Chapter 556 — Migrants and Deserters

Since the end of winter, Rock Fortress had been growing more prosperous by the day.

This new city in the north of Cecil had once been nothing more than a stretch of forts and plains south of the Rock Fortress stronghold. The Cecilites had torn down the walls of the old stronghold, leveled its former towers, and raised a new fortress city from the wartime ruins. Around its outer ring they built new "magic energy barriers," and along the banks of the Dolgon-Whitewater River they laid out a wharf plaza, bringing this land that had known war back to life.

At first, the people living in the city's inner keep were uneasy—they were residents of the old stronghold, who had once served the royal army garrisoned at Rock Fortress, and this awkward identity left them in constant fear of postwar reckoning at the hands of the Cecilites. But as the new fortress commander took office and the administrative office began to function, the Cecilites honored, one by one, the promises they had made when they took over the fortress: no purges, no forced conscription, no demolition of homes, no seizure of fields. Once these promises were fulfilled one after another, order at Rock Fortress gradually stabilized, and that growing order in turn set the newly built city of Rock Fortress running.

As a city designed from the outset to serve as a "window of exchange," Rock Fortress, once it began to run, swiftly turned prosperous.

This was the throat, the vital passage between the Holy Spirit Plain and the Southern Region, the route merchants had to take for north-south trade. To the merchants, the Southern Region seemed to hold an ever-unfillable gap in ores and magical conductive materials, while people everywhere in Ansu welcomed the alchemical potions and magic-net units from Cecil—the Dolgon-Whitewater River practically ran with rolling gold coins, so much so that the merchants doing business in Rock Fortress had coined a new saying: so long as you can haul a sack around Rock Fortress once, even a donkey will come away with pockets bursting.

And recently, the royal house had reached a new agreement with Cecil. Those sluggish nobles of Frostrest finally acknowledged the authority of the Southern Region Duchy, and Cecil opened more trade orders to the Holy Spirit Plain. Rock Fortress grew livelier still; new merchants were drawn here, and new goods began to appear on the cargo boats and wagons—cheap textiles, paper, and liquor from the south were added to Cecil's list of goods, and their low prices left merchants from the Holy Spirit Plain gaping. In a very short time, the goods flowing from Cecil to the Holy Spirit Plain were no longer limited to alchemical potions and magical conductive components—while what Cecil purchased remained, as ever, endless ores and magical materials...

Commercial prosperity made Rock Fortress develop at a breakneck pace. More and more outsiders were drawn here to settle—not only residents of the Southern Region, but also people from the Holy Spirit Plain who had left their homes for one reason or another.

At the entry-exit registration checkpoint on the wharf plaza of Rock Fortress, a line of new immigrants who had just come off the boats was filing through a narrow passage. This narrow passage and the rule of "queuing" were strange novelties to anyone crossing beyond Rock Fortress for the first time; they were not quite used to it, but the fully armed soldiers at the wharf could be relied upon to make them adapt quickly.

A red-haired youth with his head lowered shuffled forward with the line, looking altogether unremarkable. The lanky man ahead of him stumbled through his registration, and then it was his turn to stand before the "registrar."

"Name?" the registrar asked.

The red-haired youth shrank back a little, glanced around in what he believed to be an inconspicuous manner, and said quietly, "Sala. No surname, sir."

"Age? Trade or specialty?"

"Nineteen... eighteen. I've been a carpenter, sir."

The registrar lifted his eyes, looked at the red-haired youth's hands, and then at the way he stood.

The calluses at the web between thumb and forefinger were thick; his stance leaned habitually slightly forward, feet apart.

The registrar glanced over the youth's clothing and then at the thick leather boots on his feet.

"Where are you from?"

"The Holy Spirit Plain... the middle, a village near Giantstone City..."

"Can you read?"

"No, sir."

"Your reporting card. Take the left-hand passage; someone at the end will take you for resettlement." The registrar produced a card and handed it to the red-haired youth, and as the other reached out to take it, he gave him a long, deep look. "Young man, remember to obey Cecil's laws—on that premise, the Duchy will protect you. Also, don't call me sir. I'm just a registrar."

"Y-yes, sir."

The red-haired youth took the stiff paper card somewhat flusteredly, and whether or not he had caught the registrar's words, he hurried off toward the left-hand passage. On the card in his hand was printed a number: 3.

The registered youth did not know what the number meant, but the registrars working the wharf did: this code meant suspected deserter from the Holy Spirit Plain, recommend secondary review.

The registrar raised his head and looked at the still-long line inside the passage, wondering how many more deserters from the Holy Spirit Plain were mixed in among these people.

Ever since this messy civil war had sunk into a stalemate, such people had only grown more numerous.

The situation on the eastern front of the Holy Spirit Plain was said to be fierce, with both the royal army and the Eastern Region army caught in the awkward position of being unable to win a quick victory. The deadlock forced both sides to pour ever more soldiers onto the battlefield, and the protracted war produced ever more deserters.

For noble armies that lacked effective management, and whose soldiers had little zeal or loyalty, deserters were as common as wind and rain.

That youth was most likely a royal army soldier, and so he dared not flee east; he might also be a follower of some god other than the God of Holy Light, and so he dared not flee north of the plain—in these times, other-faith believers had a hard lot in the north. Between the Western Region and the Southern Region, the nearer Southern Region with its generous immigration policies was clearly the better choice for such deserters.

The registrar shook his head. Cecil did not mind where these deserters came from—whether deserters fled from old-style noble armies or refugees who had lost their homes and land and left their native places, they were all valuable labor to Cecil. Though the registrar himself was no high-ranking administrative official, he had been trained, and he knew that to the Duchy every person coming from north of Rock Fortress was the same: none of them qualified as they were; all of them had to be civilized.

Similar scenes played out not only at this one registration exit. Across the whole wharf plaza, at the ends of twenty-eight registration passages, every registrar held reporting cards used to mark special immigrants—deserters from the Holy Spirit Plain, other-faith believers expelled by the Daylight Church, suspected spies sent by northern nobles... Ever since Cecil's situation had stabilized and the Duchy had won the royal house's recognition, the Southern Region had once again opened its channels for absorbing population, and in the vast tide of immigrants pouring into the Southern Region, there were all kinds of people.

In a sense, the Cecil territory had risen on "displaced folk," and to Cecil's administrative office, handling these immigrants could almost be considered a basic professional requirement.