Chapter Ninety-Seven: A Deadlock

As darkness fell, the woods by the roadside took on a peculiarly sinister air. A faint breeze stirred the branches, and the leaves swayed like demons in a wild dance. Victor’s guards immediately closed ranks around their lord, spears leveled and shields raised, until the whole company became a bristling hedgehog.

Victor could not help but laugh at the guards’ nervousness, and the gloomy weight on his mind eased somewhat.

At Victor’s orders, everyone had witnessed the savage wolves, and not just one. By now, not only the ordinary guards, but even Nelson was terribly on edge.

If one were to make a film with a paladin as the protagonist, then the righteous, radiant Captain Claude would surely lead a great multitude of people through hardships and over more than five hundred miles to reach the land of hope. There they would encounter the lord’s escort, and the lord would tell the paladin that terrible monsters were roaming the territory and that unless they were destroyed, the people would not be safe. So the great Paladin Claude, in order to protect the people, would begin a bloody struggle against cunning and ferocious beasts, only to slay the monsters at last and discover that the baron had been the true mastermind all along. Hah. Such a film would be a sure-fire hit.

Pity that in reality, good intentions so often brought about ruinous results. Victor thought with scorn.

Yesterday, after Victor had just made arrangements to deal with the approaching tide of refugees, he received a letter from Baron Eskri. After reading it, Victor had been utterly stunned. In the letter, Eskri informed him that a large number of refugees, organized by the church, were migrating into his territory, and demanded that Victor handle the matter properly, or else Eskri would seal the border. In other words, if Victor blocked the refugees within Eskri’s lands, then Eskri would no longer allow Victor’s caravans to pass through his territory.

Eskri’s domain was a necessary route on Victor’s way to Blackfort Town. Since Victor and Eskri had always enjoyed fairly cordial relations, Victor’s caravans had never been taxed there. Thus, Victor had no choice but to accept these refugees, for his trade with Blackfort Town depended on it too much.

What was more, the church’s involvement filled Victor with both dread and bafflement. The church had always done its best to safeguard the survival of the people, so why would it organize so many free tenants to march to their deaths? The church could not possibly be unaware that this territory simply did not have enough grain. Could it be that whoever was plotting against him had already bribed the church?

With that question in mind, Victor revised his deployment. Originally, against small bands of refugees, a few alchemical warhounds would have been enough to keep order. But now that a great wave of refugees was pouring in under organization, five alchemical warhounds were no longer enough. Victor acted decisively, leading his guards to intercept them at the border and using the menace of the savage wolves to make them camp in the designated area.

Just as Victor had expected, the organizers among the refugees did not dare to send the people deep into the territory and risk their lives; they could only obediently set up camp. But inevitably, some bold free tenants would try to slip into the heart of Victor’s domain. When that happened, they would meet the savage wolves’ slaughter, and the survivors would flee back to camp with the truth in hand. Then the rest would dare no further rashness.

“Your lordship, do we really have to provide grain for those people? There are more than a thousand of them! More than our own people!” Nelson said gloomily to Victor. Feeding a few dozen extra mouths he could accept, but the thought of sustaining so many people left him profoundly unwilling.

Victor sighed. “We must support them. We cannot simply watch them starve. If they are driven to desperation, they will storm our villages and camps and bring us even greater losses.”

Victor understood very well that only basic survival could keep these refugees orderly, and that even under the threat of savage beasts they would not dare act recklessly.

“Your lordship, I’m afraid we can’t afford to support so many people. Could we not, as other lords do, hire free tenants to work for us? After all, weren’t we already planning to recruit more hands?” Nelson suggested quietly.

He knew the territory’s income was still decent, especially since the products of the specialized villages sold very well in Blackfort Town. If more people were put to work, the whole thousand could be absorbed without difficulty. Rather than letting them eat for nothing, it would be better to hire them and let them feed themselves.

Victor shook his head. “It is not that simple. In truth, land and population are equally important to a lord. But look at how the York family turns free tenants into settlers. More than twenty thousand free tenants make their living in Blackfort Town. The Yorks did not directly bring those people into their territory; instead, they donated grain to the church and kept the free tenants in the shantytowns of Blackfort Town. The York family established three organizations: the Mason Guild, the Cabbage Heads, and the Hyenas. The Mason Guild and the Cabbage Heads recruit labor from among the free tenants and select the diligent and dependable to become their own settlers, while the idle and worthless can only continue relying on the church’s aid. The Hyenas maintain order among the free tenants and prevent those who have been eliminated from causing trouble.”

“The Mason Guild, the Cabbage Heads, and the Hyenas are like a sieve, sifting the free tenants over and over, until they produce qualified settlers for the York family. But all three organizations are made up of free tenants; no matter what they do, the church can never fault the Yorks for it.”

“The York family’s transformation of free tenants is difficult and slow. Those who successfully rise to the status of settlers come to cherish that identity all the more, and naturally develop a deep sense of belonging to the York family.”

Victor saw the matter with great clarity, thanks in large part to the life he had lived on Earth. In that highly civilized world, every country treated the problem of refugees with caution. Even those saintly nations that accepted refugees would place them in refugee camps rather than letting them enter their cities and villages directly. Even so, those refugees still brought many social problems. Most ironically, the most developed country of all kept producing refugees without ever resettling them on any large scale. This alone showed how thorny the issue of refugees truly was.

To Victor’s mind, these free tenants pouring in were, in essence, refugees, and with his present capabilities he simply could not absorb them. Forcing the issue would only sink the whole enterprise. More importantly, someone had clearly dug a pit for him. If he jumped into it like a fool, then he truly would deserve to have been kicked in the head by a donkey.

“Our production system could indeed accommodate these people. But we absolutely must not do so!” Victor said firmly. “They are not here to make a living; they are here because of the labor-credit system. Once we begin hiring them, even more people will rush here. We cannot give them the slightest hope!”

Nelson looked around at the guards, wanting to speak but stopping himself at last with only a sigh.

In the face of this crisis, Victor did not abolish the labor-credit system. On the contrary, he publicly reaffirmed his determination to uphold it. The villagers, so anxious and unsettled, immediately calmed down. At a critical moment, internal stability mattered above all else, and Victor could not cut away the roots on which he stood.

“Your lordship, I’m afraid even more people will join that camp. By then, our burden will be even heavier,” Nelson said worriedly.

However insensitive he might be to internal administration, Nelson understood that an ever-growing number of people living at others’ expense would surely drag the entire territory down. Yet he was at a loss. He did think of driving them away by force, but with the paladins watching, that could only remain a thought, and in any case Victor would never agree to such a thing.

A shadow crossed Victor’s eyes. The small bands of refugees had originally been forced to turn back by the savage wolves’ threat. Now, with the paladins interfering, they had gained another choice. Victor could already picture more and more free tenants going to that camp merely to observe, while his own burden grew heavier and heavier. At this juncture, he could not even recruit more labor for production, and even the plan to retake Sunlake Village had stalled. Worst of all, he could not let the paladins leave now, or else the thousands of refugees would become his burden, impossible to shake off. It was an inescapable dead end.

“We have only one choice: delay,” Victor said with a sigh.

“Delay until they despair, delay until they leave on their own, delay until news of the savage wolves spreads throughout all of Blackfort Town. Until then, we provide only a small amount of food, just enough so they do not starve. We must also keep sending caravans to Blackfort Town to buy grain, while escorting those who wish to depart.”

Victor himself did not know whether he could afford to drag this out, but everything that ought to be done had already been done. Beyond intimidation, relief, blockade, repatriation, and dissemination, he still needed to seek outside help.

There was a reason Victor had the paladins camp in that area. It was the junction of three territories. Besides Eskri and Victor, there was also Viscount Briat. Once the gathering crowd became too large for Victor’s territory to bear, the other two lords would be unable to stand by and do nothing. Though they were but fish splashed by the flood, what choice did they have when they happened to be Victor’s neighbors?

Mounted on his warhorse, Victor gazed toward Blackfort Town. He had a feeling that if this disturbance was to be calmed, the key was not in the territory, but in the church. Right now, the first thing he had to determine was this: who was plotting against him? Was this organized migration arranged by the church, or was it the personal doing of that paladin?

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“Stupid! Idiot! Is this a paladin? He is not even fit to be compared with an old farmer! Conley, you will bear full responsibility for this!”

Father Ivan, broad-shouldered and warlike in bearing, roared at Father Conley of the central church.

Conley was berated by Ivan for a full half hour, and even after being spat on repeatedly, he did not raise his voice. Claude had made such a colossal mess, and Conley was his superior. Yet now Ivan wanted him to shoulder all the blame, and Conley immediately bristled.

“As the presiding priest of the parish district, you knew nothing of a migration of more than thirteen hundred people? Such a huge disturbance, and you had no idea? Now that something has gone wrong, you come here and dump all the responsibility on my head? Don’t even think about it!”

Ivan was left speechless. He had indeed come to pass the buck, but the burden was not so easy to cast off. As for Claude, Ivan had long since grown sick of him. That paladin always came to him with trivial matters, and in the end Ivan simply refused to see him anymore, unwilling even to hear about his affairs. Who would have thought that in the space of just two days, Claude would lead more than a thousand people out of Blackfort Town?

“Claude is your subordinate, not mine! He acted on his own; you cannot escape responsibility!” Ivan shouted, jumping in place.

“We are brothers of the same church. What good does this kind of mutual evasion do? We should be thinking about how to solve the problem!” Conley said bitterly. “It is truly strange. Free tenants moving around is normal enough, but they always move from poor places to prosperous ones. When have you ever seen them moving toward remote, desolate land? And in such numbers, too? What on earth are they doing it for?”

Conley’s yielding steadied Ivan. He snorted. “What else could it be for? To join the labor-credit system, of course.”

Then Ivan explained to Conley everything he had learned.

Conley listened in stunned silence. After quite a while, he finally said, “Baron Victor is in trouble! He will be swallowed by the free tenants!”

“Not only is he in trouble! We are in trouble too! And those foolish free tenants are in even worse trouble!” Ivan said irritably.

Victor’s territory did not have that much grain. If large numbers of free tenants starved to death, then as presiding priests of the Radiant Church, they too would be hard-pressed to avoid blame.

“No, that is not right. Where did Claude gather enough grain for this? That is thirteen hundred people. They could never be fed by digging up wild vegetables!” Conley frowned. He clearly sensed that there was a conspiracy behind all this.

“That is why Claude is an idiot! He was being used and never even knew it! Some merchant directly donated a large quantity of supplies to him, and off he went all excited, completely forgetting the church rule that only priests may accept donations.” Ivan said angrily. In truth, that rule was already dead in all but name; the Radiant Knights had long been accepting donations, and those donations were enormous.

The two priests exchanged bitter looks, each feeling the same unease. It was obvious that Claude had been afraid they might obstruct him, and so had quietly set out with his men, catching them completely unprepared.

“What do we do now?” Conley asked. He had to admit that when it came to handling free tenants, he was no match for Ivan.

Ivan paced back and forth a few steps. “In truth, as you know, our church is not afraid of free tenants moving about. It is like grazing sheep: wherever the flock goes, all that is needed is for us clergy to follow. But now, neither of us can leave. There are even more people in Blackfort Town!”

“If we send grain there now, it will only draw even more people together. Unless the bishop sends a priest to Victor’s territory, we really cannot send grain there.”

Conley was silent for a moment, then asked, “Can’t you get those free tenants to come back?”

“Do you think so?”

Ivan gave Conley a cold look. The Radiant Church had always stood for protecting the people, not forcing them. But without coercive means, how could they make those mad free tenants leave Victor’s territory?

“Let me be blunt. The only way to recover our losses is to build a church in Victor’s territory! I know you have a very good relationship with the bishop, so now it is up to you.” Ivan fixed Conley with a burning gaze.

Conley forced a wry smile. “I can only go and try. Truthfully, I have no confidence at all. You may not know this, but there is a shortage of people everywhere right now, or they would never have made that thickheaded Claude the captain of the paladins.”

Lowering his voice, Conley added, “The last messenger who came here was a friend of mine. He told me that most of the paladins and priests have been transferred north.”

Ivan drew in a sharp breath.

Was the weather changing?