Chapter 165 — What Happened in the Kant Territory

It was a finely made dagger. Though not an enchanted weapon, its alloy had been mixed with a small amount of refined gold and purple steel, which gave it a distinctive pale violet sheen in the light. A blade of that composition granted no extraordinary power, but against enchanted armor and protective gear it tended to perform rather well.

And on the dagger's grip, Gao Yang discovered a mark shaped like a brown bear's head, ringed about with a garland of decoration.

In this age, many emblems could not be used at will—a fair number of fierce beasts and flowers were regarded as the "private symbols" of the nobility, and a mark combining a beast's head with flowers and plants often meant the sigil of some house. A commoner who used such marks freely would, without realizing it, be infringing upon a noble's rights. Judging by the heraldry he had learned and the noble law of Ansu, the mark on this dagger was, in structure, plainly the device of some family.

Seven hundred years on, these noble house sigils still followed the ancient traditions.

This dagger must have come as a noble's "grant." From what Gao Yang knew, nobles observed very strict rules when bestowing weapons upon others: battle-axes, war hammers, halberds, and the like only the King had the right to bestow, and only upon nobles with military merit; swords of various patterns (chiefly longswords) were far more common gifts—any noble could grant a sword to another for any reason, but the recipient had to be a noble as well, at least of knightly rank; while daggers, knives, short bows, and the like were deemed "beneath dignity"—nobles gave such things to commoners they favored, usually guards and retainers of outstanding performance, or… hunting dogs.

"Looks like I was right. Those mercenaries were 'reared' by a noble house," Gao Yang said, picking up the dagger and examining it closely. "I just don't know whether they serve one house, or several at once…"

"Do you recognize the mark on it?" Amber leaned in, curious. "Ah—I only thought it looked pretty at first…"

"No," Gao Yang studied it a while, then shook his head. "That house probably didn't exist yet in my time. Go and fetch Hetty—she should know the southern nobles better."

Before long Hetty arrived at Gao Song's tent.

After examining the mark on the dagger carefully, she said with certainty: "This is the crest of the Kant family."

"The Kant family?" Gao Qi frowned, searching his memory, and at last found the name among the contemporary common knowledge he had been cramming recently. "The viscount north of the Leslie family?"

"Yes. Cross the wild hills and forests north of the Whitewater River, and farther north still from where you brought back those refugees—that is the Kant family's domain," Hetty began to sketch the Kants for him. "It is a house that rose three hundred years ago, enfeoffed there for military merit. When the Cecil family 'had its trouble,' they happened to be loyal to the present royal house, and so escaped the great purge of the south. They count as one of the few families in these southern lands with a history of more than a century."

Gao Lan put in: "How do they stand with the Cecil family?"

"Neither close nor distant," Hetty answered. "During the great purge a hundred years ago they neither helped nor kicked a man who was down—they kept strictly neutral. They are a rather mysterious house, with little dealings with the outside world, and their members seldom appear in high society. Though southern high society is itself a loose thing, the Kants appear least of all."

"What is their main industry? Farmland? Mines? Or pasture?"

"The Kant domain chiefly produces grain, along with various fine herbs, including magical herbs—but no mines."

"Then there's a problem. A big one…" Gao Yang tapped the table. "A noble domain with no mines, living mainly off its fields—what does it want with a great herd of slaves plundered before winter? And judging by this dagger, these mercenaries work specifically for the Kant family. This surely isn't their first time catching slaves in the wild. What are all those slaves being sent to the Kant domain for?"

"That…" Hetty too sensed something bizarre, and suddenly another thought struck her. "There is one other strange thing. The Kant domain's main output has always been grain; herbs and magical herbs were only sidelines. But in recent years the quantity of herbs and magical herbs they sell abroad has risen year by year—magical herbs especially. Not only has their output doubled, the quality keeps improving, and they are quietly on the verge of overtaking grain to become the Kant family's main pillar. But by the laws of magical diffusion, that is very hard to explain…"

Because supernatural forces exist in this world, its "medicinal plants" fall into two kinds: besides ordinary herbs with common effects, there are "magical herbs" usable in various magical rites or directly as casting materials. Normally the growth of magical herbs is closely bound by the local magical environment, and their output has an inherent ceiling. Where the magical environment is poor, no amount of careful cultivation or improved seed can raise the yield of magical herbs—merely increasing the quantity may instead reduce the magic contained in the plants.

Yet the Kant domain's magical herb output was rising year after year.

In an age when nothing was properly counted, apart from merchants who dealt specifically in trade, nobles rarely noticed fluctuations in the crops of neighboring domains (in truth they were not always clear even about their own domains' output—that was the concern of advisors and stewards). But Hetty, being a mage—and a mage from a fallen house—naturally kept a close eye on the magical herb market around her, and had sharply caught this anomaly.

Amber had been listening idly from the side, but at this her pointed ears suddenly twitched, and her face filled with horror: "Good heavens! The Kant family aren't using living people for fertilizer to grow their herbs, are they?!"

"…I'll grant that with certain nobles' morals, they could well think of such a thing, but actually doing it is rather unlikely," Gao Yang said, waving a hand with a twitching eye. "Fields for growing magical herbs usually can't be hidden—outsiders can see them at a glance. And living people as fertilizer wouldn't raise the concentration of the magical environment anyway… what kind of black magic would that even be?"

As Gao Yang was speaking, Betty's voice suddenly came from outside the tent: "Master! Master! Piyun is here to see you!"

Gao Cen started, then recalled the task he had given the druid, and could not help smiling: "It seems his 'specific remedy' has done the trick."

Since he had long expected that ordinary interrogation would get nowhere with those mercenaries, Gao Yang had from the start asked Piyun to think of a way to deal with the two "prisoners" they had brought back.

Druids were not a profession skilled in "interrogating" information; in that regard their spells fell far short of the Blood God's followers, or of those necromancers who specialized in the ways of torment and pain. But change the approach, and interrogation was not the only way to extract information.

At least in the memory of Gao Yang Cecil, there were many methods of drawing intelligence from an enemy's mouth by means of druidic potions and rites—methods that worked just as well after seven hundred years.

In a small hut temporarily serving as a prison, Gao Yang found the two captured mercenaries, already dosed with potion, their foreheads smeared with ointment, and fumigated with ritual incense for a full hour.

By now the pair were barely in their right minds.

Piyun stood nearby, fairly preening: "Didn't I tell you, my potions and rites are very effective—this incense especially. The firmest mind will lose itself in its magic…"