Meeting Mikhail had been a pleasure. He could forget 'Hans Gale Zimmer' the discharged soldier with the battlefield's stress on his back and remember a childhood spent running about the grasslands. He could not go back to being that rascal, but the memory remained and was shared with a friend.
At a fork in the road Mikhail said his goodbyes.
"We part here. I have to fetch Susan from the pasture."
"Yeah, all right. See you later."
"Right, I'll gather the lads. The harvest is in and they've nothing to do, so they'll come running."
"Hahaha. Do that."
Hans watched until his old friend's back disappeared over the hill, then mounted and went on his way.
Along the road the child began to whine, her legs hurting. With her parents' faces brighter and her belly full for a while without hunger, the child's own face had brightened markedly, and she had begun at last to show feelings as a child does.
"Papa, carry me."
The man spread both arms and gathered her up.
"Give her to me."
"Ah. Thank you."
Hans took the child from the overawed couple and seated her in front of him.
"Wow, it's high. I can see a long way."
Excited by the new experience the child chattered, and soon began to nod off. Hans held on to her and dozed on horseback himself, and before long her father had taken the reins and was leading. Her mother followed behind, leading the donkey. It was a peaceful picture.
***
"We'll stop at the lord's keep and register you as domain subjects."
"Ah, thank you."
At being taken on as domain subjects rather than serfs, just as promised, the couple were relieved. Today's food was the urgent thing, but on the assumption that they would at least escape hunger, a domain subject is a hundred times better than a serf. Above all it was good to have the trust they placed in their landholder confirmed.
'It is a mercy the master keeps his word.'
'I can see hope in the future.'
The laborer and his wife confirmed once again that their choice had been right, looked at each other and smiled.
—Clop, clop.
Past the footpath, beyond a rise, was the lord's keep. Mikhail had said an outpost had gone up along the way; around harvest time monsters appear more often, and small outposts are run here and there across the domain.
He seemed to be a noble who did a lord's job properly.
"Well, everything in the domain is his, so of course he should protect it."
The trouble was that there were many lords who did not manage even this much. Local strongmen who gathered a following and styled themselves nobles never mind a noble's obligations; they squeezed their subjects and, once they had strength enough, provoked a neighboring domain.
It had been so in the war as well. Having watched nobles who felt no particular reproach at their soldiers' deaths, Hans looked kindly on a lord who did his duty.
The lord's keep was better described as a mansion with a high wall.
In the age when wars between domains were common, the usual form was a high cliff or a riverside, a moat dug and a wall of thick span raised so that soldiers could defend from the top of it.
But once centralization began to strengthen, castles were abandoned over the enormous cost of upkeep or reduced to warehouses. Excluding the domains of the margraves near the borders, the trend for newly developed territory these days is to have no wall at all.
"Halt."
A soldier in front of the mansion looked Hans over and asked.
"What is your business?"
Hans answered from the saddle.
"I am a subject of this domain who has received a title, and I have come to pay my respects to the lord."
"Ah, one moment, please."
The soldier spoke politely and disappeared inside, and after a short wait a man came out.
"Welcome. Simon di Drenod, butler."
Hans dismounted and made his greeting.
"Hans Gale Zimmer."
Hearing the other man's middle name, he paid his respects, and the butler showed him to the lord's study. The laborer and his wife were left behind with the horses.
The viscount's house as it appeared along the hall invited comparison with the count's house he had seen before. A great noble's mansion was the royal palace plausibly reduced, and a provincial noble's mansion was a great noble's mansion reduced again.
'I do not know much, but it looks frugal beside the count's house.'
"Welcome."
The lord's expression was stiff.
"Hans Gale Zimmer. Three years ago I volunteered for the front. Afterward I was granted a barony for service in the war, and exchanged it for a knighthood. I ask your permission to return and settle in my home village."
"Oh. Is that so."
The atmosphere improved all at once. It was Hans's saying that he had sold the barony and bought a knighthood that smoothed the lord's face.
His house had run the domain for generations on behalf of the count, who was his cousin. The king's permission had been obtained, but it was plainly a title the count had conferred. For a lord holding such a viscounty, a barony granted by the king is awkward. But a knight can be treated suitably and left at that — a presence who costs nothing and may be asked for help in hard times.
"I welcome a war hero returned to his home."
"Thank you."
"This is a happy occasion for the domain."
The viscount was pleased that the domain had gained one knight. The knights he could appoint were five in all, and between them they could raise two hundred and fifty soldiers.
Hans, as a force outside the official strength, could be entrusted with raising fifty soldiers as interests aligned.
The domain is barren and there are many enemies around it. Anything at all that can be made to take your side is a good thing. The old man, who had lived his whole life as the master of a country domain, was full of life's wisdom.
"You have not eaten yet? I invite you to dine with us."
"You honor me."
Hans was more punctilious than he had been with the nobles of the capital.
With the capital's nobles there was no overlap of interests, and the attitude was that what was pleasant was best. But the lord in front of him was, plainly, the king of this region. Having come home, he could not help watching the lord's face.
The owner of a country is of course its king. Only a king may appoint any noble. But the further you go from the capital, the less the king's power reaches.
The reality is that a merchant with money buys serfs, works untilled land, usurps a title for himself and throws his weight about. Then a royal envoy is dispatched, takes a suitable bribe, and sometimes grants the title. The king chooses between putting the man down and soothing him to collect his taxes.
The so-called 'usurp first, title afterward' rests on a noble's right to grant five titles two steps below his own, and that too is the logic of force. When a question is raised, only then is the king's permission obtained; the cycle repeats, so that what is illegal has continued on like custom.
This is the result of the king turning a blind eye to the nobles' excesses for the sake of provincial stability and the smooth collection of taxes. No — the accepted view is that in truth he never had the strength to squeeze the nobles that hard.
Dining with the lord by his favor, Hans told stories of the battlefield with suitable embroidery and kept his host in good humor. Perhaps because he was a noble of a country domain, he was not bound up in formality, and it was a comfortable enough meal for Hans as well.
Over tea afterward the lord said.
"I permit you to reside on my land as an independent noble."
Recognized as an independent noble, he was exempt from tax.
'I have my exemption, so I had better do my duty.'
Hans said the thing the lord would most want to hear.
"I am grateful for your consideration, and I promise that whenever you should ask it, I will take the field in the domain's business."
"Ohh."
The lord's mouth went to his ears. Reading the lord's face, Hans recalled the advice of Baron Louis Chel Lindenmann of the Capital Administration Office.
'It is give and take. Where there is giving there must also be receiving. That is the basis of mutual trust between nobles.'
With a small nod, Hans said.
"There is something I wish to say to you, my lord."
"Yes. Speak."
The lord's expression said he would grant anything at all.
"Three years ago I was a headache who did nothing but cause trouble."
Hans laid his own story out. The lord brightened with curiosity, and Simon the butler pricked up his ears as well. On an idle, long winter night, a young war hero's story could only be gripping.
The butler quietly gestured to a servant and wine was brought.
"I made trouble all over the place, and got into a quarrel with a certain man, and he declared a duel."
"Country troublemakers would not even have known what a 'duel' was."
—Nod, nod.
Simon the butler held a mouthful of wine and nodded. The lord refused the wine and took a mouthful of vodka. Riding that atmosphere, Hans steered an uncomfortable story into something suitably like gossip.
"In the duel, held before an inspector, my opponent performed a perfect sword form even in full plate mail, and I......."
Watching his listeners' reactions, he told it with a little dramatization added.
"And so I lost, and my father handed over half the family's property. After that I volunteered for the war."
He had dressed up a dog-fight between the sons of two country nouveaux riches as a plausible duel. Honestly, he had lost the fight, and he had been outmatched in family power too.
"Against a knight, that is how it would end."
"He is said to have completed the Capital Academy's knight faculty with distinction."
"Mm? You know a great deal."
"I consider that a butler's post requires him to know everything in the domain."
"That is so."
The viscount nodded with a satisfied expression.
"Do you mean to take revenge?"
"I would hesitate to call it anything so grand as revenge, but I paid the price, so I believe I am qualified to request a second duel......."
"I see. And what am I to help with?"
"Nothing at all. Help, my lord? I only wish to ask your permission. The party to the duel is of the tax collector's family."
"The tax collector?"
The lord turned to Simon the butler.
"Paget. To be precise, the deputy tax collector."
At Simon's level answer a chill could only run up Hans's spine.
'He has already looked into my home village and the tax collector? We met for the first time today, and he knows about an old quarrel?'
The dignity of that professional post, 'butler,' impressed itself on him again.
"He is not even a formal official, so my permission is hardly required. Is it not so?"
"Ah, yes. Yes."
At the lord's question, which carried the pressure of 'agree that I am right,' Simon the butler assented reluctantly.
The lord looked at him with an expression that asked whether he wanted anything more.
Hans made his bow with the look of a man who had got everything.
"Thank you."
The lord nodded with a kindly face.
"The tea tastes particularly good today."
Hans glanced at Simon the butler. His expression was gloomy.
As they came out of the reception room, Simon the butler took the registration of the laborer and his wife as domain subjects.
A servant asked the couple their names and ages and wrote them in a ledger, and with that the formalities were simply concluded.
"I shall show you to your rooms."
"Thank you."
"Those two I shall direct to the servants' quarters."
—Nod.
***
The next morning, as he came out from paying his respects and taking his leave of the lord, Simon the butler followed him hesitantly.
'It would certainly do no harm to be well thought of by the butler.'
"Sir Drenod?"
"Ah, yes."
"It is written on your face. That you have something to say."
"Ah, hahaha. Is it?"
"Is there something I might help you with?"
At Hans's direct question the butler brightened. There was something so like waiting-for-this in the gesture that it made him laugh.
"The fact is......."
"Your nephew's wife's maternal uncle?"
Hans looked at Simon with an expression that said, 'Is that not a stranger?'
Sweating, Simon tried to recover the ground.
"By no means, by no means am I raising an objection to your rightful revenge. Only that, if it should be possible, I might hope for your generous handling of it......."
"In a word, you are asking me to see to it suitably?"
"Yes. That is...... no, that is not what I......."
Hans, looking at the seasoned butler of the ruling family of this barren country, was no fool either.
'Deliberately playing the clumsy innocent.'
Considering the sharpness with which Simon had named old Paget's family the moment the tax collector was mentioned in front of the lord, it was a transparent maneuver — and ironically that was what made him feel companionable.
'With the lord's unspoken permission he is planting his kin all through the domain. He protects them thoroughly and maximizes his house's profit.'
He had no intention of setting himself against a retainer the lord valued. He meant to crush the second duel with overwhelming force, not to draw blood clumsily. And he had the confidence for it.
"So far as my ability allows, I will keep your position in mind."
Having got the answer he wanted, the butler bowed his head.
"Thank you."
Hans nodded with a smile, but his eyes were not smiling.
'You will know about give and take yourself.'
Presented by the lord with a donkey cart and ten sacks of wheat, Hans left the keep. The child rode in the cart, and the laborer and his wife each took a donkey by the reins.
'Now, home.'