongoing feud with Valdemar without—in theory, at least—costing Karse anything. Except that, of course, bandits didn’t keep their bargains, which had required the Sunpriests use all of their Sunsguard to quell them, leaving no fighters for any other little projects they might have in mind.

Which left hiring troops as the only viable option, if troops were needed for a campaign against anyone. That meant either Mercenary Guild companies, which were trustworthy, would not loot or otherwise molest your people, and in general were welcome in the lands of those who hired them—or non-Guild troops, which were unpredictable at best, and a hazard to those who hired them at worst. By betraying the Mercenary Guild, the Sunpriests had shaved those options to a narrow little rind, because not even the non-Guild Companies operating anywhere near Karse would touch a contract.

Of course, the only reason why you would need more troops was if you were going to start a war. The last time when the rulers of Karse had reneged on a Guild contract—the war had been internal. Some madman out of the hills had decided that Vkandis spoke through him without any evidence or real miracles to back up his assertions. But his cause was convenient for some of the nobles, moneyed merchants, and even a few priests, so they backed him and began a civil war. Both sides of the conflict had been decimated, which was, in part, how a bastard-born peasant like Alberich had managed to get into cadet training. And if it came to more than Border skirmishing, frankly, in Alberich’s opinion Karse couldn’t possibly raise the troops needed from among its own people.