Chapter 46 — The Sorcerer's Present Circumstances

The people working in the camp soon came to feel that this "ancestor" from seven hundred years ago was truly a strange man.

As for the lord of Cecil suddenly changing from Miss Rebecca to Lord Gao Yang, the commoners and serfs had no particular thoughts at all. The lower classes of this era, so long as they were guaranteed seven or eight parts out of ten of a full belly each day, would be grateful for the lord's generosity and wisdom—and as to who exactly the lord was, they simply did not care. For them, the only thing worth discussing after the lord changed to Lord Gao Yang was the strange rules this "ancient" had laid down the moment he arrived.

As for serfs being able to rise to freemen, and freemen being paid for their labor—most chose to believe this only to a limited degree, and regarded it as a means by which the new lord displayed his generosity. By the usual pattern, they expected these promises would ultimately be fulfilled in some harsh or cunning fashion: there might indeed be serfs who became freemen, but probably only one or two; there might indeed be payment for work, but it would likely be docked away on all sorts of pretexts, and in the end only two or three lucky souls would receive a few token copper coins, just to show the lord had truly done as he said.

But the commoners and serfs would not complain about this—after all, a lord willing to display his generosity was surely better by far than one who, the moment he arrived, wanted to whip slaves to display his authority.

And there was always some small benefit to be handed down, wasn't there?

Compared with those generous rules, the various so-called "regulations and codes" Lord Gao Yang laid down were what truly baffled people.

Dividing people into work groups, having the groups compete, registering workloads and holding "assessments"—such methods had never been heard of.

Some whispered among themselves, guessing which link in these new rules would in future become the tax-collecting part—though at present there was not a single person in the utterly destitute domain of Cecil who could pay any tax at all. Others discussed whether Lord Gao Yang's turning simple corvée labor into such an elaborate affair was some ancient quirk of the great nobles of old...

But be that as it may, there were parts touching their vital interests that they could still understand: the group ranked first in the daily work appraisal got meat to eat; the second and third could dip bread in meat broth until they were full.

Those who performed only passably got nothing but thin vegetable soup and black bread; though these too could be eaten to fullness, for those who had failed to get meat in the first day's "tent-pitching appraisal," the feeling of drinking vegetable soup while watching others eat stewed meat was one they truly did not wish to repeat.

Whether or not those promotion and wage systems that sounded like sheer fantasy were real, at least the matter of the lord giving out meat had already been proven true.

So on the second day in the camp, Hedy witnessed a scene of labor such as she had never seen before: commoner and serf alike worked as though possessed. They did not even need overseers standing by to finish their tasks swiftly; and since the work was divided into groups rather than each man fighting alone, they began unconsciously coordinating with one another as they worked, and efficiency rose still higher.

Most of those chosen as group leaders quickly realized that if they themselves wanted to eat meat, the only way was to raise the efficiency of the whole group, so that every member of it could eat meat. And the small minority who could not get their heads around this, who had won their leader posts by fists or cunning, would soon enough be replaced.

Not the whip to drive them to work, but competition and reward—this was truly incredible.

The tents had all been raised. Rebecca had taken some people to survey the nearby wasteland. The logging team had set out at first light for the cutting site upstream on the White Water River to the west, and by noon a batch of timber would come drifting down the White Water to the broad, gentle stretch downstream. To keep the logs from being swept away, Hedy handed over the patrol work to Sir Byron before the appointed time, and came herself to the riverbank to receive them.

At the appointed hour the first batch of timber appeared. Bound into rafts with thick ropes, the large logs beneath and the small ones heaped and lashed crosswise on top, from a distance they looked like one great ugly mass of dead branches floating on the river. Two serfs stood on the raft, their faces tense, controlling its course with long poles: the White Water ran very slowly along this stretch, and today there was neither wind nor wave, but a raft lashed together on the spot was hard to control in itself, and a single careless moment might see the whole thing come apart—no wonder they were tense.

But very soon the two serfs noticed the raft begin to glide steadily toward the shoal beside them: they saw a huge translucent hand rise from one side of the raft, a hand formed of air pressing the raft toward the bank with a gentle yet powerful force. One serf cried out instinctively, but the other promptly rapped the fool on the head with his pole and pointed at Lady Hedy standing on the bank.

They hurriedly worked with their mistress to pole the raft toward shore, letting it scrape against the sand and gravel and come to a smooth stop.

Then the people who had long waited on the bank surged forward, undid the ropes, and dragged the timber away, ready to turn it into the plank houses the camp would build next.

Ordinarily the timber would still need a whole series of processes—shade-drying, pest removal, and so on—before it could become sound, durable planks, but since much of the camp's coming construction was temporary, and there was urgent need, they could not afford to be so particular.

Gao Yang stood behind Hedy, lost in thought. "Magic really is convenient..."

Hedy had just caught her breath when the voice suddenly sounding behind her gave her such a fright that she nearly fell off the rock—luckily Gao Yang caught hold of her.

"S-sorry..." the lady apologized in a fluster. "I didn't realize you were standing behind me..."

"It was I who startled you," Gao Yang waved a hand, unconcerned. "By the way, that trick of yours just now was rather good, wasn't it?"

Hedy blushed slightly. "The Hand of Evocation is a very basic spell. I've practiced its metamagic techniques, so its duration can be extended somewhat; that way, so long as I keep pushing, even a very heavy raft can be guided to the bank. But if the current were any faster, there'd be nothing I could do..."

Though Gao Yang was a knight, in the age of exploration everyone was forced to become a naturalist, and he understood a little of the theoretical knowledge concerning the field of magic. Though Hedy made it sound simple, he knew that strengthening a basic Hand of Evocation to this degree, and specifically training its metamagic, was no easy matter—and also very rare.

"I... don't really have much magical talent," Hedy said, her face growing still more bashful at Gao Yang's question. "Though I awakened mana affinity at a very young age, my spiritual power condenses very slowly, and I can't construct overly complex spell models. So to this day I'm only a mage of the third rank, and in all likelihood I'll stay at this rank for the rest of my life—so all I can do is strengthen those low-tier spells over and over."

"Rebecca's magical talent doesn't seem high either..." Gao Yang frowned, thinking of that stubborn great-great-great-...-granddaughter who could conjure four kinds of fireball.