Free Web NovelChapter 239: Screening the Flock
Since the fiefs and titles hadn’t been officially revoked, the original holders were still the masters of those lands, but Fried intended to play lord of Valent anyway. He must have found it deeply satisfying, because he laughed until he could barely breathe.
"You know what? My wife’s family (Glesia) was situated near Valent. When that bastard tried to threaten my wife into letting him swallow up Glesia, I snatched her away. It’s been the best decision of my life ever since. Heh heh heh."
I drank my wine and listened in silence. I could well imagine how Baron Valent had felt when the bride he’d won after beating out his rivals—Ingrid, with whom he’d already completed the proxy marriage—was abducted on her way to his home.
Baron Valent might look like the victim, but he’d forced the marriage through to pressure Fried, who owed a debt to the Glesia family, so really, the two of them had just been trading sucker punches all along.
"With Ingrid, the sole direct heir, marrying me, her younger cousin came to inherit Glesia. If Glesia establishes itself as a prominent local family in Valent, I’ll take them on as my vassals."
"So you mean to appoint your in-laws as vassals and solidify your base of support."
"That’s right. You’ve seen for yourself how willful these vassal bastards are, haven’t you? Better to make my wife’s kin my vassals, get them backing me, and grow my own faction. That’ll give me far more room to maneuver down the road."
And then that vassal’s descendants and Fried’s descendants will fight all over again, just like now. It was obvious without even looking. Most princes go through exactly this. That’s why the civil wars never end.
Exploiting resentment against an heir to expand one’s own interests is a defining trait of the nobility. Once I have vassals of my own, there’s a good chance I’ll be plagued by the same problem. No—problems are guaranteed.
That’s why regional revolts break out at every generational handover, and why even the royal family pays them little mind. This is happening all across Europe, which is why there are so many nameless battles.
Even Grand Duke Karlus is fighting a civil war a mere three years into his reign, isn’t he?
The way the nobles threw themselves into the civil war without batting an eye was almost comical.
That’s why passive skills and the governance stat of family prestige matter so much. Unwavering loyalty to the Streit family is the highest criterion, so it was also important to put a few safeguards in place for the future.
I can’t allow a narrative like "the heir who reunified a divided territory and became a new hero" to take shape. That would be proof that I’d made a complete dog’s breakfast of politics. Ensuring the succession passes without incident is part of the work.
Fried cursed Baron Valent and treated the spectacle of the man being driven from the land his family had ruled for three generations as fine entertainment. Miserable as the baron’s situation was, even a rotten fish keeps its shape; he wouldn’t simply collapse into ruin like this.
"I wonder if the baron, driven out of Valent, can make a comeback in Strasbourg."
"A comeback... assuming he arrives in Strasbourg safely, that is."
The heir of Euznirk smiled meaningfully and drained his glass.
The next day, I summoned the people of Boeven who wished to relocate to Feuzen, one by one.
A simple disposition check.
It would have been nice if they were all positive and good-natured, but humanity comes in every shade, and selecting only residents with the dispositions I wanted was next to impossible. So my plan was simply to filter out the ones likely to cause trouble.
I had absolutely no intention of letting anyone with a heinous disposition set foot in my territory. Thinking of the victims brutally murdered by monsters like Schwarz Wolf, I couldn’t afford to be lax about it. freēwebnovel.com
Of the fifty migrants, twenty were farmers who had worked in orchards, and the rest broke down into guards, bricklayers, blacksmiths, and tailors, in that order. Most of them were exactly the kind of manpower Feuzen desperately needed.
Among them, I was especially interested in the orchard farmers.
Apart from the vineyards, Feuzen had no orchards; at most, each household grew a single apple or pear tree. And of course, even that was counted toward taxes and collected.
So I wanted to start orchard production in earnest. Boeven was famous for its fruit, and I hoped its know-how and techniques would transfer to Feuzen.
"My lord, we’re farmers who worked in the orchards. Does Feuzen have orchards too?"
"It doesn’t. That’s why I have very high hopes for you. When you relocate, pack fruit saplings above all else."
"S-saplings? We can’t just take those as we please."
In normal times, smuggling a territory’s property beyond its borders would be the kind of thing you’d risk your life over. But this was wartime, and Boeven, famed for its fruit production, was now occupied land. freёwebnovel.com
Apple, pear, and all manner of fruit saplings were obtained with remarkable ease, and no one stopped us. Saplings ranked as utterly worthless on the mercenaries’ loot lists, so we were able to gather most of them.
The orchard farmers’ representative gaped at the pile of saplings.
Next, I met the blacksmiths. Boeven had no fewer than three blacksmith families, and the one wishing to relocate was the smallest—the family that had been edged out of the competition.
Feuzen’s blacksmith had died in battle, so his son had become the new blacksmith. It would have been great if the son had talent, but truth be told, I’d had no time to find out, and that left me uneasy.
So it was excellent that exactly the manpower Feuzen needed was asking to relocate.
"We will forge arms and armor for you, my lord! Please, take us with you!"
"Feuzen is short on blacksmiths, so you’ll have plenty of work."
"Ohh, that much work? I can’t wait!"
Once the firearm replication is complete, every blacksmith will have to throw himself into producing and improving guns, and they’ll be insanely busy. Add civilian commissions on top of that, and they won’t know which way is up.
Misreading my smile, the blacksmith beamed innocently.
That’s right—enjoy it while you can. If you run, I’ll come catch you myself.
That’s exactly what the Searcher Scouter is for.
Bricklayers, along with carpenters, are key producers of building materials. In particular, I planned to repair the roads over the long term, which would require an enormous amount of brick. On top of that, all the wooden houses needed converting to brick.
Feuzen had a clay deposit too, but its development had been shelved for lack of bricklayers. The brickworks would make a perfect new workplace for the farmers who sat idle through the winters.
The interviews with the migrants I’d met so far showed that most leaned neutral in disposition.
It’s just that I prefer positive dispositions and keep such people around me; generally speaking, neutral is the most common and abundant. Capable of good and evil alike—that’s the hallmark of a neutral disposition.
Still, it beats an openly negative or evil disposition a hundred times over. The next group, a former guard with his wife and two children, looked rather far removed from anything positive.
The husband’s obsequious grin was one thing, but the expressions of the woman said to be his wife, and of the children, were deeply gloomy. What was this suspicious combination? The former guard’s disposition read cruelty (evil).
"No matter how I look at it, you two don’t seem like husband and wife."
"Wh-what are you saying? We are most certainly married!"
A lie. I gazed steadily at the woman. Feeling my eyes on her, she trembled, her pupils wavering wildly. She wept and sobbed, but offered me no explanation. Well, she didn’t need to.
"Why is this wench crying...!"
"Anton, cover the children’s eyes and ears."
Anton quickly grabbed the children and turned them away. The man’s bewilderment at the sudden turn of events was vivid on his face. It was the last expression of his life. The cavalry sword at my hip took him across the throat.
Gurk! Khurgh!
The man’s throat tore open and blood fountained out. Watching him die with a wet rattle, the woman turned her stifled weeping into open wailing. It was not grief for him.
"Thank you, my lord! Thank you for avenging us!"
While my men quickly dealt with the body, the woman recounted to me, in full detail, every atrocity that vile man had committed. The more I heard, the more he deserved to die. Anton soothed the children crying alongside her.
The man wasn’t the woman’s husband but her husband’s friend. In the chaos of the battle, under the pretext of protecting her in his friend’s place, he had dragged her off and raped her. Her actual husband had died in the fighting.
Worse, the man had even offered the woman up to mercenaries to save his own skin. Not only had he shamelessly played the husband, he’d tried to relocate to Feuzen—probably to escape all the watching eyes.
I’d filtered out only one man, but that alone was a tremendous result.
I gathered all the migrants who had been waiting outside into one place.
"Apart from one man, none of you are disqualified, so as Lord of Feuzen, I grant you leave to relocate."
There wasn’t a single migrant present who hadn’t witnessed the man’s grisly death. As they watched my men carry out his corpse, all sorts of thoughts must have crossed their minds. Naturally, the mood sank.
"What you must keep in mind is this: never, ever commit a crime in Feuzen. Just as I executed the criminal hiding among you, no one can deceive my eyes. Remember that."
It was fine for them to lose hope in Boeven and pin their expectations on me, a lord with prestige and compassion, but I gave them a light warning that if they pulled any funny business in Feuzen, things would get very unfunny indeed.
In any case, Feuzen came to accept forty-nine new residents.
I trusted Hilda would get them all squared away.
