The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 2, Chapter 6

The Paladin of the Holy Kingdom, Part III: Act 2, Chapter 6

Chapter 6

“There she is.”

“Mm.”

Astride her chestnut steed, Neia chewed on a head of dried grass as she watched a pair of ranchers guide a cow and her calf back to their herd. The two Lanca had gotten lost somehow earlier that day, but it didn’t take long for her men to track them down.

Track, huh...I guess father was right.

The ranchers did indeed seem to be Rangers. Neia could see that everything they did was something that Rangers were known for. They ranged over their territory, which consisted of open grasslands rather than forests, just as any Ranger would. Every one of them somehow grasped the condition of the land without thinking, driving their cattle from place to place as necessary without needing to confer with their fellows. The men tirelessly maintained their vigil throughout the day, keeping the herds together, fighting off wild beasts, and deterring Human trespassers.

Human trespassers, huh...

She hadn’t witnessed that part, yet. Of course, they mentioned it to her back when she was patrolling as part of the Holy Order, but land disputes weren’t rare even before Jaldabaoth’s invasion. Storms came, knocking over fences or moving markers and everyone swore that the border was a metre or two in their favour when putting them back up. The Holy Order was called upon to intervene only if the local leaders couldn’t make a call and rulings had to be made on their behalf.

Neia idly plucked her bowstring while she eyed the horizon, alert for the telltale silhouettes of Humans trekking over the grassland. What would she do if it happened? Fighting off beasts and monsters was fine, but she didn’t want to fight her own people.

Well, they didn’t mention fighting people at all so maybe I’m overthinking things.

Work on the ranch kept her busy, but it wasn’t the same sort of busy as in the cities or working with the Holy Order. Overall, it was a relaxing way of life that afforded her a lot of time to think. The people were similarly relaxed and easy to get along with. When she thought about it a bit more, she couldn’t imagine any violence occurring.

She nudged her mount into a walk as the herd started moving.

“Where are we going next?” Neia asked.

“There’s a small river three kilometres down the other side of this ridge,” Carlos, the rancher riding beside her, said. “We’ll be setting up camp there.”

Neia nodded, watching the sea of Lanca as they plodded their way forward. When they crested the ridge, she took in the vast landscape under the clear blue sky. She pointed to a distant patch of off-coloured fields to the south.

“Is that a farming village over there?”

“It is,” Carlos nodded. “Gora.”

Really? How did I not know that?

Gora was one of the stops along her old patrol route, so she thought she should have noticed. Then again, it wasn’t as if they were following the roads.

“Do you ever have any trouble with the farming villages?” Neia asked.

“We make sure to keep the herds a few hundred metres from their fields,” Carlos replied. “Lousa gives them milk from time to time, but they still sneak onto our land to steal Lanca chips.”

“Eh...we don’t fight them over that, do we?”

“It’s sad to see the people so desperate, but theft is theft.”

‘Lanca chips’ were piles of dried Lanca manure. It would be inconceivable to city dwellers that one would so jealously guard their literal crap, but it was a valuable resource. Not only was it fertiliser, but the womenfolk in Mister Lousa’s holdings also regularly came around with carts, collecting it to use as fuel for their fires.

Neia gestured to the veil of haze that drifted from the village.

“If they’re short on fuel,” she said, “then why are they turning copse wood into charcoal to sell in town?”

“Because it’s the easiest thing for them to sell until their crops are ready,” Carlos shrugged. “They need to survive until then.”

“I see. In that case, why not loan them er...”

Neia’s voice trailed off as she tried to figure out how to phrase it. ‘Loan them your poop’ just sounded wrong. The man’s chuckle filled the awkward silence.

“Doesn’t work,” he told her.

“Why?”

“It’s hard to put a finger on why,” Carlos said. “Maybe it’s because we don’t see eye to eye on what’s worth what. Aside from that, the Nobles ‘managing’ those territories refuse to recognise it as a proper commodity. Neither do the Merchants.”

“Hmm...”

It was yet another way that the ranchers were similar to her father. They had a distinct sense of ‘wholeness’ that they strictly enforced on the ranch whenever they could. Everything was a part of something, and they saw themselves as a part of that something. Everything had value and absolutely nothing was considered ‘waste’.

As with most professional Rangers, they considered themselves custodians of the land that maintained its balance, not masters who tamed it to suit their whims. Neia could never quite figure out how it worked, but she knew better than to try and dislodge them from their thinking.

“So what do you do about it?” Neia asked.

“All we can really do is deter them. Patrols will keep them from bringing out wagons to collect the stuff, but they’ll still send out their kids to snatch what they can when we’re not around.”

She envisioned herself riding after kids over piles of Lanca dung. In hindsight, she was glad that she didn’t have to settle any poop-related disputes when she was working for the Holy Order.

When they arrived at the river, Neia’s company split up to raise twenty camps around the perimeter of the herd. Though outsiders might have scoffed at the idea that ranchers might organise themselves like the army, each of Mister Lousa’s herds had two thousand Lanca and a company was just enough to do everything related to taking care of them. Mister Lousa had five such herds, which roamed a two-thousand-square-kilometre strip of land that wrapped around the kingswood northwest of Hoburns.

Neia took a clipboard out of her saddlebags and visited each camp before she lost the daylight, recording any problems and changes that the ranchers had noticed over the course of the day. That seemed to be a more practical reason why she had been made a ‘captain’ – very few of the ranchers could read or write very well, if at all.

A pack of stray dogs attacked the herd’s northern flank. A Bunnia colony is digging up holes along the grazing route. Two cows got sick. Twelve new calves...heheheh, that’s good.

That was probably the best part about her new job. Lanca calves were cute. She wondered what Shizu would think of them. The Maid Demon had come by once after the end of the war to pick up the equipment that the Sorcerer King had lent to her, but, unfortunately, Neia was busy with work and Shizu couldn’t stay for long.

Neia wondered what the Maid Demon was doing now. The Sorcerer King had taken her back with him to the Sorcerous Kingdom, but he never did specify what he wanted the Maid Demons for. They were strong and people came to certain conclusions because of that, but would the Sorcerous Kingdom have any enemies at all? The Empire was their client state and Re-Estize had recently been defeated by them in a war. Roble’s delegation tried to learn what they could about the Battle of Katze Plains before heading to the Sorcerous Kingdom and came away with the sense that no one wanted to fight the Sorcerous Kingdom ever again.

I should have accepted their invitation to go visit.

The last time she had seen her, Shizu had invited her to come over and ‘play’, but Neia felt that she had a duty to help in the Holy Kingdom’s recovery and spread the wisdom of the Sorcerer King. If knew of the thankless fate that awaited her, she would have taken Shizu up on her offer without a second thought.

By the time Neia returned to her camp, a simmering pot of stew was waiting to greet her. Her stomach growled as the wind blew its appetising aroma in her direction.

“That smells good,” Neia sat on one of the boulders circling the campfire. “I didn’t know we had meat.”

Some dried fish went into their rations, but that was it as far as she knew.

“We didn’t.”

“...then where did we get the meat from?”

“Our calves were being nipped at by some dogs. One of our guys dropped one off just now.”

“Oh.”

I should have expected that.

People who went onto the ranch without permission were trespassers. Animals that did the same thing were trespassers they could eat. As far as Rangers were concerned, it was population management.

“Oh, I did,” Neia nodded energetically. “There was one I hadn’t heard before. The one about the Azerlisia Mountains...where is that song from?”

“Ah, Winter’s Crown. That one’s popular along the western frontier of the Baharuth Empire. And in the Azerlisia Mountains, of course.”

“Of course...”

What was she thinking? Maybe she hadn’t been thinking at all. Her enthusiasm overrode everything when it came to anything related to the Sorcerer King.

“It’s a bit weird, though,” Saye said.

“What is?” Neia asked.

“The song,” Saye answered. “Even though it’s about the Azerlisia Mountains, it first appeared in the Sorcerous Kingdom. No one knows–”

“Really?!”

Saye leaned back as Neia leaned forward. Neia calmed herself down and cleared her throat.

“Have you been to the Sorcerous Kingdom before?”

“I have,” Saye replied, taking a sip out of her cup. “Was there something you wanted to know?”

Something? More like everything!

Aside from what Neia saw on her brief visit to E-Rantel, she didn’t know anything about the Sorcerer King’s realm. His Majesty barely talked about it during the war, either.

Surely, it was a place where everyone embraced the Sorcerer King’s wisdom. She especially wanted to know how they went about it in their everyday lives. The people didn’t seem all that different from anyone else when she was there, but that was probably because she wasn’t watching for evidence of His Majesty’s truth back then.

“Hello?”

“Oh,” Neia blinked. “Sorry, I was just thinking about what to ask. I don’t have much to pay you for your information...”

That’s right, I nearly forgot in my excitement. Information is valuable to Bards.

Any information at all about His Majesty the Sorcerer King was undoubtedly worth a pile of treasure. A pile of treasure that Neia Baraja didn’t have.

“In that case,” Saye asked, “how about a trade? I came to learn about the war and how the Holy Kingdom is doing now. There weren’t any soldiers in the Sorcerous Kingdom that seemed to know about it.”

That made sense. The only person from the Sorcerous Kingdom who came to fight in the Holy Kingdom was the Sorcerer King, after all.

“Alright,” Neia nodded. “I can do that. You can tell me everything you know about His Majesty’s realm, and I’ll tell you everything about His Majesty!”

“Um, I wanted to learn about the war and the Holy Kingdom, too...”

While Saye had been to the Sorcerous Kingdom, she didn’t appear to appreciate the Sorcerer King’s greatness. Otherwise, she wouldn’t want to hear about anything else. Did that mean she didn’t know about the Sorcerer King’s wisdom, as well? If so, Neia resolved to open her eyes to the truth.

The Bard rose from her seat, draining away the rest of her drink.

“Break’s over,” she said. “Want to meet up after tonight’s banquet is over?”

“Of course!” Neia stood up, “I have a few days off before my next shift, so I’m sure we can share a lot.”

“Great,” Saye grinned. “Where would you like to meet?”

“I have a place on the eastern side of the villa,” Neia told her. “Unit seven.”

“Really? Mister Lousa put me in unit eight.”

“Great!” Neia said, “That’s really convenient. Then...I’ll see you then?”

“Yup!”

Neia returned to her home, giddy over the prospect of having someone to talk about His Majesty to. She went around cleaning things up – even though there wasn’t much to clean – then retired to her room to think about what she would say.

A knock on the door woke her up.

Huh? Wha...

She turned her head to look out the window, groaning at what she saw. The days working out on the ranch must have taken a greater toll on her than she thought.

Another set of knocks issued from the door.

“Just a minute!” Neia said.

She sat up in her bed, trying to comb down her hair with her fingers while straightening out her dress at the same time. It was too dim to see her reflection in the water basin, so she eventually gave up and went to open the door. Saye was on the other side, impeccably groomed and carrying a covered basket in the crook of her arm. The Bard looked up at her for less than a second before speaking.

“I can come back tomorrow if this is a bad time...”

“No, it’s fine,” Neia ushered the Bard in, “I just dozed off, that’s all.”

“Oh. I thought you had a man over or something.”

Neia yelped as she closed the door on her foot. Did she come off as that sort of woman? No, it was probably a normal expectation. Most at her age were already married or close to it. Neia was the rare exception – even her mother, who was a renowned Paladin, had given birth to her around the same age. The war and her busy schedule after it spared no time for romance.

Saye placed the basket on the dining room table, pulling back the cover with a flourish to reveal some bread, cheese and a bottle of wine.

“You shouldn’t have...”

“It would be weird if I didn’t bring anything as a guest,” Saye replied.

Neia looked down at her dress and tried smoothing out a crease. Everything about the young Bard seemed extraordinarily classy – she was probably highly popular wherever she went. Did someone like Neia have any right to entertain such a high-calibre artist? Saye seemed like she would be more suited to the courts of High Nobles or even Kings.

The Bard settled down at the table, patting its surface as she looked up at Neia with her ice-blue eyes. Whether Saye sensed her mounting nerves, Neia couldn’t tell. It could be that she was already used to reactions like hers.

“So,” Saye asked, “how would you like to start?”

“Well,” Neia answered as she took a seat opposite the Bard, “since you brought something nice, why don’t you ask the first question?”

“Alright.”

Saye retrieved a quill, inkwell, and stack of paper from the bottom of the basket. Neia’s eyes shimmered as she tensed, ready to spread the word of the Sorcerer King’s greatness.

“Let’s start with something easy,” Saye said. “What is the Sorcerer King’s favourite colour?”

...huh?

Upon hearing the question, Neia’s anticipation transformed into ash.