Whitestone was a town where many of the residents worked in quarrying and mining.
As its name suggested, the area produced both limestone and marble.
According to teacher Medipl, the lay of the land was such that two different strata met and merged there at just the right angle, which was why both limestone and marble could be found and why their quality was so good.
Rimas, however, had let that explanation wash over him, and so had never quite understood the details.
Rimas and the others had come from the north of Whitestone.
To the east, northeast, northwest, and southwest, the land was entirely mountainous, as befitted a mining town.
Toward the south, the elevation gradually fell away into open plains, which led into a minor fief ruled by another lord.
Thus, although Whitestone lay on the southern edge of the Shadowfoot demesne, there was, oddly enough, no road connecting it to the neighboring territory to the south.
Of course there was a path, but it was not a road.
Places that were not roads under a lord’s care had no milestones, and without milestones, monsters could approach the path.
A milestone was not just a stone with distances and directions carved into it; it was an object imbued with magic, and no monster could come within fifty meters of it.
Thus, on any road managed by a lord, milestones were placed roughly every hundred meters.
With things arranged that way, monsters could not get close to the road, and one could travel along it in relative safety.
Accordingly, when people in the Empire said a road existed or did not exist, they meant these lord-maintained ways protected from monsters by milestones, and did not especially care whether the road surface was paved or not.
When they meant a path that had no milestones, they either added an explanation or used the word “passage.”
Of course, even on a road with milestones, where there was no fear of monsters, there were still highwaymen, and ordinary wild animals were not monsters, so beasts like wolves or tigers could still come near the road and attack travelers.
That was why people whose work required them to travel along the roads were allowed to go armed.
For that reason, the route leading south from Whitestone was used only by heavily escorted travelers, with enough guards that there was no need to fear wild beasts, or by people like MOW, who could take down most monsters on their own even when traveling alone.
Rimas knew that the lords of the Empire tended not to build too many roads connecting their lands to neighboring minor fief, for reasons of military security, because Medipl had once explained as much.
Even though there was no official road leading south, there were plains to the south, and thus fields where crops were grown.
The farmers of Whitestone were out working there now, in the heat of midday.
As mentioned, Rimas and his party were approaching from the north, so they did not encounter the farmers in the fields before reaching the village gate.
However, one of the villagers manning a watchtower that rose even higher than the two meter palisade encircling the village, a crossbow in his hands, saw them coming and had already called down to report that the merchant was on his way.
There was no gate fitted to the village entrance.
Wagons loaded with stone had to pass through often, which required a wide gate, and opening and closing something that big would be hard work.
Instead, the villagers used several obstacles that could be moved aside by hand to block the way.
As Rimas, his father, and Medipl approached, the villagers at the entrance cleared away the barricades and the hedgehogs so they could come in.
Because the village had to be able to host several wagons loaded with stone at once, there were many spots set aside for wagons.
As usual, Skelvis pulled into one of them and began to ready his wares.
While the village headman came out to exchange greetings with Medipl and then with Skelvis, the village women rounded up the children who had gone out to work and also called in those who had been helping with household chores.
Primary education in the Empire was closer to an obligation than a right.
The moment Medipl arrived, the villagers gathered up all the children, no matter what they had been doing.
Medipl greeted those he knew, drove his donkey to a spot where he could tie it securely, slung the sack of teaching materials over his shoulder, and headed for the place where the children always gathered.
As he made preparations for his trade, Skelvis said to Rimas,
“Go help teacher Medipl carry his teaching bag, then sit down and study right away.”
Rimas knew perfectly well that he could not help his father with his business instead, so he obeyed at once.
Everyone knew that even a lord would be in serious trouble if he neglected compulsory education, so no adult could openly say, “Finish your work first and then go to school.” Especially in a place like this, with so many watching eyes, any respectable adult was expected to tell a child to drop what they were doing and hurry to school.
Rimas might be wandering from place to place with his father, but whenever they visited a village that happened to be hosting a traveling teacher, or a settlement that had a resident teacher, he had to put everything else aside and go to school, no matter what. This chapter was copied from NovelPing without permission.
It was the only way an itinerant merchant’s son could make up for all the lessons he missed.
Students like Rimas, whose schooling was irregular, had to take an exam when graduation drew near, and if their result were poor, their fathers had to pay a fine, so they had to study hard.
Children who lived in one place, like those in this village, did not have to take such exams; simply attending classes was enough to graduate.
In that sense it was unfair, since they could graduate even if they slept through every lesson.
Still, no parent, however lax about schooling, could afford to let their child remain unable to read or do basic arithmetic, so they made sure their children learned at least that much—and teachers would turn a blind eye to dozing off as long as the student had cleared that baseline.
Compulsory primary education began in the year a child turned seven and ran for four years until the year they turned ten, so barring exceptional cases, most children managed to complete the curriculum.
Lessons were held in what normally served as the village smokehouse.
It belonged to the entire village, so it was roomy, and the ceiling was high.
At the moment there was no meat hanging there, so the place stood empty and made an ideal common classroom.
They needed a space that large because every child in the village had to attend when the teacher was in town.
The building did not let in much light, but they were lucky to have such a space at all.
Though the schoolroom was a dark interior lit by only a few lamps, that did not matter much.
The main form of instruction was not having the children read from the text on their boards by lamplight, but having them repeat after what the teacher recited.
The quality of teaching varied greatly with the teacher’s abilities, but for most children, listening to history and geography explained in lively fashion, told almost like old tales, was more effective than reading from a book.
Whitestone’s population was 254, and of them, as many as 60 were children under ten.
Officially, schooling began at seven, but given the village’s circumstances, the students brought along younger siblings and the small children from neighboring houses as well.
The villagers treated the school as a temporary daycare center and all returned to work to make up for the absence of that precious resource, child labor.
Even newborn infants were brought to the smokehouse in the arms of siblings only a few years older.
Thus, Medipl, as teacher and head of this makeshift daycare, also bore responsibility for ensuring that none of the children or babies came to harm or had any accidents—though he considered that naturally part of a traveling teacher’s duties and cared for them in that spirit.
It was hard for children minding their younger siblings to study properly, but Medipl still went around to each one, distributing materials and checking their progress.
He would check by asking questions that indirectly reinforced what they had learned: during whose reign had the story he told last time taken place?
Which direction did a certain province lie from here?
Or, referring to a heroic battle he had described, if one company had 50 soldiers and there were five companies, how many soldiers would there be in total?
This way he gave them practice in multiplication.
In the central settlements of a demesne, where a resident teacher lived, classes lasted three or four hours in the morning.
But for a traveling teacher, lessons ran from arrival until bedtime.
He took short breaks here and there, but since he stayed only a day or two before moving on to the next village, it was unavoidable if he wanted to cover the required material.
Still, on fine days he would sometimes take everyone outside and hold class in an open space in the village.
Because the children there ranged from toddlers to older pupils, the teaching materials Medipl handed out were wooden boards.
Ordinary books were extremely expensive items, and if children tore them, drooled on them, or spilled something on them, the loss would be unbearable, so in villages like this the materials were boards with writing on them.
As far as possible they used light-colored wood, carefully planed it smooth, then wrote on it with a metal stylus or branding iron heated in the fire.
Even if the teacher had no talent for carving, this made it easy to inscribe letters into the wood.
Even with sixty children shouting, crying, playing, and getting into mischief, Medipl did his best to see that they learned what they needed.
Some of the brighter students took it upon themselves to teach their younger siblings or the smaller children from neighboring houses and helped them with their work, and there were also children who maintained order in the teacher’s stead, so at least Medipl was not the only one rushing about in all directions.
Rimas stayed mostly near the teacher, helping him, when a girl came up to them.
To his surprise, she was holding not a wooden board, but an actual book.
Rimas had come to this village many times with his father, but this was the first time their stay coincided with Medipl’s.
Any child capable of doing anything was expected to help with farm work or household chores, and those too young even for that stayed inside the house.
Naturally, this was the first time he had seen this girl’s face.
Medipl glanced back at the girl and said,
“Ah, Rimgaile.
So you have already finished the book I lent you last time.”
“Yes, teacher Medipl.”
The girl called Rimgaile answered with a cheerful smile, yet somehow it never quite reached her face at least, not to Rimas.
She was, by most accounts, a pretty girl, but there was one thing about her that stood out.
A patch covered her left eye.
No child would wear such a thing for play, which meant she had lost the sight of that eye simply a one-eyed girl.
The patch itself was nothing more than a scrap of cloth, crudely stitched and tied around her head, and it alone spoke of the hardship she lived with.
Then again, it was hardly surprising.
A commoner’s daughter in a mining village like this could scarcely be well off.
“You see?
I told you she’s the only student in this village I can trust with my books.”
So saying, the teacher drew Rimas closer by the shoulder.
“This is Rimas, the son of Skelvis, a traveling merchant who has come to town.
He’s quite diligent in his studies much like you.”
Rimgaile had shown little interest when his name or his father’s trade was mentioned, but at that, she turned her gaze toward him.
Being looked at by a girl with only one eye felt strangely unsettling, and Rimas found himself shrinking under it.
After a moment, Rimgaile looked away from him and addressed Medipl.
“Teacher, I have a question.”
“All right, let’s hear it.”
“Our units of distance are meters and kilometers, so why does the word ‘mile’ appear in ‘milestone’?
Even the inscriptions say things like ‘so many kilometers to such-and-such village’ or ‘so many kilometers from it.'”
“You never let a question like that pass, do you, Rimgaile?
Wanting to clear up your doubts like that—well, that in itself is a kind of talent.
Now then, as for the reason.
Even before the Empire was founded, this continent—though of course it wasn’t called the Imperial Continent back then—was divided among many different countries.
And within those countries were countless territories, each with its own lord.
The trouble was that nearly all of those territories used their own systems of weights and measures.
Even when the units shared the same name, their actual values differed from place to place.
If you bought a pound of steel in Whitestone and another pound in Tofsloin, then set them on a balance, they would never come out even.
Volume, weight, length—everything varied.
The differences were not enormous, but discrepancies of ten percent, and in some cases even twenty percent, were simply unavoidable.
And in such situations, it was usually the stronger side that benefited.
So when merchants traveled to trade in other regions, they had to keep track of which place’s ‘pound’ was heavier than another’s.
They might bring extra goods to compensate—or, if they had enough influence, simply insist, ‘This is what a pound is here,’ and push the deal through.That was how trade worked in those days.”