Oblivious to what was unfolding in the realm of the burning ice, with no idea that his mother was about to return bearing a great gift and a vast fortune, Ethan stood at the Goldenveil barracks, his gaze sweeping carefully across the ranks of his soldiers.
It was already the end of the fifth moon, and in total, Doran had managed to muster three thousand five hundred men into the Goldenveil Guard.
That represented a considerable portion of Goldenveil's population, which now numbered just over eleven thousand inhabitants.
Of those eleven thousand people, four thousand were men of military age, one thousand were children, and the remaining five thousand were divided between women and the elderly.
Adding the five hundred soldiers stationed in Windmere, the total army numbered four thousand.
It was an absurdly high percentage of the population in military service—something that, for most cities, would be completely unsustainable.
For Goldenveil, however, this mattered little.
