Chapter 26 - Interlude – Ganche’s Repairs (1/2)

Although Meissen was exceedingly poor, it had plenty of land.

In fact, Meissen made up one twentieth of the Kingdom. However, seventy percent of Meissen was mountains or forests, and it was covered in trees.

The Lord’s estate also owned vast stretches of land. No one knew for sure where the Lord’s lands began and ended, but at the very least, his properties included three forests.

The estate itself was also extraordinarily enormous, being at least three times as wide as the palace of the Crown Prince where Ernst had formerly resided. Each and every room was also large, their ceilings high.

Thanks to this, even with Ganche’s physique, he was able to live here without any problems; yet he was able to sense the voiceless cries coming from this mansion, which had fallen into disrepair.

“Lord Ernst. A large hole has cracked open in the wall of the corridor.”

The life of a man in the militia was a leisurely one, Ganche thought. Ever since Targes had become the captain, they spent every morning to afternoon training, but it seemed like there hadn’t been any training before then.

The militia’s main job was to cultivate the fields around the estate and to gather firewood, the soldiers had said with placid, peace-loving faces.

“Humm. There are also holes on the second floor of the south building as well as the first floor of the east building, and also on the second and third floors of the west building.”

Ernst replied while writing something upon some documents.

“So you were aware of them…”

As always, Ernst’s brightness caught Ganche’s tongue. Just how much information was contained within that small, golden-haired head? It was mystifying to him.

“That’s right. I know about it, but I don’t have the money to make repairs.”

Saying that, Ernst smiled wryly.

Two months have passed since Ernst came to Meissen, and one month has passed since he and Ganche became partners.

For this one month, Ernst had shut himself into his office as if trying to make up for his past neglect.

No one was allowed to come near the office lest they disturb his work, and Ernst didn’t invite anyone to spend time inside other than Ganche.

It makes me feel lonely when we only spend time together from dinner to breakfast the next morning, so whenever you don’t have anything to do, come stay beside me, Ernst said.

Feeling happy but also nervous about causing trouble for Ernst, Ganche had timidly entered the office – but it didn’t take long for him to realize that his fears had been unfounded.

While conversing casually with Ganche, Ernst read mysterious and complicated papers, and he wrote up official documents which Ganche was sure freely made use of many difficult-to-understand, abstruse sentences; and when the head butler entered the room for business, Ernst calmly pointed out, without overtly saying it, that the calculations in the papers filed to him three days ago were incorrect.

In Targes’ words, ‘Lord Ernst’s head has ten people inside of it.’

Even with all of Ernst’s intellect, the issue of Meissen’s financial difficulties was a formidable one.

In Meissen’s current situation, the basic tax paid by each villager was 5 sitts. The militia was exempt from taxes, so 539 people, excluding the soldiers, paid taxes. In other words, every year, the Lord came into possession of 2695 sitts without fail.

But the Lord of Meissen must also pay taxes to the King of Rintz. The amount was decided by the size of the territory and the number of citizens.

Although the militia didn’t have to pay taxes to the Lord, for some reason when the Lord had to pay taxes to the King, the entire population was taken into account; in other words, this number included the militia.

The Lord had to pay 1 sitt per person under his rule. As such, every year, he had to pay 696 sitts, as well as a land tax of 2500 sitts, totalling 3196 sitts which had to be paid.

The current status quo was a deficit of 501 sitts every year.

The vastness of Meissen’s land had become its liability.

The minimum tax stipulated by national law was 5 sitts per person, and the Lord was able to change the amount of tax so long as the number was above 5 sitts.

Up until Ernst had been made Lord, the neighboring lord of Rintz had collected Meissen’s tax and paid it to the King.

At that time, the tax collected for each person had been 10 sitts.

Every year, the Lord of Rintz had collected 2194 sitts from Meissen and pocketed it for himself.

“Couldn’t you raise the taxes? If it were even just 6 sitts, you could at least work out the payment for the Kingdom’s taxes…”

Once, Ganche had said this. But Ernst gave a decisive reply.

“That would certainly be true. However, the yearly income of someone who leaves the village to find work is, at most, 7 sitts. Though I have on hand data collected over twenty years, the situation in reality has changed greatly. In the villages where people leave to become migrant workers, the number of people who leave consists of half their population. That half earns the taxes which the village has to pay… I understand that even 5 sitts for each person is already harsh.”

“…That does seem to be the case.”

“But this amount of tax was set in place by national law. I can’t do anything about it.”

Ernst sighed heavily.

The way Ernst spoke to anyone was always in this way.

First, he acknowledged and affirmed what the person said.

After, he would talk about the present situation, as well as his own thinking of how the issue at hand should be dealt with.

He never ignored the other person’s words or denied what they said, and no matter how off the mark their answer was, he never treated it as foolish.

Finally, he absolutely never spoke to the other person with condescension.

There had been a time where one of the militiamen had said something exceptionally rude to Ernst.

Targes, who had also been there, had instantly frozen in place, but Ernst merely changed his posture into a calm stance and accepted the militiaman’s words. Then, he nonchalantly corrected the soldier’s misunderstanding.

‘I haven’t been deceived by that person’s appearance, or his personal history.’

Targes, grinning cheekily, had relayed these words to Ganche.

Did Ernst have a secret plan for recovering the deficit that would occur every year from now on?

He knew that the head butler had heavily criticized Ernst, saying, ‘He only lowered taxes to curry favor with the common people.’

Ganche had been so aggravated that he wanted to strike him, but when Ernst heard this story, he just laughed quietly.

The Vice-Captain of the militia, Aldo, had been born in Meissen, but from when he was 40 up until he was 80, he had been a mercenary in the Gaidla fief. Even in that territory, a single person had to pay a tax of 15 sitts to the Kingdom.

The tax collected from the people was only one part of the taxes the Lord collected – was how things usually were.

It was unheard of for a fief to be like Meissen, where the tax collected from the people fell short of the tax to be paid to the Kingdom.

‘Aren’t you the ones doing it wrong?’ Targes and Aldo said, when Ganche brought it up.

‘What the head butler said is right, isn’t it?’

At that time, Ganche had been so indignant that he pounded his fist on the desk of the barracks, splitting it in half.

He understood that even though Ernst was incredibly concerned over the lives of the people, if he was too kind to the point where he disregarded the reality of the situation, it would only lead to a disaster.

To say nothing of doing such rash things for foolish reasons like raising one’s brownie points.

Ganche wasn’t able to come up with any good ideas on how to help with Meissen’s financial difficulties. Since he wasn’t able to help Ernst here, then he wanted to find some other way to help.

Ganche stood from his chair, and said to Ernst:

“Lord Ernst. How about I repair the holes in the estate?”

A slightly surprised expression appeared on Ernst’s face when he heard Ganche’s proposal. He agreed to it.

“Even if you say you’re going to repair the estate, no matter how I think about it, just how are you going to…”

“It sure is an extremely ambitious project for fixing up, isn’t it.”

“If you make it that misshapen, Lord Ernst’s going to get angry.”

Ignoring the noisy commentary, Ganche swung an axe with one hand. The tree that he had carried over became logs. Some of it was piled up to be made into firewood.

“Ya have to pack the rocks according to the formation of the rocks inside, or it won’t work.”

“That sounds right. Looks like you have to carve the rocks.”

“Ya probably don’t know this, but the rocks actually have something like eyes. If ya aim for those eyes, the stone’ll break easily, y’see.”

“This rock formation or whatever is something that needs some experience. We should really leave it to an expert, yeah?”

“…so if you do it like this, ya should be able to break it open like paper…”

Today’s training had ended in the morning. Although there was work to do in the fields, the militia had 157 adult men. Ganche didn’t have as many men as the captain or vice-captain, but there were still a plentiful number of hands. They spent one hour working on the lord of the land’s fields before they were finished.

As a result, the militiamen who had plenty of time on their hands were always on the lookout for anything interesting to do.

“…Quiet! If you’re not going to help, break it up.”

Though Ganche glared at them, they had spent three months in close contact. Up until Ganche had become Ernst’s partner, he had slept in the barracks with them.

By now, there wasn’t anyone who was afraid of Ganche.

“No no no no no. I’m worried that you might mess something up.”

“It’s just plugging up a hole. How exactly is he supposed to mess that up?”

“You yourself told me it was easy, so are you now saying this simple thing is actually difficult?”

The soldiers of the fourth platoon said, ‘That’s right! That’s right!’, all of them nodding their heads with know-it-all expressions on their face.

This was why Ganche hated the people of Schell continent.

Since they lived for 200 years, by the time someone became an independent adult, they were already past 40 years old.

To them, Ganche was the same as a baby.

‘You may not know this, but-’ they said, flaunting their knowledge; the ones who didn’t have any academic background talked about their experience.

There wasn’t any room for Ganche to cut in when these people, who had been around before his parents, and before his parents’ parents, talked to him about their experience. The difference between what he and they had experienced was far too great.

In his opinion, the people of the Schell races would never be a match for the Grude in terms of physical power, so they clung to their one point of living for twice as long and used it to bask in a sense of superiority.

Ganche had that sort of cynical perspective.

Before you start quibbling about your theories, why don’t you lift a finger and test it? Though Ganche always thought this, he wasn’t foolish enough to say it aloud.

If he said something like that, they would nag him twice as much as before.

Even so, that dialogue baked into his brain, ready to be unleashed.

“…What are you doing?”

A new voice joined in. Knowing that this was Targes, the militiamen corrected their behavior. After undergoing training every day, they were finally able to conduct themselves like soldiers.

“You can see it if you use your eyes. I’m fixing the estate.”

Ganche answered glumly.

Although Ganche was just a common soldier, he didn’t belong to any platoon, and his position was the same as the captain’s.

In the beginning, he had made a contract with the captain, Targes, to be hired as part of the militia. The contract lasted for one year, and during that time, the rank of Ganche would be equal to that of his employer, Targes.

At present, Ganche had made a contract of companionship with Ernst, so his contract of employment with Targes had been destroyed.

Since his rank had been equal, even if the other person was the captain, Ganche didn’t salute or use formal language. It was only when Ernst was around that Ganche changed the way he behaved.

He was like a kid who acted like a good boy in front of his parents.

When Targes had told him that, cackling, Ganche had gone to smack him – but as if he’d predicted that would happen, Targes had just barely dodged out of the way.

“I know that you’re trying to patch the hole, but… is it really okay like that?”