11: Exiled Lord — Chapter 11 – Baseness — The Noble’s Passport 11: Exiled Lord — Chapter 11 – Baseness —
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This world was soaked in blood and baseness from end to end.
Kindness got you killed, especially if you were a noble.
Field had run out of patience for it.
He’d run out of kindness, too.
Let steel and blood do the talking.
Baseness was a noble’s passport.
As it turned out, humans attacking their own kind was far simpler than fighting the walking dead.
At least they didn’t look horrifying.
One of the human slaves let out a howl, lunged forward, and pinned the one-armed soldier to the ground.
He drove the sickle into the man’s neck and yanked hard.
The head came clean off.
The soldier’s expression of pure terror stayed frozen on his face long after the rest of him stopped moving.
“Well done.” The corner of Field’s mouth curved upward.
He fished a silver coin from his pocket and tossed it over.
“I allow slaves to own property.
The more you work, the more you earn.” Every pair of eyes around them went red.
One silver coin was no small sum, it could buy a hundred loaves of black bread, and a hundred loaves of black bread meant a hundred more days of life.
Money lit a fire in them that nothing else could.
With Ashina’s giant wolf already charging at the front, the slaves didn’t hesitate.
They gripped their weapons and surged forward together.
“What an effortless slaughter.” Against a Chosen One, a handful of fully-armored infantry was nothing but a bad joke.
Heavy armor didn’t help when a wolf’s paw could flatten you into something two-dimensional.
Blood seeped from the crushed corpses, gurgling together into a shallow river across the stone floor.
Field ignored the begging.
He ignored the screaming.
Once the last of the garrison was down, he stood on tiptoe to avoid the scattered limbs and picked his way carefully into the bunker.
“This is…
the armory!” He couldn’t hide it.
The moment he stepped inside, the grin spread across his face on its own.
Armor was stacked in mountains from floor to ceiling, bound in neat bundles and giving off the warm scent of tung oil.
Racks beside them held standard-issue long halberds, steel swords, and iron-banded shields.
Crossbows lined the walls.
Barrels of feathered arrows sat in rows, broadheads, bodkins, fire-tipped, every function covered.
Enough to arm five hundred men to the teeth.
Full armor for every single one.
No baron could have funded this on his own.
It had come from across the entire Empire, every major lord was required to contribute a share of supplies and gold each year to shore up the border, to hold back the corrupted monsters and the orcs pushing from the north.
“Kashan Fortress is just a forward outpost and it’s already sitting on all of this.” Field shook his head slowly.
“I don’t even want to think about how much the bigger fortresses further back are holding.” “Are we… This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
rich now?” Ashina had already pulled a cavalry bow from the wall and was turning it over in her hands, clearly reluctant to put it down.
“We made a small fortune.
This is nothing.” Field was absolutely thrilled, but he kept it casual.
He waved a hand.
“Stop standing around.
Arm yourselves.” That was all they needed to hear.
The slaves swarmed the racks, pulling down sets of lamellar armor and working the straps with clumsy, eager hands.
For most of them, it was the first time they had ever worn real armor.
It was heavy, far heavier than they expected, but the security it gave them was something else entirely.
The only problem was that they were all half-starved and rail-thin.
The armor hung off them.
Half of them wobbled when they walked.
“Heh.” Field rubbed his hands together.
“Enjoy that, Richard, you smug bastard.” He turned and waved over the slave who had struck first.
“What’s your name?” “Wildcat, my lord.” He looked like he expected to be punished for having a name.
In an age where knowledge was hoarded by the powerful, common people named themselves however seemed convenient.
There wasn’t much choice in the matter, either.
If your name accidentally matched a noble’s, the guillotine and the horses’ hooves wouldn’t care whether it was intentional.
“I’ve got a job for you.” Field drew Wildcat aside and laid it out in a low voice, gesturing as he talked, pulling the man through it twice until he had it right.
He’d already stolen Baron Bull’s entire weapons stockpile.
One more transgression wasn’t going to make much difference.
He sent Wildcat off with twenty men and turned back to the armory.
“Take it all,” Field muttered, pacing.
“Every single piece.
I’ll feel sick leaving any of it behind.” He raised his voice.
“Ashina — go get Carl.
Bring everyone here.
Start moving the equipment off the wall.
We’ll collect it once we’re through the checkpoint.
From this moment on, it belongs to Nightfall Fief.” But weapons and armor alone weren’t enough.
Field knew it.
Nightfall Fief was a gamble he couldn’t afford to lose, which meant he had to push further.
Kashan Fortress drew supplies from nobles across the Empire, but the villages under its jurisdiction still paid every coin of their taxes.
Six large villages in total, all sitting on fertile land, sending a steady flow of cattle, sheep, wheat, and silver to the Baron’s castle every year.
Rolling hills stretched out in every direction.
A squad of well-equipped soldiers, bearing the family banner of Baron Bull, moved through the withered vines and dead weeds, past crumbling walls and broken stone.
Oxhorn Village was famous in the surrounding countryside for its two watchtowers.
In truth, they were only four meters tall, and that was counting the roofs.
But to the people who lived there, those towers were something to be proud of.
As long as hunters were posted up top, the village could hold off bandits with nothing but the outer wooden palisade and a handful of militia.
The old men were shaken.
Monsters, inside the fortress itself.
It reminded them of stories about the orcs, the kind of stories you didn’t want to think about for too long.
Three or four villagers in rough hemp clothing sat at the village gate, dung forks resting beside them, bowls of vegetable soup cooling in their laps.
They were deep in a debate about how many rounds the widow from the east village could last against a greenskin orc, and they kept breaking into loud, ugly laughter.
“Lord’s soldiers!” One of them spotted the banner.
They all looked up, curious, uncertain, not sure whether to be relieved or worried.
Then Wildcat and the slave guards came into view.
“Open the gate.” Wildcat didn’t bother with pleasantries.
The soldiers beside him drove their halberds into the dirt with a sharp crack, lamellar armor ringing.
Wildcat drew himself up the way he’d seen nobles do it and bellowed, “What, you want us standing out here drinking the wind?
Open it, you damn idiots!” The villagers scrambled.
They practically fell over each other ushering the group inside.
“My lord!
Is this about the corrupted corpses?
Our village held the attack off — thanks be to the gods, and of course to Lord Baron.” The village chief’s face had opened up into the widest, most enthusiastic grin imaginable.
He rushed forward, then stopped when he got a proper look at Wildcat.
A small crease appeared between his brows.
“This officer — I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.” Wildcat’s stomach tightened.
Then he remembered Field’s instructions.
Hard question?
Don’t answer it.
Just start yelling.
“Screw your old mother, you snake-licking worm, where is all this noise coming from?” He yanked his sword out of the scabbard.
“I’m here to collect taxes.
Not to introduce myself.
Not to make friends.
Do I look like I care whether you recognize my face?” The village chief took a face full of spit and nearly fell backward.
“Of course, my lord.
My apologies.
Completely my fault.” “Agricultural tax.
Head tax.
Household tax.
Faith tax.
Land tax.
Exemption-from-labor tax.
Breathing tax.
And whatever else there is, you know what Bull Fief collects.
Don’t make me list them all.” The medieval age had a truly impressive variety of taxes.
There was always something that suited the peasant perfectly.
➤ Next: Tax Collection, But From Someone Else’s Village